The Pennsylvania Special’s last stop was at the Hudson River’s edge in Jersey City. Bell rode a ferry to Manhattan and the El uptown and walked to the Cadillac Hotel on Broadway. Avoiding the front door and the sharp-eyed house detectives recruited personally by Mr. Van Dorn, he found a bellboy smoking a cigarette outside the service entrance and tipped him to pass a private message to Grady Forrer in the Van Dorn suite.
Then Bell retreated five blocks down Broadway to the bar of the Hotel Normandie, which was loud with jobbers and wholesalers entertaining buyers. He watched from a corner table, guessing who among the customers streaming through the door was the big brain that the Boss had hired to establish the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s division of research.
Was it the guy with his hat cocked like a newspaperman? Reporters were trained in research. But, no, he did not appear to be meeting anyone as he went straight to the lunch bar. Was it the stern academic with a waxed mustache? No, he clapped a salesman on the back and was greeted like an old friend. Nor was it the long-haired fellow who looked like a scientist.
Suddenly, the bar grew quiet, conversations ceasing, as an immense shadow filled the door. It was certainly not this guy, large of shoulder and substantial of belly. As young as Bell, he had his hair slicked down and parted in the middle like a high-class floor manager who could keep a saloon orderly with a glance. He churned across the room, parting the crowd like a steamboat, straight at Bell. Then he placed wire-rimmed glasses on his nose and inspected the young detective closely.
His voice rumbled from deep in his chest. “I’m Grady Forrer, Mr. Bell. Your note described a fair-haired gent with a mustache. I’m going to venture that it’s a mustache you have just begun to encourage.”
“I’m hoping it will be worth the wait,” said Bell, thrusting out his hand. “Thanks for coming.”
“Glad to. It’s a madhouse up there. More business than you can shake a stick at.”
“Flimflammed buyers?”
“Flimflammed buyers by the gross, yard, bolt, ream, karat, bale, peck, dram, grain, pennyweight, each according to his measure. So many beating at the door that Mr. Van Dorn stripped my office of assistants to interview victims. Let’s have a drink.”
Bell hailed a waiter, and when the waiter ran with their order, he asked, “Do you have experts in Wall Street?”
“I have access to experts. And a certain rudimentary knowledge as I apprenticed down there before I became interested in this library work, and I’ve maintained friendships. What do you need to know?”
Bell told him about the sudden purchase of a controlling interest in Gleason Consolidated. “I’ve pored through newspapers and buttonholed a banker at a dinner in Pittsburgh, but I got no further than the name of a trust that no one’s heard of.”
“How quickly did they buy it up?” asked Forrer.
“Days.”
“Astonishing. Buying up a controlling interest takes time, particularly when trying to mask your intention. And buying from grieving heirs who are battling each other for the spoils takes even longer. Even if the deceased’s will was rammed through probate. Which is not impossible. If there is a more corrupt breed of judge than probate, I’ve never heard of them. Interesting, though, unless it was already in the works. Has it occurred to you that whoever bought Gleason had advance notice the shares would come to market?”
“I wondered if you would ask,” said Bell. “Fact is, whoever blew up Gleason’s yacht would know precisely when.”
After an hour, during which time Isaac Bell concluded that the Boss had made a brilliant decision to invest in a research department, and doubly brilliant to hire Grady Forrer, a weedy young man sidled into the Normandie Bar and spoke urgently to Forrer.
“Himself has gone to supper and won’t return ’til morning. Our boys are back at work.”
“Come on, Isaac! Now’s our chance.”
• • •
FORRER’S OFFICE was a collection of shabby rooms that connected by a narrow hall to the lavish Van Dorn suite. It was a windowless warren, unlike the agency’s big open front office. Cabinets, chairs, and tables were stacked with newspapers from towns and cities around the country, and, as Bell and Grady entered, a mailman staggered in under a canvas sack, which contained, he announced, three hundred subscription newspapers, none more than a week old. Clattering ceaselessly in one corner was the research division’s own telegraph key, presided over by an operator sending and receiving the Morse alphabet with a lightning-fast fist. A telephonist with a listening piece pressed to his ear was taking notes in another corner. A typewriter banged away, printing catalog cards, and the rooms echoed with shouts of “Boy!” as file boys were sent scampering to the ever-growing stacks.
Forrer explained that at this early stage he was devoting all his energy to collecting a library of information. He had hired students part-time from Columbia College and the seminaries to clip stories from the thousands of newspapers published around the country.
Bell asked, “How will you keep track?”
“I’m adapting the Dewey decimal system to Van Dorn requirements,” Grady explained. “All the information in the world is worth nothing if we can’t find it.”
• • •
ISAAC BELL worked at a desk deep in clippings of newspaper headlines, features, cartoons, and pen-and-ink sketches about coal interests in Wall Street. The railroads had a powerful hand in the mineral, as he had seen in Pittsburgh. But Kenny’s father was only one of several line presidents depicted as grasping for controlling interests in the transport and sale of coal.
The western railroad builder Osgood Hennessy had attracted far more cartoonists’ ire than Mr. Bloom. Bell found the titan drawn in the images of an anaconda, an octopus, and a spider, all with more teeth than such creatures possessed in their natural state. Wall Street financiers—especially Judge James Congdon, founder of U.S. Steel; John Pierpont
