little wary of. Clem kept talking about how everybody would be better off forming a labor union, which leveler heads feared would provoke the Pullman Company to fire every last one of them, as it had done numerous times in the past.
Price addressed the room. “Mr. Bell has his eye out for a yellow-haired, green-eyed gentleman riding to New York wearing a fresh bandage on his head or neck. Such a gentleman was seen in Denver and someone similar- looking might have passed through Kansas City, but no one I saw in Chicago had seen him when Mr. Bell asked me yesterday.”
“Bandage?” echoed a sharp-eyed older man, who looked Bell over carefully and asked with a smile, “Like he ran into something?”
“Me,” said Bell, to knowing winks and laughter.
“Is he riding in the open section or a stateroom?”
“Stateroom, almost certainly,” said Bell.
The men exchanged glances, shook heads, shrugged.
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“I just got off from D.C. Didn’t see him.”
“He’s traveling from the west,” said Bell. “Though he could be plying a circuitous route.”
“I just come in from Pittsburgh. Didn’t see him. Didn’t hear anyone mention him, either.”
“He would have stood out, aside from the bandage,” Bell answered. “He has unusually long arms. I was really hoping his appearance would have caused some talk. Long arms, heavy brow. And a bright smile that could sell you ice in Alaska. Here. Here’s a sketch.”
They passed it around, shaking their heads.
“Would have stood out, if folks had seen him,” the porter in from Pittsburgh ventured.
Bell said, “It is possible that he’s traveling with someone else. Possibly a doctor.”
“Doctor?”
“For his injury.”
“Well, funny you should say doctor, Mr. Bell.”
“How’s that?’ Bell asked, eagerly.
“I saw two men like you’re saying, but they weren’t on a Pullman. Least not a scheduled one.”
“He could have chartered a special.”
“It was a special I saw. Out in New Jersey, in the Elizabeth yards. They were walking by a special that had just pulled in. I thought they were tramps, but they could have got off the special. And the other fellow was carrying a little bag, that could have been a doctor’s bag.”
“Was he wearing a bandage?”
“I don’t know. But when you ask, I realize he had his collar turned up and his hat pulled low.”
“Yellow hair?”
“Hard to tell under that hat — big old slouch with a wide brim pulled down low.”
“Did you notice whose special it was?”
“I think she was private. I just wasn’t paying much mind.”
“I don’t suppose you saw the engine number?” said Bell.
“Sorry, Mr. Bell. Wish I had. Mr. Locomotive was pointed the other way.”
“It is strange,” Bell told Archie, “to think it was Semmler whom the porter saw in the Elizabeth yards. If he crossed the continent on a special, why did he get off way out in Elizabeth?”
Archie agreed. “You would think he would take his train closer to the steamship docks. Step from the privacy of a special train to the privacy of a First Class stateroom.”
“Once on the boat, he takes his meals in his room. No one sees him till he lands in England or France or Germany — First Class and private all the way from Los Angeles to Berlin.”
“So why did he get off in the Elizabeth yards?”
Bell pulled a regional map down from the ceiling of the Van Dorn library. “He could go anywhere from Elizabeth. Newark has a German community. The German steamers dock at Hoboken. Or he could catch the train or the tubes into Manhattan. Lots of choices.”
“But not so private and not First Class.”
Bell raised the map, spun on his heel, and stared at Archie, his eyes alight with sudden realization. “But Christian Semmler did not arrive in America in First Class.”
“What do you mean?”
“He did not disembark from the
“He wasn’t a passenger,” said Archie. “He did not intend to sail on the
“He crossed the ocean in the
Bell grabbed the Kellogg’s mouthpiece. “Get me Detective Eddie Tobin. On the jump!”
47
Van Dorn detective Eddie Tobin, whose lopsided face and drooping left eye were the result of a brutal beating inflicted by the Gophers when he apprenticed with the gang squad, was from Staten Island, a faraway, isolated borough of the city. His family, an extended clan of Tobins, Darbees, Richardses, and Gordons, ran oyster boats out of St. George on the northeast tip of the island. Many of the small, flat, innocent-looking vessels were used to tong oysters. But hidden below the decks of some were powerful gasoline engines enabling them to outrun the harbor squad while smuggling taxable goods, ferrying fugitives away from the police, pirating coal, and retrieving items of cargo that fell from the docks. Young Eddie was honest, despite the childhood spent roving with opportunistic uncles and felonious cousins, which made him an invaluable guide to the immense and sprawling Port of New York.
Isaac Bell asked Eddie where the coal barges that bunkered the Cunard liners at the Chelsea Piers might come from.
“Perth Amboy, Joisey, down where the Arthur Kill and the Raritan enter the Bay.”
“Do you know anyone in the coal yards?”
“Sure.”
“What’s our fastest way down there?”
“Boat.”
“Is your Uncle Donny out of jail?”
“He’d be glad of the job. Poor old guy’s got his boat tuned up but nothing to do, seeing as how the harbor squad is shadowing him.”
Eddie Tobin telephoned a Tomkinsville saloon, where a boy was sent running to the docks. Bell and Eddie caught the Ninth Avenue El down to the Battery. They waited at Pier A, at the tip of Manhattan Island, trading gossip with New York Police Department harbor squad roundsman O’Riordan, whose steam launch was bouncing alongside on the chop stirred by the wind and passing boats.
Eying the waterborne traffic, Bell was struck by the near impossibility of their task. The Acrobat had his pick of seagoing ships getting ready to sail — American and British liners and freighters up the west side of Manhattan, German and French boats across the river in Hoboken, and hundreds across the Lower Bay in Brooklyn — all attended by hundreds of barges and lighters. Every few minutes, the thunder of a steam whistle announced another ship putting to sea.
