The Trainmasters Read online

  She looked at him as he spoke. And then she answered, “I’d like very much to see you again, too, Mr. Carlysle.”

  “Good!” he said. “Would you like to go to the theater tomorrow evening?”

  “I’d love it,” she said, grinning. “I’d love it like nothing else.”

  “Then that’s what we will do.” He began to walk away.

  “Wait!” she called out before he had gone more than ten paces.

  He looked back at her.

  “Come back.”

  “Come back?” he repeated, a bit puzzled.

  Teresa reached up and brushed the back of her hand against his cheek. He caught her hand in his and squeezed it slightly. Then his lips met hers as Teresa kissed Graham lightly on his mouth once, then again, and suddenly his arm was around her waist as they held each other tightly. Both were a bit overwhelmed, but neither wanted to let go.

  “Will you come with me? Will you come upstairs to my room?” Teresa asked shyly.

  “To your room?”

  “Yes. Come with me,” she said more firmly.

  “All right,” he said, smiling warmly. “I’d like that. Very much.”

  He followed her through the door and up the dark and narrow stairs to the top floor. She lived in a garret in the back of the building. Her space was tiny, but clean and neat. And there were scarcely any furnishings, just a bed, a hard chair, a chest for her clothes, and a washstand with basin.

  And a few books. This clearly surprised Graham, but he did not say anything. Nor did he pay any attention to the poverty of her home, for almost as soon as they entered it, Teresa began to remove her dress and underthings. And from that moment Graham’s complete attention was directed toward Teresa.

  When their lovemaking was over, he fell asleep like a child. But Teresa remained awake, with her head lying across his breast. She was confused, baffled. She didn’t know what to make of this strange young man from England… this strange young man whom she had wanted very much to bring up to her bed, and who clearly wanted just as much to be with her.

  Just then, she raised herself up so that she could look at Graham’s face. For a moment the face she saw was not Graham’s, but her brother Egan’s.

  “God!” she cried out, but it came out as a gasp rather than a shout, and Graham only shifted his position and mumbled.

  Focusing more clearly, she realized it was not her brother after all. It was a tall, good-looking, dark-haired Englishman, not her blond, small, lithe brother.

  Then she imagined the two men together.

  She knew that if they met, Egan would despise Graham Carlysle just because he is English. He was even likely to become violent.

  But such a meeting is most unlikely, she realized, for her brother had not met her other men.

  Graham Carlysle himself was a much bigger problem, perhaps a much more dangerous one than even Ben Kean had presented, for Teresa knew she liked him. She liked Graham much more than she wished to like any of the men she had taken home.

  Five

  On Monday morning, Egan O’Rahilly and the other men in Tom Henneberry’s gang climbed into the steel cage for their daily descent into the tunnel. At the bottom, they picked up their tools from the wooden boxes where they’d been locked for safekeeping. Then they trouped to the heading they were working on.

  Henneberry was as silent, sullen, and mean as always, but at least he was not as voluble as usual, which was a blessing. He was detoxing from a massive intake of rum that had started on Saturday evening and had not stopped until he passed out late on Sunday night. His head throbbed painfully, his body was weak and unsteady, and he gave orders in a slurred, scarcely audible mumble. The orders were unnecessary, however; everyone knew what to do.

  It was Henneberry’s gang’s turn to work in the pilot heading, a twenty-foot section of tunnel that was drilled in advance of the main tunnel.

  The pilot tunnel, as it was used at the Gallitzin summit tunnel, had been developed by British engineers in the 1830s for use in drilling through shifty, wet, and unstable soil. The pilot heading was about twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and eighteen feet high; and it was dug along the top, or crown, of what would become the main runnel. The function of the pilot was to allow the miners to make a firmly founded roof, beneath which the tunnel builders could safely dig the main tunnel. As the pilot tunnel was dug, the heading was supported by heavy timbers. Once these were securely in place, the heading was gradually widened, deepened, and enlarged, becoming in due course the main tunnel.

  The especially hazardous moment in this process was the transfer of the roof load from the original pilot shoring to the permanent shoring of the main tunnel. Holes had been dug down to what would be the floor of the main tunnel. These would accommodate the permanent vertical posts. As they were dug, the holes were immediately lined in order to prevent slippage. After this was done, the weight of the roof would be transferred from the temporary to the permanent posts.

  Once that was accomplished, masons were brought in to cover the roof and sides.

  Henneberry’s gang had to start shifting the load from the temporary to the permanent shoring. True to his word on Saturday, Tom Henneberry gave Egan O’Rahilly the most dangerous job of all, working the jack.

  As they began, the lanterns were dim at best. There wasn’t nearly enough light for the men to see clearly, and the floor of the tunnel was made of mud that came up to their ankles. Pumps throbbed in the distance, pulling out some but not all of the water that drained out of the mountain into the new hole that the men were boldly—or else foolishly— digging. Lagging covered the tunnel roof and walls, but that did not stop the steady trickle of water from pattering down on top of the men like rain. The best thing about the lagging, as far as Egan was concerned, was that it covered most of the raw face of the tunnel, and thus hid from sight the visual evidence of the tremendous weight of the mountain above them.

  Egan, Geraghty, Ferdy O’Dowd, and the twins worked the jack, while the rest of the crew set the huge thirty-inch posts into place.

  As they worked, Tom Henneberry leaned against one of the posts that was already set down, complaining now and again. Otherwise he was harmless.

  “Damn it all to hell!” Geraghty said, struggling with the huge and cumbersome jack. They were having a hard time making a firm foundation to place it on.

  “Easy, man,” said one of the twins, as he braced the foot of the jack with a block of wood.

  That wasn’t enough to stabilize it, and Ferdy inserted a stone chip the size of two bricks. The jack then looked steady and firm.

  Next Egan and Geraghty began working the jack, taking the load off of the post to be replaced and putting it on the jack.

  As the two of them turned the handle, the ground beneath them groaned and then made a barely perceptible heave.

  They stopped what they were doing, alarmed.

  Henneberry, no less alarmed than the others, straightened himself up and moved to take charge.

  “Keep at your work there. Don’t you be worried. That was just a straightenin’ out of the ground underneath,” he said unconvincingly.

  “Huh?” Egan said. “What do you mean by that?”

  “That weren’t nothin’ to worry about is what I’m sayin’. I’m sayin’ to git on with your job.”

  Another heave then followed, stronger and more pronounced this time, and with it was a deep, grinding boom from below.

  “Somethin’s wrong down there!” Geraghty cried, pointing to the floor of the tunnel. He was obviously worried; they were all terrified of the possibility that millions of tons of earth above them would come crashing down on top of them. They never suspected that the floor would cave in.

  The ground beneath them was supposed to be solid; yet it was moving now…

  Suddenly Ferdy screamed: “Look! There!”

  About ten feet up the tunnel, ahead of them, the sides and roof, including the support beams and posts, seemed to be twisting out of shape.


  All at once everybody started shouting; many were screaming in terror. They all dropped their tools and tried to run back toward the shaft.

  But nobody in the gang got very far, because just as they began to run, part of the floor of the main tunnel between the pilot and the shaft to the surface collapsed, and the ceiling of the tunnel that they had spent days of hard toil shoring up broke through the lagging. Tons of rock and mud smashed down onto several men and closed off the escape of those who were not instantly crushed.

  Then the floor they were standing on sank still more, before pitching downward, throwing the living and the dead on top of one another.

  Dust, grit, and mud droplets so filled the little space now left to the survivors, that it was nearly impossible to breathe.

  There were no more screams and cries of terror; they were replaced by moans of pain and whimpers.

  Egan was alive, but he could not move. Nothing pained him or seemed broken, and he was thankful for that.

  He was grateful, too, that the mountain beneath them had stopped heaving and that the dust, grit, and mud had started to settle, so that he could at least breathe.

  Ferdy O’Dowd was also alive. Egan could hear his voice. Dazed and shaky with pain, Ferdy was reciting an “Our Father.”

  Egan listened: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will…”

  And then the ground groaned and heaved one more time.

  Mr. Abraham Gibbon, attorney at law, maintained offices on the fourth floor of a building on Third Street (near Chestnut) that was primarily occupied by the Franklin Bank and Trust. But he also maintained a second set of offices, in a much seedier building, at the corner of Wharton and Second streets in the warehouse district along the Delaware River. In his Third Street offices, Abraham Gibbon dealt with those clients who desired for the most part to keep in compliance with the laws of the city of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania, as well as with any applicable federal laws. In his other offices, Abraham Gibbon saw those clients who might from time to time choose not to comply with some— or most—city, state, or federal laws.

  Gibbon was comfortable in either office, just as he was happy to operate on either side of the law. And in fact, not surprisingly, rather a larger portion of his considerable income derived from activities generated from his Second Street office.

  On this particular Monday morning in April, Abraham Gibbon was alone in his Second Street office waiting for a pair of new and very important clients. One of these was George Kean, a leading teamster in Pennsylvania. At any given time, Kean probably had almost fifty ten mule wagons operating somewhere between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. He was also active in canal shipping. Because Pennsylvania teamsters were a clannish group, he had close friendships with most of the other teamsters who ran more than one wagon between the major cities of Pennsylvania.

  The other man Abraham Gibbon was expecting was Tom Collins. Collins was a labor contractor, and he ran the work gang at the Gallitzin Tunnel, which was the largest work gang on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s mountain division.

  Collins was the first to arrive at Gibbon’s office. He was a smallish man with silver-gray hair, a quick, nervous, high-pitched voice, and an ingratiating manner. But for all his flattery and efforts to please, he was a man who carried an air of authority. In him the ingratiation was clerical rather than servile. Indeed more than once Tom Collins had been mistaken for a priest out of cassock. And those so mistaken were not very far off the mark, for in Ireland Tom Collins had been a priest. He had, however, been defrocked because he liked young girls more than the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

  Abraham Gibbon rose to his feet when filins entered the room. “Good day, Mr. Collins,” he said. “Please sit down over there. You’ll find my furnishings comfortable, though dilapidated. Will you have a spot of whiskey or rum?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Gibbon,” Collins said, sliding into the chair Gibbon had pointed out. “I’ll take a drop of your whiskey if you don’t mind.” He was wearing his best black gabardine suit and a clean white shirt. But he had gone out without collar and tie, and the last time he had put a razor to his face had been at least a day before. Since he was a man who did not show a heavy beard, he did not look terribly scruffy; but Abraham Gibbon was unusually fastidious, and consequently he thought badly of Tom Collins for appearing so unkempt. Abraham Gibbon was a fussy, peevish man who took offense easily and swiftly. And this morning he was much more peevish than normal because of a searing and relentless pain in one of his back teeth.

  Gibbon poured a small portion of cheap whiskey into a glass for Collins. For himself he poured a larger portion (because of his tooth, he rationalized) of better brandy. He had chosen not to offer the brandy to Collins. Nor would he offer it to Kean when he arrived, although Kean would be offered a better whiskey than Gibbon had made available to Collins.

  “And how is your family, Mr. Gibbon?” Collins asked affably, after Gibbon had resumed his seat behind his large, though shabby desk. There was a slight trace of brogue still in his voice, even though he had been twenty years on the western side of the Atlantic.

  “My family, sir?” Gibbon asked, petulantly. “What do you know or care about my family? I should think my personal life would be of little interest to you.”

  “I’m sure I know nothing at all about your family or your personal life, Mr. Gibbon,” Collins said, a wide charming smile spreading across his face. “I was only starting out our conversation this morning by, as it were, passing the time of day. Truly, I wish you and your family well, Mr. Gibbon. And if you would prefer not to talk about them, then I would be most pleased to pass the time of day talkin’ about something else. That is, of course, until the other gentleman arrives. On the other hand,” Collins went on pleasantly, “if you’d like to talk your business before he comes, then by all means let’s set to that. Because I’m here at your service, and that’s for sure. Make no mistake about that.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Abraham Gibbon muttered uncertainly, not sure why he felt a bit belittled.

  “I, of course, have never had the good fortune of marrying, and so I don’t have the blessing of children.”

  Or the curse of children, Gibbon thought but did not say. He was recalling his older son Jeremy, who had gone to California to look for gold. He had only been at his diggings a month before he discovered what turned out to be his true mother lode—gin and whores. He had returned to Philadelphia addicted to drink and riddled with syphilis.

  “I have children,” Gibbon said abruptly after a long and uncomfortable silence. “Two daughters and a son. The two daughters are of marriageable age, but they are unmarried and ugly. My son will never be married. And my wife is dead.”

  “It is indeed fortunate,” Collins replied, making the most he could out of Gibbon’s misfortune, “that you have two fine women to take care of you. You will be soon at an age, I’m sure, where you’ll need more than ever the care of women.” Collins’s charming smile never deserted him.

  “Twin harpies!” Gibbon muttered into his glass as he took another large gulp of his brandy. Collins’s whiskey was scarcely touched.

  He was about to offer Mr. Gibbon another encouraging thought when George Kean arrived. Kean was a large, rough, outdoorsy man with a loud voice and few words.

  After the introductions and dispersal of whiskey, Gibbon announced his business.

  “A client has approached me who has asked me to keep his identity most confidential, but I can assure you that he is a man of the highest stature and… urn,” he coughed, “integrity. This man of, as I say, wealth and position has asked me to provide certain discreet services for him. And after a careful search of possible candidates to execute those services, I have settled upon the two of you.”

  George Kean nodded cautiously, but Tom Collins spoke.

  “That’s most kind of you,” he said. “I’m sure that your confidence will be well rewarded by good and faithful service.�
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  “That may be as it will be,” Gibbon said mysteriously.

  “Go on,” said George Kean to Gibbon. “State the business.”

  “At any rate,” Gibbon said, “my client has approached me with a proposition. I should add that he has significant interests in various enterprises specializing in shipping and transportation. And he views with alarm the successful completion of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main line across the mountains to Pittsburgh.”

  “So do I,” George Kean said. “The bastard will ruin my business.”

  “Exactly!” Gibbon agreed. “It will destroy the enterprise you have constructed by the sweat of your brow.”

  “And may the good Lord spare you such grief, to be sure,” Tom Collins said.

  “And now,” Gibbon said, “my client has no illusions that the Pennsylvania can be stopped. But it would serve all of our purposes, as you will soon learn, if the successful completion of the Pennsylvania’s main line can be delayed for a year or two, or perhaps if all goes well, three.”

  Kean nodded.

  “You do know that I am employed by the railroad,” Collins said, his face lighting up with scarcely concealed shrewdness.

  “That, sir, is exactly the source of your usefulness to my client,” Gibbon said.

  “Keep talking,” Kean said.

  “Both of you could be instrumental in delaying the railroad. And my client would be pleased to pay you both a fair price for your help in accomplishing that goal.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “You, for instance, Mr. Kean, could easily mobilize a number of teamsters who feel as you do about the railroad. Together you could, I’m sure, use your imaginations to find ways to hinder the construction.”

  “I’ve had a thought or two about that,” Kean said in a low, quiet voice.

  “Of course you have. Of course you have.” And then Gibbon turned to Tom Collins. “And you, Collins, because of your responsibility as contractor for the largest work gang on the mountain division, are in a position to, umm, encourage strife among the laborers. And instill in them in any other way you can devise the desire to loaf and malinger.”