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

“Where is Senator Kincaid?”

“Most every one’s down at the town,” said the dispatcher.

The telegrapher opened his eyes. “Last I saw, he was heading for the Old Man’s special. But I wouldn’t go there, if I was you. Hennessy’s hoppin’ mad. Somebody sent him four trains of coal instead of the traprock they need to riprap the piers.”

“Round up a doctor and a wreck train. There’re men hurt at a landslide fifteen miles down the line. Come on, Dash!”

They ran across the bridge, past the parked coal train. Bell saw ripples in the rain puddles. The weakened structure was trembling despite the weight of the coal train. A glance over the side showed that the Cascade River had risen many feet in the nine days since he left for New York. He could see hundreds of workmen ganged on the banks, guiding barges with long ropes, dumping rock in the water, trying to divert the flood, while hundreds more swarmed over new coffer dams and caissons being sunk around the piers.

“Have you participated in many arrests?” Bell asked Dashwood as they neared the special on its raised siding. Train and yard crews were changing shifts. A row of white yardmen’s lanterns and signal flags were lined up beside Hennessy’s locomotive, the lanterns glowing in the murky light.

“Yes, sir. Mr. Bronson let me come along when they captured ‘Samson’ Scudder.”

Bell hid a smile. The ironically named Samson Scudder, a prolific second-story man who weighed ninety pounds dripping wet, was known as the sweetest-natured crook in San Francisco.

“This one’s poison,” he warned soberly. “Stick close and do exactly what I say.”

“Should I draw my firearm?”

“Not on the train. There’ll be people around. Stand by with your handcuffs.”

Bell strode alongside Hennessy’s special and up the steps to Nancy No. 1. The detective he had assigned to guard the car since Philip Dow’s attack was covering the vestibule with a sawed-off.

“Senator Kincaid aboard?”

Osgood Hennessy stuck his head out the door. “You just missed him, Bell. What’s going on?”

“Which way did he go?”

“I don’t know. But he parked that Thomas Flyer up the line.”

“He’s the Wrecker.”

“The devil, you say.”

Bell turned to the Van Dorn detective. “If he comes back, arrest him. If he gives you any trouble, shoot first or he’ll kill you.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Send word to Archie Abbott. Railway cops to guard the bridge and the town in case Kincaid doubles back. Van Dorns, follow me. Dash! Grab a flag and a couple of lanterns.”

Dashwood picked up a signal flag, which was rolled tightly around its wooden staff, and two yardman’s lanterns and ran after Bell.

“Give me one!” Bell said, explaining, “If we look like we’re railroad men, it will buy us a few seconds to get closer.”

From the vantage of the raised siding, Bell scanned the ranks of still trains and the narrow walkways between the sidings. He had less than six hours of daylight to catch up with Kincaid. He looked toward the bridge. Then he looked toward the end of the line where new construction had ceased when they learned the bridge had been sabotaged. The road was brushed out, cleared of trees and shrubs, well past the point it crossed the mud road to East Oregon Lumber.

He could not see Kincaid’s Thomas Flyer from where he stood. Had Kincaid already reached his car and driven away? Then, on the edge of the deserted yards, he saw a man emerge from between two strings of empty freight cars. He was walking briskly toward a pair of locomotives that were parked side by side where the tracks ended.

“There he is!”

52

THE WRECKER WAS HURRYING TOWARD THE LOCOMOTIVES TO signal Philip Dow to blow the dam when he heard their boots pounding behind him.

He looked back. Two brakemen were running fast, signaling with white train-yard lanterns. A skinny youth and a tall, rangy man, wide of shoulder and narrow in the waist. But where was the locomotive they were guiding with their lights? The pair he was hurrying toward were sidetracked, with only enough steam up to keep them warm.

The tall one wore a broad-brimmed hat instead of a railroader’s cap. Isaac Bell Running after him was a boy who looked like he should still be in high school.

Kincaid had to make a instant decision. Why was Bell prowling the yards pretending to be a brakeman? Assume the best, that Bell still had not tumbled to his identity? Or walk toward them, wave hello, and pull his derringer and shoot them both and hope no one saw? The second he reached for his gun, he knew he had made a mistake wasting time to think about it.

Bell’s hand flickered in a blur of motion, and Charles Kincaid found himself staring down the barrel of a Browning pistol held in a rock-steady grip.

“Don’t point that pistol at me, Bell. What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“Charles Kincaid,” Bell answered in a clear, steady voice, “you are wanted by the law for murder and sabotage.”

“Wanted by the law? Are you serious?”

“Remove your derringer from your left pocket and drop it on the ground.”

“We’ll see about this,” huffed Kincaid. His every mannerism bespoke the aggrieved United States senator put upon by a fool.

“Remove your derringer from your left pocket and drop it on the ground before I blow a hole in your arm.”

Kincaid shrugged, as if humoring a madman. “All right.” Moving very slowly, he reached for his derringer.

“Careful,” said Bell. “Hold the weapon between your thumb and forefinger.”

The only eyes Charles Kincaid had ever seen so cold were in a mirror.

He lifted the derringer from his pocket between his thumb and forefinger and crouched as if to place it gently on the ground. “You realize, of course, that a private detective cannot arrest a member of the United States Senate.”

“I’ll leave the formalities to a U.S. marshal ... or the county coroner, if your hand moves any closer to the knife in your boot.”

“What the devil—”

“Drop your derringer!”