The Assassin

by Clive Cussler

  He scanned the drawings again.

  “Grisly imagination. A near miss with one of these would not be a miss. As for a ‘flesh wound,’ call the gravediggers.”

  “More likely, the assassin’s imagination.”

  “Did he happen to say how far he’s gotten with it?”

  “He’s dead. His lathe grabbed his tie. Broke his neck.”

  “Damned fool wearing a tie around a lathe.”

  “He meant to kill himself.”

  “There’s loyalty, for you,” said McCoart. He handed Bell back the notebook. “Well, at least he’s not going to finish this awful thing.”

  “I reckon he already has.”

  “Did you find any fulminate of mercury?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Did you find any cartridges?”

  “There are none in the shop.”

  “Hopefully, he was still experimenting.”

  “I’m not counting on that,” said Isaac Bell.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He said he was in love.”

  “In love? And he killed himself? Are you going to talk to her?”

  “I couldn’t hear her name.”

  —

  Like most upper-crust brothels, Miss Dee’s ten-dollar parlor house on North Wichita Street was a hangout for politicians and prosperous business men. Compared to New York or Chicago, its setting was less than glamorous, on a street bordered by a lumberyard, a blacksmith, a foundry, gas storage tanks, and tenements.

  Wichita, thought Archie, where expectations were modest.

  “Come right in,” the madam greeted him warmly. Wealthily dressed men made good customers. Handsome, wealthy customers with exquisite manners were a rare treasure. She remarked that she had not seen him before. Archie said he was not from Kansas. She said that she was not surprised and asked what in particular she could do for him.

  “Would it be possible to make the acquaintance of a young lady named Jane?”

  “Very possible, we have several Janes.”

  Archie drew on Mack and Wally’s description. “Jane of hair as red as mine and eyes like lapis lazuli.”

  “That Jane.”

  “Is she still here?”

  “Still here,” the madam said grimly.

  “You don’t sound pleased,” said Archie.

  “She’s tough on the business. The old geezers fall hard for her. One of these days, fisticuffs in my parlor will end in a heart attack.”

  “I hope I’ll be immune,” said Archie.

  “Frankly,” said the madam, “I hope you fall so hard, you take her home with you . . .”

  —

  Archie popped the question on the train to Chicago, a city that the round and bright-eyed Jane told him she had always wanted to visit. Archie had promised a paid vacation and a shopping trip (at Van Dorn expense). If Mr. Van Dorn balked, he would hit Isaac up for the dough. Any luck, Jane’s gratitude would materialize as the name of her dead admirer’s blackmail victim. Best of all, while in Chicago he could sink his teeth back into the Rosania case.

  Archie waited until they were highballing out of St. Louis before he asked about Reed Riggs. Jane’s lapis lazuli eyes darkened, turning a sad, stony blue.

  “Reed was a good man. A gent like you, Archie. Not fancy like you, but a gent in his heart. That’s why he couldn’t follow through. He was no blackmailer. It just seemed like a good idea to save his refinery, but when push came to shove he couldn’t do it.”

  “Did he ever actually approach the victim?”

  “He told me he went to New York and talked to him.”

  “At 26 Broadway?” Archie asked casually.

  Jane laid a plump hand on the back of Archie’s. “Stay a gent, Archie. Don’t try to trick me.”

  Archie said, “I understand that you would never dishonor Reed Riggs’ memory by betraying the name of the man he decided not to blackmail. But what if I told you that the man we think it was just tried to kill John D. Rockefeller?”

  Jane said, “Most people would think he had a pretty good idea.”

  “And if I told you that we suspect he killed Mr. Riggs?”

  “Reed died in an accident.”

  “It is possible it was not an accident.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “I cannot prove it was murder,” Archie admitted, “though we have a pretty good idea how the killer did it.”

  Jane looked out the window. Her beautiful eyes had recovered their natural color and her spirits had risen. It was cheerfulness that the geezers fell for, Archie guessed, as much as her round shape. “Archie, what you just said rings true. When Reed died, he left me the only thing he possessed. His decency. I hate to think of the poor man dying in fear. When they told me he fell under the train, I decided he had fainted.”

  Archie said, “If he was killed the way we believe he was, he never knew what hit him, or even saw it coming. One moment he was alive, the next he was not.”

  “How can you know that?”

  Archie described in detail the assassin’s shooting perch that he and Isaac Bell had discovered in a Fort Scott train yard.

  Jane turned from the window and touched Archie’s cheek. The conductor passing through the car noted their red hair and his stern face broke into a smile as he wondered, mother and son off to Chicago? More likely, maiden aunt and her favorite nephew.

  “I will speak one name aloud,” said Archie. “Only one. Can you please nod if he’s the man Reed changed his mind about blackmailing?”

  “Part of me wants to cover my ears.”

  “No need,” said Archie. “I won’t say his name until you agree.”

  “I still want to cover them.”

  “I will say this. If it is who I think it is, then I can guarantee that Reed died just as I described and never felt a thing.”

  She looked at him and believed him and Archie exulted. Jackpot!

  34

  Bet you a duck I can hit four in a row.”

  “Bet a duck? What are you talking about?”

  “If I hit four ducks,” said the assassin, “you give me one.”

  It was too hot to stroll at the Hudson County Fair—ninety-five degrees even after dark. The midway was deserted except for ice cream stands and an enterprising kid selling chips of ice to press to sweaty foreheads. The heat made people cranky, and the owner of the shooting gallery, whose parade of moving ducks had attracted no gunfire for hours, was in no mood for jokers.

  “You hit the duck, you win a prize. You win a cigar—if you’re old enough to smoke ’em.” He peered dubiously at the short, slight boyish figure leaning on the counter. “Or you get a dog.” He pointed at a plaster bulldog painted blue. “You hit the duck four times, you win a teddy bear for your girl—if you got one. The duck’s the target. You don’t win the target.”

  “Afraid I’ll hit four?”

  “You won’t hit three.”

  “For the duck.”

  The assassin dropped a nickel on the counter for five shots and fired three so quickly, the rifle bolt seemed to blur. Three moving ducks fell down and popped up. The owner nudged a hidden lever and the parade speeded up.

  The assassin smiled, “Faster won’t save you,” fired again, and hit a fourth, then shifted slightly so that the barrel angled in the general direction of the man who owned the stand. “Do I have any left?”

  “One.”

  “Give me my duck.”

  —

  A butler wearing the uniform of a United States Army orderly showed Isaac Bell into a reception room off the front foyer of the Mills mansion on Dupont Circle. Brigadier Mills’ daughter, Helen, was every bit “the looker” Archie had made her out to be—a tall, lean brunette with long arms, demanding brown eyes, and an intriguingly low voice.

  Bell went straight at her. “It is a pleasure to meet a lady with a famous left hook.”

  A puzzled Helen Mills arched both her eyebrows.

  “Should I duck?” asked Bell. �
��I’m a friend of Archie Abbott.”

  She looked Isaac Bell over, inspecting him closely. “Only if the louse sent you to apologize.”

  “I came on my own.”

  “Are you on Mr. Abbott’s mission?”

  “Mr. Abbott was on my mission. And to be straight with you, it’s your father, Brigadier Mills, I must meet.”

  “What is the matter with you men from New York? Why don’t you just call at my father’s office? His bark is worse than his bite. He is actually quite approachable.”

  “Not on this subject. It is deeply personal.”

  “At least you’re honest about it. Archie was misleading.”

  “To be fair to my old, old friend,” said Bell, “we must assume that when Archie laid eyes on you, he was swept off his feet and therefore not operating at his best.”

  She did not appear to dislike compliments. She inspected Bell some more and smiled as if she liked what she saw. “I’ll make you a deal, Detective Bell. Stay for lunch. If you’re still here when my father gets home, I’ll introduce you.”

  “What time does he get in?”

  “We dine late.”

  “You drive a hard bargain,” said Isaac Bell, “but how can I resist?” It occurred to him that if Edna Matters wasn’t whirling in his brain, and Nellie Matters not pirouetting on the edges, he might half hope that the Army would post Helen’s father to Indian Territory for the weekend.

  Helen’s alto voice made her sound older than Archie had reported she was. Much older. She turned out to be a girl starting her second year at Bryn Mawr College. She admitted over lunch to being at loose ends about her future. But one thing for sure, she told Bell. She was determined to do more than marry and raise children.

  Bell discovered that newspaperwoman E. M. Hock and suffragist Nellie Matters were heroes to Helen and her classmates; that he knew both women made him almost as heroic in her eyes. He offered advice, and before her father got home, he had convinced her to aim her studies toward a career even bolder than Edna’s and Nellie’s.

  Brigadier General G. Tannenbaum Mills had fathered young Helen at a late age. Short, wide, and stiff-necked, he looked old enough to be her grandfather but was in fact as vigorous as a longhorn, and as ornery. Helen made him a cocktail, and at her urging he invited Bell into his study. The walls were hung with swords, dueling pistols, and Bowie knives.

  Bell found it tough going trying to convince the old mossback that hanging a murderer was more important than shielding the Army from the embarrassment of a years-ago desertion. Mills repeated his argument in a voice trained to be heard over the thunder of a cavalry charge. “The Army is a more fragile institution than civilians suppose. Reputation is all. To suffer a black eye and deliver that black eye to the president is—”

  “Lieutenant K.K.V. Casey,” Isaac Bell interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Private Howard H. Gensch . . . Sergeant Clarence Orr.”

  “Why are you—?”

  “They are marksmen.”

  “I know that!”

  “Lieutenant Casey won the President’s Medal in 1903. Private Gensch won the President’s Medal last year. Sergeant Orr won this year.”

  “Why are you bandying their names?”

  “Surely the United States Army isn’t ashamed of such marksmen.”

  “What do they have to do with Private Jones?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you, sir. Neither Lieutenant Casey, Private Gensch, nor Sergeant Orr are Private Billy Jones. Give your soldiers their due and help me hang a killer.”

  “How?” Mills growled.

  “Have you ever heard of a Standard Oil executive named Bill Matters?”

  Mills put down his glass. “I wondered if you would ask.”

  “You know of him?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Isaac Bell leaned closer, which put the veteran officer in mind of a cougar about to land on him with all four feet. “Tell me how.”

  “When we investigated Billy Jones’ desertion,” Mills said, “we discovered certain items the boy had left behind that we were able to trace—or so we thought. I went, personally, to the man that our investigation revealed was very likely Billy Jones’ father. That his son had disappeared around the time that Private Jones joined the Army seemed to cinch it.”

  “What ‘item’ did he leave behind?”

  “Ticket stubs from an opera house. Shakespeare shows. We traced them to Oil City, Pennsylvania.”

  “Bill Matters lived in Oil City. He raised his daughters there before he moved to New York.”

  “He still maintained a home in ’02. For all I know, still does. Anyway, I found him in Oil City.”

  “Why did you go personally?”

  “I would not put the officers under me in the position of offending a powerful man who might well have had no connection with the deserter other than the fact he was grieving for a missing son who had run off back in ’98 to enlist for the war.”

  “Was the marksman Bill Matters’ son?”

  Brigadier Mills looked Isaac Bell in the eye and Bell found it easy to imagine him as a young officer leading his men into a storm of lead. “I’m not proud of this,” he said, “but it was my job to cover things up. I went to Matters’ house. I spoke with him in private. He was alone there. I found him sitting in the dark. Mourning the boy.”

  “In ’02? But that was years after he disappeared.”

  “He still mourned him. I promised that nothing we discussed would leave the room. I made my case. The cross-grained SOB refused to believe me. He was certain—dead certain—that the marksman was not his missing son.”

  Bell said, “Detectives run into similar denials by the parents of criminals.”

  The general’s answer was uncharacteristically roundabout. “I’ve led men my whole life, Bell. Gettysburg. The west. Cuba. The Philippines. I can read men. I know what they’re thinking before they do. Bill Matters was telling the truth! The marksman Billy Jones was not his boy.”

  “And yet?” Bell asked.

  “And yet what?” Mills fired back.

  “And yet I sense your, shall we say, disquiet? If not doubt?”

  Angered, Mills looked away. He stared at his collection of weapons. He hesitated, face working, as if he was debating the merits of shooting Bell versus running him through. Finally, he spoke.

  “Maybe you read men, too. You’re right. Something was off there. I don’t know what, but something was way off, out-of-kilter.”

  “What?”

  “Bill Matters knew that his boy was not the marksman. But he was not surprised that I had come calling.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was not surprised that I had connected him to the marksman who won the President’s Medal of 1902. Even as he sat there in the dark denying the theater stubs were his.”

  “Maybe they weren’t.”

  “I found him in a back parlor. He refused to leave the room or turn on the lights. So we talked in the dark. My eyes adjusted until I saw that the room was filled with toy theaters. You know what I mean?”

  “Paper stage sets. You can buy them in New York theaters.”

  “His parlor was full of them. But he sat there steadfastly denying that the theater stubs were his.”

  Bell said, “You seemed to be suggesting that Matters knows who the deserter is.”

  “I am not ‘suggesting,’ I am telling you that Matters knew beyond doubt that the marksman who deserted was not his missing boy.”

  “Why?” asked Bell. “How could he know?”

  “Either he knew exactly where his missing boy was in 1902 the day Billy Jones won the President’s Medal or—”

  “Or he knows the marksman,” said Isaac Bell.

  The brigadier said, “In my firm opinion, the deserter was not his boy. He is someone else.”

  Isaac Bell was tumbling possibilities in his mind when he heard the old general say, “And now, sir, what are your designs on my daughter?”


  “Helen? I’ve already proposed an offer.”

  “Proposed? The girl is barely eighteen. She’s got college ahead of her.”

  “I made every effort to convince her and she agreed to apply for an apprenticeship at the Van Dorn Detective Agency as soon as she graduates.”

  “What the devil makes you think my daughter could be a detective?”

  “Helen’s got a mean left hook . . . Could we go back to reading men, sir? . . . I believe something is still on your mind. Something you’ve left unsaid about the marksman.”

  Mills nodded. “It’s only speculation. I can’t offer proof.”

  “I’d still like to hear it.”

  “I’d bet money that Matters was shielding him.”

  35

  Are you sure you want to blow this all to smithereens?” asked the assassin.

  “Sure as I know my name,” said Bill Matters.

  They were standing out of sight of the street in a glassed widow’s walk on the roof of The Hook saloon five stories above the Standard Oil Constable Hook refinery’s front gate. Originally erected by a sea captain who made his fortune in whale oil, the widow’s walk was festooned with wooden spires and elaborate bronze lightning rods fashioned like harpoons. Matters was safe here for a while, even with Isaac Bell closing in, for he owned the saloon lock, stock, and barrel.

  He could see the gut-churning proof that the refinery had prospered just as he and Spike Hopewell had dreamed it would when they built the first stage on the neck of land that thrust into New York Harbor north of Staten Island. After stealing it, the Standard had enlarged it repeatedly on the same lines they had surveyed. Orderly rows of tanks and stills covered the hilly cape. Seagoing tank steamers lined up at the oil docks. And the village had grown these last six years from a raucous boomtown into a jam-packed city of tenements and factories, shops, churches, and schools—home to twenty thousand workers and their wives and children.

  The assassin swept binoculars from the biggest naphtha tank across the city and up the tank-covered hill to the top of the tallest Standard Oil fire company tower, then back down the slope, over the rooftops, and back to the naphtha tank, which the red duck marked for a bull’s-eye.

  The heat had intensified and the humidity had thickened. Old-timers were comparing it to the deadly temperatures of ’96, even the heat wave of ’92 that killed thousands in the seaboard cities. It was stifling inside the widow’s walk, and the heat shimmered so violently from the tanks that everything seemed to be in motion. It would take every ounce of the assassin’s skill to calculate how it would bend the flight of a bullet.