Among the standouts were the immense, powerfully built director of the San Francisco office, Horace Bronson, and short, fat Arthur Curtis, with whom Bell had worked on the Butcher Bandit case, on which they’d lost a mutual friend in Curtis’s partner, Glenn Irvine.

“Texas” Walt Hatfield, a barbed-wire-lean former ranger who specialized in stopping railroad express-car robberies, would be of particular value on this case. As would Kansas City’s Eddie Edwards, a prematurely white-haired gent who was expert at rousting city gangs out of freight yards, where sidelined trains were particularly vulnerable to robbery and sabotage.

The oldest in the room were ice-eyed Mack Fulton from Boston, who knew every safecracker in the country, and his partner, explosives expert Wally Kisley, dressed in his trademark three-piece drummer’s suit with a loud pattern bright as a checkerboard. Mack and Wally had teamed up since the early days in Chicago. Quick with a joke or a prank, they were known in the agency as “Weber and Fields” after the famous vaudeville comedians and producers of burlesque musicals on Broadway.

Last came Bell’s particular friend, Archie Abbott from New York, a near-invisible undercover man, sidling through Miss Anne’s kitchen door, dressed like a tramp looking for a handout.

Bell said, “If someone detonates a bomb in here, every outlaw on the continent will be buying drinks.”

Their laughter was subdued. Texas Walt Hatfield asked the question that was on many minds, “Isaac, you fixing to tell us why we’re hunkered down in a sportin’ house like we was longhorns canyon-skulking on roundup morning?”

“Because we’re up against a saboteur who thinks big, plans smart, and doesn’t give a hoot who he kills.”

“Well, now that you put it that way-”

“He is a vicious, ruthless murderer. He’s done so much damage already and killed so many innocent people that the hobos took notice and nicknamed him ‘the Wrecker.’ His target appears to be the Southern Pacific Railroad Cascades Cutoff. The railroad is our client. The Wrecker is our target. The Van Dorn Detective Agency has two jobs: protect the client by stopping the Wrecker from doing any more damage and catch him with enough proof to hang him.”

Bell nodded briskly. A male secretary in shirtsleeves sprang forward to drape a railroad map over a picture of nymphs in their bath. The map depicted the western railroads from Salt Lake City to San Francisco that served California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona.

“To pinpoint the railroad’s most vulnerable locations, I’ve invited Jethro Watt, superintendent of railway police, to fill you in.”

The detectives responded with derisive mutters.

Isaac Bell quieted them with a cold glance. “We all know the shortcomings of the railroad dicks. But Van Dorn hasn’t the manpower to cover eight thousand miles of track. Jethro has information we couldn’t learn on our own. So if anyone in this room says anything to make Superintendent Watt less than enthusiastically cooperative, he’ll answer to me.”

At Bell’s command, the secretary ushered in Superintendent Watt, who in appearance did not contradict the detectives’ low expectations of railway police. From the greasy hair pasted to the forehead above his ill-shaven, bad-tempered face to his grimy collar, wrinkled coat and trousers, to his scuffed boots to the bulges in his clothing that bespoke cannon-caliber sidearms, saps, and billy clubs, Jethro Watt, who was nearly as tall as Isaac Bell and twice as wide, looked like the prototype for every yard bull and cinder dick in the country. Then he opened his mouth and surprised them all.

“There’s an old saying: ‘Nothing is impossible for the Southern Pacific.’

“What railroad men mean by that is this: We do it all. We grade our own road. We lay our own track. We build our own locomotives and rolling stock. We erect our own bridges-forty in the new expansion, in addition to Cascade Canyon. We bore our own tunnels-they’ll be fifty before we’re done. We maintain our own machinery. We invent special High Sierra snowplows for winter, fire trains for summer. We are a mighty enterprise.”

With neither a softer tone nor the hint of smile, he added, “On San Francisco Bay, our ferry passengers crossing from Oakland Mole to the City claim that our machine shops even bake the doughnuts we sell on our boats. Like ‘em or not, they still eat ’em. The Southern Pacific is a mighty enterprise. Like us or not.”

Jethro Watt’s bloodshot eye fell on the ornate bar heaped high with a pyramid of crystal decanters, and he wet his lips.

“A mighty enterprise makes many enemies. If a fella climbs out of the wrong side of bed in the morning, he’ll blame the railroad. If his crop fails, he’ll blame the railroad. If he loses his farm, he’ll blame the railroad. If his union can’t raise his wages, he’ll blame the railroad. If he gets laid off in a Panic, he’ll blame the railroad. If his bank closes and can’t return his money, he’ll blame the railroad. Sometimes he gets mad enough to transact a little business with the express car. Robbing trains. But worse than robbing trains is sabotage. Worse, and harder to stop because a mighty enterprise makes a mammoth target.

“Sabotage by angry fellas is why the company maintains an army of police to protect itself. An enormous army. But like any army, we need so many soldiers we can’t pick and choose, and sometimes we must recruit what others more privileged might call the dregs . . .”

He glowered around the room, and half the detectives there expected him to whip out a blackjack. Instead, he concluded, with a cold, derisive smile, “The word has come down from on high that our army is to assist you gentlemen detectives. We are placed at your service, and my boys are instructed to take orders from you gentlemen.

“Mr. Bell and I have already had a long talk with the company’s top engineers and superintendents. Mr. Bell knows what we know. Namely, if this so-called Wrecker wants to disrupt our Cascades Cutoff, he can attack us six ways from Sunday:

“He can wreck a train by tampering with the switches that shunt trains around one another. Or he can manipulate the telegraph by which division superintendents control train movements.

“He can burn a bridge. He’s already dynamited a tunnel, he can blow another.

“He can attack our shops and foundries that serve the cutoff. Most likely, Sacramento. And Red Bluff, where they fabricate truss rods for the Cascade Canyon Bridge.

“He can set fire to our roundhouses when they’re crowded full of locomotives undergoing maintenance.

“He can mine the rails.

“And every time he succeeds and folks get killed, he will panic our workmen.

“At Mr. Bell’s request, we have dispatched our ‘army’ to the places where the railroad is most at risk. Our ’soldiers’ are in place and await you gentlemen’s requests. Now Mr. Bell will pinpoint those places for you while I go pour me a snort.”

Watt plunged across the parlor without apology, heading directly to the crystal-laden bar.

Isaac Bell said, “Listen close. We have our work cut out for us.”

By MIDNIGHT, YOUNG WOMEN’S laughter had replaced the solemn proceedings in Miss Anne’s back parlor. The Van Dorn detectives had dispersed, slipping away quietly to their hotels alone or in pairs, leaving only Isaac Bell and Archie Abbott in Miss Anne’s library, a windowless room deep in the mansion, where they continued to pore over the railroad maps.

Archie Abbott strained the authenticity of his tramp costume by pouring a twelve-year-old Napoleon brandy into a crystal balloon snifter and inhaling with refined appreciation.

“Weber and Fields made a good point about powder-house burglaries. Missing explosives are a red flag.”

“Unless he buys some at the general store.”

Archie raised his glass in a toast. “Destruction to the Wrecker! May the wind blow in his face and the hot sun blind him!”