“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 fiancée 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 Lumière 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 Reidhead was 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 Julia that 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.”
&n
bsp; “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’s why 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 wa
s 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 you don’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.
The Wrecker Page 22
