Clive Cussler - The Assassin

Edna ran after the dragline.

A canvas sack like a bank’s money bag slid down it and landed at her feet.

She waved it to the person looking down from the basket and hurried back to the tent, where she opened the bag and removed a sturdy buff-colored envelope. Inside was a tin cylinder of the type that contained Kodak roll film.

“Is that camera film?”

“My sister snapped an aerial photograph of the devastation.”

“Your sister?”

“Half sister. My real father died when I was a baby. My mother married my stepfather and they had Nellie.”

She stepped inside the tent and emerged with binoculars. “I got the impression you like beautiful women, Mr. Bell. Have a look.”

Bell focused on chestnut hair cut as short as Edna Matters’, a brilliant smile, and exuberant eyebrows. Edna’s fine features seemed magnified in Nellie’s face.

“If you find her appealing, Mr. Bell, I recommend you leave her beauty and womanliness out of your conversational repertoire.”

“Why?”

“Read.”

The yellow balloon had drifted on the light wind. Now that it was no longer directly overhead, Bell could read huge black letters on its side:

VOTES FOR WOMEN

“A suffragette?”

“A suffra gist ,” Edna Matters corrected him.

“What’s the distinction?”

“A suffra gette tries to convert men to the cause of enfranchisement.”

“I heard Amanda Faire at Madison Square Garden,” said Bell, recalling a statuesque redhead who had enthralled her mostly male audience.

“The fair Amanda is a shining example of a suffragette. A suffra gist converts women. You’ll get further with Nellie if you understand that women will gain the right to vote when all women agree that enfranchisement is a simple matter of justice.”

“What about the men?”

“If they want their meals cooked, shirts ironed, and beds warmed, they will have no choice but to go along. Or so Nellie believes… And by the way, you’ll get nowhere if you ever mention Amanda Faire in her company.”

“Rivals?”

“Fire and ice.”

Archie Abbott hurried up, shielding his eyes to inspect the balloon. “Get ready for a speech if that’s Nellie Matters.”

“Do you know her?”

“I heard her in Illinois last fall at a county fair. Two hundred feet in the air, she delivered a William Jennings Bryan stem-winder that had the ladies eyeing their husbands like candidates for a mass hanging.”

“This is her sister,” said Bell, “E. M. Hock… May I present my good friend Archibald Angell Abbott IV?”

The redheaded, blue-blooded Archie whisked his bowler off his head and beamed a smile famous in New York for quickening the heartbeats of New York heiresses and their social climbing mothers and arousing the suspicions of their newly wealthy fathers. “A pleasure, Miss Hock. And may I say that rumors I have heard among journalists that you are a woman are borne out splendidly.”

Bell could not help but compare the chilly response when he uttered a similar compliment to the warm smile Archie received from Edna.

“How’d you happen to get here so quickly?” Archie asked her. “The fire is still smoldering.”

“I was passing by on my way back from Indian Territory.”

Archie stared at the buckboard. “In that?”

“Reporting on ‘oil fever’ takes me places the trains don’t visit.”

“I salute your enterprise and your bravery. Speaking of oil fever, Isaac — I’m sure you’ve heard this already, Miss Hock — the wildcatters are blaming Standard Oil for the fire.”

“Did you interview any witnesses who presented evidence to support their contention?” asked Bell.

“Mostly, like you said, they heard that somebody saw Straub, somewhere — that’s Big Pete Straub, Miss Hock, a Standard—”

“Mr. Straub was just promoted to refinery police superintendent,” Edna interrupted.

“Which means he travels anywhere he pleases,” said Bell. “Go on, Archie.”

“I did find one guy who claimed to see Mr. Straub renting a horse in Fort Scott.”

“Did he see the horse?”

“Said it was tall as a Clydesdale.”

“The one I saw was a mighty lean Clydesdale. Are your witnesses suggesting Standard Oil’s motive for setting the fire?”

“One school of rumor says Standard Oil wants to shut down Kansas production to raise the price of oil by limiting the product reaching market.”

Bell looked to see Edna’s reaction. She said, “The Standard is still heavily invested in the Pennsylvania and Indiana fields. They’re somewhat depleted, so the oil is more expensive to pump. The Standard will lose money if they don’t keep the price up.”

“What else, Archie?”

“Another rumor, a doozy, claims that Standard Oil is laying pipe lines straight through Kansas to tap richer fields in Oklahoma. After they connect those fields to their interstate pipe line, they’ll bypass Kansas oil completely and shut down Kansas production. Then when the producers are forced to the wall, the Standard will buy their leases cheap and lock the oil in the ground for the future. Their future.”

Bell looked again to Edna Matters.

The newspaperwoman laughed. “When you grow up with a father in the oil business, you learn that rumors about Standard Oil are always true. And JDR hears them first.”

“What about this one?” asked Bell.

“The Kansas part fits their pattern. Indian Territory and Oklahoma appear rich in new strikes. But the Standard’s pattern does not include shooting people and setting fires.”

“Exactly what Spike Hopewell told me.”

Edna Matters said, “Clearly, Mr. Hopewell was murdered. But there’s no evidence of the cause of the fire.”

“Yet,” said Bell. He conceded that the only crime that he knew for sure had occurred was the sniper killing of Spike Hopewell. If anyone could determine the cause of the fire, it was Detective Wally Kisley. But to get the best work out of Wally, he had to stay out of his way until he asked for a hand.

Archie asked, “How does John D. Rockefeller hear the rumors first?”

“When two men shake hands, JDR knows the terms of their deal before they report to their front offices.”

“How?” asked Bell.

“He pays spies to keep him ahead of every detail in business and politics. Refiners, distributors, drillers, railroad men, politicians. He calls them correspondents.”

“Does he pay newspaper reporters?”

Edna Matters Hock smiled at the tall detective. “He’s been known to ask reporters.”

“What do they say?”

“I can’t report on other reporters. There are confidences involved. Among friends.”

“Do you have any personal experience in what reporters say?” Archie asked, his most eligible bachelor in New York smile working overtime.

Edna smiled back. “Personally? I quoted my father’s old partner, poor Mr. Hopewell.”

“What did Hopewell say?”

“Why don’t you ask Mr. Bell? He was the last to speak with him.”

Bell said, “He told Rockefeller to go to blazes.”

“Actually,” Edna corrected, “he was paraphrasing. What he originally said, at least according to my father, was, ‘I’d join Satan first.’”

“How did Rockefeller respond to your preference for Satan?”

“I haven’t a clue. JDR does not ask in person. He sends people who ask for him.”

“He’s a famous negotiator. Did they come back with a counteroffer?”

Edna Matters answered Bell seriously. “They asked me to reconsider. So I did. JDR never gives interviews. I said, All right, I’ll fill you in on some things I learn if, in return, Mr. Rockefeller will sit down with me and my questions for a full day interview.”