Wild Wind Westward

by Vanessa Royall

  Eric took her hand. There seemed no point in not doing so. From him to her, as of old, flowed the raw attraction. He could not help it. And from her to him flowed in response that demonic allure she had always been able to exert upon him. He pulled his hand away.

  “Perhaps we might bargain on different terms.” She smiled slowly, conscious of her power.

  “No,” Eric said, “not anymore.”

  “Then the end will come in another way,” Joan replied. “The two great things in life are love and money. People die for those.”

  “What about power?” asked Benjamin Horace.

  “Power is made up of love and money.” Joan smiled again.

  XI

  Little Haakon had thrived during the winter, and now, in April 1865, at all of fifteen months old, he toddled sturdily, adventurously, all over the Rolfson mansion.

  “Hardiness is in the blood,” Gustav boasted. “The Rolfson stock prospers always.”

  “Of course, husband,” replied Kristin. “Pray, and how are your business affairs progressing?”

  Gustav eyed her suspiciously. “Very well. Very well, indeed,” he said, too casually, then turned his attention to Haakon, calling him over for a good-night pat on the head. Gustav believed it a sign of weakness to kiss his son, and believed such kisses would weaken the boy.

  “You, there nurse. Get him to bed now. It’s quite late.”

  Kristin hugged and kissed the child, turned him over to Traudl, his governess. Traudl had been hired personally by Gustav. Kristin did not approve of the woman, nor trust her. She was a part of the Rolfson household politics, a politics cold and complicated.

  Gustav Rolfson did nothing spontaneously, effected no act or gesture whose potential consequences he had not calculated in advance. Tonight was Friday, and on Friday Gustav always took Kristin to dine at Connaught’s, an exclusive restaurant catering to the entrepreneurial rich. But tonight was Good Friday, and Gustav thought it unseemly to be out and about on such a night. He had no religious scruples. He had no religion at all. Staying home was a matter of appearances only.

  Now, as he and Kristin sat down at the table in their huge dining room and avoided each other’s eyes from opposite sides of the glittering five-armed candelabra in the center of the table, he complained.

  “You’d think a country like this, which is committed to money, would put aside some of these ridiculous superstitious commemorations.”

  “Yes, my husband.” Kristin motioned the waiters to begin serving. Gustav did not care much for the clam broth, but he attacked with relish the appetizer of pickled pig’s feet.

  “Business progresses well?” Kristin tried again. All winter, Gustav had been increasingly closed mouthed about his affairs, saying little of his loans to Rockefeller, mentioning only a few times—in considerable agitation—that “your former lover, the Viking plowboy, is bent upon causing a ruckus down there in Pennsylvania. When it comes to a head, no one will be sorrier than he. I ought to have dealt him out of the game long ago…”

  Kristin had a feeling that the matter was due to “come to a head” quite soon, but she had no idea when or how.

  “Well, the North has won the war, anyway,” muttered Gustav. The main course was served, Gustav’s favorite, a roasted suckling pig stuffed with barley and brown sugar. Gustav nodded to a servant, who poured him a huge goblet of red wine. As usual, he was served the head of the suckling pig. He loved to dunk the head whole into his goblet, then transfer it, dripping wine, to his plate, whereupon he would devour it carefully, wielding his knife like a scalpel, smacking over each morsel, tongue and eye and brain.

  “I feel badly for General Lee,” Kristin offered, speaking of Robert E. Lee, who had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, earlier in the week.

  Gustav grunted, sucking wine from the snout of the tiny pig. “It is his own fault. Lincoln offered him Union command, way back in 1861. But Lee was loyal to his homeland, and Virginia went with the Confederacy. It’s his own fault. No one else to blame.”

  “What will happen now, do you think, my husband?”

  “If I can just get this Pennsylvania oil business settled,” answered Gustav, pink chunks of pig flesh going round and round in his row of squat molars, “what will happen is that I will make a lot of money and run the oil business in this savage country for the rest of this century. After which Haakon will run it.”

  “How will you settle the Pennsylvania problem?” asked Kristin, hoping the wine might have_ loosened his tongue a little.

  But he was immediately wary. “What is this?” he demanded, glaring at her. “You haven’t enough to keep you amused? That portrait I paid Phipps to do has made you famous. You need but to walk down the street and someone will recognize you. You have a child and a great house, and you sit about with Isabel Van Santen—oh, I know she doesn’t care for me, but nor do I for her—and yammer, no doubt, of love and poesy. Haven’t you enough to keep you busy? I do.”

  He reached across to the serving plate, grabbed the pig’s rear legs, and ripped off the whole hindquarters.

  After she had retired for the night, Kristin did not go to sleep. Gustav was planning something, and Gustav planning was Gustav dangerous. A wise person did not sleep while such a man was spinning webs. The clock in the hallway struck midnight, then one. Still Gustav did not come up to bed. Kristin, afflicted by a gnawing sense of disorder and unease, got out of bed, slipped on her robe, and crept downstairs. All servants had long since retired to their quarters cold in winter, warm in summer, but clean, and better than many of them might ever have afforded elsewhere.

  On the lower floor no one stirred, and everything was dark. Quietly, holding her robe to herself, Kristin went through the hall, passed the dining room, moving toward her husband’s study. The door, she saw now, was slightly ajar. A long, thin sliver of light, like a gold thread of portent, slipped from the room and fell upon the carpet in the hall.

  And Kristin heard voices.

  Surprised, because there were no houseguests at this time and because Gustav would not be caught dead chatting with a servant, she pressed herself against the wall, and eased toward the door, peered in.

  “…cannot be a mistake made,” Gustav was saying, with eerie emphasis.

  From her position Kristin could not see him, but she was able to observe the man Gustav was talking to.

  “You need not be concerned,” that man assured Gustav coldly. “I am a master at what I do. The men I employ have never seen me, and do not even know my name.”

  His tone was so icy, his manner so frigid, that Kristin felt a chill shoot up her skeleton, down her spine. The man was almost impossible to describe. He was pale, gray, average. He seemed to have not one distinguishing feature or trait. He was Everyman: undistinguished in coloring, build, height. Strangely, this fact unnerved Kristin all the more. Looking at the man was like regarding the husk of a human being, which looked human, and seemed human, but within which no heart beat, no blood coursed, no feelings or emotions abided, not one.

  “I have checked, and you come highly recommended,” Gustav said. “I want no trace of my involvement.”

  The man nodded. “There won’t be. I work through a hierarchy of intermediaries.”

  “No amateurs!” Gustav growled.

  “Amateurs always permit their emotions to interfere with the job at hand,” the man observed, “and because they do, everything is botched, even if the victim is killed.”

  Kristin put her hand to her mouth, to stifle a gasp. Gustav was speaking with an assassin!

  But who did he have in mind as victim?

  “You have, of course, a fee?” he asked.

  “Of course,” the man replied, without inflection or avarice. He was a businesman, above all. “But the fee depends upon the mission, and the complications attendant on it. We have sufficiently discussed preliminaries. I see that I can work for you, if I choose to. And even if I refuse the job, you have no need to fear that I will ever reveal the
details of our conversation.”

  “Thank you,” said Gustav, happy to find a man he could trust. “Next Monday, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a trial is scheduled to begin. It is over the matter of…ah…mineral rights. Gunnarson, Ordway, Fensterwald, et al. versus Horace and Creedmore.”

  “You want them all killed?” asked the man, with an awful snicker.

  “No, just Gunnarson. It is something I ought to have had done years ago. I did not anticipate the threat he would become. I have to act now, right away.” He paused, as if he had said too much.

  “Why do you want him dead?” asked the man.

  “It doesn’t concern you.”

  The man stood and held out his hand.

  “What?” exclaimed Gustav.

  “Good night I’m leaving.”

  “Wait! Why?”

  “If you do not tell me your reasons, and all related facts, I will not work for you. You might leave out something important. My men would be surprised. We do not like the unexpected. We plan everything down to the minutest detail”

  “All right,” agreed Gustav, and the stranger sat down again. “Briefly put, I am in the oil business, having financed the fortunes of a man in northern Pennsylvania. He owes me a great deal of money. I stand to profit if this man cannot pay my money on time.”

  “Name?”

  “Rockefeller. Also, oil has been discovered in southern Pennsylvania by Gunnarson. He and his neighbors, a group of dumb farmers over whom he exercises control, are going to court. Against two men named Horace and Creedmore. It is a complicated matter of mineral rights. I myself want to control and exploit those mineral rights. But Gunnarson has refused to deal with me. If he wins the court case, I lose. Gunnarson and Rockefeller might go into league against me. Or, if the oil strike proves to be a major one, and there are rumors to this effect, Gunnarson may remain independent, in which case I also lose, being, in effect, frozen out of both north and south.”

  “What if Horace wins in court? Horace and…Creed-more, did you say?”

  Gustav nodded. “In that case as well I might be frozen out.”

  “And so?”

  “And so I want Gunnarson dead before the trial begins. His death will terrorize those farmers, scare them off. Therefore no court case. I’ll go down there personally and make a deal with Horace and the farmers. I’ll control the southern fields, thereby depriving that sneaky little Godster, Rockefeller, of half the supply. He’ll never be able to pay my notes on time, and thus I’ll wind up with northern oil, too, not to mention that big refinery in Cleveland.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

  “My father did not raise a son to win second place.”

  “Isn’t it amazing what one dead man will gain?”

  “You should talk. It’s what you do for a living.”

  The stranger did something with his lips—made a fleet, obscure grimace. It was his way of smiling. “Spoken like a born businessman,” he said. “And, as businessmen, let us now consider what it will be worth to rid you of Gunnarson.”

  “I am willing to offer ten thousand dollars,” Gustav said.

  “Twenty,” drawled the stranger.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Twenty, and that’s final.”

  Gustav considered. He had to act fast. The trial was due to get underway early next week. And here was a professional, who claimed to have anonymous lieutenants at his disposal. Part of the fee, at least, would be worth such traceless anonymity. “Ten now and ten upon completion,” Gustav said.

  The stranger shook his head. “This is our one and only meeting, my friend. I trust you enough to show my face once. You trust me to see that my men do the job you wish.”

  Gustav capitulated. The way he saw it, he had no choice. By a welter of strange events and turnings, his future success in oil seemed dependent on Eric Gunnarson’s death. Gustav was not about to become fastidious over a detail he ought to have dispatched long ago. He went to the far wall of the library, and Kristin saw him move aside the Phipps portrait, which was hung there. From a wall safe behind the portrait he withdrew a large leather wallet and from it he removed twenty crisp new bills. Then he closed the safe and slid the portrait back over it.

  “I’ve seen that woman’s face before,” the stranger observed, nodding toward the painting.

  “Many have. Brady, the camera scientist, also captured her image. She is my wife.”

  The stranger seemed astonished that a man like Gustav should have so lovely a mate.

  Gustav handed over the bills, which the man counted and slid inside his breast pocket.

  “How will the job be done?” Gustav asked.

  “It is up to the man selected for the assignment.”

  “Well, surely you must have some control over…”

  The stranger laughed. “I plan to be far from Harrisburg when the deed is done. I suggest the same for you.”

  “Oh, certainly. But Harrisburg? You are going to kill him there? Why not do it when he is on his farm? In his bed?”

  The stranger did not tell Gustav that he sounded like a fool. He did not speak the word. Yet his expression revealed that thought clearly enough.

  “Yes,” he drawled, “and do you know with what curiosity country folks follow the movements of a stranger in their midst? No, a crowd is the best place, the best cover. The man chosen for the task will know how to blend into such a crowd. He will be the most natural person there, accepted by all. He will be beyond suspicion—”

  Aghast, Kristin listened. How could this be? How could a murderer be beyond notice?

  “—and after the deed,” the man continued, “the ensuing chaos and confusion facilitate escape. Do you see my point?”

  “All right, I leave it to you,” Gustav said.

  The men moved toward the door. Fleetly, soundlessly, Kristin fled back into the darkness of the hall. While Gustav was seeing the stranger to the door, she made her way back Upstairs to the bedroom, and feigned sleep while Gustav slid heavily into bed beside her.

  I must leave now, she thought. This is my last night as Gustav’s wife, my last hours in Rolfson’s thrall. She thought, with jittery trepidation, of her family in Norway, still vulnerable to old Adolphus’s knoutish vindictiveness. She would have to deal with that matter later. Getting out of here came first.

  XII

  “Isabel, you must help me,” pleaded Kristin on the morrow.

  “Why, my dear, you look a fright! Whatever has happened?”

  “I must leave New York at once. I do not intend ever to return.”

  It was early Saturday morning, and Kristin had hastened to the Van Santen home, to ask for the help Isabel had promised so often.

  “What about Haakon?” Isabel asked.

  “I’m taking him with me.”

  “To Eric?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why this sudden decision? And you are so agitated! Something has happened. What?”

  Kristin did not wish to deceive her friend, but neither did she wish to tell of the conversation she had overheard. If Isabel knew that murder was being planned, she might wish to keep Kristin safe in New York, might withhold the aid Kristin needed to travel.

  “I have decided I can no longer bear Gustav,” she told Isabel. “It is as simple as that.”

  “I understand, dear. I cannot see how you have stood him this long! What help do you need?”

  “A nurse or a maid, to accompany me as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And a manservant. Valet or coachman doesn’t matter, only let him be discreet. I shall send both servants back in two or three days.”

  “This I can do. When do you wish to leave?”

  “On the Saturday afternoon train. We shall stop in Philadelphia that night, and go out to Harrisburg on Sunday.”

  Kristin had planned the trip. She might then take a hotel Sunday night, and find out where the trial would be in time to warn Eric of the planned assassination Monday morning.

  “And E
ric will meet you in Harrisburg then?”

  “Yes,” said Kristin, not lying.

  “But Gustav is sure to miss you?”

  “Gustav has the habit of carousing on Saturday evenings, with people I have never met.” She thought of Lord Soames’s boys, Rob and Pierre and Vitas; she had often wondered whether Gustav had found similar companions here in New York. In any case he went out without her on Saturday nights. “Sometimes he does not return until late Sunday,” she told Isabel.

  “Oh my dear, I didn’t know that.”

  “It never mattered and now it may be of help. In any event, I cannot use my servants. I do not trust Traudl, our governess, nor any of the others.”

  “You do not have to. My people are at your beck and call.”

  The two discussed details and timing, and Kristin returned to her own home to prepare.

  Gustav seemed jittery and preoccupied all Saturday morning, and Kristin began to worry that, with the assassination on his mind, he would forsake his regular ritual. But after a lunch of squab hash, he prepared to leave.

  “I may be late.”

  “Yes, husband.”

  He gave her a sudden, direct look. “I don’t believe you have ever understood just how inexorable I am.”

  “Oh, yes I have, husband. Yes, I have, indeed.”

  There he stood, feeling so cocksure and mighty. She could not resist an attempt to bring him down a peg.

  “Tell me,” she asked, “where do you go, and with whom, when you are out on your evenings alone?”

  Gustav colored slightly. “It is my affair, woman,” he said.

  She saw that he was somewhat discomfited. “I hope you do not partake of sordid delights. It is you who are always guarding your reputation, so precious a thing.”

  “Quiet! I won’t have this!”

  “Mr. Rockefeller does not carouse. He reads his Bible and grows ever more and more clever and rich.”