told him that the engineer and fireman were peering down gun barrels, too.
“This way, boys, right behind the water tower.” There were three of them with bandannas pulled over their noses. They had brought iron manacles, which they clamped around the train crew’s wrists and ankles. The fireman got the big idea to resist, which earned him a gun-butt to the head.
Conductor Kux was not entirely displeased to imagine Bloom Jr. being relieved of his watch, cuff links, stickpin, and billfold. But from what he had seen of Bloom’s friend Isaac Bell, the robbery would likely turn into a bloody shoot-out, so he tried to dissuade them.
“If you’re fixing to rob my passengers, there’s only two of ’em, you damned fools. You stopped a special.”
“We ain’t robbing your passengers. We’re robbing your train.”
“Kenny?” asked Isaac Bell as the train started rolling again. “Do you know Thibodeau & Marzen in New York?”
“The brokers.”
“Right. What do you know about them?”
“I think Dad used them once or—”
The train jerked, and he spilled whiskey over his shirt. “Dammit to hell. I will fire that engineer.”
“He’s displayed a fine smooth hand up to now,” said Bell. “I wonder what’s got into him?”
Kenny Bloom dabbed his shirt with a napkin. “Overpaid son of a bitch has probably been drinking.” The train picked up speed.
“What do you know about Thibodeau & Marzen?” Bell asked again.
“Old-fashioned old codgers.”
“Are they honest?”
Kenny dabbed his shirt some more, then poured another glass. He gestured with the bottle. Bell shook his head.
“Are they honest?”
“Honest as the day is long. Frankly, I don’t know how they survive on Wall Street.”
Bell looked at their reflections in the night-blackened glass. Lights in a farmhouse raced by. Old and honest? Had Clay and his boss somehow tapped secretly into Thibodeau & Marzen’s private system?
“We’re making time at last,” said Kenny. “Running fast and hitting the curves hard. Maybe I won’t fire him after all.”
“What? Oh yes.”
The train was highballing through the night, although the rate of speed was not that apparent. Their car was coupled between a stateroom car, which rode directly behind the tender, and the diner car at the back of the train. Thus anchored, it did not sway much, while thick insulating felt between the paneling and the outer walls muffled wind and track noise. Bell was surprised, as they passed a small-town train depot, how fast its lights whipped by.
A sudden chatter broke the silence.
Kenny darted to the telegraph key. They had picked up a message by grasshopper telegraphy, the signal relayed to the speeding train from the telegraph wires that paralleled the tracks through an Edison-patented electrostatic induction system. Fluent since boyhood in the Morse alphabet, Kenny cocked his ear and wrote furiously, then carried what he had written to Bell, his expression grave. Bell, who had listened intently, knew why.
“For you,” said Kenny.
“I told the boys I’d be on your train.”
He read it, his brow furrowing.
“Looks bad,” said Kenny.
“Hellish,” said Isaac Bell.
REGRET TOWBOAT CAMILLA EXPLOSION. CAPTAIN DIED.
REGRET UNION HALL FIRE.
BODYGUARDS FRIED.
ENJOY YOUR RIDE.
TRIPLE PLAY.
43
“Enjoy your ride?’” asked Kenny Bloom. “What the hell kind of joke is that supposed to be?”
“A vicious joke,” said Bell, mourning Captain Jennings, murdered for helping the marchers, and Mike Flannery and Terry Fein, whom he had sent into action over their heads.
“And what does ‘triple play’ mean?”
The floor shook and the windows reverberated as the train thundered across an iron trestle bridge. “Where’s the conductor?”
“I don’t know. Back in the diner.”
“Are you sure?”
Bell strode quickly to the back of the car and threw open the door into the enclosed vestibule. The wheels were thundering on the track, and the wind was roaring past the canvas diaphragm. Bell opened the diner door and stepped into the car. It was swaying violently.
“Kux! Conductor Kux! Are you there?”
The cook stuck his head out of the kitchen. “We’re going mighty fast, Mr. Bell. In fact, we’re going faster than I’ve ever seen this train go.”
“Where’s Mr. Kux?”
“I haven’t see him since we stopped for water.”
Bell ran forward. Kenny was pouring a fresh drink. “We’re bouncing around like a yawl in a storm. What the hell is going on?”
“First thing I’m going to ask your engineer.” Bell pushed into the front vestibule, heading for the locomotive. The door to the stateroom car was bolted shut. It was a steel express car door. There was no budging it short of dynamite.
“Locked,” he told Kenny.
“Something’s nuts,” said Kenny Bloom. “We’re doing ninety miles an hour.”
The train hit a curve hard. Wheel flanges screeched on the rails.
“‘Triple play,’” said Isaac Bell, “means we’re next. He shanghaied our crew and tied down the throttle.”
“I’m stopping us!” Kenny lunged for the red handle of the emergency brake on the wall at the front of the car.
Bell beat him to it and blocked his hand. “If we slam on the air brakes at this speed we’ll derail her.”
“We’ve got to stop her. Feel that? She’s still accelerating.” Kenny, who had carried his glass with him, put it down. “Isaac, we’re heading for Pittsburgh at a hundred miles an hour.”
“How drunk are you?” Bell asked.
“I’m too scared to be drunk.”
“Good. Help me out the window.”
“Where you going?”
“Locomotive.”
Bell dropped the sash. A hundred-mile-an-hour wind blasted through the opening and sent everything not nailed down flying about the car in a tornado of cloth and paper. Bell tugged off his coat and thrust his head out the window. The rushing air hit him like a river in a flood. He wormed his torso out, sat on the sash, and
