“And more private,” said Bell.
“Yes, the advantages of a private closed wire include economy, quickness of dispatch, and privacy.”
“Did he send a reply?”
“It was brief. An acknowledgment, I presume, but it, too, was in cipher.”
Bell asked another question to which he knew the answer. “Are ciphers unusual?”
“Not among brokers. It’s only sensible to conceal buy and sell orders just in case the telegrapher violates his oath of privacy.”
“What do you make of it?”
“He is a friend of the firm, shall I put it? A special customer. Of the New York firm, I mean. I don’t know him from Adam. But he knows someone in New York.”
Isaac Bell stood up and offered his hand. “I appreciate your candor.” What was it the manager had said earlier? The firm extends certain courtesies… Perhaps sometimes more than we should.“May I ask you one more thing?”
“Go ahead.”
“I am curious why.”
“Why what?”
“What made you candid?”
The manager straightened his shoulders. “Mark Twain says that he intends to move back to Cincinnati on Judgment Day because we’re twenty years behind the times. Fine with me. I’m old-fashioned. I don’t like stock traders who can afford private wires getting a jump on the fellow who has to use the public wire. And Thibodeau & Marzen didn’t used to be the sort of outfit that liked them either.”
Bell stopped at Western Union on his way to meet Kenny Bloom at the Queen City Club and wired a telegram to Grady Forrer:
RESEARCH PRINCIPALS THIBODEAU & MARZEN.
He doubted very much that Henry Clay was communicating on private wires to get a jump on a stock sale as the Cincinnati branch manager suspected. Instead of fraudulent profits, a business with branches scattered around the continent could offer direct private communication with someone in their New York office. In the case of Smith, Claggart, and Henry Clay, Isaac Bell bet that someone was the man who gave the provocateur his orders.
He found Court Held at the Queen City Club bar. The shipyard heir greeted him like an old friend and invited him and Kenny to stay for dinner. Kenny, who was on his fourth whiskey, looked like he thought that was a good idea, but Bell reminded the coal-and-railroad heir that having raced to Cincinnati to meet with his Ohio bankers, he should be racing home, which was why he had taken his father’s special in the first place.
“We better eat on the train.”
“Pittsburgh in one hour,” announced the Bloom Special’s conductor as they neared the Ohio border for the run across West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle.
“Why so long?” Kenny demanded. He had fallen asleep on the couch in the office — sitting room car and sat up, rubbing his temples.
“Sorry, Mr. Bloom, we have to stop for water outside Steubenville.”
“Why outside? Jeez, my head is aching. Can’t we just go straight?”
“As I mentioned earlier, the dispatcher had to shunt us around Steubenville for a mail train. We didn’t lose more than ten minutes.”
“But now we have to stop for water.”
“Or don’t stop and blow up the locomotive,” said Bell, and Kenny laughed. “All right, all right. Just get us there.”
The train slowed and stopped by a dark water siding.
The conductor, who was doubling as brakeman, jumped down to the tracks to throw the switch. His name was Bill Kux, and he’d been hankering after a job on the New York Central’s 20th Century Limited — or, better yet, way out west on the Overland Limited — and this Cincinnati trip with Old Man Bloom’s spoiled brat had pretty much made up his mind.
Kux threw the switch. The engineer backed the special onto the water siding. The fireman climbed up on the locomotive and jerked a chain that pulled the waterspout down to the engine. The engineer climbed down from the cab to stretch his legs. Kux said, “You’ll make all our lives easier if you can make up some time.”
The engineer swore he would do his damnedest. The fireman climbed down. Kux turned to run back to the switch and found himself staring into the twin maws of a twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun. Gasps behind Kux told him that the engineer and fireman were peering down gun barrels, too.
“This way, boys, right behind the water tower.” There were three of them with bandannas pulled over their noses. They had brought iron manacles, which they clamped around the train crew’s wrists and ankles. The fireman got the big idea to resist, which earned him a gun-butt to the head.
Conductor Kux was not entirely displeased to imagine Bloom Jr. being relieved of his watch, cuff links, stickpin, and billfold. But from what he had seen of Bloom’s friend Isaac Bell, the robbery would likely turn into a bloody shoot-out, so he tried to dissuade them.
“If you’re fixing to rob my passengers, there’s only two of ’em, you damned fools. You stopped a special.”
“We ain’t robbing your passengers. We’re robbing your train.”
“Kenny?” asked Isaac Bell as the train started rolling again. “Do you know Thibodeau & Marzen in New York?”
“The brokers.”
“Right. What do you know about them?”
“I think Dad used them once or—”
The train jerked, and he spilled whiskey over his shirt. “Dammit to hell. I will fire that engineer.”
“He’s displayed a fine smooth hand up to now,” said Bell. “I wonder what’s got into him?”
Kenny Bloom dabbed his shirt with a napkin. “Overpaid son of a bitch has probably been drinking.” The train picked up speed.
“What do you know about Thibodeau & Marzen?” Bell asked again.
“Old-fashioned old codgers.”
“Are they honest?”
Kenny dabbed his shirt some more, then poured another glass. He gestured with the bottle. Bell shook his head.
“Are they honest?”
“Honest as the day is long. Frankly, I don’t know how they survive on Wall Street.”
Bell looked at their reflections in the night-blackened glass. Lights in a farmhouse raced by. Old and honest? Had Clay and his boss somehow tapped secretly into Thibodeau & Marzen’s private system?
“We’re making time at last,” said Kenny. “Running fast and hitting the curves hard. Maybe I won’t fire him after all.”
“What? Oh yes.”
The train was highballing through the night, although the rate of speed was not that apparent. Their car was coupled between a stateroom car, which rode directly behind the tender, and the diner car at the back of the train. Thus anchored, it did not sway much, while thick insulating felt between the paneling and the outer walls muffled wind and track noise. Bell was surprised, as they passed a small-town train depot, how fast its lights whipped by.
A sudden chatter broke the silence.
Kenny darted to the telegraph key. They had picked up a message by grasshopper telegraphy, the signal relayed to the speeding train from the telegraph wires that paralleled the tracks through an Edison-patented electrostatic induction system. Fluent since boyhood in the Morse alphabet, Kenny cocked his ear and wrote furiously, then carried what he had written to Bell, his expression grave. Bell, who had listened intently, knew why.
“For you,” said Kenny.
“I told the boys I’d be on your train.”
He read it, his brow furrowing.
“Looks bad,” said Kenny.
“Hellish,” said Isaac Bell.
REGRET TOWBOAT CAMILLA EXPLOSION. CAPTAIN DIED.
REGRET UNION HALL FIRE.
BODYGUARDS FRIED.
ENJOY YOUR RIDE.
TRIPLE PLAY.
43
“Enjoy your ride?’” asked Kenny Bloom. “What the hell kind of joke is that supposed to be?”
“A vicious joke,” said Bell, mourning Captain Jennings, murdered for helping the marchers, and Mike Flannery and Terry Fein, whom he had sent into action over their heads.