“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.”
“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?”
“A
s 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 p
lanning 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.
The Assassin Page 11
