Текст книги "The Striker"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Justin Scott
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

9

“Welcome back, Mr. Clay.”

The provocateur who shot at Isaac Bell from the back of the lynch mob marched into his elegant Wall Street office, where he was received with great deference, and no little fear, as the proprietor and chief investigator of the exclusive Henry Clay Investigations Agency of New York City. Clay’s manager, and secretary, and researcher, and telegrapher all stood respectfully at their desks, while the thugs ready to do his strong-arm work lined up in the back hall. Clay was a cultured man – his clothing exquisite, his taste sublime. The famous author Henry James had been known to converse with him companionably, utterly unaware – deserted, curiously, by his customary sound judgment – that Clay was also as ferociously ambitious as a hungry anaconda.

He had been raised in bohemian poverty by his mother, a struggling portrait painter who had named him after the man she claimed was his father – the ruthless coal, steel, and railroad baron Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie’s man of all work.

Henry Clay was thirty-five. He was well educated thanks to his mother’s gentlemen friends and clients who had staked him to excellent boarding schools in his youth. But the stints at school were as brief as his mother’s friendships, and he remained always the outsider – the day student at Choate, Phillips Andover, Exeter, Deerfield Academy, and St. Paul’s – brushing shoulders, fleetingly, with heirs to the great American fortunes that he hungered to possess himself.

At fifteen, Clay ran away from home and became a Pinkerton spy in the labor unions. At eighteen, in Chicago, he lied about his Pinkerton service and hired on as the first employee of the great detective of the age, Joseph Van Dorn. Van Dorn had recognized Clay’s extraordinary natural aptitude – his striking wit, his astonishing physical strength – and had held high hopes that his first apprentice would help him build his detective agency.

Van Dorn, a child of the Irish revolutions, which he had turned his back on when he saw them descend into criminality, had personally honed the boxing skills Henry Clay learned in school and trained him to fight with guns and knives. And while making Clay deadly, Van Dorn had taught him the fine art of investigation.

Clay still mourned the day they parted company.

Van Dorn had refused to make him a partner on the grounds that Clay was more interested in currying favor with industrialists than imprisoning criminals. Van Dorn, as bitterly disappointed in his choice of protégé as any man could be with this first failure, had also suspected – but could never prove – that the brilliant Henry Clay had thrown the bomb that set off the deadly Haymarket Riot.

Clay had not seen Van Dorn in many years. But he was aware, and he knew Van Dorn was, too, of the other’s presence in the detective line: Van Dorn, chief of an outfit extending its reach from regional to national; the younger Clay yet to make a bigger mark than a lucrative one-man outfit courting a clientele of rich and powerful financiers.

Back from the coalfields, Henry Clay locked the door to his private office. He kept a brass telescope in the window, a powerful instrument made for a harbormaster, which he swept across the fronts of the office-building headquarters of Wall Street tycoons. An expert lip-reader, he fleshed out their conversations with information he had acquired by bribing the engineers and mechanicians who installed their voice tubes, telephones, and private telegraph lines to reroute them through his.

This morning he focused his spyglass on a one-hundred-thousand-dollar, life-size white marble sculpture – Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss—which decorated the private office of a steel magnate that Wall Street men rated more cold-blooded than robber baron Frick at his worst. He was the financial titan who forged the old empires of Carnegie and Frick into the United States Steel Corporation – Judge James Congdon.

Judge Congdon was unyielding in his opposition to union labor. As Clay focused on the old man’s lips, Congdon was haranguing a visitor, a rich owner of coal mines, who was listening attentively.

“Labor’s victory will be notto labor when modern machines work for them. Until then, they’ll accept their place in God’s estate, if I have anything to do with it. And I do. After machines replace them, God knows how they’ll spend their time.” He whirled abruptly to his desk, moving with startling speed for a man his age, and wrote a note in a flowing hand:

There will be great profit in providing them games.

Congdon’s visitor nodded obsequiously.

Clay focused his spyglass on the mineowner’s face and took pleasure in watching him squirm. “Black Jack Gleason,” he whispered. “Not such a big man here in Wall Street, are you?”

Gleason was standing in Congdon’s office, literally hat in hand, worrying the brim of his homburg with anxious fingers, while James Congdon bullied him. Even lip-reading only parts of their conversation, as Congdon occasionally turned his face from the window, it was clear to Clay that the financier was calling the tune. The biggest coal baron in West Virginia was no match for a Wall Street titan hell-bent on consolidating the industry. Congdon’s money controlled the steel mills, and the coking plants that bought coal, and the railroads that not only burned it in their locomotives but also set the rates to ship it.

“Have you read Darwin?” Congdon asked contemptuously.

“I don’t believe so, Mr. Congdon.”

“The weak perish, the fittest survive.”

“Oh yes, sir. I know who you mean.”

“Mr. Darwin knows his business. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes. The weak die – perish. We’ll always have the poor. It’s the way of the world.”

“The way of the world,” said Congdon, “brings us to the business of digging coal less expensively than the next man. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Henry Clay, a painter like his mother though not as gifted, likened Congdon’s craggy face to a sunless, cold north slope gullied by storm water. It was no surprise, looking at that face, that Judge Congdon was the most powerful man in Wall Street, and Henry Clay’s chest filled with hope in the knowledge that he was about to hitch his wagon to an element as mighty as fire.

* * *

Judge James Congdon listened with a cold smile as the now thoroughly cowed Black Jack Gleason turned to flattery to try to shift the subject from the price of coal.

“Some members of the Duquesne Club were wondering out loud at lunch the other day whether you would consider a run at public office?”

“The ‘people’ won’t elect a banker president,” Congdon replied.

“I’ll bet you could change their minds.”

“No, they won’t vote for a Wall Street man. I know. I ran for governor and I lost. They beat the pants off me.”

“There’s always a next time.”

Congdon shrugged his broad and bony shoulders. “Who knows what the future holds?” he asked modestly while thinking to himself, I do. Next time, I know how to win.

“First thing you ought to do,” said Gleason, “is get the damned newspapers to stop complaining about your senators.”

“If only it were that simple, Gleason. The papers can howl their heads off about bribing congressmen and buying senators. People don’t give a hang. Oh no. People expect it. People admire a president who controls Congress.”

“So you would consider running for president?”

“Who knows what the future holds?” Congdon repeated. “Other than that in the immediate future, starting this afternoon, my mills will pay twenty cents a ton less than you’ve gotten used to, and my roads and barges will increase our shipping rates by five percent.”

Gleason turned pale.

“How am I to make a profit?”

“Rob Peter to pay Paul.”

“How do you mean?”

“You may think of me as Paul. Labor is Peter. After you meet my terms and get your coal on the market, you can keep whatever you can hold on to. In other words, pay labor less.”

“I’m doing everything I can, but, I warn you, labor is fighting back.”

Judge James Congdon stood to his full height. “I warn you: I will not subsidize any mine operator’s failure to bring labor to heel.”

10

Heading out to meet Isaac Bell, Joseph Van Dorn swaggered proudly from the high-class Cadillac Hotel on Broadway, where he had just signed the lease on a suite of rooms for his brand-new New York field office. He was not one to throw money around, but a client clapping eyes on its fine limestone façade would not be inclined to quibble over fees. And having passed through its marble lobby – under the watchful eye of top-notch house detectives supplied by Van Dorn in exchange for a break on the rent – and been wafted upstairs in its gilded elevator, the client would count himself lucky that the Van Dorn Detective Agency agreed to take his case.

At Forty-fourth Street, a redheaded gentleman stopped dead in his tracks and stared at him. Van Dorn stared back. Faint scars on the man’s brow indicated some experience with fisticuffs, though hardly in the professional prize ring, for the fellow looked prosperous, in a tasteful tweed suit and a bowler and with a heavy gold watch chain. Van Dorn saw anguish in his expression and a tear forming in his eye.

“Are you quite all right, sir?”

The answer came in a lilting Irish brogue, “Och, aye, forgive me, sir. I could not help but notice…” He swallowed hard.

“What is it, young fellow?” The accent of Van Dorn’s Dublin childhood was almost too faint to be heard over the harder layers of his Chicago years.

“Begod, sir, if you’re not the spitting image of me old dad.”

“Your father?”

“Is it not as if he rose from his grave to parade big as life down Broadway?” He caught himself. “Oye, I mean no harm.”

“No, no, no. Not to worry, young fellow.”

“The splendid whiskers – scarlet as new dawn – the piercing eyes, the high brow.” He shook his head in amazement and in sorrow.

“When did he leave us?” Van Dorn asked gently.

“Only at Easter. I thought I had reckoned with it, and there you were. You’re kind to stop, sir. Don’t be putting yourself out a moment longer.” The young man bowed, his expression still troubled, and turned away.

Joseph Van Dorn was a sharp detective and a shrewd businessman, but he was a kindly soul and he called after him, “I experienced the like when mine passed. I’ll not promise it gets easier, but gradually, you won’t dwell every day.”

“I will cherish that thought… You’ve been very kind– Sir, it would give me great pleasure to stand you to a wee dram.”

Van Dorn hesitated. He was already late to meet Isaac Bell, but the young fellow looked to be in desperate need, and a brother Irishman in need was not to be ignored. “Of course.”

“There’s a friendly snug just around the corner,” said the redhead, extending his hand. “Finnerty. Jack Finnerty.”

They shook hands and found the bar. The bartender greeted Finnerty with a warm “Welcome back” and poured Bushmills.

Van Dorn waited a decent interval to let Finnerty speak about his father before, in hopes of changing the subject to one less morbid, he asked, “What line are you in, Mr. Finnerty?”

“Coal,” said Finnerty. “Or, I should say, supercoal.”

“What is supercoal?”

“Something of a modern miracle. Scientists have developed a means of releasing the excess power hidden inside coal – burning a bucket of supercoal produces the heat of a carload. Imagine a locomotive crossing the continent on one full tender, or the city dweller snug in his apartment with his entire winter supply in a single cupboard.”

“I have never heard of it.”

“You’ll be hearing of it soon—”

All of a sudden, Finnerty jerked his watch chain and looked at the time. “Begor! I must run. I promised the investors I’d attend their board meeting. I’ve not ten minutes to get to Wall Street. Thanks be to God for the El – though they’ll not finish digging the Rapid Transit Subway soon enough for me. What good fortune to meet you, Mr. Van Dorn! You were kind when kindnesses made a difference.”

Van Dorn shook his hand and held tight a moment to ask, “At what stage of development is this invention?”

Finnerty glanced around and lowered his voice. “I would not be surprised to see customers lined up for supercoal next winter. Particularly if the miners strike.”

“How are you making out with investors?”

“Near fully subscribed– I must run, but here’s my card. Perhaps, we’ll meet, again.”

Finnerty handed Van Dorn his card and was out the door.

* * *

Isaac Bell was pacing in the front hall when Van Dorn bustled into the Yale Club at Forty-fourth Street. Even impatiently pacing, Van Dorn thought, the young detective glided like a panther – precision-cocked to spring.

“Sorry, Isaac. Tied up in a meeting.”

Bell led the way to a pair of wing chairs in a quiet corner of the lounge. He related in detail what had happened at the Gleason jail and laid out his suspicions. Van Dorn listened attentively, intrigued again by Bell’s speculation about a provocateur but still dubious about the evidence.

“I’m hoping you can spare me some men to get to the bottom of this, sir.”

“Your own squad?”

“It’s too big for one detective.”

“Not possible,” said Van Dorn. “We are stretched to the breaking. Prince Henry is dragging us around the country like the tail of a kite and now he’s threatening to extend his visit. They love him everywhere he goes and he’s having a ball.”

Bell spoke urgently. “Before I went down in the mine, I did as you suggested and learned everything I could about the coal business. The mines employ half a million men. Hundreds of thousands more work on the railroads and barge tows that transport it. In a nutshell, coal is the most important business in America.”

“That nutshell does not alter the fact that the Van Dorn Detective Agency has other fish to fry,” Van Dorn growled back.

Isaac Bell did not appear to hear him. “Coal is indispensable for heat, for coke to make steel, for smelting ore, for electricity generation for lights, pumps, elevators, and agriculture wells, and for fuel where wood is scarce. Coal powers ocean liners, battleships, and railroad trains.”

Van Dorn nodded impatiently, thinking, All the more reason to invest some part of my savings in Jack Finnerty’s supercoal.He said, “I am aware that the wealth coal underpins is unimaginably immense, and the benefit to the entire nation is incalculable, as is ensuring a steady supply.”

“But such wealth has the potential to stir the worst in men of all stripes,” Bell persisted, “be they labor, owner, or financier.” He took a deep breath. “I could begin my investigation with Wally Kisley and Mack Fulton, and Wish Clarke.”

Van Dorn could not conceal his surprise. “Only them?”

“Kisley is expert in explosives. Fulton’s been working labor cases since the Haymarket Riot. And the boys all say that Wish Clarke is the toughest fighting man in the agency, which I observed to be true when you let me work with him in Wyoming and again in New Orleans.”

“You would be the youngest squad leader in the history of the agency.”

“No, sir. You were younger when you led your first squad.”

“Times were simpler back then…”

“Coincidentally,” said Isaac Bell, “your first squad consisted of Kisley and Fulton and an apprentice named Wish, for ‘Aloysius,’ Clarke.”

It was Van Dorn’s turn to take a deep breath.

“O.K., you can have Weber and Fields,” he said, using the agency nickname for Kisley and Fulton whose jokes reminded everyone of the vaudeville comics. “They’re in Chicago. God knows where Wish Clarke is.”

“I can find him.”

“If you can find him, you can have him.”

“Could I also have Mr. Bronson?”

Joseph Van Dorn’s bushy eyebrows would have shot no higher if Isaac Bell had demanded the combined services of heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries, President Roosevelt and half his Rough Riders.

“Horace Bronson,” the Boss answered coldly, “is engaged in San Francisco.”

Bell was not surprised, but it had been worth a try. He asked, “Is there anyone else currently at large you could spare, sir?”

“You’ll have to make do with what I’ve given you,” Van Dorn said sternly. “You’ll be thin on the ground, so don’t get cocky. Weber and Fields are old hands but no longer spry, to put it mildly. They’re of the years when men age quickly. And Wish… well, enough said.”

“You’ve always said he’s a crack sleuth.”

“When sober,” Van Dorn shot back.

Bell said, “You are right, sir. I will be thin on the ground. Would you consider hiring a particular friend of mine as an apprentice? He’s a handy fellow with his fists – when I met him, he was captain of Princeton’s boxing team.”

“That will stand him in good stead against college men who’ve taken up crime.”

“He’s a whiz at disguises. He wanted to be an actor.”

“If he wanted to be, why isn’t he?”

“His mother forbade it.”

“Obedience to mothers,” Van Dorn responded drily, “is an admirable trait, but not the sort that spawns detectives with the requisite moxie.”

“He’s got plenty of moxie, and Kisley and Fulton will show him what to do with it. Sir, I could really use the extra hand.”

Van Dorn looked dubious. “I’d have to speak with him, size him up.”

“But you already have spoken with him.”

“What? When?”

“I believe you have his card in your vest pocket.”

Van Dorn reached into his vest. “Jack Finnerty?”

Isaac Bell kept a straight face. “Based on all I’ve learned about coal for this case, Mr. Van Dorn, I wouldn’t bet the farm on supercoal.”

Van Dorn flushed red as his whiskers. His eyes narrowed to pinpricks of blue flame, and his mighty chest filled like a bull’s. Isaac Bell braced for the explosion. But, at last, the Boss laughed.

“ Flimflammed!You flimflammed me.”

“I had to demonstrate his moxie.”

“You did that, all right. Really had me going there– Well, at least I was flimflammed by a brother Irishman.”

Bell could no longer hide his smile.

“Now what are you smirking about?”

“Sorry to disillusion you, sir, but your ‘Irish brother’ is a direct descendant of the English and Dutch founders of New York – Archibald Angel Abbott IV, listed first in Society’s Four Hundred.”

* * *

The Congdon Building was more secure than most in Wall Street, tight as a bank.

Henry Clay entered by the basement service entrance, dressed in steamfitter’s overalls and carrying a ball-peen hammer, a pipe wrench, a measuring tape, and an inspection gauge with its thin metal gap gauges modified to pick locks. He knew the guards’ routine and eluded them easily. He picked open a lock, bounded up twelve flights of stairs without sweating or breathing hard, removed his overalls, picked two more locks in utter silence, and stepped suddenly through the back door of Judge James Congdon’s private office.

Clay saw immediate confirmation of the wisdom of his plan. The tough old bird glanced up from his desk startled but not one bit frightened. He had chosen well.

11

James Congdon was intrigued by the intruder.

He could summon help in an instant with a shout into the speaking tube or one of several candlestick telephones on his desk. Better yet, simply shoot him with a revolver from his desk. Or, best of all, he could activate his “lunatic stopper.” But for the moment, Congdon was curious. Why would such an elegant, well-dressed gentleman break in his back door?

As if to prove that he was as cultured as he looked, the intruder complimented the marble sculpture that dominated Congdon’s office with a connoisseur’s appreciation. “I commend your knowledge of antiquities.”

Judge Congdon uncapped the speaking tube. “Antiquities? You’re showing off your ignorance. Auguste Rodin carved that statue two years ago.”

“But unlike the prudish original, this superior copy of Le Baiserthat you commissioned depicts the male form complete – in the classical Greek style – rather than draped, as it were, under a modest limb.”

Congdon snorted, “That’s a big-sounding way of saying he’s showing his tackle.”

The intruder flushed and lost his composure for an instant. “In the presence of such beauty,” he said stiffly, “I would consider an expression less crude.”

Congdon pulled a gun from his desk. “While I consider whether to have you beaten to a pulp or shoot you myself.”

“That is a privilege of wealth,” said Henry Clay. “But you would miss the greatest opportunity of your life. I will make an offer you will find irresistible.”

“I am rarely tempted.”

“But when you are, sir, you seize the opportunity.”

Clay cast a significant glance at Rodin’s passionate lovers. Then he nodded appreciatively at the bronze statuette on Congdon’s desk, which depicted the most recent of Congdon’s shapely young wives au naturel.

“My name is Henry Clay. I am a painter’s son by birth and a private detective by profession. I offer no threat, only promise. And I do it at great risk because you couldhave me beaten or killed.”

“So you’re a betting man?”

“Yes, sir. I am betting my life that you’ll see this opportunity for what it is.”

“What opportunity?”

“The opportunity to destroy the miners’ unions: the United Mine Workers in the east and the Western Federation of Miners in the west. Stop them dead, once and for all. It will be twenty years before another miner dares start a union, much less call a strike, anywhere on the continent. And here’s a sugarplum bonus for you. You will profit mightily knowing ahead of time to invest in businesses that will flourish when you destroy the unions.”

“By what means?”

“Every means. No holds barred.”

Congdon shook his head. “No. I risk everything if you are caught and turn blab-mouthed.”

“What would the word of a lowly detective be against the great Judge Congdon?”

Congdon fixed him with a gimlet eye. “‘The great Judge Congdon’ intends to be president of the United States. Unfortunately, that means convincing the ignorant people that he is above suspicion.”

“What could I blab? You can seal our deal with a nod. No signature, no contract. There is no way to record a nod.”

“Without a contract, you are betting on the groundless hope that I will reward you. What if I don’t?”

“I don’t need your reward.”

“Then why—”

“Here is all I need from you,” said Clay, and ticked items off on fastidiously manicured fingers. “Unlimited operating funds to do the job. Certain information that only you possess. Rail passes on all lines, and special trains to help me travel quickly about the continent. Permission to send and receive messages over the private closed telegraph wires leased by your brokers.”

Congdon interrupted with a sarcastic comment that the Interstate Commerce Commission forbid outsiders sending messages over leased wires.

Clay laughed. Brokers of stocks, bonds, and commodities bent that law day and night. “Speed and privacy are a matter of business.” He knew that he did not have to remind Congdon that owners and lessees of private wires got a jump on competitors who had to rely on Western Union’s slower public wires.

“In every city I operate, we will communicate swiftly and secretly through your branch offices.”

“Branch offices untraceable to me,” Congdon said sharply.

“Doesn’t a financier of your stature hold secret controlling interests in firms that lease private wires?”

Congdon ignored the flattery and demanded, “But what do youget out of this scheme?”

“Reputation. By rights, you will pay me handsomely when I succeed. But if you don’t – if you cheat me – it will not matter. I will be a made man.”

“How?”

“Henry Clay Investigations will become the detective agency to presidents and kings when the men who run this country learn who smashed the unions. When you are president, I, too, will be very big in Washington.”

Congdon mulled over Clay’s proposal. He was a famous judge of character. The detective, a robust physical specimen, possessed the steady gaze of a valuable man capable of finishing what he started. “What makes you so sure that this would appeal to me?”

“I have studied you, Judge Congdon. I understand you. I am a very good detective. I am the best.”

“You think you know me, do you? Have another look at my statue. Look close at The Kiss. Do you see anything unusual?”

Henry Clay did as Congdon ordered. He leaned close to the marble and let his eyes roam over the man and woman in passionate embrace. “I see a magnificent statue.”

“It draws you closer, doesn’t it?”

“It does. I am actually standing closer to it than I was a moment ago. But what is it you want me to see?”

“Look up.”

The skylight that illuminated the marble was ringed by a plaster frieze studded with tiny holes one-tenth the diameter of a dime.

“I see holes in the frieze. They’re barely visible.”

“Now look down.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“Look down.”

In the pattern of the marble circle on which he was standing were dozens of similar holes. “I still don’t understand.”

“I will teach you two things about wealth, Mr. Best Detective. Wealth attracts lunatics. My old enemy Frick was shot and nearly killed in his own office by a lunatic ten years ago, which set me to thinking of my own safety. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“You said twothings about wealth.”

“Common wisdom holds that coal is the source of all wealth. Like most common wisdom, that’s dead wrong. Coal is only fuel. It happens to be the best fuel at the moment, but it will be replaced by a better fuel. Oil is the coming fuel until the scientists come up with something even better, which they will. The realsource of wealth for the past hundred years, and hundreds more to follow, is steam – hot steam made by boiling water with the cheapest and most efficient fuel available – wood, coal, oil, and whatever science dreams up next. Steam pushes pistons that drive locomotives. Steam whirls turbines to spin electricity. Steam storms through pipes under city streets to heat modern buildings like mine.”

Congdon reached for the bronze statuette of his current wife. He stroked it with his gnarled fingers.

“Steam scalds flesh. Steam from a mere teakettle will sear your hand with the most painful burn imaginable. Shortly after the attack on Frick, a six-inch steam riser in a building like this one ruptured. Escaping steam blasted through the walls as if they were made of paper. Every man and woman in the office died in an instant. They were found still seated at their desks, scalded head to toe, horribly disfigured, cooked to death inside and out. That set me to thinking about the lunatic attack on Mr. Frick. What he should have installed in his office – and what I have installed in mine – is a steam-powered lunatic stopper.”

Congdon tightened his grip on the bronze statuette.

“Do you notice anything peculiar about this statue of my new wife?”

Clay looked more closely and saw what he had missed earlier. The bronze was hinged to the top of the desk. “I see a hinge.”

“The hinge makes it a lever. When I move this lever, it will open a valve that will deliver a scalding hot three-hundred-and-fifty-degree blast of steam straight from the central boiler plant on Cortlandt Street to your skin, Best Detective Clay.”

Henry Clay eyed the holes in the floor and the ceiling.

“Scalding jets of high-pressure steam will cook you to death in seconds. The longest and worst, most painful seconds of your life.”

“It will kill you, too.”

“I’ll be unscathed. The jet holes are calculated to deliver just enough for you.”

“O.K.,” said Clay, “you caught me flat-footed. If you throw that lever, I’m dead.”

“Painfully dead.”

“Painfully dead.”

Hand firmly on the lever, James Congdon recognized a certain unique quality in Henry Clay: If the fellow felt fear, Congdon could not see it. In fact, it appeared that if Clay had one strength above all others, it was the strength to recognize the inevitable and accept it without complaint. A controlling interest in such a man could be a solid investment.

“If I were to give you unlimited operating funds, private information, rail passes, and specials, how would you use them?”

“The details are mine alone to know.”

Congdon frowned. “You’re a brave man to stand your ground in your precarious situation. Or a fool.”

“A determined man,” Clay shot back. “The only thing you can count on in this world is determination. I’m offering determination. I repeat: The details are mine alone to know.”

“Assume, for the moment, that tacticsare up to you,” Congdon conceded. “What is your strategy?”

“You need a story to destroy the unions. The newspapers are already on your side. They will tell your story. I will give you your story.”

“What story?”

“The owners upon whom God has seen fit to bestow property will protect property and liberty from murderous agitators.”

“How will you tell it?”

“By starting a war in the coalfields.”

“How?”

“Are you familiar with the accident at Gleason Mine No. 1?”

“Runaway coal train, some hands killed, and production interrupted for four days. Are you telling me you started that?”

“And finished it. Before the miners returned to work, they burned down Gleason’s jail and the courthouse. I’d call that a war.”

“I’d call it a good beginning,” Congdon conceded. “A veritable Harry O’Hagan one-man triple play.”

“A quadruple play, counting the fire.”

“Yes indeed you outdid O’Hagan. But I am deeply disappointed.”

“Why, sir?”

James Congdon answered with a wistful sigh. “My lunatic stopper will have to wait for another lunatic.”

He let go the steam lever and gestured for Henry Clay to take a seat beside him.