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

“Take Harry Warren to talk Italian to the organ grinder. If the old guy’s scared we’re stealing his livelihood, it’ll start a riot.”

Warren engaged the organ grinder in conversation and finally persuaded him to stop cranking for a moment. Kisley looked it over, inside and out. He felt under it and leaned down to inspect the leg that propped up the heavy instrument. When he was satisfied, he nodded his O.K. and stuffed a dollar into the monkey’s hat. Then he hurried back to Bell and paced alongside him while he described the booby trap in the pressure tunnel.

“How’d you spot it?” Bell’s eyes were flickering like metronomes.

“I’d seen it before . . . But here’s the funny thing, Isaac. It was sloppy work.”

Bell looked at him, sharply. “What do you mean?”

“It could have gone off at any moment. Before the President even got down in the tunnel.”

“But you told me they were masters of dynamite.”

“Either these ones weren’t or they got lazy.”

“Or,” said Bell, “they’re blowing smoke to lull us. Archie found a Springfield rifle in a sniper hide.”

“Just sitting there?” asked Kisley.

“In a closet.”

“I don’t mean to take away from Archie’s investigative talents, but that sounds a little too easy.”

“Archie thought so, too. He didn’t believe the rifle. You don’t believe the booby trap. I don’t believe either. So far all we see is what Branco wants us to see.”

Walter Kisley said, “So what does he not want us to see?”

“I still say he’s going to do it in close. But I still don’t know how.”

“And here comes Teddy. “

Isaac Bell had already spotted the White Steamer creeping through the throng. The auto was wide open, its top down, with President Roosevelt clearly visible in the backseat. The chief of his Secret Service corps was driving. Joe Van Dorn was up front with him, riding shotgun.

Bell broke into a long-legged stride.

“Slow down,” ordered the President. “They’ve been standing hours in the cold waiting to see me. Let them see me.”

The chief exchanged wary glances with Van Dorn.

“Slower, I say!”

The chief shifted the speed lever to low. The White slacked to a walking pace.

Van Dorn loosened the firearm in his shoulder holster for the fourth time since they arrived at Cornwall Landing and the President ordered the top lowered. The only good news—other than knowing he had his top detectives in the case—was the height of the Steamer. The auto rode as high off the ground as a stage coach, which meant that criminals and anarchists intending to jump into the open auto had some climbing to do. Otherwise, the attacker held every advantage: surprise; a mob of people to spring from and melt back into; the automobile’s glacial pace; and the victim’s open heart.

The President was grinning from ear to ear. The car rolled slowly between applauding rows of engineers and contractors’ clerks and machine operators, who poured into the road behind the automobile and followed in the parade the President had demanded. Next were Negro rock drillers, cheering mightily.

“Honk the horn for them, Joe!” TR shouted. “The Spaniards called our colored regiments ‘Smoked Yankees,’ but the Rough Riders found them to be an excellent breed of Yankees covering our flanks.”

Van Dorn stomped on the rubber bulb and the White let loose a gay Auuuugha!

The rock drillers peeled out of their rows and joined the march.

Ahead waited legions of mustachioed, swarthy Italian laborers in brimmed hats. They were quiet, lining the road six deep on either side. But they smiled like they meant it, and Van Dorn had the funny thought that by the time the celebrity President got through with them, he’d convert them all to the Republican Party.

When Roosevelt heard their street organ, his grin doubled and redoubled.

“Do you recognize the tune that organ grinder’s playing?”

“‘You’re all right, Teddy!’” chorused Van Dorn and the Secret Service chief.

“Bully!” shouted the President. His fist beat the time on his knee and he broke into song.

“‘Oh! You are all right, Teddy!

You’re the kind that we remember;

Don’t you worry!

We are with you!

You are all right, Teddy!

And we’ll prove it in November.’

“Stop the auto! I’m going to thank these people personally.”

44

The President jumped down from the White Steamer before it stopped rolling.

Van Dorn and the corps chief flanked him instantly. Too excited to wait to join the end of the parade, the crowd surged at them from both sides.

“Did you see what that monkey’s wearing?”

Van Dorn was trying to look in every direction at once. “What was that, sir?”

“The monkey’s hat!” said Roosevelt. “He’s wearing a Rough Rider’s hat . . . Chief! Fetch that Consul General.”

“I can’t leave your side, sir.”

“Hop to it, man. I need a translator.”

Suddenly, Isaac Bell was there, saying, “I’ll cover.”

“Of course,” whispered Antonio Branco when Isaac Bell materialized in the space vacated by the Secret Service bodyguard. “Where else would you be?”

Then the crowd pushing forward blocked his view of the President. At the same time, it blocked Bell’s view of the elderly Sicilian groom cranking the street organ. With every eye fixed on President Roosevelt, it was all the cover Branco needed. He slipped in front of the old man and took the crank in his right hand and the monkey’s chain in his left. Not a note of music was lost, and a gentle tug of the chain made the animal jump on his shoulder, having learned in just a few days that its kindly new master would reward it with a segment of an orange.

“Step back, both of you,” ordered the President.

“Mr. President, for your safety—”

“You’re too tall. You make me look like a coward. These are hardworking men. They won’t hurt me.”

Roosevelt grasped hands with the nearest laborer. “Hello there. Thank you for building the aqueduct.”

The laborer whipped off his hat, pressed it to his heart, and smiled.

“I know you don’t understand a word I just said, but you