The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

“I’m sorry about my little outburst last night,” Brewster muttered. He focused his attention on lacing his boots. “I get these wild ideas sometimes. Don’t know where they come from, but it feels like I have to say it out loud or it’ll only get worse in my head.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Bell said, checking Hall’s eyes. They were reacting normally to light. “We’re all feeling the pressure. You most of all, since this is your crew.”

Brewster shook his head dismissively. “Some leader I am. Four men dead, one injured, a traitor living among us for months.”

Bell said, “You succeeded, Brewster. Keep that in mind.”

The miner just looked at Bell, his face wrinkled beyond its years, sunken and sallow, and framed by long gray hair as wispy as spider’s silk. There were stains on his chin from him coughing up blood in his sleep.

There was no sign of the innkeeper or his wife. Bell let himself into the kitchen to see what he could rustle up. He heard the back door open and guessed Charlie was heading out back to check on the trucks the way he’d checked on the draft animals back at the mine in Russia. On the table was a local newspaper.

Bell picked it up to see if there was news about the train theft. It was splashed across the front page, with details about the dead men found on the train and a description of the men and trucks that left the factory outside of Glasgow. Below the article was a separate box with a plea to the public to help apprehend the thieves and a telephone number to call with information. A reward was offered.

Bell’s heart slammed into his ribs. That’s why the hotel was quiet. The police were on their way. The innkeeper had read the article and called the number and was told to vacate the premises because the renegades were dangerous. He fought the stab of panic and read the newspaper’s plea for information again. Something bothered him. He read it a third time. It didn’t mention the police specifically or who posted the reward. The telephone listing meant nothing to him. Just numbers preceded by a three-letter exchange.

Then he saw it. The exchange was the same as he’d used the night before to speak with Joel Wallace’s assistant, Miss Bryer. The exchange was for London, not Glasgow or Aberdeen.

“Fellas, get moving!” he bellowed, and raced for the telephone. He got an operator and had her put the call through. It was Saturday so there were free lines. After a moment of clicks and hisses, a male voice answered.

“Allô?”

Bell smashed down the earpiece so hard that its cord whipsaw-danced. The English hello and the French allô sounded close enough that many bilingual speakers never bothered to translate the word. They just pronounced it as they always had. Like the man who’d answered the phone just did. Bell would bet anything that call went straight to the French Embassy, near Hyde Park.

Bell was fully expecting to encounter Foster Gly again, but he had to admit Gly was craftier than just about anybody he’d ever faced. He’d placed an advertisement in the paper and had it look like it was from the police when in actuality it was a direct line to agents acting on behalf of the Société des Mines. He’d had all the previous day to set this in motion, and Bell was certain the ad ran in other cites as well. Foster Gly had turned the entire nation into his own private spy network with just a few inches of ad space. Even as he felt disaster descending, Bell had to acknowledge his own grudging respect for the strategy.

He rushed for the back door, meeting Walter and Warry as they came down the stairs. With Joshua Brewster close behind, they ran out into the backyard. The morning was cool and still, with just a few clouds in an otherwise blue sky. The industrial pall of Newcastle was still some miles to the south.

Charlie Widney had just reached the doors of the distant barn and didn’t hear Bell’s shouted warning. Nor did he hear the roar of the Leyland truck’s motor just before it slammed into the doors from the inside. Charlie was struck first by the swinging door and went flying back some feet, landing heavily on the hard-packed earth and lying there quite still. The driver could have swerved at that moment and maybe given him a fighting chance, but he deliberately ran over the prone miner. The truck’s narrow tires and heavy load made sure the pressure across Charlie’s body crushed his internal organs.

Bell roared incoherently at the senseless murder and ran doubly hard. He gestured to the others to head for the barn to prevent the second truck from being stolen. Pushing himself as fast as he could go, Bell couldn’t cut an angle to reach the truck before it was past him without risking the driver running him down as well. The vehicle shot the alley between the inn and the neighboring building with Bell in pursuit.

The Leyland had to go wide as it turned onto the unpaved street and brushed up against a parked delivery wagon. The mild impact barely slowed the vehicle, but the two draft horses yoked in the traces reared, their hooves pawing the air, their neighs like the screams of frightened children.

Bell made up some ground, as the driver had to work the gears, but he knew it wasn’t going to be close. Once the truck came up to speed, the road was open enough to outpace him easily. Half the byzanium would be gone, and if the miners failed to prevent Gly’s men from stealing the other truck, then the whole mission was for naught.

To the uninitiated, the contraption parked in front of a store just down the block resembled a long, robustly built bicycle with an engine slung on its frame. To Bell, it looked like the fastest Thoroughbred he’d ever ride. It was a Norton 16H, a nearly 500cc single cylinder motorcycle that Bell had read was about to take the race world by storm. The engine was running, while the rider was down on his knees adjusting something on the motor.

Bell was astride the bike and had the clutch popped by the time the owner knew anything was amiss and was down the street fifty feet before the man got to his feet. The truck had gained some more distance, but when Bell cranked back on the throttle, the Norton came alive between his legs. He had to slit his eyes against the wind, while his hair was blown flat across his skull.

In seconds, he’d cut the distance to the truck. The problem was, the man in the p

assenger’s seat had heard the motorcycle in pursuit and alerted the driver that they were being followed. Bell didn’t recognize either of them from the dockyard fight. Gly had brought in more muscle from Paris. His supply of heavies seemed limitless.

When Bell tried to pull up alongside, the driver would swerved into his path, forcing him to ease off the Norton’s accelerator to avoid being crushed beneath the lorry’s wood-spoked wheels. Three times he tried it and three times he was beaten back, the third sending him on a wobbly trajectory that almost forced him to crash into a sanitation wagon used by workers to clean manure from the streets.

Bell was well aware their antics were likely to attract attention. He had to end this quickly, and reached behind his back for the .45, hoping he could place an accurate shot. Before he tugged it free, he saw another opportunity. A tip wagon drawn by oxen was on the side of the street, lowered so its trailing edge was on the ground and the rest of it elevated in a perfect ramp. Next to it, some workers had just unloaded a dozen fat, oak-staved barrels.

The angle and timing had to be perfect, but Bell had confidence in his machine and his abilities to ride it. It was similar to the Indian cycle he enjoyed back home. He came up almost to the rear bumper of the truck. In anticipation, the driver swerved to the left to block him. It put the Leyland exactly where Bell wanted it. Bell peeled away farther to the left so that he was approaching the trailer at a diagonal and he cranked the throttle.

The front wheel rattled the rig, but the oxen that had dragged it there remained motionless and kept it from sliding forward. The Norton rocketed up the ramp and off the edge at close to forty miles per hour. The bed of the Leyland was under the bike as it came back down to earth. The bike slammed into the crates of ore, slicing its drive belt, which ripped free like a snapped whip. Bell was jolted by the Norton’s stiff suspension but kept enough control so that he had the bike stopped before it rammed into the back of the truck’s cab.

Moving fast, he let the motorcycle spill onto the bed and stepped up over the side of the truck and around to the passenger’s side of the cab. There was no door, so he merely reached in, grabbed a handful of the co-driver’s jacket, and heaved him from the moving vehicle. The man tumbled across the dirt road like a stringless marionette and lay there, not moving.

The driver reacted fast, swerving the big lorry in an attempt to make Bell fall from the truck. Bell clung tightly to the truck as his legs swayed out into space for a moment. As soon as they came back and he could plant his boots on the running board, he pulled the Colt and shot the driver in the left shoulder. A bloody mist filled the cab for an instant. Bell lunged at the driver, punching him twice where the bullet had impacted and reaching across to the low, windowless door beyond. He levered it open and shoved the injured driver to the road. The lorry kept right on going as Bell seamlessly took control. He eased off on the speed and took the next corner.

The village didn’t have Manhattan’s easily negotiated north-south grid, but it didn’t take him long to make his way back to the inn. The second truck was in the courtyard outside the barn, three surviving Coloradans sitting grimly in its bed, and the fourth, Vernon Hall, still unconscious, under a blanket. Bell jockeyed his truck around in the tight space until the nose was pointed back out to the street beyond their Tudor-style accommodations.

“The thieves?” Bell asked.