The Chase

The first solid clue, provided by a scrawny young boy, wasn’t exactly a breakthrough, but it was a start, thought Bell. He felt pleased with himself for the discovery and began to daydream of the day he confronted the bandit and identified him by the missing finger.

THE CHASE QUICKENS

11

MARCH 4, 1906 SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

THE MAN WHOSE LAST ALIAS HAD BEEN RUSKIN stood in front of an ornate brass sink and stared into a large oval mirror as he shaved with a straight razor. When finished, he rinsed off his face and patted on an expensive French cologne. He then reached out and clutched the sink as his railroad boxcar came to an abrupt stop.

He stepped up to a latched window, disguised from the outside as if it were a section of the wooden wall of the car, cautiously cracked it, and peered outside. A steam switch engine had pushed ten freight cars uncoupled from the train, including the O’Brian Furniture car, through the Southern Pacific Railroad’s huge terminal building, called the Oakland Mole. It consisted of a massive pier built on pilings, masonry, and rock laid in the San Francisco Bay itself, on the west side of the city of Oakland. The slip where the ferryboats entered and tied up was at the west end of the main building, between twin towers. The towers were ma

Because the Oakland Mole was at the end of the transcontinental railway, it was filled twenty-four hours a day with a mixed crowd of people, coming from the east and heading across the continent in the opposite direction. Passenger trains commingled with freight trains that carried goods and merchandise. It was a busy place in 1906, since business was booming in the sister cities of the bay. San Francisco was a thriving commercial center while much of the actual goods were manufactured in Oakland.

Ruskin checked a schedule and saw that his cleverly disguised mode of secret travel was on board the San Gabriel, a Southern Pacific Railroad ferry built to haul freight trains as well as passengers. She was a classic ferry, double-ended, her stern and bow surmounted with a pilothouse on each end. She was propelled with side paddle wheels powered by two walking-beam steam engines, each with its own smokestack. Ferries carrying trains had parallel tracks on the main deck for the freight cars, while the cabin deck housed the passengers. The San Gabriel was two hundred ninety-eight feet long, seventy-eight feet wide, and could carry five hundred passengers and twenty railroad cars.

The San Gabriel was to arrive at the Townsend and Third Streets Southern Pacific terminus, where the passengers would disembark. Then it would move on to Pier 32 at Townsend and King Streets, where its cargo of railroad cars would be taken to the city railyard between Third and Seventh Streets. There, the O’Brian Furniture Company car would be switched to the siding of a warehouse the bandit owned in the city’s industrial section.

Ruskin had ridden on the San Gabriel many times on his trips across the bay and looked forward to returning home after his venture in Salt Lake City. A great whoop echoed around the Mole from the boat’s steam whistle as it a

Ruskin quickly finished dressing in an exactingly tailored conservative black business suit. A small yellow rose went in the buttonhole. He sat a derby hat on his head at a rakish angle and pulled a pair of suede gloves over his hands. He picked up his cane.

Then he bent down and gripped the handle to the trapdoor in the floor of the freight car and swung it open. He dropped a large, heavy suitcase through the opening. Then he slowly lowered himself to the deck between the rails, careful not to soil his clothes. Hunched down under the car, he made certain none of the crew were within view as he moved away and straightened up.

Ruskin was headed up a stairway to the cabin deck where the passengers rode when, halfway up, he met a crewman coming down. The crewman stopped and nodded at him, a serious expression on his face.

“Are you aware, sir, that passengers are not allowed on the main deck?”

“Yes, I’m aware.” The bandit smiled. “I realized my mistake, and, as you see, I was turning around to return to the cabin deck.”

“Sorry to have troubled you, sir.”

“Not at all. It’s your duty.”

The bandit proceeded up the stairs and stepped into the ornate, highly decorated cabin deck where the passengers crossed the bay in style. He went into the restaurant and ordered a cup of tea at the stand-up bar, then walked outside onto the open forward deck and sipped as he watched the buildings of San Francisco grow larger across the bay.

The City by the Bay was already becoming a fascinating, romantic, cosmopolitan city. It had risen in stature since 1900, establishing itself as the financial and merchandising hub of the West. It was built on the foresight of entrepreneurs much like the meticulously dressed man standing on the deck with the huge suitcase. He, like they, saw an opportunity and moved quickly to seize it.

Not one for niceties, Ruskin finished his tea and then threw the cup overboard, not returning it to the restaurant. He idly watched a thick flight of sandpipers fly past the boat, followed by a trio of brown pelicans gliding inches above the water in search of small fish. Then, mingling with the throng, he moved down the forward stairway to the main deck, where the passengers disembarked the ferry onto the pier in front of the big, ornate, Spanish-style Southern Pacific terminus.

He walked briskly through the interior cavern of the terminus, lugging the big suitcase, and through the doors on the Townsend Street side. For the next few minutes, he stood on the sidewalk and waited. He smiled as a white Mercedes Simplex runabout rolled up the street and came to a tire-skidding halt at the curb in front of him. Under the hood was a massive four-cylinder, sixty-horsepower engine that could move the car as fast as eighty miles an hour. It was a marvelous contrivance of steel, brass, wood, leather, and rubber. Driving it was sheer adventure.

If the car produced a striking picture, so did the woman behind the steering wheel. She was svelte and wasp-waisted. Her red hair was adorned with a large red bow that matched her fiery hair. Her bo

“Hello, brother. You’re an hour and a half late.”

“Greetings, sister.” He paused to grin. “I could only go as fast as the engineer drove the train.”

She offered him her cheek and he dutifully kissed it. She inhaled the smell of him. He always used the French cologne she had given him. It smelled like a sea of flowers after a light evening rain. If he hadn’t been her sibling, she might have had a love affair with him.

“I assume your trip was successful.”

“Yes,” he said, strapping the suitcase on the ru

She pushed a laced-up brown leather shoe against the clutch and shifted expertly, as the car leaped down the street like a lion chasing a zebra. “It took two days for you to get here. Don’t you think you’re cutting it close? They would have contacted law enforcement officials and hired private agents, prodding them to check all the banks in the country for a stolen bank draft worth a fortune.”