Текст книги "The Chase"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

26

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, A BLACK-HAIRED WOMAN drove a smart-looking buggy pulled by a dappled gray horse on the road into Telluride. The road led from the ranching community of Montrose, a rail terminus for the Rio Grande Southern Railroad. She had arrived from Denver and rented the rig and horse at the local stable. She was dressed in a long buckskin skirt over a pair of pointed-toe leather boots. Her upper torso was covered by a nicely knit green sweater under a wolfskin fur coat. A lady’s-style flat-topped cowboy hat was set squarely on her head. She was fashionably attired for the West, but not ostentatious.

She came onto Colorado Avenue, passed the San Miguel County Courthouse, and pulled the horse to a stop in front of the town stable. She climbed down from the buggy and tied the horse to a hitching post. The stable owner came out and lifted his hat.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. Can I help you?”

“Yes, I wonder if you would please feed and water my horse. I have to be on the road back to Montrose this afternoon.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the stable owner politely, slightly taken aback by a voice that had a gentle harshness about it. “I’ll take care of it. While I’m at it, I’ll tighten your front wheels. They look a mite loose.”

“You’re very kind, thank you. Oh, and by the way, my sister will come for the buggy and pay you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The woman left the stable and walked a block to the New Sheridan Hotel. She approached the desk clerk and asked, “Do you have a Miss Rachel Jordan registered here?”

The clerk shook his head, stared at what he saw as an attractive woman, and said, “No, ma’am, she checked out last night.” He paused, turned, and pulled an envelope out of a mail-and-key slot. “But she said if someone asked for her to give them this.”

The woman thanked the clerk, walked out onto the sidewalk, opened the envelope, and read the note. She stuffed it in her purse and began walking through town. After a short hike, she came to the Lone Tree Cemetery, on a hill north of the San Miguel River. She passed through the gate and walked among the tombstones, noting that most of the deceased had died from mine accidents, snow slides, and miner’s consumption.

A pretty blond woman was sitting on a bench beside a grave site, leaning back and sunning herself. Out of the corner of one eye, she caught the approach of another woman. She sat up and stared at the intruder, who stopped and looked down at her. Margaret began to laugh.

“My God, Jacob,” she finally gasped. “That’s the most ingenious disguise you’ve ever created.”

Cromwell smiled. “I thought you’d approve.”

“A good thing you’re short, thin, and wiry.”

“I don’t know why I never thought of it before.” He awkwardly bunched up his buckskin skirt and sat down on the bench next to Margaret. “Tell me, sister dear, what have you learned since you’ve been here?”

Margaret told him how she became friendly with the sheriff and his wife. She handed him a sketch she’d made of the Telluride First National Bank’s interior and a description of the employees. Her report included the arrival of the payroll shipment from the bank in Denver and the counting today before it was sent to the mines tomorrow.

Cromwell looked at his watch. “We have one more hour before the bank closes. The best time to remove the currency and leave town.”

“I spotted a man hanging around the railroad depot. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I suspect he might have been a Van Dorn agent who was on the lookout for you.”

Cromwell looked thoughtful. “Even if Van Dorn sends agents to watch train arrivals and departures during payroll shipments, they’re only chasing a phantom. No way they could know where I’ll strike next.”

“If they’re wise to your boxcar, it’s a good thing you had it repainted.” She looked at him quizzically. “Just how do you expect us to make a clean escape after you rob the bank?”

Cromwell grinned wolfishly. “Who would suspect a pair of clean-cut, attractive ladies riding slowly out of town in a horse and buggy?”

She placed her arm around his shoulders. “The simplest plan is the best plan. You are brilliant, brother. You never cease to amaze me.”

“I appreciate the compliment,” he said, rising to his feet. “We don’t have much time. The payroll awaits.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“Go to the stable and pick up my horse and buggy. I told the stable owner my sister would come by to get the rig. Then wait at the back door of the bank.”

WHILE IRVINE watched the train station and town railyard, Bell and Curtis manned the Telluride Bank. Sitting in Murray Oxnard’s office, Bell began to think he had bet on the wrong horse. There were only ten minutes left before closing time and no sign of the bandit. Playing the role of a teller, Irvine was getting ready to close out his cashbox in anticipation of waiting on the last customer.

Bell glanced down at the .45 Colt automatic he’d kept in an open desk drawer and regretted that he would not get to use it on the Butcher Bandit. Blowing the scum’s head off was too good for him, Bell mused. Not after he had murdered so many unsuspecting people. His death would save the taxpayers the expense of a trial. Now Bell was faced with admitting defeat and starting over again with the meager clues he and his agents had ferreted out.

Irvine walked over to the office door and leaned his shoulder against the frame. “I can’t deny it was a good try,” he said with a tightness in his voice.

“It looks as if the bandit failed to take the bait,” Bell said slowly.

“Perhaps he didn’t read the article in the paper because he doesn’t live in San Francisco.”

“It’s beginning to look that way.”

Just then the door opened and a woman wearing a buckskin skirt walked into the bank, her hat pulled low so it covered her eyes. Bell gazed past Irvine but relaxed at seeing what appeared to be a well-dressed woman. He nodded to Irvine, who walked back to his teller’s cage and said, “How may I help you, ma’am?”

Cromwell lifted his head slightly so he could look into Irvine’s face. Then with a pang of alarm he stiffened as he instantly remembered the Van Dorn agent as one of the men who were sitting with Bell and Bronson in the Bohemian Club dining room only days earlier. He did not answer Irvine for fear his voice would give him away to the agent. Cromwell became charged with tension as he realized this was a trap. There came a pause as he lowered his head, his mind racing with alternatives. His advantage was that the agent did not recognize him, not dressed as a woman, and was not alert to the fact that the bandit was less than four feet away on the other side of the counter.

He could shoot the agent and take what money was in the safe or he could simply turn around and walk out of the bank. He chose the latter option and was about to beat a hasty retreat when Bell stepped from the office. Cromwell immediately recognized Bell. For the first time in his criminal career, he felt the spur of panic.

“How may I help you, ma’am?” Irvine repeated, vaguely wondering why the woman did not answer him the first time.

Already, Bell was looking at him with a questioning expression on his face, as if the female customer looked familiar. Bell was a master of identification and had a photographic memory when it came to faces. His eyes betrayed the fact that he was trying to recall where he’d seen her. Then his eyes dropped to Cromwell’s hands, which were covered by leather gloves. Abruptly, as if he had seen an apparition, he realized that he was staring at the bandit. It struck him like a hammer blow to the head. Bell’s eyes flared open and he gasped: “You!”

Cromwell did not waste another second. He reached into his large cloth purse and jerked out his .38 Colt, which had a heavy cloth taped around the muzzle. Without the slightest hesitation, he pointed the Colt at Irvine’s chest and pulled the trigger. A loud thump reverberated in the bank’s lobby. Then he swung the muzzle around and shot at Bell even before Irvine hit the floor like a rag doll.

If Bell hadn’t instinctively whirled around and thrown his body over the top of the desk, crashing to the floor behind it, the bullet would have caught him square in the stomach. The violent thrust saved him, but the bullet still plowed through the fleshy part of his thigh. He hardly felt the piercing blow. In a single movement, he reached up and snatched his Colt from the desk drawer. Without the luxury of time, he snapped off a shot at Cromwell that missed the neck of the bandit by less than half an inch.

Then, faster than lightning could strike, both men fired again, the shots coming so closely together they sounded as one.

Cromwell’s second bullet gouged a small trench across the side of Bell’s head, barely piercing the skin but creasing the skull. Bell’s vision became a blurred mist and he fell into the black pit of unconsciousness. Blood quickly seeped from the wound and covered the side of his head. It had not been a decisive wound, but to Cromwell, who was still standing, it looked as if he had shot off half of Bell’s head.

The bandit did not come out of the gun battle unscathed. Bell’s bullet had caught Cromwell in the waist but had passed through without striking any internal organs. He swayed, and only by reaching out and grasping the edge of the teller’s cage did he prevent himself from falling to the floor. He stood there for a few moments, fighting the pain. Then he turned and unlocked the rear door, standing aside as Margaret burst in.

“I heard shots outside,” she shouted shock. “What went wrong?”

“It was a trap,” he murmured as anger replaced fear. Holding a hand over his wound, he motioned the muzzle of his Colt toward the office floor. “I killed Isaac Bell.”

Margaret stepped into the office and looked down at the bloodied Van Dorn agent and a look of horror came into her eyes as she recognized Bell despite the blood covering much of his face. “Oh, my God!” She felt as if she was going to be sick, but the nausea quickly passed when she turned and saw that her brother was also bleeding. “You’re hurt!” she gasped.

“Not as bad as it looks,” he said through clenched teeth.

“We’ve got to get out of here. The shots will bring the sheriff and rouse half the town.”

Margaret half carried, half dragged her wounded brother through the rear door of the bank. Outside, the horse and buggy were waiting. She used all her strength to push him onto the seat of the rig, untied the horse from the fence post, and climbed aboard.

She raised the whip to urge the horse to a gallop, but he grabbed her wrist. “No, go slowly, as if we’re two women out for a buggy ride. It will look suspicious if we charge out of town.”

“The sheriff is a smart man. I know him. He won’t fool easily.”

“Even a smart man won’t suspect a woman of robbing a bank and killing two men,” muttered Cromwell.

At the end of the alley, Margaret turned the buggy up a side street and then headed west toward the town limits. Cromwell took off the wolfskin coat and draped it over his lap to cover the blood that soaked his sweater. He slipped the Colt into one of his cowboy boots and sat back, trying to keep his mind clear by ignoring the throbbing pain in his side.

BELL HAD instructed Sheriff Pardee that he would fire a shot as a signal if the bandit made his appearance. But Pardee knew there was trouble when he heard five shots, some of them muffled like the distant dynamite charge in a nearby mine. He rushed into the street from a hardware store where he had been hiding, fearful that the woman he’d seen walk into the bank might have been shot by the bandit.

Seeing him running toward the bank, four of his deputies leaped from their hiding places and rushed after him, while a fifth deputy ran to the railroad depot to alert Curtis. With his single-action Smith & Wesson drawn and the hammer pulled back, Pardee burst through the door of the bank. At first, he didn’t see anyone. Irvine was lying out of sight, behind the teller’s cage, and Bell was down on the other side of the desk. Then he came around the cage, saw the Van Dorn agent sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood. He checked to make sure Irvine was dead before he entered the office and found Bell.

“Is he a goner?” asked one of his deputies, a great bear of a man with a huge stomach bulging over pants with suspenders stretched to their limits, who stood poised with a sawed-off shotgun at the ready.

“The bullet only creased his skull,” answered Pardee. “He’s still alive.”

“What about the woman?”

Pardee’s mind did not register for a moment. Then it hit him. “The woman who came into the bank before the gunshots?”

“That one.”

“She must have been abducted by the bandit.”

“But we saw no one else enter the bank before or after her.”

Pardee stood up in confusion and disbelief. It took all his imagination to believe a woman was the Butcher Bandit.

“The bandit must have entered through the back door.”

“I don’t know, Sheriff,” said the deputy, scratching his chin. “The door should have been locked from the inside, like it always is.”

Pardee rushed over to the rear door and found it unlocked. He jerked it open and peered up and down the alley but saw no one. “Hell’s fire,” he muttered. “She got away.”

“She can’t get far,” said the deputy.

“Round up the men!” snapped Pardee. He motioned to another deputy, who was standing at the entrance of the bank. “Get Doc Madison. Tell him the Van Dorn agent is down with a head wound and to get over to the bank double-quick.” Pardee knelt down and quickly examined Bell again. “Also tell him there looks like there’s a bullet in the agent’s leg.”

The deputy was no sooner out the door than Pardee was on his heels, running toward his horse tied to the hitching post in front of his office. It didn’t seem possible, he thought, that everything had gone so terribly wrong. Only then did it begin to strike him that the bandit was a man disguised as a woman and that the poor widow he and his wife had taken in was an accomplice.

AS SOON as they left the city limits of Telluride and passed the road leading to the mines of Ophir to the south, Margaret gave the horse the whip and urged it to run through the canyon and down the road heading west toward Montrose. During the ten minutes since they left the bank, Cromwell had time to think. He pointed to a break in the trees that led to a bridge over the San Miguel River. It was an overgrown access road used by the railroad for maintenance crews repairing the track.

“Get off the road,” Jacob said to Margaret. “Go over the bridge and head down the track bed.”

She turned and looked at him. “I thought you said they’d never be suspicious of two women in a buggy?”

“That was before it occurred to me that the sheriff and his deputies were watching the bank.”

“That goes without saying, but what does it have to do with our escape?”

“Don’t you see, dear sister? I was the last one to enter the bank and never came out. If what you say is true, Pardee is no fool. He must have put two and two together by now and is looking for both of us. But he’ll never think to search for us riding over the track bed. He’ll be certain we took the road.”

“And if he doesn’t find us, what do you think he’ll do then?”

“He’ll backtrack, thinking that we hid out in the trees while he and his posse rode past. By then, we’ll be on a train out of Montrose, dressed as two men.”

As usual, Cromwell was miles ahead of his pursuers when it came to matching wits. Though he was disheartened that Bell had out-smarted him in laying a well-conceived trap, he gained a certain amount of satisfaction believing he had killed the famous Van Dorn agent.

Just as he had predicted, the sheriff and his posse charged down the road that was out of sight of the railroad tracks in the trees and, not finding any sign of their quarry, had doubled back toward Telluride. It was a bumpy ride over the railroad ties, but it was compensated for by knowing that Pardee had been hoodwinked and would end up empty-handed.

27

BELL WAS CARRIED TO THE TELLURIDE HOSPITAL, where he was treated by the town doctor. The first bullet out of Cromwell’s Colt had entered and exited his thigh, causing only minor damage to the tissue. The doctor said it would heal within a month. The doctor then stitched the scalp wound, sewing up the crease as neatly as a tailor mending a torn suit pocket.

After ignoring the doctor’s demands that he remain in the hospital for a few days, Bell limped to the depot to take the next train to Denver. Wearing a hat to cover the bandage around his head, he, along with Curtis, watched with anger and sadness as the coffin containing Irvine was lifted into the baggage car by Sheriff Pardee’s deputies. Then he turned and held out his hand to Pardee. “Sheriff, I can’t thank you enough for your cooperation. I’m grateful.”

Pardee shook Bell’s hand. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said sincerely. “Did he have a family?”

“Fortunately, no wife or children, but he lived with an aging mother.”

“Pour soul. I suppose it’s the county poorhouse for her.”

“She’ll be taken care of in a good nursing home.”

“A good nursing home doesn’t come cheap. Did Irvine have money?”

“No,” replied Bell, “but I do.”

Pardee refrained from any more questions. “If only things had fallen our way.”

“Our well-laid plans certainly turned into a fiasco,” said Bell, seeing the baggage car door close behind the coffin. “The bandit made me out the fool.”

“Not your fault,” said Pardee. “He fooled us all, and I was the biggest fool. I’m certain now the destitute widow who my wife and I took in was in cahoots with him. I should have been suspicious when she finagled information out of me about the bank’s operations.”

“But you didn’t tell her there was a trap being set. Cromwell would have never walked into the bank if he suspected a trap.”

Pardee shook his head. “They bought your story—hook, line, and sinker. If only we had known he was going to wear women’s clothing, we might not have thought twice before we shot him down like the dog he is.”

“According to reports of his other robberies, he never dressed as a woman.”

“Even if the trap turned sour, my posse and I should have apprehended them. Stupidly, I thought they’d stay on the road. It never crossed my mind they would use the railroad track bed as an escape route until it was too late. By the time I figured out how they had outfoxed me, they were long gone.”

“Were the train passenger lists checked in Montrose?”

“I wired the stationmaster, but they had already left on the train to Grand Junction,” answered Curtis. “He didn’t remember two women boarding, but he noticed two men. He said that one looked as if he were sick.”

“There was blood on the back step of the bank,” said Pardee with a tight smile. “You must have plugged him.”

“Not seriously enough to stop him,” Bell muttered quietly.

“I telegraphed the marshal of the territory. He had deputies in Grand Junction search all the trains going east and west but found no trace of two women traveling together.”

Bell leaned on a cane given to him by Pardee. “I’m beginning to know how the bandit’s mind works. He went back to wearing men’s clothes and dressed his sister as a man, too. The marshal, looking for two females, never suspected them.”

“A clever man, Cromwell.”

“Yes,” admitted Bell, “he is that.”

“Where do you go from here?” asked Pardee.

“Back to Denver and start all over again.”

“But now you know the bandit’s name and habits.”

“Yes, but making a case is impossible. No federal prosecutor would waste time on an indictment with such flimsy evidence.”

“You’ll nail him,” Pardee said confidently.

“We’ll work even harder now that we’ve got a personal reason to see him hung,” said Bell.

WHEN BELL and Curtis reached Denver late in the evening, a hearse was waiting to take Irvine to the local mortuary.

“He was my closest friend,” said Curtis. “I’ll console his mother and take care of the funeral arrangements.”

“Thank you,” Bell said. “I’ll take care of the costs.”

Bell took a taxi to the Brown Palace Hotel. Entering his suite, he removed his clothes and relaxed in a tub of hot water, propping his wounded leg on the edge to keep the bandage from getting wet. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander over the events of the past few days. Bell now knew the woman he’d passed in the New Sheridan Hotel was Margaret Cromwell. When her brother entered the bank from the front door, she was waiting in the rear with a horse and buggy. The picture of Cromwell made up as a woman disgusted him, yet he could not help but respect the shrewd, calculating mind of the Butcher Bandit. Avoiding Sheriff Pardee’s posse by driving the rig down the railroad track bed was a stroke of genius.

At first, Bell thought Cromwell would not tempt fate with another robbery. The possibility seemed extremely remote, but, as he had with all the criminals he’d apprehended, Bell began to make inroads inside Cromwell’s mind. He trained himself to think like the bandit. The more Bell thought about it, the more he became convinced that Cromwell believed he was invincible and immune to every investigation by law enforcement officers, especially the agents of the Van Dorn Detective Agency.

The next step would have to be carefully thought out. His mind was considering alternatives to accumulate enough evidence to arrest Cromwell when he heard a knock on his door. Favoring his good leg and suffering a brief bout of dizziness caused by his head wound as he stood, Bell climbed awkwardly out of the tub, put on a robe, and limped to the door. After pulling it open, he was surprised to see Joseph Van Dorn standing in the hallway.

Van Dorn looked up at the bandage around Bell’s head, which had seeped a spot of red, and he grinned tightly. “You’re a sorry sight.”

“Come in, sir, and make yourself at home.”

Van Dorn studied his wounded agent. He was concerned, but he made an effort to look nonchalant. “Is there much pain?”

“Nothing aspirin won’t cure.”

Van Dorn stepped into the suite and looked around. “I like an agent who travels in style when it’s not my money.”

“Can I call room service and get you something to eat or drink?”

Van Dorn waved a hand. “No, thanks, I ate on the train from Chicago just before it arrived in Denver. A glass of port would hit the spot.”

Bell phoned Van Dorn’s request to room service and hung up the phone. “I did not expect the head man to travel over a thousand miles just to see me.”

“A meeting between us is not only appropriate but vital to the investigation.” Van Dorn sank into an overstuffed chair. “I prefer a detailed report to a few words on a telegram. Now, tell me what happened in Telluride, and leave out nothing.”

“Most of what I can tell you went wrong,” Bell said sourly.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Van Dorn consoled him. “I wish I had a dollar for every plan I conceived that turned bad.”

A waiter brought a glass of port, and then Bell spent the next forty minutes filling Van Dorn in on the scheme to catch the Butcher Bandit and how Cromwell turned the tables on him and Sheriff Pardee. He told of the murder of Irvine and his own wounding, ending up with him waking up in the Telluride Hospital.

When Bell finished, Van Dorn asked, “You’re certain Jacob Cromwell is the Butcher Bandit?”

“His disguise was the work of genius, and Irvine and I were caught off guard. But there is no doubt in my mind Cromwell was the person I recognized wearing women’s clothing at the bank. Both Pardee and I also identified his sister, Margaret, who was staying in town to help him rob the bank.”

Van Dorn pulled a cigar case from his vest pocket, retrieved a long, thin corona, and lit it with a wooden match he flamed with his thumbnail. “It makes no sense. If Cromwell is wealthy, owns a bank with assets in the millions, and lives on Nob Hill in San Francisco, what does he gain by risking it all to pull off a string of robberies and murders?”

“From what I’ve been able to put together, the money he stole was used to build his bank’s assets.”

“But why now, when he is financially secure and his bank well established? Why continue the crime spree?”

Bell gazed through a window at the blue sky above the city. “The simple answer is, the man is insane. I’ve put together a profile of him in my mind. I’m certain he robs and kills because he enjoys it. The money is no longer his intent. It has lost its importance. Like a man addicted to whiskey or opium, he is driven to commit mayhem and murder. He believes himself too untouchable by law enforcement. In his mind, he is invincible and considers every criminal act as a challenge to outwit the law.”

“You have to admit,” said Van Dorn, blowing a large blue smoke ring across the room, “so far, he’s done a pretty good job of making us and every peace officer west of the Mississippi look like a bunch of amateurs.”

“Cromwell is not flawless. He’s human and humans make mistakes. When the time comes, I intend to be there.”

“Where do you go from here?”

Bell grimaced. “I wish everybody would stop asking me that.”

“Well?”

Bell’s gaze was focused and calm as he stared at Van Dorn. “It’s back to San Francisco to build a case against Cromwell.”

“From what you’ve told me, that won’t be easy. You have little evidence to make a case. A defense attorney would crucify you on the witness stand. He’d laugh at your identification of a man dressed like a woman, claiming it was impossible to tell the difference. And, without another witness or any fingerprints, I’d have to say you’re fighting a lost cause.”

Bell fixed Van Dorn with an icy stare. “Are you suggesting I resign from the investigation?”

Van Dorn scowled. “I’m not suggesting anything of the sort. I’m only pointing out the facts. You know perfectly well this is the number one priority case within the agency. We won’t rest until Cromwell is behind bars.”

Bell tenderly touched the side of his head, as if to feel if the wound were still there. “As soon as I sew up a few loose ends here in Denver, I’m returning to San Francisco.”

“I can arrange a team of agents to assist you. You have but to ask.”

Bell shook his head. “No. With Carter as my right-hand man, and backed by Bronson and the agents in his office, I’ll have all the manpower I’ll need. Better we continue to work undercover without an army of agents to cause complications.”

“What about Colonel Danzler and the Criminal Investigation Department in Washington? Can the government be of help in this matter?”

“Yes, but only at the opportune moment. Cromwell has an incredible amount of influence with the political and wealthy elite in San Francisco. He is the city’s leading philanthropist. If we obtain enough evidence to indict him, his friends will circle the wagons and fight us every step of the way. At that time, we’ll need all the help from the federal government we can get.”

“What is your plan?”

“At the moment, I have no set plan. Cromwell is fat, dumb, and happy, not knowing we’re getting closer to him with each passing day.”

“But you’re no closer now to seizing him than you were three weeks ago.”

“Yes, but now I have the advantage.”

Van Dorn’s eyebrows raised in curiosity and he muttered skeptically, “What advantage is that?”

“Cromwell doesn’t know I’m still alive.”

“It will come as a blow to his ego when he sees you’ve been resurrected.”

Bell smiled faintly. “I’m counting on it.”