“Mauretania?” asked Bell.
“We love the Maury. Gobbles coal like it’s going out of style, and you could set your watch by her: six thousand tons every two weeks.”
“Is Lampack’s barge going back to the Mauretania?”
“Nope, she’s full up. Ought to be sailing just about now.”
Bell nudged Eddie Tobin, and the two detectives ran out on the coaling pier, climbed the incline under the shadows of the dumper, and looked down. “I don’t see no trimmer,” said Eddie.
“What’s that in the corner?”
“Just some coal stuck there.”
Bell ran to the steel ladder affixed to the girders
“Look out, you idiot!” yelled the workman who manipulated the levers that tipped the cars and aimed the dumper nozzle.
“Tell him to wait,” Bell shouted.
Eddie jumped to the controller’s shack. “Hold on a sec.”
“I got fifty barges waiting. I’m not stopping for that fool.”
Eddie opened his coat. The operator saw the checkered grip of a Smith & Wesson and said, “Think I’ll go have a smoke.”
Bell slid thirty feet down the ladder and landed on the pier beside the barge. Eddie was right. It was a heap of coal jammed in the corner of the barge. The breeze swooped down and blew grit. Cloth shimmied. Bell dropped into the barge and scattered coal with his hands. The trimmer lay under it, with the red ring of Semmler’s garrote around his throat.
“Mr. Bell!”
Bell looked up. Eddie Tobin had climbed to the top of the dumper, where he could see over the low buildings of Tottenville that blocked their view of the harbor.
“Mauretania! She’s coming out the Narrows.”
48
The thunder of the liner’s whistle — a stentorian warning that she would stop for nothing — carried for miles. Isaac Bell heard it as he ran to the dock where Darbee had tied his oyster boat.
Seeing him coming, the old man fired up his engine and cast off his lines.
“Who’s chasing you?”
“Can you catch up with the Mauretania?”
The oyster boat soared away, trailing white smoke. They rounded the point and there she was, the largest and fastest ship in the world, emerging from the Narrows, six miles away, steaming down the Lower Bay, billowing smoke from the forward three of her four tall red-and-black stacks. Darbee steered a course to intercept the giant at the mouth of the harbor where the channel passed close to Sandy Hook.
&nbs
p; “Is little Eddie O.K?” he asked over the roar of his motor.
“He’s fine. No time to wait. Can you catch the ship?”
“I can probably catch her, but what do I do with her when I do?”
“Put me aboard.”
“Can’t. Pilot door’s much higher than you can reach from my deck.”
“I’ll throw a line.”