“Only in conversation,” replied Bell. “Mr. Van Dorn has kept me busy on other cases.”
“What do you actually know about the crimes?”
“Only that the robber murders anyone in the bank during the act, escapes like a spirit, and leaves no evidence behind that might incriminate him.”
“Anything else?” Danzler probed.
“Whoever he is,” answered Bell, “he is very, very good. There have been no leads and no breaks in the investigation.” He paused and stared at Van Dorn. “Is that why I’ve been called here?”
Van Dorn nodded. “I want you to take over the case as chief investigator.”
Bell threw down a card, picked up the card that Danzler dealt, and slipped it in the fan, which he held in his left hand.
“Are you a lefty, Mr. Bell?” asked Danzler out of curiosity.
“No. Actually, I’m right-handed.”
Van Dorn laughed softly. “Isaac can draw the derringer he hides in his hat, cock it, and pull the trigger faster than you can blink.”
Danzler’s respect for Bell grew during the conversation. He drew back his coat and revealed a 1903 Colt .38 caliber hammerless automatic. “I’ll take Joe’s word for it, but it would be interesting to put it to the test—” Danzler had not finished the sentence when he found himself staring into the twin muzzles of a derringer.
“Age has slowed you, Henry,” said Van Dorn. “Either that or your mind wandered.”
“I have to admit, he is very fast,” Danzler said, visibly impressed.
“What office will I work out of?” Bell asked Van Dorn as he slipped the derringer back in his hat, where it fit in a small pocket inside the crown.
“The crimes have occurred from Placerville, California, in the west, to Terlingua, Texas, to the east,” replied Van Dorn. “And from Bisbee, Arizona, in the south, to Bozeman, Montana, in the north. I think it best if you operated in the center.”
“That would be Denver.”
Van Dorn nodded. “As you know, we have an office there with six experienced agents.”
“I’ve worked with two of them three years ago,” said Bell. “Curtis and Irvine are good men.”
“Yes, I forgot,” Van Dorn said, now recalling. “I might add, Colonel, that Isaac was responsible for the apprehension of Jack Ketchum, who was later hung for two murders committed during a train robbery.” He paused and reached under the table and produced an identical valise to the one Bell had carried into the gambling salon. Bell then passed his empty valise to Van Dorn. “Inside, you will find the reports on all the crimes. Every lead so far has led up a blind alley.”
“When do I start?”
“At the next landing, which is Clarksville, you will depart and take the first train to Independence. From there, you will be given a ticket on the Union Pacific express to Denver. You can digest and study what little clues and evidence we’ve gathered. Once you arrive, you’ll take up the hunt for the murdering scum.” A look of anger and frustration clouded Van Dorn’s brown eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t give you a chance to pack when you left Chicago, but I wanted you to start as soon as possible.”
“Not to worry, sir,” Bell said with a faint smile. “Fortunately, I packed two suitcases for the duration.”
Van Dorn’s eyebrows raised. “You knew?”
“Let’s say I made an educated guess.”
“Keep us informed on your manhunt,” said Danzler. “If you need any help from the government, I’ll do all in my power to assist you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Bell acknowledged. “I’ll be in contact as soon as I get a firm grip on the situation.”
Van Dorn said, “I’ll be working in our Chicago office. Since transcontinental telephone service has yet to run from St. Louis across the prairie to Denver and beyond to California, you’ll have to telegraph me on your progress.”
“If any,” Danzler muttered sarcastically. “You’re up against the best criminal brain this country has ever known.”
“I promise I won’t rest until I capture the man responsible for these hideous crimes.”
“I wish you good luck,” Van Dorn said sincerely.
“Not to change the subject,” Danzler spoke with satisfaction as he laid his card hand on the green felt, “I have three queens.”
Van Dorn shrugged and threw his cards on the table. “Beats me.”
“And you, Mr. Bell?” said Danzler with a crafty grin.
Isaac Bell slowly laid his cards on the table one by one. “A straight flush,” he said matter-of-factly. Then, without another word, he rose and walked briskly from the salon.
3
LATE IN THE MORNING, A MAN DROVE AN OLD WAGON, hitched to a pair of mules, past the cemetery outside the town of Rhyolite, Nevada. The graves had simple wooden fences around them, with the names of the deceased carved on markers made of wood. Many were children who had died of typhoid or cholera, aggravated by the hard family life of a mining town.
The July heat in the Mojave Desert was unbearable under the direct rays of the sun. The driver of the wagon sat beneath a tattered umbrella attached to the seat. Black hair fell past his neck but just short of the shoulders. His head was protected by a stained Mexican sombrero. His unseen eyes peered through the stained-blue glass of spectacles, and a handkerchief wrapped the lower half of his face, to keep out the dust raised by the mules’ hooves. The manner in which he was hunched over made it difficult, if not impossible, to determine his build.
As he rode by, he stared with interest at a house a miner had built using thousands of cast-off saloon beer bottles embedded in adobe mud. The bottoms of the bottles faced outward with the mouths facing in, the green glass casting the interior in an eerie sort of light.
He came to the railroad tracks and drove the mules along the road next to them. The tops of the rails gleamed like narrow twin mirrors in the blinding sun. These were the tracks of the Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad, which wound through the middle of the residential district of the town.
The wagon rolled slowly past more than eighty railcars on a siding. They had been unloaded of their incoming freight. The empty cars were now being filled with outgoing ore for the mills. The driver took a brief glance at a boxcar being coupled to a thirty-car train. The lettering on the side said O’BRIAN FURNITURE COMPANY, DENVER. He glanced at the dial of his cheap pocket watch—he carried nothing that might help identify him—and noted that the train was not scheduled to leave for Las Vegas for another forty-four minutes.
A quarter of a mile later, he came to the Rhyolite train station. The substantial building was a mixture of Gothic and early Spanish styles. The ornate depot had been built of stone, cut and hauled from Las Vegas. A passenger train that had steamed in from San Francisco sat alongside the station platform. The passengers had disembarked, and the seats cleaned by porters, and the train was now filling with people heading back toward the coast.