The Wrecker

2

BY 1907, THE “SPECIAL” TRAIN WAS AN EMBLEM OF WEALTH AND power in America like none other. Ordinary millionaires with a cottage in Newport and a town house on Park Avenue or an estate on the Hudson River shuttled between their palatial abodes in private railcars attached to passenger trains. But the titans-the men who owned the railroads-traveled in their specials, private trains with their own locomotives, able to steam anywhere on the continent at their owners’ whim. The fastest and most luxurious special in the United States belonged to the president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, Osgood Hennessy.

Hennessy’s train was painted a glossy vermilion red, and hauled by a powerful Baldwin Pacific 4-6-2 locomotive black as the coal in its tender. His private cars, named Nancy No. 1 and Nancy No. 2 for his long-dead wife, measured eighty feet long by ten feet wide. They had been built of steel, to his specifications, by the Pullman Company and outfitted by European cabinetmakers.

Nancy No. 1 contained Hennessy’s office, parlor, and state rooms, including marble tubs, brass beds, and a telephone that could be connected to the telephone system of any city he rolled into. Nancy No. 2 carried a modern kitchen, storerooms that could hold a month’s provisions, a dining room, and servants’ quarters. The baggage car had room reserved for his daughter Lillian’s Packard Gray Wolf automobile. A dining car and luxurious Pullman sleepers accommodated the engineers, bankers, and lawyers engaged in building the Cascades Cutoff.

Once on the main line, Hennessy’s special could rocket him to San Francisco in half a day, Chicago in three, and New York in four, switching engine types to maximize road conditions. When that wasn’t fast enough to serve his lifelong ambition to control every railroad in the country, his special employed “grasshopper telegraphy,” an electromagnetic induction system patented by Thomas Edison that jumped telegraphic messages between the speeding train and the telegraph wires running parallel to the tracks.

Hennessy himself was a wisp of an old man, short, bald, and deceptively frail looking. He had a ferret’s alert black eyes, a cold gaze that discouraged lying and extinguished false hope, and the heart, his fleeced rivals swore, of a hungry Gila monster. Hours after the tunnel collapse, he was still in shirtsleeves, dictating a mile a minute to a telegrapher, when the first of his dinner guests was ushered in.

The smooth and polished United States senator Charles Kincaid arrived impeccably dressed in evening clothes. He was tall and strikingly handsome. His hair was slick, his mustache trim. No hint of whatever he was thinking-or if he was thinking at all-escaped from his brown eyes. But his sugary smile was at the ready.

Hennessy greeted the politician with barely veiled contempt.

“In case you haven’t heard, Kincaid, there’s been another accident. And, by God, this one is sabotage.”

“Good Lord! Are you sure?”

“So damned sure, I’ve wired the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

“Excellent choice, sir! Sabotage will be beyond the local sheriffs, if I may say so, even if you could find one up here in the middle of nowhere. Even a bit much for your railway police.” Thugs in dirty uniforms, Kincaid could have added, but the senator was a servant of the railroad and careful how he spoke to the man who had made him and could as easily break him. “What’s the Van Dorn motto?” he asked ingratiatingly. “‘We never give up, never!’ Sir, as I am qualified, I feel it’s my duty to direct your crews in clearing the tunnel.”

Hennessy’s face wrinkled with disdain. The popinjay had worked overseas building bridges for the Ottoman Empire’s Baghdad Railway until the newspapers started calling him the “Hero Engineer” for supposedly rescuing American Red Cross nurses and missionaries from Turkish capture. Hennessy took the reported heroics with many grains of salt. But Kincaid had somehow parlayed bogus fame into an appointment by a corrupt state legislature to represent “the interests” of the railroads in the “Millionaires’ Club” United States Senate. And no one knew better than Hennessy that Kincaid was growing wealthy on railroad-stock bribes.

“Three men dead in a flash,” he growled. “Fifteen trapped. I don’t need any more engineers. I need an undertaker. And a top-notch detective.”

Hennessy whirled back to the telegrapher. “Has Van Dorn replied?”

“Not yet, sir. We’ve just sent-”

“Joe Van Dorn has agents in every city on the continent. Wire them all!”

Hennessy’s daughter Lillian hurried in from their private quarters. Kincaid’s eyes widened and his smile grew eager. Though on a dusty siding deep in the Cascade Range, she was dressed to turn heads in the finest dining rooms of New York. Her evening gown of white chiffon was cinched at her narrow waist and dipped low in front, revealing decolletage only partially screened by a silk rose. She wore a pearl choker studded with diamonds around her graceful neck, and her hair high in a golden cloud, with curls draping her high brow. Bright earrings of Peruzzi triple-cut brilliant diamonds drew attention to her face. Plumage, thought Kincaid cynically, showing what she had to offer, which was plenty.

Lillian Hennessy was stunningly beautiful, very young, and very, very wealthy. A match for a king. Or a senator who had his eye on the White House. The trouble was the fierce light in her astonishingly pale blue eyes that announced she was a handful not easily tamed. And now her father, who had never been able to bridle her, had appointed her his confidential secretary, which made her even more independent.

“Father,” she said, “I just spoke with the chief engineer by telegraphone. He believes they can enter the pioneer tunnel from the far side and cut their way through to the main shaft. The rescue parties are digging. Your wires are sent. It is time you dressed for dinner.”

“I’m not eating dinner while men are trapped.” “Starving yourself won’t help them.” She turned to Kincaid. “Hello, Charles,” she said coolly. “Mrs. Comden’s waiting for us in the parlor. We’ll have a cocktail while my father gets dressed.”

Hennessy had not yet appeared when they had finished their glasses. Mrs. Comden, a voluptuous, dark-haired woman of forty wearing a fitted green silk dress and diamonds cut in the old European style, said, “I’ll get him.” She went to Hennessy’s office. Ignoring the telegrapher, who, like all telegraphers, was sworn never to reveal messages he sent or received, she laid a soft hand on Hennessy’s bony shoulder and said, “Everyone is hungry.” Her lips parted in a compelling smile. “Let’s take them in to supper. Mr. Van Dorn will report soon enough.”

As she spoke, the locomotive whistle blew twice, the double Ahead signal, and the train slid smoothly into motion.

“Where are we going?” she asked, not surprised they were on the move again.

“Sacramento, Seattle, and Spokane.”