ARISE!

FAN THE FLAMES OF DISCONTENT

DESTROY THE FAVORED FEW

So WORKINGMEN MAY LIVE!"I don't suppose it was Jack's," said Tom. "That old man weren't the sort to turn radical."

"Looks like," explained Ed, "Jack grabbed hold of it in their struggle."

Tom said, "Would have done better to grab his gun."

"So it would appear," said Isaac Bell.

"Strange thing is why he didn't."

"What do you mean?" asked Bell.

Tom said, "I mean you could make a mistake thinking that because Jack Douglas was ninety-two years old that he was asleep at the switch. Just last year, a couple of city boys came out to Glendale looking for easy pickings. Drew guns on Jack. He drilled one through the shoulder with that old hogleg of his and the other in the backside."

Ed chuckled. "Jack told me he was getting soft. In the old days, he would have killed them both and scalped them. I said, 'You didn't miss by much, Jack. You plugged one in the shoulder and the other in the rear.' But Jack said, 'I said soft, not afflicted. I didn't miss. I hit 'em right where I aimed. Shows I'm turning kindly in my old age.' So whoever got the drop on Jack last night knew how to handle himself."

"Particularly," Tom added, "if all he had on him was a sword. Jack would have seen that coming a mile away. I mean, how does a man with a sword get the jump on a man with a gun?"

"I've been wondering the same thing," said Bell. "Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much." He took out two of his cards and gave one to each. "If you ever need anything from the Van Dorn Agency, get in touch with me."

"I WAS RIGHT," BELL told Joseph Van Dorn when Van Dorn summoned him to San Francisco. "But not right enough. He's thinking even bigger than I imagined."

"Sounds like he knows his business," said Van Dorn, grimly echoing the Southern Pacific maintenance director. "At least, enough to run circles around us. But how does he get around? Freight trains?"

Bell answered, "I've sent operatives to question the hobos in every jungle in the West. And we're asking every stationmaster and ticket clerk in every station he might have been near who bought a ticket on a long-distance flyer."

Van Dorn groaned. "The ticket clerks are even a longer shot than the hobos. How many passengers did Hennessy say the Southern Pacific carries per year?"

"One hundred million," Bell admitted.

Chapter 7.

WHEN ISAAC BELL TELEPHONED MARION MORGAN TO TELL her he had one hour free in San Francisco before he caught his train to Sacramento and could she possibly get off work early, Marion replied, "Meet me at the clock!"

The Great Magneta Clock, the first master clock west of the Mississippi, which had come around the Horn by steamship, was famous already, even though it had been installed in the St. Francis Hotel only the week before. Dominating the Powell Street lobby of the St. Francis, the ornately carved Viennese timepiece resembled a very large grandfather clock and looked somewhat old-fashioned in the European mode. But it was, in fact, electrically powered, and it automatically controlled all the clocks in the vast hotel that towered over Union Square.