“What happened?” cried Luke.

“Her boiler blew,” said Zeke. “The Good Lord has intervened! He has struck that Satan dead.”

Isaac Bell exchanged dubious glances with Wish Clarke.

The younger detective spoke first. “That one-two punch sounded like someone lent the Good Lord a hand with a hundred pounds of dynamite. First the dynamite, then the boiler.”

“Isaac, old son,” said Aloysius Clarke. “I do believe you’re getting the hang of your line.”

“We better get down there and lend a hand.”

• • •

BELL DISCOVERED as he and Wish pushed their way onto the dock that the Polish and Italian scabs had not been imported from their home countries. Nor had the numerous black men come directly from the South. They had been rounded up from the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, where an anthracite strike had shut down the hard-coal mines. Those he talked to were stunned by the explosion, bewildered, and afraid.

“They didn’t tell us nothing about the union.”

“They just said there was jobs.”

In the middle of the river, the steamboat that had brought the scab tow was circling the burning remains of the Monongahela, playing lights on the water, looking for survivors. Suddenly, her whistle shrieked an alarm.

“Now what?” asked Wish.

Bell pointed upstream where the tipple loomed darkly against the night sky. “Coal barges adrift.”

The entire tow that had been moored to the tipple pier—a fleet of twenty loaded barges lashed together—wheeled ponderously into the river and picked up speed as the powerful current dragged it downstream.

“How in heck did they break loose?”

“First thing I’ll ask, come morning,” said Isaac Bell.

Wish said, “Amazing how many things went wrong at once.”

Isaac Bell’s eyes shot from the drifting tow to the burning yacht to the bewildered scabs milling on the dock to the steamboat, whose captain had stopped his engine to let the current sweep him away from the wreck.

“Too many things. And I have a bad hunch it isn’t over.”

When the boat was a safe distance from any possible survivors still in the water, her big stern wheel churned, and she raced to capture the drifting coal barges. Deckhands scrambled with lines and the steamboat tied on. Stern wheel thrashing the water, she swung the lead barges into the current to master the tow.

“He’s got her,” said Wish. “Captain’s a man to ride the river with.”

Just as he spoke, the big steamboat exploded with a colossal double roar that toppled her chimneys and wheelhouse into the river. To Bell’s ear, the double roar echoed the one-two that destroyed the Monongahela.

But unlike the yacht, which was still drifting and on fire, the big steamboat sank straight to the bottom, leaving the wreckage of her upper decks exposed. The current slammed the coal barges against her, ripping their wooden hulls. Within minutes, twenty had sunk, blocking the channel to Pittsburgh.

“My provocateur,” said Isaac Bell, “is getting the hang of his line, too.”

17