Текст книги "The Chase"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

“Good night, Marion,” he said, holding her hand. “I trust you had an interesting evening.”

It was as if she saw now something deep within him that she had never seen before and she felt repulsed by his touch. “It will be an evening I’ll long remember,” she said honestly. “I hope Mr. Butler and your sister recover.”

“They’ll be hungover tomorrow, and justly so,” he said with a tight smile. “I’ll see you Monday morning. There is a pile of correspondence I have to dictate. I want to have a clean desk when I leave on a business trip on Friday.”

“You’re leaving again so soon?”

“A bankers’ conference in Denver. I must attend.”

“Until Monday morning, then,” she said with vast relief as he released her hand.

Marion climbed the steps to the door but turned and gazed at the Rolls-Royce as it pulled away into the street. Her mind acted without command. Things between her employer and herself would never be the same. There was a coldness about him that she was not aware of before and she cringed as she remembered his touch. All of a sudden, the lingering smell of the dance hall’s smoke and sweat on her clothes sickened her.

She rushed upstairs to her room, turned on the faucets of her bathtub, frantically removed her clothes, and slipped into the soapy water to remove all memory of the decadent evening.

“WHAT WAS your little meeting with Red Kelly all about?” asked Margaret after they let off Marion at her apartment.

“I hired him for a little job.”

She stared at his face as it was reflected by the light of the passing streetlamps. “What kind of a job?”

“He’s going to take care of Isaac Bell,” he said matter-of-factly.

“You can’t murder a Van Dorn agent!” Margaret gasped. “Every peace officer in the country would come after you.”

Cromwell laughed. “Not to worry, dear sister. I instructed Kelly to administer only enough damage to keep Bell in the hospital for a few months. That’s all. Call it a warning.”

Cromwell had blatantly lied to his sister. He would act surprised when Bell’s murder was announced and claim the agent’s death had been a mistake, that Kelly had gotten carried away. Inciting his sister’s anger, he decided, was a small price to pay for eradicating the man who had become his worst enemy.

16

“GIVE IT ANOTHER COAT,” CROMWELL ORDERED THE two men painting his boxcar. The color had been the earth brown that most freight cars had been painted since the early days of the railroad. But Tuscan red was the newer color used by Southern Pacific to standardize their vast fleet of freight cargo haulers. Cromwell wanted a second coat because the O’BRIAN FURNITURE COMPANY, DENVER still bled through the freshly dried first coat.

Margaret, dressed in a woolen dress and short jacket to keep her warm against the cool breeze blowing in from the ocean through the Golden Gate, held a parasol against a light early-morning mist that fell in the city. They stood watching the painters on the loading dock of an empty warehouse her brother had leased under a pseudonym.

“Can you trust them?” she asked.

“The painters?” He stared at the four men busy brushing paint on the boxcar. “To them, it’s just another job, another boxcar that needs to be tidied up. As long as they’re well paid, they don’t ask questions.”

“About time you changed the name,” she said. “Some sheriff or a Van Dorn detective is bound to discover that an O’Brian Furniture freight car was present in five of the towns that were robbed.”

“The same thought crossed my mind,” he said.

“What are you going to call it this time?”

“Nothing,” answered Cromwell. “It will look just like another freight car belonging to the Southern Pacific Railroad.”

“You could buy and decorate a new one. Why keep this old relic?”

“Because it looks like an old relic,” he said with a slight laugh. “Built in 1890. The railroad is still using this model. I prefer it to look tired and worn from many years and thousands of miles of hauling freight. And because its outward appearance is so ordinary, no one would suspect its true purpose. Even your Mr. Hotshot Bell could never begin to guess its real purpose.”

“Don’t underestimate Bell. He’s smart enough to get wise to your traveling hotel suite.”

He gave her a sour look. “Not that smart. And even if he smells a rat, it’s too late. The O’Brian Furniture car no longer exists.”

Cromwell was proud of his aged boxcar. It was thirty-four feet long, with a capacity of forty thousand pounds. Empty, it weighed twelve thousand. Once the second coat was dry, the car would be finished off with the proper signage on its wooden sides, which would include a serial number under the letters SP, for Southern Pacific. The capacity and unloaded weight also would be lettered on one side, while the SP insignia sunrise—a white circle with SOUTHERN arched across the top, PACIFIC arched across the bottom, and LINES across the middle—would be painted on the opposite side. When finished, the boxcar would look like any one of thousands of cars belonging to the Southern Pacific.

Even the serial number, 16173, was correct. Cromwell had arranged for the number to be lifted from a car in the middle of a railyard, scrapped, and then transferred to his rolling suite.

Nothing was ever left to chance. Every move was carefully thought out, then rehearsed and rehearsed again and again. All possible contingencies were considered and dealt with. Nothing escaped Cromwell’s attention, down to the last detail. No bandit in the history of the United States, including Jesse James and Butch Cassidy put together, came close to matching him in the number of successful robberies he pulled off and the amount of loot he collected. Or the number of people killed.

At the mention of Bell’s name, Margaret’s mind traveled back to when they danced together at the Brown Palace Hotel. She cursed herself for wanting to reach out and touch him. The mere thought of it sent a shiver down her spine. She had known many men, a great number of them intimately. But none had affected her as much as when she was in Bell’s arms. It was a wave of yearning she could neither understand nor control. She began to wonder if she would ever see him again, knowing deep inside it would be extremely dangerous. If they ever did meet, he surely would learn her true identity and find a path to her brother Jacob.

“Let’s leave,” she said, angry at herself for allowing her emotions to lose control.

Cromwell saw the faraway look in her eyes but chose to ignore it. “As you wish. I’ll return tomorrow to oversee the finished results.”

They turned and walked through a door into the warehouse. Cromwell paused to lock the door and set a bar in place so no one could enter. Their footsteps echoed throughout the deserted interior of the building. The only furnishings were in one corner, two desks, and a counter that looked like the tellers’ windows at a bank.

“A pity you can’t lease this space out and put it to good use,” said Margaret, fussing with her hat that had tilted to one side of her head when the pin slipped out.

“I must have a place to park the boxcar,” Cromwell replied. “So long as it sits unnoticed on a siding, next to the loading dock of an empty warehouse whose owner cannot be traced, so much the better.”

She gave her brother a suspicious glance and said, “You have that look on again.”

“What look?”

“The one that means you’re planning another robbery.”

“I can’t fool my own sister,” he said with a grin.

“I suppose it’s a waste of time trying to talk you into retiring from the robbery business.”

He took her hand and patted it. “A man can’t bear to give up a pursuit in which he excels.”

She sighed in defeat. “All right, where this time?”

“I haven’t decided yet. The first step is to make discreet inquiries in banking circles about payrolls. Then I have to select towns that have railroads and sidings for freight trains. The getaway is the most important part of the operation. Next is a study of the streets and location of the bank. Finally, I have to carefully plan the actual robbery itself, the timing and my disguises.”

Margaret stopped beside the desks and counter. “And this is where you rehearse.”

He nodded. “After our agents obtain a layout of the interior of the bank and I arrange the furnishings accordingly.”

“You have it down to a fine science.”

“I try,” he said loftily.

“Your method of operation is becoming too polished, too sophisticated,” she cautioned him.

He took her by the arm and gently squeezed. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

17

BELL CAME TO THE OFFICE DIRECTLY FROM THE TRAIN and found Irvine and Curtis already in the conference room waiting for him. He could tell the news was good because there were no frowns or grim looks on their faces. The jovial mood was enhanced by Irvine smoking a cigar and Curtis pulling a silver cigarette case from his coat pocket. “You two seem to be in good spirits,” said Bell, setting down his suitcase.

“We found some leads,” Curtis said, lighting a cigarette. “Nothing earth-shattering, but a few small pieces to fit in the puzzle.”

“How about you, Isaac, did you turn up anything?” asked Irvine.

Before Bell could answer, Agnes Murphy entered the conference room carrying a tray with three cups and a coffeepot. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said sweetly, “but I thought you gentlemen might like some coffee.”

Bell took the tray from her and set it on the long table. “That’s very kind of you, Agnes.”

She turned and started for the door. “I’ll be right back.” In less than a minute, she returned with a sugar bowl and cream pitcher. “I didn’t forget. I just couldn’t carry it all.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” said Curtis with a broad smile, as he lightly kissed her on the cheek.

Bell and Irvine exchanged glances, smiling. They both knew that Curtis and Agnes were just pals and always teasing each other. Agnes gathered her skirts as she turned, left the conference room, and closed the door.

“Besides the coffee,” said Bell, “it was thoughtful of her to close the door.”

Curtis blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. “She knows the score. Agnes has no more respect for Alexander than we do.”

“You were about to say…” Irvine prompted Bell.

“I discovered that, besides a missing finger, he probably has red hair. And rides a motorcycle, which he’s used on more than one robbery.” Bell reached into his pocket and lifted out a small silk sack, opened it, and spilled the cartridge out on the table. “We now know the Butcher Bandit uses a thirty-eight-caliber Colt automatic. This shell casing was found under a carpet. The killer somehow missed it since he hasn’t left any shells at his other bank hits. Sheriff Murphy of Bisbee was a smart man and had the county coroner remove the bullets from the murder victims. They all came from a thirty-eight Colt.”

“We can check sales of all thirty-eight Colt automatics,” said Curtis.

“There couldn’t be more than ten thousand of them,” Irvine replied sarcastically. “It would take ten agents years to check out every gun dealer, salesman, and hardware store owner who sells thirty-eight Colt automatics.”

“Art is right,” Bell said as he stared at the brass cartridge. “It would be a tremendous long shot.”

Curtis grinned like a fox. “Not if we have a lead to where the bandit hides out. Then we can check out dealers in the area.”

“Good thinking,” Bell agreed, not knowing what Curtis was about to reveal. “In the meantime, I’ll send it off to Chicago and see if our agency experts can pull any fingerprints.” He relaxed in a chair and tilted it back on two legs, propping a foot against the table. “Now, let me hear what you two have unearthed.”

Irvine opened a bound ledger and placed the book on the table in front of Bell and Curtis. “I hit pay dirt in Elkhorn, Nevada. They had recorded the serial numbers of the fifty-dollar bills in their vault the day before the robbery.”

“I can understand why,” said Bell. “Fifties are counterfeited more than any other bill. As their bookkeeper itemized the bills, he must have studied each one and made sure they weren’t bogus.”

Irvine tapped the entries in the book with his finger as he looked at Bell. “You can request the Chicago office to put out bulletins to banks around the West to be on the lookout for them. Fifties will be easier to trace than fives, tens, or twenties.”

“And a lot easier than ones,” Curtis added.

“I’ll see to it,” Bell assured Irvine.

“I made a few inquiries on my own and actually came up with two banks in San Francisco where three of the bills showed up.”

“Good work,” said Bell. He then focused on Curtis. “Now, how about you, Arthur? Any luck on your end?”

“Did you find any passenger trains the killer might have escaped on?” Irvine queried.

“No. But freight trains are a different story.”

“Weren’t they searched by the posses?”

Curtis shook his head. “Not the ones that were loaded and locked.”

“So where did you go from there?” inquired Bell.

Curtis broke out into a smile that spread and beamed. “It took many hours of digging in musty old railroad company records, but I did manage to make an interesting discovery. I found three cars that were on the sidings of towns that were robbed. Boxcar serial number 15758 was present in Virginia City and Bisbee during the robberies. In Virginia City, its cargo manifest was listed as fifty bales of barbed wire to be transported to a ranch in Southern California. Boxcar 15758 was empty when it sat on a siding waiting to be switched to another train in Bisbee.”

“Empty,” Irvine repeated, stirring restlessly in his chair.

“Yes, empty. It had hauled a load of pottery from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to Tucson, before being sent empty back to El Paso.”

“So we can scratch that one,” muttered Bell. “What about the others?”

Curtis referred to his notes. “Number 18122 was present at Elkhorn, Nevada, and Grand Junction, Colorado, when their banks were robbed. It was on the siding at Grand Junction waiting to be switched to a train to take it to Los Angeles. Its cargo was sixty cases of wine. At Elkhorn, it carried a load of mattresses, from a factory in Sacramento, California.”

“So much for 18122,” said Irvine. “It’s not likely the bandit escaped to different locations.”

Curtis fairly beamed. “I saved the best for last.” Rising and walking to a blackboard, he wrote O’BRIAN FURNITURE COMPANY, DENVER on the black surface. Then he turned with a pleased expression on his face. “Now we come to a boxcar that was present at five robberies.”

Both Bell and Irvine sat up suddenly in their chairs as Curtis caught their fixed attention. The agent had taken the bull by the horns and delved into an area no one had thought to go.

Bell, surprised at Curtis’s unexpected revelation, said, “The car was in five towns on the day their banks were robbed?”

“I’ve made a list of towns, times, and its final destination.”

Irvine nearly spilled his coffee as he set it back on the tray. “Don’t you mean destinations, plural?”

“No. Destination, singular.” Curtis laughed softly. “In every instance, the furniture car from Denver went to San Francisco. I could find no record of it ever having been hauled to Denver or anywhere else. I can only assume it was a façade the bandit used to escape the posses.”

Bell stared at the writing on the blackboard. “I’ll bet a month’s pay that a check of furniture stores in Denver will prove O’Brian Furniture does not exist.”

“I think that goes without saying,” Irvine summed up.

Bell turned to Curtis. “When was the last Southern Pacific Railroad account of the car?”

“It was put on a siding in the San Francisco railyards two weeks ago. At my last inquiry, it was still there.”

“Then we’ve got to find and search it.”

“And stake it out,” said Irvine.

“That, too,” replied Bell. “But we must be very careful not to alert the bandit that we’re closing in on him.”

Curtis lit another cigarette. “I’ll leave on the first train in the morning for San Francisco.”

“Irvine and I will join you.” Bell then turned his attention to Irvine. “You mentioned that three bills turned up in San Francisco.”

Irvine nodded. “That’s right. One at the Cromwell National Bank of San Francisco and two at the Crocker National Bank.”

Bell smiled for the first time. “It would seem, gentlemen, all roads lead to San Francisco.”

“It’s beginning to look that way,” Curtis agreed, his enthusiasm growing.

The two agents stared expectantly at Bell as he studied the map with the flags marking the terrible crimes committed by the Butcher Bandit. The evidence was almost infinitesimal and could easily lead to dead ends. Yet there was satisfaction in what the three Van Dorn agents had gleaned. Meager as it was, they had little else to go on. But it was enough for a plan to form in Bell’s mind.

“It might be like betting on a plow horse at the racetrack, but I think we may have an opportunity to trap the bandit.”

“You have a plan?” asked Irvine.

“Suppose we plant stories in the local San Francisco newspapers revealing that a million-dollar payroll is being shipped by special train to a bank in a town populated by several thousand miners. The large amount would be because the mine owners have declared a special bonus for the workers to avert a threatened strike called by the miners’ union over the demand for substantially increased wages.”

Curtis pondered Bell’s proposition and said, “The bandit could easily check out the story and find it’s false.”

“Not if we have one of us sitting in the telegraph office when the inquiry comes in and give the appropriate reply.”

“We might even get lucky and discover who sent the telegram,” said Irvine.

Bell nodded. “There is that, too.”

Irvine gazed into his coffee cup as if he was a fortune-teller reading tea leaves. “It’s a thousand-to-one shot. We all know that.”

“No doubt about it,” Bell said, “it’s worth a try. And, if the scheme fails, we might still stumble onto another lead to the bandit.”

“Got a mining town in mind?” Curtis asked.

“Telluride, Colorado,” answered Bell. “Because the town is situated in a box canyon. Telluride is also the area where its miners struck the mine owners in 1901 and 1903, so another strike is quite plausible.”

“If the O’Brian Furniture freight car shows up,” said Curtis, “we’ll know our man took the bait.”

“Once the train pulls it onto the Telluride siding, the only way out is the way it came.” Irvine sighed and smiled contentedly. “The bandit will be trapped and have no means of escape.”

The atmosphere in the conference room crackled with expectation and hope. What had almost seemed like a lost cause was coming together. Three pairs of eyes trained on the giant wall map, traveled west toward the Pacific Ocean, and focused on the port city of San Francisco.

In the elevator that took him down to the street for his walk to the Brown Palace, Bell felt jubilant. Win, lose, or draw, the end of the game was in sight. Granted, it was still hazy and indistinct, but the cards were finally falling in Bell’s favor. His thoughts turned to Rose and he found himself wondering for the hundredth time what connection she had with the Butcher Bandit.

What woman could be close to a man who murdered women and children? He began to believe that she might be as rotten as the bandit, if not more so.

BELL STEPPED from the Brown Palace elevator and walked to his suite. He pulled the key from his pant pocket and inserted it in the door lock. Before he could turn the key, the door slipped open a crack. The latch had not been fully engaged when the door had been closed.

Bell paused and tensed. His first thought was that the maid had forgotten to close the door and spring the bolt. It was a logical assumption, but an inner wisdom made him suspicious. The perception of something being not quite right had saved him on more than one occasion.

Bell had made many enemies during his years as a detective with Van Dorn. Several of the men he had captured and seen tried and sentenced to prison had vowed they would come after him. Three had tried and two had died.

If someone was waiting for him inside his room, it wouldn’t be with a gun, he reasoned. Gunshots would echo throughout the hotel and bring a dozen staff running. For a criminal to escape from the ninth floor, he either would have to wait for an elevator or run down the stairs, neither a good choice for a successful escape.

Bell was aware that he was probably overexaggerating the threat, which could very well be nonexistent. But he hadn’t survived this long without a suspicious mind. If someone was waiting inside his suite, he thought, they would do their dirty work with a knife.

He removed his hat and dropped it. Before it hit the carpet, his derringer was in his hand, an over-and-under, two-barrel, .41 caliber small handgun that packed a surprisingly heavy punch at close range.

Bell waggled the key in the door as if he was turning the lock. He pushed the door open and hesitated, staring around the foyer of the suite and the living room beyond before he entered. The smell of cigarette smoke greeted his nostrils, confirming Bell’s suspicions. He only rarely smoked a cigar and then only with brandy after a gourmet dinner. With the derringer in hand, he stepped into the suite. Death, like a third man, was waiting inside.

A man was sitting on a settee reading a newspaper. At Bell’s approach, he laid the paper aside and revealed a face as ugly as sin. The black hair was greasy and slicked flat. His face looked like it had been stomped on by a mule, and he had the body of a state fair prizewinning boar. His eyes were strangely soft and friendly, a guise that fooled many of his victims. Bell was not fooled; he could see the man had the strength to spring like a tiger.

“How did you get in?” Bell asked simply.

The stranger held up a key. “Skeleton key,” he said in a voice that came like a rock crusher. “I never leave home without one.”

“What is your name?”

“It won’t matter if you know my name. You’ll never get a chance to use it. But since you’ve asked, it’s Red Kelly.”

Bell’s photographic memory shifted into gear and the recollection of a report he’d once read came back. “Yes, the infamous Red Kelly, boxer, Barbary Coast saloonkeeper, and murderer. You fought a good battle against world champion James J. Corbett. I once studied a report on you in the event you ever wandered beyond the California border. This is a mistake on your part. You have protection from crooked politicians that keeps you from getting extradited for crimes in other states, but that won’t help you in Colorado. You’re subject to arrest here.”

“And who is going to arrest me?” said Kelly showing an expanse of gold teeth. “You?”

Bell stood loosely, waiting, and expecting a move from Kelly. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

“I know all about you, pretty boy,” said Kelly contemptuously. “You’ll bleed just like the other poor slobs I’ve put in the grave.”

“How many detectives and police?”

Kelly grinned nastily. “Three that I can remember. After a while, the numbers began to fade.”

“Your days of murder are over, Kelly,” Bell said calmly.

“That’ll be the day, pretty boy. If you think you can bully me with that popgun in your hand, you’re wasting your breath.”

“You don’t think I could kill you with it?” Bell said.

“You’d never get the chance,” Kelly retorted coldly.

There it was. Bell caught it instantly. The sudden shift in the eyes. He swung into a crouch and, in the blink of an eye, aimed and fired a shot into the forehead of the man who was creeping up behind him from where he’d been, hidden by a curtain. The report reverberated out the open door and throughout the atrium of the hotel.

Kelly glanced at the body of his henchman with all the interest of a horse that had stepped on a prairie dog. Then he smiled at Bell. “Your reputation is well founded. You must have eyes in the back of your head.”

“You came to kill me,” said Bell evenly. “Why?”

“It’s a job, nothing more.”

“Who paid you?”

“Not necessary for you to know.” Kelly laid aside the paper and slowly got to his feet.

“Don’t try for the gun in the belt behind your back,” Bell said, the derringer as steady as a branch on an oak tree.

Kelly flashed his gold teeth again. “I don’t need a gun.”

He sprang forward, his powerful legs propelling across the room as if he had been shot from a cannon.

What saved Bell in those two seconds was the span between them, a good eight feet. Any less distance and Kelly would have been all over him like an avalanche. As it was, Kelly struck him like a battering ram, a glancing blow that knocked Bell sideways over a chair and onto the grass green carpet. But not before he pulled the trigger of the derringer and sent a bullet into Kelly’s right shoulder.

The brute was stopped in his tracks but did not fall. He was too powerful, too muscular, to fold with a bullet that did not penetrate his heart or brain. He contemplated the spreading of crimson on his shirt with the detached look of a surgeon. Then he grinned fiendishly. “Your little popgun only holds two bullets, pretty boy. Now it’s empty.”

“I wish you would stop calling me pretty boy,” said Bell, leaping to his feet.

Now it was Kelly’s turn to reach behind his back and retrieve his Colt revolver. He was just bringing it level to pull the trigger when Bell hurled his derringer like a baseball pitcher receiving the signal from the catcher to throw a fastball. At four feet away, he couldn’t miss. The little gun, solid as a piece of quartz, thudded off Kelly’s face just above the nose and between the eyes.

Blood gushed from the gash and quickly covered the lower half of Kelly’s face. The blow staggered him more than the slug in his shoulder. There was no gasp of pain, no bloodcurdling cry. He made no sound other than a great sigh. The gun was still in his hand, but he did not lift it to aim. He couldn’t. Bell put his head down and charged the strong man like a porpoise into a great white shark, accelerating with every step, thrusting his head into Kelly’s stomach with all his strength. The ex-boxer merely grunted and brushed Bell away, throwing him halfway across the room with a strength nothing less than phenomenal.

Bell crashed into a wall with a crunch that forced the breath from his lungs. If the impact had been any harder, he’d have been in traction for two months. But his bone-jarring charge had not been in vain. During the collision of his one hundred eighty-five pounds against Kelly’s two-fifty, he had snatched the revolver from the hand of the killer.

There was no command to cease another assault, no “Stop or I’ll shoot.” Bell had been through the mill and knew you don’t waste words on a killer dead set on sending you to a marble slab at the county coroner’s. He had no illusions about beating Kelly in a man-to-man fight. The murderer was stronger and more ruthless. Bell barely got off two shots before Kelly recovered enough to reach out and grasp Bell around the neck with the ferocity of a gorilla, his massive hands choking the life out of the detective. He fell against Bell, pressing him into the carpet, his massive weight crushing Bell’s torso and pinning his arms so he couldn’t fire the Colt again. Kelly squeezed calmly and purposely, as though the bullets he had taken were a mere annoyance.

Bell couldn’t move, and there was no reaching up in an attempt to pull off the fingers digging into his neck. Kelly’s strength went way beyond Bell’s. Bell didn’t doubt that he wasn’t the first man Kelly had strangled. Unless he did something very rapidly, he wouldn’t be the last. Blackness was edging his line of vision, and getting darker by the moment.

What stunned Bell more than the realization that he was only seconds away from death was what happened to the two bullets he had pumped into Kelly. He was certain he had struck the Goliath in the body. Bell looked up into two eyes that were as dark as evil and the blood that had turned the lower face into a horrific mask of crimson. What was keeping him alive, why wasn’t his strength ebbing? The man wasn’t human.

Then, perceptibly, Bell felt the pressure begin to ease slightly. Rather than try to pry the hands from around his neck, Bell reached up and embedded his thumbs in Kelly’s expressionless eyes, knowing it would be the final move before darkness closed over him. In a violent, corkscrew motion, Bell twisted his body out from under Kelly.

The big boxer groaned and covered his eyes with his hands. Unseeing, he crawled toward Bell, who kicked out viciously, catching Kelly in the stomach. Only then did he see the two bullet holes seeping blood through Kelly’s shirt below the rib cage. What kept him going? Bell wondered. He should have died before now. But, instead, Kelly reached out and grabbed Bell by the leg.

Bell felt himself being pulled across the carpet, now stained and soaked with Kelly’s blood. He lashed out with his free foot. It bounced off Kelly, who acted as if he never felt it. The grip on Bell’s calf tightened. Fingernails dug through his pants into his flesh. He was pulled closer to Kelly, seeing an agonized face, the eyes glaring with hatred.

It was time to end this ghastly fight. Bell’s right hand still held the Colt. With deadly calm, he raised the barrel until the muzzle was only inches from Kelly’s face, deliberately pulled the trigger, and sent a .44 caliber bullet into Kelly’s right eye.

There was no terrible scream or horrible gurgling sound. Kelly exhaled an audible gasp from his throat and rolled over on the carpet like some great beast in its death throes crumpling to the earth.

Bell sat up on the floor and massaged his throat, panting from the exertion. He turned his head and stared at the doorway as men came rushing into the suite. They stopped in stunned shock at the sight of the sea of blood and the great hump of a man whose face was unrecognizable because of the bloody, congealing mask. The face looked particularly grotesque due to the gold teeth showing through the open lips that slowly became coated red.

Kelly had died hard, and for what? Money? A debt? A vendetta? Not the latter. Bell had never launched an investigation against the Barbary Coast giant. Someone must have paid him to kill and paid him extremely well.