The Wrecker by Clive Cussler (book club reads .TXT) 📕

“So the Weather Bureau’s known about that one for quite some time now? Isn’t that something?”

Dashwood reckoned that the weather had taken them about as far as they could go.

“How did I scare you?” he asked.

“That picture you showed me.”

“This?” Dashwood took the sketch without the mustache from his suitcase.

The blacksmith turned away. “That’s who wrecked the Coast Line Limited,” he said softly. “Except you got his ears too big.”

Dashwood rejoiced. He was closing in. He reached into his bag. Isaac Bell had wired him to get in touch with a pair of Southern Pacific cinder dicks named Tom Griggs and Ed Bottomley. Griggs and Bottomley had taken Dashwood out, got him drunk and into the arms of a redhead at their favorite brothel. Then they’d taken him to breakfast and given him the hook that had derailed the Coast Line Limited. He pulled the heavy cast iron out of his bag. “Did you make this hook?”

The blacksmith eyed it morosely. “You know I did.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because they’d blame me for killing those poor people.”

“What was his name?”

“Never said his name.”

“If you didn’t know his name, why did you run?”

The blacksmith hung his head. Tears welled in his eyes and rolled down his red cheeks.

Dashwood had no idea what to do next, but he did sense that it would be a mistake to speak. He turned his attention to the ocean in an effort to remain silent, hoping the man would resume his confession. The weeping blacksmith took Dashwood’s silence as condemnation.

“I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t mean to hurt nobody. But who would they believe, me or him?”

“Why wouldn’t they believe you?”

“I’m just a blacksmith. He’s a big shot. Who would you believe?”

“What kind of big shot?”

“Who would you believe? A drunken smithy or a senator?”

“A senator?” Dashwood echoed in utter despair. All his work, all his chasing, all his running down the blacksmith had led him to a lunatic.

“He always hugged the dark,” Higgins whispered, brushing at his tears. “In the alley behind the stable. But the boys opened the door and the light fell on his face.”

Dashwood remembered the alley. He remembered the door. He could imagine the light. He wanted to believe the blacksmith. And yet he couldn’t.

“Where had you seen that senator before?”

“Newspaper.”

“A good likeness?”

“Like you standing there beside me,” Higgins answered, and Dashwood decided that the man believed every word as strongly as he blamed himself for the wreck of the Coast Line Limited. But belief did not necessarily make him sane. “The man I saw looked just like that big-shot senator. It couldn‘t’ve been him. But if it was—if it was him—I knew I was in a terrible fix. Big trouble. Trouble I deserved. By the work of this hand.”

Weeping harder, chest heaving, he held up a meaty paw wet with his tears.

“By the work of this hand, those people died. The engineer. The fireman. That union feller. That little boy ...”

A gust of wind whipped Higgins’s monk’s robe, and he looked down at the crashing waves as if they offered peace. Dashwood dared not breathe, certain that one wrong word, a simple “Which senator?” would cause Jim Higgins to jump off the cliff.

OSGOOD HENNESSY WAS READING the riot act to his lawyers, having finished excoriating his bankers for bad news on Wall Street, when the meeting was interrupted by a short, amiable-looking fellow wearing a string tie, a vest, a creamy-white Stetson, and an old-fashioned single-action .44 on his hip.

“Excuse me, gents. Sorry to interrupt.”

The railroad attorneys looked up, their faces blossoming with hope. Any interruption that derailed their angry president was a gift from Heaven.

“How’d you get past my conductor?” Hennessy demanded.

“I informed your conductor—and the gentleman detective with the shotgun—that I am United States Marshal Chris Danis. I have a message from Mr. Isaac Bell for Mr. Erastus Charney. Is Mr. Charney here by any chance?”

“That’s me,” said the plump and jowly Charney. “What’s the message?”

“You’re under arrest.”

THE WINCHESTER RIFLE SLUG that had nearly blown the renegade telegrapher Ross Parker off his horse had shredded his right biceps and riddled the muscle with bone splinters. Doc said he was lucky it hadn’t shattered his humerus instead of just chipping it. Parker wasn’t feeling lucky. Two and a half weeks after the Van Dorn detective with the Texas drawl had shot him and killed two of his best men, it still hurt so bad that the act of lifting his arm to turn the key in his post office box made his head swim.

It hurt more to reach into the box to extract the Wrecker’s letter. It even hurt to slit the envelope with his gravity knife. Cursing the private dick who had shot him, Parker had to steady himself on a counter as he removed the luggage ticket he had been hoping to find.

The daily Weather Bureau postcard with the forecast stamped on it sat on the counter in a metal frame. The rural mail carrier had delivered one every day to the widow’s farm outside of town where he had been recuperating. The forecast today was the same as yesterday and same as the day before: more wind, more rain. Yet another reason to get out of Sacramento while the getting was good.

Parker took the luggage ticket around the corner to the railroad station and claimed the gripsack the Wrecker had left there. He found the usual wads of twenty-dollar bills inside, along with a map of northern California and Oregon showing where the wires should be cut and a terse note: “Start now.”

If the Wrecker thought Ross Parker was going to climb telegraph poles with his arm half blown off and two of his gang shot dead, the saboteur had another think coming. Parker’s plans for this bag of money did not include working for it. He practically galloped across the station to line up at the ticket window.

A big man shoved ahead of