He said, “It won’t be in the newspapers. Those who ran the show stayed backstage.”

Kenny pulled an embossed card from his pocket and pressed it into Bell’s hand. “Here’s a rail pass, good anywhere in the country. Go to Boston. Ask your father which banks.”

“We are not on speaking terms,” said Bell.

“Because you’re a detective?”

“He wants me in the bank.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Be a detective.”

“That is too bad. He is a good fellow.”

“I know,” said Bell. “He is the best.” He held up the pass. “O.K. if I keep this?”

“Your grandfather left you plenty. You can afford to buy a ticket.”

“I would like to keep it,” said Bell. “Money talks. But a railroad pass from the son of a dodo shouts.”

The servants removed the oyster shells and the soup bowls and brought caviar, herring, and pâté. Bell switched from champagne to a sauterne. Kenny stayed with his whiskey.

“Are you going to buy Gleason’s mines?” Bell asked him.

“Somebody beat us to it. Snapped up the entire Gleason Consolidated Coal & Coke Company, lock, stock, and barrel.”

“Who?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”

“But not a Pittsburgh dodo,” said Isaac Bell.

BOOK TWO: FIRE

BOOK TWO

FIRE

Chapter 18

18

BROTHER,” SAID MARY HIGGINS. “I AM GOING BACK TO Pittsburgh.”

Jim had been worrying about this and here it was. Back in West Virginia, a thousand miners had been evicted from their Gleason company shanties. Some were huddling in a tent city, their usual fate while a strike dragged on and scabs dug the coal. Some, however, had begun a march to Pittsburgh in hopes that newspaper stories about men, women, and children marching in cold rain would raise the nation’s sympathy. It might. It might even give President Roosevelt courage to intervene.

A thousand marching up the coal-rich Monongahela Valley stood a good chance of doubling their ranks and doubling them again and again as workers struck the hundreds of mines along the way to join the march. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand arriving in Pittsburgh might well spark the general strike Higgins dreamed of. But he hesitated to join it.

The murder of Black Jack Gleason had turned the mood violent. Governors were threatening to call up troops. Prosecutors were staging trials. And the coal mine owners had dropped even pretenses of restraint.

“There’s plenty to keep us busy here. Plenty. The smelters’ strike is a disaster.”

“Read this!” She thrust the Denver Post in his face and pulled a carpetbag from under her cot. Jim read quickly. “What is this? We know Gleason got blown up.”

“Keep reading. Do you see what happened next?”

Jim read to the end where it was reported that the barges that sank at Gleasonburg had blocked the river for four days.

Mary asked, “The rivers are not deep at Pittsburgh, are they?”