The Trainmasters Read online

  “That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Francis Stockton said to John, “but nobody wants to believe it.” There was a note of triumph in his voice despite its angry edge.

  John gave him a nod and a smile, acknowledging that he now believed that Stockton had been telling what he believed to be the truth.

  “Then do you think you could spare us some of your time and experience,” John asked Durl, “to look over some of those caves that you don’t know—in the off chance I’m right?”

  Durl looked reluctant but agreeable. “I guess so,” he said.

  “You mean right now?” Aaron Kolb said. “Tonight?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “I don’t know if I could go into the caves tonight.”

  “I didn’t ask you to go,” John said. “It was your son that I asked.”

  “Nope,” Kolb said. “He don’t go without me. An’ I don’t go into no caves at night.”

  “Mr. Kolb,” John said, with growing exasperation, “I understand your position. But we can’t wait. If there are men still alive in that tunnel, most of them are sure to be senously injured, they are surely suffering… So I’ve got to try to find them now. Tonight. Not tomorrow.”

  “He’s right, Papa,” Durl said.

  “Durl!” Kolb warned. “You shut up.”

  Then came a high-pitched, woman’s voice. It was Kolb’s wife. She was so unobtrusive that John had almost forgotten about her.

  “Aaron Kolb,” she said, “why are you so ornery? You can’t just let somethin’ happen. You have to stand in the way of it or else poke at it with a stick. This thing they are doin’ ain’t goin’ to harm you. So why don’t you just go along with it.”

  Kolb just glared at her. Francis Stockton started to smile and say something. But he stopped himself.

  “I’m taking them in now,” Durl said. “I’m goin’ into the caves.”

  “Durl, you ain’t goin’ tonight. An’ that’s final!”

  Goddamn fool, John thought. Then he realized what he had to do. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and came up with a dollar. “Francis?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You got a dollar?”

  Stockton searched into his own pockets and came up with the bill. “Right here,” he said.

  “Give it to me.” He did that. Then John passed the two bills over to Kolb. “This is for you,” he said. “But it’s for staying and not coming. I can do better without you.”

  “Well, shit,” he said, but all the bluster was out of his voice.

  I wish all my problems were so easy, John thought. “Let’s go, Durl,” he said. And then he remembered Harrison. “Are you coming with us?” he asked.

  “If I’m asked,” Harrison said.

  “You’re asked.”

  “Then I’m glad to come.”

  And the four of them marched out of the door.

  A few moments later they were at the cave entrance, standing under the overhang formed by the wide, granite brow. The entire width of the entrance was enclosed by a split-rail fence, and behind the fence there were a couple of dozen hogs. They were making a terrible racket, even for hogs. And this made Durl curious.

  “They aren’t usually so skittish and rambunctious this late,” he said. “Somethin’ must of disturbed ‘em.”

  “Do you have any idea what it was?” John asked.

  “Nope,” he said. “I expect it’s a coon or a polecat. A coon’ll go anywhere, steal from anybody, even from hogs. That’s why God gave them robbers’ masks over their eyes. But I don’t know. Sometime a man’ll sneak in behind the hogs. Papa keeps the whiskey he makes back there. If they can get through the hogs, they can get to a lot of booze. But the hogs make pretty good watch dogs. I guess we’ll find out soon enough what’s botherin’ you people.” He was addressing the hogs now, not the other men. Then he swung his leg over the top rail of the fence. When he did that, the hogs came closer and crowded next to the place where he was entering the yard. “You back away now,” he said. “I don’t have any food for you.” Now he was among them, waving them away with his arms. “Go on, now. You go on back. Back up.” Then to the men, “You can come in now. They won’t bother you. Not while I’m here.”

  “Here goes nothing,” Francis Stockton said, and went over the fence. He was quickly followed by John Carlysle and Harold Harrison.

  It was completely dark now, so each man carried a lantern. The lanterns allowed them to see fairly well as they moved single file into the yard, but their light was eerie, and it made the shadows shifty. The floor of the yard was covered with filth and muck and shit and slop. But that proved to be the worst problem they had to face in the yard, for Durl was telling the truth about his hogs. The animals parted before him the way the sea did for Moses. And so all of the men walked safely through them.

  At the other side of the yard, there was another split-rail fence. When they crossed that, they found themselves in a smaller gallery than before. But it was still large enough to hold more barrels than John could easily count.

  Here the overpowering stench of the hog pen was itself overwhelmed by the deep, rich aroma of aging whiskey.

  “Would you like some?” Durl asked. “For courage?” He pointed to one of the barrels. “We’ve tapped that one.” He moved closer to the barrel so he could shine his lantern light on it.

  “I don’t think so, Durl,” John Carlysle said. “After we come back, I—”

  But before he could finish his thought, Francis Stockton called out in surprise and alarm. He had been ranging around the room, poking into whatever pricked his curiosity. “Hey Durl,” he cried, “come on over here and take a look. You’ve been invaded.”

  “Well, shi-it!” Durl yelled. Then he started moving. “What the fuck is this?” He was moving fast now. And his light was shining on the space on the other side of one of the barrels. John followed him, and a moment later he, too, could make out what had caught Francis’s attention: Two booted legs protruded just enough into the aisle to be visible. The boots were wet and covered with mud and slime, and so were the trousers above them.

  Durl and Francis moved around the barrel so they could see the man face to face; John followed close behind them. And then John moved in front of the other two so he could get a clear view of the man who owned the boots.

  What he saw made his breath choke in his throat. The man was injured—perhaps close to death. He was only half-clothed. And what he was wearing was torn and ragged. His flesh was torn and ravaged and abraded. He looked unconscious, but he was breathing. John bent over and checked his pulse. It was steady. There may have been whiskey on the man’s breath, too. But John knew that this man’s troubles hadn’t been caused by whiskey.

  And then there was a yell from Francis Stockton. “There’s another one over here.”

  “Alive?” John called back.

  “Barely.”

  At that moment, the one John was bending over opened his eyes. “Ferdy?” he whispered.

  “Ferdy?” John repeated. “Is that your name, boy? Ferdy?”

  The man’s eyes grew wider, frightened, desperate. “Ferdy? Ferdy? Are you all right? Where are you?” Then he looked at John’s face and shuddered violently.

  “I’m not Ferdy,” John said gently. “But I think Ferdy is all right. I’m John Carlysle.”

  The man closed his eyes and opened them again. Then he tried—unsuccessfully—to lift his hand to his face. But his hand wasn’t ready to obey him right then.

  “Get some water,” John said to Durl. Then he asked the ravaged man, “What’s your name? Can you tell me that?”

  The man looked away a moment. Then returned his gaze to John’s face. “You’re an English bastard, aren’t you?”

  “I’m English.”

  “Well, then, I’m Irish scum to you, you English bastard.” He paused. And then when he resumed, his voice was stronger. But Irish scum that I may be, you English prick, I crawled out of the
tunnel and down through the fucking caves, and I’m still fucking alive, by God. And I’d like to see any fucking limey do that!”

  “Christ Jesus!” Francis Stockton said. “Is this man serious?” But of course he knew he was. There was no other explanation for his appearance and the appearance of his companion.

  John just looked at him, not knowing what to make of the man’s half-crazed words, not knowing what to say, and especially not wanting to set the man off. “Can you tell me your name then?” he asked finally, in a voice as calm and warm as he could manage.

  “I’m O’Rahilly,” he said. “Egan O’Rahilly.”

  Nine

  It was an impressive funeral even for Philadelphia, on this gray, damp Wednesday morning. The city was full of people of substance, and it, therefore, hosted many elaborate funerals. Scarcely a day passed without a long funeral processing wending westward along Market Street, across the bridge over the Schuylkill River, and out to the cemetery in West Philadelphia.

  But the funeral for Ben Kean was especially notable. Twenty-eight carriages rode behind the funeral hearse. And a hundred and thirty-seven mourners walked. The Keans were a large clan. In addition to Ben’s father, George, and his mother, Melanie, there were two brothers, Matthew and Henry, two sisters, Deborah and Aliene, and a large assortment of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. And that was just the immediate family. More than a few of George Kean’s teamster friends came to mourn, in addition to numerous other close acquaintances of George’s from various trades and professions. Among these, for instance, was the lawyer Andrew Gibbon and his two spinster daughters; the family physician,

  Fleming, and his wife, Dolly.

  The deceased had had friends, too, and these—all fourteen of them—trailed behind at the end of the procession feeling somewhat self-conscious, for they knew that this funeral was more of a tribute to the father of the deceased rather than to the deceased himself.

  In addition to family, friends, and colleagues, there were journalists who were not as interested in the deceased as they were in fresh tales and gossip of the living about the living. There were also curious rumors about the actual manner in which the deceased had made his exit from the veil of tears in which, up until two nights before, he had dwelled. But the family and friends, clearly at the direction of George Kean himself, said little about that. Everyone uttered the simple statement: “Ben has met with a dreadful accident.” That, of course, was no information at all. It was as good as saying he died of heart failure. The truth—as every journalist is well aware—is that we all ultimately die of heart failure. And for most of us, death comes as a dreadful accident.

  However, the journalists knew that Ben Kean, unlike his father, was not well loved. It was, in fact, hard to find anyone—aside from his father, his brother Matthew, and his fourteen reluctantly attending friends—who had cared for him at all. That was a fact from which journalists could make interesting copy: “The young, black-sheep of a prominent family dies under mysterious circumstances.” It was much more intriguing than, for instance, “The young saintly daughter of an impoverished family, having devoted her short life to unremitting prayer, has died after a long, wasting, painful illness.”

  Unhappily, as far as the journalists were concerned, their instincts about Ben’s mysterious death were perfectly sound, but their efforts to produce hard facts proved fruitless. Nobody at the funeral who knew the truth was talking, and the one person in Philadelphia who would have talked, had she been asked, was not called upon. That was Bridget O’Dona-hue, Kitty Lancaster’s maid.

  It was Bridget, of course, who eventually let the truth out—first to her friends, then to the tradespeople she dealt with. And these people passed it on to others, until, in time, the story was in circulation throughout Philadelphia. But by the time the actual cause of Ben Kean’s death became generally known, the story was no longer news. And journalists were chasing other, more immediately pressing rumors, gossip, and scandal.

  George Kean had much greater success than the journalists in chasing down the same story, or at least the aspects of it that interested him. But he had access to better informants than did the journalists. His son Matthew had been an eyewitness to much of what had happened. And his family physician, Fleming, had also been involved. And the lawyer Gibbon had access to the sort of people who could root out that information which Matthew and Fleming could not have known. And George himself, of course, knew still others who could tell him anything else.

  The result was that by the morning of the funeral, George Kean had many answers to the questions that had plagued him early the previous morning when he had first learned about Ben’s death. He had immediately discovered a great deal about Graham Carlysle and Teresa Derbyville, as well as about Teresa’s relationship to Ben. George had not known about Teresa until after his son’s death.

  He found out who the Carlysles were, where they dwelled, where they came from, and about John’s connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He found out that Graham was a much better than average poker player and that he spent a great deal of time at McMullen’s Saloon. And he found out that Graham could not have known Teresa for more than a few days. And he found out all he needed to know about Teresa Derbyville… that is to say, Teresa O’Rahilly, and about the other men in her life besides Ben.

  He was confused by one aspect of the story: the connection between the Carlysles and Kitty Lancaster. But that connection did not leave him baffled; rather, it sparked his curiosity. He wanted very much to learn about that, because there was a growing association in his mind between the Pennsylvania Railroad, which he despised, and the death of his son Ben, which he was determined to avenge.

  Kean did not want to involve the state and its justice system as Dr. Fleming had advised because he felt that official authorities could never repay him for his loss. Kean did not give a damn about the state’s justice system. He personally wanted to make certain that Ben’s killers paid for what they did. He also realized that by ordinary standards, his son had brought his death upon himself. And ordinary justice would let the killers go free. But George Kean could never allow that. Graham Carlysle and Teresa O’Rahilly must be made to pay-George was fascinated to learn on Tuesday that Carlysle and O’Rahilly had fled Philadelphia for an unknown destination. That simply confirmed for him that they knew what he knew. It proved the correctness of the course of action he must inevitably follow.

  The funeral procession wound through the cemetery and finally reached its destination. And Ben Kean, after the usual words were pronounced over him, was consigned to the dust from which he and every other man had originated. Afterward, George and Matthew and a few of George’s most trusted teamster friends retired to a private dining room in the Fairhope Hotel. And there they embarked on preliminary discussions about sabotaging the Pennsylvania Railroad.

  Another subject they discussed was the debt that Graham Carlysle and Teresa O’Rahilly had contracted with George Kean and the manner in which it was to be repaid.

  But George, to everyone’s surprise, was not anxious to take immediate action on that matter. He was patient. He wanted to wait and let interest and dividends build up.

  The train that left Philadelphia at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning was scheduled to reach Tyrone at eleven the same evening. But it did not arrive in that town until sometime after ten Wednesday morning.

  The train was delayed because the hard rains of the previous day had washed away a partly finished cut some forty miles east of Tyrone, and so there was a wait of several hours until it was repaired. And then there was another wait for over two hours while the westbound train was shunted onto a siding. This was to allow the passage of an eastbound train. After the westbound train had stood on the siding for over two hours, the passengers in it finally saw the cause of their delay: a locomotive and tender and a single car, the private car of Mr. Edgar Thomson, raced by them at full throttle toward Philadelphia. Thomson was doing his best to reach the city in time
to attend the board of directors meeting scheduled for that afternoon.

  One of the passengers on the westbound train was Tom Collins. He was the least disturbed by the long delay. In fact, the delay turned out to be an opportunity for him. When the train departed from Philadelphia, he found himself in the same car with a fascinating group of fellow travelers. There were three women, two of whom were surpassing beauties, a young man who was recovering from a gunshot wound, two young boys, and a very young girl.

  One of the beauties was Kitty Lancaster, the daughter of the chief engineer of the railway. The other was an Irish lass named Teresa O’Rahilly, with whom Tom managed to spend a great deal of time, even though she seemed closely attached to the wounded man. The less comely woman, it turned out, was Teresa O’Rahilly’s sister-in-law; the little girl belonged to her. The man with the wound was called Graham Carlysle. It became apparent that his father had something to do with Thomson, though Collins could not ascertain what; whatever it was would doubtless repay further research. And the two boys were his brothers.

  This little group had been in quite a dither when they embarked in Philadelphia; they had made their departure from the city in a breathless, hectic, furious scramble. Collins had overheard whispers that intrigued him: One name, Kean, was repeated over and over.

  There was only one Kean that mattered in Philadelphia, and that Kean was soon to become Tom Collins’s partner in Mr. Abraham Gibbon’s railroad project.

  Thus, before the nine o’clock westbound train had left the Philadelphia suburbs, Tom had made himself useful to the little group. No man could insinuate himself into the confidence of others quite as well as an expriest who is onto a mark. Little acts of thoughtful attention go a long way in winning over those who were susceptible to his charm (in the event it was card games with the children and errand running during station stops that did the trick). And by the time the train had reached Harrisburg some hours later, Collins was convinced that the women in the party considered him to be not only a kind companion but a true friend. The man, Graham, spent most of his time asleep or dozing.