The Assassin

“What do you suppose he’ll make of that?”

“He’ll make of it what he taught me: Show-offs trip themselves up when they forget to watch where they’re going.”

“And where are you going, Isaac?”

“Westchester.”

“To see the great man?”

“To see what makes him tick . . . Here’s another thought for Mr. Van Dorn. If our assassin is willing to throw people out windows instead of shooting them, then he’s even less predictable than a professional sniper.”

They shook hands.

“Wait a minute! Do we know why Clyde Lapham was in Washington?”

Forrer said, “I assume—”

“I thought the Research Department never assumes.”

“I’ll get right on it . . . Hey, where are you going?”

Isaac Bell was striding into the street, waving a fistful of money at a chauffeur about to garage an Acme Opera Limousine. “Grady!” he called over his shoulder. “Do me a favor and send wires in my name to Nellie Matters and John D. Rockefeller. Apologize for breaking tomorrow’s appointments and ask would it be convenient to reschedule for the day after.”

“Now where are you going?”

“Back to Washington.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“I’ll make the Congressional Express.” He paid the yawning chauffeur to speed him to the railroad ferry at 42nd Street.

The one a.m. express was fully booked. Even his railroad pass couldn’t get him a berth. He whipped out his Van Dorn badge and sprinted to the fortified express car at the head of the train. There would be no berth with crisp sheets there, either, nor even a comfortable chair. But the express messenger, responsible for jewels, gold, bearer bonds, and banknotes, was glad to have the company of another armed guard. Bell waited until the train was safely rolling at sixty miles an hour, then made his bed on canvas sacks stuffed with a hundred thousand in National Bank notes. He awakened to stand watch, pistol drawn, at station stops in Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore.

—

“Greek fire saved Constantinople from the Arab navies, Mrs. McCloud.”

The widow who owned the coffee stand on Fulton Street was tied to a kitchen chair with a gag in her mouth. Bill Matters watched from the doorway.

The assassin, who was perched on the rim of the bathtub that shared the tiny space with the chair, a table, and a cookstove, loosened the gag and asked, “Who else did you tell?”

The woman was brave. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Oh, I will know . . . Greek fire burned on water. In fact, it continues to burn even when you splash water on it. Which the invading Arabs discovered when it incinerated their ships. It was made by a secret formula as closely guarded as the workings of the Standard Oil Company. The recipe is long lost. But every guess of its ingredients includes naphtha.”

The assassin held up a gallon tin of naphtha, a familiar solvent sold in hardware stores, and punched holes in the top with a pocketknife.

“You’ll find naphtha in the Bible, Mrs. McCloud, a word to describe burning liquid. It’s mentioned in the Old Testament. The name meant ‘purification.’ Assyrians dipped their arrows in naphtha to shoot fire at their enemies.”

“You think you scare me?”

The assassin tightened the gag.

“Today in our modern, gentler age, we use naphtha to clean clothes and dissolve grease and paint. But since the auto became popular, it is especially important to give gasoline its kick. Have you ever seen gasoline catch fire? Imagine the leaps of flame that naphtha produces. Who, Mrs. McCloud? Who else did you tell that I gave you the powder that you fed to the old man?”

She shook her head. She was watching the tin, but there was still more contempt than fear in her eyes.

The assassin upended the tin and poured the naphtha on her head, soaking her hair and her shabby housedress, then loosened the gag and asked again in the same quiet, persistent voice, “Who else did you tell that I gave you powder to put in Mr. Comstock’s coffee?”

The assassin signaled that it was now Matters’ turn. Steeling himself to act, Matters scraped a kitchen match on the cookstove’s grate. Flame flared in a burst of pungent smoke.

“Who else?”

“No one. I swear it.”

“No one but the messenger you sent to blackmail me,” said Matters.

“I didn’t tell him everything. Just enough to scare you to make you pay.”

“You did that all right.”

“Where is he?” she asked, eyes locked on the flame.

“Who? Your blackmail messenger? He died. After he told us where to find you.” Matters turned to the assassin, who was watching intently. “She believes me, and now I believe her.”

Mrs. McCloud’s entire body sagged with despair, and she whispered, “My son.”

“Ask her,” said the assassin, “how she traced me to you.”

Bill Matters said to Mrs. McCloud, “You heard the question. What made you think I was the one to blackmail?”

The widow suddenly looked twenty years older and had tears in her eyes. She whispered, “My son followed the old man to his office. He saw you together. He saw you meet every day in a tearoom. Like you had secrets away from the office.”

“Your son was a good guesser.” To the assassin he said, “I believe her. Do you?”

The assassin stepped closer and stared into Mrs. McCloud’s eyes.

“Say it again: No one else.”

“No one else. I swear it.”

“Do you believe her?” Matters asked again.

“I told you, I believe her.”

“All right.”

“But,” said the assassin, “she will never leave you in peace until she dies.”

Bill Matters pondered in silence. Suddenly he heard his own voice babbling foolishness. “What could she say? Who would believe her?”

The assassin said, “They will dig Comstock up and administer the Marsh test. What do you suppose they will find in his remains?”

Matters shook his head, though he knew of course.

“Poudre de succession! That is French, you poor man, for ‘inheritance powder,’ which is a euphemism for ‘arsenic.’ In other words, they will hang you for poisoning Averell Comstock.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” said Mrs. McCloud. “I promise.”

Bill Matters kept shaking his head. He could not abide the woman’s fear. Mary McCloud’s scornful contempt had underscored the deadly threat of blackmail. But her fear pried open his heart. He did not doubt that most men were his enemies. But not women. Twice widowed, father of daughters given to him by women he loved, he heard himself whisper a coward’s confession.

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

“That’s what you have me for,” said the assassin.

16

When Isaac Bell got back from Washington, D.C., he borrowed a Stanley Steamer from a good friend of Archie Abbott, a well-off New Yorker who, as Archie put it, “passed his days in a quiet, blameless, clubable way.” He drove north of Manhattan into Westchester, passing through Spuyten Duyvil, Yonkers, and Dobbs Ferry. The road, paved with concrete in some sections, asphalted in others, graveled here and there, and along a few stretches still dirt, passed country clubs, prosperous farms, and taverns catering to automobilists from the city. He arrived in North Tarrytown in a traffic jam of farm wagons, gasoline trucks, and autos all packed with workmen.

It was Election Day, the town constable explained. The wagons, trucks, and autos were ferrying three hundred of John D. Rockefeller’s estate gardeners, masons, road builders, laborers, and house servants to the North Tarrytown polls to vote for Rockefeller’s choices of trustees.

“Will he win?” Bell asked.

“He always does,” said the constable, who surely owed his job to the incumbents. “But, this year, the butcher is waging a mighty campaign.”