Barges were rafted ten deep into the channel and appeared to extend down the shore as far as the bridge at the Point—the tip of Pittsburgh where the Mon joined the Allegheny. They were empty, riding high on the water. Across the river, all but the lowest reaches of Mount Washington and the Duquesne Heights were lost in smoke. The sun had disappeared, and night was settling in quickly.

Mary Higgins took another look around.

“Down,” said Bell, and they ducked behind a wooden staircase that ran up the side of a building. When they raised their heads, Mary had climbed a ladder onto a barge and was walking on planks laid barge to barge toward the middle of the river.

“She has amazing balance,” said Archie.

“Her father was a tug captain. They lived on the boat.”

“I thought it was those long, long legs.”

Bell gave his friend a cold, dark look, and Archie shut up.

Mary crossed ten rows of barges and stepped down onto a workboat moored at the edge of the fleet. “Was that boat there yesterday?” Bell asked.

“Right there. That’s where she went.”

“How long did she stay on it?”

“An hour and four minutes.”

Bell nodded approvingly. Mack and Wally were teaching Archie to be precise in observation and report.

“Were these same barges here?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure? They all look alike.”

“You see the barge right smack in the middle with the white cookhouse sitting on it?” The apprentice detective indicated a painted shack with a stovepipe poking through the roof. “Exactly where it was yesterday.”

Bell thought it strange that on such a busy river the empty barges had not been moved. He would expect them to be swarming with deckhands preparing for towboats to push them back up the Monongahela to move the coal being mined by scab labor. Even as he watched, a tow of empties bustled up the river from the harbor pool between the Point and Davis Island Dam, and an oversize towboat was pushing a loaded fleet of Amalgamated Coal’s big Ohio River barges downstream.

“I tried to get closer,” said Archie. “A watchman spotted me halfway across, and I thought I better run for it.”

“I’ll take a shot at it,” Bell said. “Give me a whistle if you see the watchman.”

He crossed the barges several rows down from the route Mary had taken, loping gunnel to gunnel as his eyes adjusted to the failing light. At the outside row, he drew close to the workboat, keeping an eye peeled for Mary and its crew. Its decks were empty. A thin wisp of smoke curled from its stack, indicating that steam was being kept up, but the boat wasn’t going anywhere immediately. He smelled coffee.