Clive Cussler - The Assassin

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.

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.”