The Striker (Isaac Bell 6)

“It will kill you, too.”

“I’ll be unscathed. The jet holes are calculated to deliver just enough for you.”

“O.K.,” said Clay, “you caught me flat-footed. If you throw that lever, I’m dead.”

“Painfully dead.”

“Painfully dead.”

Hand firmly on the lever, James Congdon recognized a certain unique quality in Henry Clay: If the fellow felt fear, Congdon could not see it. In fact, it appeared that if Clay had one strength above all others, it was the strength to recognize the inevitable and accept it without complaint. A controlling interest in such a man could be a solid investment.

“If I were to give you unlimited operating funds, private information, rail passes, and specials, how would you use them?”

“The details are mine alone to know.”

Congdon frowned. “You’re a brave man to stand your ground in your precarious situation. Or a fool.”

“A determined man,” Clay shot back. “The only thing you can count on in this world is determination. I’m offering determination. I repeat: The details are mine alone to know.”

“Assume, for the moment, that tactics are up to you,” Congdon conceded. “What is your strategy?”

“You need a story to destroy the unions. The newspapers are already on your side. They will tell your story. I will give you your story.”

“What story?”

“The owners upon whom God has seen fit to bestow property will protect property and liberty from murderous agitators.”

“How will you tell it?”

“By starting a war in the coalfields.”

“How?”

“Are you familiar with the accident at Gleason Mine No. 1?”

“Runaway coal train, some hands killed, and production interrupted for four days. Are you telling me you started that?”

“And finished it. Before the miners returned to work, they burned down Gleason’s jail and the courthouse. I’d call that a war.”

“I’d call it a good beginning,” Congdon conceded. “A veritable Harry O’Hagan one-man triple play.”

“A quadruple play, counting the fire.”

“Yes indeed you outdid O’Hagan. But I am deeply disappointed.”

“Why, sir?”

James Congdon answered with a wistful sigh. “My lunatic stopper will have to wait for another lunatic.”

He let go the steam lever and gestured for Henry Clay to take a seat beside him.

12

Crackerjack army Mr. Van Dorn gave you, kid: two spavined geezers and an amiable drunk.”

Isaac Bell defended his friend. “Wish goes long stretches when he never touches a drop.”

Wally Kisley, who looked less like a private detective than an aging harness salesman in a sack suit patterned bright as a checkerboard, grinned at his old partner, ice-eyed Mack Fulton. Fulton, somber in gray and black, looked the deadly sort that no sensible man would inquire about his business.