The Striker (Isaac Bell 6)

Bell paid for the guns, dropped the one-shot in his pocket, and put the Army in his shoulder holster. Then, as he started to slide the two-shot up his coat sleeve, he weighed it speculatively in his hand, wondering. Had the amber-eyed provocateur assumed or guessed he had a derringer in his sleeve? Or had he been sharp enough to spot that the sleeve was tailored extra-wide? Or had he just been covering all the places a man might hide a gun?

“I’d like another of these, please. But a lighter one, if you’ve got it.”

“I’ve got a real beaut I made myself. Weighs half that. Fires a .22 long. But it won’t pack quite the punch.”

“Some punch beats no punch,” said Bell. “I’ll take it.”

The gunsmith brought out a miniature two-shot over-under derringer. “Always happy to make a sale,” he said. “But you’re running out of places to put them.”

?

?Can you recommend a good hatmaker?”

* * *

The hatmaker was working late and eager to please the gunsmith, who was a source of clients who paid top dollar for custom-made. At midnight, Bell hurried back to the Cadillac Hotel to check for wires that had come in on the Van Dorn private telegraph.

Grady Forrer, who never seemed to sleep, said, “Excellent chapeau!”

Bell touched the wide brim in salute and looked for telegrams in his box.

Weber and Fields had not reported in, and he could only guess whether they were keeping tabs on the strikers heading for Pittsburgh or holed up in a saloon; he made a mental note to instruct Archie to report to him independently. But two wires had just come in from Chicago, both sent in the money-saving shorthand that the parsimonious Joseph Van Dorn demanded.

Wish Clarke reported,

R LAMING

LIKELY JOB.

In other words, Wish could not find Laurence Rosania in any of his usual haunts to question him about fellow experimenters with shaped explosives, but the detective had caught wind of rumors in the Chicago underworld that a wealthy dowager or an industrialist’s girlfriend was about to be separated from jewelry locked in her safe.

Bell sat up straight when he read the second wire. It was from Claiborne Hancock, who Joseph Van Dorn had coaxed out of early retirement to manage Protective Services.

CLIENT’S SISTER HERE

A LOOKER.

GLAD TO PROTECT TOO.

A looker and glad to equaled four excess words, but Hancock had done Van Dorn a favor and could take liberties.

Bell wired back.

UNTIL I ARRIVE.

24

You’re looking mighty full of yourself,” said James Congdon.

Henry Clay took dead aim at The Kiss and sailed his hat across Congdon’s office. “I have every right to,” he exulted. “Our coalfields’ war is exploding.”

“From what I read in the newspapers, it would be exploding regardless of your expensive efforts to shove a chunk under the corner.”

Clay was not to be denied his victory. His grand joust with Isaac Bell had been deeply satisfying. He had duped, disarmed, and humbled Joseph Van Dorn’s new young champion. Better yet, the fact that Bell had been shadowing Mary Higgins proved that Clay had chosen Mary brilliantly. Bell — or, more likely, Van Dorn — suspected what Clay had already learned from his spies in the union about her derailing a train in Denver. Mary Higgins was a dangerous radical because she was imaginative and supremely capable. That Joe Van Dorn sensed her powers made Clay’s plans for the unionist even more gratifying.

“Don’t believe anything in the newspapers.”

“You promised me we’ll win this war in the newspapers,” Congdon shot back.