Clive Cussler - The Assassin

“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.”

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 suffra gettes—“ 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.”