The Wrecker

The Wrecker’s linemen practiced the old Civil War tactic of cutting key telegraph wires and reco

In the meantime, he had other uses for disgruntled telegraphers.

His attack on the Southern Pacific in New York had been a disaster. Isaac Bell and his detectives and the railroad police had turned what would have been the final stake in the heart of the Southern Pacific Railroad into near victory. His effort to discredit the Southern Pacific had failed. And after his attack, the Van Dorn Agency had moved swiftly, conspiring with the newspapers to paint the railroad president as a hero.

A bloody accident would turn things around.

The railroads maintained their own telegraph systems to keep the trains moving swiftly and safely. Single-tracked lines, which were still in the majority, were divided into blocks maintained by strict rules of entry. A train given permission to be in a block possessed the right-of-way. Only after it passed through the block, or was sidetracked onto a siding, was another train permitted in the block. Observations that a train had left a block were communicated by telegraph. Orders to pull off onto a siding were sent by telegraph. Acknowledgment of those orders was made by telegraph. That a train was stopped safely on the siding had to be confirmed by telegraph.

But the Wrecker’s telegraphers could intercept orders, stop them, and change them. He had already caused a collision by this method, a rear ender on the Cascades Cutoff that had telescoped a materials train into a work train’s caboose, killing two crewmen.

A bloodier accident would erase Isaac Bell’s “victory.”

And what could be bloodier than two locomotives hauling work trains packed with laborers colliding head-on? When his train to San Francisco stopped in Sacramento, he checked a satchel in the luggage room containing orders and a generous envelope of cash and mailed the ticket to an embittered former union official named Ross Parker.

“GOOD NIGHT, MISS MORGAN.”

“Good night, Mr. Bell. That was a delicious di

“Need help with your door?”

“I have it.”

Five hours after her passengers walked the famous red carpet to board at Grand Central Terminal, the 20th Century Limited was racing across the flatlands of western New York State at eighty miles an hour. A Pullman porter, gaze discreetly averted, shuffled along the narrow corridor outside the staterooms, gathering shoes that the sleeping passengers had left out to be shined.

“Well, good night, then.”

Bell waited for Marion to step into her stateroom and lock the door. Then he opened the door to his stateroom, changed into a silk robe, removed his throwing knife from his boots and put them outside in the corridor. The speed of the train caused ice to tremble musically in a silver bucket. In it was chilling a bottle of Mumm. Bell wrapped the dripping bottle in a linen napkin and held it behind his back.

He heard a soft knock on the interior door and threw it open.

“Yes, Miss Morgan?”

Marion was standing there in a dressing gown, her lustrous hair cascading over her shoulders, her eyes mischievous, her smile radiant.

“Could I possibly borrow a cup of champagne?”

LATER, WHISPERING SIDE BY SIDE as the 20th Century rocketed through the night, Marion asked, “Did you really win a million dollars at poker?”

“Almost. But half of it was my money. ”

“That’s still a half million. What are you going to do with it?”

“I was thinking of buying the Cromwell Mansion.”

“Whatever for?”

“For you.”

Marion stared at him, puzzled and intrigued and wanting to know more.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Isaac. “And you may be right. It might be filled with ghosts. But an old coot I played cards with told me that he always gave his new wife a stick of dynamite to redecorate the house.”

“Dynamite?” She smiled. “Something to consider. I loved the house from the outside. It was the inside I couldn’t stand. It was so cold, like him … Isaac, I felt you flinch before. Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“What’s this?”

She touched a wide yellow bruise on his torso, and Bell recoiled despite himself.

“Just a couple of ribs.”

“Broken?”

“No, no, no … Just cracked.”

“What happened?”

“Bumped into a couple of prizefighters in Wyoming.”

“How do you have time to pick fights when you’re hunting the Wrecker?”

“He paid them.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. Then she smiled. “A bloody nose? Doesn’t that mean you’re getting close?”

“You remember. Yes, it was the best news I’d had in a week … Mr. Van Dorn thinks we’ve got him on the run.”

“But you don’t?”

“We’ve got He

“Have you been practicing your dueling?” she asked only half jesting.

“I got a session in every day in New York,” Bell told her. “My old fencing master hooked me up with a naval officer who was very good. Brilliant fencer. Trained in France.”

“Did you beat him?”

Bell smiled and poured more champagne into her glass. “Let’s just say that Lieutenant Ash brought out the best in me.”

JAMES DASHWOOD FILLED HIS notebook with a list of the blacksmiths, stables, auto garages, and machine shops he visited with the lumberjack sketch. The list had just topped a hundred. Discouraged, and weary of hearing about Broncho Billy Anderson, he telegraphed Mr. Bell to report that he had canvassed every town, village, and hamlet in Los Angeles County, from Glendale in the north to Mon tebello in the east to Huntington Park in the south. No blacksmith, mechanic, or machinist had recognized the picture, much less admitted to fashioning a hook out of an anchor.

“Go west, young man,” Isaac Bell wired back. “Don’t stop ‘til your hat floats.”

Which brought him late the next afternoon by Red Train trolley to Santa Monica on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. He wasted a few minutes, uncharacteristically, walking out on the Venice Pier to smell the salt water and watch girls bathing in the low surf. Two in bright costumes had their legs bared almost to their knees. They ran to a blanket they had spread next to a lifeboat that was on the beach ready to be rolled from the sand to the water. Dashwood noticed another lifeboat a half mile down the beach poised in the distant haze. Each surely had an anchor under its canvas. He berated himself for not thinking of Santa Monica sooner, squared his scrawny shoulders, and hurried into town.

The first place he walked into was typical of the many livery stables he had visited. It was a sprawling wooden structure big enough to shelter a variety of buggies and wagons for rent, with stalls for numerous horses, and a new mechanic’s section with wrenches, grease guns, and a chain hoist for motor repairs. A bunch of men were sitting around jawing: stablemen, grooms, auto mechanics, and a brawny blacksmith. By now, he had seen enough to know all these types and was no longer intimidated.

“Horse or car, kid?” one of them yelled.

“Horseshoes,” said James.

“There’s the blacksmith. You’re up, Jim.”