The Gangster

Bell headed toward a cluster of freight houses and coal pockets, timing his pace to gradually pull ahead, veered through the buildings, and used them for cover to sprint into a clump of trees. There, he hid and waited. This early in spring, branches hadn’t yet leafed out and the stars penetrated so brightly they gleamed on his hands. He dropped the satchel at his feet, pulled his collar around his face, and hid his hands in his pockets.

He heard footsteps. Then labored breathing. The hobo limped into the trees. He saw Bell, plunged a hand into his coat, and whipped out a knife in a blur of starlight on steel. Run? thought Bell. Not and turn his back on the knife. He grabbed the heavy satchel to block the knife and formed a fist.

Ten feet apart, the two eyed each other silently. The hobo’s face was dark, barely visible under the brim of his cap. His eyes glittered like a hunted animal’s. His arms and legs and entire body were coiled to spring. Isaac Bell grew aware of his own body; every muscle was cocked.

The watchmen blew their whistles. They had teamed up, far in the distance, hunting in the wrong direction. The hobo was breathing hard, eyes flickering between him and the whistles.

Bell lowered the satchel and opened his fist. The instinct was correct. The hobo returned the knife to his coat and sagged against a tree.

Bell whispered, “Me first.”

He slipped silently from the trees.

When he looked back at the rail yard from the shelter of a farm wall, he saw a shadow pass under a light. The hobo was wing-footing the other way.

* * *

Doubting Thomas had called it wrong.

When Bell’s classmates tossed pebbles at the Old Girls’ house on Main Street, the girls flung open their windows and leaned out, whispering and giggling. Who are you boys? Where did you come from? How did you get here in the middle of the night?

They had decided, while stumbling across the countryside, that it would be best for everyone’s future not to admit that they had stolen a train. They stuck to a story that they had chartered a special, and Miss Porter’s girls seemed impressed. “Just to see us?”

“Worth every penny,” chorused Larry and Doug.

Suddenly, from around the corner, a pretty blond girl appeared on the grass in a flowing white robe.

“You boys better run. The housemother telephoned Miller.”

“Who’s Miller?”

“The constable.”

The Yale men scattered, all but Isaac Bell, who stepped into a shaft of light and swept off his hat. “Good evening, Mary Clark. I’m awfully glad to see you again.”

“Isaac!”

They had met last month at a chaperoned tea.

“What are you doing here?”

“You are even blonder and more beautiful than I remember.”

“Here comes Miller. Run, you idiot!”

Isaac Bell bowed over her hand and ran for the dark. The unforgettable Miss Mary Clark called after him, “I’ll tell Miller you came from Harvard.”

* * *

Two days later, he marched into the New Haven yard master’s office and announced, “I’m Isaac Bell. I’m a first year student at Yale. There’s a rumor on campus that detectives are inquiring about Locomotive 106.”

“What about it?”

“I’m the guy who borrowed it.”

“Sit there! Don’t move. Wait for the police.”

The yard master snatched up a telephone and reported Bell’s confession.

An hour passed. A prematurely white-haired detective in a pin-striped suit arrived. He was leading an enormous man whose head was swathed in bandages that covered his entire face but for one glaring eye. The eye fixed on Isaac Bell.

“That’s no wop,” he mumbled through the bandage. “I told youse he was a wop.”

“He says he stole 106.”

“I don’t care if he stole a whole damned train. He ain’t the dago Eye-talian wop guinea what sliced me.”

The white-haired detective walked the big man out. He returned in twenty minutes. He sat with Bell and introduced himself as Detective Eddie Edwards. Then he took out a memo book and wrote in a neat hand as he listened to Bell’s story. Three times, he asked Bell to repeat it. Finally, he asked, “Did you happen to see the wop who slashed that yard bull’s face?”

“Not at New Haven, but there was someone at the Farmington yards.” Bell told him about encountering the hobo with the wing-footed gait. “He could have ridden under the tender.”

“I’ll pass it on to the railroad dicks. But he’ll have worked his way to Boston by now.” Edwards made another note and closed his book.

Bell said, “I hate to think I helped a criminal escape.”

“Any man who could whip that yard bull didn’t need your help escaping. Come on, kid. I’ll walk you back to school.”

“You’re letting me go?”

“By a miracle, your harebrained stunt did not lead to death, injury, or destruction of property. Therefore, it is not in the interest of the New Haven Railroad to prosecute the son of a Boston banker from whom they one day might want to borrow money.”

“How did you know my father is a banker?”

“Wired a fellow in Boston.”