Текст книги "The Wrecker"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“There’s Eddie Edwards!”

Edwards’s white hair had been singed black, and his eyes were gleaming in a face of soot, but he was otherwise unhurt.

“Thank God you telephoned, Isaac. We got the gun in place in time to stop the bastards.”

“Stop them? What are you talking about?”

“They didn’t blow the powder pier.” He pointed through the thick smoke. “The dynamite train is O.K.”

Bell peered through the smoke and saw the string of cars. The five that been sitting there when he left Jersey City last evening to take the night off at the Follieswere still there.

“What did they blow up? We felt it in Manhattan. It broke every window in the city.”

“Themselves. Thanks to the Vickers.”

Eddie described how they had driven off the Southern Pacific steam lighter with machine-gun fire.

“She turned around and took off after a schooner. We saw them in company earlier. I would guess that the schooner probably took their crew off. After the murdering scum locked the helm and aimed her at the pier.”

“Did your gunfire detonate the dynamite?”

“I don’t think so. We shot her wheelhouse to pieces, but she didn’t explode. She bore off, turned a full hundred eighty degrees, and steamed away. Must have been three, four minutes before the dynamite exploded. One of the boys on the Vickers thought he saw her hit the schooner. And we all saw her sails in the flash.”

“It’s almost impossible to detonate dynamite by impact,” Bell mused. “They must have devised a trigger of some sort … How do you see it, Eddie? How did they get their hands on the Southern Pacific steam lighter?”

“The way I see it,” said Edwards, “they ambushed the lighter upriver, shot McColleen, and threw the crew overboard.”

“We must find their bodies,” Bell ordered in a voice heavy with sorrow. “Archie, tell the cops on both sides of the river. Jersey City, Hoboken, Weehawken, New York, Brooklyn, Staten Island. The Van Dorn Agency wants every body that washes up. I will pay for decent burials for our man and the innocent crew of the lighter. We must identify the criminals who were working for the Wrecker.”

Dawn broke on a scene of devastation that stretched to both sides of the harbor. Where six Communipaw piers had pushed into the river now there were only five. The sixth had burned to the water-line. All that remained of it were blackened pilings and a heap of ruined boxcars poking out of the tide. Every window on the river side of the Jersey Central passenger terminal was broken, and half its roof was blown off. A ferry that had been moored there listed drunkenly, struck by an out-of control tugboat that had holed her hull and was still pressed into her like a nursing lamb. The masts of ships beside the piers were splintered, tin roofs and the corrugated sides of pier shacks were scattered, the sides of boxcars split open with cargo spilling out. Bandaged railroad workers, injured by flying glass and falling debris, were poking through the ruins of the rail yards, and the frightened residents of the nearby slums could be seen trudging away with their possessions on their backs.

The most incongruous sight Bell saw in the dull morning light was that of the stern of a wooden sailing schooner that had been blown out of the water and landed on a triple-tracked car float. From across the Hudson, there were reports of thousands of broken windows in lower Manhattan and the streets littered with glass.

Abbott nudged Bell.

“Here comes the boss.”

A trim New York Police launch with a low cabin and a short stack was approaching. Joseph Van Dorn stood on the foredeck in a topcoat with a newspaper tucked under his arm.

Bell walked directly to him.

“It is time for me to submit my resignation.”

27

“REQUEST DENIED!” VAN DORN SHOT BACK.

“It is not a request, sir,” Isaac Bell said coldly. “It is my intention. I will hunt the Wrecker on my own, if it takes the rest of my life. While I promise you I will not impede the Van Dorn investigation led by a better-qualified investigator.”

A small smile parted Van Dorn’s red whiskers. “Better-qualified? Perhaps you’ve been too busy to read the morning papers.”

He seized Bell’s hand and practically crushed it in his powerful grip. “We’ve won a round at last, Isaac. Well done!”

“Won a round? What are you talking about, sir? People killed on the ferry. Half the windows in Manhattan blown out. These piers a shambles. All due to the sabotage of a Southern Pacific Railroad vessel that I was hired to protect.”

“A partial victory, I’ll admit. But a victory nonetheless. You stopped the Wrecker from blowing the powder train, which was his target. He would have killed hundreds had you allowed him to. Look here.” Van Dorn opened the newspaper. Three headlines of immense type covered the front page.

EXPLOSION DAMAGE EQUAL OF MAY 1904 PIER FIRE

WORSE Loss OF LIFE ON FERRY, 3 DEAD,

COUNTLESS INJURED

COULD HAVE BEEN FAR WORSE,

SAYS FIRE COMMISSIONER

“And look at this one! Even better …”

THE WRECKER RAGED.

Manhattan’s streets were strewn with broken glass. From the railway ferry, he saw black smoke still billowing over the Jersey shore. The harbor was littered with damaged ships and barges. And the dynamite explosion was all the talk in saloons and chophouses on both sides of the river. It even invaded the plush sanctuary of the observation-lounge car as the Chicago-bound Pennsylvania Special steamed from its battered Jersey City Terminal.

But, maddeningly, every newsboy in the city was shouting the headlines on the extra editions and every newsstand was plastered with the lies:

SABOTEURS FOILED

RAILWAY POLICE AND VAN DORN AGENTS

SAVED DYNAMITE TRAIN

MAYOR CREDITS SOUND SOUTHERN PACIFIC MANAGEMENT

If Isaac Bell were on this train, he would choke him to death with his bare hands. Or run him through. That moment would come, he reminded himself. He had lost only a battle, not the war. The war was his to win, Bell’s to lose. And that deserved a celebration!

Imperiously, he beckoned a steward.

“George!”

“Yes, Senator, suh.”

“Champagne!”

A steward rushed him a bottle of Renaudin Bollinger in an ice bucket.

“Not that swill! The company knows goddamned well I will only drink Mumm.”

The steward bowed low.

“I’m terribly sorry, Senator. But as Renaudin Bollinger was the favorite champagne of Queen Victoria, and now of King Edward, we hoped it would make a worthy substitute.”

“Substitute? What the devil are you talking about? Bring me Mumm champagne or I’ll have your job!”

“But, sir, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s entire store of Mumm was destroyed in the explosion.”

“A VICTORY AT LAST,” repeated Joseph Van Dorn. “And if you’re right that the Wrecker is trying to discredit the Southern Pacific Railroad, then he cannot be happy with these results. ‘Sound Southern Pacific Management’ indeed. Exactly the opposite of what he had hoped to achieve with this attack.”

“It doesn’t feel like a victory to me,” said Isaac Bell.

“Savor it, Isaac. Then get busy finding out how he set this up.”

“The Wrecker isn’t done.”

“This attack,” Van Dorn said sternly, “wasn’t planned overnight. There’ll be clues in his method as to what he is scheming next.”

A search of the section of the schooner’s stern that had been hurled onto the railroad float revealed the body of a man the Marine Division police knew well. “A water rat named Weitzman” was how a grizzled patrol-launch captain put it. “Hung out with that schooner’s captain, a son of a crocodile named Yatkowski. Smuggler when he wasn’t up to something worse. From Yonkers.”

The Yonkers police searched the old river city to no avail. But the next morning, the captain’s remains drifted ashore at Weehawken. By then, Van Dorn operatives had traced ownership of the schooner to a lumber dealer who was related to Yatkowski by marriage. The dealer admitted to no crimes, however, claiming that he had sold the ship to his brother-in-law the previous year. Asked whether the captain had ever used her to smuggle fugitives across the river, the dealer replied that when it came to his brother-in-law, anything was possible.

As Bell had surmised in Ogden, the Wrecker was changing tactics. Instead of relying on zealous radicals, he was proving adept at hiring cold-blooded criminals to do his dirty work for cash.

“Did either of these men ever use explosives in their crimes?” he asked the launch captain.

“Looks like this was the first time,” the water cop replied with a grim chuckle, “and they weren’t all that good at it. Seeing as how they blew themselves to smithereens.”

“BEAUTIFUL GIRL TO SEE you, Mr. Bell.”

Bell did not look up from his desk in the Van Dorn offices at the Knickerbocker Hotel. Three candlestick telephones were ringing constantly. Messengers were racing in and out. Operatives were standing by to make their reports and awaiting new orders.

“I’m busy. Pass her on to Archie.”

“Archie’s at the morgue.”

“Then send her away.”

It was forty hours since the explosion had shaken the Port of New York. Experts from the railroad-backed Bureau of Explosives combing through the wreckage had discovered a dry cell battery that led them to conclude that the dynamite had been skillfully detonated using electricity. But Bell still hadn’t a clue as to whether the dead schooner crew had set off the dynamite or had expert help. He was wondering if the Wrecker himself had wired it to explode. Had he been on the schooner? Was he dead? Or was he preparing his next attack?

“I’d see this one if I were you,” the front-desk man persisted.

“I’ve seen her. She’s beautiful. She’s rich. I don’t have time.”

“But she’s got a gang of fellows with a moving-picture camera.”

“What?” Bell glanced through the door. “Marion!”

Bell pushed through the door, picked her up in his arms, and kissed her on the mouth. His fiancee was wearing a hat anchored with a scarf that covered the side of her face, and Bell noticed that she had combed her straw-blond hair, which she ordinarily wore piled high upon her head, so that it draped one cheek.

“What are you doing here?”

“Attempting to take pictures of the hero, if you’ll put me down. Come outside in the light.”

“Hero? I’m the hero of the glassmakers’ union.” He pressed his lips to her ear, and added in a whisper, “And the only place I’m putting you down is on a bed.”

“Not before we take pictures of the famous detective who saved New York.”

“Showing my face in nickelodeons won’t help me sneak up on criminals.”

“We’ll take your picture from behind, just the back of your head, very mysterious. Come quickly or we’ll lose the light.”

They trooped down the Knickerbocker’s grand stair, trailed by Bell’s assistants muttering reports and whispering questions, and Marion’s cameraman and assistants carrying a compact Lumiere camera, a wooden tripod, and accessory cases. Outside on the sidewalk, workmen were replacing windows in the Knickerbocker.

“Put him there!” said the cameraman pointing to a shaft of sunlight illuminating a patch of sidewalk.

“Here,” said Marion. “So we see the broken glass behind him.”

“Yes, ma‘am.”

She gripped Bell’s shoulders.

“Turn this way.”

“I feel like a package being delivered.”

“You are-a wonderful package called ‘The Detective in the White Suit.’ Now, point at the broken window …”

Bell heard gears and flywheels whirring behind him, a mechanism clicking like a sewing machine, and a flapping of film.

“What are your questions?” he called over his shoulder.

“I know you’re busy. I’ve already written your answers for the title cards.”

“What did I say?”

“The Van Dorn Detective Agency will pursue the criminal who attacked New York City to the ends of the earth. We will never give up. Never!”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“Now, wait a moment while we attach the telescopic lens … O.K., point at that crane lifting the window … Thank you. That was wonderful.”

As Bell turned to face her smile, a gust of wind lifted her hair, and he suddenly realized that she had arranged her hair, hat, and scarf to conceal a bandage.

“What happened to your face?”

“Flying glass. I was on the ferry when the bomb exploded.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Of course. There won’t even be much of a scar. And, if there is, I can wear my hair on that side.”

Bell was stunned and almost paralyzed with rage. The Wrecker had come within inches of killing her. At that moment of almost losing control, a Van Dorn operative ran from the hotel, waving to get Bell’s attention.

“Isaac! Archie telephoned from the Manhattan morgue. He thinks we’ve got something.”

THE CORONER’S PHYSICIAN IN the Borough of Manhattan commanded a salary of thirty-six hundred dollars a year, which allowed him to enjoy the luxuries of middle-class life. These included summers abroad. Recently, he had installed a modern photographic-identification device that he had discovered in Paris.

A camera hung overhead beneath a large skylight. Its lens was aimed at the floor, where marks had been painted indicating height in feet and inches. A dead body lay on the floor, brightly illuminated by the skylight. Bell saw it was a man, though the face had been obliterated by fire and blunt force. His clothes were wet. From the mark where they had placed his feet to the mark at the top of his head, he measured five feet three inches.

“It’s only a Chinaman,” said the coroner’s physician. “At least, I think it’s a Chinaman, judging by his hands, feet, skin tone. But they said you wanted to see every drowned body.”

“I found this in his pocket,” said Abbott, holding up a pencil-sized cylinder with wires extending from it like two short legs.

“Mercury-fulminate detonator,” said Bell. “Where was the man found?”

“Floating past the Battery.”

“Could he have drifted across the river from Jersey City to the tip of Manhattan?”

“The currents are unpredictable,” said the coroner’s physician. “Between ocean tide and river flux, bodies go every which way, depending upon ebb and flow. Do you think he set off the explosion?”

“He looks like he was near it,” Abbott said noncommitally with an inquiring glance at Bell.

“Thank you for calling us, Doctor,” said Bell, and walked out.

Abbott caught up with him on the sidewalk.

“How did the Wrecker recruit a Chinese to his cause?”

Bell said, “We can’t know that until we find out who the man was.”

“That’s going to be hard without a face.”

“We must find out who he was. What are the principal sources of employment for Chinese in New York?”

“The Chinese work mostly at cigarmaking, running grocery stores, and hand-wash laundries, of course.”

“This man’s fingers and palms were heavily callused,” said Bell, “which makes it likely he was a laundryman working with a hot, heavy iron.”

“That’s a lot of laundries,” said Archie. “One in every block of the working districts.”

“Start in Jersey City. The schooner was tied up there. And that’s where the Southern Pacific lighter loaded her dynamite.”

SUDDENLY, THINGS MOVED QUICKLY. One of Jethro Watt’s railroad detectives recalled allowing a Chinese with a huge sack of laundry on a pier. “Said he was heading for the Julia Reidhead,a steel barque unloading bones.”

The Julia Reidheadwas still moored at the pier, her masts shattered by the explosion. No, said her captain. He had not had his laundry done ashore. He had a wife on board who did it herself. Then the harbormaster’s log revealed that Yatkowski’s wooden schooner had been tied near the Juliathat afternoon.

The Van Dorn detectives found missionary students who were studying Chinese at a seminary in Chelsea. They hired the students to translate for them and then intensified the search for the laundry that had employed the dead man. Archie Abbott returned to the Knickerbocker Hotel triumphant.

“His name was Wong Lee. People who knew him said he used to work for the railroad. In the West.”

“Dynamiting cuts in the mountains,” said Bell. “Of course. That’s where he learned his trade.”

“Probably came here twenty, twenty-five years ago,” said Abbott. “A lot of the Chinese fled California to escape mob attacks.”

“Did his employer confirm this just to make him sound good? To make the white detective go away?”

“Wong Lee wasn’t really an employee. At least, not anymore. He bought a half interest from his boss.”

“So the Wrecker paid him well.” Bell said.

“Very well. Up front, no less, and enough to buy himself a business. Have to admire his enterprise. How many workingmen would resist the temptation to spend it on wine and women? … Isaac, why are you staring at me?”

“When?”

“When what?”

“When did Wong Lee buy a half interest in his laundry?”

“Last February.”

“February?Where did he get the money?”

“The Wrecker, of course. When he hired him. Where else would a poor Chinese laundryman get that much money?”

“You’re sure it was February?”

“Absolutely. The boss told me it was right after the Chinese New Year. That fits the Wrecker’s pattern, doesn’t it? Plans far ahead.”

Isaac Bell could barely contain his excitement.

“Wong Lee bought his share of the laundry last February. But Osgood Hennessy concluded his secret deal only this November. How did the Wrecker know back in February that the Southern Pacific Railroad was going to gain entry to New York in November?”

28

“SOMEHOW THE WRECKER CAUGHT WIND OF THE DEAL,” ABBOTT answered.

“No!” Bell shot back. “Osgood Hennessy knew he had to acquire a dominating interest in the Jersey Central in the deepest secrecy or his rivals would have stopped him. No one ‘catches wind’ of that old pirate’s intentions until he wants them to.”

Bell snatched up the nearest telephone.

“Book two adjoining staterooms on the Twentieth Century Limited, with through connections to San Francisco!”

“Are you saying the Wrecker has inside knowledge of the Southern Pacific?” asked Archie.

“Somehow, he does,” said Bell, grabbing his coat and hat. “Either some fool spilled the beans. Or a spy deliberately passed on the information about Hennessy’s plans. Either way, he’s no stranger to Hennessy’s circle.”

“Or in it,” said Abbott, trotting alongside as Bell strode from the office.

“He’s certainly close to the top,” Bell agreed. “You’re in charge of shutting down the Jersey City operation. Move every man you can to the Cascades Cutoff. Now that he lost out in New York, I’m betting the Wrecker will hit there next. Catch up with me as soon as you can.”

“Who’s in Hennessy’s circle?” asked Archie.

“He’s got bankers on his board of directors. He’s got lawyers. And his special train tows Pullman sleepers packed with engineers and superintendents managing the cutoff.”

“It will take forever to investigate them all.”

“We don’t have forever,” said Bell. “I’ll start with Hennessy himself. Tell him what we know and see who comes to mind.”

“I would not telegraph such a question,” said Archie.

“That’s why I’m heading west. For all we know, the Wrecker’s spy could be a telegrapher. I have to speak with Hennessy face-to-face.”

“Why don’t you charter a special train?”

“Because the Wrecker’s spy might take notice and figure something’s up. Not worth the day I’d save.”

Abbott grinned. “That’swhy you booked two adjoining staterooms. Very clever, Isaac. It’ll look like Mr. Van Dorn took you off the Wrecker case and assigned you to another job.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Personal protection service?” Archie answered innocently. “For a certain lady in the moving-picture-news line returning home to California?”

THE SAN FRANCISCO TELEGRAPHERS’ strike had ended disastrously for their union. The majority had returned to work. But some telegraphers and linemen made bitter by highhanded company tactics had turned to sabotage, cutting wires and burning telegraph offices. Among these renegades, one band found a new paymaster in the Wrecker, a mysterious figure who communicated with messages and money left in railroad-station luggage rooms. On his orders, they rehearsed a nationwide disruption of the telegraph system. At a crucial moment, he would isolate Osgood Hennessy from his bankers.

The Wrecker’s linemen practiced the old Civil War tactic of cutting key telegraph wires and reconnecting the ends with bypass wires so that the splices could not be detected by eye from the ground. It would take many days to restore communication. Since northern California and Oregon were not yet connected to the eastern states by telephone, the telegraph was still the only method of instantaneous intracontinental communication. When the Wrecker was ready, he could launch a coordinated attack that would hurl the Cascades Cutoff fifty years back in time to the days when the fastest means of communication was mail sent by stagecoach and Pony Express.

In the meantime, he had other uses for disgruntled telegraphers.

His attack on the Southern Pacific in New York had been a disaster. Isaac Bell and his detectives and the railroad police had turned what would have been the final stake in the heart of the Southern Pacific Railroad into near victory. His effort to discredit the Southern Pacific had failed. And after his attack, the Van Dorn Agency had moved swiftly, conspiring with the newspapers to paint the railroad president as a hero.

A bloody accident would turn things around.

The railroads maintained their own telegraph systems to keep the trains moving swiftly and safely. Single-tracked lines, which were still in the majority, were divided into blocks maintained by strict rules of entry. A train given permission to be in a block possessed the right-of-way. Only after it passed through the block, or was sidetracked onto a siding, was another train permitted in the block. Observations that a train had left a block were communicated by telegraph. Orders to pull off onto a siding were sent by telegraph. Acknowledgment of those orders was made by telegraph. That a train was stopped safely on the siding had to be confirmed by telegraph.

But the Wrecker’s telegraphers could intercept orders, stop them, and change them. He had already caused a collision by this method, a rear ender on the Cascades Cutoff that had telescoped a materials train into a work train’s caboose, killing two crewmen.

A bloodier accident would erase Isaac Bell’s “victory.”

And what could be bloodier than two locomotives hauling work trains packed with laborers colliding head-on? When his train to San Francisco stopped in Sacramento, he checked a satchel in the luggage room containing orders and a generous envelope of cash and mailed the ticket to an embittered former union official named Ross Parker.

“GOOD NIGHT, MISS MORGAN.”

“Good night, Mr. Bell. That was a delicious dinner, thank you.”

“Need help with your door?”

“I have it.”

Five hours after her passengers walked the famous red carpet to board at Grand Central Terminal, the 20th Century Limited was racing across the flatlands of western New York State at eighty miles an hour. A Pullman porter, gaze discreetly averted, shuffled along the narrow corridor outside the staterooms, gathering shoes that the sleeping passengers had left out to be shined.

“Well, good night, then.”

Bell waited for Marion to step into her stateroom and lock the door. Then he opened the door to his stateroom, changed into a silk robe, removed his throwing knife from his boots and put them outside in the corridor. The speed of the train caused ice to tremble musically in a silver bucket. In it was chilling a bottle of Mumm. Bell wrapped the dripping bottle in a linen napkin and held it behind his back.

He heard a soft knock on the interior door and threw it open.

“Yes, Miss Morgan?”

Marion was standing there in a dressing gown, her lustrous hair cascading over her shoulders, her eyes mischievous, her smile radiant.

“Could I possibly borrow a cup of champagne?”

LATER, WHISPERING SIDE BY SIDE as the 20th Century rocketed through the night, Marion asked, “Did you really win a million dollars at poker?”

“Almost. But half of it was my money. ”

“That’s still a half million. What are you going to do with it?”

“I was thinking of buying the Cromwell Mansion.”

“Whatever for?”

“For you.”

Marion stared at him, puzzled and intrigued and wanting to know more.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Isaac. “And you may be right. It might be filled with ghosts. But an old coot I played cards with told me that he always gave his new wife a stick of dynamite to redecorate the house.”

“Dynamite?” She smiled. “Something to consider. I loved the house from the outside. It was the inside I couldn’t stand. It was so cold, like him … Isaac, I felt you flinch before. Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“What’s this?”

She touched a wide yellow bruise on his torso, and Bell recoiled despite himself.

“Just a couple of ribs.”

“Broken?”

“No, no, no … Just cracked.”

“What happened?”

“Bumped into a couple of prizefighters in Wyoming.”

“How do you have time to pick fights when you’re hunting the Wrecker?”

“He paid them.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. Then she smiled. “A bloody nose? Doesn’t that mean you’re getting close?”

“You remember. Yes, it was the best news I’d had in a week … Mr. Van Dorn thinks we’ve got him on the run.”

“But youdon’t?”

“We’ve got Hennessy’s lines heavily guarded. We’ve got that sketch. We’ve got good men on the case. Something’s bound to break our way. Question is, does it break before he strikes again.”

“Have you been practicing your dueling?” she asked only half jesting.

“I got a session in every day in New York,” Bell told her. “My old fencing master hooked me up with a naval officer who was very good. Brilliant fencer. Trained in France.”

“Did you beat him?”

Bell smiled and poured more champagne into her glass. “Let’s just say that Lieutenant Ash brought out the best in me.”

JAMES DASHWOOD FILLED HIS notebook with a list of the blacksmiths, stables, auto garages, and machine shops he visited with the lumberjack sketch. The list had just topped a hundred. Discouraged, and weary of hearing about Broncho Billy Anderson, he telegraphed Mr. Bell to report that he had canvassed every town, village, and hamlet in Los Angeles County, from Glendale in the north to Mon tebello in the east to Huntington Park in the south. No blacksmith, mechanic, or machinist had recognized the picture, much less admitted to fashioning a hook out of an anchor.

“Go west, young man,” Isaac Bell wired back. “Don’t stop ‘til your hat floats.”

Which brought him late the next afternoon by Red Train trolley to Santa Monica on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. He wasted a few minutes, uncharacteristically, walking out on the Venice Pier to smell the salt water and watch girls bathing in the low surf. Two in bright costumes had their legs bared almost to their knees. They ran to a blanket they had spread next to a lifeboat that was on the beach ready to be rolled from the sand to the water. Dashwood noticed another lifeboat a half mile down the beach poised in the distant haze. Each surely had an anchor under its canvas. He berated himself for not thinking of Santa Monica sooner, squared his scrawny shoulders, and hurried into town.

The first place he walked into was typical of the many livery stables he had visited. It was a sprawling wooden structure big enough to shelter a variety of buggies and wagons for rent, with stalls for numerous horses, and a new mechanic’s section with wrenches, grease guns, and a chain hoist for motor repairs. A bunch of men were sitting around jawing: stablemen, grooms, auto mechanics, and a brawny blacksmith. By now, he had seen enough to know all these types and was no longer intimidated.

“Horse or car, kid?” one of them yelled.

“Horseshoes,” said James.

“There’s the blacksmith. You’re up, Jim.”

“Good afternoon, sir,” said James, thinking that the blacksmith looked morose. Big as the man was, his cheeks were hollow. His eyes were red, as if he didn’t sleep well.

“What can I do for you, young fella?”

By now, Dashwood had learned to ask his questions privately. Later, he would show the sketch to the whole group. But if he started off in front of all of them, it would turn into a debate that resembled a saloon brawl.

“Can we step outside? I want to show you something.”

The blacksmith shrugged his sloping shoulders, got up from the milk crate he was sitting on, and followed James Dashwood outside next to a newly installed gasoline pump.

“Where’s your horse?” the blacksmith asked.

Dashwood offered his hand. “I’m a Jim, too. James. James Dashwood.”

“I thought you wanted horseshoes.”

“Do you recognize this man?” Dashwood asked, holding up the sketch with the mustache. He watched the blacksmith’s face and, to his astonished delight, he saw him recoil. The man’s unhappy face flushed darkly.

Dashwood’s heart soared. This was the blacksmith who had fashioned the hook that had derailed the Coast Line Limited. This man had seen the Wrecker.

“Who are you?” asked the blacksmith.

“Van Dorn investigator,” James answered proudly. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, and the blacksmith was running full tilt down an alley.

“Stop!” Dashwood yelled, jumped to his feet, and gave chase. The blacksmith ran fast for a big man and was surprisingly agile, whipping around corners as if he were on rails, losing no speed in his mad turns and jinks, up and down alleys, through backyards, tearing through laundry hung from clotheslines, around woodsheds, toolsheds, and gardens and onto a street. But he hadn’t the stamina of a man just out of boyhood who neither smoked nor drank. Once they were out in the open, Dashwood gained on him for several blocks. “Stop!” he kept shouting, but no one on the sidewalks was inclined to get in the path of such a big man. Nor was there a constable or watchman in sight.

He caught up in front of a Presbyterian church on a tree-lined street. Grouped on the sidewalk were three middle-aged men in suits, the minister in a dog collar, the choirmaster gripping a sheaf of music, and the deacon holding the congregation’s account books under his arm. The blacksmith barreled past them, with James hot on his tail.

“Stop!”

Only a yard behind, James Dashwood launched himself into a flying tackle. As he flew, he took a heel on the chin, but he still managed to close his skinny arms around the blacksmith’s ankles. They crashed to the sidewalk, rolled onto a lawn, and scrambled to their feet. James clung to the blacksmith’s arm, which was as thick as the young detective’s thigh.