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

alluring wisp of flaxen hair had escaped from her brimmed hat. If there was a more agreeable sight in Oregon at that moment, neither man could imagine it. Each produced his best smile.

“Charles, what are you doing here?”

“Whatever I’m doing here, I’m not disobeying my father.”

But she had already turned to Abbott with a smile. “Did you find the gunfight you were looking for?”

“Not yet,” he answered seriously. “I’m got to speak with the manager. Please wait for me. I’d rather you didn’t ride back alone.”

“She won’t be alone,” said Kincaid. “I’d ride her back.”

“That’s exactly what I meant,” said Abbott. “I’ll be back shortly, Lillian.”

He rode to the frame building that looked like an office, dismounted, and knocked on the door. A gaunt, hard-eyed man who looked to be in his late thirties opened it.

“What?”

“Archie Abbott. Van Dorn Agency. Have you a moment for a few questions?”

“No.”

Abbott stopped the door with his boot. “My client is the railroad. Seeing as how they’re your only customer, do you want me to complain?”

“Why didn’t you say so? Come in.”

The manager’s name was Gene Garret, and Abbott found it hard to believe that he was not aware that there was no way the operation could be turning a profit. When Abbott pressed, pointing out the expense that had gone into the operation, Garret snapped, “The owners pay me a good wage, plus a bonus for delivery. That says to me they’re making a profit and then some.”

Archie poked his head into the millhouse, looked over the machinery, and then joined Lillian and Kincaid, who were standing silently under the canvas lean-to with their horses. It was a slow ride down the awful road to the staging yards.

Abbott took Lillian’s horse to the stables so she could slip back onto her train undetected by her father. Then he went to telegraph a report to Isaac Bell, recommending that Van Dorn auditors delve deeply into the owners of East Oregon Lumber and reporting that he had discovered Kincaid on their property and would be keeping a close eye on him.

“I’ll send it the second the line’s repaired,” promised J.J. Meadows. “Wires just went dead as a doornail. Poles must have toppled from the rain.”

JAMES DASHWOOD LEAPED FROM the Southern Pacific Railroad ferry at Oakland Mole. White weather-warning flags with black centers were snapping in the stiff breeze blowing off San Francisco Bay. White with black centers forecast a sudden drop in temperature.

He ran full speed for the connecting train to Sacramento desperate to intercept Isaac Bell at that junction. His train was already rolling from the platform. He ran after it, jumped aboard at the last possible second, and stood on the rear vestibule catching his breath. As the train cleared the terminal building, he saw the white flags being hauled down. Up their staffs shot red flags with black centers. Just like the blacksmith predicted.

Storm warnings.

48

ISAAC BELL WASTED NO TIME IN SACRAMENTO. IN RESPONSE TO his wire, the railroad had its newest Pacific 4-6-2 ready to hitch on—steam up, watered, and coaled. Minutes after it pulled in from the east, the Van Dorn Express was rolling north.

Bell directed new arrivals to the diner, where the work was being done. He lingered on the rear platform, brow furrowed, as the train crept out of the yards. That strange phrase kept churning in his mind: I am thinking the unthinkable. Over and over and over.

Had Charles Kincaid acted the fool earlier in the poker game? Had Kincaid allowed him to win the enormous pot to distract him? No doubt it was Kincaid who had jumped off the train in Rawlins to hire the prizefighters to kill him. And it had probably been Kincaid, acting on the Wrecker’s behalf, who had alerted Philip Dow to ambush him on Osgood Hennessy’s special when his guard was down.

He recalled again Kincaid pretending to admire Hennessy for taking enormous risks. He had deliberately undermined his benefactor’s standing with the bankers. Which made him a very efficient agent for the Wrecker. A very devious spy.

But what if the famous United States senator was not the Wrecker’s corrupt agent? Not his spy?

“I am,” Bell said out loud, “thinking the unthinkable.”

The train was picking up speed.

“Mr. Bell! Mr. Bell!”

He looked back at the frantic shouting.

A familiar figure lugging a suitcase was sprinting through the maze of rails, jumping switches, and dodging locomotives.

“Stop the train!” Bell ordered, yanking open the door so the conductor could hear him.

Locomotive, tender, dining car, and Pullman sleeper ground to a stop. Bell grasped the outstretched hand which was wet with rain and perspiration and pulled James Dashwood into the vestibule.

“I found the blacksmith.”

“Why didn’t you wire?”

“I couldn‘t, Mr. Bell. You’d think I was a lunatic. I had to report face-to-face.”

A fierce glance from Bell sent the conductor quickly retreating inside the car, leaving them alone on the platform.

“Did he recognize the sketch?”

“He admits he was drunk the night he made the hook for the Wrecker. But he thinks that the man he saw might have been a very important personage. So important, I can’t believe it. That’s why I have to report face-to-face.”

Isaac slapped Dashwood’s shoulder and shook his hand. “Thank you, James. You have made thinkable the unthinkable. Senator Charles Kincaid is the Wrecker.”

49

“HOW DID YOU KNOW?” JAMES DASHWOOD GASPED.

The moment Isaac Bell said it, he knew it was true. Senator Charles Kincaid was not the Wrecker’s spy. Kincaid was the Wrecker himself.

Charles Kincaid raced from attack to attack on a senator’s railway pass. (“Oh, he gets around, sir,” said the conductor on the Overland Express. “You know those officeholders, always on the go.”)

Charles Kincaid had penetrated Hennessy’s inner circle. (Hanging around pretending to court Lillian Hennessy. Toadying to her father. Recruiting intimate functionaries like Erastus Charney.)

Charles Kincaid was a civil engineer who know how to extract the most damage from every attack. (“Look for an engineer,” he had taunted.)

“How did you know?”

The crestfallen expression on the boy’s face prompted