“Isaac . . . I have to talk to you.”
“What is it? Is something the matter?”
“I am deeply in love with you. I hope you know that.”
“You show me in every way.”
“And I want ever so much to marry you. But I wonder if we could wait a little while.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been offered an exciting job, and it is something I would like to try very much.”
“What sort of job?”
“Well . . . you know who Preston Whiteway is, of course?”
“Of course. Preston Whiteway is a yellow journalist who inherited three of California’s leading newspapers, including the San Francisco Inquirer.”He gave her a curious smile. “The newspaper you happen to work for … He’s said to be quite handsome and a celebrated ‘man-about-town,’ and he flaunts his wealth, which he earns publishing sensationalist headlines. He’s also sunk his hooks into national politics by using the power of his newspapers to get his friends appointed to the United States Senate-first among them Osgood Hennessy’s lapdog legislator, Senator Charles Kincaid. In fact, I believe that it was your Mr. Whiteway who gave Kincaid the moniker ‘Hero Engineer.”’
“He’s not myMr. Whiteway, but-Oh, Isaac, he has a wonderful new idea. He came up with it while the paper was reporting on the earthquake-a moving-picture newsreel. He’s calling it Picture World.They’ll take moving pictures of actual events and play them in theaters and nickelodeons. And, Isaac!”-she gripped his arm in her excitement-“Preston asked me to help get it started.”
“For how long?”
“I’m not sure. Six months or a year. Isaac, I know I can do this. And this man will give me a chance to try. You know that I took my degree in law in Stanford’s first graduating class, but a woman can’t get a job in law, which is why I’ve worked nine years in banking. I’ve learned so much. It’s not that I want to work my whole life. But I want to makesomething, and this is my chance to make something.”
Bell was not surprised by Marion’s desire to work at an exciting job. Nor did he doubt their love. They were both too well aware of their great good fortune at having discovered each other to ever let someone come between them. Some sort of a compromise was in order. And he could not deny that he had his own hands full trying to stop the Wrecker.
“What if we were to promise that in six months we would set a date to marry? When things have settled down? You can still work and be married.”
“Oh, Isaac, that would be wonderful. I so much want to be in at the beginning of Picture World.”
The bells of the Magneta Clock began to strike four o‘clock.
“I wish we had more time,” she said sadly.
It seemed to Bell like only minutes since they had sat down. “I’ll drive you to your office.”
He noticed that Lillian Hennessy was looking pointedly the other way as they left the lobby. But Mrs. Comden parted her lips in a discreet smile as their eyes met. He returned a polite nod, struck again, forcibly, by the woman’s sensuality, and gripped Marion’s arm a little tighter.
A fire-engine-red, gasoline-powered Locomobile racer was parked directly in front of the St. Francis. It was modified for street traffic with fenders and searchlight headlamps. The hotel doormen were guarding the car from gawking small boys, threatening dire punishment to the first who dared lay dirty fingers on the gleaming brass eagle atop its radiator, much less breathe near its red leather seats.
“You got your race car back! It’s beautiful,” said Marion, showing her delight.
Bell’s beloved Locomobile had been beaten half to death by a five-hundred-mile race against a locomotive from San Francisco to San Diego, with the locomotive steaming on smooth rails and the Locomobile pounding over California’s rock-strewn dirt roads. A race, Bell remembered with a grim smile, that he had won. His trophy had been the arrest of the Butcher Bandit at gunpoint.
“As soon as the factory rebuilt it, I had it shipped out here from Bridgeport, Connecticut. Hop in.”
Bell leaned past the big steering wheel to turn the ignition switch on the wooden dashboard. He set the throttle and spark levers. Then he pumped the pressure tank. The doorman offered to crank the motor. Still warm from the drive from the freight depot where Bell had taken delivery, the four-cylinder engine thundered to life on the first heave. Bell advanced the spark and eased the throttle. As he reached to release the brake, he beckoned the smallest of the boys who were watching big-eyed.
“Can you give me a hand? She can’t roll without blowing her horn!”
The boy squeezed the big rubber horn bulb with both hands. The Locomobile bellowed like a Rocky Mountain bighorn. Boys scattered. The car lurched ahead. Marion laughed and leaned across the gas tank to hold Bell’s arm. Soon they were racing toward Market Street, weaving around straining horse carts and streetcars and thundering past slower automobiles.
As they pulled up in front of the twelve-story, steel-frame building that housed the San Francisco Inquirer,Bell spotted the last parking space left by the curb. A fair-haired gent in an open Rolls-Royce veered toward it, blowing his horn.
“Oh, there’s Preston! You can meet him.”
“Can’t wait,” said Bell, stomping his accelerator and brake in quick succession to skid the big Locomobile into the last spot, a half second ahead of Preston Whiteway’s Rolls.
“Hey! That’s my spot.”
Bell noticed that Whiteway was as handsome as rumored, a bluff, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven man with extravagant waves of blond hair. As tall as Bell, though considerably bulkier in the middle, he looked like he had played football in college and could not recall the last time he had not had his way.
“I got here first,” said Bell.
“I own this building!”
“You can have it back after I say good-bye to my girl.”
Now Preston Whiteway craned his neck to look past Bell, and bawled, “Marion? Is that you?”
“Yes! This is Isaac. I want you to meet him.”
“Pleased to meet you!” said Preston Whiteway, looking anything but. “Marion, we better get upstairs. We’ve got work to do.”
“You go ahead,” she said coolly. “I want to say good-bye to Isaac.”
Whiteway leaped from his car, bellowing for the doorman to park it. As he charged past, he asked Bell, “How fast is your Locomobile?”
“Faster than that,” said Bell, nodding at the Rolls-Royce.
Marion covered her mouth to keep from laughing, and when Whiteway had moved out of earshot she said to Bell, “You two sounded like boys in a school yard. How could you be jealous of Preston? He’s really very nice. You’ll like him when you get to know him.”
“I’m sure,” said Bell. He took her beautiful face gently in his hands and kissed her lips. “Now, you take care of yourself.”
“Me? You take care of yourself. Please, take care of yourself.” She forced a smile. “Maybe you should bone up on your sword fighting.”
“I intend to.”
“Oh, Isaac, I wish we had more time.”
“I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
“I love you, my darling.”
HIGH ABOVE THE CASCADES Cutoff construction yard, a single gondola car had been left behind on a siding. It sat a short distance above the switch that, when closed, would connect the siding to the steep grade of a supply spur that connected the railroad’s newly built lumber mill in the forest miles up the mountain to the construction yard below. The car was heavily laden, heaped higher than its sides with a crown of freshly sawn mountain hemlock crossties bound for the cutoff’s creosoting plant to be impregnated with coal tar preservative.
The Wrecker saw an opportunity to strike again, sooner than he had planned, killing two birds with one stone. This attack would rattle not only the Southern Pacific Railroad. If he could pull it off, it would announce how immune he was from the protective efforts of the Van Dorn Detective Agency.