The Chase (34 page)
Authors: Clive Cussler
“They're my responsibility,” he said slowly. “You save yourself.”
“God bless you, Captain.”
Then the tube went silent.
T
HE TORNADO WINDS OF THE CHINOOK WERE THE
most destructive in memory. Barns were flattened, roofs carried away, trees ripped by their roots, and telegraph and telephone lines downed. The full force of the warm winds roared over Flathead Lake and flogged the water into a swirling turbulence that battered the weary old
Kalispell
unmercifully as she wallowed in the valleys between the waves. Already, the lifeboat that Captain Boss had hoped would save lives had been torn from its lashed mounting and shattered, its wreckage swept into the restless water.
Boss struggled with the helm in a desperate attempt to keep the
Kalispell
on a straight course toward the west shoreline, now only two miles away. He nurtured a slim hope that they might reach the safety of the little harbor of Rollins, but, deep inside, he knew the odds were stacked against him and his boat. There was a constant danger the ferry might swing. The engine, tender, and freight car were the straws that would break the camel's back.
Without their weight, the
Kalispell
might have ridden higher in the water and not have suffered as badly from the huge waves that swept across her lowered track deck. Boss looked down at the bow and saw that it was badly damaged. Timbers on the exposed part of the bow were being smashed and torn from their beams.
His clothes and lumberman's coat soaked through to his skin, Boss grimly took one hand off the wheel, held the speaking tube to his mouth, and whistled. There was a lag of nearly thirty seconds before Ragan answered.
“Yes, Captain?”
“How does it look down there?”
“I've got good steam, but the water is still rising.” Ragan's voice was tinged with fear. “It's over my ankles.”
“When it gets to your knees, get out of there,” Boss ordered him.
“Do you still want me to unlash the boat?” Ragan asked anxiously.
“You don't have to bother,” Boss said bitterly. “It's been swept away.”
The fear was noticeably heavier in Ragan's voice now. “What will we do if we have to abandon the boat?”
Boss said flatly, “Pray there's enough loose wreckage that will float that we can hang on to until this storm blows over.”
Boss hung up the speaking tube and gave a mighty heave of the wheel to keep the boat moving against the swell, as a huge wave fell against the left bow of the
Kalispell
and shoved her broadside to the surge. This was what Boss was afraid of. Caught by a huge wave on the side of the hull and unable to recover, the ferry would capsize and then sink like a stone under the weight of the train.
Fighting the ferry around to head into the teeth of the gusts, he stole a glance down at the train and was stunned to see it violently rocking back and forth, as the boat fell into the troughs before being struck by the crests that now swirled around the engine's drive wheels.
Bell took little satisfaction in knowing that if the
Kalispell
sank into the depths of the lake the criminals on the train would die with him.
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I
N THE
locomotive, Hunt and Carr were hanging on to any valve, gauge, or lever within reach to keep from being flung against the boiler and sides of the cab. Abner sat in the fireman's seat, his feet braced against the front panel below the window. He felt no need to keep his gun aimed at the engineer and fireman. Not with everyone fighting to keep from being hurled about and becoming injured. He was no longer their threat. It was the storm around them that was menacing.
The last thing that occurred to Abner was that Hunt and Carr might conspire against him. He had not heard their exchanged muffled words nor seen their discreet hand signs to each other. There was nothing for him to do but stare with great trepidation at the vicious water battering the ferry. The engineer fell from his seat and reeled across the cab, colliding against Abner. The impact momentarily stunned Abner, but he roughly pushed Hunt back to his side of the cab.
Abner did not pay any attention to Carr, as the fireman struggled to shovel coal into the firebox while fighting to keep his balance against the lurching and rolling of the
Kalispell.
Hunt staggered against him again. Irritated, Abner tried to heave the engineer back to his side of the cab. But, this time, Hunt had flung himself on Abner, pinning the big man's arms to his side. Then Hunt fell backward, pulling the startled and angered Abner down to the floor of the cab on top of him.
Galvanized into action, Carr swung his coal scoop over his head and brought it down heavily between Abner's shoulder blades. The ferry plunged into a trough just as Carr swung with whiplash speed, but the scoop missed Abner's head and surely would have cracked his skull if it had connected. To Carr, it felt as though he had struck a fallen log.
It was a vicious blow, a bone-crushing blow, and it would have paralyzed most men and left them unconscious. Not Abner. He gasped, his face twisted in pain, and rolled off Hunt and came to his knees. He reached for his Smith & Wesson and leveled it at Carr. His face was expressionless and his eyes stared unblinkingly as he pulled the trigger. Carr's scoop was poised for another strike, but the fireman froze as the bullet drilled into the center of his chest. The shock threw him against the maze of valves before he slowly sank to his knees and keeled over onto the floor of the cab.
Without the slightest hesitation, Abner swung the muzzle of the revolver toward Hunt and shot the engineer in the stomach. Hunt doubled over, his eyes locked on Abner with cold hatred mixed with pain and shock. He staggered backward, one hand clutching his stomach, the other outstretched. Too late, Abner realized what Hunt had in mind. Before he could react, Hunt had reached out and struck the engine's brass horizontal brake lever, moving it from right to left. In his last act, the dying man swung his arm around the throttle lever, pulling it toward him as he fell dead.
The drive wheels spun and the locomotive lurched forward. Abner, weakened by the crushing blow to his back, was too slow to respond. There was a mist surrounding his vision, and it took a long three seconds to realize the locomotive was forging across the deck of the ferry. Any attempt to stop the inevitable came too late. By the time Abner could push back the throttle, the hundred-thirty-four-ton locomotive began its plunge off the
Kalispell
's bow into the cold depths of Flathead Lake.
A
T FIRST, NO ONE IN
C
ROMWELL'S BOXCAR REALIZED
the train was rolling off the ferry because of the violent motion caused by the waves and wind. Bell quickly distinguished a different movement and sensed the wheels beneath the car were beginning to turn. He threw open the freight door and was met by a blast of wind that staggered him for an instant. But then he lowered his head and leaned out. He took in two macabre sights at once. One, the deck appeared to be moving toward the stern because of the train's forward motion. And, two, the locomotive's front four-wheel truck was rolling off the bow and diving into the surging turbulence below.
Bell spun around. “The train is falling off the boat!” he shouted over the gale. “Quick, jump while you still can!”
Cromwell thought he saw an opportunity and did not immediately consider the disaster-in-the-making. Without a word, he launched himself off the couch and drew his automatic as he leaped. A foolish mistake. Instead of instantly squeezing the trigger and killing Bell, he hesitated to say, “Farewell, Isaac.”
Suddenly, the hand clutching the gun was knocked off to the side and the bullet smashed into the doorframe beside Bell's head.
Margaret stood in front of Cromwell, her dark eyes on fire and her lips pressed tightly together until she spoke. There was no fear, no fright; she stood with her legs firmly planted on the freight car's floor. “Enough, Jacob,” she said.
She had no time to say more. Bell grabbed her by the arm. “Jump!” he urged her. “Quickly!”
Only Bell grasped the inevitable. He glanced out the door again and saw the engine had almost disappeared beneath the waves and the tender and the freight car were moving faster as they were rapidly dragged by the immense weight into the water. The deck was tilted at a sharp angle, and the
Kalispell
was in dire danger of going down with the train. There were only seconds left before the freight car was pulled over the bow.
His face contorted with hate, Cromwell swung the Colt's muzzle toward Bell again, but Margaret stepped between the two men. Cromwell was finally aware of the danger now, his eyes sick in the realization that defeat and death were only moments away. He tried to push Margaret aside so he could leap out the door, but she wrapped her arms around her brother's waist, pulling him back inside the car. He swung the barrel of the gun and struck her across the cheek. Blood seeped, but she clutched him in a death grip he could not shake off.
The freight car's front wheels were irresistibly following the tender off the front of the ferry. Bell tried to yank Margaret out the door, but she was clutching her brother too tightly. The sleeve on her blue sweater tore away and he lost his grip on her arm.
She looked at Bell and her eyes turned soft. “I'm sorry, Isaac.”
He reached out for her but it was too late. Bell was falling through the door.
He twisted violently in midair and crashed to the wooden deck, striking the shoulder opposite his cracked ribs. The impact was still enough to make him gasp in agony. He lay there, watching in horror as Cromwell's freight car was drawn below the surface. A hope flashed through his mind that Margaret might still leap through the door and into the water and be saved. But it was not to be. A seething white wall of water washed over the boxcar and penetrated the interior through the open freight door with a surge that made it impossible for anyone inside to escape. Still hoping against hope, Bell lay on the deck, water swirling around him, staring at the bubbles rising from the depths as the ferry steamed over them. He was still staring at the place where the train sank when it fell far astern, but neither Margaret nor her brother came to the surface.
The bow of the ferry swung up and the hull rose nearly a foot out of the water without the hundreds of tons of deadweight from the train. Almost immediately, to the immense relief of Captain Boss in the wheelhouse, the
Kalispell
's stability increased dramatically and she began to burrow through the waves, her paddle wheels driving her toward the western shore of the lake.
It took Bell nearly ten minutes to struggle across the deck to the door leading to the stairs up to the wheelhouse. When he got to the wheelhouse, looking like the proverbial drowned rat, Boss stared at him in astonishment.
“Well, now, where did you come from?”
“I jumped on deck as you pulled away from the dock in Woods Bay. My name is Bell. I'm an agent with Van Dorn.”
“You were lucky you didn't go down with the others.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “I was lucky.”
“Who were those people?”
“Two were innocent members of the train crew who were held hostage. The other three were wanted for murder and robbery. I was going to arrest them when we reached port.”
“Poor devils. Drownin' isn't a good way to go.”
Bell was deeply marked by guilt and grief. His face was expressionless as he turned his gaze to the waters of the lake. The waves no longer looked deadly and were settling down to a mild chop. The chinook was moving east and the terrible winds had subsided to a stiff breeze.
“No,” he murmured. “Not a good way to go at all.”
APRIL
16, 1950
FLATHEAD LAKE, MONTANA
A
FTER THE COAL TENDER WAS BROUGHT UP AND SET
on the barge behind the big Pacific locomotive, the divers concentrated on running the steel lift cables under the bottom of the freight car and attaching them to a cradle so it could also be raised. Despite the muck and slime, the name
SOUTHERN PACIFIC
was still readable across the sides of the tender.
Late in the afternoon, the director of the salvage operation, Bob Kaufman, paced the deck impatiently, as the divers were lifted from the bottom on a platform that was swung onto the barge. He looked up at the clouds, which were dark but not threatening, and lit a cigar while he waited for the brass helmet to be lifted off the dive master's head.
As soon as it was lifted from the diver's head, Kaufman asked, “How's it look?”
The diver, a balding man in his early forties, nodded. “The cables are secured. You can tell the crane operator he can begin the lift.”
Kaufman waved to the man who operated the big crane that rose skyward from the deck of the salvage barge. “All cables secure!” he shouted. “Lift away!” Then Kaufman turned and spoke to the tall, older, silver-haired man standing next to him on the deck of the barge. “We're ready to raise the freight car, Mr. Bell.”
Isaac Bell nodded. His face was calm, but there was an expression of expectancy. “All right, Mr. Kaufman. Let's see what it looks like after all these years on the bottom of the lake.”
The crane operator engaged the lift levers, tightening the cables as the diesel engine on the crane rose from an idle to a high rpm before flattening out as it strained to hoist the freight car. The operation was not nearly as complex as bringing up the hundred-thirty-four-ton locomotive. Once the car was pulled free from the bottom, the lifting operation went smoothly.
Bell watched with an almost-morbid fascination as the freight car broke the surface of the water and was raised up high before the crane slowly swung it over the barge. Deftly coordinating the controls, the crane operator cautiously lowered the car until it settled onto the deck behind the locomotive and tender.
Gazing at the train, Bell found it hard to visualize in his mind how it looked so many years ago. He walked up to the car and wiped the lake growth away from the serial number that was barely visible through the oozing slime. The number 16455 now became distinct.
Bell looked up at the freight door. It was still as open as when he fell through it so long ago. The interior was dark because the sunlight was diminished by the clouds. Memories flooded back as he recalled that fateful day when the train rolled across the ferry and plummeted to the bottom of the lake. He dreaded what he would find inside.
Kaufman came with the ladder they had used to enter the locomotive's cab and propped it against the open floor of the freight car. “After you, Mr. Bell.”
Bell nodded silently and slowly mounted the ladder until he was standing on the threshold of the boxcar. He stared into the darkness and listened to the water dripping throughout the freight car. He suppressed a shudder. The dampness and the smell of muck and slime seemed to reek of death, hoary and evil and infinitely ghastly.
The once-ornate furnishings and decor of the palatial car now looked like something out of a nightmare. The plush-carpeted floor was covered with sediment decorated with long slender weeds. The intricately carved bar, the leather chairs and couch, the Tiffany lamps overhead, even the paintings on the walls, looked grotesque under their coating of ooze and growth. Small fish that had not escaped as the car came out of the water were flopping on the floor.
As if delaying the inevitable, Bell sloshed through the mud and found the five leather trunks along one wall where he remembered seeing them back in 1906. He pulled a folding knife from his pocket and pried open the rusting and nearly frozen latches on the first trunk. Lifting the lid, he saw that the interior was relatively free of silt. He carefully picked up one of the bundles. The paper currency was soggy but had held its shape and consistency. The printing on the gold certificate bills still appeared distinct and well defined.
Kaufman had joined Bell and stared fascinated at the stacks of bills stuffed in the trunk. “How much do you reckon there is?”
Bell closed the lid and motioned at the other four trunks. “A wild guess? Maybe four or five million.”
“What happens to it?” asked Kaufman with a glint in his eyes.
“Goes back to the bank whose depositors were robbed of their savings.”
“Better not let my crew know about this,” said Kaufman seriously. “They may get it in their heads it's open salvage.”
Bell smiled. “I'm certain the banking commissioners in San Francisco will be most generous in granting a reward to you and your crew.”
Kaufman was satisfied, his gaze sweping through the car. “This must have been one luxurious palace on wheels before it sank. I've never seen a boxcar fixed up like a private Pullman parlor car.”
“No expense was spared,” said Bell, eyeing several bottles of vintage champagne and expensive brandy that were scattered in the sediment on the floor.
Kaufman's expression turned grim as he nodded at two misshapen mounds protruding from the floor. “These the two you were looking for?”
Bell nodded solemnly. “Jacob Cromwell, the infamous Butcher Bandit, and his sister, Margaret.”
“The Butcher Bandit,” Kaufman said softly in awe. “I always thought he'd disappeared.”
“A legend handed down through the years because the money was never recovered.”
The adipose tissue that once stored Cromwell's fat had broken down and his body, like the corpses in the cab of the locomotive, had turned waxlike in saponification. The notorious killer looked less than something that had once been a living human being. It was as though he had melted into an indiscernible lump of brown gelatin. His body was twisted, as if he'd died writhing in terror when tons of water gushed into the freight car as it followed the locomotive down to the bottom of the lake. Bell knew better. Cromwell might have struggled to survive, but he would never have been gripped with terror. No longer was he a menacing figure. His reign of robbery and murder had ended forty-four years ago under the cold waters of Flathead Lake.
He waded through the muck to where Margaret's body lay. Her lustrous hair was fanned out in the silt and tangled with strands from a reedlike weed. The once-lovely face looked like a sculpture an artist had left unfinished. Bell could not help but remember her beauty and vivaciousness the night they met in the elevator of the Brown Palace Hotel.
Kaufman interrupted Bell's thoughts. “His sister?”
Bell nodded. He felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow and remorse. Her final words before he fell from the car came back to haunt him. He could never explain his feelings toward her. There was no endearing love on his part, more a fondness coated with hatred. There was no forgiving her criminal actions in league with her brother. She deserved to die as surely as he did.
“Can't tell from the look of her now,” said Kaufman. “She might have been a beautiful woman.”
“Yes, she was that,” said Bell softly. “A beautiful woman full of life but veiled in evil.” He turned away saddened but his eyes dry of tears.
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S
HORTLY BEFORE
midnight, the salvage barge tied up at the old railroad dock in Rollins. Bell made arrangements with Kaufman to see that the bodies were taken care of by the nearest mortuary and the next of kin of Hunt and Carr notified. He recognized Joseph Van Dorn standing on the dock surrounded by four of his agents and was not surprised to see him.
Van Dorn was in his eighties but stood straight, with a full head of gray hair and eyes that never lost their gleam. Although his two sons now ran the detective agency from offices in Washington, D.C., he still worked out of his old office in Chicago and consulted on the cases that had never been solved.
Bell walked up and shook Van Dorn's hand. “Good to see you, Joseph. It's been a long time.”
Van Dorn smiled broadly. “My work isn't as interesting since you retired.”
“Nothing could stop me from coming back on this case.”
Van Dorn stared at the freight car. Under the dim lights on the dock, it looked like some odious monster from the depths. “Was it there?” he asked.
“The money?”
Bell merely nodded.
“And Cromwell?”
“Both he and his sister, Margaret.”
Van Dorn sighed heavily. “Then at long last it's over. We can write finish to the legend of the Butcher Bandit.”
“Not many of the Cromwell Bank's depositors,” Bell said slowly, “will still be alive to receive their money.”
“No, but their descendants will be notified of their windfall.”
“I promised Kaufman and his crew a fat finder's fee.”
“I'll see that they get it,” Van Dorn promised. He placed a hand on Bell's shoulder. “Nice work, Isaac. A pity we couldn't have found the train fifty years ago.”
“The lake is two hundred seventy feet where the train sank,” explained Bell. “The salvage company that was hired by the San Francisco banking commissioners dragged the lake but couldn't find it back in 1907.”
“How could they have missed it?”
“It had fallen in a depression in the lake bed and the drag lines passed over it.”
Van Dorn turned and nodded toward a car parked by the dock. “I guess you'll be heading home.”
Bell nodded. “My wife is waiting. We'll be driving back to California.”
“San Francisco?”
“I fell in love with the town during the investigation and decided to remain after the earthquake and make my home there. We live in Cromwell's old mansion on Nob Hill.”
Bell left Van Dorn and walked across the dock to the parked car. The blue metallic paint of the 1950 Custom Super 8 convertible Packard gleamed under the dock lights. Although the night air was chilly, the top was down.
A woman was sitting in the driver's seat wearing a stylish hat over hair that was tinted to its original blond. She gazed at him approaching with eyes that were as coralâsea green as when Bell met her. The mirth lines around her eyes were the lines of someone who laughed easily, and the features of her face showed the signs of an enduring beauty.
Bell opened the door and slipped into the seat beside her. She leaned over and kissed him firmly on the lips, pulled back, and gave him a sly smile. “About time you came back.”
“It was a hard day,” he said with a long sigh.
Marion turned the ignition and started the car. “You found what you were looking for?”
“Jacob and Margaret and the money, all there.”
Marion looked out across the black water of the lake. “I wish I could say I'm sorry, but I can't bring myself to feel grief, not knowing about their hideous crimes.”
Bell did not wish to dwell on the Cromwells any longer and changed the subject. “You talk to the kids?”
Marion stepped on the accelerator pedal and steered the car away from the dock toward the main road. “All four this afternoon. Soon as we get home, they're throwing us an anniversary party.”
He patted her on the knee. “You in the mood for driving all night?”
She smiled and kissed his hand. “The sooner we get home, the better.”
They went silent for a time, lost in their thoughts of events long gone. The curtain to the past had come down. Neither of them turned and looked back at the train.