He reached across the table and took her hand. “Hopefully, Prince Charming will come along one day and sweep you off your feet.”

She pulled her hand back, more from exerting her authority than rejecting him. “Prince Charmings are few and far between. I’ve yet to see one in San Francisco.”

Bell decided not to go there. He was determined to ask her out again and see where their wave of mutual attraction might take them. “I’ve enjoyed the evening. It’s not often I can value the company of such a lovely woman who can hold her own in conversation.”

“You’re very good at flattery.”

He dropped his eyes from hers. Bell did not want to push his luck, but there was one more enigma he had to have answered. “There’s another thing about Cromwell that intrigues me.”

He could see from her expression that she was disappointed and had expected him to say something about them getting together again, and he sensed that she was beginning to doubt her feelings toward him.

“What is it?” Her tone suddenly went icy.

“When I first saw him in the dining room of the Bohemian Club, and today in his office, he was wearing gloves. Does he always wear them when dining or working at his desk?”

She folded her napkin and laid it on the table as a sign that for her the evening was over. “When he was a boy, he was in a fire. Both his hands were badly burned, so he wears gloves to cover the scars.”

Bell felt guilty for using Marion. She was a vital, beautiful, and intelligent woman. He stood, came around the table, and pulled her chair out for her. “I’m truly sorry for letting my detective’s undue inquisitive nature get the best of me. I hope you’ll forgive me. Will you give me a chance to make it up to you?”

She could tell that he was sincere and felt a tickle of excitement, her hope rising again that he was truly interested in her. He was far more enticing than she could have imagined. “All right, Isaac, I’ll go out with you again. But no questions.”

“No questions,” he said with a tingle of pleasure at hearing her use his first name. “That’s a promise.”

21

TWO DAYS LATER, THE FOUR DETECTIVES MET IN THE Van Dorn Detective Agency offices on the fifth floor of the Call Building on Market Street. They sat in a semicircle at a round table and compared notes. They were all in shirtsleeves, their coats hanging on the back of their chairs. Most wore straight, conservative neckties under their stiff collars. Only one wore a bow tie. Three sipped coffee from cups with the Van Dorn logo baked on the porcelain surface, the fourth drank tea. Loose papers and bound reports covered the top of the table. “I’ve written up a story telling how one of the largest shipments ever of newly printed currency from the San Francisco Mint will be shipped under heavy guard to the mining town of Telluride, Colorado, to make the payroll and a bonus to ten thousand miners,” Bell told them. “I merely alluded to the exact amount but suggested that it was in the neighborhood of five hundred thousand dollars.”

“I used my contacts with the newspaper editor to run the article,” said Bronson. “It will be printed in tomorrow’s papers.”

Irvine spun his cup slowly around on its saucer. “If the bandit lives in San Francisco, it should tantalize him into making a try for it.”

“If he lives in San Francisco,” repeated Curtis. “We’re going out on a limb on this one. We may have run up a dead-end alley.”

“We know the boxcar and several of the stolen bills ended up here,” said Bell. “I think the odds are good he lives somewhere in the Bay Area.”

“It would help if we knew for certain,” Bronson said wearily. He looked at Irvine. “You say your search to backtrack the stolen currency went nowhere.”

“A bust,” Irvine acknowledged. “The trail was too cold and there was no way to trace the bills before they were recirculated.”

“The banks had no record of who turned them in?” asked Bronson.

Irvine shook his head. “The tellers have no way of knowing because they don’t list the serial numbers. That’s done later by the bank’s bookkeepers. By the time we made a connection, it was too late. Whoever traded in the bills was long gone and forgotten.”

Bronson turned to Curtis. “And your search for the boxcar?”

Curtis looked as if he had just lost the family dog. “It disappeared,” he replied helplessly. “A search of the railyard turned up no sign of it.”

“Maybe it was sent out on a freight train that left the city,” Bell offered.

“Southern Pacific freight trains that left on scheduled runs in the last week show no manifest that includes a freight car owned by the O’Brian Furniture Company.”

“You’re saying it never left the railyard?”

“Exactly.”

“Then why can’t it be found?” inquired Bronson. “It couldn’t have vanished into thin air.”

Curtis threw up his hands. “What can I say? Two of your agents and I searched the railyard from top to bottom. The car is not there.”

“Did the Southern Pacific’s dispatchers know where the car was switched after it arrived?” asked Bell.

“It was switched to a siding next to the loading dock of a deserted warehouse. We checked it out. It wasn’t there.”

Irvine lit a cigar and puffed out a cloud of smoke. “Could it have been coupled to a train without the dispatcher knowing about it?”

“Can’t happen,” Curtis came back. “They would know if a car was covertly added to their train. The brakemen use a form to list the serial numbers on a train in the sequence the cars are coupled together. When the boxcars arrive at their designated destination, they can easily be switched from the rear of the train before it continues on its run.”

“Perhaps the bandit figured the car had outlived its usefulness and he had it scrapped and destroyed,” said Bronson.

“I don’t think so,” Bell said thoughtfully. “My guess is that he simply had it repainted with a new serial number and changed the name to another fictitious company.”

“Won’t make any difference,” said Curtis. “He couldn’t use it anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Bell asked.

“Only the Rio Grande Southern Railroad runs into Telluride.”

“So what’s stopping him from repainting that railroad’s insignia over one advertising the Southern Pacific?”

“Nothing. Except it would be a waste of time. The Rio Grande Southern runs on a narrow-gauge track. The Southern Pacific trains run on standard gauge, nearly a foot wider. There’s no way the track can accommodate the bandit’s boxcar.”