“You make it sound easy,” she said drily.
“The simpler, the better.” He climbed from bed and headed for the bathroom. “By this time tomorrow, our curtain will ring down on San Francisco and, within a few short months, we’ll launch a new banking empire in Montreal.”
“How much do you figure we’ll have?”
“I’ve already transferred fifteen million by telegraph wire to four different Canadian banks in four different provinces,” he pointed out. “We’ll carry another four million with us in currency.”
Now she smiled broadly, the fear of the earthquake suddenly pushed aside. “That’s more than we had when we came to San Francisco twelve years ago.”
“A lot more,” Cromwell said comfortably. “Nineteen million more, to be exact.”
BELL MISSED Cromwell by twenty minutes when he reached the mansion on Cushman Street. He studied the house and was surprised at the superficial damage after witnessing the unbelievable destruction of the buildings in the main part of the city. He climbed over the mound of fallen bricks that had been an eight-foot wall and walked up the driveway to the front door.
He pulled the doorbell knob, stood back, and waited. After a long minute, the door cracked open and the housekeeper peered out at Bell. “What do you want?” she demanded, all formal courtesy lost from the lingering fright of the earthquake.
“I’m from the Van Dorn Detective Agency, here to see Mr. Cromwell.”
“Mr. Cromwell is not at home. He left soon after the awful earth shuddering.”
He could see a figure approach through the curtains covering the glass of the door. “Do you know if he went to his bank?”
The housekeeper moved back as Margaret stepped onto the threshold. She stared at the man standing on the step in a suit covered with dust, grime, and soot. The face was blackened with ash, the eyes tired of seeing too much misery. She barely recognized him.
“Isaac, is that you?”
“A little worse for wear, I’m afraid. But, yes, it’s me.” He removed his hat. “Good to see you, Margaret. I’m happy you survived the quake without injury.”
Her dark eyes were wide and soft, as if she were seeing him for the first time. She stood back from the door. “Please come in.”
He entered and saw that she had been working at cleaning up the mess littering the floors of the mansion, mostly broken china, porcelain figurines, and Tiffany lampshades. She wore a comfortable red cotton skirt and a woolen sweater under a long apron. Her hair was wrapped in a tight curl atop her head, with loose strands falling beside her cheeks. Despite her plain appearance, she filled the air around her with a sweet fragrance. Whether she wore an expensive silk gown or an ordinary work dress, Margaret was still a stunning woman.
She led him into the parlor and offered him a chair by the fireplace, whose ashes had fanned out over the carpet when the chimney collapsed. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“I’d sell my soul for a cup of coffee.”
She turned to her housekeeper, who had overheard and simply nodded, then scurried off to the kitchen. Margaret found it difficult to gaze directly into Bell’s hypnotic eyes. She found herself with a growing lust that she had experienced earlier in his presence.
“What do you want with Jacob?” she demanded without preamble.
“I think you know the answer to that question,” he replied in a flat tone.
“You cannot abduct him again. Not in San Francisco. You must know that by now.”
“You and he have bribed too many corrupt politicians in this town to ever be held for your crimes,” Bell said bitterly. He paused and looked around at the servants cleaning up the house and putting the furniture and décor back in its proper place. “Looks like you intend on remaining in the city.”
“Why not?” she said, faking indignation. “This is our city. We have a thriving business and close friends. Our hearts are open to the poor who live here. Why on earth should we leave?”
Bell was almost tempted to believe Margaret. She was good, he thought, remembering the night they danced in the Brown Palace Hotel. Very good.
“Is Jacob at the bank?”
“He left to survey the damage.”
“I saw what’s left of Market Street. Most all the buildings are ruined, few still stand, and the Cromwell Bank is right in the path of the growing inferno.”
Margaret seemed unconcerned. “Jacob built the bank to stand for a thousand years, as he did this house, which, you can see, survived the earthquake while the more-pretentious Nob Hill mansions were heavily damaged if not destroyed. The House of Cromwell was built to endure.”
“Be that as it may, Margaret,” said Bell with deadly seriousness. “But I warn you and Jacob not to consider leaving town.”
Her anger flared and she came to her feet. “Do not threaten me, and do not think for a moment you can bully my brother. You’re all bluff, Isaac. You have no authority, no influence, in this city. My brother and I will be here long after you’re gone.”
He came to his feet. “I admit defeat on that score. I have no influence in this city or with its political machine. But once you cross the city limits, the two of you belong to me. You can count on it.”
“Get out!” she hissed fiercely. “Get out now!”
For a long moment, they glared at each other through wild eyes, infuriated with sudden hostility. Then Bell rose slowly and put on his hat as he walked to the front door.
Margaret jumped to her feet and shouted, “You’ll never lay your hands on my brother again. Never in a thousand years! Over my dead body!”
He paused to give her one final look. “I wish you hadn’t said that.” And then he was gone out the door.
ABNER EXPERTLY zigzagged the Rolls-Royce to the Cromwell National Bank on Sutter and Hyde Streets, evading the heaps of bricks and swarms of people littering the streets. At one corner, a policeman stopped the car and ordered Abner to go to the Mechanics’ Pavilion, the immense building and arena that housed a huge archive and was the scene for many fairs, sports events, and concerts. In desperate need of an emergency facility, the city had converted the pavilion into a hospital and morgue. The policeman insisted Cromwell put the Rolls into service as an ambulance for the injured.
“I have other uses for my car,” Cromwell said loftily. He spoke through the speaking tube: “Continue on to the bank, Abner.”
The policeman pulled out his revolver and pointed the muzzle at Abner. “I’m personally commandeering this car and seeing that you go directly to the pavilion or I’ll blow your driver’s head off and turn the car over to someone with decency.”
Cromwell was not impressed. “A pretty speech, Officer, but the car stays with me.”
The policeman’s face flushed with anger. He waved his revolver. “I’m not going to warn you again—”
The policeman reeled back in shock, his eyes wide, as a bullet from Cromwell’s Colt .38 ripped into his chest. He stood for a moment, bewildered, until his heart stopped and he crumpled to the pavement.
There was no hesitation, no concern, no remorse. Abner quickly slid from behind the wheel, snatched up the body as if it were a dummy, and set it on the front seat. Then he resumed his position behind the wheel, shifted into first gear, and drove away.
There was so much pandemonium on the streets—people shouting, the occasional thunder of another building collapsing, and the shriek of the fire equipment—that no one noticed the murder of the policeman. The few people who saw him fall to the ground thought he was injured and being picked up by a driver using his automobile as an ambulance.
“You’ll dispose of him?” Cromwell asked, as if suggesting that a servant throw a dead cockroach in the trash.
Abner spoke into his speaking tube: “I’ll take care of the matter.”
“When you’re finished, drive into the freight-and-service entrance at the rear of the bank. Let yourself in the back door—you have the key. I’ll need you to help carry several trunks to the automobile.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the Rolls-Royce reached the corner of Sutter and Market Streets and Cromwell saw the approaching inferno and the magnitude of the destruction, he began to feel apprehensive about what he would find when they drove up to his bank. His growing fear quickly turned to elation when the building came into view.
The Cromwell National Bank had withstood the earthquake nearly unscathed. The unyielding stone structure had lived up to Cromwell’s boast that it would last a thousand years. None of the walls or the great fluted columns had fallen. The only apparent damage was the shattered stained-glass windows, whose shards turned the sidewalk around the bank into a kaleidoscope of colors.
Abner pulled the Rolls to a stop and opened the rear door. Several bank employees were milling around the front entrance, having come to work out of habit, not knowing how else to deal with the tragic interruption of their lives. Cromwell got out and was only halfway up the steps when they surrounded him, all talking at once, bombarding him with questions. He held up his hands for silence and reassured them: “Please, please, go home and stay with your families. You can do nothing here. I promise your salaries will continue to be paid until this terrible calamity has ended and normal business can resume.”
It was an empty promise. Not only did Cromwell have no intention of continuing their salaries while the bank was shut down; he could see that the flames sweeping through the business district of the city were only a few hours away from consuming the bank building. Though the walls were stone and unyielding, the wooden roof beams were highly susceptible to fire, which would quickly gut the building to an empty shell.
As soon as his employees were walking away from the bank, Cromwell took a set of large brass keys from his coat pocket and unlocked the massive bronze front door. He didn’t bother to lock it after him, knowing the fire soon would consume any records inside. He headed straight for the vault. The time lock was set to engage the combination at eight o’clock. It was now seven forty-five. Cromwell calmly walked over to a leather chair at the loan officer’s desk, brushed off the dust, sat down, and produced a cigar from a case in his breast pocket.
Feeling as if he were in full command of the situation, he leaned back, lit the cigar, and blew a cloud of blue smoke toward the ornate ceiling of the lobby. The earthquake, he thought, could not have come at a more-opportune time. He might lose a few million, but the insurance would cover any damage to the bank building itself. His competitors tied up their assets in loans, but Cromwell always kept his assets in cash and invested on paper. Once it became known he had fled town, bank examiners would land on the Cromwell National Bank like vultures. With luck, his depositors might get ten cents on their invested dollar.
At precisely eight, the vault mechanism made a chiming sound as the locks clicked off one by one. Cromwell walked over to the vault and turned the huge wheel, which had spokes like a ship’s helm, turned it, and released the bars from their shafts. Then he pulled the giant door open on its gigantic well-oiled hinges as easily as if it were attached to a kitchen cupboard and entered.
It took him two hours to finish loading four million dollars in large-denomination gold certificate bills into five large leather trunks. Abner arrived, after hiding the body of the policeman under the collapsed floor of a hardware store, and carried the trunks out to the Rolls. Cromwell was always impressed with the Irishman’s brute strength. He himself could barely lift one end of a filled trunk off the floor, but Abner hoisted it onto one shoulder with barely a grunt.
The Rolls was parked in the underground freight entrance used by armored trucks and wagons that delivered currency or coins from the nearby San Francisco Mint. Cromwell helped Abner load the trunks in the spacious rear compartment before covering them with blankets he’d brought from his mansion. Under the blankets, he placed cushions from the chairs in the lobby of the bank, positioning them so that it looked as if they were dead bodies.
Cromwell went back inside and left the vault door open so the contents would be destroyed. Then he walked out and climbed in the open driver’s section of the Rolls and sat beside Abner. “Drive to our warehouse at the railyard,” he instructed.
“We’ll have to detour to the north docks and come around behind the fires if we want to reach the railyard,” said Abner, shifting the car into first gear. As he skirted the huge fire consuming Chinatown, he headed toward Black Point, to the north. Already, wooden buildings were disintegrating into beds of smoldering ashes as broken chimneys stood like blackened tombstones.
Some streets were clear enough to drive through, Abner avoiding those that were impassable because they were buried under collapsed walls. The Rolls was stopped twice by police, demanding the car be used as an ambulance, but Cromwell merely pointed to the makeshift bodies under the blankets and said they were on their way to the morgue. The police duly stepped back and waved them on.
Abner had to weave his way around crowds of refugees from the burned-out areas, carrying their meager belongings. There was no panic; people moved slowly, as if they were out for a Sunday stroll. There was little conversation, and few looked back at what had been their homes before the calamity.
Cromwell was stunned at the intensity and swiftness of the fire as it consumed a nearby building. The towering blaze sent a shower of flaming sparks and debris onto the roof, which became a flaming torch within two or three minutes. Then a firestorm enveloped the entire building and consumed it in less time than it takes to boil water.
Regular army troops from the surrounding military installations began arriving to maintain order and help the city firemen fight the flames. Ten companies of artillery, infantry, cavalry, and the Hospital Corps—seventeen hundred men in all—marched into the city with guns and cartridge belts, prepared to guard the ruins, the bank and store vaults and safes, the post office, and the Mint from looters. Their orders were to shoot any man caught stealing.
They passed a caravan of soldiers in four automobiles whose backseats were stacked with boxes of dynamite from the California Powder Works. Within minutes, explosions rocked the already-devastated city, as homes and stores were detonated and leveled to slow the rage of the fire. Losing the battle, the army quickly began to dynamite entire blocks in a last-ditch attempt to stop the onslaught of the conflagration.
A sickly pale yellow light crept through the growing pall of smoke. There was no sun falling on the ruins except around the outskirts of the city. The dull ball of the sun appeared red and seemed smaller than its usual size. The army troops, firemen, and police retreated from the flames, herding the homeless to the west away from the approaching holocaust.
Abner twisted the wheel of the Rolls as he evaded the rubble in the streets and the crowd of people struggling to reach the ferry terminal in the hope of crossing the bay to Oakland. At last, he came across a railroad track and followed it into the main Southern Pacific railyard until he reached Cromwell’s warehouse. He drove up a ramp and parked next to the boxcar sitting at the loading dock. He noted the serial number painted on the side: 16455.
Cromwell did not know that Bell was aware the boxcar was not what it appeared to be. But the agent who was assigned to observe it had been called away by Bronson for other duties after the quake. All looked secure. Cromwell studied the padlock on the big sliding door of the boxcar to make sure it had not been tampered with. Satisfied, he inserted a key and removed the lock, which was more for show than for protection. Then he crouched under the car and came up though the trapdoor into the interior of the car. Once inside, he turned the heavy latches that sealed the door from within and slid it open.
Without instructions, Abner began carrying the heavy trunks filled with currency from the Rolls, hoisting them up to the floor of the boxcar, where Cromwell dragged them inside. When the last of the four million dollars was removed from the limousine, Cromwell looked down at Abner and said, “Return to the house, gather up my sister and her luggage, then return here.”
“You’re staying, Mr.
Cromwell?” asked Abner.
Cromwell nodded. “I have business to conduct across the yard at the dispatcher’s office.”
Abner knew that making a round-trip from the warehouse to the mansion on Nob Hill was a near-impossible task, but he gave Cromwell a casual salute and said, “I’ll do my best to bring your sister here safe and sound.”
“If anyone can do it, you can, Abner,” said Cromwell. “I have complete faith in you.”
Then Cromwell closed the sliding door of the boxcar and dropped down through the trapdoor. As Abner drove the Rolls down the ramp, he saw Cromwell making his way across the tracks toward the dispatcher’s shack.
39
BELL HIKED DOWN NOB HILL AND STOPPED TO HELP a crew of men removing the debris of a small hotel that was little more than a mound of splintered wooden beams and crushed bricks. Underneath the wreckage, a little boy’s voice could be heard sobbing. Bell and the men worked feverishly, throwing rubble off to the side and digging a hole toward the pitiful cries.
After nearly an hour, they finally reached a small air pocket that had protected the boy from being crushed. In another twenty minutes, they had him free and carried him to a waiting car that would rush him to a first-aid facility. Except for his ankles, which appeared to be fractured, he had suffered no other injuries but bruises.
The little boy looked to be no more than five years old to Bell. As the boy cried for his mother and father, the men who had saved him looked at each other with great sorrow, knowing his parents, and possibly brothers and sisters, were lying crushed deep within the collapsed hotel. Without a word, they went their separate ways, saddened, but glad they were at least able to save him.
Two blocks farther on, Bell passed by a soldier supervising a group of men who were pressed into service removing bricks from the street and stacking them on the sidewalk. Bell thought one of the men with a handsome profile looked familiar. Out of curiosity, he stopped and asked an older man, who was observing the operation, if he could identify this man who had “volunteered” to clean up the street.
The Chase Page 28
