The Striker

Wondering whether he had led the Van Dorn Detective Agency into a shooting war, Bell asked, “Sure you need explosives?”

“Sure we won’t get caught short.”

“I’ll come for you when we’ve got the last of your people loaded.”

Back at the river Bell found the loading going slowly. When Camilla finally swung her barges away from the bank and started down the Monongahela, and Captain Jennings’s son maneuvered the second fleet alongside, the tall detective opened his pocket watch. At the rate this was going, they would be lucky to land the last tow at Amalgamated before the morning fog lifted ten hours from then.

37

Henry Clay spotted a junior stockbroker waiting under a light where the Vulcan King landed for coal in Wheeling, West Virginia. He recognized the type employed by Midwestern branch offices of the brokerage that Judge Congdon controlled with his secret interest. Hair short and combed, suit pressed, collar freshly starched despite the late hour, smile hopeful, the young man was hungry to please anyone from New York headquarters.

“Mr. Claggart?” he asked, his eyes wide at the spectacle of the biggest steamboat he had ever seen hulking over the wharf, broad as a steel mill and twice as black.

“You from the office?”

Gone was Clay’s Southern banker costume and his drawl. He was brusque — his dark frock coat as severe as the freshly painted Vulcan King, his costly homburg fixed at a sober angle — a valuable man obliged to journey from the great city to direct enterprises too lofty to be trusted to ordinary mortals.

“Telegram for you, sir. On the private wire.”

The young fellow handed him an envelope and emphasized its importance with a breathless, “It’s in cipher.”

“Cipher means private,” snapped Clay. “Private means don’t shout about it in a public place.”

It was nearly midnight. The wharf was remote, chosen for its distance from the public wharf, and deserted except for Vulcan King’s firemen wheeling fresh coal up the steamboat’s landing stage. The junior broker stammered apologies.

“Lesson learned,” was Clay’s magnanimous reply. “Wait over there until I give you an answer to wire back.”

He sent the broker scurrying with a cold nod and moved under the light, slit open the envelope, and immediately began grinding his teeth. Inside the envelope was the standard printed company message blank:

Form A-14

Private Wire Telegram Received

Thibodeau & Marzen, Brokers

Wheeling, West Virginia Office

In the space after The following message received at Time: they had written “8:48 pm.”

After By telegraph from: they had written “New York.”

And, incredibly, after To: they had written “John Claggart” in letters big enough to advertise a circus.

“Young man!”

“Sir?”

He beckoned him close and muttered grimly, “Inform your office that if fate ever drags me back to Wheeling not to use your standard form for my private wires but enter the cipher on a blank sheet with no names attached.”

He had gone through this at every branch office, even Chicago, where they should know better. The only reason none of the morons had written “Judge James Congdon” after from was that no one knew that Congdon owned Thibodeau & Marzen.

The message itself, written by hand, contained several strings of four-digit numbers. He read quickly, deciphering the figures in his head. Then he balled the paper in his fist.

“Cast off!”

He bolted up the boarding stage.

“Any reply, sir?” called the junior broker.

“Send immediately in cipher. ‘The Point. Nine hours.’”

Judge Congdon was in a rage. His spies in Pittsburgh had seen the miners moving camp from the McKeesport trolley park. About to hurl the crumpled telegram into the water, Clay remembered the lesson he had just taught about privacy, smoothed the paper, folded it repeatedly, and slid it deep in an inside pocket reserved for business cards.

“Cast off, I said! Take in the stage!”

The firemen raced aboard. Deckhands threw off lines. The steam winch lifted the boarding stage from the wharf and swung it inboard, and the Vulcan King backed slowly into the river.

Clay ran up the four flights of stairs to the pilothouse.

“Go! What are you waiting for? Full speed!”

The pilot was dithering with the engine room telegram. “Where?”

“Pittsburgh!”

“I don’t know if we took on enough fuel.”

Clay crossed the lavish pilothouse in three strides and slammed both engine levers to Ahead Full.

“Burn the furniture if you have to. Get us there.”

It had taken a full day and a half to steam three hundred and eighty miles from Cincinnati. Ninety more to Pittsburgh. “What speed can you make?”

The pilot wrestled the brass-bound wheel, and the steamboat surged from the bank. “River’s running hard, all this rain,” he said. “Nine knots.”

Clay smoothed out the telegram and read it again. Foolishness. It hadn’t changed. How could it? He stuffed it back in his pocket.

Ninety miles to Pittsburgh would take ten hours at nine knots. “Make it ten knots.”

“I don’t know—”

“Lower the water in your boilers. Jump your pressure. You’ll get hot steam easier with little water.”

“Blow up easier, too.”

“Hot steam! Do what it takes. Ten knots!”

Congdon had every right to rage. The strikers were moving in barges. Clay’s barges. God knows where they were going next, but it couldn’t be good. Had Mary Higgins changed her mind? Not likely. Not at all. No, this reeked of Isaac Bell.

The steamboat had modern voice pipes. Clay shouted down for the boat’s carpenter, who came quickly, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Mount the cannon.”

“Now?”

“And the Gatling.”

* * *

Mary Higgins knew that Isaac Bell was right. John Claggart — the man Isaac called Henry Clay — was no friend. Not to the strikers betrayed by slogans they had wanted to hear—Bum government and bloodsucking capitalists. Not to her, fooled so cunningly.