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“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?” He
“Speed is wonderful,” Bell interrupted. “Here’s why …”
That He
“Sixty years ago, a group of pioneer families calling themselves the Do
“What the devil do ca
Isaac Bell gri
Osgood He
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 tu
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” He
“And one railway police detective crushed to death in the pioneer tu
“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 He
“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 tu
“Toward Eureka!” He
“Kevin Butler will be confessing to the devil, sir. His body was found beside Detective Clarke’s in the pioneer tu
A telegraph key rattled in the next room. Lillian He
He
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 i
“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 schools that Father hired Mrs. Comden to complete my education.”
Bell smiled back. “How can you still have time for French and German and the piano when you’re your father’s private secretary?”
“I’ve outgrown my tutor.”
“And yet Mrs. Comden remains … ?”
Lillian responded coolly. “If you have eyes, Mr. Detective, you might notice that Father is very fond of our ‘family friend.”’
He
“I was just saying that I’ve heard it said that Mrs. He
“Lillian didn’t get that face from my side of the family. How much money are you paid to be a detective, Mr. Bell?”
“The top end of the going rate.”
“Then I have no doubt you understand that as the father of an i
“My grandfather Isaiah Bell.”
Osgood He
“My father is a banker. I am a detective.”
“My father never met a banker in his life. He was a section hand, pounding spikes. You’re talking to a shirtsleeve railroader, Bell. I started out like he did, spiking rails to ties. I’ve carried my di
“What my father is trying to say,” said Lillian, “is that he rose from pounding iron spikes in the hot sun to driving ceremonial gold spikes under a parasol.”
“Don’t mock me, young lady.” He
“This is where we’re headed, Mr. Bell, the Cascade Canyon Bridge. I hauled a top-hand engineer, Franklin Mowery, out of retirement to build me the finest railroad bridge west of the Mississippi, and Mowery’s almost finished. To save time, I built it ahead of the expansion by routing work trains on an abandoned timber track that snakes up from the Nevada desert.” He pointed at the map. “When we hole through here-Tu