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Bell shook his head. “Maybe he shaved… I always kidded him it made him look old. Say, what color were his eyes?”
“Strange-colored. Like copper, like a snake’s. I found ’em off-putting.”
“I’ll be,” said Bell. “It’s not him.”
“What do you mean?”
“His are blue.”
Bell stood up. “I’m sorry, Mr. Held. The louse tried to trick me into buying a boat I don’t need.”
“But maybe he bought his down in Louisville or New Orleans.”
“Well, if I find out he did, I’ll be back.”
Bell put on his hat and started out the door, feeling a mite guilty for the disappointed look on Held’s face. A funny idea struck him — a scheme that could upend the situation in Pittsburgh and, with any luck, defuse it.
“Mr. Held, I do know some fellows who might like a steamboat.”
“Well, send them to me and I’ll cut you in with a finder’s fee.”
“I couldn’t take a fee among friends. But the trouble is, these fellows don’t have much money.”
“I have a lot sunk into this one.”
“I understand. Would you consider renting it?”
“I might.”
“I’ll tell these fellows about her. Meantime, let me pay you to coal her and get steam up by tomorrow.”
“By tomorrow?”
North Pole light flickered in Isaac Bell’s eyes.
“I’m sure I could, now that I think about it,” said Held. “She’ll be raring to go in the morning.”
Bell paid Court Held for the coal and labor and hopped a trolley back to the business district. He got off at a Western Union office and sent a long telegram to Jim Higgins about the White Lady, recommending that he round up men who had worked on steamboats. Next, he went to East Seventh Street and found the Cincinnati branch office for Thibodeau & Marzen on the ground floor of a first-class building.
He stood outside, reading the gold leaf on the window, while he thought about how Wish Clarke, or Joseph Van Dorn, would pry information about “Smith” from prominent brokers — the leading New York — based broker in Cincinnati, judging by the look of the office — who had every reason not to give it.
He started by presenting a business card from Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock, an old-line New England insurance company. Joseph Van Dorn had made a deal to allow select agents a business disguise in return for discreet investigations of underwriting opportunities and losses incurred. Thibodeau & Marzen’s manager himself was summoned. Behind the broker’s friendly salesman’s smile, Bell detected a serious, no-nonsense executive, a tough nut to crack.
“Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock? Delighted to meet you, Mr. Bell. What brings you all the way from Hartford, Connecticut?”
“The principals have sent me on a scouting expedition.”
“Well, as stockbrokers and insurance firms are potential partners rather than adversaries, I do believe you started scouting in the right place. May I offer a libation in my office?”
They felt each other out over bourbon whiskey, the manager probing for Bell’s status at the venerable Hartford firm, Bell dropping names of school friends’ fathers he had met and men he had read about in Grady Forrer’s newspaper files. Turning down a hospitable refill, he said, “I’ve been asked to look into some bearer bonds that went missing in Chicago.”
“Missing bearer bonds are never a happy story, as whoever possesses them can cash them and whoever lost them can’t. Which, of course, I don’t have to tell a man in the insurance line.”
“Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock would not dream of trying to recover them, or the losses, which as you point out would be impossible. However, we do have a strong interest in the man in whose hands they ended up.”
“If missing bearer bonds
have ended up repeatedly in this man’s hands as you are implying,” the branch manager said drily, “I am not surprised you do.”
