The Assassin

“Having ‘detected’ that you’re awash in gasoline, I traded my horse for an auto.”

Hopewell laughed. “You got me there. Biggest glut since the auto was invented . . . Whatcha doing here, son? What do you want?”

Bell said, “The government’s Corporations Commission is investigating Standard Oil for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.”

“Do tell,” said Hopewell, his ma

“The commission hired the Van Dorn Agency to gather evidence of the Standard busting up rivals’ businesses.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Fifty thousand gallons of gasoline you can’t ship to market is the sort of evidence I’m looking for.”

“It’s sitting there in that tank. Look all you want.”

“Can you tell me how your glut filled it?”

“Nope. And I won’t testify either.”

Isaac Bell had expected resistance. Hopewell had a reputation for being tough as a gamecock and scrappy as a one-eyed tom. But the success of the Van Dorn investigation hinged on persuading the independent to talk, both in confidence and in public testimony. Few oil men alive had more experience fighting the monopoly.

Age hadn’t slowed him a bit. Instead of cashing in and retiring when he struck enormous oil finds in Kansas, Spike Hopewell had built a modern refinery next to the fields to process crude oil for his fellow independent drillers. Now he was in the fight of his life, laying a tidewater pipe line to ship their gasoline and kerosene to tank steamers at Port Arthur, Texas.

Standard Oil was fighting just as hard to stop him.

“Won’t testify? The Standard flooded the courts with lawyers to block your line to the Gulf of Mexico.”

Spike was no slouch in the influence department. “I’m fighting ’em in the State House. The lawmakers in Topeka know darned well that Kansas producers and Kansas refineries are dead unless I can ship their product to European markets that Standard Oil don’t control.”

“Is that why the railroad untied your siding?”

There were no tank cars on the refinery siding. A forlorn-looking 0-6-0 switch engine had steam up, but it had nowhere to go and nothing to do except shuttle material around the refinery. A quarter mile of grass and sagebrush separated Hopewell’s tracks from the main line to Kansas City. The roadbed was graded, and gravel ballast laid, and telegraph wire strung. But the co

Hopewell said, “My lawyers just got an injunction ordering the railroad to hook me up again.”

“You won a hollow victory. Standard Oil tied up every railroad tank car in the region. The commission wants to know how.”

“Tell ’em to take it up with the railroad.”

A wintery light grayed the detective’s eyes. His smile grew cool. Pussyfooting was getting him nowhere. “Other Van Dorn operatives are working on the railroad. My particular interest is how the Standard is blocking your tidewater pipe line.”

“I told you, son, I ain’t testifying.”

“With no pipe line,” Bell shot back, “and no railroad to transport your products to market, your wells and refinery are worthless. Everything you built here will be forced to the wall.”

“I’ve been bankrupt before—before you were born, so

“If you’re afraid,” Bell said, “the Van Dorn Agency will protect you.”

Spike’s ma

“And enough extra parts to build a new one to pull the old one out of a ditch,” Bell smiled back, thinking they were getting somewhere at last.

“But you underestimate Standard Oil. They don’t murder the competition.”

“You underestimate the danger.”

“They don’t have to kill us. You yourself just said it. They’ve got lobbyists to trip us up in the legislature and lawyers to crush us in court.”

“Do you know Big Pete Straub?” Bell asked, watching for Hopewell’s reaction.

“Pete Straub is employed by Standard Oil’s industrial service firm. That’s their fancy name for refinery cops, strikebreakers, and labor spies. He smashed my pipe line back in Pe

“I bumped into Straub only yesterday in Kansas City.”

The older man shrugged, as if monumentally unconcerned. “Standard Oil has no monopoly on private cops and strikebreakers. You’ll find Big Pete’s bulldozing union labor in coal mines, railroads, and steel mills. For all you know, he’s on his way to Colorado to bust up the miners union. Heck, Rockefeller owns half the mines out there.”

“He’s not in Colorado. He’s in Kansas. Last time Straub visited Kansas, independent refiners bucking the Standard turned up dead in Fort Scott and Coffeyville.”

“Accidents,” Spike Hopewell scoffed. “Reed Riggs fell under a locomotive—drunk, if he held to pattern—and poor Albert Hill was repairing an agitator when he tumbled into a tank.” Hopewell shot Bell a challenging look. “You know what an agitator is, Mr. Detective?”

“The agitator treats crude gasoline distillate with sulfuric acid, washes away the acid with water, neutralizes it with caustic soda, and separates the water.”

Hopewell nodded. “You’ve done your homework. In that case, you know that the fumes’ll make you light-headed if you’re not careful. Albert tended not to be.”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure both were accidents.”

“I’m sure,” Hopewell fired back.

Bell turned on him suddenly. “If you’re not afraid, why won’t you testify?”

Hopewell folded his ample arms across his chest. “Tattling goes against my grain.”

“Tattling? Come on, Spike, we’re not schoolboys. Your work’s at grave risk, everything you built, and maybe even your life.”

“It’ll take your commission years, if ever, to change a damned thing,” Spike retorted. “But folks in Kansas are itching for a fight right now. We’ll beat the Standard in the State House—outlaw rebates and guarantee equal shipping rates for all. And if the Standard don’t like it, Kansas will build its own refinery—or, better yet,” he added with a loud laugh, “buy this one from me so I can focus my thoughts on my pipe line.”

Isaac Bell heard a false note in that laugh. Spike Hopewell was not as sure of himself as he boasted.

—

Could you snipe a man in the neck at seven hundred yards?

Ask the wi

Could you even see him a third of a mile away?

Read the commendatory letter signed by Theodore Roosevelt in which TR, the hero of San Juan Hill, saluted the sharpshooter who won the President’s Match for the Military Rifle Championship of the United States.

Doubt me?

Read about bull’s-eyes riddled at a thousand yards.

Did President Roosevelt shout Bully! the assassin smiled, when the champion took “French leave”?

But who’d have had the nerve to tell Teddy that the deadliest sniper in the Army deserted his regiment?

—

“Mr. Hopewell,” said Isaac Bell, “if I can’t persuade you to do the right thing by your fellow independents, would you at least answer some questions about one of your former partners?”

“Bill Matters.”

“How did you know I meant Matters? You’ve had many partners, wildcat drilling partners, pipe line partners, refinery partners.” Bell named three.

Hopewell answered slowly and deliberately as if addressing a backward child. “The commission that hired your detective agency is investigating Standard Oil. Bill took up with the Standard. He sits to lunch with their executive committee in New York. Lunch—Mr. Anti-Trust Corporations Commission Detective—is where they hatch their schemes.”