The Chase

  “Let’s just say we’ll have to finish the race on fumes.”

  Bell nodded without answering.

  The grinding strain had taken its toll on him. After hours of twisting the big steering wheel in a thousand gyrations to turn the stiff linkage to the front wheels, his arms felt numb, as if they were no longer a part of his body. His ankles and knees also ached from constant clutch, accelerator, and brake pedal action. And both his hands were blistered inside his leather driving gloves. Yet Bell drove at full throttle the last few miles, forcing the Locomobile to leap toward the final destination like a bear sprinting after an elk.

  The Locomobile was badly worn down, too. The knobby tread on the Michelin tires was nearly shredded, the wheels were wobbling from the beating they had endured, the faithful engine was beginning to emit strange noises, and steam was billowing from the radiator cap. Still, the magnificent machine pushed on.

  “I wonder what’s in Cromwell’s mind,” said Bell. “He’s too late to commit robbery today. The bank is closed until tomorrow morning.”

  “This is Friday,” answered Bronson. “The banks in San Diego stay open until nine o’clock in the evening.”

  They were sprinting down India Street, parallel to the railroad tracks, with the depot no more than a mile away, when Bell flicked his eyes from the road for an instant and glanced in the direction of a train with only one car that was slowing to a halt.

  The locomotive pulling the private Pullman car came to a stop on a siding four tracks over from the street. Smoke lazily rose from its stack as the engineer vented steam from exhaust tubes. The fireman had climbed on top of the tender, preparing to take on water from a large wooden tank. With the growing darkness, lights blinked on in the Pullman car, which was now parked a mile away from the depot and the city’s downtown.

  Bell knew immediately that this had to be Cromwell’s private train.

  He did not hesitate. He spun the wheel hard left and sent the Locomobile bouncing wildly across the railroad tracks. By the time he had bounded over three tracks, he had blown all four of the badly worn tires and rolled the rest of the way up to the train on the rims of the wheels, showering sparks like meteors as they smashed against the steel rails.

  Bronson said nothing. He had been frozen in confused shock, until he saw the train and realized what Bell had up his sleeve. Excitement grew to elation at knowing that, after their five-hundred-mile daredevil drive, they had finally come within spitting distance of their goal.

  Bell slammed the Locomobile to a stop across the tracks in front of the locomotive. Its momentum finally spent, the battered automobile sat forlornly with its overheated engine crackling, its radiator hissing steam, and the smell of shredded tires. Its mad and wild chase had come to a fitting climax in front of the quarry it had pursued through the backwoods of hell.

  “We may be jumping the gun,” said Bronson. “He hasn’t attempted to rob the bank yet. We can’t arrest him without a crime.”

  “Maybe. But on the drive down here from San Francisco, I had much to think about. Better we take Cromwell now, before he has time to act. If he sees through our trap again, we’re lost. I’ll worry about gathering enough evidence to convict him later. Besides, he’s not on home ground. He can’t call in expensive attorneys to get him out on bond.”

  Bell was well aware that no one had had the time to exit the train during the few minutes since it had come to a standstill. He climbed from the automobile and walked unsteadily toward the Pullman car, the aches and pain and weariness slowly falling away. He halted abruptly, and slipped between the Pullman and the coal tender, as two stewards wrestled a motorcycle from the car to the ground beside the track.

  He waited patiently for a few minutes until a man dressed in the uniform of a railroad conductor stepped from the Pullman car and threw one leg over the seat of the motorcycle that Bell recognized as a Harley-Davidson. The man’s back was to Bell as Bell stepped silently alongside the Pullman car and stopped only when he was no more than five feet behind the man, who was leaning down to open the fuel valve to the carburetor in preparation for starting the engine.

  “The Harley is a good machine,” Bell said calmly, “but I prefer the Indian.”

  The man on the motorcycle froze at the sound of the familiar voice. He slowly turned and saw an apparition standing behind him. Eerie illumination fell from overhead electric lights along the railroad siding. The figure wore a short leather coat over jodhpurs and boots that looked like they had been dragged through a swamp. A pair of goggles was pushed back on his head, revealing strands of blond hair coated in dried mud. But there was no mistaking the face, the piercing eyes, and the begrimed mustache that covered the upper lip.

  “You!”

  “Not very original,” Bell said cynically. “But since I used the same expression at the bank in Telluride, I won’t criticize.”

  A silence came over the two men that seemed to last a lifetime, but it was only the few seconds that it took Cromwell to see that the apparition really was Isaac Bell. Cromwell just stood there in growing disbelief, his face suddenly turning pale.

  “You were dead!” he gasped. “I shot you!”

  “Twice, as a matter of fact,” said Bell with a hard edge to his voice. His right hand gripped the 1905 Colt .45 automatic, its muzzle aimed squarely between Cromwell’s eyes and held as steady as an iron bar in concrete.

  For the first time in his life, Jacob Cromwell was taken completely off guard. His agile mind, filled with overconfidence, had never considered how he would act should the time ever come when he was apprehended. The unthinkable was never dwelled upon. He had always thought of himself as untouchable. Now he stood face-to-face with his archenemy, who should have been dead. He felt like a captain whose unsinkable ship had run up on the rocks.

  Cromwell’s Colt .38 was in his coat pocket, but he knew Bell would blow his brains out before he could reach for it. Slowly, he lifted his hands into the air in abject defeat.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  “I’m going to borrow your special train to take you back to San Francisco. There, I’ll turn you over to the police, until such time as you’re tried for murder and hung.”

  “You have it all mapped out.”

  “The day had to come, Cromwell. You should have quit when you were ahead.”

  “You can’t arrest me. I have committed no crime.”

  “Then why are you disguised as a railroad conductor?”

  “Why don’t you shoot me now and get it over with?” Cromwell asked, his composed arrogance coming back on keel.

  “A mere slap on the hand for your crimes,” Bell said caustically. “Better you have plenty of time to think about the hangman’s noose tightening around your murdering neck.”

  Bronson came from around the rear of the Pullman car, his Smith & Wesson double-action .44 revolver drawn and pointed at Cromwell’s chest. “Nice going, Isaac. You nabbed our friend here before he could commit another crime.”

  Bell handed Bronson a pair of Tower nickel-plated, double-lock handcuffs. The agent wasted no time in snapping them on Cromwell’s wrists. Then he gave the bandit a thorough search and found the .38 Colt automatic.

  “The weapon you used to commit three dozen murders,” Bronson said with a cold voice.

  “Where did you come from?” Cromwell demanded at seeing Bronson and knowing with certainty that these men would not hesitate to shoot him if he gave the slightest indication of trying to escape.

  “Isaac drove us from San Francisco in his automobile,” he answered as if it were an everyday event.

  “Impossible!” snorted Cromwell.

  “I thought so, too,” said Bronson, leading Cromwell up the steps into the Pullman car, where he took his own handcuffs, placed them around Cromwell’s ankles, and roughly shoved him onto a couch.

  Bell walked back up the track and stared sadly at the mauled Locomobile. A barrel-chested man carrying an oil can in the coveralls and denim striped hat o
f a locomotive engineer came up behind him and stared dumbly at the automobile.

  “How in God’s name did that derelict come to be on the tracks in front of my engine?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Bell wearily.

  “What’s going to happen to it?”

  Bell spoke quietly, almost reverently: “It’s going to be shipped back to the factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where it will be rebuilt until it is as good as new.”

  “Fix this wreck?” said the engineer, shaking his head. “Why bother?”

  Bell looked at the Locomobile with a loving expression in his eyes and said, “Because she deserves it.”

  34

  YOU’RE A FOOL IF YOU THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY with kidnapping me,” Cromwell stated contemptuously. “You have no authority to arrest me without a warrant. As soon as we get back to San Francisco, my attorneys will demand my release. After making fools of the Van Dorn Detective Agency, I shall walk free as a bird. Then I’ll launch a series of lawsuits that will break your agency and drown it in a sea of scandal.”

  Cromwell sat manacled to a large couch in the center of the parlor car. His wrists, legs, and even his neck were encased in steel bands that were chained to tie-down rings on the floor of the forward baggage section of the car. No chances were taken. Four heavily armed Van Dorn agents from the Los Angeles office sat in the car less than ten feet from the bandit, sawed-off shotguns, loaded and cocked, laid across their knees.

  “You may have a chance to demonstrate your arrogant ego with your pals in city hall, my friend,” said Bell. “But you’ll walk free only as far as a pig to a butcher shop.”

  “I am an innocent man,” said Cromwell matter-of-factly. “I can prove I was nowhere near the bank robberies you accuse me of. Where is your evidence? Where are your witnesses?”

  “I’m a witness,” Bell answered. “I saw through your disguise as a woman in Telluride before you shot me.”

  “You, Mr. Bell? What jury in San Francisco would buy your testimony? The trial will be a farce. You have nothing to bring an indictment, much less conviction.”

  Bell gave Cromwell a foxlike smile. “I am not the only witness. There are other people in the towns where you committed your murders who can identify you.”

  “Really.” Cromwell leaned back in the couch as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “From what I read of the Butcher Bandit, he always used disguises during his crimes. How can he be identified?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  “I have great influence in San Francisco,” Cromwell said with total conviction. “I have contributed heavily to the election of every superior and federal court judge on the bench. They owe me. Same with the good citizens of San Francisco. Even if you could bring me to trial, no jury of my peers will convict me, not when they take into account the many thousands of dollars I’ve spent on their behalf.”

  “You’re betting your hand before you see it,” said Bell. “A federal judge will be sent out from Washington to hear your case and the venue will be moved elsewhere, where you’re not the city’s darling.”

  “I can afford the finest attorneys in the country,” Cromwell continued haughtily. “No jury, regardless of what judge sits on the bench, will ever sentence me for crimes with so little evidence, certainly not with my reputation as a man who is beloved by the poor and homeless of San Francisco.”

  Bronson’s face was clouded with disgust. It took all his willpower not to plant his fist in Cromwell’s face. “Tell that to the families of the victims you shot down in cold blood. Tell them how the money you stole went to give you a lavish lifestyle as a banker in a mansion on Nob Hill.”

  Cromwell smiled brazenly and said nothing.

  The train began to slow. Bronson stepped over to a window and peered out. “We’re coming into Santa Barbara. The engineer will probably stop to take on water.”

  “I’d like to get off at the depot,” said Bell. “There’s a little matter I’d like to take care of.”

  As soon as the train came to a stop, Bell jumped down the stairs to the platform and quickly disappeared into the depot. Ten minutes later, as the engineer tooted the whistle warning that he was going to engage the drive wheels, Bell trotted out and climbed back aboard the Pullman car.

  “What was that all about?” asked Bronson.

  Cromwell immediately suspected something that was not to his liking. He shifted in his chair and leaned forward to listen.

  “The phone lines have been repaired over the ravine where the flash flood went though,” Bell answered Bronson. Then he looked down at Cromwell with a sardonic grin. “I put a call through to the Van Dorn office and instructed our agents to take your sister into custody as an accomplice.”

  “You’re insane,” Cromwell cried out.

  “I think we can prove she is implicated in the murders carried out by the Butcher Bandit.”

  Cromwell surged up from the couch, his face a mask of loathing and hate, but was stopped dead by his chains. “You dirty swine,” he hissed. “Margaret had nothing to do with any of this. She knew nothing about my…” He hesitated, before he incriminated himself. He slowly lowered himself back onto the couch, his composure and presumptuous behavior regaining control. “You’ll pay dearly for involving an innocent woman in your ridiculous accusations. Margaret will be back in her parlor within an hour after she’s falsely accused of crimes she knows nothing about.”

  Bell stared into Cromwell’s eyes with the self-assurance of a panther about to take a bite out of an antelope. “Margaret will talk,” Bell said firmly. “She will tell what she knows in an effort to save her brother. She’ll lie, of course, but she’ll be tripped up on a thousand details she can’t answer. Margaret will be the witness who will unwittingly lead you to the gallows.”

  “Even if I was guilty, Margaret would never utter a single word against me,” Cromwell said with conviction.

  “She will if she knows she’s going to jail for the rest of her natural life. That, and the loss of a luxurious lifestyle. Turning state’s evidence will be quite simple if there is a heavy price to pay for not doing so.”

  “You’ve badly underestimated Margaret.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bell quietly.

  Cromwell smiled tightly. “You’ll never connect Margaret with the crimes any more than you can convince a jury that I am guilty.”

  Bell stared at the banker. “Are you guilty?”

  Cromwell laughed and nodded around the parlor car. “Admit to being your Butcher Bandit in front of witnesses? Come now, Bell.” There was no “Mr.” this time. “You’re skating on thin ice and you know it.”

  Then Bell pulled off the glove on Cromwell’s left hand and revealed a metal tube where his finger once extended.

  “We’ll see,” Bell mused aloud. “We shall see.”

  BELL WAS taking no chances. When they reached San Francisco, he ordered the engineer to bypass the main depot and head onto the siding of the railyard. Bronson had a small army of agents on hand to escort Jacob Cromwell to an ambulance, where he was tied down to a stretcher, for the ride through the city.

  “We can’t run the risk of putting Cromwell in the county jail,” said Bell. “He’s right about his friends springing him within an hour. Take him across the bay to the state prison at San Quentin. We’ll keep him on ice until we’re ready to bring formal charges.”

  “Every reporter with every newspaper in town will be on hand to report that event,” said Bronson.

  “They’ll send the story across the country by telegraph to every newspaper from here to Bangor, Maine,” Bell said with a grin. “Now all we have to do is keep him from slipping through our fingers. Cromwell will attempt to bribe any guard that comes near him.”

  “I know the warden at San Quentin,” said Bronson. “He’s as straight as an arrow. Cromwell will be wasting his breath if he thinks he can bribe him into escaping.”

  “Don’t think he won’t try.” Bell looked at Cromwell as
he was roughly lifted into the ambulance. “Put a hood over his head so no one will recognize him. Swear the warden to secrecy, and have him lock Cromwell in solitary confinement, away from the other prisoners. We’ll give the warden the necessary paperwork in the morning.”

  “What about Margaret? I doubt a judge with his hand in Cromwell’s pockets would fill out arrest papers for her.”

  “Go through the motions,” Bell instructed. “Put pressure on her. Once she knows her brother is in custody and that she may go down with him, I’m betting Margaret will gather up all the cash she can and make a run for it. Then she’ll sail right into our hands.”

  Before heading for Bronson’s office, Bell stopped off at a telegraph office and sent a lengthy wire to Van Dorn reporting the capture of the notorious Butcher Bandit. He also asked for whatever help Colonel Danzler could offer from the federal government.

  CROMWELL WAS right about one thing. Margaret walked out of the police department less than thirty minutes after she was escorted there by two Van Dorn agents. Cromwell’s attorneys were already there arranging bond when she arrived. Even her chauffeur was on hand to drive her home, waiting in the Rolls-Royce out front, parked in a zone where no vehicle was allowed. A court magistrate miraculously appeared to sign the necessary release papers. It seemed to a reporter, who happened to be present covering a burglary case, that Margaret’s arrest and almost-instant release were a staged formality.

  Meanwhile, Bronson and his agents had driven the ambulance carrying Cromwell onto the ferry that took them across the bay to Marin County. After moving off the dock, they drove to the state prison at San Quentin. As Bronson had claimed, the warden was very cooperative and even proud to have the famous Butcher Bandit in his prison until Bell and Bronson could orchestrate an arraignment.

  After Bell left the telegraph office, he walked to Cromwell’s bank. He took the elevator up to the main office and approached Marion’s desk. “Get your hat,” he said without preamble in a no-nonsense tone. “You’re taking the rest of the day off.”