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Bell had already noticed the wheelbarrows lined up and covered with canvas.
“What’s in those barrows?”
“Rifles, ammunition, and dynamite.”
Wondering whether he had led the Van Dorn Detective Agency into a shooting war, Bell asked, “Sure you need explosives?”
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“Sure we won’t get caught short.”
“I’ll come for you when we’ve got the last of your people loaded.”
Back at the river Bell found the loading going slowly. When Camilla finally swung her barges away from the bank and started down the Monongahela, and Captain Jennings’s son maneuvered the second fleet alongside, the tall detective opened his pocket watch. At the rate this was going, they would be lucky to land the last tow at Amalgamated before the morning fog lifted ten hours from then.
37
Henry Clay spotted a junior stockbroker waiting under a light where the Vulcan King landed for coal in Wheeling, West Virginia. He recognized the type employed by Midwestern branch offices of the brokerage that Judge Congdon controlled with his secret interest. Hair short and combed, suit pressed, collar freshly starched despite the late hour, smile hopeful, the young man was hungry to please anyone from New York headquarters.
“Mr. Claggart?” he asked, his eyes wide at the spectacle of the biggest steamboat he had ever seen hulking over the wharf, broad as a steel mill and twice as black.
“You from the office?”
Gone was Clay’s Southern banker costume and his drawl. He was brusque — his dark frock coat as severe as the freshly painted Vulcan King, his costly homburg fixed at a sober angle — a valuable man obliged to journey from the great city to direct enterprises too lofty to be trusted to ordinary mortals.
“Telegram for you, sir. On the private wire.”
The young fellow handed him an envelope and emphasized its importance with a breathless, “It’s in cipher.”
“Cipher means private,” snapped Clay. “Private means don’t shout about it in a public place.”
It was nearly midnight. The wharf was remote, chosen for its distance from the public wharf, and deserted except for Vulcan King’s firemen wheeling fresh coal up the steamboat’s landing stage. The junior broker stammered apologies.
“Lesson learned,” was Clay’s magnanimous reply. “Wait over there until I give you an answer to wire back.”
He sent the broker scurrying with a cold nod and moved under the light, slit open the envelope, and immediately began grinding his teeth. Inside the envelope was the standard printed company message blank:
Form A-14
Private Wire Telegram Received
Thibodeau & Marzen, Brokers
Wheeling, West Virginia Office
In the space after The following message received at Time: they had written “8:48 pm.”
After By telegraph from: they had written “New York.”
And, incredibly, after To: they had written “John Claggart” in letters big enough to advertise a circus.
“Young man!”
“Sir?”
He beckoned him close and muttered grimly, “Inform your office that if fate ever drags me back to Wheeling not to use your standard form for my private wires but enter the cipher on a blank sheet with no names attached.”
He had gone through this at every branch office, even Chicago, where they should know better. The only reason none of the morons had written “Judge James Congdon” after from was that no one knew that Congdon owned Thibodeau & Marzen.
