The Wrecker

The cops stormed off, blowing whistles for assistance. Bell stumbled up the steps just as Marion came down. “Are you all right?” they chorused.

“I’m fine,” she said, and shouted to a conductor ru

She helped Bell into the car. Preston Whiteway was leaning on her door, blocking it.

“Say, what’s going on?” he asked.

“Preston!” said Marion Morgan. “Get out of our way before I pick up that gun and shoot you.”

The newspaper publisher shambled off, scratching his head. Marion helped Bell into her stateroom and onto the bed.

“Towels,” muttered Bell. “Before I make a mess of your sheets.”

“How badly hurt are you, Isaac?”

“I think I’m O.K. He only got my arm, thanks to you.”

By the time the doctor came from the Southern Pacific’s hospital car, the railroad police had reported to Bell that the man who had shot him had disappeared in the dark.

“Keep looking,” Bell said. “I’m pretty sure I winged him. In fact, I think I shot his ear off.”

“You sure did! We found a chunk of it. And a trail of blood right to the edge of the lights. But not enough to kill him, unfortunately.”

“Find him! His name is Philip Dow. There’s ten thousand dollars on his head. I want to know if he is working for the Wrecker.”

The Southern Pacific Company doctor was a rough-and-ready sort used to the puncture and crush wounds encountered in railroad building. Bell was relieved that he was singularly unimpressed by the bloody furrow that Dow’s .45 caliber slug had plowed through his flesh and muscle. The doctor washed it thoroughly with water. Then he held up a bottle of carbolic acid. “This is going to hurt.”

“Blood poisoning will hurt more,” Bell said, gritting his teeth. There was cloth in the wound. “Pour it on.”

After the doctor dosed it with the fiery disinfectant, he dressed it. “You may want to rest it in a sling for a couple of days. But the bone’s all right. Bet it hurts like the blazes.”

“Yes,” Bell said, gri

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that.”

The doctor took a hypodermic needle from his leather bag and started to draw a clear fluid into the barrel.

“What’s that?” asked Bell.

“Morphine hydrochloride. You won’t feel a thing.”

“No thanks, Doc. I need a clear head.”

“Suit yourself,” said the doctor. “I’ll change that dressing tomorrow. Good night. Good night, ma‘am.”

Marion shut the door behind him.

“Clear head? Isaac, you’ve been shot. You’re white as a ghost. The pain must be awful. Can’t you take the rest of the night off?”

“I intend to,” said Bell, reaching for her with his good arm. “That’s why I want a clear head.”

40

“Father, dear father, come home with me now,“ sang the Ventura County Temperance Glee Club, sixty voices strong.

James Dashwood craned his neck, hoping to spot slope-shouldered blacksmith Jim Higgins, who had run when he showed him the sketch of the Wrecker. Isaac Bell was betting that Higgins had taken the abstinence pledge at a temperance meeting. This meeting, in the beet-farming town of Oxnard, filled a tent big enough to hold a circus.

Dashwood had attended six such meetings already, enough to know the ropes. Nimbly, he dodged the smiling mothers who nudged their daughters in his direction. Men were outnumbered by women whenever the pledge of abstinence was sought. Few were young as he, or as clean and neatly turned out. More typical was the prospector sitting next to him, in a patched coat and floppy hat, who looked like he’d come to get out of the rain.

The singers finally finished. Ushers rigged a powerful acetylene-lit magic lantern. Its long lens shined a circle of light on a screen on the other side of the tent. All eyes watched the circle. Some sort of show was about to commence.

The next speaker was a fiery Methodist.

“The rank and file of the red-nosed corps scorn us as Utopians!” he thundered. “But to proclaim that there ought to be no place in the world for intoxicating drink does not make us Utopians. We are not conducting a dangerous experiment. Practicing personal abstinence is no new thing. The danger comes with trying to live with drink.”

He gestured toward the magic lantern.

“With the aid of a powerful microscope and this magic lantern, I will now demonstrate that to imbibe distilled spirit is to drink poison. When you drink intoxicating liquor, you poison your mind. You poison your family. You poison your own body. Watch the screen, ladies and gentlemen. Under the enlarging powers of this microscope, I place this glass of pure natural water drawn from the well of the church down the road and project it on the screen.”

Greatly magnified, the well water was alive with swimming microbes.

He held up an eyedropper, inserted it down the neck of a bottle of Squirrel whiskey, and drew brown liquid into it.

“I now place a single drop of whiskey in the water. Only one, single drop.”

The magnified drop of whiskey struck like mud fouling a pond. A brown cloud spread through the water. Microbes fled, swimming frantically toward the edges of the glass. But there was no escape. Writhing, shriveling, they fell still and died. The prospector seated beside Dashwood shuddered.

“Look at all them slimy varmints,” he said. “Last time I’ll drink water that don’t have whiskey in it.”

Dashwood spied a big man in a dark coat near the front of the gathering and hurried after him.

“Who will come forward,” the speaker called. “Who will sign the certificate of abstinence and pledge never to drink?”

When he got closer, Dashwood saw that the man in the dark coat was not Jim Higgins. But by then Dashwood was within reach of the speaker’s assistants, comely young ladies, who descended upon him flourishing Waterman fountain pens and blank certificates.

“Two MORE WIRES, MR. BELL,” said J. J. Meadows. “How’s the arm this morning?”

“Tip-top.”

The first wire addressed Bell’s question about Senator Charles Kincaid’s early departure from the Military Academy at West Point. Van Dorn’s Washington, D.C., office, which had informal access to United States Army records, reported that Kincaid had withdrawn voluntarily to pursue his studies at the University of West Virginia. They had unearthed no hint of impropriety and no record of dismissal. The operative ventured the opinion that the quality of civil engineering schools had risen above that of the military, which was, before the Civil War, the only learning ground for engineers.

Bell was more intrigued by the second message, which contained new information about Franklin Mowery’s assistant, Eric Soares. Deeper digging revealed that Soares had run away from the Kansas City orphanage that Mowery supported. Soares had surfaced after a couple of years in a reform school. Mowery had taken personal responsibility for him, hired tutors to fill the gaps in his schooling, and then put him through engineering college at Cornell. Which explained, Bell thought, the uncle-and-favorite-nephew relationship they shared.

Bell called on the old man in the afternoon, when Soares was down at the river conducting his daily inspection of the work on the bridge piers. Mowery’s office was a converted stateroom on He

“I thought you’d be in the hospital. You’re not even wearing a sling.”

“The sling hurt more than no sling.”

“Did they catch the fellow who shot you?”

“Not yet… Mr. Mowery, may I ask you a few questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m sure that you can imagine how wide-ranging our investigation is. So please forgive me if I appear to get personal.”

“Shoot, Mr. Bell. We’re on the same side. I’m building it. You’re making sure that criminal doesn’t knock it down.”