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

happen to love trains,” Bell said, mildly. “But railwaymen don’t exaggerate when they say that the tiny steel flange that holds the wheel on the track is ‘One inch between here and eternity.”’

Hennessy pounded the table. “These murdering radicals are blinded by hate! Can’t they see that railway speed is God’s gift to every man and woman alive? America is huge! Bigger than squabbling Europe. Wider than divided China. Railroads unite us. How would people get around without our trains? Stagecoaches? Who would carry their crops to market? Oxen? Mules? A single one of my locomotives hauls more freight than all the Conestoga wagons that ever crossed the Great Plains—Mr. Bell, do you know what a Thomas Flyer is?”

“Of course. A Thomas Flyer is a four-cylinder, sixty-horsepower Model 35 Thomas automobile built in Buffalo. It is my hope that the Thomas Company will win the New York to Paris Race next year.”

“Why do you think they named an automobile after a railroad train?” Hennessy bellowed. “Speed! A flyer is a crack railroad train famous for speed! And—”

“Speed is wonderful,” Bell interrupted. “Here’s why ...”

That Hennessy used this section of his private car as his office was evinced by the chart pulls suspended from the polished-wood ceiling. The tall, flaxen-haired detective chose from their brass labels and unrolled a railroad map that represented the lines of California, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, and Washington. He pointed to the mountainous border between northern California and Nevada.

“Sixty years ago, a group of pioneer families calling themselves the Donner Party attempted to cross these mountains by wagon train. They were heading for San Francisco, but early snow blocked the pass they had chosen through the Sierra Nevada. The Donner Party was trapped all winter. They ran out of food. Those who did not starve to death survived by eating the bodies of those who died.”

“What the devil do cannibalistic pioneers have to do with my railroad?”

Isaac Bell grinned. “Today, thanks to your railroad, if you get hungry in the Donner Pass it’s only a four-hour train ride to San Francisco’s excellent restaurants.”

Osgood Hennessy’s stern face did not allow for much difference between scowls and smiles, but he did concede to Joseph Van Dorn, “You win, Joe. Go ahead, Bell. Speak your piece.”

Bell indicated the map. “In the past three weeks, you’ve had suspicious derailments here at Redding, here at Roseville and at Dunsmuir, and the tunnel collapse, which prompted you to call on Mr. Van Dorn.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” Hennessy snapped. “Four track layers and a locomotive engineer dead. Ten off the job with broken limbs. Construction delayed eight days.”

“And one railway police detective crushed to death in the pioneer tunnel.”

“What? Oh yes. I forgot. One of my cinder dicks.”

“His name was Clarke. Aloysius Clarke. His friends called him Wish.”

“We knew the man,” Joseph Van Dorn explained. “He used to work for my agency. Crackerjack detective. But he had his troubles.”

Bell looked each person in the face, and in a clear voice spoke the highest compliment paid in the West. “Wish Clarke was a man to ride the river with.”

Then he said to Hennessy, “I stopped in hobo jungles on my way here. Outside Crescent City on the Siskiyou line”—he pointed on the map at the north coast of California—“I caught wind of a radical or an anarchist the hobos call the Wrecker.”

“A radical! Just like I said.”

“The hobos know little about him, but they fear him. Men who join his cause are not seen again. From what I have gleaned so far, he may have recruited an accomplice for the tunnel job. A young agitator, a miner named Kevin Butler, was seen hopping a freight train south from Crescent City.”

“Toward Eureka!” Hennessy broke in. “From Santa Rosa, he cut up to Redding and Weed and onto the Cascades Cutoff. Like I’ve been saying all along. Labor radicals, foreigners, anarchists. Did this agitator confess his crime?”

“Kevin Butler will be confessing to the devil, sir. His body was found beside Detective Clarke’s in the pioneer tunnel. However, nothing in his background indicates the ability to carry out such an attack by himself. The Wrecker, as he is called, is still at large.”

A telegraph key rattled in the next room. Lillian Hennessy cocked her ear. When the noise stopped, the telegrapher hurried in with his transcription. Bell noticed that Lillian did not bother to read what was written on the paper, as she said to her father, “From Redding. Collision north of Weed. A workmen’s train fouled a signal. A materials train following didn’t know the freight was in the section and plowed into the back of it. The caboose telescoped into a freight car. Two train crew killed.”

Hennessy leaped to his feet, red faced. “No sabotage? Fouled a signal, my eye. Those trains were bound for the Cascades Cutoff. Which means another delay.”

Joseph Van Dorn stepped forward to calm the apoplectic railroad president.

Bell moved closer to Lillian.

“You know the Morse alphabet?” he asked quietly.

“You’re observant, Mr. Bell. I’ve traveled with my father since I was a little girl. He’s never far from a telegraph key.”

Bell reconsidered the young woman. Perhaps Lillian was more than the spoiled, headstrong only child she appeared to be. She could be a font of valuable information about her father’s inner circle. “Who is that lady who just joined us?”

“Emma Comden is a family friend. She tutored me in French and German and tried very hard to improve my behavior”—Lillian blinked long lashes over her pale blue eyes and added—“at the piano.”

Emma Comden wore a snug dress with a proper round collar and an elegant brooch at her throat. She was very much Lillian’s opposite, rounded where the younger woman was slim, eyes a deep brown, almost black, hair dark, lustrous chestnut with a glint of red, constrained in a French twist.

“Do you mean you were educated at home so you could help your father?”

“I mean that I was kicked out of so many eastern finishing