‘Well,’ the attorney general said, ‘we’ve got one of them.’
‘But that’s all we’ve got,’ Wells added.
They were sitting in the attorney general’s office on the first floor of the Justice Department headquarters; Wells in the same leather chair he usually occupied, the attorney general leaning forward across his desk. The second armchair was occupied by a third man, younger than both the others, broad-shouldered and rangy, the kind of man you knew would be very tall when he stood, no matter how he might scrunch down into an armchair. His dark gray suit was well-tailored, but he seemed constrained by it, as though he might prefer something much more practical and comfortable. His face was tanned, the cheekbones not quite high enough to hint at mixed blood but giving his face a flat, planed look, which together with level gray eyes, sun-bleached hair, and the tapering hands and fingers of an artist, made him look like some kind of an executive for a company whose business was mostly out of doors. And in a manner of speaking, that was what he was. His name was Frank Angel, and he was a special investigator: Angus Wells’ discovery and his top trouble-shooter.
Wells knew what others did not know about Frank Angel. He knew about the bullet scars in both of Angel’s legs and the longer one in his belly, and he knew how they had gotten there. He knew that if you checked Angel’s hands more carefully, you would find the outer edges calloused, for the man was well trained in the martial arts of the Orient. He knew that if you put any kind of gun into Angel’s hands, Angel could kill with it; and he knew the other things you could not see about Angel – the concealed throwing knives he could use so unerringly, the razor-edged buckle clipped behind the ornate one he usually wore, the peg-ended wire garrote looped inside the wide leather belt. He knew all about Frank Angel because he had taught Angel a great deal of it and had been there to see that Angel had been taught all the rest. He also knew that he owed Angel his life, but neither of them had ever spoken of that.
‘Goddamn it, they can’t have just vanished off the face of the earth!’ the attorney general said. ‘Two men with a quarter of a million dollars don’t just disappear!’
‘I don’t know,’ Wells mused. ‘I’d have said that with that kind of money, anyone could disappear. Buy a new name, a new country even.’
‘In ten days? Hardly!’ snorted the attorney general.
‘Where’s Briggs now?’
It was the first time Frank Angel had spoken since he’d come into the room. He’d listened to the theories. Wells had several. The old man had a few of his own. The robbers were lying low, waiting until pursuit died down before they spent their loot. Or they weren’t and were papering one of the big cities with federal money, and nobody had even noticed. Or they had split up and were awaiting word from Briggs. Or they weren’t. He shrugged mentally. Made no difference. Ten days had passed since they took Dick Briggs, and nothing else had turned up.
He’d read the reports. Engineer Pat Seele: Southern Pacific Railroad employee for eighteen years, married, four kids, living in a small frame house on the outskirts of Trinidad, Colorado. Exemplary record, unlikeliest of unlikely candidates to have been implicated in the robbery, unless you counted the Negro stoker with the magnificent name – Moses Glorification Washington. All they’d been able to say about the man who’d held them at gunpoint was that he was about five feet nine, had sallow skin and green eyes. At least, they thought they were green. The other two they’d seen only from a distance. One thickset and stocky, the other tall with long dark hair – not much more help than the descriptions given by the two Pinkerton men.
Sheriff George Curtis had also put in a report on the men he’d seen. The one riding a chestnut had been tall with long dark hair (he’d lost a hat in his flight, but the hat was old, sweat-stained, and indistinguishable from a thousand other hats), and the other man had been so far away that he could only make out a dark blue shirt and pants and his excellent riding. Curtis had the feeling that the trio knew the area well, and it was possible that they’d been involved in the Lincoln troubles a year or two before. Which, Angel reflected, cut the number of possibilities down to seven or eight hundred.
The only positive lead was Briggs.
‘He’s in the territorial penitentiary at Folsom,’ Wells replied. ‘Why?’
‘He’s no use to us there,’ Angel said.
‘Take your point, Frank,’ Wells said.
‘But we can’t risk losing him if we turn him loose. Even the best shagger in the business would run a fair chance of either being spotted and taken or dodged without too much trouble. And we don’t know if his sidekicks aren’t watching out for just such a dodge.’
‘Hardly likely,’ Angel suggested.
‘Too chancy,’ was the firm reply.
Angel just shrugged.
The attorney general reached for the box on the right-hand side of his desk and took out one of his evil-smelling cigars. He raised an eyebrow at the two men, who politely but firmly shook their heads in refusal. With a shrug that almost said that they were out of their heads, the attorney general lit his cigar with a wooden match, inhaling with deep pleasure. Wells looked at Frank Angel, and although their faces showed nothing, each knew what the other was thinking. They’d both, at one time or another, accepted the old man’s offer – but only once. After choking politely for what seemed like interminable hours, both had vowed never to touch the cigars again under any circumstance. They privately agreed that the attorney general probably had the cigars manufactured in a South American banana republic by very fat, very sweaty peons who created the unique flavor and bouquet by using a mixture of horse manure and wet newspaper to roll the stogies and stored them in the outhouse of the town brothel to mature.
‘Well Angus, Frank,’ the attorney general said, puffing happily on the glowing cigar, his head wreathed in pungent smoke. ‘Those Treasury boys want some answers, and they want them fast. We’re in trouble if we don’t come up with them.’
‘There is a way,’ Angel said.
Both men turned to look at him, and Angel grinned. When the old man said ‘we’ were in trouble, what he meant was ‘you’ were – and up to your eyebrows in it. If there was trouble, he wasn’t in it. No way.
‘Let’s hear it,’ the attorney general said. He sat down in his big leather chair, spreading his hands on the polished desk and looking expectantly at Frank Angel. Wells, too, eased himself into his chair, watching carefully, as though Angel were going to ask a conundrum he might have to answer.
‘Frame me,’ Angel said.
‘What?’
‘Rig a robbery, something fairly heavy. Something involving a lot of money – gold, perhaps. Something that might impress a man who can lay his hands on a one-third share of a quarter of a million dollars.’
‘Yes,’ Wells said. ‘I’m with you. You get pulled in for this job, whatever it is. Thrown into the pen. But it won’t get you anywhere.’
‘Why not?’ Angel asked.
‘Briggs won’t cough,’ Wells told him. ‘He’s like a rock. I’ve had three men in there working on him. Tried every trick in the book. Told him we’d taken the other two, he might as well spill. He laughed in their faces. Told him the money had been recovered, his pals had run for it leaving him holding the baby. Not a peep. Either he really doesn’t know anything, or he knows he’s fireproof.’
‘Which do you think it is?’ Angel asked.
‘Fireproof,’ Wells answered.
‘There’s something else, though,’ Angel put in thoughtfully. ‘Something we could try.’
Wells leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowing slightly. He took a deep breath as the attorney general nodded for Angel to continue.
‘Put me in with Briggs. Let me see if I can win his confidence. Three days at the most. If I do, I’ll pass a signal. Then you fix it, Angus – fix it so we can escape, crash out.’
‘Are you out of your head?’ Wells said harshly. ‘You think the territorial penitentiary will stand for having its reputation ruined?’
Angel looked at the attorney general, who was frowning.
‘The territorial penitentiary will do what it is damned well told to do, Angus,’ the old man said, ‘if I’m the one that tells it.’
‘It’s only a chance,’ Angel said, ‘but it might work.’
‘You might also get your throat cut,’ Wells pointed out. ‘This Briggs might get on to you.’
‘He might,’ Angel admitted. ‘It’s worth trying, If we got together – as sidekicks – he might lead me to the others. Or the money. Or both.’
‘I don’t know,’ Wells said. ‘It’s a damned long shot, Frank.’
‘Name another we can try,’ Angel said flatly.
There was a silence. If Wells had any other thoughts on the idea, he kept them to himself. The attorney general fell silent, too, tapping his teeth with a pen.
‘Yes,’ he said, finally, decisively. ‘I think we’ll try it.’
Angel didn’t smile. He wasn’t being rewarded. It was just a good idea. It might work, and it might not. It depended on how good they could make the escape look and if he could swing Briggs’ friendship. He said as much.
‘Oh,’ Wells said softly. ‘I think we can make it look good, all right. That is, if you can break Briggs.’
‘There’ll be a way,’ Angel said. ‘There always is.’
‘All right,’ the attorney general said. ‘That’s it. Angus, I leave the details to you. Get on to it and make it look good. Frame Angel so he only just avoids being hung!’
He smiled to take the sting out of his words. ‘Good luck, boy,’ he said to Angel.
‘Thanks,’ Angel said. He figured he was going to need it.