The Chase by Clive Cussler (ebook reader 8 inch .txt) 📕

a Van Dorn agent!” Margaret gasped. “Every peace officer in the country would come after you.”

Cromwell laughed. “Not to worry, dear sister. I instructed Kelly to administer only enough damage to keep Bell in the hospital for a few months. That’s all. Call it a warning.”

Cromwell had blatantly lied to his sister. He would act surprised when Bell’s murder was announced and claim the agent’s death had been a mistake, that Kelly had gotten carried away. Inciting his sister’s anger, he decided, was a small price to pay for eradicating the man who had become his worst enemy.

16

GIVE IT ANOTHER COAT,” CROMWELL ORDERED THE two men painting his boxcar. The color had been the earth brown that most freight cars had been painted since the early days of the railroad. But Tuscan red was the newer color used by Southern Pacific to standardize their vast fleet of freight cargo haulers. Cromwell wanted a second coat because the O’BRIAN FURNITURE COMPANY, DENVER still bled through the freshly dried first coat.

Margaret, dressed in a woolen dress and short jacket to keep her warm against the cool breeze blowing in from the ocean through the Golden Gate, held a parasol against a light early-morning mist that fell in the city. They stood watching the painters on the loading dock of an empty warehouse her brother had leased under a pseudonym.

“Can you trust them?” she asked.

“The painters?” He stared at the four men busy brushing paint on the boxcar. “To them, it’s just another job, another boxcar that needs to be tidied up. As long as they’re well paid, they don’t ask questions.”

“About time you changed the name,” she said. “Some sheriff or a Van Dorn detective is bound to discover that an O’Brian Furniture freight car was present in five of the towns that were robbed.”

“The same thought crossed my mind,” he said.

“What are you going to call it this time?”

“Nothing,” answered Cromwell. “It will look just like another freight car belonging to the Southern Pacific Railroad.”

“You could buy and decorate a new one. Why keep this old relic?”

“Because it looks like an old relic,” he said with a slight laugh. “Built in 1890. The railroad is still using this model. I prefer it to look tired and worn from many years and thousands of miles of hauling freight. And because its outward appearance is so ordinary, no one would suspect its true purpose. Even your Mr. Hotshot Bell could never begin to guess its real purpose.”

“Don’t underestimate Bell. He’s smart enough to get wise to your traveling hotel suite.”

He gave her a sour look. “Not that smart. And even if he smells a rat, it’s too late. The O’Brian Furniture car no longer exists.”

Cromwell was proud of his aged boxcar. It was thirty-four feet long, with a capacity of forty thousand pounds. Empty, it weighed twelve thousand. Once the second coat was dry, the car would be finished off with the proper signage on its wooden sides, which would include a serial number under the letters SP, for Southern Pacific. The capacity and unloaded weight also would be lettered on one side, while the SP insignia sunrise—a white circle with SOUTHERN arched across the top, PACIFIC arched across the bottom, and LINES across the middle—would be painted on the opposite side. When finished, the boxcar would look like any one of thousands of cars belonging to the Southern Pacific.

Even the serial number, 16173, was correct. Cromwell had arranged for the number to be lifted from a car in the middle of a railyard, scrapped, and then transferred to his rolling suite.

Nothing was ever left to chance. Every move was carefully thought out, then rehearsed and rehearsed again and again. All possible contingencies were considered and dealt with. Nothing escaped Cromwell’s attention, down to the last detail. No bandit in the history of the United States, including Jesse James and Butch Cassidy put together, came close to matching him in the number of successful robberies he pulled off and the amount of loot he collected. Or the number of people killed.

At the mention of Bell’s name, Margaret’s mind traveled back to when they danced together at the Brown Palace Hotel. She cursed herself for wanting to reach out and touch him. The mere thought of it sent a shiver down her spine. She had known many men, a great number of them intimately. But none had affected her as much as when she was in Bell’s arms. It was a wave of yearning she could neither understand nor control. She began to wonder if she would ever see him again, knowing deep inside it would be extremely dangerous. If they ever did meet, he surely would learn her true identity and find a path to her brother Jacob.

“Let’s leave,” she said, angry at herself for allowing her emotions to lose control.

Cromwell saw the faraway look in her eyes but chose to ignore it. “As you wish. I’ll return tomorrow to oversee the finished results.”

They turned and walked through a door into the warehouse. Cromwell paused to lock the door and set a bar in place so no one could enter. Their footsteps echoed throughout the deserted interior of the building. The only furnishings were in one corner, two desks, and a counter that looked like the tellers’ windows at a bank.

“A pity you can’t lease this space out and put it to good use,” said Margaret, fussing with her hat that had tilted to one side of her head when the pin slipped out.

“I must have a place to park the boxcar,” Cromwell replied. “So long as it sits unnoticed on a siding, next to the loading dock of an empty warehouse whose owner cannot be traced, so much the better.”

She gave her brother a suspicious glance and said, “You have that look on again.”

“What look?”

“The one that means you’re planning another robbery.”

“I can’t fool my own sister,” he said with a grin.

“I suppose it’s a waste