“It’s going to get worse, much worse,” said Bell slowly. He turned to Marion. “I want you to go to Golden Gate Park; you’ll be safe there. I’ll come and find you later.”
“Where are you going?” she whispered, shuddering at the thought that she would be alone.
“To the Van Dorn office. The city is going to need every law enforcement agent available to help control the chaos.”
“Why can’t I stay here, near my apartment?”
He took another look at the growing conflagration. “It’s only a matter of a few hours before the fire reaches Russian Hill. You can’t stay here. Do you think you can make it on foot to the park?”
“I’ll make it,” she said, nodding gamely. Then she reached up and circled her arms around his neck. “I love you, Isaac Bell. I love you so much I hurt.”
He slipped his arms around her slim waist and kissed her. “I love you, too, Marion Morgan.” He hesitated before pushing her back. “Now, be a good girl and get a move on.”
“I’ll wait for you at the bridge over the pond.”
He held her hand a moment before turning away and moving through the mass of people who were crowded in the center of the street as far away as they could get from the buildings as a series of light aftershocks rippled through the city.
Bell took one of the long stairways leading from Russian Hill. It was split apart in several places but did not block his way down to Union Street. Then he cut over to Stockton and then to Market Street. The scene of destruction went far beyond anything his mind could have created.
There were no streetcars running, and all automobiles, many of them new models commandeered from dealer showrooms, as well as horse-drawn vehicles, were being pressed into service as ambulances to carry the injured to makeshift hospitals that were springing up in the city squares. The bodies of the dead, those who could be retrieved, were carried to warehouses that had been turned into temporary morgues.
The falling walls had not only crushed unlucky humans walking the sidewalks but also horses pulling the city’s huge fleet of freight wagons. They were felled by the dozens under tons of bricks. Bell saw a driver and horse that had been smashed to pulp by an electrical pole that had fallen on their milk wagon.
Reaching Market Street, Bell ducked into the remains of a still-standing doorway that was once the entrance into the Hearst Examiner Newspaper Building. He sought refuge as a herd of cattle appeared that had escaped their pen at the docks. Maddened by fright, they charged down the street and almost immediately vanished, swallowed up by one of the great chasms where the violent thrust of the earthquake had split the streets.
Bell could not believe how the great thoroughfare of the city, with its magnificent buildings, had changed from the evening before. Gone were the fleets of vehicles, the throngs of happy, contented people working or shopping in the heart of the city’s business district. Now the boulevard was scarcely recognizable. The tall buildings had crumbled to pieces, huge pillars with their decorative cornices and ornamentations had been wrenched from the facades of the structures and hurled to the sidewalk and street in jumbled fragments. The enormous office and store windows were shattered. Signs that once advertised the businesses occupying them lay scattered amid the wreckage.
As Bell made his way down through the destruction, he could see that the blocks to the south were becoming an ocean of flame. He knew it was only a matter of time before the big hotels, government buildings, tall office skyscrapers, the great department stores, and the theaters would be burned-out skeletons. There were far too few firemen and almost all of the underground water mains had been ruptured by the earthquake. Hundreds of the city’s fire hydrants and water taps trickled and then ran dry. The firemen, helpless in fighting the mushrooming fires, began a heroic struggle to repair the water lines.
After dodging the automobiles transporting the injured and making his way over the landslides of brick, Bell came within sight of the Call Building. At first, the twelve-story skyscraper looked in good shape, but as he walked closer he saw that the base of one side of the building had moved two feet over the sidewalk toward the street. Inside, he found that none of the elevators were working because the interior was twisted out of alignment. He made his way up the five flights of stairs to the Van Dorn office and stepped over the mounds of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. Footprints in the plaster told him others had preceded him.
The furniture scattered about the office by the quake had been set upright where originally positioned.
Bell walked into the conference room and found four Van Dorn agents including Bronson, who rushed over and pumped his hand. “Am I ever glad to see you alive. I was afraid you might be lying under a ton of rubble.”
Bell managed a smile. “Marion’s house lost the front wall, but her apartment is a mess.” He paused and looked around room. Not seeing Curtis, he asked, “Have you heard from Art?”
The look on everyone’s face told Bell what he needed to know. “Art is missing, assumed to have been crushed under tons of brick as he made his way from the Palace Hotel to our office,” Bronson answered solemnly. “From what reports we’ve managed to gather, two of my agents are either injured or dead. We don’t know yet. Those you see here are the only ones who survived without injury.”
Bell’s chest felt as if a belt had been cinched around it and pulled tight. He had seen and known death, but to lose someone close was an enduring hurt. “Curtis dead,” Bell muttered. “He was a fine man, a good friend, and one of the best detectives I ever worked with.”
“I lost good men, too,” Bronson said slowly. “But now we must do what we can to ease the suffering.”
Bell looked at him. “What is your plan?”
“I met with the chief of police and offered Van Dorn’s services. Despite our differences in the past, he was only too glad to have our help. We’re going to do what we can to combat looting, apprehend looters stealing from the dead and their demolished homes and take them to the city jail. Thankfully, because it’s built like a fortress, it still stands.”
“I wish I could join you and the others, Horace, but I have another job.”
“Yes, I understand,” Bronson said quietly. “Jacob Cromwell.”
Bell nodded. “The earthquake and the bedlam left in its wake have given him the ideal opportunity to escape the country. I intend to stop him.”
