The Gangster by Clive Cussler (free novels .txt) 📕

40

In Wallabout Basin, across the East River from Manhattan, battleship USS Connecticut raised steam for a maiden voyage unique in the history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Shipbuilders and sailors swarmed over her guns, searchlights, superstructure, and decks, harassed by frantic officers exhorting them to paint, polish, and holystone faster. Put in commission only two months ago, and scheduled to head south for her shakedown cruise, Connecticut suddenly had new orders: Convey the Commander-in-Chief forty-five miles up the Hudson River.

To the great relief of her officers, icebreakers were clearing the channel only as far as West Point. So many things could go wrong on a brand-new ship that the sooner the Navy men landed President Roosevelt at the Military Academy pier, the fewer chances of a humiliating disaster. With luck, she would steam back to Brooklyn deemed worthier than her archrival USS Louisiana to be flagship of an American cruise around the world—while TR toured the Catskill Aqueduct by train and auto, shaking a thousand hands.

The south wall of Raven’s Eyrie, which was closest to the main mansion, was divided midway by the service gate tower, which overlooked long sections in both directions. The Van Dorns who peered through a spy hole in the hogshead barrel had reported seeing no gatekeeper watching at night. But Bell was taking no chances. He and Archie Abbott made a thorough search of the sections in sight of the tower before dawn. They pressed farther along the wall in daylight but found no hidden passage and no indication that one had ever existed.

The Raven’s Eyrie north wall was almost as remote as the hillside wall the Van Dorns had first searched, though here and there they could glimpse the rooftops and chimneys of a neighboring estate house. Someone watching with good field glasses might notice two men creeping through the trees along Culp’s wall. But it seemed unlikely they would pick up the telephone to warn Culp when he and Archie could easily be stone masons making repairs or the estate foresters clearing brush. They traversed the full half mile of wall and again saw no relic of the Underground Railroad. All that remained unobserved was the long wall that faced the river, but they had lost the light.

Bell told Archie Abbott, “I’m worried he’ll use a sniper. You’re the only outdoorsman on the squad. The rest are city boys. Mark off a five-hundred-yard perimeter of the road to the siphon shaft and search every possible sniper hide. I’ll take the ice yacht tomorrow.”

“We will plan my escape,” said Antonio Branco.

“Miles ahead of you,” said Culp. “My train will have steam up and be designated a special on the Delaware & Hudson’s main line to Albany. North of Albany, I’ll have the tracks cleared straight across the Canadian border and through Lacolle.”

“Are you sure the tracks will be cleared?”

Puzzlement creased Culp’s face. Who could impede his private train? As if to a child, he explained, “The Delaware & Hudson Railroad to Canada owns the Napier Junction Railroad in Canada.”

“Yes, but how can you be sure about the Delaware & Hudson?”

“I own the Delaware & Hudson.”

“Will Customs board your train at the border?”

“My man at Lacolle handles Customs.”

Branco nodded. “What is my other option?”

“With no radiator to freeze, my air-cooled Franklin is a superior winter auto. The chauffeur repaired her. I had trunks added for tools and food. And extra tanks of gasoline and oil. She’s ready to roll.”

“What is my third option?”

Culp was getting fed up with Branco grilling him. “Won’t a train or an auto be enough?”

“I can’t count on your train. What if the Van Dorns watch your train? I can’t count on your auto. What if they watch your auto? So if your train and your Franklin become stalking horses to fool the detectives, what is my third option?”

Culp wondered what option Brewster Claypool would have come up with. Then realized that if Claypool were still around, he would be in way over his head. A wintery grin took hold of Culp’s face, an expression that combined cold calculation, deep satisfaction, and deeper pride.

“Your third option is a beaut.”

Starting at dawn, Isaac Bell pinned his last hope of finding Branco’s secret way in and out of Raven’s Eyrie on the river side of the estate, having found nothing in back or at either end. All he had left to search was the wall that angled up from the boat landing, but the weather was not making it easy.

Squalls rampaged up from the narrows of West Point and down from the mountains. They were tight little storms, with several often in sight. The temperature plummeted moments before one struck, and visibility dropped from many miles to mere feet, warning Isaac Bell to hold on tight. Hard knots of wind-whipped snow banged his sail, threatening to stand the ice yacht up on one runner and dump him out of the car.

The latest squall raced off as suddenly as it hit. The morning sun glared on the snow-dusted hills.

Bell juggled the tiller and field glasses, keeping one eye on an enormous lateen-rigged Poughkeepsie Club boat tearing after him and the other probing the fir trees that spread from inside the wall up the slope toward the gigantic barnlike building that housed Culp’s gymnasium. A thinner group of firs and leafless hardwoods speckled the slope outside the wall.

He cut upwind of the Poughkeepsie boat, challenging it to a race, which gave him cover for a closer look. He noticed a clump of rocks in the woods and swept them with the glasses. Intrigued, he nudged the tiller to steer too close to the wind. The sails shivered. The ice yacht slowed. The Poughkeepsie boat pulled ahead.

It was hard to tell through the trees, but the rocks appeared to be close to the wall almost as if the wall had