Текст книги "The Assassin"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Justin Scott
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10

Take off your shoe,” said the assassin.

Big Pete Straub glared down the rifle barrel aimed at his head and weighed his chances of wrapping his mitts around the neck of this man who had played him for a sucker. Not good.

Slowly, he unlaced his boot, biding his time, gathering his enormous frame for an overwhelming rush, figuring to take a bullet or even two before he crushed the life out of him.

“And your sock.”

Straub tugged off a dirty sock and reached for his other boot. Bare feet? Why?

“Leave it on. One’s enough.”

“What in—”

“Put your hands behind your back. Lay down on them. All your weight. Close your eyes. Tight! Squeeze ’em tight!”

“Is this because I missed? I would have hit Bell if you let me use my own gun.”

“I knew you would miss.”

“Then why—”

“Open your mouth.”

“What—”

The assassin shoved the rifle between Big Pete’s teeth and touched the muzzle to the roof of his mouth. Big Pete felt it tickle the sensitive membrane.

–

“Ah don’t envy Humble’s sheriff,” drawled Texas Walt Hatfield.

Texas Walt and Archie Abbott and Isaac Bell were wolfing down the Toppling Derrick’s blue plate special breakfast of fried fatback and eggs.

“Ah mean every time the man turns around, someone’s shot, and whoever does the shooting gets clean away. Dumb luck last night, only one dead with all that lead flying, and thankfully none of the ladies. Good luck for you, though, Isaac.”

“Look out!”

A flicker of motion in the corner of Isaac Bell’s eye exploded into a rock shattering the window. Bell shoved Archie. The rock missed Abbott’s aristocratic nose by a half inch and broke the coffee cup Texas Walt was lifting to his lips.

The drunk who had thrown the rock—a middle-aged, unshaven cowhand in tattered shirt and bibless overalls, and one boot peeling off its sole—stood swaying in the middle of Main Street. His truculent expression froze in astonishment when three tall Van Dorn detectives boiled out the swinging doors with guns drawn. Isaac Bell covered the sidewalk to their left with his automatic pistol. Archie Abbott guarded their right with a city slicker’s snub-nosed revolver in one hand and a blackjack in the other.

Texas Walt stalked into the street and leveled two long-barrel Smith & Wessons at the rock thrower’s face. His voice was cold, his eyes colder. “You want to explain why you ruined my breakfast?”

The drunk trembled. “Looks like I bit off more than I can chew.”

“What in Sam Hill are you talking about?”

“Did you read the note?”

“Note? What note?”

“This note,” said Isaac Bell, who had picked up the rock on his way out the door. He slid a throwing knife from his boot, cut the twine that tied a sheet of paper around the rock, spread the paper, and read it.

“Who gave you this?”

“Feller with five bucks.”

“What did he look like?”

“Big.”

“Beard? Mustache?”

“Nope.”

“What color hair?”

“Yeller.”

Texas Walt interrupted to ask, “Do you want me to shoot him, Isaac?”

“Hold on a minute. When did the fellow give this note?”

“Couple of hours ago. I guess.”

“Why’d you wait to throw it?”

“Thought I’d have a snort first.”

“Got any money left?”

“Nope.”

“Here. Get yourself something to eat.” Bell shoved a gold piece in his dirty palm and went back to breakfast. Archie and Walt followed.

“Why’d you give that sorry fool money?” asked Walt.

“He did us a big favor.”

“Favor? Spilled coffee all over my best shirt.”

“The hostlers at the stable saw ‘two men.’ Remember?”

“What two men?” asked Archie.

“Mounted up and rode off after they shot Gustafson,” said Hatfield. “What favor, Isaac?”

“When his rock broke the window, I realized why there were two men. One fired first to break the window to give the sniper a clear shot at Mr. Gustafson.”

“He missed anyhow. Twice.”

“Only because Mr. Gustafson has lightning-fast reflexes. Most men would have stood gaping at the window. But it repeats a pattern.”

“What pattern?”

“Big Pete–type assistance. In Kansas he used him to throw off the scent. Here he used him to clear his shot. I’ll lay even money he used him, too, when he shot Albert Hill in Coffeyville and Riggs at Fort Scott.”

“What does the note say?” asked Archie.

Isaac Bell read it aloud: “‘You’ll find me at the I-Bar-O. Come and get me if you’re man enough.’”

“Someone’s been reading too many dime novels,” said Texas Walt. “Why’s he announcing ahead of time he’s going to bushwhack us?”

“Theatrical,” Bell agreed.

“Bad theater,” said Archie.

Bell spoke with the saloonkeeper who told him that the I-Bar-O ranch was north of Humble on a bend of the San Jacinto River. “That’s the old Owens place. Don’t know who you’ll find living there. Heard they pulled up stakes.”

“We’re getting set up for a wild-goose chase,” said Hatfield. “Long ride on a hot day.”

Bell said, “Get horses, saddlebags, and Winchesters. Pick me up at Mike’s Hardware.”

Twenty minutes later Archie and Walt trotted their horses up to the gleaming-new, three-story brick Mike’s Wholesale and Retail Hardware Company leading a big sorrel for Bell. Bell handed them slingshots from a gunnysack and swung into the saddle.

“You been chewing locoweed, Isaac? If it ain’t a wild-goose chase, the man has a rifle. So does his sidekick.”

Bell reached deeper in his sack and tossed them boxed matches and half sticks of dynamite with short fuses. “In case they’re barricaded.”

Winchesters in their scabbards, TNT in their saddlebags, the Van Dorn detectives headed out at a quick trot. They rode six or seven miles, perspiring in the thick, humid heat, passing several cattle outfits that had gone bust. There was a shortage of cowhands in East Texas, Walt explained. Young men flocked to the oil fields.

The I-Bar-O appeared to be another of the abandoned ranches.

No smoke rose from the cookhouse, and the paddocks were empty.

The Van Dorns spread out, dismounted, and approached cautiously, guns drawn, eyes raking windows, doorways, and rooftops. The main house, a low-slung single-story affair, was deserted. So was the cookhouse—stove cold, larder draped in spiderwebs, flypaper crusted with dried-up insects. The only animals left in the barns were hungry cats.

They converged on the bunkhouse, a flimsy building with an oft-patched roof, a few small windows, and a narrow veranda. Archie forged ahead onto the veranda and reached for the door.

“Wait.”

Isaac Bell pointed at a clot of mud on the veranda steps and motioned Archie from the door. The redhead pressed his back to the wall and peered in the nearest window. “Man on the floor. Can’t quite see. He’s got a rifle beside him, but he’s not holding it . . . In fact, if he’s not dead, he sure isn’t moving.”

Archie reached again for the door.

“Don’t!” chorused Bell and Walt. Neither questioned Archie’s courage, but his judgment was not seasoned to their liking. He had come late to the detective line—personally recruited by Bell, on the first case that Mr. Van Dorn had allowed him to form his own squad. As Mr. Van Dorn put it more than once, “It’s a miracle how a Protestant New York blue blood can get his Irish up as fast as Archibald Angell Abbott IV.”

“It’s O.K.,” said Archie. “He’s alone and he’s dead.”

Walt Hatfield cocked both his pistols. “Archie, if you touch that doorknob, I’ll shoot you.”

“Shoot me?”

“To prevent you from killing yourself. Stand aside and let Isaac show you how we do it in Texas.”

Isaac Bell gestured Walt to take cover, bounded onto and across the veranda, shouldered Archie aside, jammed his spine to the wall, and rammed his rifle backward to smash the door open with the butt.

The blast it triggered shook the earth.

11

A swath of buckshot wide as two men screeched through the doorway and splintered both sides of the jamb. Isaac Bell hurled himself into the bunkhouse before the assassin could reload.

Cavernous ten-gauge shotgun barrels stared him rock steady in the face. He dived sideways, hit the floor with a crash, and rolled into a crouch before he realized that the shotgun was lashed tightly to a post.

Ears ringing, Bell lowered his Winchester and looked around.

A horseshoe dangled from a rafter. It was swinging on a string that looped over several nails and down to the shotgun’s triggers. Opening the door had bumped the horseshoe off a nail. Its weight had fetched up the slack in the string and jerked the triggers, firing both barrels simultaneously.

Big Pete Straub lay on his back on the bunkhouse floor. His right foot was bare. Flies were darting in and out of a ragged three-inch hole in the top of his head. With one shoe off and one shoe on, the refinery police chief had killed himself by putting his rifle barrel in his mouth and pushing the trigger with his toe.

“So much for your assistance pattern, Isaac,” said Hatfield. “The man went out alone with a bang.”

“Almost took us with him,” said Archie.

“About that ‘almost,’ Archie?” said Hatfield, cocking an eyebrow that demanded an answer.

“Thank you, Walt. Thank you, Isaac.”

“You can thank us by remembering that criminals do the damnedest things.”

Bell was already kneeling by Straub’s gun. “Savage 99.”

Hatfield snapped a spent shell off the floor. “Another wildcat.”

The sleek, hammerless Savage felt remarkably light in Bell’s hands. He noticed an extension on the fore end of the chamber, as if a quarter-inch piece of metal had been added to it. A metal slide under the wooden end released it, revealing the underside of the barrel. A square stud projected from it. The wood had a corresponding hole. Bell fitted the wood to the barrel, held the chamber in the other hand, and twisted firmly. The barrel, which he expected to be compression-screwed into the chamber, rotated an easy quarter turn and pulled loose. He was suddenly holding two separate parts, each barely twenty inches long, short enough to conceal in a satchel, a sample case, or an innocent-looking carpetbag.

“Walt, did you ever see a breakdown Savage 99?”

“Ah don’t believe the company makes one.”

“Someone made this one with an interrupted screw.”

Bell put it back together by inserting the barrel into the chamber and turning a quarter turn. A metal slide underneath fit into a corresponding slot, locking the barrel in place. Thanks to the interrupted threads—an invention that had made possible the quick-sealing cannon breech—the rifle could be broken down or reassembled in two seconds.

But the question remained why such a light weapon for a man as big as Straub?

“No telescope.”

“Holes tapped for mounting one?” asked Walt.

Bell inspected the top of the frame. “Mounting holes tapped . . . You should have seen his shot in Kansas. Archie saw it.”

“Better part of a half a mile,” said Archie.

Walt said, “Mr. Straub must have had hawk eyes.”

The Springfield ’03 that the sheriff had found under the dead man in a Humble alley was fed ammunition by a removable straight magazine. The Savage had a rotary magazine. The indicator on the side of the chamber read “4.” Bell extracted one of the rounds. Instead of factory-made round noses, the bottleneck cartridges had been specially loaded with pointed, aerodynamic “spitzer” bullets.

Something about the weapon felt wrong to Bell. He unscrewed the barrel again, rethreaded it in a second, slid the wooden fore end back in place, locking the entire assembly. Then he carried the gun outside. The sorrel had wandered close. He tied its reins to the veranda railing in case shots spooked the animal, took a bead on a fence post a quarter mile away, and fired until the magazine was empty.

He rode the horse to the target and rode back.

“Hit anything?” Walt asked.

“Dead center twice, grazed it twice. It’s a good gun . . . But it’s hard to believe it’s the gun that killed Spike Hopewell.”

“Unless,” Hatfield grinned, “Mr. Straub was a better shot.”

“Doubt it.”

Archie said, “But we found a custom-made Savage shell.”

Texas Walt said, “Listen close, Archie. Isaac did not say that Spike Hopewell wasn’t killed by a Savage 99. All he’s saying is he don’t reckon this particular Savage 99 did the deed.”

–

“Telegram, Mr. Bell.”

Bell tipped the boy two bits and read the urgent wire he had been hoping for. Joseph Van Dorn had outdone himself in his constant effort to minimize expenses by reducing his message to a single word:

NOW

Bell told Archie Abbott to follow him when he was done helping Hatfield and sprinted to the station. He barely made the Sunset Express to New Orleans, where he transferred to the New York Limited.

He settled into a writing desk in the club car and was composing a report from his notebook when women’s voices chorused like music in his ear: “Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Bell.”

Edna and Nellie Matters were headed to Washington, where Nellie was to address a suffragist delegation petitioning Congress. Her balloon was folded up in the express car. When the sisters said they were sleeping in upper and lower Pullman berths, Bell gave them his stateroom.

Edna protested. Nellie thanked him warmly. “How can we repay you?”

“Join me this evening in the dining car.”

At dinner, Nellie entertained him, and the surrounding tables, with tales of runaway balloons. Edna, who had clearly heard it all before, listened politely as Nellie rattled on. “Sideways, the wind blows you into trees and telegraph wires. Low on gas, you fall from the sky. Emergency! Quick! Emergency gas!—”

“Excuse me, young lady,” a clergyman interrupted from the table across the aisle. “I could not help but overhear. Where do you find emergency gas when you’re already flying in the air?”

“I have special steel containers installed in my basket,” Nellie answered. “Lots of balloons do. It’s very handy having extra hydrogen.”

“They must be heavy.”

“They beat falling,” she dismissed him and turned her green eyes back on Bell. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Too quick, too much emergency gas, you soar too high and suffocate. The air gets so thin, you run out of oxygen . . .”

Over the Neapolitan ice cream dessert, Bell echoed Archie’s earlier comment. “Strange how the three of us keep turning up together where crimes have occurred.”

Edna replied, “I’m beginning to suspect you, Mr. Bell.”

Nellie laughed. “I suspected him from the start.”

“May I ask you something?”

Nellie grinned at Edna. “Doesn’t he look suddenly serious?”

“Like a detective,” said Edna. “Go on, we shouldn’t be teasing you.”

“At least until he’s paid the dinner check,” said Nellie. “Actually, you really do look solemn. What is it?”

“Spike Hopewell told me that your brother ran off and you never heard from him. Is that true?”

Their mood changed in an instant. Nellie looked away. Edna nodded. “Yes. Actually, he was a Yale man, like you.”

“Really? What class?”

“You were probably several years ahead of him.”

“He didn’t go back after his freshman year,” said Nellie.

“Perhaps you knew him?” said Edna.

“I don’t recall anyone named Matters.”

“His name was Billy Hock.”

“Billy Hock?” Bell looked at her curiously.

“Yes,” said Edna. “He was my older brother.”

“And my older half brother,” said Nellie.

Isaac Bell said, “I never made the connection.”

“We did,” said Edna. “Or we wondered. Do you remember now?”

Bell nodded, recalling a slender, eager-to-please youngster, more a boy than a man. “Well, yes, I knew him, slightly . . .”

Billy Hock had big, bright gray-green eyes as bright as Edna’s and Nellie’s. “He enrolled as a freshman my senior year. He was very young, youngest of the boys entering.”

“Fifteen. He was small. Undersized.”

Nellie said, “He tried out for crew. He would have made a perfect coxswain, being so light. But he was terrified of water. He always had a phobia about it.”

“The crew rowers ragged him mercilessly,” said Edna.

Bell nodded.

“Until some upperclassman stepped in and put a stop to it.”

“Yes.”

“We wondered how.”

“He could not abide bullies,” said Bell.

“One boy against a team?” asked Nellie.

“He trained at boxing.”

Edna directed her level gaze into Bell’s eyes.

“When I watched you and Archie boxing those men, I suddenly wondered was it you who stood up for our brother. Wasn’t it?”

“I hadn’t realized the connection until this very moment. The different name. We didn’t discuss our families at college—unless our people were related—you must remember when you went off to college how we were all so glad to be away from home at that age.”

Both women nodded.

“So Billy Hock was the brother who ran away? Strange . . . I wondered at school how he would fare. When did he go?”

“That same summer, right after his freshman year,” said Edna.

“He was adventurous,” said Nellie. “Just like me—always running around and trying new things.”

“We never heard from him again,” said Edna.

Nellie said, “Sometimes I blame myself. I became a kind of model for him, even though I was younger. He saw me running around—one second I was entranced by balloons, then I was trying to be an actress, then I ran off to be an acrobat in the circus—remember, Edna?”

“I remember Father laughing when the ringmaster walked you home.”

“On a white horse! He said I was too young. I said, ‘O.K., take me home on a white horse!’ . . . And he did . . . I gave Billy courage. I only hope it didn’t push him toward the Army.”

“No, it didn’t,” Edna said, laying a reassuring hand on her sister’s arm. “If anything, it gave him courage to go away to Yale. Father,” she explained, turning to Bell, “so wanted Billy to attend Yale because many ‘Oil Princes’ went to college there—Comstock’s son, Lapham’s son, Atkinson’s nephews.”

“Billy and I talked about joining the Army. The Spanish war was brewing—the papers were full of it—and boys were signing up.” Bell had tried, caught up in the excitement, but his father, a Civil War veteran, had intervened forcefully, arguing with unassailable logic that there were better causes to die for than “a war started by newspapers to sell newspapers.”

Edna said, “We guess that Billy enlisted under an assumed name. Lied about his age. We fear he was lost either in the swamps of Cuba or the Philippine jungle. We never heard. If he did join, he must have changed his name and lied about his family.”

“But we don’t really know what happened,” said Nellie. “Except that it nearly destroyed our poor father.”

–

“You cut it close,” said Joseph Van Dorn.

Isaac Bell lifted his gold watch from his pocket, sprang the lid, and let Van Dorn read the dial. Then he shook his head at the latest addition to the Boss’s Willard Hotel office, a modern, glass-cased table clock from Paris. “Your O’Keenan electric, imported at untold expense, is running fifty-seven seconds fast.”

“Sit down,” said Van Dorn. “He’s in my private waiting room. But brace yourself. The poor devil lost all his hair to some disease.”

“Alopecia totalis.”

“Even his eyebrows and mustache. I had a look through the peephole. He’s smooth as a cue ball.”

“Don’t worry,” said Bell, “it’s not catching . . . Now, sir, we need a plan.”

They spoke for two minutes, Van Dorn dubious, Bell prepared with persuasive answers. When the tall detective had prevailed, the Boss murmured into a voice tube and his visitor was ushered in from the private entrance.

12

Mr. Rockefeller.”

The retired president of the Standard Oil Corporation was a tall, sixty-six-year-old, two-hundred-pound man. He had piercing eyes that burned in an enormous hairless head, an icily quiet manner, and a powerful presence that reminded Isaac Bell of the long-reigning heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries.

John D. Rockefeller shook hands with Joseph Van Dorn and nodded to Bell when Van Dorn introduced him as “my top investigator.” He refused a chair and got straight to the point.

“An assassin is discrediting Standard Oil by attacking enemies of the trust. The public, inclined to believe the worst, gossips that Standard Oil is behind the attacks.”

“It’s the price for hitting the big time,” Van Dorn said sympathetically. “You get blamed for everything.”

“This outcry against us is wrong. The public cannot seem to understand that we are not monsters. We are merely efficient—enormously more efficient than our competitors. Oil is not the biggest business in America. Coal is bigger. Railroads are bigger. Steel is bigger. Yet, we own coal. We control railroads. We own steel. Why? Not because we’re monsters, but because they are chaotic, embroiled in murderous rivalry, each conducting his own business independently of the other and in sharp competition. We cooperate.”

Van Dorn glanced at Bell. Bell had been the Boss’s personal apprentice when he started at the agency straight out of college and Van Dorn had taught him the trade on Chicago’s West Side—as dangerous a city ward as could be found anywhere in the country. Like Apache braves who had stalked game and hunted enemies side by side since boyhood, they could communicate with signs known only to them.

“You sound pretty sure of yourself,” said Van Dorn, uncharacteristically blunt.

John D. Rockefeller fixed him with his cold gaze. “The next time someone tells you that Standard Oil is an octopus, Mr. Van Dorn, you may tell them for me that the ‘octopus’ keeps his books straight, his inventory in order, his bank accounts positive, and pays his debts when due. He is not hoodwinked by alluring prospects. He keeps his powder dry. The octopus is organized and disciplined and the rest of them . . . they are not.”

“If the octopus is ready to get down to brass tacks,” said Van Dorn, “let’s take up the business of this meeting.”

“I intend to hire the Van Dorn Detective Agency to catch the assassin and end the slander.”

“You’re too late,” said Isaac Bell. “The man committed suicide in Humble, Texas.”

“I have rarely heard anything so ridiculous,” said Rockefeller. “You have your facts wrong.”

–

“Not unless you know something that we don’t about Standard Oil policeman Big Pete Straub,” said Bell.

“I do,” Rockefeller said blandly.

“We are all ears,” said Van Dorn.

“Mr. Straub suffered a medical condition the doctors call foot drop. His nerves were damaged by an injury he sustained in the course of a labor dispute. The damage, which was irreparable, caused paralysis of the flexor muscles.”

“Right foot or left?” asked Bell.

“Mr. Straub could not move the toes of his right foot. Had he desired to trigger a rifle with his toe, he would have bared his other foot.”

Van Dorn scowled as if embarrassed his detective was found lacking.

Isaac Bell almost smiled. He felt oddly relieved. That light Savage rifle in that big man’s hands did not feel right. And their attempt to penetrate Standard Oil had just paid off in a totally unexpected bonus.

“Did your refinery police detectives tell you this?” asked Van Dorn.

“Straub’s superiors reported the condition when they read the accounts in the newspapers. Do you see how perfectly silly that verdict of suicide is?”

“Thank you, Mr. Rockefeller, I do,” said Isaac Bell. “He was murdered. The killing was made to look like suicide. Mr. Straub was not the assassin.”

Bell spoke coolly, but his head was spinning with questions. The lightweight gun. How to explain such extraordinary accuracy? A circus or Wild West Show performer, hardly likely. He was grasping at straws. The assassin could be an ordinary-size man with a penchant for the Savage 99 and the means and knowledge to have the factory weapon smithed to such a degree, it was custom-made. Like the weapon he had left with Straub’s body.

Rockefeller said, “Van Dorn, I want you to stop wasting your time with the investigation in Washington and put your firm’s full effort into catching the assassin.”

Isaac Bell and Joseph Van Dorn knew that Bell’s ploy to infiltrate Standard Oil had hooked their man. Now the job was to reel in the cagey president.

Van Dorn said, “You have your own private detective force. Why don’t you put them to work?”

“They’re not the men for this job. I want the best and I’ll pay for it.”

Bell and Van Dorn exchanged what appeared to be puzzled glances. “But we are already investigating you for the Corporations Commission,” Van Dorn protested. “As I’m sure you know.”

Rockefeller said, “You will recall my instructions that I enter your offices, unaccompanied, by a private entrance.”

Joseph Van Dorn’s grand roman nose wrinkled as if he smelled something unpleasant.

“Mr. Rockefeller, what does your method of arrival have to do with anything?”

“We do not have to inform the Corporations Commission that you’re working for me.”

Joseph Dorn’s mouth tightened. His nostrils flared. His cheeks turned red as his whiskers as he ceased to draw breath. His voice took on a low, steely note that left no doubt that were Rockefeller a younger man, he would drag him down the Willard Hotel’s grand staircase by the scruff of his neck and throw him out the door onto Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I have given my word to my client, the commission. My word is my bond. A sacred oath.”

“This is more urgent,” said Rockefeller.

Van Dorn started to retort.

Isaac Bell interrupted. “We should concentrate on the assassin. He is the clear and immediate danger.”

“No,” said Van Dorn. “The agency is honor-bound to do both.”

“I agree with Mr. Rockefeller,” Bell said staunchly. “This killer will murder again. Hanging a murderer is far more important—and more honorable—than parsing the intentions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which the Supreme Court will probably overturn anyway.”

Van Dorn clenched his fists. “If you feel so strongly that the intentions of a shilly-shallying Congress and a vacillating court are more important than my agency’s honor, you are free to resign your position and join Mr. Rockefeller.”

Rockefeller turned on his heel and headed for the door. “I’ll be at my estate in Westchester, New York, Mr. Bell, where you can call on me.”

–

The assassin entered the Washington Monument carrying a carpetbag and joined a group of men and women waiting for the elevator to take them to the top of the memorial shaft. They returned the bright smile and hearty hello expected of fellow out-of-town visitors and made room when the car arrived. Piloted by a self-important operator, who seemed to take pleasure in opening and closing the door at a glacial pace, it climbed five hundred feet in twelve slow minutes, a heart-pounding eternity of grating cables, wheels, and rails made even longer by the endless din of tourist chatter and the sudden exclamations as they spotted among the memorial stones that decorated the interior walls lumps of rock from their own states. It gets easier every day to be a snob, thought the assassin.

The door opened at last to the smell of turpentine and paint.

–

The so-called Lincoln Memorial was nothing more than a mud patch, and Clyde Lapham was having a hard time concentrating on the do-gooder’s speech. His eye kept wandering toward an exposed tree root that reminded him of a snake slithering up an Allegheny riverbank. The old man remembered the snake so vividly from his boyhood that he could smell the water and hear the flies buzzing around his head. He swore he saw its fast tongue exploring the air with expectant flickers.

“‘The Great Emancipator,’” the do-gooder droned in his ear. “‘Savior of the Union’ . . . Fitting to rise opposite the monument to our first president, don’t you think, sir?”

“That snake . . .”

“Beg your pardon, Mr. Lapham?”

“You see that snake . . .” Lapham’s voice trailed off as he lost interest in whether the do-gooder raising money to build the Lincoln Memorial could see the snake. He could see the snake.

The do-gooder pointed at the Washington Monument. It was taller than a New York City skyscraper. Unlike New York skyscrapers, it stood alone. Far, far away. And far behind it, the dome of the Capitol rose into the sky like . . . like . . . he didn’t care what it was like. But here, in the mud, the snake.

He tried to remember why he was here instead of back in New York. The do-gooder wanted money from the Standard, and the boys at Number 26 had given him the job of riding the train down to Washington to reckon if it was the kind of thing Mr. Rockefeller would want to write a check to. Or so they said. Lapham had his suspicions. They just wanted him out of the office so they could cut him out of another private deal.

“How much money are you begging for?”

“Begging? May I quote Mr. Rockefeller himself on the subject of philanthropy? ‘I am proud,’ he said, ‘of my ability to beg money for the good of mankind.’”

“How much would this thing cost?”

“Well, sir, if Congress won’t act, it’s up to patriotic men of means like yourself and Mr. Rockefeller. As Mr. Rockefeller has undertaken to support many fine causes in his retirement—”

“Retirement?” Clyde Lapham snorted. “Rockefeller retired? You must be kidding . . .” His voice trailed off. He had just remembered they weren’t ever supposed to say that. He corrected himself. “Retirement. You’re right. He’s retiring. Retired. Retired. Goddamned-sure retired.”

The do-gooder, a churchman, recoiled at the sound of an oath.

“How much will this thing cost?” Lapham repeated.

“Well . . .” The do-gooder rubbed his hands. “Wouldn’t that depend, sir—Mr. Lapham—on the size of the monument?”

“Big as that one?” Lapham asked, pointing at the five-hundred-fifty-five-foot, four-sided obelisk erected to the memory of George Washington. He stared at it. His eye fixed on a barely visible square hole near the top. As the tree root reminded him of the snake, that square hole made him think of a wagon riding up the sheer wall of the pillar. He could even see the horses pulling it in the patterns of the marble building blocks.

“What’s that up there?”

“The monument?” asked the minister, who was beginning to realize that old Lapham was confused, to put it mildly. Too confused to contribute to his private Lincoln Memorial fund? Or confused in a way that might embrace the fund with open arms.

“Let us remember that magnificent edifice owes its existence to the private effort of the Washington Monument Society when good men like the good men of the Standard raised the funds that Congress failed to provide.”

“That square thing near the top . . . What the devil is that?”

“Oh, that’s one of the windows.”

“Windows?”

“People looking out that window will see the Lincoln Memorial right down here.”