The Assassin

He pointed Bell in the direction of the Rockefeller estate. Soon the bustle of the town was forgotten, dwarfed by vast building improvements—grading new roads, damming rivers, digging lakes, erecting stables and guesthouses, and laying out a golf course—that appeared to absorb the surrounding farms and entire villages. Rounding a blind bend, he saw an old tavern that stood alone in the sea of mud. A sign on the roof named it

SLEEPY HOLLOW ROADHOUSE

A hand-painted addition stated

NOT FOR SALE

NOT EVEN TO YOU, MR. PRESIDENT

Bell swerved off the road and stopped in front with a strong hunch that the proprietor of the Sleepy Hollow Roadhouse would be more than willing to tell him a thing or two about Rockefeller’s local activities. He ordered a glass of beer and got an earful.

“Retired, the man is lethal,” said the very angry tavern owner. “If the nation thinks that Standard Oil is an octopus, they should see him operate in Pocantico Hills—where, just so you know, my family logged and fished, and farmed those fields across the road, for two hundred years before that sanctimonious pirate pulled up stakes in Cleveland to foist himself on New York and, by extension, our small hamlet.”

Mine host paused for breath. Isaac Bell asked, “What makes him sanctimonious?”

“He’s a teetotaler. It galls the heck out of him that I’m selling drinks right outside his front gate. He put my competitor out of business by buying up every house in the hamlet that supplied his customers. But he can’t do that to me because my customers drive their autos up from the city like you.”

“So it’s a standoff.”

“As much as one man can stand off against an octopus. Who knows which way he’ll come at me next.”

“Is he here often?”

“Too often. Here all the time, now that he’s built his own golf course.”

“How big is the estate?” said Bell.

“Three thousand acres and counting. The man can drive for days on his own roads and never use the same one twice.”

Isaac Bell found the gates open and unma

He passed stables and a coach barn, guest cottages, gardens, both sunken and walled, a teahouse, and a conservatory under construction, its graceful framework awaiting glass. A powerhouse was hidden behind a stone outcropping with its chimney disguised by a clump of tall cedars. The drive climbed a gentle slope to a plateau that looked out on the river and circled a large mansion in the early stage of construction. Masons swarmed on scaffolds, buttressing deep cellar holes with stonework.

Bell was wondering in which of the older or newly built smaller buildings Rockefeller actually lived when he noticed below the plateau a canyon-like cut through a stone hill. He drove into it along a flat roadbed. Drill marks in the vine-tangled stone sides, ballast crunching under his tires, and chunks of coal glittering in the sun indicated it was an old railroad cut abandoned decades earlier. He emerged on the far side of the hill beside a cluster of weathered cow barns that appeared to be the remnants of a dairy farm subsumed by the estate.

Sturdy poles carried strands of telegraph, telephone, and electric wire into the biggest barn. Isaac Bell parked the Steamer and pressed a button at the door. A buzzer sounded inside.

John D. Rockefeller himself opened the door. He was dressed as he had been when Bell saw him last in Joseph Van Dorn’s office, in elegantly tailored broadcloth, winged collar and four-in-hand necktie, a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket and gold cuff links. His eyes were bleak.

“What exactly happened to Clyde Lapham?”

“You can answer that better than I,” said Bell.

“What do you mean?”

“Tell me why you sent Clyde Lapham to Washington.”

“What makes you think I did?”

“I know you did. I want you to tell me why.”

“How could you possibly know that I sent Clyde Lapham to Washington?”

“Van Dorn detectives make friends with local cops.”

“I thought you resigned your position.”

“Word of my resignation hasn’t reached my friends in the Washington police. Why did you send Clyde Lapham to Washington?”

“To give the poor man something to do.”

“Poor man?”

“Clyde Lapham was the brightest, widest-awake, most progressive business man. But he was begi

“Why did you send him?”

“You apparently know already. Why this charade?”

“I don’t know if I can trust you, sir. I want to hear it from you.”

The old man didn’t like hearing that, and Bell half expected to be escorted off the property. Instead, Rockefeller said, “I asked Clyde Lapham to discuss a contribution of money to a minister who is raising funds to build a monument to President Abraham Lincoln.”

“Thank you,” said Bell. For a moment, he debated asking why Rockefeller paid a secret visit to the Persian embassy, but that would definitely get him thrown out on his ear. He had learned nothing more of it on his quick return to Washington and had left Archie Abbott in charge of probing his friends in the State Department.

“To answer your question,” Bell said, “Clyde Lapham was murdered.”

Rockefeller’s expression did not change, but his shoulders sagged perceptibly. He stepped back, indicating Bell should enter, and without a word led the way through a foyer into a high-ceilinged drawing loft. Draftsmen in vests and shirtsleeves were bent over drawing boards, working in the pure glow of north-facing skylights. Bell saw building plans and landscape designs taking shape. Finished blueprints were spread on worktables, where civil engineers and architects were guiding foremen through the intricacies of upcoming work. Rockefeller paused at a table where a draftsman was drawing the steel frame for a stone bridge, traced a line with his finger, and politely ordered a correction.

He continued down a hallway of shut doors. Not visible until they had rounded a corner was a door with frosted glass in the upper panel. Bell followed him through it and saw instantly that the supposedly retired president of Standard Oil was leading a double life at Pocantico Hills, actively managing vast improvements of his new estate while continuing to command his industrial enterprise.

The frosted-glass door opened on a business office as modern as any on Wall Street, staffed by secretaries and bookkeepers, and equipped with private telegraph, overseas cable, telephone lines, and ticker tape machines. Rockefeller led Bell through the din into his private office, closed the door, and stood behind his desk.

“That you’re here,” he said, “tells me you’ve come to do what I asked: stop the assassin and end the slander of Standard Oil.”

Bell said, “I will concentrate on the assassin and leave the slander to you.”

“How do you know that Clyde Lapham was murdered?”

Bell related the events at the Washington Monument step-by-step.

“Byzantine,” said Rockefeller. “In your experience, have you ever seen a murder as elaborately conceived?”

“Three murders,” said Bell.

“Three?” Rockefeller blinked.

“And an attempted murder. And an elaborate act of arson.”

“What are you talking about?”

“As ‘byzantine,’ to use your word, as the killing of Clyde Lapham was, it was merely an exaggerated version of his earlier crimes.” He described for Rockefeller the deaths of the independent Kansas refiners Reed Riggs and Albert Hill, the elaborate and highly effective duck-target explosion and burning of Spike Hopewell’s refinery, the attempt to shotgun him, Texas Walt, and Archie Abbott. Finally, he reminded Rockefeller of the faked suicide of Big Pete Straub. “By those lights, sniping Hopewell and C. C. Gustafson are his only ‘normal’ crimes.”