Bell hurried on foot down Clarke, over the rail yards on Harrison Street, and waited for a tall-masted schooner to pass before he could cross the South Branch of the Chicago River on an ancient cast-iron jackknife bridge. It took a long time to creak back down, and he recalled that when he apprenticed in Chicago there were cries to replace it with a modern bascule bridge. But Chicago’s corrupt aldermen could not agree who would do the work and who would pay for it.

Black’s Social, like Little’s Exchange, was a cut above the ordinary workingman’s saloon, being near the LaSalle Street terminus for New York Central passenger trains. Drinks were not cheap, and the free lunch was correspondingly lavish, served by a chef in white who presided over the newest of innovations, a stainless steel steam table. The customers were businessmen, clerks, and drummers dressed in sack suits and sporting vests, watch chains, and a variety of head- and neckwear.

The express messengers were easy to spot if you knew what to look for. While dressed like businessmen or clerks or drummers, they had the steadier gaze of men who worked at a profession with a high mortality rate. Protecting gold, cash, bearer bonds, and jewels locked in their fortified express cars, they routinely encountered masked robbers whose methods of attack ranged from derailing trains to blasting open cars with dynamite and shooting the survivors. They were famous for shooting back.

Bell, like every Van Dorn, often caught free train rides in their express cars as the messengers enjoyed the company of gun-toting detectives who knew their business. He greeted some he knew, bought drinks, and established who was currently working on the 20th Century Limited, the New York Central train most likely patronized by passengers who could afford fifteen-carat diamonds.

Bell had been at it several hours when Wish walked in in a clean suit and went straight to the coffee urn at the lunch table. He downed a cup black, poured another, and wandered over to join Bell. “How are we doing?”

“The Twentieth Century is running five consists,” Bell answered, meaning that five separate trains carried the 20th drumhead to accommodate demand. “I found messengers from four of them, no luck. The fifth is coming in any minute. How are you doing?”

“Tip-top,” said Wish, observing the crowded saloon through slitted eyes. He was swaying slightly on his feet but looked otherwise indestructible. “There’s your fellow walking in now. Ben Lent. I’ve ridden with him. He’s all right.”

Ben Lent was short and powerfully built. The scars on his cheeks looked more likely from bullets than fists. He greeted Wish warmly, kidded him about the coffee cup, “Where a glass ought to be,” and shook hands hello with Bell. And with Ben Lent, just off the last train of the day, they hit the jackpot. Bell described the necklace that Laurence Rosania was supposedly intending to steal.