The Assassin

SPECIAL TO THE OIL CITY DERRICK.

NEW YORK PAPERS PLEASE COPY

Hopewell Field,

Kansas

A mysterious fire swept the Hopewell tract of buildings, tanks, stills, and derricks, devastated the hamlet of Kent, and destroyed the shack-and-canvas boomtown that serviced the fields. The average loss equals $3,000 a well. Most were ruined by tubing dropping into them. Fewer than six of one hundred wells survive with derricks and pump houses standing. The independents are wiped out. Only those drillers who were backed, secretly, by subsidiaries of Standard Oil can afford to rebuild their ruined engines, burnt derricks, and melted pipe.

Bell asked, “How many wildcatters were backed by Standard Oil?”

“Put that down,” she called over her shoulder. “It’s not ready to be read.”

“I’m looking for E. M. Hock.”

“She’s busy,” said the woman and kept typing.

“I sometimes suspected that the mysterious E. M. Hock was a she.”

“What aroused your suspicion?”

“A higher than usual degree of horse sense in her reporting and a distinct shortage of bombast. What’s the E. M. stand for?”

“Edna Matters.”

“Why keep it secret?”

“To derail expectations. Who are you?”

“Isaac Bell. Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

She turned around, looked him over with severe gray-green eyes softened only slightly by the boyish cut of her hair. “Are you the private detective who just happened to be with Mr. Hopewell when he was shot?”

Her ears, thought Bell, were exquisite, and he was struck forcibly by how attractive a woman could be with the shortest hair he had ever seen.

“We’re investigating for the Corporations Commission.”

“Do you know anything about oil?”

“I’m an expert.”

A dark eyebrow rose skeptically. “Expert? How? Did you work in the oil fields?”

“No, Miss Matters.”

“Did you study chemical engineering?”

“No.”

“Then how’d you become an expert?”

“I read your articles.”

She turned away, poised her fingers over the typewriter keys, and stared at the sheet of paper in the machine. She banged away at the keys. A smile quirked the corner of her mouth and she stopped typing.

“O.K., we have something in common, Mr. Bell: Private detectives flatter their subjects as shamelessly as newspaper reporters to make them talk.”

“I sincerely meant to compliment E. M. Hock’s History of the Under- and Heavy-handed Oil Monopoly. You’re a wonderful wordsmith, and you seem to be in command of your facts.”

“Thank you.”

“Besides, I would not bore a beautiful woman by flattering her good looks, which she must hear every day.”

“Mr. Bell, do me the courtesy of leaving my ‘womanliness’ out of this conversation.”

That would be like discussing the nature of daylight without mentioning the sun—a concept Isaac Bell kept to himself in the interest of garnering evidence from a savvy newspaper reporter sent to cover the fire.

—

“Are you by any chance related to Bill Matters?”

“He’s my father.”

“Would that explain your sympathy for the independents?”

“Sympathy. Not bias. I believe that the independent business man gives American enterprise spine. Independents are brave, bravery is the foundation of i

“That distinction shines through the articles,” said Bell.

“You do seem to want something from me, sir.”

Isaac Bell gri

“Until six years ago. Is that what you were discussing with Mr. Hopewell when he was shot?”

“Did they part on good terms?”

“Didn’t Mr. Hopewell tell you that he was angry with Father for joining up with Standard Oil?”

Bell recalled Hopewell’s emotional telling of Matters’ son, this woman’s brother, ru

“Mr. Hopewell called Father a traitor. Father called Mr. Hopewell a stuck-in-the-mud fool. Mr. Hopewell asked Father was there anything lower than a Standard Oil magnate, except he pronounced the word as ‘maggot.’”

She cast Bell a smile. “Witnesses swore the first punches were thrown simultaneously.”

Bell asked, “Have they spoken since?”

“Of course. Six years is too long for old friends to hold a grudge, and, besides, they both flourished—Mr. Hopewell wildcatting in Kansas and Father managing the Standard’s pipe lines.”

“How will he take the news of Hopewell’s death?”

“He will take it hard. Very hard.”

Isaac Bell asked, “Would I find your father in New York, at 26 Broadway?”

“When he’s not traveling.”

Something thumped the canvas roof. Edna Matters looked up. A delighted smile made her even more beautiful, Bell thought. She brushed past him and out the tent flaps. He followed. A thick Manila hemp rope hung down from the sky. Three hundred feet over his head, a wicker basket suspended under a yellow gas balloon was dragging the rope, which hopped and skipped across the ground.

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 suffragist,” Edna Matters corrected him.

“What’s the distinction?”

“A suffragette 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 suffragist 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 Je