Bill Matters was waiting on the gangway.

Isaac Bell saw an instance of indecision flicker on the angry man’s face. Who would he attack first? His enemy, the old man sprawled at his feet? Or his enemy’s bodyguard, who was barely hanging on to the side of the car? He chose Bell, braced himself with both hands, and cocked a foot to kick the fingers Bell had clamped around the connector. Bell was already in motion.

A gunshot—a clean, sharp Crack!—cut through the thunder of wheels and wind. Matters fell back with an expression of astonishment that Bell had somehow managed to draw his revolver and fire. Hanging by one arm as he triggered the Bisley, Bell missed his shot. He fired again; another went wild. Matters whirled away and fled toward the back of the train.

—

Bill Matters raced down the first sleeping car’s corridor, burst out the end door, through the gangway and into the second. Near the end of the car was his tiny stateroom. He locked the door, put on his coat, grabbed a bag, already packed with several thousand in gold, British ten-pound notes, and German marks, and his Remington pistol. Then he opened the window on the locomotive’s smoke and thunder and reached high in the corner of the cabin where the emergency communication cord swayed with the train’s motion and yanked its red handle.

The communication cord activated the boat train’s air brakes. From the locomotive on back, curved steel shoes slammed down hard on every wheel of every car. The effect was swift and violent.

Matters kept his feet by ramming his shoulder against his stateroom’s front partition to brace for the impact. From the compartments ahead and behind his came the thud of passengers crashing into bulkheads, the clatter of flying luggage, cries of pain, and frightened screams. Steel shrieked on steel under the hurtling car as the brake shoes bit and locked wheels slid on the rails.

The train bucked like a giant animal. The cars banged couplers into couplers. The speed dropped from sixty to fifty in an instant, and dropped as quickly to forty. Matters squeezed through the window, dragged his bag after him, and tried to gauge a safe landing by the beam of the locomotive headlamp. He could see in the distance four cars ahead, the beam flickering through a forest that hugged the tracks. To jump would be to run headlong into a tree.

Suddenly the headlamp disappeared.

For a second, Matters was baffled. Then the train whistle gave a strangely hollow, muffled shriek, and he realized that the locomotive had entered a tunnel. The car he was clinging to would be next into the narrow opening after smashing him against the stonework that rimmed it. He heard a crash. His stateroom door flew open. Isaac Bell blasted through it, revolver in hand, eyes locked on the window.

In the most decisive move of his entire life, Bill Matters dropped off the train.

—

Isaac Bell thrust head and shoulders and gun out the stateroom window and looked behind the train. The night was black, the spill of window light negligible, and he could not see where Matters had landed. The train whistle sounded oddly muffled. Bell started to turn his head toward it when he sensed something immense hurtling at him. He shoved back inside Matters’ stateroom, and the next second saw smoke-blackened masonry inches from the window.

The boat train screeched to a stop inside a tunnel.

Bell bolted from the stateroom and out the back of the sleeper car, past shaken passengers in pajamas and dressing gowns, through the last car, and jumped off the back of the train onto the crossties. A brakeman was running frantically with a red lantern to alert the next train that the boat train was blocking the tracks.

Bell followed him out the tunnel and along the railbed, searching for Matters and fully expecting to find his body smashed against a tree. Instead, one hundred yards from the tunnel portal he found a break in the forest. It looked like a meadow, but at that moment the clouds parted and he saw moonlight gleam on water.

—

“Good-bye,” said Edna. “We’ll see you in New York.”

“Good-bye?” asked Bell. “We’re on the same ship.”

“We’re sailing Second Class. You’re in First.”

“No. Stay with me. I’ll pay the difference.”

“We will not sit in the same dining room as that man,” said Nellie, turning away without another word to walk briskly to the Second Class gangway.

Edna said, “We can barely stand to be on the same ship. But it’s the fastest way home. I’ve promised a full report to the Sun, and Nellie has got to take command of the New Woman’s Flyover before a certain suffragette tries to steal it. Apparently, Amanda Faire’s husband bought her a balloon.” She lowered her voice, though her sister was far beyond earshot. “Nellie is so distraught about Father. I’ve got to get her home and busy.”

Bell said, “I hope you understand that I’m terribly sorry about your father.”

“You cannot be as sorry as we are,” said Edna. “We’ve lived in fear of this day and now it has happened.”

“You expected him to attack Mr. Rockefeller?”

“We expected him to hurt himself. Since the day Rockefeller broke up his business and stole the pieces. We expected him to kill himself. What you call an attack, Isaac, had exactly the same effect.”

“It is highly likely,” said Bell, “that your father is still alive.”

The German police had dragged the pond beside the tracks and searched the forest with hunting dogs and found no body. They had visited every farm within twenty miles and canvassed doctors and hospitals. Bill Matters had thoroughly disappeared.

“Good-bye.” Edna started after her sister, then turned back and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Isaac.”

“What for?”

“Engineering my job on the Sun.”

“They weren’t supposed to tell you.”

“No one had to tell me. I figured it out on my own. Very flattering.”

“The Sun was lucky to send you to Baku.”

“I meant flattering that you wanted me to come along.”

—

“Last stop,” said Isaac Bell.

Tugboats jetting clouds of coal smoke were working the Kaiser Wilhelm against North German Lloyd’s Hoboken pier.

“Not precisely,” said John D. Rockefeller. “We still have the train to Cleveland.”

“My last stop,” said Bell. He took a letter from his traveling suit and handed it to Rockefeller. “Here is my resignation.”

“Resignation? I am dismayed. Why are you quitting?”

“Standards.”

“Standards? What standards?”

“You had no need to rob Bill Matters. I will not condone his crimes, but you mistreated him badly and for no purpose other than beating him.”

Rockefeller’s lips tightened in a flat line. He looked away, gazing at the harbor, then he looked Bell in the eye. “When I was a boy, my father sharped us to make us strong. He taught us how to trade by taking us again and again. Every time I was soft, he took advantage and beat me in every deal until I learned how to win. It made me sharp.”

“It made you a bully.”

“It’s a habit,” said Rockefeller. “A habit that served me well.”

Bell appeared to change the subject. “I understand your father is still alive.”

A look of genuine affection warmed Rockefeller’s cold face. “Ninety and going strong.”

“Men live long in your family.”

“The lord has blessed us with many years.”

“Many years to break bad habits.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve been allotted more years than most to break habits you should break,” said Isaac Bell.

Rockefeller bridled. “I am using my years for philanthropy—for all the good it’s done me. They still think I’m a monster.”

“They think you’re a bully. And they’re right. But if you ask me, you’ve made a good start with philanthropy. I’d keep at it.”

“Would you, now? You are not familiar with business affairs, Mr. Bell. You’re like certain writers, theorists, socialists, and anarchists—so ready to determine how best they can appropriate the possessions of others.”