The Wrecker

42

ISAAC BELL WALKED ACROSS THE CASCADE CANYON BRIDGE.

The span was dead silent. All train traffic had been stopped. The only sounds Bell could hear were the click of his boot heels and the echo of the rapids far below. No one knew how unstable the bridge was yet, but the engineers all agreed it was only a matter of time and water flow before it fell. When he reached the midpoint between the lips of the gorge, he stared down at the river tumbling against the flawed piers.

He was staggered by the Wrecker’s audacity.

Bell had wracked his brain to predict how the Wrecker would attack the bridge. He had guarded every approach, guarded the piers themselves, and watched the work gangs with an eagle eye. It had never occurred to him that the criminal had already attacked it, two full years ago, before they started building the bridge.

Bell had stopped him in New York City. He had stopped him on the rails. He had stopped him all the way through Tunnel 13 right up to the bridge. But here, under this bridge, the Wrecker had proved his mettle with a devastating long-term counterthrust in case all else failed.

Bell shook his head partly in anger and partly in grim admiration for his enemy’s skills. The Wrecker was despicable, a merciless killer, but he was formidable. This sort of planning and execution went far beyond even the New York dynamite attack.

All that Isaac Bell could say in his own defense was that when the Cascade Canyon Bridge fell into the gorge, at least it would not come as a surprise. He had uncovered the plot before the catastrophe. No train loaded with innocent workmen would fall with it. But though no people would die, it was still a catastrophe. The cutoff, the vast project he had vowed to protect, was as good as dead.

He sensed someone walking toward him and knew who it was even before he smelled her perfume.

“My darling,” he called without turning his bleak gaze from the water, “I’m up against a mastermind.”

“A ‘Napoleon of crime’?” Marion Morgan asked.

“That’s what Archie calls him. And he’s right.”

“Napoleon had to pay his soldiers.”

“I know,” Bell said bleakly. “Think like a banker. That hasn’t gotten me very far.”

“There is something else to remember,” said Marion. “Napoleon may have been a mastermind, but in the end he lost.”

Bell turned around to look at her. Half expecting a sympathetic smile, he saw instead a big grin filled with hope and belief. She was incredibly beautiful, her eyes alight, her hair shining as if she had bathed in sunlight. He could not help but smile back at her. Suddenly, his smile exploded into a grin as broad at hers.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Thank you for reminding me that Napoleon lost.”

She had set his mind churning again. He scooped her exuberantly into his arms, winced from the lingering pain of Philip Dow’s bullet to his right arm, and shifted her smoothly into his unscathed left.

“Once again I have to leave you right after you arrive. But this time it’s your fault because you really made me think.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going back to New York to interrogate every banker in the railroad business. If there’s an answer to the riddle of why he is attacking this railroad, it will come from Wall Street.”

“Isaac?” Marion took his hand, “Why don’t you go to Boston?”

“The biggest banks are in New York. Hennessy and Joe Van Dorn can pull strings. I’ll start with J. P. Morgan and work my way down.”

“The American States Bank is in Boston.”

“No.”

“Isaac, why not ask your father? He is vastly experienced in finance. When I worked in banking, he was a legend.”

Bell shook his head. “I’ve told you that my father was not happy that I became a detective. In truth, he was heartbroken. Men who are legends hope their sons will continue building on the foundations that they laid. I do not regret going my own way. But I have no right to ask him to forgive me.”

Bell hurried to Osgood Hennessy’s private car to ask him to make arrangements in New York. He found him in a gloomy state of worry and defeat. Franklin Mowery was with him. Both men appeared shattered. And they seemed to reinforce each other’s pessimism.

“Ninety percent of my cutoff is on the far side of the bridge,” the railroad president mourned. “All in place for the final push. Track, coal, ties, creosote plant, roundhouse, locomotives, machine shops. All on the wrong side of a bridge that won’t hold a wheelbarrow. I’m whipped.”

Even the normally cheerful Mrs. Comden seemed defeated. Still, she tried to buck him up, saying sympathetically, “Perhaps it is time to let Nature take her course. Winter is coming. You can start fresh next year. Start over in the spring.”

“I’ll be dead by spring.”

Lillian Hennessy’s eyes flashed angrily. She exchanged a grim look with Isaac Bell. Then she sat down at the telegraph table and perched her fingers on the key.

“Father,” she said, “I better wire the Sacramento shop.”

“Sacramento?” Hennessy asked distractedly. “What for?”

“They’ve finished fabricating truss rods for the Cascade Canyon Bridge. So they have time to build a pair of rocking chairs.”

“Rocking chairs? What the devil for?”

“For retirement. For two of the sorriest geezers I ever saw in my life. Let’s build a porch on the roundhouse you can rock on.”

“Now, hold on, Lillian.”

“You’re giving up, just like the Wrecker wants.”

Hennessy turned to Mowery and asked him, with little hope in his voice, “Is there any chance of shoring up those piers?”

“Winter’s closing in,” Mowery muttered. “We’ve got Pacific storms bearing down on us, water’s already rising.”

“Mr. Mowery?” Lillian purred through clenched teeth. “What color would you like your rocking chair painted?”

“You don’t understand, little lady!”

“I understand the difference between giving up and fighting back.”

Mowery stared at the carpet.

“Answer my father!” Lillian demanded. “Is there any chance of shoring those piers before they collapse?”

Mowery blinked. He tugged a sail-sized handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his eyes.

“We could try building flow deflectors,” he said.

“How?”

“Spur dikes off the bank. Harden the bank with riprap. And riprap upstream and downstream of the piers. The same riprapping that double-crossing little bas-was supposed to install properly. We might try collar plates, I suppose.” He picked up a pencil and half heartedly drew a sketch of flow deflectors steering the river currents around the piers.

“But that’s only short-term,” Hennessy countered gloomily. “‘Til the first flood. What about long-term?”

“Long-term, we would somehow have to try to extend the depth of the pier footings. Straight to bedrock, if we can locate it. But at least below the depth of streambed scour.”

“But the piers are already in place,” groaned Hennessy.

“I know.” Mowery looked over at Lillian. “You see, Miss Lillian, we’d have to sink all new caissons for the sandhogs to excavate”-he drew a picture showing the base of the piers surrounded by watertight chambers in which men could work beneath the river-“but before we could even start sinking caissons we’d have to erect coffer dams, temporary protection around the piers to keep the river out, here and here. See? We haven’t the time.”

He dropped the pencil and reached for his walking stick.

Before Mowery could stand, Bell leaned over him and put his fin ger firmly on the sketch.

“These coffer dams look like those collar plates. Could coffer dams deflect flow?”

“Of course!” Mowery snapped. “But the point-”

The old engineer’s voice trailed off midsentence. He stared. Then his eyes began to gleam. He pushed his walking stick aside and snapped up a pencil.

Isaac Bell shoved a fresh sheet of paper toward him.

Mowery scribbled frantically.

“Look here, Osgood! To the devil with short-term. We’ll build the caissons straight off. Shape their coffer dams to function as flow deflectors, too. Better than collar plates, when you think about it.”

“How long?” asked Hennessy.

“At least two weeks, round-the-clock, to put the coffer dams in place. Maybe three.”

“Weather’s getting worse.”

“I’ll need every hand you can spare.”

“I’ve got a thousand in the yard with nothing to do.”

“We’ll riprap here and here, harden the bank.”

“Just pray we don’t get a flood.”

“Extend this spur deflector . . .”

Neither the bridge builder nor the railroad president noticed when Isaac Bell and Lillian Hennessy retreated silently from what had blossomed into a full-fledged engineering conference.

“Nice work, Lillian,” Bell said. “You stirred them up.”

“I realized I had better insure my financial future if I’m going to be courted by a penniless detective.”

“Would you like that?”

“I think I would, Isaac.”

“More than a candidate for president.”

“Something tells me it would be more exciting.”

“In that case, I’ve got good news for you: I’ve wired Archie to come take over for me.”

“Archie’s coming here?” She seized Bell’s hands in hers. “Oh, Isaac, thank you. That’s wonderful.”

Bell’s golden mustache fanned open with his first carefree smile since they discovered the catastrophe of the sabotaged piers.

“You must promise not to distract him too much. We still haven’t caught the Wrecker.”

“But if Archie is taking over here, where are you going?”

“Wall Street.”