Cromwell went back inside and left the vault door open so the contents would be destroyed. Then he walked out and climbed in the open driver’s section of the Rolls and sat beside Abner. “Drive to our warehouse at the railyard,” he instructed.
“We’ll have to detour to the north docks and come around behind the fires if we want to reach the railyard,” said Abner, shifting the car into first gear. As he skirted the huge fire consuming Chinatown, he headed toward Black Point, to the north. Already, wooden buildings were disintegrating into beds of smoldering ashes as broken chimneys stood like blackened tombstones.
Some streets were clear enough to drive through, Abner avoiding those that were impassable because they were buried under collapsed walls. The Rolls was stopped twice by police, demanding the car be used as an ambulance, but Cromwell merely pointed to the makeshift bodies under the blankets and said they were on their way to the morgue. The police duly stepped back and waved them on.
Abner had to weave his way around crowds of refugees from the burned-out areas, carrying their meager belongings. There was no panic; people moved slowly, as if they were out for a Sunday stroll. There was little conversation, and few looked back at what had been their homes before the calamity.
Cromwell was stunned at the intensity and swiftness of the fire as it consumed a nearby building. The towering blaze sent a shower of flaming sparks and debris onto the roof, which became a flaming torch within two or three minutes. Then a firestorm enveloped the entire building and consumed it in less time than it takes to boil water.
Regular army troops from the surrounding military installations began arriving to maintain order and help the city firemen fight the flames. Ten companies of artillery, infantry, cavalry, and the Hospital Corps—seventeen hundred men in all—marched into the city with guns and cartridge belts, prepared to guard the ruins, the bank and store vaults and safes, the post office, and the Mint from looters. Their orders were to shoot any man caught stealing.
They passed a caravan of soldiers in four automobiles whose backseats were stacked with boxes of dynamite from the California Powder Works. Within minutes, explosions rocked the already-devastated city, as homes and stores were detonated and leveled to slow the rage of the fire. Losing the battle, the army quickly began to dynamite entire blocks in a last-ditch attempt to stop the onslaught of the conflagration.
A sickly pale yellow light crept through the growing pall of smoke. There was no sun falling on the ruins except around the outskirts of the city. The dull ball of the sun appeared red and seemed smaller than its usual size. The army troops, firemen, and police retreated from the flames, herding the homeless to the west away from the approaching holocaust.
Abner twisted the wheel of the Rolls as he evaded the rubble in the streets and the crowd of people struggling to reach the ferry terminal in the hope of crossing the bay to Oakland. At last, he came across a railroad track and followed it into the main Southern Pacific railyard until he reached Cromwell’s warehouse. He drove up a ramp and parked next to the boxcar sitting at the loading dock. He noted the serial number painted on the side: 16455.
Cromwell did not know that Bell was aware the boxcar was not what it appeared to be. But the agent who was assigned to observe it had been called away by Bronson for other duties after the quake. All looked secure. Cromwell studied the padlock on the big sliding door of the boxcar to make sure it had not been tampered with. Satisfied, he inserted a key and removed the lock, which was more for show than for protection. Then he crouched under the car and came up though the trapdoor into the interior of the car. Once inside, he turned the heavy latches that sealed the door from within and slid it open.
Without instructions, Abner began carrying the heavy trunks filled with currency from the Rolls, hoisting them up to the floor of the boxcar, where Cromwell dragged them inside. When the last of the four million dollars was removed from the limousine, Cromwell looked down at Abner and said, “Return to the house, gather up my sister and her luggage, then return here.”
“You’re staying, Mr. Cromwell?” asked Abner.
Cromwell nodded. “I have business to conduct across the yard at the dispatcher’s office.”
Abner knew that making a round-trip from the warehouse to the mansion on Nob Hill was a near-impossible task, but he gave Cromwell a casual salute and said, “I’ll do my best to bring your sister here safe and sound.”
“If anyone can do it, you can, Abner,” said Cromwell. “I have complete faith in you.”
Then Cromwell closed the sliding door of the boxcar and dropped down through the trapdoor. As Abner drove the Rolls down the ramp, he saw Cromwell making his way across the tracks toward the dispatcher’s shack.
39
BELL HIKED DOWN NOB HILL AND STOPPED TO HELP a crew of men removing the debris of a small hotel that was little more than a mound of splintered wooden beams and crushed bricks. Underneath the wreckage, a little boy’s voice could be heard sobbing. Bell and the men worked feverishly, throwing rubble off to the side and digging a hole toward the pitiful cries.
After nearly an hour, they finally reached a small air pocket that had protected the boy from being crushed. In another twenty minutes, they had him free and carried him to a waiting car that would rush him to a first-aid facility. Except for his ankles, which appeared to be fractured, he had suffered no other injuries but bruises.
The little boy looked to be no more than five years old to Bell. As the boy cried for his mother and father, the men who had saved him looked at each other with
