“The repair shop should have her ready to go in another three hours.”

“I’ll take her,” Bell said without hesitation. “See that Van Dorn is charged for the time it’s in use.”

Gould looked as if he was going to protest and argue with Bell, but, staring at the derringer, he thought better of it. “If you report me, I could lose my job and go to jail.”

“Just give me that engine and route me around San Jose toward Salt Lake City and I’ll say nothing.”

Gould sighed thankfully and began making out the paperwork to charter and dispatch a route for the locomotive under the Van Dorn Detective Agency. When he was finished, Bell took the papers and studied them for a moment. Satisfied, he left the office without another word, climbed in the Ford, and drove toward the Ferry Building.

41

NEARING THE FERRY BUILDING, BELL THREW A BLANKET over his head as he drove through a shower of cinders. He could see that Chinatown was gone, leaving little more than hundreds of piles of charred, smoldering ruins. The Ferry Building had survived with only minor damage to its clock tower. Bell noted that the clock had stopped at 5:12, the time the earthquake struck.

The streets and sidewalks around the Ferry Building looked like a vast mob scene.

Thousands were fleeing, believing the entire city would be destroyed. There was pandemonium and bedlam in the jumbled mass of people, some wrapped in blankets and loaded down with what possessions they were able to carry onto the ferryboat.

Some pushed baby buggies or toy wagons, and yet, amid the nightmare, everyone was gracious, courteous, and considerate toward others.

Bell stopped beside a young man who seemed to be merely standing around and watching the fire across the street from the wharfs. He held up a twenty-dollar gold piece. “If you know how to drive a car, take this one to the Customs House and turn it over to Horace Bronson of the Van Dorn Detective Agency and this is yours.”

The young man’s eyes widened in anticipation, not so much from the money but the chance to drive an automobile. “Yes, sir,” he said brightly. “I know how to drive my uncle’s Maxwell.”

Bell watched with amusement as the boy clashed the gears and drove off down the crowded street. Then he turned and joined the mass of humanity that was escaping the destruction of the city.

Within three days, over two hundred twenty-five thousand people left the peninsula where San Francisco stood, all carried free of charge by the Southern Pacific Railroad to wherever they wished to travel. Within twenty-four hours of the quake, overloaded ferryboats were departing San Francisco for Oakland every hour.

Bell showed his Van Dorn credentials and boarded a ferry called the Buena Vista.