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

admitted to no crimes, however, claiming that he had sold the ship to his brother-in-law the previous year. Asked whether the captain had ever used her to smuggle fugitives across the river, the dealer replied that when it came to his brother-in-law, anything was possible.

As Bell had surmised in Ogden, the Wrecker was changing tactics. Instead of relying on zealous radicals, he was proving adept at hiring cold-blooded criminals to do his dirty work for cash.

“Did either of these men ever use explosives in their crimes?” he asked the launch captain.

“Looks like this was the first time,” the water cop replied with a grim chuckle, “and they weren’t all that good at it. Seeing as how they blew themselves to smithereens.”

“BEAUTIFUL GIRL TO SEE you, Mr. Bell.”

Bell did not look up from his desk in the Van Dorn offices at the Knickerbocker Hotel. Three candlestick telephones were ringing constantly. Messengers were racing in and out. Operatives were standing by to make their reports and awaiting new orders.

“I’m busy. Pass her on to Archie.”

“Archie’s at the morgue.”

“Then send her away.”

It was forty hours since the explosion had shaken the Port of New York. Experts from the railroad-backed Bureau of Explosives combing through the wreckage had discovered a dry cell battery that led them to conclude that the dynamite had been skillfully detonated using electricity. But Bell still hadn’t a clue as to whether the dead schooner crew had set off the dynamite or had expert help. He was wondering if the Wrecker himself had wired it to explode. Had he been on the schooner? Was he dead? Or was he preparing his next attack?

“I’d see this one if I were you,” the front-desk man persisted.

“I’ve seen her. She’s beautiful. She’s rich. I don’t have time.”

“But she’s got a gang of fellows with a moving-picture camera.”

“What?” Bell glanced through the door. “Marion!”

Bell pushed through the door, picked her up in his arms, and kissed her on the mouth. His fiancée was wearing a hat anchored with a scarf that covered the side of her face, and Bell noticed that she had combed her straw-blond hair, which she ordinarily wore piled high upon her head, so that it draped one cheek.

“What are you doing here?”

“Attempting to take pictures of the hero, if you’ll put me down. Come outside in the light.”

“Hero? I’m the hero of the glassmakers’ union.” He pressed his lips to her ear, and added in a whisper, “And the only place I’m putting you down is on a bed.”

“Not before we take pictures of the famous detective who saved New York.”

“Showing my face in nickelodeons won’t help me sneak up on criminals.”

“We’ll take your picture from behind, just the back of your head, very mysterious. Come quickly or we’ll lose the light.”

They trooped down the Knickerbocker’s grand stair, trailed by Bell’s assistants muttering reports and whispering questions, and Marion’s cameraman and assistants carrying a compact Lumière camera, a wooden tripod, and accessory cases. Outside on the sidewalk, workmen were replacing windows in the Knickerbocker.

“Put him there!” said the cameraman pointing to a shaft of sunlight illuminating a patch of sidewalk.

“Here,” said Marion. “So we see the broken glass behind him.”

“Yes, ma‘am.”

She gripped Bell’s shoulders.

“Turn this way.”

“I feel like a package being delivered.”

“You are—a wonderful package called ‘The Detective in the White Suit.’ Now, point at the broken window ...”

Bell heard gears and flywheels whirring behind him, a mechanism clicking like a sewing machine, and a flapping of film.

“What are your questions?” he called over his shoulder.

“I know you’re busy. I’ve already written your answers for the title cards.”

“What did I say?”

“The Van Dorn Detective Agency will pursue the criminal who attacked New York City to the ends of the earth. We will never give up. Never!”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“Now, wait a moment while we attach the telescopic lens ... O.K., point at that crane lifting the window ... Thank you. That was wonderful.”

As Bell turned to face her smile, a gust of wind lifted her hair, and he suddenly realized that she had arranged her hair, hat, and scarf to conceal a bandage.

“What happened to your face?”

“Flying glass. I was on the ferry when the bomb exploded.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Of course. There won’t even be much of a scar. And, if there is, I can wear my hair on that side.”

Bell was stunned and almost paralyzed with rage. The Wrecker had come within inches of killing her. At that moment of almost losing control, a Van Dorn operative ran from the hotel, waving to get Bell’s attention.

“Isaac! Archie telephoned from the Manhattan morgue. He thinks we’ve got something.”

THE CORONER’S PHYSICIAN IN the Borough of Manhattan commanded a salary of thirty-six hundred dollars a year, which allowed him to enjoy the luxuries of middle-class life. These included summers abroad. Recently, he had installed a modern photographic-identification device that he had discovered in Paris.

A camera hung overhead beneath a large skylight. Its lens was aimed at the floor, where marks had been painted indicating height in feet and inches. A dead body lay on the floor, brightly illuminated by the skylight. Bell saw it was a man, though the face had been obliterated by fire and blunt force. His clothes were wet. From the mark where they had placed his feet to the mark at the top of his head, he measured five feet three inches.

“It’s only a Chinaman,” said the coroner’s physician. “At least, I think it’s a Chinaman, judging by his hands, feet, skin tone. But they said you wanted to see every drowned body.”

“I found this in his pocket,” said Abbott, holding up a pencil-sized cylinder with wires extending from it like two short legs.

“Mercury-fulminate detonator,” said Bell. “Where was the man found?”

“Floating past the Battery.”

“Could he have drifted across the river from Jersey City to the tip of Manhattan?”

“The currents are unpredictable,” said the coroner’s physician. “Between ocean tide and river flux, bodies go every which way, depending