The Wrecker

40

“Father, dear father, come home with me now,“ sang the Ventura County Temperance Glee Club, sixty voices strong.

James Dashwood craned his neck, hoping to spot slope-shouldered blacksmith Jim Higgins, who had run when he showed him the sketch of the Wrecker. Isaac Bell was betting that Higgins had taken the abstinence pledge at a temperance meeting. This meeting, in the beet-farming town of Oxnard, filled a tent big enough to hold a circus.

Dashwood had attended six such meetings already, enough to know the ropes. Nimbly, he dodged the smiling mothers who nudged their daughters in his direction. Men were outnumbered by women whenever the pledge of abstinence was sought. Few were young as he, or as clean and neatly turned out. More typical was the prospector sitting next to him, in a patched coat and floppy hat, who looked like he’d come to get out of the rain.

The singers finally finished. Ushers rigged a powerful acetylene-lit magic lantern. Its long lens shined a circle of light on a screen on the other side of the tent. All eyes watched the circle. Some sort of show was about to commence.

The next speaker was a fiery Methodist.

“The rank and file of the red-nosed corps scorn us as Utopians!” he thundered. “But to proclaim that there ought to be no place in the world for intoxicating drink does not make us Utopians. We are not conducting a dangerous experiment. Practicing personal abstinence is no new thing. The danger comes with trying to live with drink.”

He gestured toward the magic lantern.

“With the aid of a powerful microscope and this magic lantern, I will now demonstrate that to imbibe distilled spirit is to drink poison. When you drink intoxicating liquor, you poison your mind. You poison your family. You poison your own body. Watch the screen, ladies and gentlemen. Under the enlarging powers of this microscope, I place this glass of pure natural water drawn from the well of the church down the road and project it on the screen.”

Greatly magnified, the well water was alive with swimming microbes.

He held up an eyedropper, inserted it down the neck of a bottle of Squirrel whiskey, and drew brown liquid into it.

“I now place a single drop of whiskey in the water. Only one, single drop.”

The magnified drop of whiskey struck like mud fouling a pond. A brown cloud spread through the water. Microbes fled, swimming frantically toward the edges of the glass. But there was no escape. Writhing, shriveling, they fell still and died. The prospector seated beside Dashwood shuddered.

“Look at all them slimy varmints,” he said. “Last time I’ll drink water that don’t have whiskey in it.”

Dashwood spied a big man in a dark coat near the front of the gathering and hurried after him.

“Who will come forward,” the speaker called. “Who will sign the certificate of abstinence and pledge never to drink?”

When he got closer, Dashwood saw that the man in the dark coat was not Jim Higgins. But by then Dashwood was within reach of the speaker’s assistants, comely young ladies, who descended upon him flourishing Waterman fountain pens and blank certificates.

“Two MORE WIRES, MR. BELL,” said J. J. Meadows. “How’s the arm this morning?”

“Tip-top.”

The first wire addressed Bell’s question about Senator Charles Kincaid’s early departure from the Military Academy at West Point. Van Dorn’s Washington, D.C., office, which had informal access to United States Army records, reported that Kincaid had withdrawn voluntarily to pursue his studies at the University of West Virginia. They had unearthed no hint of impropriety and no record of dismissal. The operative ventured the opinion that the quality of civil engineering schools had risen above that of the military, which was, before the Civil War, the only learning ground for engineers.

Bell was more intrigued by the second message, which contained new information about Franklin Mowery’s assistant, Eric Soares. Deeper digging revealed that Soares had run away from the Kansas City orphanage that Mowery supported. Soares had surfaced after a couple of years in a reform school. Mowery had taken personal responsibility for him, hired tutors to fill the gaps in his schooling, and then put him through engineering college at Cornell. Which explained, Bell thought, the uncle-and-favorite-nephew relationship they shared.

Bell called on the old man in the afternoon, when Soares was down at the river conducting his daily inspection of the work on the bridge piers. Mowery’s office was a converted stateroom on Hennessy’s special. He was surprised to see Bell.

“I thought you’d be in the hospital. You’re not even wearing a sling.”

“The sling hurt more than no sling.”

“Did they catch the fellow who shot you?”

“Not yet… Mr. Mowery, may I ask you a few questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m sure that you can imagine how wide-ranging our investigation is. So please forgive me if I appear to get personal.”

“Shoot, Mr. Bell. We’re on the same side. I’m building it. You’re making sure that criminal doesn’t knock it down.”

“I am concerned about your assistant’s past,” Bell said bluntly.

Mowery put his pipe in his mouth and glared.

“When I chose to help Eric, the boy was fifteen years old and had been living in the street. Well-meaning folks told me he would pick my pocket and knock me on the head. I told them what I’ll tell you: I don’t believe in the existence of a criminal class.”

“I agree there is no such thing as a criminal class,” said Bell. “But I am familiar with a criminal type.”

“Eric earned his degree,” Mowery retorted. “The times I pulled wires to get him a job, he never disappointed. The folks at Union Pier and Caisson are pleased with his work. In fact, they have already asked him to stay on with their firm after this job is finished. I would say by now the young man is over the hump, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose you’ll miss him if he stays with Union Pier and Caisson . . .”

“I wish him well in his career. As for me, I’m going back to my rockin’ chair. I’m too old to keep Hennessy’s pace. Did him a favor. Glad I did. We built a fine bridge. Osgood Hennessy. Me. And Eric Soares.”

“Funny thing, though,” said Bell. “I heard Jethro Watt, the chief of the railway police, repeat an old saying, recently: ‘Nothing is impossible for the Southern Pacific.”’

“Truer words were never spoken, which is why working for the Southern Pacific is a younger man’s game.”

“Jethro said it meant that the railroad does it all. Builds its own engines and rolling stock and tunnels. And bridges.”

“Famous for it.”

“So why did they hire Union Pier and Caisson to sink the piers for your bridge?”

“River-pier work is a specialized field. Especially when you have tricky conditions like we found here. Union is the best in the business. Cut their teeth on the Mississippi. If you can build piers that stand up to the Mississippi River, you can build them anywhere.”

“Did you recommend hiring the firm?”

Mowery hesitated.

“Now that you mention it,” he finally said, “that is not precisely true. I was originally inclined to let our company do the job. But it was suggested to me that Union might be the wiser course because the geology here proved to be complicated… as I mentioned to you last night. We encountered challenging conditions on the Cascade River bottom, to say the least. Even more shifting than you’d expect in these mountains.”

“Did Eric recommend Union?”

“Of course. I had sent him ahead to conduct the survey. He knew the river bed and he knew Union. Why are you asking all this?”

The tall detective looked the elderly engineer in the eye. “You appeared troubled in Mr. Hennessy’s car last night after the banquet. Earlier, when we were down at the lodge, you were staring long and hard at the bridge piers.”

Mowery looked away. “You don’t miss much, do you, Mr. Bell? … I didn’t like the way the water flowed around them. I could not pin down why-still can‘t-but it just looked different than it should.”

“You have an instinct that something is wrong?”

“Perhaps,” Mowery admitted reluctantly.

“Maybe you’re like me that way.”

“How so?”

“When I’m short on facts, I have to go on instinct. For instance, the fellow who shot me last night could have been a robber who followed Preston Whiteway onto this train intending to knock him on the head and take his wallet. I believe I recognized him as a known assassin. But I have no hard facts to say he wasn’t looking to make easy money. Whiteway was visibly intoxicated and therefore defense-less, and he was dressed like a wealthy gentleman likely to be carrying a big roll in his pocket. Since the ‘robber’ escaped, those are my only facts. But my instinct suggests that he was sent to kill me and mistook Whiteway for me. Sometimes, instinct helps put two and two together . . .”

This time, when Mowery tried to look away, Bell held him with the full force of his compelling gaze.

“It sounds,” Mowery muttered, “like you want to blame Eric for something.”

“Yes, it does,” said Bell.

He sat down, still holding the old man’s gaze.

Mowery started to protest, “Son . . .”

A wintery light in Bell’s blue eyes made him reconsider. The detective was no man’s son but his own father’s.

“Mr. Bell . . .”

Bell spoke in cool, measured tones. “It is curious that when I remarked that we need engineers, you countered that we need to trust engineers. And when I observed that you seemed troubled by the piers, you replied that I sounded as if I want to blame Eric.”

“I believe I had better have a talk with Osgood Hennessy. Excuse me, Mr. Bell.”

“I’ll join you.”

“No,” Mowery said. “An engineering talk. Not a detective talk. Facts, not instincts.”

“I’ll walk you to his car.”

“Suit yourself.”

Mowery grabbed his walking stick and heaved himself painfully to his feet. Bell held the door and led the way up the side corridor, helping Mowery through the vestibule doors between the cars. Hennessy was in his paneled office. Mrs. Comden was with him, reading in her corner chair.

Bell blocked the door for an instant.

“Where is Soares now?” he asked Mowery.