The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

Dashwood’s heart soared. This was the blac

ksmith who had fashioned the hook that had derailed the Coast Line Limited. This man had seen the Wrecker.

“Who are you?” asked the blacksmith.

“Van Dorn investigator,” James answered proudly. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, and the blacksmith was running full tilt down an alley.

“Stop!” Dashwood yelled, jumped to his feet, and gave chase. The blacksmith ran fast for a big man and was surprisingly agile, whipping around corners as if he were on rails, losing no speed in his mad turns and jinks, up and down alleys, through backyards, tearing through laundry hung from clotheslines, around woodsheds, toolsheds, and gardens and onto a street. But he hadn’t the stamina of a man just out of boyhood who neither smoked nor drank. Once they were out in the open, Dashwood gained on him for several blocks. “Stop!” he kept shouting, but no one on the sidewalks was inclined to get in the path of such a big man. Nor was there a constable or watchman in sight.

He caught up in front of a Presbyterian church on a tree-lined street. Grouped on the sidewalk were three middle-aged men in suits, the minister in a dog collar, the choirmaster gripping a sheaf of music, and the deacon holding the congregation’s account books under his arm. The blacksmith barreled past them, with James hot on his tail.

“Stop!”

Only a yard behind, James Dashwood launched himself into a flying tackle. As he flew, he took a heel on the chin, but he still managed to close his skinny arms around the blacksmith’s ankles. They crashed to the sidewalk, rolled onto a lawn, and scrambled to their feet. James clung to the blacksmith’s arm, which was as thick as the young detective’s thigh.

“Now that you caught him,” called the deacon, “what are you going to do with him?”

The answer came from the blacksmith himself in the form of a wide fist ribbed with thick knuckles. When James Dashwood came to, he was lying on the grass, with the three men in suits peering down curiously at him.

“Where’d he go?” said James.

“He ran off.”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere he wanted to, I’d reckon. Are you all right, sonny?”

James Dashwood rose swaying to his feet and wiped the blood off his face with a handkerchief his mother had given him when he moved to San Francisco to work for the Van Dorn Detective Agency.

“Did any of you recognize that man?”

“I believe he’s a blacksmith,” said the choirmaster.

“Where does he live?”

“Don’t know,” he answered, and the minister said, “Why don’t you let be whatever got between you, son? Before you get hurt.”

Dashwood staggered back to the livery stable. The blacksmith was not there.

“Why’d Jim run off?” a mechanic asked.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“He’s been acting strange, lately,” said a stable hand.

“Stopped drinking,” said another.

“That’ll do it,” said a groom, laughing.

“The church ladies claim another victim. Poor Jim. Getting so a man’s not safe on the streets when the Women’s Christian Temperance Union holds a meeting.”

With that, grooms, stable hands, and mechanics broke into a song that James had never heard but they all seemed to know:Here’s to a temperance supper,

With water in glasses tall,

And coffee and tea to end with-

And me not there at all!