“Of the railroad?” asked Archie. “Or the United States?”
“The United States. He told me he’s having a secret meeting with California businessmen who want him to run if Teddy Roosevelt doesn’t stand again next year.”
“If it’s secret, why did he tell you?” asked Archie.
“That’s what I was wondering. Only a complete fool would blab that about.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Good question, Archie. Funny thing is, he said nothing about William Howard Taft.”
“That’s like not mentioning the elephant in the drawing room. If Roosevelt doesn’t choose to run for a third term, then Secretary of War Taft will be the good friend he designates to replace him. No wonder Kincaid wants it secret. He’ll be challenging his own party.”
“Yet another reason not to confide in me,” said Isaac Bell. “What is he up to?”
Across the boxes, Lillian Hennessy asked, “What did you think of Mr. Abbott, Charles?”
“The Abbotts are among the oldest families in New York, except for the Dutch, and they’ve got plenty of Dutch roots under their family tree. Too bad they lost all their money in the Panic of ‘93,” Kincaid added with a big smile.
“He told me that straight off,” said Lillian. “It doesn’t seem to trouble him.”
“It would certainly trouble the father of any young woman he proposed to,” Kincaid needled her.
“And what do you think of Isaac Bell?” Lillian needled back. “Archie told me you and Isaac played cards. I noticed you two deep in conversation in the lobby.”
Kincaid kept smiling, deeply pleased by his conversation with Bell. If the detective was getting suspicious, then pretending that he was one of the many senators who dreamed of becoming president of the United States had to be a convincing demonstration that he was not a train wrecker. If Bell investigated further, he would discover that there were California businessmen, Preston Whiteway first among them, who were shopping for their own candidate for president. And Senator Charles Kincaid topped their list, having encouraged and manipulated the mercurial San Francisco newspaper magnate to believe that the Hero Engineer he had helped make a senator would serve him in the White House.
“What were you talking about?” Lillian persisted.
Kincaid’s smile turned cruel.
“Bell is engaged to be married. He told me he was buying a mansion for his intended… the lucky girl.”
Was there sadness in her face or was it merely the houselights dimming for Act Two?
“JERSEY CITY DEAD AHEAD, chink boy!” yelled the mate “Big Ben” Weitzman, whom Captain Yatkows
ki had put aboard Lillian I to steer after they threw the steam lighter’s crew in the river. “Shake a leg down there.”
Wong Lee kept working at his own pace, treating twenty-five tons of dynamite with the respect it deserved. Decades of pressing shirts with heavy irons had thickened his hands. His fingers were not so nimble anymore.
He had one detonator left over when he was done and he slipped it in his pocket, maintaining old habits of frugality. Then he reached for the double electric wire that he had strung from the bow of the boat into the hold where the boxes of dynamite were stacked. He had already exposed two inches of its copper core by stripping off the insulation. He connected one wire to one leg of the first detonator. He reached for the second wire and stopped.
“Weitzman! Are you up there?”
“What?”
“Check that the switch at the bow is still open.”
“It’s open. I already checked.”
“If it is not open, we will explode when I touch these wires.”
“Wait! Hold on. I’ll check again.”
Weitzman slipped a loop of rope around the wheel spoke to hold the lighter on course and hurried to the bow, cursing the cold rain. Yatkowski had given him a cylinder flashlight and in its flickering beam he saw that the jaws of the switch the Chinaman had rigged to the tip of the bow were open and would stay open until the bow crashed into the powder pier. The impact would close the jaws, completing the electric connection between the battery and the detonators, and blow up twenty-five tons of dynamite. That, in turn, would set off a hundred tons more on the powder pier, which would make it the biggest explosion New York had ever heard.
Weitzman hurried back to the wheel and shouted down the hatch. “It’s open. Like I told you.”