“The drowning man sinks in water. The drinking man sinks in whiskey.”
“Say, Wally,” asked Mack, “here comes a passerby, strolling by the sea, what does the drowning man yell?”
“Throw me a rope.”
“What does the drinking man yell?”
“Throw me a bottle.”
They looked to Bell for a laugh.
Stone-faced, Isaac Bell said, “I worked with Wish Clarke in Wyoming and New Orleans. He’s sharp as they come.”
“So’s a busted bottle.”
“I also remember when you ‘spavined geezers’ took over my apprenticeship from Mr. Van Dorn, you taught me plenty. And you weren’t so spavined that you couldn’t clear a saloon of Harry Frost’s boys.”
“Your recent apprenticeship,” Kisley and Fulton chorused.
Bell saw that the old detectives were not joking but deadly serious and with a purpose. Kisley stared hard at him. Mack Fulton got down to brass tacks.
“Who’s ramrodding this outfit?”
“It’s my case,” said Isaac Bell. “I am.”
Kisley said, “It was not long ago we was changing your diapers in Chicago.”
“I’ve got the hang of it since.”
The partners shot back obstinate glowers and Mack said, flatly, “The man bossing an outfit has to change everyone’s diapers and still stay on top of the case.”
“You’re looking at him.”
“I’m looking at a kid who started shaving yesterday,” Fulton shot back.
“Spouting highfalutin French,” Kisley piled on. “Provocateur? Whatever happened to good old agitator?”
“Or provoker?”
“Or instigator?”
Isaac Bell was constitutionally incapable of punching a man twice his age, but he was getting tempted.
Suddenly, Aloysius Clarke was standing in the doorway.
He was a big, red-faced fellow who moved quietly.
Bell said, “Hello, Wish.”
Clarke nodded. “Kid.”
“We was just discussin’ who ramrods this outfit,” said Mack Fulton.
Wish Clarke stood silent. He had small blue eyes buried so deeply in drink-swollen, purple-veined cheeks that observers who associated whiskey with dulled wits and melancholy would miss the glow of intelligence and laughter. He smiled unexpectedly and answered the question on all minds. How long had Wish Clarke been standing there and how much had he overheard?
“It’s Isaac’s case. The kid’s the boss.”
Wally Kisley shook his head. “Them coal miners ain’t the only ones who need a union.”
“And to close another subject,” said Wish Clarke, a self-educated man who revered the English language, “Provoker is too general a word, agitator is a misspelling of adjutator, which means ‘a representative,’ and instigator is vague. But provocateur, short for agent provocateur, describes exactly what Isaac suspects we’re up against—a smart fellow who’s hoodwinking not-so-smart fellows into committing crimes that will discredit them.”
“For what reason?”
“For reasons,” said Wish Clarke, “we have not yet detected, Detective Kisley.”
Isaac Bell raised his voice. “Saddle up, gents!”
He pulled tickets from his vest and passed them out.
“Train’s leaving for West Virginia. All aboard!”
• • •
LOCOMOTIVE HEADLAMP blazing through the night, a train of sixty ore cars steamed from the Cripple Creek gold mines on Pikes Peak down the Colorado Front Range into the smoke-shrouded city of Denver. Pinkerton detectives boarded the locomotive in the Auraria rail yard.