The Chase Page 8

  Huey shook his head. “No one gave him the slightest notice. Three people gave different descriptions. None matched. All I know is, my posse found no tracks from wagon, horse, or automobile leading out of town.”

  “What about the railroad?”

  Huey shook his head. “No train left town for eight hours. I posted men at the depot who searched the passenger cars before it left, but they found no one that looked suspicious.”

  “How about freight trains?”

  “My deputies ran a search of the only freight train that left town that day. Neither they nor the train engineer, fireman, or brakemen saw anyone hiding on or around the boxcars.”

  “What is your theory on the bandit?” asked Bell. “How do you think he made a clean getaway?”

  Huey paused to shoot another wad of tobacco saliva into the brass cuspidor. “I gave up. It pains me to say so, but I have no idea how he managed to elude me and my deputies. Frankly, I’m put out by it. In thirty years as a lawman, I’ve never lost my man.”

  “You can take consolation in knowing you’re not the only sheriff or marshal who lost him after he robbed their town banks.”

  “It still isn’t anything I can be proud of,” muttered Huey.

  “With your permission, I would like to question the three witnesses.”

  “You’ll be wasting your time.”

  “May I have their names?” Bell persisted. “I have to do my job.”

  Huey shrugged and wrote out three names on the back of a wanted poster, and where they could be found, handing it to Bell. “I know all these people. They’re good, honest citizens who believe what they saw even if it don’t match up.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff, but it is my job to investigate every lead, no matter how insignificant.”

  “Let me know if I can be of further help,” said Huey, warming up.

  “If need be,” said Bell, “I will.”

  BELL SPENT most of the next morning locating and questioning the people on the list given him by Sheriff Huey. Bell was considered an expert at drawing on witnesses’ descriptions, but this time around he drew a blank. None of the people, two men and one woman, gave correlating accounts. Sheriff Huey was right. He accepted defeat and headed back to his hotel and prepared to leave for the next town on his schedule that had suffered a similar tragedy: Bozeman, Montana.

  He was sitting in the hotel restaurant, eating an early dinner of lamb stew, when the sheriff walked in and sat down at his table.

  “Can I order you anything?” Bell asked graciously.

  “No thanks. I came looking for you because I thought of Jackie Ruggles.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “He’s a young boy of about ten. His father works in the mine and his mother takes in laundry. He said he saw a funny-looking man the day of the robbery, but I dismissed his description. He’s not the brightest kid in town. I figured he wanted to impress the other boys by claiming he’d seen the bandit.”

  “I’d like to question him.”

  “Go up Third Street to Menlo. Then turn right. He lives in the second house on the left, a ramshackle affair that looks like it may fall down any minute, like most of the houses in that area of town.”

  “I’m obliged.”

  “You won’t get any more out of Jackie than you did from the others, probably less.”

  “I have to look on the bright side,” said Bell. “As I said, we have to check out every lead, no matter how trivial. The Van Dorn Detective Agency wants the killer as much as you.”

  “You might stop by the general store and pick up some gumdrops,” Sheriff Huey said. “Jackie has a sweet tooth for gumdrops.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  BELL FOUND the Ruggles house just as Huey described. The entire wooden structure was leaning to one side. Another two inches, Bell thought, and it would crash into the street. He started up the rickety stairs just as a young boy dashed out of the front door and ran toward the street.

  “Are you Jackie Ruggles?” Bell asked, grabbing the boy by the arm before he dashed off.

  The boy wasn’t the least bit intimidated. “Who wants to know?” he demanded.

  “My name is Bell. I’m with the Van Dorn Detective Agency. I’d like to ask you about what you saw the day of the bank robbery.”

  “Van Dorn,” Jackie said in awe. “Gosh, you guys are famous. A detective from Van Dorn wants to talk to me?”

  “That’s right,” said Bell, swooping in for the kill. “Would you like some gumdrops?” He held out a small sack that he had just purchased at the general store.

  “Gee, thanks, mister.” Jackie Ruggles wasted no time in snatching the sack and savoring a green gumdrop. He was dressed in a cotton shirt, pants that were cut off above the knee, and worn-leather shoes that Bell guessed were handed down by an older brother. The clothes were quite clean, as befitting a mother who was a laundress. He was thin as a broomstick, with boyish facial features that were covered with freckles, and topped by a thicket of uncombed curly light brown hair.

  “I was told by Sheriff Huey that you saw the bank robber.”

  The boy answered while chewing on the gumdrop. “Sure did. The only trouble is, nobody believes me.”

  “I do,” Bell assured him. “Tell me what you saw.”

  Jackie was about to reach in the sack for another gumdrop, but Bell stopped him. “You can have them after you’ve told me what you know.”

  The boy looked peeved but shrugged. “I was playing baseball in the street with my friends when this old guy—”

  “How old?”

  Jackie studied Bell. “About your age.”

  Bell never considered thirty as old, but to a young boy of ten he must have appeared ancient. “Go on.”

  “He was dressed like most of the miners who live here, but he wore a big hat like the Mexicans.”

  “A sombrero.”

  “I think that’s what it’s called.”

  “And he was toting a heavy sack over his shoulder. It looked like it was plumb full of something.”

  “What else did you notice?”

  “One of his hands was missing the little finger.”

  Bell stiffened. This was the first clue to identifying the killer. “Are you sure he was missing a little finger?”

  “As sure as I’m standing here,” answered Jackie.

  “Which hand?” Bell asked, containing his mounting excitement.

  “The left.”

  “You’ve no doubt it was the left hand?”

  Jackie merely nodded while staring longingly at the gumdrop sack. “He looked at me like he was really mad when he saw I was looking back.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I had to catch a fly ball. When I turned around, he was gone.”

  Bell patted Jackie on the head, almost losing his hand in a sea of unruly red hair. He smiled. “Go ahead and eat your gumdrops, but, if I were you, I’d chew slowly so they last longer.”

  AFTER HE checked out of the Rhyolite Hotel and before he boarded the train, Bell paid the telegraph operator at the depot to send a wire to Van Dorn describing the Butcher Bandit as missing the little finger on his left hand. He knew that Van Dorn would quickly send out the news to his army of agents to watch out for and report any man with that disfigurement.

  Instead of traveling back to Denver, he decided on the spur of the moment to go to Bisbee. Maybe—just maybe—he might get lucky again and find another clue to the bandit’s identity. He leaned back in his seat, as the torrid heat of the desert grilled the interior of the Pullman car. Bell hardly noticed it.

  The first solid clue, provided by a scrawny young boy, wasn’t exactly a breakthrough, but it was a start, thought Bell. He felt pleased with himself for the discovery and began to daydream of the day he confronted the bandit and identified him by the missing finger.

  THE CHASE QUICKENS

  11

  MARCH 4, 1906 SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  THE MAN WHOSE LAST ALIAS H
AD BEEN RUSKIN stood in front of an ornate brass sink and stared into a large oval mirror as he shaved with a straight razor. When finished, he rinsed off his face and patted on an expensive French cologne. He then reached out and clutched the sink as his railroad boxcar came to an abrupt stop.

  He stepped up to a latched window, disguised from the outside as if it were a section of the wooden wall of the car, cautiously cracked it, and peered outside. A steam switch engine had pushed ten freight cars uncoupled from the train, including the O’Brian Furniture car, through the Southern Pacific Railroad’s huge terminal building, called the Oakland Mole. It consisted of a massive pier built on pilings, masonry, and rock laid in the San Francisco Bay itself, on the west side of the city of Oakland. The slip where the ferryboats entered and tied up was at the west end of the main building, between twin towers. The towers were manned by teams of men who directed the loading and unloading of the huge fleet of ferries that moved to and from San Francisco across the bay.

  Because the Oakland Mole was at the end of the transcontinental railway, it was filled twenty-four hours a day with a mixed crowd of people, coming from the east and heading across the continent in the opposite direction. Passenger trains commingled with freight trains that carried goods and merchandise. It was a busy place in 1906, since business was booming in the sister cities of the bay. San Francisco was a thriving commercial center while much of the actual goods were manufactured in Oakland.

  Ruskin checked a schedule and saw that his cleverly disguised mode of secret travel was on board the San Gabriel, a Southern Pacific Railroad ferry built to haul freight trains as well as passengers. She was a classic ferry, double-ended, her stern and bow surmounted with a pilothouse on each end. She was propelled with side paddle wheels powered by two walking-beam steam engines, each with its own smokestack. Ferries carrying trains had parallel tracks on the main deck for the freight cars, while the cabin deck housed the passengers. The San Gabriel was two hundred ninety-eight feet long, seventy-eight feet wide, and could carry five hundred passengers and twenty railroad cars.

  The San Gabriel was to arrive at the Townsend and Third Streets Southern Pacific terminus, where the passengers would disembark. Then it would move on to Pier 32 at Townsend and King Streets, where its cargo of railroad cars would be taken to the city railyard between Third and Seventh Streets. There, the O’Brian Furniture Company car would be switched to the siding of a warehouse the bandit owned in the city’s industrial section.

  Ruskin had ridden on the San Gabriel many times on his trips across the bay and looked forward to returning home after his venture in Salt Lake City. A great whoop echoed around the Mole from the boat’s steam whistle as it announced her departure. She began to tremble when the tall walking-beam engines turned the big twenty-seven-foot paddle wheels that churned the water. Soon the boat was riding the glass-smooth bay toward San Francisco, no more than twenty minutes away.

  Ruskin quickly finished dressing in an exactingly tailored conservative black business suit. A small yellow rose went in the buttonhole. He sat a derby hat on his head at a rakish angle and pulled a pair of suede gloves over his hands. He picked up his cane.

  Then he bent down and gripped the handle to the trapdoor in the floor of the freight car and swung it open. He dropped a large, heavy suitcase through the opening. Then he slowly lowered himself to the deck between the rails, careful not to soil his clothes. Hunched down under the car, he made certain none of the crew were within view as he moved away and straightened up.

  Ruskin was headed up a stairway to the cabin deck where the passengers rode when, halfway up, he met a crewman coming down. The crewman stopped and nodded at him, a serious expression on his face.

  “Are you aware, sir, that passengers are not allowed on the main deck?”

  “Yes, I’m aware.” The bandit smiled. “I realized my mistake, and, as you see, I was turning around to return to the cabin deck.”

  “Sorry to have troubled you, sir.”

  “Not at all. It’s your duty.”

  The bandit proceeded up the stairs and stepped into the ornate, highly decorated cabin deck where the passengers crossed the bay in style. He went into the restaurant and ordered a cup of tea at the stand-up bar, then walked outside onto the open forward deck and sipped as he watched the buildings of San Francisco grow larger across the bay.

  The City by the Bay was already becoming a fascinating, romantic, cosmopolitan city. It had risen in stature since 1900, establishing itself as the financial and merchandising hub of the West. It was built on the foresight of entrepreneurs much like the meticulously dressed man standing on the deck with the huge suitcase. He, like they, saw an opportunity and moved quickly to seize it.

  Not one for niceties, Ruskin finished his tea and then threw the cup overboard, not returning it to the restaurant. He idly watched a thick flight of sandpipers fly past the boat, followed by a trio of brown pelicans gliding inches above the water in search of small fish. Then, mingling with the throng, he moved down the forward stairway to the main deck, where the passengers disembarked the ferry onto the pier in front of the big, ornate, Spanish-style Southern Pacific terminus.

  He walked briskly through the interior cavern of the terminus, lugging the big suitcase, and through the doors on the Townsend Street side. For the next few minutes, he stood on the sidewalk and waited. He smiled as a white Mercedes Simplex runabout rolled up the street and came to a tire-skidding halt at the curb in front of him. Under the hood was a massive four-cylinder, sixty-horsepower engine that could move the car as fast as eighty miles an hour. It was a marvelous contrivance of steel, brass, wood, leather, and rubber. Driving it was sheer adventure.

  If the car produced a striking picture, so did the woman behind the steering wheel. She was svelte and wasp-waisted. Her red hair was adorned with a large red bow that matched her fiery hair. Her bonnet was tied under her chin to keep it from blowing away, and she wore a tan linen dress that came halfway up her calves so she could dance her feet deftly over the five floor pedals. She took one hand from the big steering wheel and waved.

  “Hello, brother. You’re an hour and a half late.”

  “Greetings, sister.” He paused to grin. “I could only go as fast as the engineer drove the train.”

  She offered him her cheek and he dutifully kissed it. She inhaled the smell of him. He always used the French cologne she had given him. It smelled like a sea of flowers after a light evening rain. If he hadn’t been her sibling, she might have had a love affair with him.

  “I assume your trip was successful.”

  “Yes,” he said, strapping the suitcase on the running board. “And we haven’t a minute to lose.” He climbed into the brown leather passenger’s seat. “I must record the bank draft I obtained at the Salt Lake Bank and Trust before their agents show up to stop the transfer.”

  She pushed a laced-up brown leather shoe against the clutch and shifted expertly, as the car leaped down the street like a lion chasing a zebra. “It took two days for you to get here. Don’t you think you’re cutting it close? They would have contacted law enforcement officials and hired private agents, prodding them to check all the banks in the country for a stolen bank draft worth a fortune.”

  “And that takes time, not less than forty-eight hours,” he added, clutching the side of the seat with a hand since there were no doors on the runabout for support as she made a sharp left turn up Market Street. He barely grabbed his derby with his other hand before it almost flew off into the street.

  She drove fast, seemingly recklessly, but nimbly, smoothly whipping around slower traffic at a speed that turned heads and startled passersby. She hurtled past a big beer truck, pulled by a team of Percheron horses, that blocked most of the street, slipping between the stacked barrels on the street and the sidewalk filled with pedestrians with only inches to spare. He bravely whistled a marching tune called “Garry Owen” and tipped his hat at the pretty girls coming out of the clothing stores. The big Mark
et Street electric trolley car loomed ahead, and she crossed into oncoming traffic to pass it, sending more than one horse rearing up on its hind legs, to the anger and fist waving of their drivers.

  Another two blocks through the canyon of brick-and-stone buildings, she came to a quick stop, skidding the rear tires when she hit the brakes, in front of the Cromwell Bank on the southeast corner of Market and Sutter Streets. “Here you are, brother. I trust you enjoyed the ride.”

  “You’re going to kill yourself someday.”

  “Blame yourself,” she said, laughing. “You gave me the car.”

  “Trade you my Harley-Davidson for it.”

  “Not a chance.” She gave a cheery wave and said, “Come home early and don’t be late. We’ve a date on the Barbary Coast with the Gruenheims to go slumming and take in one of the scandalous dance revues.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said sarcastically. He stepped down to the sidewalk before turning and unstrapping the suitcase. She saw that he strained as he lifted and knew it was crammed with stolen currency from the Salt Lake bank.

  At the press of the accelerator pedal, the chain-driven Mercedes Simplex charged across the intersection and roared up the street, the thunder of the exhaust coming within a few decibels of breaking the storefront windows.

  The bandit turned and looked with pride at the big, elaborately ornamented Cromwell Bank Building, with its tall, fluted Ionic column and large stained-glass windows. A doorman in a gray uniform opened one of the big glass doors for him. He was a tall man with gray hair, and a military bearing that came from thirty years in the United States Cavalry.

  “Good morning, Mr. Cromwell. Glad to see you back from your holiday.”

  “Glad to be back, George. How’s the weather been in my absence?”

  “Just like it is today, sir, sunny and mild.” George looked down at the large suitcase. “May I carry that for you, sir?”

  “No, thank you. I can manage. I need the exercise.”

  A small brass sign listed the bank’s assets at twenty-two million dollars. It would soon be twenty-three, thought Cromwell. Only the fifty-year-old Wells Fargo Bank had higher assets, capital, and liquidity. George swung open the door, and Cromwell the bandit strode across the marble floor of the bank’s lobby, past the beautifully carved desks of the managers and the tellers’ windows and the counters without bars, totally open to the customers. The open tellers’ area was a strange innovation by a man who trusted no one and robbed out-of-state banks to build his own financial empire.