The manager straightened his shoulders. “Mark Twain says that he intends to move back to Cincinnati on Judgment Day because we’re twenty years behind the times. Fine with me. I’m old-fashioned. I don’t like stock traders who can afford private wires getting a jump on the fellow who has to use the public wire. And Thibodeau & Marzen didn’t used to be the sort of outfit that liked them either.”

•   •   •

BELL STOPPED at Western Union on his way to meet Kenny Bloom at the Queen City Club and wired a telegram to Grady Forrer:

RESEARCH PRINCIPALS THIBODEAU & MARZEN.

He doubted very much that Henry Clay was communicating on private wires to get a jump on a stock sale as the Cincinnati branch manager suspected. Instead of fraudulent profits, a business with branches scattered around the continent could offer direct private communication with someone in their New York office. In the case of Smith, Claggart, and Henry Clay, Isaac Bell bet that someone was the man who gave the provocateur his orders.

He found Court Held at the Queen City Club bar. The shipyard heir greeted him like an old friend and invited him and Kenny to stay for dinner. Kenny, who was on his fourth whiskey, looked like he thought that was a good idea, but Bell reminded the coal-and-railroad heir that having raced to Cincinnati to meet with his Ohio bankers, he should be racing home, which was why he had taken his father’s special in the first place.

“We better eat on the train.”

•   •   •

“PITTSBURGH IN ONE HOUR,” announced the Bloom Special’s conductor as they neared the Ohio border for the run across West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle.

“Why so long?” Kenny demanded. He had fallen asleep on the couch in the office–sitting room car and sat up, rubbing his temples.

“Sorry, Mr. Bloom, we have to stop for water outside Steubenville.”

“Why outside? Jeez, my head is aching. Can’t we just go straight?”

“As I mentioned earlier, the dispatcher had to shunt us around Steubenville for a mail train. We didn’t lose more than ten minutes.”

“But now we have to stop for water.”

“Or don’t stop and blow up the locomotive,” said Bell, and Kenny laughed. “All right, all right. Just get us there.”

The train slowed and stopped by a dark water siding.

The conductor, who was doubling as brakeman, jumped down to the tracks to throw the switch. His name was Bill Kux, and he’d been hankering after a job on the New York Central’s 20th Century Limited—or, better yet, way out west on the Overland Limited—and this Cincinnati trip with Old Man Bloom’s spoiled brat had pretty much made up his mind.