The Wrecker

Bell reconsidered the young woman. Perhaps Lillian was more than the spoiled, headstrong only child she appeared to be. She could be a font of valuable information about her father’s inner circle. “Who is that lady who just joined us?”

“Emma Comden is a family friend. She tutored me in French and German and tried very hard to improve my behavior”-Lillian blinked long lashes over her pale blue eyes and added-“at the piano.”

Emma Comden wore a snug dress with a proper round collar and an elegant brooch at her throat. She was very much Lillian’s opposite, rounded where the younger woman was slim, eyes a deep brown, almost black, hair dark, lustrous chestnut with a glint of red, constrained in a French twist.

“Do you mean you were educated at home so you could help your father?”

“I mean that I was kicked out of so many eastern finishing schools that Father hired Mrs. Comden to complete my education.”

Bell smiled back. “How can you still have time for French and German and the piano when you’re your father’s private secretary?”

“I’ve outgrown my tutor.”

“And yet Mrs. Comden remains … ?”

Lillian responded coolly. “If you have eyes, Mr. Detective, you might notice that Father is very fond of our ‘family friend.”’

Hennessy noticed Isaac and Lillian talking. “What’s that?”

“I was just saying that I’ve heard it said that Mrs. Hennessy was a great beauty.”

“Lillian didn’t get that face from my side of the family. How much money are you paid to be a detective, Mr. Bell?”

“The top end of the going rate.”

“Then I have no doubt you understand that as the father of an innocent young woman, I am obliged to ask who bought you those fancy clothes?”

“My grandfather Isaiah Bell.”

Osgood Hennessy stared. He couldn’t have been more surprised if Bell had reported he had sprung from the loins of King Midas. “Isaiah Bell was your grandfather? That makes your father Ebenezer Bell, president of the American States Bank of Boston. Good God Almighty, a banker?”

“My father is a banker. I am a detective.”

“My father never met a banker in his life. He was a section hand, pounding spikes. You’re talking to a shirtsleeve railroader, Bell. I started out like he did, spiking rails to ties. I’ve carried my dinner pail. I’ve done my ten hours a day up through the grades: brakeman, engineer, conductor, telegrapher, dispatcher- up the line from track to station to general office.”

“What my father is trying to say,” said Lillian, “is that he rose from pounding iron spikes in the hot sun to driving ceremonial gold spikes under a parasol.”

“Don’t mock me, young lady.” Hennessy yanked another chart down from the ceiling. It was a blueprint, a fine- lined copy on pale blue paper that depicted in exquisite detail the engineering plans for a cantilevered truss bridge that spanned a deep gorge on two tall piers made of stone and steel.

“This is where we’re headed, Mr. Bell, the Cascade Canyon Bridge. I hauled a top-hand engineer, Franklin Mowery, out of retirement to build me the finest railroad bridge west of the Mississippi, and Mowery’s almost finished. To save time, I built it ahead of the expansion by routing work trains on an abandoned timber track that snakes up from the Nevada desert.” He pointed at the map. “When we hole through here-Tunnel 13-we’ll find the bridge waiting for us. Speed, Mr. Bell. It’s all about speed.”

“Do you face a deadline?” asked Bell.

Hennessy looked sharply at Joseph Van Dorn. “Joe, can I assume that confidences are as safe with your detectives as they are with my attorneys?”

“Safer,” said Van Dorn.

“There is a deadline,” Hennessy admitted to Bell.

“Imposed by your bankers?”

“Not those devils. Mother Nature. Old Man Winter is coming, and when he gets to the Cascades that’s it for railroad construction ‘til Spring. I’ve got the best credit in the railroad business, but if I don’t connect the Cascades Cutoff to the Cascade Canyon Bridge before winter shuts me down even my credit will dry up. Between us, Mr. Bell, if this expansion stalls, I will lose any chance of completing the Cascades Cutoff the day after the first snowstorm.”

Joseph Van Dorn said, “Rest easy, Osgood. We’ll stop him.”

Hennessy was not soothed. He shook the blueprint as if to throttle it. “If these saboteurs stop me, it’ll take twenty years before anyone can tackle the Cascades Cutoff again. It’s the last hurdle impeding progress in the West, and I’m the last man alive with the guts to clear it.”

Isaac Bell did not doubt that the old man loved his railroad. Nor did he forget the outrage in his own heart at the prospect of more innocent people killed and injured by the Wrecker. The innocent were sacred. But foremost in Bell’s mind at this moment was his memory of Wish Clarke stepping in his casual, offhanded way in front of a knife intended for Bell. He said, “I promise I will stop him.”

Hennessy stared at him for a long time, taking his measure. Slowly, he settled into an armchair. “I’m relieved, Mr. Bell, having a top hand of your caliber.”

When Hennessy looked to his daughter for agreement, he noticed that she was appraising the wealthy and well-connected detective like a new race car she would ask him to buy for her next birthday. “Son?” he asked. “Is there a Mrs. Bell?”

Bell had already noticed that the lovely young woman was appraising him. Flattering, tempting too, but he did not take it personally. It was an easy guess why. He was surely the first man she had seen whom her father could not bully. But between her fascination and her father’s sudden interest in seeing her suitably married off, the moment was overdue for this particular gentleman to make his intentions clear.

“I am engaged to be married,” he answered.

“Engaged, eh? Where is she?”

“She lives in San Francisco.”

“How did she make out in the earthquake?”

“She lost her home,” Bell replied cryptically, the memory still fresh of their first night together ending abruptly when the shock hurled their bed across the room and Marion’s piano had fallen through the front wall into the street.

“Marion stayed on, caring for orphans. Now that most are settled, she has taken a position at a newspaper.”

“Have you set a wedding date?” Hennessy asked.

“Soon,” said Bell.

Lillian Hennessy seemed to take “Soon” as a challenge. “We’re so far from San Francisco.”

“One thousand miles.” said Bell “Much of it slow going on steep grades and endless switchbacks through the Siskiyou Mountains-the reason for your Cascades Cutoff, which will reduce the run by a full day,” he added, deftly changing the subject from marriageable daughters to sabotage. “Which reminds me, it would be helpful to have a railway pass.”

“I’ll do better than that!” said Hennessy, springing to his feet. “You’ll have your railway pass-immediate free passage on any train in the country. You will also have a letter written in my own hand authorizing you to charter a special train anywhere you need one. You’re working for the railroad now.”

“No, sir. I work for Mr. Van Dorn. But I promise to put your specials to good use.”

“Mr. Hennessy has equipped you with wings,” said Mrs. Comden.

“If only you knew where to fly …” The beautiful Lillian smiled. “Or to whom.”

When the telegraph key started clattering again, Bell nodded to Van Dorn, and they stepped quietly off the car onto the platform. A cold north wind whipped through the rail yard, swirling smoke and cinders. “I’ll need a lot of our men.”

“They’re yours for the asking. Who do you want?”

Isaac Bell spoke a long list of names. Van Dorn listened, nodding approval. When he had finished, Bell said, “I’d like to base out of Sacramento.”