The Thief (Isaac Bell 5)

“What are you doing?”

“Soon as I’m out the door, lock it. Let no one in, not even the conductor.”

Bell stepped into the pitch-black corridor and shut the door behind him. As far as he could see, the corridor was empty. He could hear people shouting in their staterooms. They sounded more confused than frightened. Train wreck was never far from any traveler’s mind, but the Limited’s stop, while sudden, had not ended in the splintered wood, twisted metal, smashed bones, and burning flesh that got their names among the dead and injured in tomorrow’s newspapers.

Bell stood still with his back pressed against the door. His eyes adjusted to the dark in seconds. The corridor was still empty. He could see the shapes of the windows on the opposite side of the narrow corridor outlined by the starlight that bathed the high-desert floor. Outside in the starlit dark he saw a flicker of motion. Were his eyes playing tricks or did he see horses clumped close together, a hundred yards from the train? It was too far and too dark to see if they were saddled, but wild animals so near the thundering derailment would have stampeded to the far side of the mountains by now. These were horses with men.

Bell saw a flashlight at the head end of the car and, in its flickering back glow, the snow-white uniform of the Pullman porter, Edward, roused from a nap in his pantry. Bell closed one eye to protect his night vision. He sensed motion behind Edward. Before he could shout a warning, the porter crumpled silently to the floor. His flashlight fell beside him, arcing its beam along the corridor toward Bell.

A stateroom door flew open, and a fat man in pajamas stepped out, shouting, “Porter!”

More doors banged open. Passengers stumbled into the dark corridor, and Bell realized that the Acrobat’s plan had suddenly gone wrong. He saw the shadowy figure who had knocked down the porter move oddly, thrusting one arm out and folding the other across his face.

Bell smelled a familiar scent and covered his eyes. He heard a champagne cork pop. A blaze of intensely white light flooded the corridor. Blinded, the passengers fell back into their staterooms, crying out in fear and dismay.

No one stood between the Acrobat and Clyde Lynds’s door except Isaac Bell.

Bell had remembered from his circus days the peculiar odor of flash cotton. The clowns loved the gag of igniting cloth impregnated with nitrocellulose to shoot fire from their fingertips, and he had recognized its smell in time to avoid being blinded.

He charged into the dark straight at the starlit simian shape of the Acrobat.

“I can’t see!” cried the fat man, stumbling back into the corridor. The tall detective slam

med into the fat man. Both lost their footing, and the pair went down in a tangle. Bell somersaulted off and rolled to his feet. The fat man grabbed his ankle in a surprisingly strong grip.

Bell wrenched himself loose and ran to the head of the car and through the vestibules into the next car. At the far end, flame from the spirit stove for brewing tea in that car’s porter’s closet illuminated a broad-shouldered, long-armed silhouette running past. That porter, too, lay on the floor, either out cold or dead. The tall detective raised his gun and did not waste time ordering the Acrobat to stop.

Bell aimed for his legs and squeezed the trigger.

Just as the weapon’s firing pin descended on the rim of the cartridge, detonating the charge within, Isaac Bell jerked the gun upward with all his might. A woman in a dressing gown that glowed white in the starlight had stepped out of her stateroom. She screamed and Bell saw her sleeping cap fly from her head.

“Are you all right?” an aghast Isaac Bell cried. This was his nightmare: an innocent had stepped into his line of fire. He ran to her, feeling his way along the row of stateroom doors. Then he felt a stinging sensation in his hand — wooden splinters his bullet had gouged from her door — and he realized with enormous relief that no woman shot in the head could keep screaming that loudly. He confirmed that she was unhurt, guided her gently back to her berth, then charged after the Acrobat.

* * *

Unlike Isaac Bell, the German was not slowed by confused and frightened passengers blundering out of their staterooms yelling for porters and demanding explanations. He smashed through them, knocking bodies to the floor and shattering glass as he pushed others through the windows. The derailment had extinguished the lights, so no one could see him — although at the moment his own wife would not recognize his face, so contorted was it by rage. Twice now Isaac Bell had upended an intricately planned and precisely executed operation.

He ran toward the head of the train, and when he reached the mail car whose couplers had parted, he jumped to the ballast and ran past the express cars and the tender. He heard Isaac Bell pound after him. Seizing a golden opportunity to put a stop to Bell’s interference once and for all, the German climbed the side of the helper locomotive.

Out of nowhere, a brakeman grabbed his ankle.

The German laid him flat with a kick so powerful the man’s neck broke. But the impact caused him to lose his own balance. He started to fall backwards. Reacting coolly, with a cat’s economy of motion, he flipped his left hand forward. Launched from the gauntlet buckled to his wrist, the weighted end of the wire he had used to strangle the express messenger whirled around a handrail.

24

Isaac Bell saw the acrobat jump onto the cylinder rod that connected the piston to the drive wheels of the helper engine, and he saw the shadow of a trainman who tried to stop him fall to the ground. For a second, Bell thought the Acrobat himself was falling off. Instead, his arm shot up in a peculiar overhead motion. Suddenly he appeared to fly from the connecting rod up past the wheel fender to a handrail above it. He gripped the rail and flipped backwards. The simian silhouette blurred the stars atop the big helper engine, and then he was gone, disappearing like smoke.

Bell scrambled after him. The locomotive was festooned with handholds and steps so workmen could reach every part that had to be oiled, greased, cleaned, and adjusted. The fender above the Pacific’s seven-foot-high drive wheels formed a ledge alongside the boiler. He jumped onto the connecting rod, hauled himself on the ledge, stood up, and reached for the handrail. Only after he had locked both hands on it and was clenching his arms to pull himself up did he see the shadow of a boot cannonballing at his face. The Acrobat had not fled, but was waiting on top.

Bell whipped his head back and sideways, as if slipping a punch.

The boot whizzed past his ear and smashed into his shoulder. The Acrobat wore boots with india rubber soles and heels, Bell realized. A kick that hard with leather soles would have shattered bone.

The impact threw him off the locomotive. He fell backwards, tucking into a ball to protect his head. Tucking, twisting, he fought to regain his equilibrium in the air. If he could somehow land on the steeply angled side of the track bed instead of the flat top, he might survive the fall. The star-speckled sky spun circles like a black-and-white kaleidoscope. The dark ground rushed at his face. He hit the lip between flat and slope and skidded down the slope into a dry ditch.

Bell sprawled there, the stars still spinning. He heard a drumming noise, like hoofbeats. He wondered if he had cracked his skull again. But he hadn’t. His head, in fact, was about the only part of him that wasn’t going to hurt for a week. Scrambling to his feet, ignoring sharp pains in his shoulders and both knees, he heard the sound fade in the distance. Hoofbeats, of course. He had seen horses in starlight. And horses were the fastest way out of rough country.

He climbed up the embankment and came face-to-face with Clyde Lynds.