Текст книги "The Assassin"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Justin Scott
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“They better have good eyes,” said Lapham. He had lost sight of the wagon, but he could see a clear shot straight from that window to where he stood. “That’s the best part of a mile.”

“When Americans climb the stairs to honor President Washington, they will rush back down them to visit the Standard’s gift memorializing President Lincoln.”

“Damned fools should take the elevator.”

–

The assassin detached from the clot of tourists when the elevator door opened and they were shunted past a canvas curtain toward the observation windows that faced east, south, and north. The assassin slipped behind the curtain and put the carpetbag beneath the window that faced west. Stout metal bars had been installed in the window to stop suicides from launching themselves from it. They were set deep in the masonry six inches apart.

The window looked over the Mall, a grass-covered flat land that stretched almost to the Potomac River. At the far end, just before the river, was a stretch of raw mud where a Brooklyn minister—inspired by a previous generation’s Brooklyn Abolitionists—was attempting to collect contributions to build a memorial to Abraham Lincoln.

It was a thankless task that the Lincoln Memorial Association had been trying with no success since 1867. His target today, Clyde Lapham, could pay for the entire thing, being a charter member of the Standard Oil Gang. If he could only remember where he had left his checkbook.

–

Clyde Lapham forgot the snake in the mud and forgot the wagon on top of the Washington Monument. He was mesmerized now by the tip of the obelisk, a shiny point that was a different color than the marble. The marble was turning darker as it was silhouetted against the setting sun. But the tip glowed with an unearthly light.

The do-gooder churchman was rattling on again.

Lapham interrupted.

“Explain why the tip of the Washington Monument is a different color than the bottom?”

“It is made of aluminum,” said the churchman.

“Are you building something similar for President Lincoln?”

I’ve snagged a live one, thought the minister. If I can only land him.

“We have no design yet, sir. Congress fails to fund the memorial, so the money has not been allocated to pay for any proposed designs, and won’t be until private citizens step up and take charge.”

A closed carriage pulled up nearby. Two men stepped out and walked toward them. One carried a physician’s medical bag. He addressed Lapham, speaking slowly and loudly, “Good afternoon, Mr. Lapham. How are we feeling today?”

“Who the devil are you?”

To the minister’s astonishment, they seized Clyde Lapham by his arms and marched him forcefully toward the carriage.

The minister hurried after them. “You there! Stop. What are you doing?”

“I’m his doctor. It is time for him to come home.”

The minister was not about to let this opportunity be marched away. “Now, hold on!”

The doctor turned abruptly and blocked the minister’s path while his companion walked Lapham out of earshot. “You are disturbing my patient.”

“He’s not ill.”

The doctor pulled a pistol from his bag. He pointed it in the minister’s face. “Turn around. Walk away.”

“Where are you taking—”

The doctor cocked the pistol. The minister turned around and walked away, head swimming, until the carriage clattered off.

–

The assassin had demanded double canvas curtains to shield the monument’s west window just in case some tourist got nosy. Sure enough, through the curtains came a querulous demand: “What’s going on in there?”

“It’s a painter,” answered one of the Army privates responsible for guiding visitors. “He’s making pictures of the view.”

“Why’s he walled in?”

“So no one bothers him.”

“What if I want to see out that window?”

“Come back another day, sir.”

“See here! I’m from Virginia. I came especially to view Virginia from this great height.”

The assassin waited.

A new voice, the smooth-talking sergeant in charge of the detail who had been tipped lavishly: “I invite you, sir, to view Maryland and the District of Columbia today and return next week to devote your full attention to Virginia. It will be my personal pleasure to issue you a free pass to the elevator.”

The assassin took a well-lubricated cast-iron screw jack from the carpetbag and inserted it sideways in the window, holding the base against one bar and the load pad against the other and rotating the lever arm that turned the lifting screw. The jack was powerful enough to raise the corner of a barn. Employed sideways, it spread the vertical bars as if they were made of macaroni.

–

Clyde Lapham’s captors timed their arrival at the Washington Monument to coincide with the elevator’s final ascent of the day. The man with the physician’s bag stepped ahead to speak privately with the soldier at the door, palming a gold piece into his hand as he explained, “The old gent has been asking all day to come up and now that we’re here he’s a little apprehensive. I wonder if we could just scoot him aboard quickly. My resident will distract him until we get to the top . . . Who is he? Wealthy donor to my hospital, just as generous a man as you’ll ever meet. A titan of industry, in his day . . .”

The private’s nose wrinkled at the smell of chloroform on the doctor’s frock coat. The rich old guy was reeling on his feet. The resident was holding tight.

“Don’t worry, he won’t cause any trouble. He’s just nervous—it will mean so much to him.”

The private ushered them into the elevator and whispered to the other tourists not to trouble the old man.

They let the others off first and, when no one saw, they stepped behind the canvas.

The assassin pointed at the window. One of the bars had snapped. The other was bent. There was plenty of room between them. Lapham’s eyes were rolling in his head. “What’s that stink?”

“Chloroform.”

“Thought so. What are we doing here?”

“Flying,” said the assassin. At his signal, the two men lifted Lapham off his feet and threw him headfirst out the window.

Startled by the wind rushing past his head, Clyde Lapham soon found his attention fixed placidly on the granite blocks racing by like a long gray train of railroad cars. He had always liked trains.

–

In the passenger hall of the Baltimore & Ohio Depot, the public telephone operator signaled a successful long-distance connection to New York.

The assassin closed the door of the soundproofed booth.

“I have accomplished the mission.”

“Mission?” asked Bill Matters. “This is a weak line. I can’t hear you.”

“I have accomplished the mission.”

“What mission?”

“When the New York papers get the news, they’ll flood the streets with extras.”

Even through a weak connection, Matters heard the overblown exuberance that could mean trouble. “What news?”

“Clyde Lapham leaped to his death from the Washington Monument.”

“What?”

“As you requested, his death will seem innocent.”

“No.”

“The poor man was deranged. He jumped from the top of the Washington Monument.”

“No!”

“You could tell that he planned it a long time. He brought a barn jack to force open the bars wide enough to slip through. He arranged for the window to be blocked off from public view. He anticipated every detail. Apparently, an artist was painting views for the Army—the Army runs the monument, you know. Dementia is a strange affliction, isn’t it? That a man could be simultaneously so confused and so precise.”

“No! No! No!”

“What’s wrong?”

Bill Matters raged. He clamored he still had use for Lapham. He had not ordered him killed. He was so angry that he shouted things he could not mean. “Are you insane?”

The assassin hooked the earpiece back on the telephone, paid the clerk at the operator’s desk, and strolled out of the station and up New Jersey Avenue until the incident was forgotten.

13

Isaac Bell walked across E Street, peering into shopwindows, and turned down 7th, where he propped a boot on a horse trough and mimed tying a nonexistent shoelace. Then he continued along Pennsylvania Avenue, skirted the Capitol, and turned down New Jersey. Ahead stood the Baltimore & Ohio Depot.

The clock tower was ringing his train.

He collected a ticket he had reserved for the Royal Blue passenger flier to New York. The clerk warned that it was leaving in five minutes. Bell hurried across the station hall, only to pull up short when an ancient beggar in rags, a torn slouch hat, and white beard deeply frosted with age shuffled into his path and extended a filthy hand.

Bell fumbled in his pocket, searching for a coin.

“Rockefeller’s detectives are still on your tail,” the beggar muttered.

“Skinny gent in a frock coat,” said Bell without looking back. “He took over from a tall, wide fellow on 7th Street. Any more?”

Joseph Van Dorn scratched his powder-whitened beard and pretended to extract a louse. “They put a man on the train dressed as a priest. Good luck, Isaac. You’re almost in.”

“Did the boys manage to follow Mr. Rockefeller?”

Van Dorn’s proud grin nearly undid his disguise.

“Right up to the back door of the Persian embassy.”

“Persia?” Edna called Rockefeller the master of the unexpected. She had that right. “What does he want with Persia?”

“Play your cards right and you’ll be in a position to find out.”

Bell dropped a coin in Van Dorn’s hand. “Here you go, old-timer. Do your friends a favor, spend it at a bathhouse.”

He showed his ticket and headed out on the platform, hurried the length of the blue-and-gold train, peering through the gleaming leaded-glass windows, and boarded the Royal Blue’s first car. Then he worked his way swiftly through the cars. The locomotive, a rocket-fast, high-wheeled Atlantic 4-4-2, whistled the double ahead signal.

Four cars back, he spotted the Standard Oil detective dressed like a priest. He clamped a powerful hand around his dog collar. The locomotive huffed steam, gently for a smooth start, and the drivers began turning. Bell lifted the priest out of his seat by the scruff of his neck. Passengers stared. Bell marched him off the train.

“Tell Mr. Rockefeller he’s wasting his money and my time shadowing me with amateurs.”

“What are you talking about?” the detective blustered. “How dare you assault a man of the cloth.”

The train was rolling, the side of a coach brushing Bell’s shoulder. “Tell the thin man in the frock coat and his fat friend in the derby next time they follow me, I’ll punch both their noses.”

Bell ran to catch up with the Royal Blue.

“And that goes double for the clergy.”

–

Voices were raised when Isaac Bell walked into the club car looking for a well-earned cocktail. The loudest belonged to a red-faced United States senator in a dark sack suit, a florid necktie of the type President Roosevelt was making popular, and a hawser-thick gold watch chain draped across his ample belly. He was hectoring the only woman in the car, Nellie Matters, who was wearing a white shirt, a broad belt around her slim waist, a straight skirt to her ankles, and a plain straw hat adorned with a red ribbon.

Bell ordered a Manhattan and asked the perspiring bartender, “What is going on?”

“The suffragette started it.”

“Suffragist,” Bell corrected. “Seems to be enjoying herself.” Her eyes were bright, and she had dots of high color in her cheeks. Bell thought he had never seen her quite so pretty before.

“They were debating enfranchisement, hammer and tongs, before we even got rolling.” The bartender filled his glass. “We don’t often see a lady in the club car, it being a bastion, shall we say, of ‘manliness.’”

“The gents appear willing to make an exception for a looker.”

“But the senator prefers an audience to a looker.”

“Yet another reason not to trust a man who enters politics,” said Isaac Bell.

The senator loosed a blast of indignation. “I read in the newspapers, Miss Matters, you intended to fly your balloon over the Capitol and drop torpedoes on the Congress! And would have dropped them if the wind had not blown your balloon the other way!”

“I made a terrible mistake,” said Nellie Matters, her clear voice carrying the length of the car.

“Mistake?”

“I forgot to read the weather report. A balloonist must always keep track of which way the wind blows.”

“Good lord, woman, you admit you intended to bomb Congress?”

“Nonsense!” Nellie’s eyes flashed. She tossed her head, and every man in the club car leaned in to hear her answer. “I would never harm a soul—not even a senator.” She turned and opened her arms wide as if to take everyone in the car into her confidence. “My only purpose in soaring over the Congress was to expose the members for the idiots they are.”

That drew chuckles and catcalls.

Isaac Bell raised his voice in a strong baritone: “How could flying your balloon over senators and congressmen do that?”

Nellie flashed him a smile that said Hello, Mr. Bell, thanks for setting up my next line: “My balloon soars on gas or hot air. I had no fear of running out of either in their vicinity.”

The car erupted in laughter. Business men pounded their palms pink. Salesmen slapped their thighs. From every direction, dyed-in-the-wool anti-woman-voters vied to buy her a glass of wine.

“No thank you! I don’t drink.” She cast Bell a glance that clearly said Except, of course, when dining on jackrabbit in Texas. “But, gentlemen, in lieu of your glasses of wine, I will accept contributions to the New Woman’s Flyover.”

“New Woman’s Flyover?”

“What’s that?”

“The New Woman’s Flyover is a stunt when a fleet of red, white, and blue balloons full of suffragists take to the sky to boom an amendment to the Constitution enfranchising women voters.”

“Never heard of it.”

“I just thought it up! And you gentlemen are going to make the first contributions, aren’t you?”

“Open your carpetbag, Miss Matters,” Isaac Bell called. “I’ll pass the hat.”

He whipped his hat off his head, deftly palmed the derringer holstered within, and walked the length of the club car like a deacon until it was brimful with contributions. Nellie opened her carpetbag wide. Bell poured the money in.

Nellie called, “Thank you, gentlemen! Every suffragist in the nation will thank you, and your wives will welcome you home warmly.”

“Another coincidental meeting?” Bell asked. “But no crime this time. At least none yet.”

“It’s no coincidence.”

“Then how do we happen to be on the same train?”

“I asked the clerk at the Willard Hotel for your forwarding address. The Yale Club of New York City.”

“Were you planning a trip to New York?”

“I decided to visit my father.”

“Spur-of-the-moment?”

“Whenever I like,” she smiled back.

Bell said, “I would like to meet your father.”

“How should I introduce you?” Nellie asked. “Father will not cotton to a private detective investigating his corporation.”

“I’m not on the commission case anymore.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a long story,” said Bell.

“We have time for a long story. It’s six hours to New York.”

“Let’s just say it won’t be an official visit,” Isaac Bell lied.

Only part a lie. The chance to observe Spike Hopewell’s former partner in his own home would be absolutely official, but it would not require much pretense to act the part of a man who desired to visit Bill Matters’ daughter. Either daughter.

“Why don’t you introduce me as a gentleman caller?”

“Father won’t believe you. He knows I am not the sort of woman who sits at home waiting for gentleman callers.”

“Then tell him I’m a man hoping for a ride in your balloon.”

“You can ride in my balloon anytime you’ll make a speech for women’s votes.”

“Actually, I rode in a balloon once, in the circus. Is that where you discovered balloons? In the circus?”

“I prefer theaters to circuses. They’re more fantastical.”

“I don’t agree. I ran away to a circus when I was a boy.”

“You must tell me about the circus sometime.”

“How about now?”

“Spur-of-the-moment?”

“Whatever you like.”

“I would like to eat dinner,” said Nellie Matters. “I’m hungry, and it’s my turn to take you.”

–

At Central Station, the twelve-year-old boys peddling the Washington Post Late Extra Edition were shrill as a flock of jays.

“Tourist falls from Washington Monument.”

“Extra! Extra! Tourist falls!”

Archie Abbott tossed pennies for the paper and ran to the horse cabs. Mr. Van Dorn had sent a wire care of the Danville, Virginia, stationmaster ordering him to report the instant his train pulled into Washington. Top hands like Isaac Bell took direct summons from the Boss for granted, but this was his first one ever.

“Willard Hotel. Fast as you can.”

Upon arrival, he dashed up the stairs into the Van Dorn offices.

“The Boss wired my train at Danville. Said to come right over.”

The front desk man spoke calmly into a voice tube. A blasé apprentice walked Archie into Joseph Van Dorn’s office. With his coat off and his sleeves rolled up his bulging forearms, Van Dorn, Archie thought, looked less the company proprietor than a prosperous bricklayer.

“Abbott, you’re a Princeton man.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve got something right up your alley.”

“How can I help, sir?”

Van Dorn nodded at the extra edition that Archie had tucked under his arm. “The ‘tourist’ who fell from the memorial shaft was not a tourist, and I don’t believe he fell. The papers don’t have it yet, but it was Clyde Lapham.”

“Standard Oil?”

“Rumor has it, he jumped. If he did, I want to know why. If he didn’t jump, I want to know who helped him out the window.”

“May I ask, sir, what makes you think he didn’t jump?”

“Our investigation has established that not one of the Standard Oil Gang has a guilty bone in his body. On the remote chance that one was ever stricken with remorse, it wouldn’t be Clyde Lapham. He had no doubt that making money was his divine right. Something’s fishy. That’s where you come in.”

“Yes, sir,” Archie said, wondering what it had to do with being a Princeton graduate.

“They won’t let our men near the monument. Were it a Navy facility, I would have no trouble gaining access. But I am not so well connected with the Army, and I’ve run head-on into a snob of a Colonel Dan Egan, who looks down on private detectives as not worthy of his exalted friendship. Do you get my drift?”

Archie was suddenly on firm ground, with intimate knowledge of the fine distinctions of the social order. “Yes, sir. Army officers are more likely to be ill-bred and have chips on their shoulders than their Navy counterparts.”

“This particular officer is carrying a chip bigger than a redwood. Fortunately, I’ve learned he has a son attending Princeton. I’m betting he’ll be mightily impressed by the fact that you matriculated, as well as by your manner, which is less that of a private detective than a privileged layabout. Not that I’m suggesting you lay about, necessarily, but I suspect you can act the part.”

“I’ll rehearse,” Archie said drily.

“You don’t have time,” Van Dorn shot back. “Colonel Egan is at the monument right now, in the middle of the night, leading what the Army optimistically calls an inquiry. Get over there and sweet-talk your way in before they trample the evidence and insert words in the mouths of witnesses.”

Archie doubted he’d make much headway walking up to a full colonel and saying he went to Princeton. He ventured, “This might require more than ‘sweet talking,’ Mr. Van Dorn.”

The Boss stared, his eyes suddenly hard. “The agency pays you handsomely to do ‘more than sweet talking.’”

“I’ll do my best.”

“See that you do.”

14

Joseph Van Dorn was still at his desk when Archie reported back, shortly before midnight.

“Suicide or murder?”

“It’s more complicated than you might expect, Mr. Van Dorn.”

The glower Van Dorn leveled at him reminded Archie Abbott of an encounter on safari with an East African rhinoceros. “Let me decide what I expect. In a word, ‘suicide’ or ‘murder’?”

“In a word,” said Archie, “the Army was ‘hoodwinked.’”

Joseph Van Dorn, so wintery a moment earlier, broke into a delighted smile—as Archie knew he would. Beaming at his old U.S. Marine Corps NCO sword, which hung from his coat tree, the Boss asked, “What did the Army fall for this time?”

–

Isaac Bell doubted there was room in Nellie Matters’ exciting life for a boyfriend. She was great company at dinner in the Royal’s beautiful dining car, entertaining him, and eavesdroppers at nearby tables, with tales of her suffragist travels, balloon mishaps, and rivalries with suffragettes—“the dread Amanda Faire”—while spinning like cotton candy her newly invented New Woman’s Flyover. By the time they got off the train in Jersey City, the suffragist’s publicity stunt details were in place. All that remained was to raise the money for a hundred balloons, a prospect she thought not at all daunting.

But on the railroad ferry across the Hudson to New York City, Bell sensed a sudden shift toward the romantic. He credited the beautiful lights of the downtown skyscrapers and the chill wind they braved on deck. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and Nellie huddled close. Just as the boat landed, she curled deeper in his arm. “I don’t usually meet men I like. I don’t mean to say that I dislike men. But I just don’t find most of them that likeable. Do you know what I mean?”

“No,” said Isaac Bell. “What is it you don’t find likeable?”

“Is that a detective trait to always ask questions?”

“Yes.”

“You’re as bad as my sister the reporter.”

A hansom cab whisked them across town. She held his hand, and, all too soon, the cab pulled up to the Matters town house in Gramercy Park, a quiet oasis of a neighborhood that predated the Civil War. Just across the narrow park was one of Archie Abbott’s clubs, The Players. The cab clattered off. Bell walked Nellie to the front door. The house was made of brick with gleaming black shutters.

“What a handsome house.”

“We moved up in the world with the Standard,” Nellie replied as she slipped a key in the door. She whirled around suddenly and faced him. “Come back tomorrow evening to meet Father.”

“As aspiring balloonist or gentleman caller?”

Nellie Matters gave Isaac Bell her biggest smile. “Both.”

She disappeared behind the door.

He lingered on the sidewalk. He had to admit that he was more than a little dazzled by the vibrant and witty young woman.

Suddenly he was alert, seeing movement from the corner of his eye. A slight figure, a woman in a cloak, materialized from the shadows of Gramercy Park. Lamplight crossed her face.

“Edna?” he asked, caught off base by how happy he was to see her.

“I was just coming home,” she answered. “I didn’t want to interrupt you and Nellie.”

She seemed upset.

“Are you all right?”

Edna Matters paused to consider her answer. “Not entirely. I mean, I’m in a bit of a quandary.”

“Good or bad?”

“If I knew, it wouldn’t be a quandary, would it?”

“Tell me what it is,” said Bell. “I’m a fair hand, sometimes, at sorting good from bad. Come on, we’ll take a walk.”

The hour was late and the well-dressed couple might have drawn the attention of thieves who would attempt to separate them from their money. That is until a closer inspection revealed a gent light on his feet and cold of eye. They walked until the lights grew brighter on Broadway, its sidewalks crowded with people bustling in and out of hotels, restaurants, and vaudeville theaters.

“I grew up with oil derricks,” Edna said suddenly. “Pipe lines and breakout tanks. And a father beaten repeatedly by the Standard.”

“Is that how you came to write the History of Under-handed?”

“Do you think I had a choice?”

“I don’t know,” said Bell. “Nellie didn’t respond to your father’s losses by becoming a reporter.”

“Wouldn’t you say that pursuing justice for women is the other side of the same coin?”

“How?”

“Of trying to make things right.”

“No,” said Bell. “Enfranchisement is a cause, a worthy cause. Writing the truth is more like a calling. So maybe you’re right. Maybe you had no choice.”

“You’re not making this easier.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what your quandary is. Not making what easier?”

She fell silent again. Bell tried to reengage her. “What about Nellie? Did she take your father’s losses as hard as you did?”

Edna thought a moment. “Nellie loves him as fiercely as I do. But she wasn’t around for as much of it. She’s traveled ever since she put her teens and pinafores behind her. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

“Maybe she was trying to get away from them.”

“I don’t know. She’s always on the road—and at home wherever she alights.”

“You travel, too.”

“Like a hermit crab. I carry my home with me. No matter where I land at the end of the day, I’m at my typewriter. I thought it was time to stop writing, my crusade over.”

“Is there a purpose to stop your writing?”

“I thought I was ready to stop. But the new oil strikes make it a new story. And now the unrest in Baku threatens shortages that could upend the petroleum industry all over the world. Imagine what must be going through Mr. Rockefeller’s mind at a moment like this.”

“What is in Baku for him?”

“Half the world’s oil. And a well-established route to the customers. If they burn the Baku fields, who will supply the Russians’ and the Nobels’ and the Rothschilds’ markets? JDR, that’s who, even if it’s true he retired, which I never believed . . . Listen to me! I’m too obsessed with JDR to stop reporting on him. Just when I think I’m done, I learn something new.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve heard rumors—speculation, really—that Rockefeller uses his publicists to communicate secretly with his partners. They plant a story. It gets printed and reprinted in every paper in the world, and those who know his code get his message . . . Boy!”

She gave two pennies to a passing newsboy hawking the early-morning edition of the Sun and scanned the paper in the blazing window of a lobster palace. “Here! I’ve traced this one back to last January. It’s supposedly a letter he wrote to his Sunday school class from his vacation to France. ‘Delightful breezes. I enjoy watching the fishermen with their nets on the beach, and gazing upon the sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. The days pass pleasantly and profitably.’”

Bell said, “It sounds perfectly ordinary. So ordinary, you wonder why the papers print it.”

“Any pronouncement the richest man in America makes is automatically news. They change details to keep it up to date. After he returned from Europe they added the introductory ‘I recall, when I was in France,’ et cetera. Recently they added ‘the sun rising.’ I’m sure it’s a message. Maybe it doesn’t matter—except it might, and I can’t stop writing about him . . .” She leafed through the paper. “Here’s another I’ve been following in the social sections. I cannot for the life of me figure it out, but it has to be code.” She read, “‘Monmouth County Hounds, Lakewood. First Drag Hunt of the season. John D. Rockefeller in his automobile was in line at the start, but soon dropped out.’ And this, supposedly about him playing golf. ‘Standard Oil President Rockefeller was gleeful over his foursome victory. Dominated the links with long sweeping drives—’ Why are you staring at me, Mr. Bell?”

“You should see your face. You’re on fire. Congratulations!”

“For what?’”

“An excellent decision not to retire.”

Suddenly a ragged chorus of young voices piped, “Extra! Extra!”

Gangs of newsboys galloped out of the Times building. They scattered up and down Broadway and Seventh Avenue, waving extra editions and shouting the story.

“Rich old man jumps off Washington Monument.”

Bell bought a paper. He and Edna leaned over the headline

TYCOON SUICIDE

STANDARD OIL MAGNATE LEAPS TO DEATH FROM WASHINGTON MONUMENT

and raced down the column and onto the second page.

“Why do you think he did it?” asked Bell. “Guilt?”

Edna Matters shook her head. “Clyde Lapham would have to look up ‘guilt’ in the dictionary to get even a murky idea of its meaning.”

“Maybe he felt the government closing in,” said Bell, knowing the Van Dorn investigation had yet to turn up enough evidence to please a prosecutor.

“If he jumped,” said Edna, “because he felt the government breathing down his neck, then his last living thought must have been I should have taken Rockefeller with me.” She cupped Bell’s cheek in her hand. “Isaac, I must go home. I have to look into this . . . I bet you do, too.”

–

At the Yale Club on 44th Street, where Isaac Bell lodged when in New York, Matthew, the night hall porter, ushered him inside.

“Mr. Forrer telephoned ahead and asked that I slip him in privately by the service door. I put him in the lounge.”

Bell bounded up the stairs.

The Main Lounge, a high-ceilinged room of couches and armchairs, was deserted at this late hour but for the chief of Van Dorn Research, who occupied most of a couch. Forrer wore wire-rimmed spectacles, as befit his station as a scholar. Scholarly he was, but a very large man, as tall as Bell and twice as wide. Bell had seen him disperse rioters by strolling among them.

“The Boss and I have been burning up the wires. All hell’s broken loose on the Corporations Commission case.”

“I just read the Lapham story. Do we know for sure he killed himself?”

“No. All we know is what Archie Abbott learned when he wormed his way into the official investigation. Mr. Van Dorn was impressed, which he isn’t always with Archie.”

“What did Archie learn?”

“Someone—if not Lapham, then presumably our assassin—pulled an elaborate fast one on the Army, who operate the monument. So elaborate that it can only be characterized as baroque.”

“‘Baroque’? What do you mean, baroque? Complicated?”

“More than complicated. Bizarre. Whimsical as an elaborate prank, except a man died. It’s hard to imagine they pulled it off. Harder to reckon why they went to such trouble to kill one old man.”

“How could he fit out the window?” asked Bell. “They barred them up after that lunatic Anti-Saloon Leaguer tried to jump with a banner.”

“The bars were forced open with a barn jack.”

“It takes time to crank a barn jack. Why didn’t anyone stop him?”

“No one saw. The window on the west had been cordoned off from the observation area with canvas drapes to ensure the privacy of an artist painting the view.”

“Where was the artist?”

“No one is exactly sure they ever saw the artist. He left behind his paint box and his easel but no painting. According to Archie, it’s not clear he did more than set up his easel. And before you ask his name, it was very likely a false name.”