private detective, or a provocateur on the run.
“I wonder if there is anything else I should report back about Mr. Smith. Is there anything he did that might help us track him down? I do hope I’ve made it clear that the firm regards him as a determined thief who will strike again.”
“You finally worked your way around to that, young man.”
“Anything. Anything odd?”
The manager stood up abruptly. “No, sir. Nothing I can recall.”
Bell stood up, too. He did not believe him. He had touched a nerve. And he had probably put him in the position he didn’t want to be. He said, “A man I’ve worked with who taught me my trade once told me that the hardest thing in the world is to get a man to do the right thing for the wrong reason.”
“What trade is that, Mr. Bell?”
“I’m actually a private detective.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m shocked by your admission. What agency?”
“Van Dorn.”
“Ah. A reputable outfit… Well, you’ve been honest at last. I’ll take a chance and be honest with you. Smith made me uncomfortable. For one thing, who in blazes buys a floating palace steamboat in this day and age? For another… Well, for another, my instincts were aroused. On the other hand, there was no legitimate reason not to cash the bonds — and, in fact, an obligation — since our firm was the issuing agent.”
“If the legitimacy of the bonds was not in doubt, what was odd?”
“While he was here, a message came in for him on our private wire.”
Isaac Bell felt an electric jolt. Pay dirt!
42
“Did you see the wire?”
Bell tried to sound casual but doubted he was fooling the manager.
“It was in cipher. Just numbers.”
“Does that imply he works for your firm?”
“No. And I’m quite sure he doesn’t. If he happened to work for the firm, wouldn’t he have introduced himself as such when he arrived?”
“Then how did he gain the use of your private telegraph?”
“The firm extends certain courtesies to good customers — as does any broker. Perhaps sometimes more than we should. By law, outsiders are forbidden to use leased wires. But everyone does it.”
“As I understand it,” said Bell, hoping to encourage his candor, “it’s a matter of business.” He was no stranger to private wires. The Van Dorn Detective Agency leased one. But he wanted the manager’s version untarnished by his preconceptions. Something was troubling the man.
“Yes, a matter of business. To send a message on an existing private wire is less costly than the usual commercial message, quicker, and certainly more convenient.”
“And more private,” said Bell.
“Yes, the advantages of a private closed wire include economy, quickness of dispatch, and privacy.”
“Did he send a reply?”
“It was brief. An acknowledgment, I presume, but it, too, was in cipher.”
Bell asked another question to which he knew the answer. “Are ciphers unusual?”
“Not among brokers. It’s only sensible to conceal buy and sell orders just in case the telegrapher violates his oath of privacy.”
“What do you make of it?”
“He is a friend of the firm, shall I put it? A special customer. Of the New York firm, I mean. I don’t know him from Adam. But he knows someone in New York.”
Isaac Bell stood up and offered his hand. “I appreciate your candor.” What was it the manager had said earlier?
“Go ahead.”
“I am curious why.”
“Why what?”
“What made you candid?”
The manager straightened his shoulders. “Mark Twain says that he intends to move back to Cincinnati on Judgment Day because we’re twenty years behind the times. Fine with me. I’m old-fashioned. I don’t like stock traders who can afford private wires getting a jump on the fellow who has to use the public wire. And Thibodeau & Marzen didn’t used to be the sort of outfit that liked them either.”
Bell stopped at Western Union on his way to meet Kenny Bloom at the Queen City Club and wired a telegram to Grady Forrer:
RESEARCH PRINCIPALS THIBODEAU & MARZEN.
He doubted very much that Henry Clay was communicating on private wires to get a jump on a stock sale as the Cincinnati branch manager suspected. Instead of fraudulent profits, a business with branches scattered around the continent could offer direct private communication with someone in their New York office. In the case of Smith, Claggart, and Henry Clay, Isaac Bell bet that someone was the man who gave the provocateur his orders.
He found Court Held at the Queen City Club bar. The shipyard heir greeted him like an old friend and invited him and Kenny to stay for dinner. Kenny, who was on his fourth whiskey, looked like he thought that was a good idea, but Bell reminded the coal-and-railroad heir that having raced to Cincinnati to meet with his Ohio bankers, he should be racing home, which was why he had taken his father’s special in the first place.
“We better eat on the train.”
“Pittsburgh in one hour,” announced the Bloom Special’s conductor as they neared the Ohio border for the run across West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle.
“Why so long?” Kenny demanded. He had fallen asleep on the couch in the office — sitting room car and sat up, rubbing his temples.
“Sorry, Mr. Bloom, we have to stop for water outside Steubenville.”
“Why outside? Jeez, my head is aching. Can’t we just go straight?”
“As I mentioned earlier, the dispatcher had to shunt us around Steubenville for a mail train. We didn’t lose more than ten minutes.”
“But now we have to stop for water.”
“Or don’t stop and blow up the locomotive,” said Bell, and Kenny laughed. “All right, all right. Just get us there.”
The train slowed and stopped by a dark water siding.
The conductor, who was doubling as brakeman, jumped down to the tracks to throw the switch. His name was Bill Kux, and he’d been hankering after a job on the New York Central’s 20th Century Limited — or, better yet, way out west on the Overland Limited — and this Cincinnati trip with Old Man Bloom’s spoiled brat had pretty much made up his mind.
Kux threw the switch. The engineer backed the special onto the water siding. The fireman climbed up on the locomotive and jerked a chain that pulled the waterspout down to the engine. The engineer climbed down from the cab to stretch his legs. Kux said, “You’ll make all our lives easier if you can make up some time.”
The engineer swore he would do his damnedest. The fireman climbed down. Kux turned to run back to the switch and found himself staring into the twin maws of a twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun. Gasps behind Kux
