"Emma Comden is a family friend. She tutored me in French and German and tried very hard to improve my behavior"--Lillian blinked long lashes over her pale blue eyes and added--"at the piano."

Emma Comden wore a snug dress with a proper round collar and an elegant brooch at her throat. She was very much Lillian's opposite, rounded where the younger woman was slim, eyes a deep brown, almost black, hair dark, lustrous chestnut with a glint of red, constrained in a French twist.

"Do you mean you were educated at home so you could help your father?"

"I mean that I was kicked out of so many eastern finishing schools that Father hired Mrs. Comden to complete my education."

Bell smiled back. "How can you still have time for French and German and the piano when you're your father's private secretary?"

"I've outgrown my tutor."

"And yet Mrs. Comden remains ... ?"

Lillian responded coolly. "If you have eyes, Mr. Detective, you might notice that Father is very fond of our 'family friend."'

Hennessy noticed Isaac and Lillian talking. "What's that?"

"I was just saying that I've heard it said that Mrs. Hennessy was a great beauty."

"Lillian didn't get that face from my side of the family. How much money are you paid to be a detective, Mr. Bell?"

"The top end of the going rate."

"Then I have no doubt you understand that as the father of an innocent young woman, I am obliged to ask who bought you those fancy clothes?"

"My grandfather Isaiah Bell."

Osgood Hennessy stared. He couldn't have been more surprised if Bell had reported he had sprung from the loins of King Midas. "Isaiah Bell was your grandfather? That makes your father Ebenezer Bell, president of the American States Bank of Boston. Good God Almighty, a banker?"

"My father is a banker. I am a detective."

"My father never met a banker in his life. He was a section hand, pounding spikes. You're talking to a shirtsleeve railroader, Bell. I started out like he did, spiking rails to ties. I've carried my dinner pail. I've done my ten hours a day up through the grades: brakeman, engineer, conductor, telegrapher, dispatcher--up the line from track to station to general office."

"What my father is trying to say," said Lillian, "is that he rose from pounding iron spikes in the hot sun to driving ceremonial gold spikes under a parasol."

"Don't mock me, young lady." Hennessy yanked another chart down from the ceiling. It was a blueprint, a fine-lined copy on pale blue paper that depicted in exquisite detail the engineering plans for a cantilevered truss bridge that spanned a deep gorge on two tall piers made of stone and steel.

"This is where we're headed, Mr. Bell, the Cascade Canyon Bridge. I hauled a top-hand engineer, Franklin Mowery, out of retirement to build me the finest railroad bridge west of the Mississippi, and Mowery's almost finished. To save time, I built it ahead of the expansion by routing work trains on an abandoned timber track that snakes up from the Nevada desert." He pointed at the map. "When we hole through here--Tunnel 13--we'll find the bridge waiting for us. Speed, Mr. Bell. It's all about speed."