She didn’t question him further. The Mercedes Simplex easily cruised up the hill to Pacific Heights. She turned off Fillmore Street and took Sacramento Street until she reached the park, then stopped at the foot of a path leading into the trees. A five-minute walk took them to the summit of the park, which presented them with a beautiful panoramic view of the city.
“What do you wish to talk about?” Margaret asked.
“I’ve decided to undertake another robbery.”
She stopped in midstride and stared at him in distress. “You must be joking.”
“I’m dead serious.”
“But why?” she demanded. “What have you to gain? You almost got caught in Telluride. Why tempt fate again for no purpose?”
“Because I like a challenge. Besides, I rather enjoy being a legend in my own time.”
She turned and looked away stunned. “That’s stupid.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, putting his arm around her waist.
“I understand that it’s crazy, and that someday your luck will run out and they’ll hang you.”
“Not for a while, at any rate,” he said. “Not while their best agent lies in his grave.”
Margaret remembered the incredible blue-purple eyes and Bell’s arm around her as they danced at the Brown Palace. She seemed to hear her voice from far away. “Bell dead, it’s hard to believe.”
He looked at her curiously. “You sound like you had a crush on him.”
She shrugged and tried to look uninterested. “Oh, he was nice-looking, in a strange sort of way. I imagine other women found him attractive.”
“No matter. Isaac Bell is history.” Cromwell stopped and began leading his sister back to the automobile. “I’m going to fool Van Dorn and all the other stupid peace officers who want me hung. They’ll never suspect I’d commit another crime so quickly, at a bank in a town they’d never suspect. Once again, they’ll be caught with their pants down.”
A tear came to her eye and Margaret dabbed a handkerchief at it, not sure if her emotions were twisted by Bell’s demise or her brother’s madness. “Where this time?”
“Not a mining town payroll,” he said, grinning. “I’ll throw them a curve and hit a town that doesn’t expect me, and leave them frustrated once again.”
“What town?”
“San Diego, here in California.”
“That’s almost in our backyard.”
“All the better,” said Cromwell. “My escape will be that much easier.”
“What makes San Diego so special?”
“Because the city’s Wells Fargo is fat with deposits, from merchants and from ships importing goods into the port. And because I’d love to poke a hole in my biggest competitor.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Do not call me crazy!” he said harshly.
“What do you call yourself? Everything we’ve worked for could come crashing down around us if you’re ever caught.”
“Not so long as they’re dealing with a mastermind,” Cromwell said brashly.
“When will you ever stop?” Margaret demanded.
“When the Cromwell Bank is as big as the Wells Fargo Bank and I am crowned king of San Francisco,” he said with a nasty glint in his eyes.
She knew it was hopeless to argue with her brother. Without his knowledge, she had quietly moved assets, little by little over the years, into the Wells Fargo Bank, where he would never think to trace them. The expensive jewelry she had purchased was put away in a safe-deposit box. If the worst came to pass and her brother was caught and hung, she would leave San Francisco, go to Europe, and live a life of luxury before finding a rich and titled husband.
They reached the automobile and Jacob helped his sister into the driver’s seat. As he cranked the engine to life, Cromwell’s self-confidence was overwhelming. Like a ship sailing into a heavy sea with all sails set, danger became a challenge that bordered on addiction. At the thought of outwitting every law enforcement officer in the West once again, his face beamed like that of a religious fanatic who had just witnessed a miracle.
Neither of them paid any attention to a man sitting on a bench near the car dressed like a worker, with a toolbox perched in his lap, casually smoking a pipe.
29
BELL’S TRAIN GOT HIM INTO SAN FRANCISCO AT EIGHT o’clock in the morning. By nine, he was meeting with Carter, Bronson, and five of his agents. Everyone was seated around a large conference table that was twice as large as the one in the office in Denver. Bell was dead tired, and his wounds still gave him trouble, but he ignored the pain, as he had with earlier injuries, and soldiered on. “Gentlemen,” he began, “now that our number one suspect for the Butcher Bandit is Jacob Cromwell, we are going to put him and his sister, Margaret, under
