The Striker by Clive Cussler (ebook reader web TXT) 📕

on Halsted Street. A coin piano banged away in a corner, and the audience was howling at a comedy on the screen, Appointment by Telephone, in which a couple drinking champagne at lunch was spotted through the restaurant window by the man’s wife.

Clay located Mary in the back row, where he had instructed her to sit. His heart took him by surprise, soaring when the projection light jumped from the screen to her beautiful face. She was the only person in the theater not laughing.

Before he could reach her, a man stood up and moved a few seats over to sit next to her. Suspecting one of the mashers who preyed on women who sat alone in nickelodeons, Clay rushed to the seat next to him. He had guessed right. The man was already laying a hand on Mary’s leg. She slapped it away. The masher whispered, “Don’t play hard to get.”

Clay took the masher’s hand in his right, clamped his left over his mouth to muffle his scream, and broke his finger. “Leave quietly,” he whispered in his ear. “If I hear a peep out of you or ever see you again, I’ll break the other nine.”

The masher stumbled away, moaning, and Clay slipped into the seat he had vacated. Loud laughter and the coin piano allowed them to speak in low tones without fear of being overheard.

“I’ve lined up fifty barges and a couple of towboats.”

Nothing in her manner suggested whether she had noticed what he had done to the masher, and he could not tell whether that was because he had done it smoothly or because she didn’t care. Her reply was all business.

“Mr. Claggart, where did the money come from? Fifty barges and two towboats must cost a fortune.”

“Empty barges are going cheap at the moment. What with the operators fearing the strike will diminish production. Pittsburgh is awash in empties.”

“Fifty barges and the services of two steamboats still must cost money.”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s been a slew of bank and payroll robberies in the Chicago area, out toward Evanston and Cicero and all the way down to Hammond and Gary.”

“What do bank robberies have to do with the coal strike?”

“Not every bank robber is in it for personal gain,” Clay answered. “Some support worthy causes.”

The idea of labor radicals raising money by robbing banks had a ring of truth, he thought. And regardless of her scruples, if any, about robbing capitalist banks, they would be nothing compared to her scruples about financing her brilliant barge scheme with Judge James Congdon’s Wall Street money.

He glanced at her to see how the lie registered.

She was staring straight ahead at the show on the screen. The wife stalked into the restaurant. Crockery flew. Tables were overturned. The woman scorned procured a horsewhip from somewhere and flailed away, and the audience roared as she chased her husband and his girlfriend around the restaurant. Henry Clay feasted on Mary’s compelling profile, waiting, thinking, She’s got to laugh. She’s not made of stone.

•   •   •

MARY HIGGINS had been troubled from the first by the money. It seemed that whatever Claggart needed, he had access to limitless funds. But she found it difficult to believe that the bank robbers, who had inspired all sorts of lurid reporting in the newspapers, were nobler than common criminals. Albeit skillful ones who had managed enough successful robberies to inflame so much attention. With the Spanish War long gone from the headlines, and a reluctance on the part of many newspapers to lend the mine strike credence by writing about it, their editors were probably getting desperate.

But none of that guaranteed the robbers were supporting the strike.

She felt as she had since she first met Claggart in New York. She could not entirely trust the man. Despite his radical talk, his underlying motive was a mystery. But she hadn’t thought through how much money it would take to accomplish blocking the river, and she had little choice but to subscribe to the old saying Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. What if it was a trick by the owners? What kind of trick, she had no idea.

All she knew for sure was that she had thrown her lot in with someone she knew nothing about. She had seen a man of action when he saved her from the cops. And now she had just observed a vicious streak, brutalizing the masher, who would think twice about molesting other women. And she had to admit that Claggart’s reaction could have been inflamed by the fact that he was falling for her.

She wondered what she would think and what she would do if the bank robbers were suddenly caught by the police. If they turned out to be ordinary criminals, then Mr. Claggart would have a lot of explaining to do. Until then, she resolved to keep her wits about her and watch him closely.

26

ISAAC BELL FOUND WISH CLARKE DRUNK IN LITTLE’S EXCHANGE. HE walked him out of the saloon, heaved him into a hansom cab, and gave the driver an enormous five-dollar tip to deliver him to the inexpensive hotel around the corner from the Palmer House, where Van Dorns rented rooms in Chicago.

Wish grabbed his arm as Bell tried to shut the cab’s door. “No jewels of note aboard the Pennshulvania Speshule.”

“I’ll check the Twentieth Century messengers at Black’s.”

“Shorry I let you down, Ishick. It cashes up wish me now and again.”

“Make me a promise, Aloysius.”

“Anythin’.”

“Go straight to bed. I’ll need you in the morning.”

The driver flicked his reins and the cab clattered off.

Bell hurried on foot down Clarke, over the rail yards on Harrison Street, and waited for a tall-masted schooner to pass before he could cross the South Branch of the Chicago River on an ancient cast-iron jackknife bridge. It took a long time to creak back down, and he