The Wrecker

44

“EVERY RAILROAD IN THE COUNTRY,” SAID ISAAC BELL.

Complete understanding dawned at last.

The Wrecker’s crimes were driven by a purpose as bold as they were evil.

“At last,” said Isaac, “I know what he wants. His motive makes twisted sense. He is too ambitious for anything less. Monstrous crimes to serve a mastermind’s dream. But how could he enjoy his victory? The instant he seizes the railroads, we will hunt him mercilessly from one end of the continent to the other.”

“On the contrary,” said Ebenezer Bell, “he will enjoy his victory in private splendor.”

“How?”

“He has shielded himself from being identified, much less investigated. Who do you hunt? In what country? A criminal as resourceful as you’ve described would model his ‘retirement,’ shall we say, on the European munitions dealers. Or the opium cartels. I know of speculators and profiteers and stock frauds who have plied their illegal trade unmolested for thirty years.”

“How?” Isaac demanded, though he was beginning to get the picture.

“If I were the Wrecker,” Ebenezer answered, “I would go abroad. I would establish a maze of foreign holding companies shielded by corrupt governments. My shell corporations would bribe the authorities to turn a blind eye. A war minister, a treasury secretary. The European chancellories are infamous.”

“And in America,” Isaac said quietly, “a member of the United States Senate.”

“The corporations bribe senators. Why wouldn’t a criminal? Do you have a senator in mind?”

“Charles Kincaid.”

“Hennessy’s man. Although I must say that I’ve always thought of Kincaid as even more of a buffoon than most who sit in that august chamber.”

“So he seems. But I have had a terrible suspicion about him for quite a while now. What you suggest would explain why. He could be the Wrecker’s agent.”

“With unfettered access to government officials anxious to please. And not only the Wrecker’s agent in the United States but also the Wrecker’s spy inside Hennessy’s inner circle. That would be diabolical, wouldn’t it, son?”

“Effective!” said Isaac. “If the Wrecker has shown himself to be anything more than cold-bloodedly ruthless, it is effective… But there is one problem with this theory: Charles Kincaid appears to be angling to be nominated for the presidency.”

“You don’t say!”

“Preston Whiteway is backing a run. It’s hard to imagine a politician who wants to be president risking getting caught taking bribes from a murderer.”

Ebenezer Bell said quietly, “He would not be the first politician sufficiently arrogant to convince himself no one can catch him.”

Padraic Riley interrupted to say that he had laid out brandy and coffee in the library and would be going to bed if nothing else was required. He turned on his heel and disappeared before anything was.

He had also left a coal fire glowing in the grate. While Ebenezer Bell splashed generous dollops of brandy in two coffee cups, Isaac Bell stared into the flames, thinking hard. It could have been Kincaid who hired the prizefighters to kill him in Rawlins.

“I bumped into Kenny Bloom on the Overland Limited,” he said.

“How is the scamp?”

“About sixty pounds plumper than your average scamp and richer than ever. Father, how would the Wrecker raise the capital to buy the Southern Pacific?”

Ebenezer answered without hesitation. “From the richest bankers in the world.”

“Morgan?”

“No. As I understand it, Morgan is stretched tight. He couldn’t touch Hennessy’s roads. Nor could Vanderbilt or Harriman or Hill, even if they combined. Does Van Dorn have offices overseas?”

“We have reciprocal arrangements with foreign investigators.”

“Look to Europe. The only bankers rich enough are in London and Berlin.”

“You keep referring to Europe.”

“You’ve described a criminal who needs to raise extraordinary amounts of capital in strictest secrecy. Where could he turn to but Europe for his money? And it’s where he will hide in the end. I recommend you use Van Dorn’s European connections to run down his bankers. In the meantime, I’ll try to help by beating what bushes I can.”

“Thank you, Father.” Isaac clasped his hand. “You’ve brought this case to life.”

“Where are you going?”

Isaac was striding toward the hall. “Back to the cutoff as fast as I can. He’ll keep attacking until Hennessy topples.”

“But there’ll be no fast trains this late.”

“I’ll charter a special to Albany and join a Chicago flyer.”

His father hurried with him to the door, helped him into his coat, and stood in the foyer as his son dashed into the night.

“When I can return,” Isaac called over his shoulder, “there’s someone I want you to meet.”

“I’m looking forward to making Miss Morgan’s acquaintance.”

Bell stopped short. Was that the flicker of the gas lamps or a twinkle in his father’s eye?

“You know? You’ve heard?”

“My sources are unanimous: ‘Your son,’ they tell me, ‘is a lucky man.’”

ANOTHER LATE-AUTUMN PACIFIC STORM was blowing hard while James Dashwood attended his twelfth temperance meeting. This one took place in a chilly Santa Barbara hall rented from the Elks. Rain lashed the windows, wind whipped the trees and spattered wet leaves on the glass. But the speaker was inspired and the audience enthusiastic, expecting salty passion from the gnarly, red-faced “Captain” Willy Abrams, Cape Horn clippermaster, shipwreck survivor, and reformed drunkard.

“That alcohol is not nutritious …” Captain Willy thundered. “That it awakens a general and unhealthy physical excitement… That it hardens the tissues of the brain . . . is proven by every scientific analysis. Ask any ship’s officer what makes mutineers. His answer? Alcohol. Ask a police officer what makes criminals. His answer? Alcohol. Ask the prison warden. Alcohol. And think of the expense! How many loaves of bread could grace the kitchen table with the money spent upon intoxicating liquors? How many snug homes could that money build? Why, that money could even pay off the entire National Debt!”

Dashwood paused, momentarily distracted from scanning the men in the audience. Of the many temperance orators he had heard on his search for blacksmith Jim Higgins, Captain Willy Abrams was the first to promise relief of the National Debt.

When it was over and Dashwood saw no one in the dwindling crowd who resembled the blacksmith, he approached the dais.

“One more?” asked Captain Willy, who was packing up his notes. “Always time for one more pledge.”

“I’ve already pledged,” said Dashwood, flourishing a Total Abstinence Declaration registered four days earlier by the Ventura chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. He had ten more in his suitcase, along with the train-wrecking hook fashioned from an anchor and a stack of the lumberjack’s sketches.

“I’m looking for a friend, whom I hope has taken the pledge but might have stumbled. He’s disappeared, and I fear the worst. A tall, strapping fellow, a blacksmith named Jim Higgins.”

“Blacksmith? Big man. Sloped shoulders. Dark hair? Sad and weary eyes.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“Seen him? You bet I’ve seen him. Thanks to me, the poor devil’s mended his ways. In the extreme.”

“How do you mean?”

“Instead of taking the pledge never to drink alcohol again, he’s pledged to give up everything a man could ever want.”

“I don’t follow you, Captain Willy.”

The speaker looked around, confirmed there were no women within earshot, and dropped a wrinkled lid over a bloodshot eye. “Gave up drink, gave up worldly possessions, even gave up girls. Now, I truly believe, brother, that drinking and drunkenness are inseparable evils. Our Savior Jesus Himself could not keep His customers sober if He ran a saloon. But never let it be said that Captain Willy advocates abandoning all earthly pleasures.”

“What did Jim Higgins do?”

“Last I heard, he became a monk.”

“A monk?”

“Joined a monastery, that’s what he’s done.”

James Dashwood whipped out his notebook.

“Which order?”

“Not sure about that. Order of Saint Somebody or other. I had never heard of them before. Not one of the regulars, sort of an offshoot… like you find in these parts.”

“Where?”

“Up the coast a ways. Understand they have a heck of a spread.”

“What town?”

“Somewhere north of Morro Bay, I believe.”

“In the hills or by the sea?” Dashwood pressed.

“Both, I heard. Heck of a spread.”

IT HAD BEEN FORTY years since the first transatlantic telegraph cable annihilated time and space. By 1907, more than a dozen stretched under the ocean between Ireland and Newfoundland. The latest could transmit a hundred twenty words per minute. As Isaac Bell rocketed west, a notable share of the cable’s capacity was taken up by the Van Dorn Detective Agency gathering information on the Wrecker’s European bankers.

Cablegrams poured aboard at every crew change and water stop. By the time he reached Buffalo in his chartered Atlantic 4-4-2-a high-wheeled racer born for the lakeshore water-level route-Bell had a suitcase full of paper. Van Dorn agents and research contractors joined him along the way, specialists in banking, and French and German translators. There were general reports, at first, on the European financing of railroads in China, South America, Africa, and Asia Minor. Then, as the agency’s contacts dug deeper, the reports grew more specific, with repeated references to Schane amp; Simon Company, a little-known German investment house.

Bell picked up a Pullman sleeper in Toledo for his growing staff and replaced the 4-4-2 with a more powerful Baldwin 4-6-0. He added a dining car in Chicago so the investigators could spread their work out on the tables as they sped through Illinois and Iowa.

They crossed Kansas, switching locomotives to the new, highly efficient Baldwin balanced compound Atlantics for speeding up the light but relentless grade of the Great Plains. They picked up wires at every stop. The diner’s tables were buried under their yellow paper. Isaac Bell’s operatives, accountants, and auditors named their special train the Van Dorn Express.

The Rocky Mountains came into view, blue as the sky, then hardening out of the mist into three distinct snowcapped ranges. The railroad’s Mountain Division superintendents, eager to help, wheeled out their best Prairie-type engines, with Vauclain compound cylinders, to suit the grade. So far on the cross-country run, a total of eighteen locomotives and fifteen crews had driven the Van Dorn Express at speeds that surpassed the previous year’s record time of fifty hours from Chicago.

Bell saw a pattern swirling around Schane amp; Simon, which was based in Berlin. Years ago, it had forged close ties with the German government through the powerful chancellor Otto von Bismarck. These ties had grown stronger under the current ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm. Van Dorn’s sources reported that the banking house appeared to have channeled government money to the builders of the Baghdad Railway secretly to maintain the fiction that Germany was not building the railroad to a Persian Gulf port to challenge British, French, and Russian interests in the Near East.

“Senator Charles Kincaid’s employer, I recall,” said one of the translators, who had served with the Department of State before Joseph Van Dorn lured him away.

“In his ‘Hero Engineer’ days.”

Bell wired Sacramento to look for transactions between Schane amp; Simon and members of Osgood Hennessy’s inner circle.

Charles Kincaid, of course, had remained foremost in Isaac Bell’s mind ever since his father had explained that foreign holding companies and their secret owner would be shielded by corrupt government officials. Surely, a U.S. senator could do much to promote the Wrecker’s interests and guard his secrets. But what motive would drive Kincaid to risk his already lucrative political career? Money? Much more than he got from Southern Pacific Railroad stock. Anger at Hennessy for not encouraging Lillian to marry him? Or was courting her a ruse, an excuse to hang around Hennessy’s ever-rolling headquarters?

But how did spying for the Wrecker jibe with his presidential aspirations? Or was he encouraging Preston Whiteway to launch the campaign merely to provide a smoke screen? Had Charles Kincaid surrendered political dreams to concentrate on accumulating an immense fortune in bribes? Or, as Bell’s father suggested, was he so arrogant as to believe he could get away with both?

EBENEZER BELL’S DEFINITION OF “beating the bushes” was broad and enterprising. The president of the American States Bank had started out querying trusted friends and associates in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., by telephone, telegraph, and private messenger. Learning what he could through lofty connections, he then delved deep into the middle of the country, paying particular attention to St. Louis, home of the burned-out Union Pier amp; Caisson Company. In the West, information he gathered canvassing the top bankers of San Francisco, Denver, and Portland led him to call in favors from smaller banks in California and Oregon.

A request from the patrician Boston banker prompted a private meeting in Eureka, a deepwater port serving the redwood timber industry two hundred twenty-five miles north of San Francisco. Stanley Perrone, the rough-and-ready president of the Northwest Coast Bank of Eureka, dropped by the office of up-and-coming lumberman A. J. Gottfried. Gottfried had borrowed heavily from Perrone’s bank to modernize the Humboldt Bay Lumber Company. His office overlooked his timber pier, which jutted into the rain-lashed harbor.

Gottfried pulled a bottle of good bourbon from his desk, and the men sipped whiskey for a while, chatting about the weather. That it was turning from awful to worse could be predicted by the sight of a red steam launch chugging purposefully between the moored and anchored lumber schooners.

“Son of a gun. Looks like we’re getting hit again.”

The red launch was piloted by the special messenger from the U.S. Weather Bureau who delivered forecasts of violent storms to the captains of vessels in the harbor.

The banker got down to business. “As I recall, A J., you bought Humboldt Bay Lumber with the proceeds of the sale of your timber operation in eastern Oregon.”

The lumberman, intending to make hay out of this unexpected visit from his banker, answered, “That’s exactly how it happened. Though I recall that you made it easier by promising to help me replace the old equipment.”

“A.J., who bought your East Oregon Lumber Company?”

“A feller with more money than sense,” Gottfried admitted cheerfully. “I had despaired of ever unloading it ‘til he came along. It was just too expensive to snake the timber down off those mountains. Not like here, where I can load lumber schooners right at my own wharf. Provided, of course, the ship don’t founder trying to get into the harbor.”

Perrone nodded impatiently. Everyone knew that the entrance into Humboldt Bay deserved its title “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Pea-soup fog, pounding breakers that dissolved into spindrift, and a thick haze of smoke from the lumber mills made finding the channel an exercise that turned sea captains’ hair white. “I understand,” he said pointedly, “you’re considering adding a sash and door factory to your business.”

“If I can raise the means,” Gottfried answered, hoping he had heard right. “This Panic isn’t making it any easier to borrow money.”

The banker looked the lumberman in the eye, and said, “I suspect that favored borrowers will get a sympathetic ear despite the Panic. Who bought your East Oregon business?”

“Can’t tell you everything about him. As you can imagine, I wasn’t looking that particular gift horse in the mouth. Soon as we shook on the deal, I was gone from that place so fast you could hear me whiz.”

He drained his glass and poured another, and topped off the banker’s glass, which hadn’t gone down as far.

“What do you know about the purchaser of the East Oregon Lumber Company?” Perrone pressed.

“For one thing, he had plenty of cash.”

“Where’d he draw his check from?”

“Well, that was interesting. I would have thought San Francisco or Portland. But his check was on a New York bank. I was a little suspicious, but it cleared lickety-split.”

“Was the fellow from New York?”

“Might’ve been. Sure didn’t know much about the lumber business. Now that you mention it, it occurs to me he was buying it for somebody else.”

The banker nodded, encouraging the lumberman to continue talking. Ebenezer Bell had made it clear that he didn’t expect the whole story from any one source. But every bit helped. And the powerful American States president had also made it clear that he would be grateful for every nugget Perrone could wire him.