"Train ticket, hell," said Bloom. "He could buy the train."
"Sold!" Bell laughed. "Come back to my observation car and drinks are on me, and maybe a bite of late supper. All this bluffing makes me hungry."
As Bell led them to the rear of the train, he wondered why Senator Kincaid had folded. It had been a strictly correct move, he supposed, but after Congdon had folded it was a lot more cautious than Kincaid had been all night, which was puzzling. It was almost if Kincaid had been acting a bit more the fool earlier than he really was. And what was all that blather about Osgood Hennessy taking enormous risks? He certainly hadn't improved his benefactor's standing with the bankers.
Bell ordered champagne for all in the observation car and asked the stewards to serve up a late-night supper. Kincaid said he could stay for only one quick glass. He was tired, he said. But he let Bell pour him a second glass of champagne and then ate some steak and eggs and seemed to get over his disappointment at the card table. The players mingled with one another and some other travelers who were passing the night drinking. Groups formed fluidly, broke up, and formed again. The tale of the three queens was told over and over. As the crowd thinned, Isaac Bell found himself alone with Ken Bloom, Judge Congdon, and Senator Kincaid, who remarked, "I understand you've been showing the train crew a wanted poster."
"A sketch of a man we're investigating," Bell answered.
"Show us!" said Bloom. "Maybe we've seen him."
Bell took one from his coat, pushed plates aside, and spread it on the table.
Bloom took one look. "That's the actor! In The Great Train Robbery. "
"Is it really the actor?" asked Kincaid.
"No. But there is a similarity to Broncho Billy Anderson."
Kincaid trailed his fingers across the sketch. "I think he looks like me."
"Arrest this man!" laughed Ken Bloom.
"He does," said Congdon. "Sort of. This fellow has chiseled features. So does the Senator. Look at the cleft in the chin. You've got one of those too, Charles. I heard a bunch of damned fool women in Washington squawking like hens that you look like a matinee idol."
"My ears aren't that big, are they?"
" No."
"That's a relief," said Kincaid. "I can't be a matinee idol with big ears."
Bell laughed. "My boss warned us, 'Don't arrest any ugly mugs."'
Curiously, he looked from the sketch to the Senator and back to the sketch. There was a similarity in the high brow. The ears were definitely different. Both the suspect in the sketch and the Senator had intelligent faces with strong features. So did a lot of men, as Joseph Van Dorn had pointed out. Where the Senator and the suspect diverged, in addition to ear size, was the penetrating gaze. The man who had struck the lumberjack with a crowbar looked harder and filled with purpose. It was hardly surprising that he had looked intense to the man he was attacking. But Kincaid did not seem driven by purpose. Even at the height of their betting duel, Kincaid had struck him as essentially self-satisfied and self-indulgent, more the servant of the powerful than powerful himself. Although, Bell reminded himself, he had wondered earlier whether Kincaid playing the fool was an act.