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

circle of musicians, Bell saw that the piano player arched over the keys, with fingers flying, eyes bright, and full lips parted in a gleeful smile, was none other than Mrs. Comden.

Lillian said, “I don’t know how he found out. But thanks to Father and Mrs. Comden, your honor will be safe, Mr. Bell. Please stay. All I ask is that we become friends. We’ll have a fast ride. We’re cleared straight through to the Cascades Cutoff.”

Bell was tempted. The line north of Sacramento was congested with materials and work trains heading to and from the cutoff. He had been considering ordering up one of Hennessy’s specials. Lillian’s was ready to roll. Steaming northward on cleared tracks, the railroad president’s daughter’s special would save him a day of travel time.

Lillian said, “There’s a telegraph in the baggage car, if you need to send messages.”

That tipped it. “Thank you,” Bell said with a smile. “I accept your ‘ambush,’ though I may have to hop off at Dunsmuir.”

“Have a glass of champagne, and tell me all about your Miss Morgan.”

The train lurched into motion as she handed him the glass. She licked a spilled drop from an exquisitely delicate knuckle and flashed her eyes in French-actress mode. “She was very pretty.”

“Marion thought you were, too.”

She made another face. “‘Pretty’ is rosy cheeks and gingham dresses. I am usually called more than pretty.”

“Actually, she said you were unspeakably beautiful.”

“Is that why you didn’t introduce me?”

“I preferred to remind her that she is unspeakably beautiful, too.”

Lillian’s pale blue eyes flashed. “You don’t pull your punches, do you?”

Bell returned a disarming smile. “Never in love, young lady—a habit I recommend you cultivate when you grow up. Now, tell me about your father’s troubles with his bankers.”

“He has no trouble with his bankers,” Lillian shot back. She answered so quickly and so vehemently, Bell knew what to say next.

“He said he would by winter.”

“Only if you don’t catch the Wrecker,” she said pointedly.

“But what of this Panic brewing in New York? It started last March. It doesn’t appear to be going away.”

Lillian answered with sober deliberateness. “The Panic, if it remains one much longer, will bring boom times in the railroad business to a crashing halt. We’re in the midst of wonderful expansion, but even Father admits it can’t go on forever.”

Bell was again reminded that Lillian Hennessy was more complicated than a coddled heiress.

“Does the Panic threaten your father’s control of his lines?”

“No,” she said quickly. Then she explained to Bell, “My father learned early on that the way to pay for his second railroad was to manage his first so well that it was solvent and creditworthy and then borrow against it. The bankers would dance to his tune. No railroad man in the country would fare better. If the others collapsed, he’d snap up the pieces and come out of it smelling like a rose.”

Bell touched his glass to hers. “To roses.” He smiled. But he was not sure whether the young woman was boasting truthfully or whistling past the graveyard. And he was even less sure of why the Wrecker was so determined to uproot the tangled garden of railroads.

“Ask any banker in the country,” she said, proudly. “He will tell you that Osgood Hennessy is impregnable.”

“Let me send a wire telling people where to find me.”

Lillian grabbed the champagne bottle and walked him to the baggage car, where the conductor, who doubled as the train’s telegrapher, sent Bell’s message reporting his whereabouts to Van Dorn. As they were starting to head back to the parlor car, the telegraph key started clattering. Lillian listened for a few seconds, then rolled her eyes and called over her shoulder to the conductor, “Do not answer that.”

Bell asked, “Who is that transmitting, your father?”

“No. The Senator.”

“Which Senator?”

“Kincaid. Charles Kincaid. He’s courting me.”

“Do I gather that you are not interested?”

“Senator Charles Kincaid is too poor, too old, and too annoying.”

“But very handsome,” called Mrs. Comden, with a smile for Bell.

“Very handsome,” Lillian agreed. “But still too poor, too old, and too annoying.”

“How old?” Bell asked.

“At least forty.”

“He’s forty-two and extremely vigorous,” said Mrs. Comden. “Most girls would call him quite a catch.”

“I’d rather catch mumps.”

Lillian refilled her glass and Bell’s. Then she said, “Emma, is there any chance that you might hop off the train in Sacramento and disappear while Mr. Bell and I steam our way north?”

“Not in this life, dear. You are too young—and far too innocent—to travel without a chaperone. And Mr. Bell is too . . .”

“Too what?”

Emma Comden smiled.

“Interesting.”

THE WRECKER HURRIED UP the lumber-mill spur after dark, walking on the crossties so as not make noise crunching the ballast.

He carried a four-foot-long crowbar that weighed thirty pounds. On his back was a Spanish-American War soldier’s knapsack of eighteen-ounce cotton duck with a rubberized flap. Its straps tugged hard on his shoulders. In it were a heavy two-gallon tin of coal oil and a horseshoe he had lifted from one of the many blacksmiths busy shoeing the hundreds of mules that pulled the freight wagons.

The chill mountain air smelled of pine pitch, and something else that took him a moment to recognize. There was actually a hint of snow on the wind. Although it was a clear night, he could feel winter coming early to the mountains. He increased his pace, as his eyes adjusted to the starlight. The rails shone in front of him, and trees took shape along the cut.

A tall, long-legged, fit man, he climbed the steep slope with swift efficiency. He was racing the clock. He had less than two hours until moonrise. When the moon cleared the mountains, lancing the darkness with its full light, he would be a sitting duck for the railway police patrolling on horseback.

After a mile, he came to a Y junction where the spur split. The left-hand spur, which he had been climbing, descended to the construction yard. The spur to the right veered to join the newly