The lumberman, intending to make hay out of this unexpected visit from his banker, answered, “That’s exactly how it happened. Though I recall that you made it easier by promising to help me replace the old equipment.”
“A.J., who bought your East Oregon Lumber Company?”
“A feller with more money than sense,” Gottfried admitted cheerfully. “I had despaired of ever unloading it ‘til he came along. It was just too expensive to snake the timber down off those mountains. Not like here, where I can load lumber schooners right at my own wharf. Provided, of course, the ship don’t founder trying to get into the harbor.”
Perrone nodded impatiently. Everyone knew that the entrance into Humboldt Bay deserved its title “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Pea-soup fog, pounding breakers that dissolved into spindrift, and a thick haze of smoke from the lumber mills made finding the channel an exercise that turned sea captains’ hair white. “I understand,” he said pointedly, “you’re considering adding a sash and door factory to your business.”
“If I can raise the means,” Gottfried answered, hoping he had heard right. “This Panic isn’t making it any easier to borrow money.”
The banker looked the lumberman in the eye, and said, “I suspect that favored borrowers will get a sympathetic ear despite the Panic. Who bought your East Oregon business?”
“Can’t tell you everything about him. As you can imagine, I wasn’t looking that particular gift horse in the mouth. Soon as we shook on the deal, I was gone from that place so fast you could hear me whiz.”
He drained his glass and poured another, and topped off the banker’s glass, which hadn’t gone down as far.
“What do you know about the purchaser of the East Oregon Lumber Company?” Perrone pressed.
“For one thing, he had plenty of cash.”
“Where’d he draw his check from?”
“Well, that was interesting. I would have thought San Francisco or Portland. But his check was on a New York bank. I was a little suspicious, but it cleared lickety-split.”
“Was the fellow from New York?”
“Might’ve been. Sure didn’t know much about the lumber business. Now that you mention it, it occurs to me he was buying it for somebody else.”
The banker nodded, encouraging the lumberman to continue talking. Ebenezer Bell had made it clear that he didn’t expect the whole story from any one source. But every bit helped. And the powerful American States president had also made it clear that he would be grateful for every nugget Perrone could wire him.
45
THE VAN DORN EXPRESS PAUSED IN DENVER’S UNION DEPOT just long enough for a Van Dorn agent in bowler hat and checkerboard suit to swagger aboard bearing fresh reports from London and Berlin. “Howdy, Isaac. Long time no see.”
“Sit there, Roscoe. Go through these Schane and Simon Company records with a fine-tooth comb. Have your queries ready to wire at the next stop.”
A lawyer who connected in Salt Lake City brought more on Schane & Simon. The foundation of the German bank’s power was an investment network that backed modernization projects throughout the Ottoman Empire. But as far back as the nineties, they had begun doing business in North and South America.
The Van Dorn Express was racing across the Great Salt Desert when Roscoe, who had boarded in Denver, hit pay dirt in the heaps of cablegrams about Schane & Simon.
“Isaac! Who’s Erastus Charney?”
“Railroad attorney. Got rich on Southern Pacific stock. Seemed to know more than he should about when to buy and when to sell.”
“Well, he sure as heck sold something to Schane and Simon. Look at these deposits with Charney’s stockbroker.”
Bell wired Sacramento from Wendover, while the train quickly watered and coaled for the climb into Nevada, instructing them to follow up on Roscoe’s discovery. But he feared it was too little too late. If Simon & Shane did bankroll the Wrecker, then the evidence was clear that Charney had been bribed to pass information about Hennessy’s plans to the saboteur. Unfortunately, the fact that the crooked railroad attorney was still alive suggested that his link to the murderous Wrecker was circuitous, and Charney would know nothing about him. But at least they would take another of the Wrecker’s accomplices out of action.
Two hours later, the train was pulling out of Elko, Nevada, when a plump accountant sprinted for the last car. Thirty pounds overweight and a decade past his sprinting years, Jason Adler tripped. One soft pink hand was already clinging to the vestibule rail, the other gripping a fat satchel. As the train dragged him along the platform, he held on with all his might, coolly calculating that he was now flying too fast to let go without suffering grievous injury. An alert conductor rushed to the vestibule. He sank both hands into the folds of the accountant’s coat. Too late, he realized that the weight of the falling man was dragging both of them off the train.
Burly Van Dorn detectives sprang to their aid.
The accountant ended up on the vestibule floor, clutching his satchel to his chest.
“I have important information for Mr. Isaac Bell,” he said.
Bell had just fallen asleep for the first time in twenty-four hours when they tugged open the curtain to his Pullman berth. He was wide awake instantly, eyes glittering with ferocious concentration. The operative apologized for waking him and introduced an overweight man clutching a briefcase to a suit that looked like he’d been turning somersaults in a coal yard.
“This is Mr. Adler, Mr. Bell.”
“Hello, Mr. Adler, who are you?”
“I am an accountant employed by American States Bank.”
Bell swung his feet off the bunk. “You work for my father.”
“Yes, sir,” Adler said proudly. “Mr. Bell specifically asked for me to take on this audit.”
“What have you got?”
“We have uncovered the name of the secret owner of the Union Pier and Caisson Company of St. Louis.”
“Go on!”
“We should talk in private, Mr. Bell.”
“These are Van Dorn agents. You can say your piece here.”
Adler clutched his briefcase closer. “I apologize to you gentlemen, and to you Mr. Bell, but I am under strict orders from my boss, Mr. Ebenezer Bell, president of the American States Bank, to speak to you and only you.”
“Excuse us,” said Bell. The detectives left. “Who owns Union Pier?” he demanded.
“A shell corporation established by a Berlin investment house.”
“Schane and Simon.”
“Yes, sir. You are well informed.”
“We’re getting there. But who owns the shell corporation?”
Adler lowered his voice to a whisper. “It is wholly controlled by Senator Charles Kincaid.”
“You’re sure?”
Adler hesitated only a second. “Not beyond all doubt, but reasonably sure Senator Kincaid is their client. Schane and Simon supplied the money. But there are numerous indications that they did it on his behalf.”
“That implies that the Wrecker is well connected in Germany.”
Adler answered, “That was your father’s conclusion, too.”
Bell wasted no time congratulating himself on the discovery that Kincaid likely served the Wrecker just as he had suspected. He ordered an immediate investigation of every outside contractor hired by the Southern Pacific Company to work on the Cascades Cutoff. And he wired a warning to Archie Abbott to keep a close eye on the Senator.
“TELEGRAPH, MR. ABBOTT.”
“Thank you, Mr. Meadows.”
Archie Abbott broke into a broad grin when he decoded the message from Isaac Bell. He combed his red hair in the reflection of a railcar window and straightened his snappy bow tie. Then he marched straight to Osgood Hennessy’s private office with a fine excuse to call on Miss Lillian, who was wearing a ruby velvet blouse with a fitted waist, an intriguing row of pearl buttons down the front, and a riveting flow of fabric over her hips.
The Old Man was not in a friend
ly mood this morning. “What do you want, Abbott?”
Lillian was watching closely, gauging how Archie handled her father. She would not be disappointed. Archie had no trouble with fathers. Mothers were his weakness.
“I want you to tell me everything you know about outside contractors working on the cutoff,” Abbott said.
“We already know about Union Pier and Caisson,” Hennessy replied heavily. “Otherwise, several down in Cascade. Purveyors, hotels, laundries. Why do you ask?”
“Isaac doesn’t want a repeat of the pier problem and neither do I. We’re checking into all the outside contractors. Do I understand correctly that a contractor was hired by the Southern Pacific to supply crossties for the cutoff?”
“Of course. When we started building the cutoff, I arranged to stockpile crossties on this side of the Canyon Bridge so we’d be ready to jump as soon as we crossed.”
“Where is the mill?”
“About eight miles up the mountain. New owners modernized the old water mill.”
“Did they supply ties as promised?”
“Pretty much. It’s slow snaking timber down from there, but, by and large, it’s worked out. I gave them a long head start, and the creosoting plant has more than it can handle.”
“Is the plant an outside contractor, too?”
“No. It’s ours. We just knock it down and move it up the line where we need it.”
“Why didn’t you establish your own sawmill as you’ve done in the past?”
“Because the bridge was far ahead of the rest of the road. These folks were already up and running. It seemed the fastest way to get the job done. That’s all I can tell you.”
“By the way, have you seen Senator Kincaid today?”
“Not since yesterday. If you’re that interested in the timber operation, why don’t you ride up there and have a look?”
“That’s exactly where I’m headed.”
Lillian jumped up. “I’ll ride with you!”
“No!” chorused Archie Abbott and Osgood Hennessy.
Her father pounded the table for emphasis. Archie offered a heart-grabbing smile and an apology.
“I wish you could ride with me, Lillian,” he said, “but Van Dorn policy ...”
“I know. I’ve heard it already. You don’t bring friends to gunfights.”
46
JAMES DASHWOOD LOCATED ST. SWITHUN’S MONASTERY FROM A clue dropped by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union orator Captain Willy Abrams: “A heck of a spread.”
Its boundaries encompassed thirteen thousand acres that sprawled from the foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains to the bluffs that reared over the Pacific Ocean. A muddy road miles from the nearest town led through iron gates onto an undulating plateau planted in orchards of fruit trees, nut trees, and vineyards. The chapel was a spare, modern building with simple Art Nouveau stained-glass windows. Low stone buildings of similar design housed the monks. They ignored James when he asked to see a recent arrival, a blacksmith named Jim Higgins.
Man after man in swaying robes walked past him as if he did not exist. Monks harvesting grapes and picking nuts just kept working no matter what he said. Finally, one took pity, picked up a stick, and wrote in the mud vow OF SILENCE.
Dashwood took the stick and wrote BLACKSMITH?
The monk pointed at a cluster of barns and corrals opposite the dormitories. Dashwood headed there, heard the distinctive clank of a hammer on iron, and quickened his pace. Rounding a barn, he saw a thin column of smoke rising through the branches of a chestnut tree. Higgins was bent over a forge, pounding a horseshoe on the horn of his anvil.
He wore a brown robe under his leather apron. His head was bare to the cold drizzle. The robe made him look even bigger than Dashwood remembered. In one powerful hand, he gripped a massive hammer, and in the other long tongs that held red-hot iron. When he looked up and saw Dashwood in his city clothes carrying a suitcase, Dashwood had to suppress the strong impulse to flee.
Higgins stared long and hard at Dashwood.
Dashwood said, “I hope you haven’t taken vows of silence like the others.”
“I’m just a novice. How did you find me?”
“When I heard you stopped drinking, I went to temperance meetings.”
Higgins gave a snort that was half laugh, half angry growl. “Figured the last place the Van Dorns would find me would be in a monastery.”
“You were scared by the sketch I showed you.”
Higgins raised the hot horseshoe in his tongs. “Guess I figured wrong ...”
“You recognized him, didn’t you?”
Higgins threw the horseshoe into a bucket of water. “Your name is James, ain’t it?”
“Yes. We’re both Jims.”
“No, you’re a James, I’m a Jim ...” He leaned his tongs against the anvil and stood his hammer beside it. “Come on, James. I’ll show you around.”
Jim Higgins lumbered off toward the bluff. James Dashwood followed him. He caught up and walked beside Higgins until they had to stop at the bluff’s crumbling edge. The Pacific Ocean spread as far as they could see, gray and forbidding under a lowering sky. Dashwood looked down, and his guts clenched. Hundreds of feet below them, the ocean thundered on a rocky beach, hurling up spray. Had Higgins lured him to this lonely precipice to throw him to his death?
“I have known for some time that I was going to Hell,” the blacksmith intoned gravely. “That’s why I stopped drinking whiskey. But it didn’t help. Stopped beer. Still going to Hell.” He turned to James Dashwood with burning eyes. “You turned me inside out when you came along. Scared me into running. Scared me into hiding.”
James Dashwood wondered what he should say. What would Isaac Bell do under these circumstances? Try to clamp handcuffs around his thick wrists? Or let him talk?
“Bunch of big shots started this monastery,” Higgins was saying. “Lot of these monks are rich men who gave up everything to live the simple life. You know what one of them told me?”
“ No. ”
“Told me that I’m blacksmithing exactly like they did in the Bible, except I burn mineral coal in my forge instead of charcoal. They say that working like folks in the Bible is good for our souls.”
He turned his back on the cliff and fixed his gaze on the fields and meadows. The drizzle strengthening into rain shrouded the vineyards and the fruit trees.
“I figured I was safe here,” he said.
He stared for a long time before he spoke again.
“What I didn’t figure was liking it here. I like working outdoors under a tree instead of cooped up with trucks and automobiles stinking up the air. I like being with weather. I like watching storms ...” He whirled around to face the Pacific, which was checkered with dark squalls. To the southwest, the sky was turning black as coal. “See there?” he asked Dashwood, pointing to the blackness.
Dashwood saw a grim, cold ocean, a crumbling precipice at his feet, and rocks far below.
“Look, James. Don’t you see it coming?”
It struck the apprentice detective that the blacksmith had gone crazy long before the train wreck. “See what, Jim?”
“The storm.” The blacksmith’s eyes were burning. “Mostly, they angle in from the northwest, a monk told me, down from the northern Pacific where it’s cold. This one’s coming from the south where it’s warm. From the south brings more rain ... You know what?”
“What?” Dashwood asked, hope fading.
“There’s a monk here whose daddy owns a Marconi wireless telegraph. Do you know that right now, four hundred miles at sea, there’s a ship telegraphing to the Weather Bureau what the weather is out there!” He fell silent, contemplating that discovery.
It was a chance to prime the pump, and James seized it. “They got the idea from Ben Franklin.”
“Huh?”
“I learned it in high school. Benjamin Franklin noticed that storms are moving formations, that you can track where they’re going.”
The blacksmith looked intrigued. “He did?”
“So when Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, it made it possible to send warnings to folks in the storm’s path. Like you say, Jim, now Marconi’s wireless telegraph lets ships send radiotelegraph storm warnings from way out in the ocean.”
“So the Weather Bureau’s known about that one for quite some time now? Isn’t that something?”
Dashwood reckoned that the weather had taken them about as far as they could go.
“How did I scare you?” he asked.
“That picture you showed me.”
“This?” Dashwood took the sketch without the mustache from his suitcase.
The blacksmith turned away. “That’s who wrecked the Coast Line Limited,” he said softly. “Except you got his ears too big.”
Dashwood rejoiced. He was closing in. He reached into his bag. Isaac Bell had wired him to get in touch with a pair of Southern Pacific cinder dicks named Tom Griggs and Ed Bottomley. Griggs and Bottomley had taken Dashwood out, got him drunk and into the arms of a redhead at their favorite brothel. Then they’d taken him to breakfast and given him the hook that had derailed the Coast Line Limited. He pulled the heavy cast iron out of his bag. “Did you make this hook?”
The blacksmith eyed it morosely. “You know I did.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because they’d blame me for killing those poor people.”
“What was his name?”
“Never said his name.”
“If you didn’t know his name, why did you run?”
The blacksmith hung his head. Tears welled in his eyes and rolled down his red cheeks.
Dashwood had no idea what to do next, but he did sense that it would be a mistake to speak. He turned his attention to the ocean in an effort to remain silent, hoping the man would resume his confession. The weeping blacksmith took Dashwood’s silence as condemnation.
“I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t mean to hurt nobody. But who would they believe, me or him?”
“Why wouldn’t they believe you?”
“I’m just a blacksmith. He’s a big shot. Who would you believe?”
The Wrecker Page 34
