JAMES CONGDON’S special was waiting for him at a Union Station platform reserved for private trains. His Atlantic 4-4-2 locomotive, which had just rolled, gleaming, from the roundhouse, had steam up, and his conductor was arranging to clear tracks with a Pennsylvania Railroad division boss. The cook was shucking oysters from Delaware Bay, a steward was chilling champagne, and the actress who had come along for the ride to New York was luxuriating in a hot bath.

Congdon himself raised a brandy in the paneled library that served as his mobile office and said, “Nothing becomes Pittsburgh like the leaving of it.”

“You seem mighty cheerful for a man whose business has been seized by radicals,” answered Henry Clay.

“Bless them!” Congdon laughed. “They’ve outdone themselves. And outdone you, for that matter, Clay. You could not have planned it better.”

“They exceeded my expectations,” Clay admitted. “Even my imagination. But I will take full credit for creating the atmosphere that stimulated them.”

“Credit granted. What’s next?”

“Exploding steamboats and burning union halls.”

“In that order?”

“Simultaneous.”

Congdon eyed the younger man closely. “I don’t mind telling you that you’re doing an excellent job.”

“I was hoping you would say that.”

Of course you were, thought Congdon, saying only, “You deserve it.”

He checked the gilded clock on the wall and opened the louvers of the rosewood shutters. The railcar’s window overlooked the train yard and the sidings that snaked into the private platforms.

“Is there any more archetypical symbol of rampant capitalism than the special train?” he asked.

“None. Yachts pale by them.”

“Have you considered having the vicious strikers wreck a special?”

Clay sat straighter, alert as a terrier.

Congdon said, “The governor would have no choice but to call out the militia and hang strikers from lampposts.”

“Do you have a particular one in mind?”

“You see through me as if I were made of glass.” Congdon smiled, thinking, as Clay lit up like limelight, My oh my, does that make you preen. “Any special would do.”

As he spoke a locomotive glided into view, drawing a beautiful train of four cars painted in Reading Railroad green livery, with the yellow trim done in gold as befitted the president of the line.

“Look! Here comes one now.”

“That looks like R. Kenneth Bloom’s,” said Clay.

“I believe it is.”

“Two birds with one stone?”

“What do you mean by that?” Congdon demanded.

“President Bloom has been resisting your takeover of his Reading Line.”

“You presume too much, Clay. Be careful.”

“Forgive me,” Clay said contritely. “I’ve been up several days. I’m not thinking clearly.”

“Get some sleep,” said Congdon. And then, to put Clay deeper in his thrall, he warmed up a friendly smile and said, “Three birds, actually.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Congdon?”