The Assassin

19

Thank you for seeing me off,” John D. Rockefeller told the New York reporters who mobbed the Lake Shore Limited platform at Grand Central. “I’d expect you’d have more profitable ways to pass your time, but it is very kind of you.”

He wore an old man’s overcoat and held tight to the burly Bill Matters’ arm while Isaac Bell stood guard just out of camera range. “What will I do in Cleveland? Warm these old bones and try my hand knocking golf balls.”

The Cleveland newspapers sent reporters to meet his train at Union Depot, and posted more reporters at the front gate of Forest Hill, Rockefeller’s summer residence on the edge of town. A week later, the newspapermen returned when the city’s Italian Boys Band came to serenade him. Rockefeller gave them a show, seizing a baton to conduct “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It would be his last public appearance until October.

That night Isaac Bell slipped him and Matters into a private car coupled to the New York Central’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited. Ten hours later, the train was divided at Albany. Some cars continued east to Boston, most headed south to New York City. Bill Matters joined the New York section to board the four-funnel German ocean liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. Isaac Bell and John D. Rockefeller continued on the eastbound section.

Waiting with steam up in Boston Harbor was the three-hundred-foot Sandra, a handsome yacht with a lofty raked stack and the lines of a greyhound that Rockefeller had borrowed when Bell pointed out that the newspapers ensured there were no secrets on an ocean liner. Judge James Congdon had lent Sandra in a flash, leaving Bell to speculate whether the legendary Wall Street potentate, a founder of U.S. Steel, was in on Rockefeller’s deal. Whatever the deal was. So far, Bell had made no progress in getting Rockefeller to confide in his bodyguard.

Sandra’s triple-expansion engines drove them across the Atlantic Ocean in twelve days. They landed at Cherbourg and rode in a private car coupled to the boat train to Paris. A French actress whom Bell had known in San Francisco recruited her favorite theatrical costumer and wigmaker from the Comédie-Française. They called on John D. Rockefeller in the privacy of his hotel.

Bell booked train tickets to Constantinople. Then he visited a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, whose wife’s sapphire necklace Van Dorn detectives had ransomed from the thief Rosania when she visited Chicago. The grateful director of the sleeping car company gave Bell a copy of the passenger manifest. Bell showed it to Rockefeller to ensure that the oil magnate would not bump into fellow tycoons on the Express d’Orient.

The tawny yellow all-stateroom train offered its pampered customers the unique benefit of not being rousted from their beds for passport checks at the border crossings as they steamed through Munich, Strasbourg, Vienna, and Budapest. Sixty-four hours after leaving Paris, they awakened to the balmy air and dazzling sunshine of Constantinople, a vast and ancient cosmopolitan city of mosques and minarets, a sprawling bazaar, mangy dogs, and a bustling harbor on a deep blue sea.

A mail steamer carried them up the Bosporus Strait and four hundred miles across the Black Sea to Batum, the world’s biggest oil port, where the snow-covered Caucasus Mountains loomed over the harbor, and the six-hundred-mile pipe line from Baku terminated.

Dozens of steam tankers rode at anchor, queuing to load at the kerosene docks. But the city’s streets were deserted and buildings shuttered.

“Muslims and Christians are shooting each other,” Bill Matters reported when he met them at the steamer in a Rolls-Royce. “It’s a pogromy, Tatars attacking Armenians.”

“Where do the Russians stand?” asked Bell.

“The cops and Army turn a blind eye.”

They drove five miles out of the city to Manziadjani. The American vice consul, a prosperous and well-connected ship broker whom Rockefeller had arranged to meet, had his country place there. Shots were fired from the woods as they pulled in through the front gate. Bell had his pistol out and was opening his carpetbag when Vice Consul Abrams staggered up to the car with blood pouring from his mouth.

They rushed him to a nearby Russian Army fort, where he died within moments of arriving. Isaac Bell raced Rockefeller and Matters back to Batum and onto the train to Baku. At Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, halfway to the Caspian Sea, there were reports of riots. A bomb exploded outside the station. Bell kept his party on the train and they slept the night sitting up on hard benches.

Next morning, the authorities dithered. It was midday before the train pulled out, proceeded by a pilot engine, in case wreckers taking advantage of the collapse of law and order had mined the tracks to rob the passengers. They steamed slowly across an endless, ever-more-desolate dry valley between snowy mountains to the north and indistinct highlands to the south.

An hour before nightfall, still fifty miles from Baku, the pilot engine hit a mine.

The explosion blew it off the rails and into a ravine, taking with it the riflemen guarding the train. Horsemen in black cloaks gathered on a ridge that loomed above the tracks.

Isaac Bell opened his carpetbag and joined the Savage 99’s barrel to its chamber with a practiced twist. Another explosion blocked the rails behind them, and a wild-eyed conductor ran through the car yelling, “Wreckers!”

They attacked, galloping down the slope, brandishing long guns and sabers.

“Get Mr. Rockefeller under cover,” Bell told Matters. “Fort him up with those bags.”

Matters obeyed instantly, helping Rockefeller to the floor, pulling luggage down from the racks. The old man remained calm and watchful and seemed to have the horse sense to trust the job to the man he had chosen to protect him. If C. C. Gustafson was the most philosophical man on the subject of getting shot, John D. Rockefeller took the cake as the calmest man without a gun that Isaac Bell had ever seen in a gunfight.

Bell counted ten expert riders on agile ponies. Without a telescope on the rifle, he’d be wasting ammunition if he opened up any farther than four hundred yards. But four hundred yards would give him only forty seconds to stop them before they reached the stranded train. He glanced about the car. Some of the men had pulled revolvers. Bill Matters unlimbered an ancient Civil War Remington. Bell’s was the only rifle.

20

When will you shoot?” John D. Rockefeller called to Isaac Bell.

“When I can hit them.”

He chose a large boulder on the hillside as his quarter-mile marker. The lead horseman steered his mount directly at it. As he raised his whip to make the animal jump, Bell pressed the Savage to his shoulder. The whip descended. The animal gathered its haunches and left the ground. Isaac Bell waited for the rider’s chest to cross the iron sight and curled his finger gently around the trigger.

Dave McCoart had loaded a box of wildcats for him and Bell decided he owed the gunsmith a box of Havana cigars. The train wrecker slid off his horse almost as smoothly as if he had chosen to dismount. His foot jammed in a stirrup. The panicked animal veered sharply, dragging its dead rider across the line of charge. Two train wreckers crashed into them and went down in a tangle of hoofs.

Bell levered in a fresh shell.

He fixed a bead on a rider who was whirling a carbine over his head like a sword. Again the perfectly balanced trigger kept the weapon dead steady as Bell fired and another wrecker fell off his horse. But they had closed within two hundred yards. Bell’s next target was an easy hit, and they were so near for his next that he could have dropped his man with a rock.

“Shoot!” he roared at the men gaping out the windows.

They jerked the triggers of their revolvers, hitting nothing. Through that hail of wild fire, the horsemen charged. The Savage’s magazine indicator read one shot left. Bell fired at a man so close, he could see the hairs of his beard.

That shot and the volume of pistol fire broke the charge. Twenty yards from the train, the survivors turned their horses and drove them back up the ridge. Bell reloaded, shouting to the others, “Keep shooting before they change their minds.”

He sent two slugs whistling over their heads and they kept going, lashing their horses. The revolver-toting passengers stopped shooting or ran out of ammunition. The beginnings of a ragged cheer died on their lips as each and every man considered how close he had come to annihilation. Silence finally descended in the hot, dusty railcar.

Isaac Bell helped John D. Rockefeller to his feet.

“Now what?” asked the Standard Oil magnate.

“We wait for a wreck train to repair the tracks.”

“They’re coming back,” a passenger shouted.

Men clutched their revolvers. But this time the thunder of hoofbeats was only a roving police patrol of Cossacks armed with bolt-action rifles and shashka sabers.

Bell broke down the Savage.

“Nice shooting,” said Matters. “Where’d you get the rifle?”

Bell hid it in his carpetbag. “What rifle?”

If he owed Dave McCoart a box of cigars for his bullets, he should in all fairness send one to the assassin for his gun. Lacking a name and address, Bell would wait until he installed him in his cell in death row.

Isaac Bell led a much-jauntier John D. Rockefeller off the train at Baku Station than the geezer in the overcoat who had boarded the Lake Shore Limited to Cleveland. His actress friend’s Comédie-Française costumers had camouflaged the magnate’s famous features with a silver-gray wig to cover his bald head and matching eyebrows fastened with spirit gum to replace those he had lost to alopecia. Tinted spectacles shaded his piercing gaze. A white flannel “ice cream” suit, a straw panama, and a gold-headed walking stick bedecked a gracefully aging dandy visiting a southern Russian city in the summer.

He even cracked a joke.

“Process servers from the Corporations Commission won’t know me from Adam.”

With Bell at his side, he strode through the station, the picture of an adventurous American who might be a tourist or a wealthy missionary. Though, in fact, they had made him a diplomat. Rockefeller’s Washington “correspondents” had provided unassailable documents for a fictitious Special U.S. Envoy for Commercial Affairs to Russia and Persia — the Honorable Joseph D. Stone.

On Bell’s orders, Bill Matters had left the train earlier at a suburban station. Matters was traveling under his own name as the representative of the American refinery builder Purest Incorporated of New Jersey — which happened to be one of Standard Oil’s secret subsidiaries. His letters of introduction to the mayor of Baku, the prefect, the governor, and the city’s leading oil men stated that his mission was to persuade the Russian government to let Purest build new, modern refineries and replace the old ones owned by Rothschild and Nobel. A seemingly chance meeting with Special Envoy Joseph D. Stone would lead to Matters and Stone discovering that their business interests coincided.

Isaac Bell, too, traveled under his own name. Bogus papers established the tall detective as Special Envoy Stone’s private secretary and bodyguard who had been granted extended leave from the United States Secret Service.

Compared to Tiflis and Batum, the much-bigger city of Baku seemed peaceful and less tense, exhibiting few outward signs of last winter’s murderous riots. Baku was also quite clearly the thriving capital of an oil-rich region that pumped half the entire world’s petroleum. The lavish railroad station, bustling with crowds of people speaking Farsi, Russian, and Armenian, was the equal of any in Paris or London.

Outside the station, women wore veils, cart horses plodded under tall Russian yokes, and the ruins of a centuries-old Persian citadel loomed on a hill. But swift modern trolleys glided on broad cobblestone avenues. The stonework, mansard roofs, towers, cupolas, and porte cocheres of Baku City Hall and the Embassy Row buildings were typical of a great metropolis. The ostentatious private palaces built by the oil kings spoke of vast fortunes made as suddenly as they were on Wall Street — and were no less gaudy than those lining Fifth Avenue.

An hour of buying drinks and eavesdropping in the Hotel de l’Europe’s bars and lobby confirmed Bell’s decision to base Rockefeller’s envoy disguise on the information Archie had turned up in Washington. The rumor repeated most anxiously said that the Shah of Persia had secretly borrowed fifteen million rubles from Czar Nicholas. That the loan might gain Russia’s Navy entrée to the Persian Gulf had Great Britain and the United States riled to the core.

John D. Rockefeller was thrilled. Beaming, he confided to Bell in one of the unguarded moments he had begun to offer up since his costuming in Paris, “Not one man in a hundred will keep his eye on the ball.”

He did not seem at all surprised by the rumors of the czar’s moneylending, and Isaac Bell concluded that he had probably known about the loan right down to the last ruble long before they left New York for Cleveland.

21

The assassin’s first and strongest inclination had been to masquerade as a Cossack. The pageantry and sheer spectacle of the savage warriors appealed, and there was great advantage to be had playing the role of a character who frightened ordinary folk. But Cossacks were so closely related by blood and clan that they knew one another, and all knew their place from a hundred traditions of tribal hierarchy.

To act the part of an aristocrat was almost as tempting. The privileged gratin of Russian society spoke French, which the assassin could understand, and were kowtowed to by everyone, especially soldiers and police. But aristocrats, too, were divided by impenetrable layers of rank. Who knew what superior you would accidentally insult?

Luckily, there was one sort that every Russian feared.

The lowliest peasant, the noblest aristocrat, the angry Tatar, the despised Armenian, the arrogant soldier, the brutal cop, the corrupt bureaucrat, all were terrified by the Okhrana, the czar’s secret police.

Plainclothes agents’ disguises ranged from the rubbernecking tourist to the city laborer. The assassin had observed that, however disguised, secret agents often betrayed themselves with a superior attitude. Lording it over people was no way for the czar’s spies to catch revolutionaries. That was their loss. But from the assassin’s point of view, pulling rank was a foolproof way to scare Russians into backing down and leaving you alone.

The riots, and the dread of worse impending, gave the disguise even sharper teeth. The government had put the Baku region in a state of chrezvychainaia okhrana, or “extraordinary security.” People dreading merciless sentences of prison and exile without a trial were doubly in terror of the Okhrana.

Head high and gaze contemptuous, brandishing a master rigger’s toolbox, the assassin brushed past the guards at the Nobel refinery gate. They were watching for armed Tatars, and not inclined to tangle with a plainclothes secret policeman masquerading in brand-new, too-clean overalls.

The derricks in the Baku fields were fireproofed with metal and Gypsolite sheathing and more densely positioned than in Kansas — stacked more like the crowded Los Angeles fields along Sunset Boulevard, with the accompanying smoke, fumes, stench, and noise. In all other aspects, they resembled those the assassin had studied. Steam engines powered the drill machinery, ladders ran up the sides, cables turned over crown pulleys, and the tops of the derricks were surrounded with parapet work platforms that made an ideal shooting perch.

The workmen tending the engines and the pumps looked away, hoping not to make eye contact that could lead to questions. Even the drillers deepening the wells with bit and casing — a much-tougher lot of men — averted their faces. The way was clear to choose an untended derrick that offered a clear field of fire yet was remote enough to allow an unimpeded escape.

The assassin found the right derrick along the shore of Baku Bay, which sheltered tank steamers, barges, and tugboats from the Caspian Sea. Its parapet commanded a perspective of the Baku road and the gate where traffic entered the refinery. The smoke made it hard to see, but wind gusts off the water stirred it sporadically, much as the Kansas wind had at Hopewell Field.

Safely ensconced high in the air with a panoramic field of fire, all that remained was to assemble the Savage, adjust the telescope, insert the clip, and wait for the so-called Special Envoy Joseph D. Stone, Standard Oil directing head Bill Matters, and supposed former Van Dorn detective Isaac Bell.

After months of instigating murder in the streets and homes set afire and property looted in hopes of distracting angry citizens from contemplating revolution — hopes largely realized — it dawned on the czar’s government that the European investors demanding stability were right to be alarmed. The Tatar pogromy against the Armenians was about to destroy Russia’s most valuable industry. So when Purest Incorporated executive Bill Matters and Special Commercial Envoy Stone drove to the Nobel refinery in Black Town, the Baku region prefect and the governor insisted on providing a powerful escort.

Cossack outriders in brilliant red uniforms crowned by tall sheepskin papakhi formed a cordon around their auto — a Cleveland-built, 24-horsepower Peerless Tonneau car — which caused Isaac Bell to elevate every nerve end to its highest state.

Surrounded by saber-wielding horsemen, the car’s rate of speed was limited to a brisk trot. At the same time, the glittering Cossacks pinpointed the exact location of the Peerless — itself a visual extravaganza of red enamel and polished brass — for a revolutionary with a pistol or a sniper drawing a bead.

Bell was not particularly concerned about a revolutionary getting past the Cossacks, and even if one managed to, the scuffle would give him plenty of time to blow the attacker’s head off with his Colt automatic. A sniper was a grimmer story, and Bell watched anxiously for a glint of smoke-darkened sunlight on a distant rifle. He could be stationed on a roof or in an attic window, at any height that presented a line of fire above the tall horsemen.

They moved out of the hotel and embassy districts, past Armenian neighborhoods of shuttered houses, and through slums where the Tatars, distinguished by their blue tunics, darker skin, and round faces, stared sullenly. The Cossacks’ faces hardened, their tension betrayed by stiffened backs and darting eyes.

Bell had befriended the chauffeur, Josef, a Georgian with a tall pompadour of wavy black hair and the furtive flicker in his coal-dark eyes of a police spy assigned to eavesdrop on the Americans. Josef explained in halting English that the Cossacks had new orders to stop the pogromy, to which they had been turning an officially sanctioned blind eye. Now they were the Tatars’ enemy. “Tatar shoot Cossack,” the Georgian flung cheerfully over his shoulder to Bell in the backseat. “Cossack shoot Tatar. Make peace.”

Bell glanced at Rockefeller beside him. The old man was looking everywhere with big eyes. “What splendid horses!” He seemed happy, almost joyful. Bell speculated that he was delighted that his Special Envoy disguise allowed him for the first time in decades to move about in public. Tatars were glowering at his police escort, not at the “most hated man in America.”

Whereas Bill Matters sat rigidly in the front seat next to the chauffeur, uncomfortable as he always appeared to be in Rockefeller’s presence. He did not appear nervous, although he was hardly at ease.

Bell was not quite sure what to make of him. As brusque and tough as he had found Edna and Nellie Matters’ father on first meeting, he had not seen real indications of the “hard as adamantine” that Spike Hopewell had characterized. Granted, the man had kept a cool head during the train attack. He was clearly accustomed to command. And it seemed that the former independent had effected a successful transition to what Rockefeller referred to as a “valuable executive.” But regardless of the high level of Standard Oil director or head of department the president had permitted him to rise to, Bell did not believe that Bill Matters had yet become “one of the boys” who ran the secretive trust.

The smoke grew thicker in the suburbs, the sky blacker.

They headed southeast toward the Bibi-Eibat oil field and Black Town refineries.

The slow-moving auto and clattering horses crept into an enormous field of refinery tanks. Beyond the tanks were countless refining pots, each with a squat chimney belching smoke. A sharpshooter could crouch on the climbing rungs on one of the chimneys, though he would be taking a big risk of being seen. The more likely sniping position, like the roost that the assassin had climbed up to in Kansas, would be in the virtual skyscraper city of a thousand oil derricks that marched in close-packed ranks to the edge of the Caspian Sea.

A Tatar plumber working on the roof of one of the refinery tanks dropped a monkey wrench. The tool banged resoundingly against the metal side. The noise startled a horse. It reared so suddenly that its rider nearly slid off his saddle. For a moment, there was consternation, angry shouts, and milling horses. The chauffeur had to slam on his brakes. The Peerless stopped abruptly, jostling Matters against the windshield, the chauffeur into his wheel, and Rockefeller half off his seat until caught and held firmly in place by Isaac Bell.

In that same instant, Bell heard the crack of a high-velocity rifle slug split the air inches from the back of his seat. He grabbed Rockefeller’s arm to drag him down out of the line of fire. A second bullet struck the tall detective like a bolt of lightning.

22

The impact of the high-velocity slug threw Isaac Bell against the side door, breaking its latch. It flew open. He tumbled out of the Peerless, ricocheted off the running board, and sprawled on the oil-soaked road. Still gripping Rockefeller’s arm, he found himself vaguely aware that he somehow landed underneath the two-hundred-pound magnate. A bullet shattered the windshield. Bills Matters and the chauffeur jumped for their lives.

Bell heard his own voice. He sounded as if he were calling to John D. Rockefeller from a passing train. “Are you O.K.?”

The old man straightened his wig.

“My, my! Mr. Bell, your coat is drenched in blood.”

From Bell’s neck to his elbow, his white suit jacket was soaked ruby red.

His shoulder felt on fire.

The shooting had stopped. Now the danger was the steel-shod hoofs of the panicked horses plunging and rearing as their riders looked everywhere at once for the source of the gunfire.

Again his voice drifted from a distance. “We better stand up, Mr. Stone. Before we get trampled.”

He struggled to his feet, used his working arm to help Rockefeller to his, then found himself holding on to the old man to keep his balance.

“There!” Bell shouted, pointing at the derricks, the likeliest place the assassin fired from.

The Cossacks drew swords and galloped in the opposite direction.

A Tatar work gang was caught in their path. The Cossacks began slashing and shooting indiscriminately. The Moslems fled from the horses, leaving behind crumpled dead and squirming wounded and some hastily discarded sidearms.

Isaac Bell was surprised to see John D. Rockefeller standing over him, staring down with a concerned expression. “Mr. Bell, you’ve fallen down again. You are wounded.”

Bell started to stand again.

Rockefeller admonished him with an imperious gesture. “Right there! As I have been saying, you are wounded.” He raised his voice. “A doctor! Fetch a doctor!”

It finally struck Isaac Bell that it was not a good idea to stand and he lay back and let his mind fix on his memory of the shooting. He was sure it was the assassin. He was also fairly sure that the bullet had been aimed at him, not at Rockefeller. The car stopping suddenly had thrown off the first shot. That was the one he heard crackle over the seat back. He had taken the second. A terrible thought pierced his whirling thoughts. Was he drawing fire at the man he was supposed to protect?

Bell motioned to Bill Matters, one of the faces hovering over him.

“Get Mr. R — Envoy Stone — under cover. I’ll catch up.”

“You O.K., Bell?”

Bell took inventory. Bloody as he was, there were no arteries spurting or he’d have bled to death by now. He tried to move his arm. That made his shoulder hurt worse. But he could move it. No bones fractured. The whirling in his head and a general air of confusion he blamed on the shock of impact from a high-velocity bullet.

“Tip-top,” he said. “Get Envoy Stone under cover! Now!”

Matters knelt to speak privately. “He says he won’t leave you here.”

“Tell him I said to get under cover before he gets killed and I lose my only client. Explain to him that I don’t know what’s going on and I can’t help him at this moment.”

They were still shouting for a doctor.

One appeared, a sturdy, barrel-chested young man in a threadbare coat, who knelt beside him, opened his bag, and took out a pair of scissors. He cut away Bell’s blood-soaked coat and shirtsleeves, exposing a ragged tear through the flesh of his upper biceps. He reached for a bottle of carbolic acid and muttered something in Russian.

“What?” asked Bell.

“Is hurting. But important.”

“Beats infection,” Bell agreed. He braced for the fiery disinfectant. For a long moment, the sky turned dark. Afterwards the doctor bandaged the wound, then took a hypodermic needle from its nest in a box padded with red velvet.

“What’s in that?” asked Bell.

“Morphine. You are feeling nothing.”

“Save it for the next guy— What are those Cossacks shouting?”

“What?”

“Doctor, you speak English.”

“I study at Edinburgh.”

“I will pay you twenty rubles a day to be my translator. What are those Cossacks shouting?”

The doctor’s eyes widened. On January’s Bloody Sunday, the workers gunned down at the Winter Palace had been demanding their pay be raised to a daily salary of one ruble.

“What is your name?” asked Bell.

“Alexey Irineivoich Virovets.”

“Dr. Virovets, what are those Cossacks shouting?”

“They are recognizing the captured guns as being looted from armory.”

Bell levered himself onto his good elbow. He saw pistols heaped on a horse blanket but no sharpshooter’s weapons.

“Now what’s he saying?” A Cossack officer was reporting loudly to a civilian dressed in top hat and frock coat. Bell pegged him for the governor’s representative or an Okhrana operative.

“He blames the attack on revolutionaries,” said Virovets.

“Help me up. We’re going for a walk.”

“I am not recommending—”

“Your objection is noted.”

Twenty minutes later, with his arm in a sling, the sturdy Dr. Virovets at his side, and anxious oil company officials trailing them, Isaac Bell walked beside the Caspian surf breaking at the feet of the derricks until he found one that had been abandoned. As much as he wanted to climb to its parapet, he doubted he could with one working arm and a spinning head.

The doctor climbed for him and reported back that he could see the Cossacks still clustered where the bullets had rained down on the Peerless. Bell was not surprised. Forging ahead before the others trampled the beach, he had spotted a single set of footprints in the sand that had approached the ladder from one direction and left in another.

But it was puzzling. The derrick was less than five hundred yards from where the auto had been. How could the assassin have missed twice? The sudden stop could explain the first bullet going awry. But why hadn’t the second or third hit him in the head? Or the assassin’s favorite target, the neck?

23

Isaac Bell woke up stiff and sore the next morning to a slew of cipher cablegrams from New York. The first was from Grady Forrer, who continued to substitute as directing head of the case in his absence.

Bell took that to mean that Van Dorn detectives had discovered that Anthony McCloud’s fellow Five Points gangsters did not believe he had fallen drunk into the East River but had been murdered. They naturally blamed their rivals the Gopher Gang. But whoever had killed him, and whatever the motive, it was a heck of a coincidence it happened the day of the fire that killed his mother.

Bell cabled back

entertaining a slim hope that the city’s medical examiner could be persuaded to dig up Averell Comstock’s body to investigate for a cause of death other than old age.

A cable that read

told Bell that Wally Kisley and Mack Fulton were grasping at straws about Spike Hopewell’s “tricks up his sleeve” inference. Any independent trying to build a refinery and pipe line would have to travel regularly to New York City to romance his Wall Street bankers.

But the information that Forrer passed along from Dave McCoart resonated with hope of a breakthrough on the gunsmith front — clues that Joseph Van Dorn believed could lead them to the craftsman who smithed the assassin’s deadly weapon.

Archie Abbott, on the other hand, still had nothing to report about sharpshooter Billy Jones.

Bell had just written in encipher on the cablegram blank

when Doctor Virovets arrived to change his bandage. The wound was clean, with no sign of infection, but they agreed on another dose of carbolic acid to be on the safe side. For distraction, Bell asked about the variety of languages he heard spoken in the streets. “Tatar,” the doctor explained, “Georgian and Russian.”

“May I borrow your stethoscope?” Bell asked as the doctor was leaving.

John D. Rockefeller walked in carrying a tray of milk and pryaniki, the Russian spice cookies of which Bell had grown fond.

“I’m surprised to see you dressed, Mr. Bell. I presumed I would venture out alone today.”

“I could use the fresh air.”

A Renault limousine was waiting with its curtains drawn. At Bell’s insistence, the Cossacks had been replaced by plainclothes police detectives on foot. Some trotted alongside, huffing and puffing, as they pulled onto the avenue. Others rode behind them in an identical Renault, Bell having convinced the cops that similar limousines would confuse a sniper.

He and Rockefeller sat in near darkness behind the curtains. Bell watched the streets through a split in the cloth, wondering whether a sense of shared danger might incline the reticent Rockefeller to open up further to him. He tested the waters with a joke.

“I guess we can’t blame the assassin for slandering Standard Oil if he shoots at the president.”

“He wasn’t shooting at me,” said Rockefeller. “He was shooting at you.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“You are the one with his arm in a sling, not I.”

“Isn’t it possible he hit me when he missed you?”

“The first report you filed when you came to work for me stated that he has missed his shot on rare occasions. And never by much. He was shooting at you.”

“Sounds like you no longer need a bodyguard.”

“Don’t worry, your job is not at risk. Baku is teeming with angry people primed to kill for every imaginable reason. I’m glad to have you with us.”

“Are you free to tell me who we are calling on?”

“In confidence. Please bear in mind this is not to be repeated. We are meeting a representative of the Shah of Persia.”

“Has Mr. Matters gone ahead?”

“Mr. Matters has other business.”

“May I ask—?”

Rockefeller’s eyes cut through the dimly lit passenger cabin like locomotive headlamps. “You have many questions today, Mr. Bell.”

“Getting shot makes me curious about what to expect next. I was about to ask whether you are meeting this representative as Commercial Envoy Stone or as the president of Standard Oil.”

“I am the retired president,” Rockefeller shot back.

“I keep forgetting,” said Bell.

That drew a stony silence. But minutes later, Rockefeller dropped his voice to a half whisper and confided, “I cannot answer your question, because I have not yet decided. I keep hearing a proverb in Baku. Perhaps you’ve heard it, too. ‘In Persia no man believes another.’”

“They love insults,” said Bell. “Armenians are sharpers; Georgians are drunkards; Tatars simultaneously violent, unintelligent, and kindly; Germans dull, Cossacks vicious, Russians petty. All agree that Persians are liars. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise after centuries of tyranny and misgovernment.”

Rockefeller favored Bell’s observation with a thin smile and the further confidence that the detective was angling for. “I don’t know yet whether I am dealing with liars. All I know is that I will begin as Envoy Stone. Whether I become Mr. Rockefeller will depend upon how much noise they make and how much dust they throw in the air.”

The Renault stopped at a side entrance to the Astoria, one of the lavish new hotels near City Hall. They slipped in quietly, skirted the lobby, guided by a hotel functionary, to a service elevator that took them to a penthouse kitchen. A Persian secretary greeted Rockefeller in flawless English. “It is my pleasure to report, sir, that no one has marked your arrival. We are prepared for the private meeting you requested.”

“You requested the meeting,” Rockefeller corrected him, politely but firmly. “I requested privacy.”

“Then we are both happy, sir.” The Persian was slim and lithe as a cat, and as graceful, with large eyes in a narrow face.

Rockefeller turned to Bell. “Wait here.”

“I have to inspect the room where you are going,” said Bell.

“It is perfectly safe,” said the secretary.

“I still want to see it,” said Bell.

“It is all right,” said Rockefeller, “I trust our hosts.”

Bell said, “If I cannot see where you are going, I must insist that I wait directly outside. At the door in the next room.”

“Insist?” The secretary’s eyebrows arched above a mocking smile.

Bell ignored him. To Rockefeller he said, “By the terms of our contract, our agreement is voided if, in my opinion, you place me in a position that I cannot protect you. Under those conditions, the severance fee is calculated on the time it will take me to return to New York. The purpose of that clause is to make you think twice about straying too far from my protection.”

“I recall,” said Rockefeller. He addressed the secretary, “Take us to the room where we are to meet. Mr. Bell will wait outside the door.”

They put him in the foyer, which was exactly where Isaac Bell wanted to be. He waited until he was alone, closed the outer door, pulled a rubber stop from his pocket, and wedged it under the door. Then he untangled the stethoscope he had borrowed from Dr. Alexey Irineivoich Virovets, inserted the ear tubes, and pressed the chest piece against the thinnest of the wooden panels.

The secretary was acting as translator for a Persian of very high rank, guessing by the secretary’s obsequious manner of speaking to him. Bell heard a round of elaborate greetings. Then Rockefeller got down to business.

“Tell His Excellency that I have a gift for the shah waiting in my hotel stables.”

This was translated and the answer translated back. “The shah is a great lover of horses.”

“Tell him that this gift for the shah has many horses.”

The translation back was a puzzled “How many horses?”

Rockefeller, clearly enjoying himself, said, “Tell him many, many, bright red and shiny brass.”

“Motors?”

“The finest autos that Cleveland builds,” answered Rockefeller. “They’ll ride circles around Rolls-Royce. Now, tell him, let’s get down to brass tacks — that expression means ‘business,’ young fellow. Tell him the pipe line will cost the shah not one penny. I will pay for every foot of pipe from Rasht to the Persian Gulf. And I will build the tanker piers and a breakwater to protect the harbor.”

The answer in Persian was long, and it took the translator a long time to craft a halting, vague reply.

“By the terms… of certain… understandings… In the name of the most merciful and compassionate God, His Majesty the shah… prefers… to secure, please God, the agreement of certain… neighbors.”

Isaac Bell gleaned from Rockefeller’s blunt reply that his “correspondents” had laid a lot of groundwork to get to this meeting with a personage who had the shah’s ear. The old man did not sound one bit surprised. Nor did he hesitate.

“Tell him to tell the shah that I am prepared to pay off the neighbor’s loan.”

After translation, there was a long silence. Finally, the Persian spoke. The secretary translated, “How much of it?”

“Every ruble.”

On their way out, they had emerged from the service elevator and were halfway along the edge of the lobby when Isaac Bell suddenly shouldered Rockefeller toward a corridor that entered from the side.

“What is it?” asked Rockefeller, resisting with his full weight. Pain shot through Bell’s wound.

“Keep walking. Turn your face toward me.”

Bell steered him down the corridor and into the first shop, a florist filled with giant sprays of out-of-season tulips and elaborate concoctions of roses. Before the door had closed behind them, he heard familiar ringing laughter.

“Good lord. They make Pittsburgh look positively genteel.”

Bell pressed against the window for a sharply angled view of the lobby.

“What is it?” Rockefeller demanded.

“Two ladies who will not be fooled by Special Envoy Stone.”

John D. Rockefeller was enraged, but he had held off saying anything until they were back at their own hotel where Bill Matters could be called on the carpet.

“That newspaperwoman is here,” he railed. “Your daughter. What is she doing in Baku?”

Bill Matters was genuinely apologetic. He looked completely baffled. “I had no idea either of my daughters was coming to Baku.”

“She is the author of The History of the Under- and Heavy-handed Oil Monopoly.”

“Yes, I know, sir, but—”

Rockefeller whirled on Isaac Bell. “Mr. Bell, did you know that she was coming here?”

“The first I knew,” Bell lied, “was when we saw her at the Astoria.”

“Find out what she knows. No one must learn I’m here.”

“Let me do that,” said Matters. “Please. She’s my daughter. She’ll confide in me.”

Rockefeller looked at Bell, demanding his opinion.

Bell said, “E. M. Hock has no reason to confide in me. I will call on her, of course, as we’ve become friends. And her sister. But no, I’m not the one to question her. Better for Mr. Matters to do it.”

Half the vast, dimly lit, high-ceilinged vault that housed the Hotel de l’Europe’s stables remained a house barn and carriage house. Half had been converted into a modern auto and limousine garage with gasoline pumps and mechanics bays.

Bell went there with Alexey Irineivoich Virovets in the event he needed a translator. He found the shot-up Peerless, with its windshield not yet repaired. They had parked it out of the way, at the back. Hidden behind it were two large wooden shipping crates covered in canvas. Bell lifted the cloth and looked under it. In the crates were two identical red Peerless autos, just as Rockefeller had told the Persians.

Virovets translated the writing on various shipping stickers pasted to the crates. The autos had been originally sent to Moscow, then south on freight trains to Baku. It was strange, Bell thought, when he discussed the details of the trip with Bill Matters, the Pipe Line Committee director had never mentioned the autos. Had Matters thought them unrelated to a bodyguard’s concerns for Rockefeller’s safety? Or did he not know about them? It seemed, Bell thought, odd for Rockefeller to keep the autos secret from a colleague. But for whatever reason they were hidden, it was clear again that Rockefeller had planned this trip far ahead.

“Well, Father, here we are all three having tea as if we’re off to the theater in New York.”

“I’m very surprised to see you.”

“How could you be?” asked Nellie. “Edna writes about the oil business.”

Edna was quietly watching their father and letting Nellie do the talking.

Their father said, “I didn’t think that the Oil City Derrick had the means to send a reporter to Baku.”

Nellie said, “Cleveland would be more their limit. Edna is writing for… May I tell him, Edna?”

“It’s hardly a secret.”

“The New York Sun! What do you think of that, Father? Your daughter is writing for one of the finest newspapers in the country.”

“The Sun is no friend of Standard Oil.”

“Fortunately for Standard Oil,” said Edna, “Standard Oil does not depend on the kindness of friends.”

“And furthermore,” said Nellie, all excited with color high in her cheeks, “Baku could be the biggest thing to hit the oil business since Spindletop.”

“In an opposite way,” Edna interrupted drily. “Cutting production in half instead of spouting gushers.”

“I don’t know if the situation is that bad,” Matters said automatically. “The authorities seem back in control.”

“Really?” asked Edna. “There’s a rumor making the rounds that shots were fired at some American business men.”

Bill Matters shrugged. “An isolated incident.”

“Apparently,” said Edna, “the Cossacks reacted by slaughtering refinery workers. And now the rest are up in arms.”

Matters shrugged again. “It’s Russia. My impression is the authorities have strict control of the situation.”

“And what are you doing here, Father? Last we heard, you were in Cleveland. I just mailed you a postcard there. Had I known, I could have handed it to you and saved a stamp.”

“Mr. Rockefeller sent me to rustle up some refinery business — and don’t print that.”

“Not without verification,” Edna said.

Nellie laughed so loudly that people glanced from nearby tables. “Father, you should see your face. You know darned well she won’t print that. Certain things are sacred.”

“Father is sacred,” said Edna with a wink that warmed Bill Matters’ heart.

He sat back with a happy smile on his face. They had bought his story.

“It’s like old times,” he said.

The girls exchanged a glance. “Whatever do you mean?” asked Nellie, and Edna asked, “What are you smiling about, Father?”

“Like going to New York to see a play back when you were in pigtails.”

“‘Pigtails’?” echoed Nellie in mock horror. “Whenever you took us to the theater, we dressed like perfect little ladies.”

“Even after we ceased to be,” said Edna.

“All I’m saying is, it makes me very happy.”

“Who was that man with E. M. Hock and Nellie Matters?” John D. Rockefeller asked Isaac Bell. “I saw him at the Astoria, and lurking here in the lobby when they came for tea with their father.”

“He is their bodyguard.”

“He looks the part, I suppose. But are you sure?”

“I know him well,” said Bell. “Aloysius Clarke. He was a Van Dorn detective.”

“A Van Dorn? What is a Van Dorn doing here?”

“Not anymore. Mr. Van Dorn let him go.”

“For what?”

“Drinking.”

“Drinking? I’d have thought that was not uncommon among detectives.”

“Mr. Van Dorn gave him several chances.”

“Who does he work for now?”

“I’d imagine he’s gone freelance. I’ll speak with him, find out what’s up.”

Rockefeller asked, “What is that smile on your face, Mr. Bell? There’s something going on here I don’t understand.”

“I was glad to see him. Wish Clarke is a valuable man. I just may ask him to join forces.”

“Right there! Not while he serves E. M. Hock!”

“Of course not. In the future, after we’re all safely back home.”

24

My daughter is reporting for the New York Sun!” Bill Matters exulted to John D. Rockefeller. “It’s a big feather in her cap. A wonderful step up!”

“Does she know I am in Baku?”

“Absolutely not!”

“What makes you so sure? How do you know she didn’t follow me here?”

“They sent her to cover the riots.”

“There aren’t any riots.”

“That could change in a flash, Mr. Rockefeller. You can feel it in the streets. And my daughter told me that the officials she’s interviewed sound deeply worried… Now, sir, I know that you can’t abide the Sun. Neither can I, but—”

Rockefeller stopped him with a gesture. “Right there! The Sun is nonsense. Newspapers are all nonsense. The less they know is all that’s important to me.”

“She doesn’t know you’re here.”

Rockefeller stared. “All right. I will have to take your word for it.”

“It’s not only my word, Mr. Rockefeller. It is my judgment. And I guarantee you, sir, if she had told me that she knew you were here, I would inform you immediately.”

Rockefeller shook his head and whispered, “She would never tell you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“All right! I’m sending you to Moscow.”

“Moscow?” Matters was stunned. How could he work on the Persian pipe line from Moscow? “Why?”

“We need those refinery contracts. You have done all you can with the local officials. Now you must convince Moscow that the Standard’s thoroughgoing, able administration will do much better for Russia’s oil business than these old, good-for-nothing, rusted-out refineries. And if you can’t find the right officials in Moscow, you’ll go on to St. Petersburg.”

“But what about the pipe line?”

“First the refineries.”

Isaac Bell met Aloysius Clarke on the Baku waterfront. The oily, smoky air had been cleared by a sharp wind blowing across the bay from the Caspian. Lights were visible for miles along the great crescent harbor, and Bell saw stars in the sky for the first time since he had arrived in Baku.

Bell thought his old partner looked pretty good, all things considered. He was a big, powerful man who carried his extra weight well. His face was getting fleshy from drink, his mouth had a softness associated with indulgence, and his nose had taken on the rosy hue beloved by painters portraying lushes, but his eyes were still hard and sharp. It was difficult to tell what he was thinking, or if he was thinking at all, unless you caught an unguarded glimpse of his eyes, which was not likely. Besides, Bell told himself, a private detective mistaken for a drunkard bought the extra seconds required to get his foot in a door.

Wish wrapped his tongue around the English language with a self-taught reader’s love. “Best job I can remember. Sumptuous feasts and the finest wines shared nightly with a pair of lookers. And Joe Van Dorn pays the piper… How bad’s that arm?”

“Healing fast,” said Bell. He flicked open his coat to reveal a Colt Bisley single-action revolver where he usually holstered his automatic, and Wish nodded. Since Bell could not yet rely on the strength in his hand to work the slide to load a round into his automatic’s chamber, the special target pistol version of the Colt .45 was an accurate, hard-hitting substitute.

“How’d you get your paws on a Bisley?”

“You can buy anything in Baku.”

A sudden gust buffeted the sidewalk. Wish said, “I read somewhere that ‘Baku’ is Persian for ‘windbeaten.’”

They walked until they found a saloon that catered to sea captains who could afford decent food and genuine whiskey. They ate and drank and got comfortable reminiscing. Finally, Bell asked, “What do you think of the lookers?”

Wish had been his partner on tough cases. The two detectives trusted each other as only men could who had been stabbed in each other’s company and shot in each other’s company. Having solved every crime they tackled, they trusted each other’s instincts. Each was the other’s best devil’s advocate — roles they could bat back and forth like competition tennis players.

“Edna is a very serious young lady,” said Wish. “Angrier than you would think, at first, about the way Rockefeller’s ridden roughshod over her father. Nellie’s a show-off. She’d make a great actress. Or a politician. She’ll make a heck of a splash if she can pull off her New Woman’s Flyover stunt.”

He gave Bell an inquiring glance. “Which one did you fall for?”

“Haven’t made up my mind.”

Wish chuckled. “That sounds very much like both.”

“It is confusing,” Bell admitted. “There is something about Edna… But, then, there is something about Nellie…”

“What?”

“Edna’s deep as the ocean. Nellie dazzles like a kaleidoscope.”

“I don’t see either making a wife anytime soon.”

“I’m not rushing.”

A gust of wind stronger than the others shook the building. Sand blown across the bay rattled the windowpanes like hail.

“Let’s get to the real question,” said Wish. “Who’s the assassin shooting for?”

Bell said, “You know how they call Standard Oil the octopus?”

“Aptly,” said Wish.

“I’m thinking our mastermind is more like a shark. Hanging around this monster-size octopus, thinking if he can just sink his teeth into one or two arms, he’ll have himself the meal of a lifetime. He’s shifting the blame for his crimes to the Standard. If he can pull it off, he reckons to pick up some pieces. If it really goes his way, he figures he’ll control the second-biggest trust in oil.”

Wish nodded. “I’d call that basis for a mighty strong hunch.”

“He could be inside the company or an outsider, an oil man, or a railroad man, or in coal or steel. Even a corporation lawyer.”

“A valuable man,” said Wish, “a man on his way up… Say, where are you going? Have another.”

Bell had stood up and was reaching for money. “My ‘boss,’ Mr. Rockefeller, is waiting for me to confirm that Detective Aloysius Clarke is no longer a Van Dorn but a freelance bodyguard for Nellie Matters and E. M. Hock, who are traveling together for safety. And that Detective Clarke gave no hint to me that either knows that Mr. Rockefeller is in Baku.”

“Rockefeller? Never heard of him,” grinned Wish. He glanced at the bottle they were sharing. His gaze shifted to Bell’s arm in his sling. “Hold on,” he said, “I’ll walk you back.”

“Stay there. I’m O.K.”

“In the event you get in a gunfight of such duration that you have to reload, I would never forgive myself if I didn’t give your one hand a hand.”

Outside, the sharp north wind that had cleared the sky of smoke earlier was blowing a gale. The stars had disappeared again, obscured now by the sand that the harsh gusts were sucking into the air. The harbor lights were barely visible. A caustic blast rattled pebbles against walls.

“Look there!”

A graceful three-masted, gaff-rigged schooner struggled alongside an oil berth, sails furled, decks rippling with dark figures crowding to get off. The moment it landed, gangs of Tatars armed with rifles jumped onto the pier and ran toward the city.

Wish Clarke said, “If the city blows?”

“We evacuate.”

The sand-swirled sky over the oil fields across the bay was abruptly aglow.

Within the city itself, small-arms fire crackled.

They hurried up Vokzalnaya toward the railroad station. The gunfire got louder, pistol and rifle shots punctuated all of a sudden by the heavier churning of Army machine guns. Looking back, Bell saw the sky over the bay getting redder. A glow ahead marked mansions set afire in the Armenian district.

They broke into a run toward the hotel district.

“We’ll grab the ladies at your place,” said Bell, “then Mr. R. at mine.”

“Then what? Land or sea?”

“Whichever we can get to,” said Isaac Bell.

25

Isaac Bell telephoned John D. Rockefeller from the Astoria Hotel’s lobby.

“Pack one bag and wear your warmest coat. We’re running for it.”

“Is this logical?”

“Imperative,” said Bell.

“I have to send cables.”

“Quickly.”

Upstairs, he and Wish found Edna Matters with a carpetbag and her typewriter already at the door, and a large-scale map of the lands bordering the Caspian and Black Seas spread out on her bed.

“Where’s Nellie?”

“On the roof.”

“What’s she doing on the roof?” asked Wish.

“It’s the nearest thing to a balloon,” said Edna. “She’s checking the lay of the land.”

“Go get her, Wish.”

Bell turned to Edna’s map, which he had already been reviewing in his mind. The train to Tiflis and Batum and a Black Sea steamer would whisk them to Constantinople in four days. But it was too easy to stop a train where outlaws were the only law.

Edna traced the Caspian Sea route north to Astrakhan and up the Volga River. “Tsaritsyn steamers connect with the Moscow train.”

Bell said, “I don’t fancy getting trapped in the middle of a Russian revolution, if that’s what’s brewing.”

“No one I’ve interviewed knows what will happen next,” said Edna.

“Least of all, the Russians.”

“Poor Father. I’m worried sick about him banished to Moscow.”

Bell went to the window and looked down at the street. A trolley had stopped on its tracks. People lugging bags streamed off it and hurried toward the railroad station. He craned his head to try to see the station, but the angle was wrong. The sky looked red. Shadows leaped, thrown by muzzle flashes. Guns crackled and people ran in every direction. For whatever reason Rockefeller had sent Matters to Moscow, he was better off than they were at the moment.

Nellie burst into the room, color high, eyes bright.

Wish Clarke was right behind her, his expression grim. “Big gunfight on Millionnaya and a riot at the train station,” he reported. “Nellie spotted a way across Vokzalnaya if we want the harbor.”

“We want it,” said Bell. “Let’s go.”

The Hotel de l’Europe was guarded by nervous plainclothes police. Europeans paced the lobby shouting at frightened staff. The hotel pianist began playing a Schubert serenade as if, Isaac Bell thought fleetingly, he hoped to help the world right itself. Bell ran to get his carpetbag. Rockefeller’s suite, adjoining his room, was empty. Bell searched it and ran back down to the lobby. Wish was standing on the stairs, where he could watch the doors. Edna and Nellie stood behind him. Both women were eerily calm.

“Did you see Rockefeller?”

“No.”

“There!” said Edna.

The oil magnate was exiting the hotel manager’s office. He looked like he was headed to a garden party in his dandy’s costume, but Edna had seen through the wig disguise in a flash. Bell saw her beautiful face harden. Her lips were pressed tightly, dots of color flushed on her cheekbones, and her eyes settled on Rockefeller with an intensity stoked by hatred.

He glanced at Nellie. Every trace of the big smile usually ready on her lips had extinguished like a burning coal plunged in cold water. The color of her eyes, like Edna’s, shed every soft vestige of green and turned gray as ash.

Wish muttered, as they plunged across the crowded lobby to intercept Rockefeller, “Are you still sure you want to run together? The young ladies are primed to claw his eyes out.”

“Not my first choice,” said Bell. “But it’s our only choice.”

Rockefeller saw them hurrying toward him and said, “There you are. I was just paying our hotel bill.”

“Bill?” echoed Wish. “The town’s blowing up.”

“I pay my debts.”

The manager ran from his office and put the lie to that.

“Envoy Stone! If they reply to your cables, where shall I forward the answers?”

“New York.”

“Envoy Stone!” Isaac Bell said with the ice of cold steel in his voice. “We’re going — now. Stick close.”

The situation on Vokzalnaya deteriorated radically before they were halfway to the harbor. Here, too, the trolley had stopped. Suddenly Tatars were running up the middle of the street shooting pistols at well-dressed Armenians huddled in groups.

Russian Army soldiers wheeled up a Maxim gun on a heavy Sokolov mount. As the machine gunners propped it on its legs, the Tatars fled around the corner. The Armenians ran toward the station, mothers dragging children, young men and women helping their elders.

Pistol fire rained down on the Russian soldiers from above. The gunners tilted the water-jacketed barrel upward. The Maxim churned, and a stream of slugs blasted second-story windows.

From one of those windows flew a baseball-size sphere with a glittering tail of a burning fuse. Still in the air, it exploded with a flash and a sharp bang, and the street and sidewalks were suddenly littered with bodies. Wounded were reeling away when a second bomb exploded prematurely still inside the window. No one remained alive in the circle of the two explosions, not the Tatars, Armenians, or the Russian gun crew sprawled around the Maxim.

Isaac Bell and Aloysius Clarke charged straight at it. A Maxim gun and a thousand .303 rounds in trained hands would be their ticket aboard any ship running from the harbor. Wish heaved one hundred forty pounds of Maxim and Sokolov mount over his shoulder. Bell scooped up four canvas ammunition belts in his good arm and looped them around his neck.

“Go!”

They staggered toward the harbor, closely trailed by Nellie and Edna and Rockefeller. At the foot of Vokzalnaya, a mob of people was storming the passenger steamer pier fighting to get up the gangway of the one remaining ship. Ships that had already fled were far across the bay, lights fading in the sand haze as they steamed for the safety of the open sea.

“Mr. Bell!” cried Rockefeller. “Is that the Nobel lubricating oil refinery afire?”

The Standard Oil president’s eyes locked on the sight of a huge fire miles up the coast at Black Town. From the white-hot heart of it, flames leaped a thousand feet into the air.

“Looks like it,” said Bell, who was scanning the finger piers for a likely ship. They had toured that Russian refinery yesterday. Rockefeller was scheming to buy it, but the Moscow-based branch of the Nobel dynamite family had no intention of selling. Now the prize had gone up in smoke.

“Tramp freighter,” said Wish, swinging his shoulder to point the Maxim up the waterfront toward a steamer so old it still had masts. “They won’t be fighting to get on that one.”

Bell saw that the tramp was billowing smoke from its single stack. “He’s raising steam.”

They herded their charges toward it. But as they got close they saw Wish had been wrong. Crowds converging on its pier had forced their way onboard. Overloaded, the ship was heeling at a dangerous angle.

“Wait, there’s one coming in.”

A small ship showing no lights slipped out of the dark. It looked like salvation. Then they saw the Tatars. They were crowded on deck, as they had been on the schooner that landed earlier, a packed mass of angry men bristling with weapons.

“Where’s Mr. Rockefeller?”

The old man had disappeared.

“He was with us a second ago.”

Bell hurried along a row of shuttered storefronts, businesses that catered to the steamship passengers, past postcard shops, a fruitier, a milliner, souvenirs, Kodak cameras, and shoved through the door of a telegraph office. A frightened telegrapher had his coat and hat on and was eyeing the door as he pounded his key.

“I’ll be right there, Mr. Bell,” Rockefeller said without looking up. “I am sending an important cable.”

“We agreed our lives were more important. Let’s go.” Bell took his arm. Rockefeller tried to shrug him off. The tall detective squeezed hard and exploded angrily, “What the devil is more important than the lives of two women depending on us?”

“Nobel’s lubricating oil factory is destroyed. The low specific gravity of Baku crude makes Russian lubricating oil the best in the world, so the Nobels had a nice melon to cut all these years. The best we’ve got is refined at the Winfield plant in Humble, Texas. Not as good as the Russian lubricating oil, but a lot better than no lubricating oil.”

Clearly, thought Bell, John D. Rockefeller could keep his head when all others were losing theirs. Juggling two balls in the air — the Baku refineries and the Persian pipe line — suddenly he tossed up a third, seizing his chance to profit by the fires. But as Spike Hopewell had said about his old partner Bill Matters, somewhere along the line he had gotten his moral trolley wires crossed.

Isaac Bell shook the magnate like a terrier. “You are risking our lives to cable New York to buy the Winfield refinery?”

“Russia will never get that market back from me.”

“Done, sir,” said the telegrapher, jumping from the key.

Wish and the Matters sisters pushed in the door as the telegrapher ran out, and Rockefeller shut his mouth like a bear trap. Wish dropped the heavy Maxim on the telegraph counter and the women put down their bags. Though still calm, they looked frightened, a tribute, thought Bell, to their common sense.

Wish coolly shifted the gun muzzle toward the door and drew his revolver.

“Isaac, old son. We need a plan.”

“First,” said Bell, addressing Rockefeller, “get this straight. I am running this like a military operation. There is one leader. Me. Wish is second-in-command. Whatever we say, goes. Is that clear, Mr. Rockefeller? No more dashing off on your own. You’ll get us all killed.”

“O.K.,” said the richest man in America. “I accept your terms. But not before we resolve another question.” He leveled a long finger at Edna. “I will not allow this woman newspaperman to report my business like public news.”

Edna Matters answered in a voice as cold as it was determined.

“John D. Rockefeller controls half the oil in the world. He is trapped in the burning city of Baku, which produces the other half. That is extraordinary news. This ‘woman newspaperman’ reports the news.”

“I have news for both of you,” said Isaac Bell.

26

Our only hope of getting out of this city alive is to pull together. I am not asking you to team up. I am laying down rules. The first rule is, Mr. Rockefeller is not here.”

“Not here?” Edna looked at him, eyes wide and angry. “What do you mean, not here?”

“You can report on anything that happens, provided we survive. But not his presence.”

“I cannot agree to that.”

“You must. To make it out of here alive, we have to pull together.”

“How will you stop me?”

“I will ask for your word.”

“And if I don’t give you my word?”

“Looters are robbing shops,” Isaac Bell answered without the trace of a smile. “I will join them. I will steal a Persian carpet and roll you up in it. I will unroll you when I have delivered you safely back to Newspaper Row.”

“How Cleopatric!” said Nellie.

To Bell’s immense relief, her joke made Edna smile. She looked at the others who were watching closely. “O.K.! If Mr. Rockefeller promises not to slow us down stopping to cable orders to his head office, I promise not to write about him.”

“Done,” said Rockefeller.

“But when he breaks that promise — which he surely will — he must tell me the contents of the cable.” She extended her hand to Rockefeller. “I give you my word. Is it a deal?”

“You’re a good negotiator, young lady. It’s a deal.”

She turned to Isaac Bell. “You, sir, will find some way to make this up to me.”

“It’s a deal.”

A bullet ricocheted off a lamppost and smashed a window.

“The question remains,” said Wish Clarke, “how are we getting out of here if we can’t take a ship or a train?”

“We can drive by auto back to Batum,” Rockefeller ventured. “Then a Black Sea steamer to Constantinople.”

“What auto?” asked Bell, intending to get Rockefeller to reveal how the Peerlesses he had hidden in the hotel stables served his scheme.

“My Peerless Tonneau car.”

“Impossible. Batum is six hundred miles over hard country.”

“Tiflis is halfway to Batum, and trains are safer in Georgia.”

Bell shook his head emphatically. “We can barely all squeeze in the car, much less stow the gasoline, oil, food, water, tools, and spares for crossing open country.”

“And let us not forget Mr. Maxim,” said Wish, patting the weapon he had propped on the telegrapher’s desk, “without whom no one in their right mind would venture on the so-called roads to Tiflis.”

“We would need three autos as sturdy as a Peerless,” said Bell.

“We have three,” said Rockefeller.

“Three?”

“I had three Peerless Tonneau cars shipped ahead.”

“Why?”

Rockefeller hesitated before he answered, “Gifts.”

“For whom?” Bell pressed.

Rockefeller clamped his mouth shut.

Bell said, “Mr. Rockefeller, Miss Matters agreed not to reveal your business. You, in turn, agreed — fairly and squarely and aboveboard, sir — that we’re all in this together.”

Rockefeller’s jaw worked. His piercing eyes, rarely readable, turned opaque.

Gunfire roared, and it did the trick.

“Very well! The English presented the Shah of Persia with gifts of autos. I would outdo their gifts with solid, Cleveland-built American autos. Show him who needs Rolls-Royce? Who needs England? Who needs Russia?”

Isaac Bell exchanged a fast grin with Edna Matters and another with Nellie: yet another reminder that John D. Rockefeller heard the rumors first. The secretive magnate had planned far ahead for his journey toward “the sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean Sea” where “the days pass pleasantly and profitably.”

“Where are they?”

“In our hotel stables.”

“Let’s see if they’re not on fire yet.”

At a fast pace in tight single file, they headed back to the Baku Hotel.

Bell led, with the ammunition belts draped around his neck and his Bisley in his good hand. He put Rockefeller between Edna and Nellie so the fit young women could keep an eye on the much-older man. Wish marched rear guard, with his Maxim gun over his shoulder and a single-action Colt Army revolver in his fist.

The many who might have wished them harm gave them a wide berth, perhaps unaware that the Maxim, ordinarily manned by a crew of four, would be a cumbersome handful for two, or were afraid to test how cumbersome. The hotel was not on fire, the Tatars having concentrated their fury on the nearby neighborhood of the Armenians, whose burning mansions were lighting the night sky.

Bell led his people past the hotel and down the driveway to the stables. The watchmen, who were gripping old Russian Army rifles, recognized him and “Envoy Stone.” Bell tipped them lavishly and closed the barn doors. It was not much quieter. Despite thick stone walls and the surrounding buildings, they could still hear the shooting in the streets, while, inside, nervous horses were banging in their stalls.

Equally nervous chauffeurs watched the new arrivals warily. A few were tinkering with limousine motors. Most were slumped behind their steering wheels with hopeless expressions as if dreading orders to drive to their employers’ mansions and brave the mobs.

Bell looked for Josef, the English-speaking chauffeur who had driven the Peerless and who could be valuable as a relief driver, mechanic, and translator. When he didn’t see him, he asked the other chauffeurs if he was around.

“No, sir.”

“No, sir.”

They muttered among themselves. One man who spoke a little English whispered, “Revolutionary.”

“Josef?”

“Maybe revolutionary. Maybe police.”

“Police?”

The chauffeur shook his head. “Agent.”

“Provocateur?”

“Informer.”

That Josef was a police spy, Bell had guessed. But a revolutionary, too? On the verge of hiring this man as driver and translator, Bell changed his mind and decided to trust no one. Better to go it alone.

The bullet-smashed windshield of the Peerless attacked at the Black Town refinery had not been replaced. The missing glass offered a clear field of fire, and Wish Clarke got busy mounting the Maxim gun on the Peerless’s backseat.

The other two autos were as Bell had seen them last, still in wooden crates.

“Hammers and bars,” said Bell, wrenching boards loose with his hand.

Edna Matters returned with a blacksmith’s hammer. John D. Rockefeller found a crowbar. Nellie Matters pried boards loose skillfully with it, saying to Bell, “Don’t look surprised. Who do you think fixes balloons in the air?”

Rockefeller swung the hammer like a man who had grown up chopping wood on a farm.

Edna said, “I can’t fix anything. What shall I do?”

Bell sent her in search of gasoline and oil and cans to carry it in. He gave her money to buy any cans and tools the chauffeurs would sell her. She came back with cans and tools and several maps.

As the packing crates fell away, Bell was glad to see the autos were equipped with straight-side tires on detachable rims. Stony, wagon-rutted roads and camel tracks guaranteed many punctures. Up-to-date straight-side tires were easily removed from the wheel, reducing the holdup for patching them from an hour to a few minutes.

Edna Matters had gathered cans to hold one hundred fifty gallons of gasoline and oil. Bell sent her, accompanied by Rockefeller and Nellie, across the stable yard to the hotel kitchen to buy tinned food and bottled water. He checked that the cars’ crankcases were filled with oil and poured gasoline into their tanks.

Wish Clarke mounted the Maxim, fed in a fresh ammunition belt, filled its barrel-cooling sleeve with horse trough water. After he cleared his line of fire by removing the empty windshield frame, he gave Bell a hand cranking the Peerlesses’ motors. One of the new ones started easily. The other was balky, but eventually Bell coaxed it alive. The car Wish had commandeered for the Maxim gun coughed and smoked. They unscrewed the spark plugs, cleaned the electrodes, and filed them to sharper points.

Outside, bursts of gunfire grew loud. A woman screamed. The chauffeurs stared fearfully at the doors. A man wept. From the hotel came the sound of the pianist still playing.

By one o’clock in the morning, they had all three Peerlesses fueled and oiled and provisions stowed. Bell spread a map on the hood of the lead car to show everyone their route from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. They were heading west across Transcaucasia, between Russia’s Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north and Persia’s Lesser Caucasus range to the south.

Their sixty-mile slot of river valleys between the mountains comprised the restive regions of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, “where,” the tall detective said, “they are actively trying to kill each other. First stop, Shemaha. About seventy-five miles. Any luck, we’ll make it before nightfall tomorrow.

“Wish leads with the Maxim. I’ll cover the rear. Mr. Rockefeller, you drive the middle one.”

“I don’t know how to drive,” said Rockefeller.

“You don’t?”

“I’ve only recently arranged to buy an auto. It will be delivered with a man to drive it.”

“I know how to drive,” said Nellie.

“You do?” asked Edna. “When did you learn?”

“In California. A bunch of us realized that suffragists ought to know how to get themselves around. I must say, it’s a lot easier than your buckboard, not to mention my balloon.”

Bell was dubious, to say the least, but had no choice and could only hope she wasn’t exaggerating her auto prowess. They needed all three cars to carry supplies and had to have a replacement if they lost one to a breakdown that he and Wish could not repair.

“Nellie drives the middle car,” he said. “Edna sits in front, Mr. Rockefeller in back. Wish, do you have something to lend Mr. Rockefeller?”

Wish Clarke pulled a pocket pistol from inside his coat and gave it to Rockefeller. The old man checked that it was loaded.

Bell had already removed his derringer from his hat when no one was looking. He handed the two-shot pistol to Edna. “Ever shoot a derringer?”

“Father taught us.”

Bell was already wishing that they had Bill Matters with them, carrying the big Remington he had on the train. Thank the Lord for the Maxim. And thanks, too, for the assassin’s Savage in his carpetbag on the floor beside the steering wheel.

“What about me?” asked Nellie. “Don’t I get a gun?”

“You’ll have your hands full driving— Now listen, everyone. We will stay very close. No headlamps except for Wish. If you have any trouble with the auto, or something happens the others can’t see, honk on your horn.”

“Isaac?”

“What, Edna?”

“Wouldn’t it be better if Mr. Rockefeller sat up front with Nellie and I sat in Wish’s car with the Maxim gun?”

“Do you know how to fire a Maxim gun?”

“I saw Mr. Rockefeller’s refinery police use them to frighten labor strikers. Anyone considering ambushing us will think twice if they see the gun manned — they won’t know I’m a woman.”

She had a point, thought Bell, though he didn’t love it. Both women had caps pulled over their short hair and had changed into trousers when it was decided to run for it. But a bushwhacker just might shoot her from a distance to disable the Maxim. And yet she was right that a manned machine gun would look a lot more intimidating, which would forestall a lot of trouble before it started.

“Wish, what do you say? Do you want her on your gun?”

Wish didn’t love it either, Bell could see. Nonetheless, he said, “I’m afraid Edna’s right.”

They shifted positions. Edna gave Bell’s derringer to Nellie and climbed in the back of the lead Peerless. “Try not to blow my head off,” Wish called over his shoulder.

“Duck if you hear me shooting.”

John D. Rockefeller climbed into the front of the middle car.

Nellie Matters said, “This should be interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sitting side by side with the devil incarnate.”

“You don’t seem that bad to me,” said Rockefeller.

It was the kind of joke that Nellie Matters loved, and Bell expected her to let loose one of her big laughs, but all Rockefeller got was an angry glare. He looked at her sister, hunched over the Maxim behind him, and saw that Edna, too, had not even cracked a smile.

“Looking on the bright side,” said Wish Clarke, “we’re driving brand-new, rock-solid, Cleveland-built machines.”

“Turn left on the main road,” said Bell, attempting to fold the map with one hand. Failing that, he worked his arm out of the sling and stuffed it in his pocket. “Let’s go.”

He opened the stable doors.

The three red cars rumbled through the cobblestone yard and out the driveway onto streets nearly light as day. House fires nearby and oil fields and refineries burning far off lit the sky. They turned away from the fires, west, out of the city on roads clogged with refugees riding in carriages, work wagons, and rich men’s autos and plodding on foot.

Isaac Bell saw that his one-day timetable to Shemaha had been wildly optimistic. They’d be lucky to make that first town in two days. Then seven or eight more towns and four hundred eighty miles to go.

27

Of the six longest, hottest days and freezing cold nights ever endured,” wrote Edna Matters, typing up her shorthand notes as she did every night when the autos finally stopped rolling, “today was the longest yet, and I’m afraid it is not over.

She looked around her. When they left the hotel stable in Baku, the Peerless autos’ tires had been white as snow. They were black now, blackened by the oily streets before they were even off the Absheron Peninsula, caked with road dust and marred by the pries used to work them on and off their rims to patch punctures. Wish Clarke was fixing one now. Nellie was helping him. JDR was stretched across a backseat, sound asleep. The plutocrat was the envy of all; he could sleep through anything. Isaac was draped over the Maxim gun, as still and watchful as a cat, the bag in which he carried his rifle in easy reach, as always.

She typed.

Suddenly Edna heard what sounded like thunder and felt the ground shake. She stopped typing and looked up. Then she resumed typing, faster than ever, as if something was chasing her fingers.

Isaac Bell dodged rifle fire and a blizzard of stone splinters to vault into Wish Clarke’s Peerless so he could feed the belt into the Maxim gun. But Wish was pinned down under another car, from where he was shooting back with his pistol. Bell slid behind the Maxim, cocked it, and jerked the trigger, grinding out ten shots before the belt caught on the tripod.

He untangled it and fired ten more at a flicker of movement atop the ridge that stared down at them. Three riflemen leaped up and fired back. Bell triggered the Maxim, trying to hit them before the belt caught. Eight shots, ten shots, and this time the belt did not hang up on anything. The pounding machine gun had cleared the top of the ridge before he realized why. Edna Matters had jumped in beside him and was feeding the belt as smoothly as a veteran of the Zulu Wars.

“You could get killed doing this,” he said.

“Beats getting killed doing nothing.”

She stood up, thinking the fight was over. Feeding the belt into the gun had made her even more bulletproof than typing. She did not want to listen to the low voice in the back of her mind that nothing made anyone bulletproof except no bullets.

“Look out!”

Suddenly Isaac was roaring in her ear, “Down! Down! Get down!”

28

An immense boulder, triple the size of the others, flew at the auto.

Isaac shoved Edna down. It cleared their heads by inches and hit the guard wall that stood between the edge of the road and a sheer drop. It smashed through the wall, scattering stones, and tumbled into the ravine. Shouts of triumph from the top of the slope announced another rolling at them.

“IB was both right and wrong last night,” Edna Matters typed in the morning.

The air was bitter cold. A strong wind was blowing and the sky was full of dust clouds. Wish Clarke sat behind the Maxim gun. He was covering the ridge at the top of the slope. Isaac Bell was starting to climb it with field glasses around his neck and a revolver in his hand. He was hoping to spot Tiflis and a route on which they could make a run for the capital city.

Edna Matters stared at the page.

Who had written that? If a typewriter could blurt, the machine had blurted it out.

She glanced over her shoulder. Isaac had started up the slope. Suddenly he stopped. Something up the road had caught his attention. She raised her fingers to the keys and typed slowly.

She stopped typing and cocked her ear to listen. Someone was shouting down the slope in broken English.

“They’re waving a white flag,” Isaac Bell called down to Wish Clarke.

It looked like a dirty shirt tied by its sleeve to a rifle. The man waving stepped warily into view and Isaac Bell immediately recognized the black, wavy pompadour hair. It was Josef the Georgian chauffeur he had befriended in Baku. The one that the other chauffeurs claimed was an informer for the secret police.

“What’s he yelling?” asked Wish.

Isaac Bell strained his keen hearing to its utmost and heard, “You give gun. We let go.”

He ran down the slope and joined Wish in the lead auto. “They want our Maxim.”

“I would, too, in their position,” said Wish.

“They’re welcome to it,” said Bell.

“What?”

“We’ll trade it for a cease-fire and directions to Tiflis.”

“They’ll kill us,” said Rockefeller.

“That thought occurred to me,” said Bell. He looked at Wish.

Wish said, “Isaac, why don’t you talk to him? I’ll get the gun ready to travel.”

Bell cupped his hands and shouted very slowly and clearly, “Tell your friends to come out where we can see them. All of them.”

Josef shouted over his shoulder.

Twelve men started down the slope. They were dressed in workmen’s clothes and they looked very sure of themselves. Bell counted only three rifles. The rest carried pistols. They descended to the road and started toward the autos, fanning out and covering one another with military discipline.

“That’s close enough,” Bell called, stopping them at fifty feet.

“You act suspicious,” said Josef.

“I don’t like people who roll boulders at me.”

“Not us. Cossacks. We chase them.”

“So did we,” said Bell. From what he had seen, heavily armed Cossacks were not easily chased. If what the chauffeurs in the Hotel de L’Europe’s stables told him was true, then an Okhrana informer could arrange for the Cossacks to be called off or driven off by loyal troops if they were renegades. How had Josef found them here in the middle of nowhere? How had he known about the machine gun?

“Who are you, Josef? Who are these men?”

“Social Democrats.”

“Aren’t they illegal?”

Josef flashed his cheerful smile. “Reason we are wanting gun.”

“Are you their leader?”

“No, no, no. They ask me translating.”

“But you just said ‘we.’”

“Mistaking translating.”

“Translate this: Guide us to a road to Tiflis. When we see the town, the gun is yours.”

“Tiflis no safe. Much unrest.”

“Pogromy?”

“Politicals. General Prince Amilakhvari dead. Hateful Russian. Oppressing all Caucasia. Russians bringing for priests to pray on. People protest. Social Democrats protest. Police shooting Social Democrats.”

“You want our gun to fight the police.”

Josef’s smile disappeared. “Not your business.”

“If he’s a translator,” muttered John D. Rockefeller, “I’m my old maid aunt Olymphia.”

The Social Democrat fighters led the way on foot. Wish Clarke covered them with the Maxim gun. Bell drove his Peerless. Rockefeller, Edna, and Nellie trailed in the second car. The wind continued high, buffeting them and blowing dust, and the sun grew hot.

They climbed a steep road up a mountain. When they finally reached a broad plateau — an open brown steppe bare of vegetation and baked brown by the sun — their guides met up with a pair of horse-drawn phaetons. The men squeezed into the wagons and started across the flatter ground on a dusty track. After about four miles there were signs of recent roadwork, surveyors’ stakes, and the cutting of streets as if the area was to be developed.

Quite suddenly the plateau ended at the rim of a cliff.

Tiflis lay below them, one thousand feet straight down.

Bell saw it was an ancient city growing large in modern times. An old town of church steeples, cathedral domes, and twisted streets hugged the curves of a river. A ruined fortress of jagged rock, abandoned walls, and ramshackle outbuildings crouched on a lower cliff. In the river floated what looked like mills, each with its waterwheel.

A new city spread out from the center on a square grid of streets. Smoke drew Bell’s eye a mile or so from a big open square at the center of the old city. It was the railroad station where two weeks ago they had holed up for the night on their way to Baku.

Beyond the station sprawled vast railyards with many rows of sidings. On every siding stood a train of black tank cars. Bell raked it with his field glasses. He saw no wreckage, none of the destruction they had encountered on the eastern stretches of the line. Switch engines and locomotives were expending the smoke that hung over the yard.

“Trains are running.”

“How are we getting down that cliff?”

“Good question.”

Just as suddenly as they had come upon the cliff, they saw the answer. Nellie was delighted by a perspective she would see normally only from a balloon. Her pretty face aglow, she erupted in a happy cry.

“Funicular!”

Two counterbalanced carriages, large enough to hold fifty people each and linked by a strong cable, rolled up and down a steep railroad between the top of the mountain that Bell and his people had just crossed and the city below. There was a bulge in the line halfway down the mountain, a way station where the tracks doubled to allow the two carriages to pass each other.

“Any steeper,” said Wish Clarke, “and it would be an elevator.”

Josef jumped down from his phaeton and strode toward them, gaze locked greedily on the Maxim gun. Wish kept his finger on the trigger.

Isaac Bell said, “Josef, order your men to place their weapons around that rock.”

Josef started to protest.

Bell cut him off. “The Maxim is ours until they lay down their guns and we drive to the funicular.”

Wish Clarke raised a water can in his free hand and called out in a friendly voice, “We just filled the barrel-cooling sleeve. Here’s more water when you need it.” He took a swig from the can and wiped his mouth. “You must remember to refill the sleeve every couple hundred rounds or the heat will steam it off and you’ll melt the barrel.”

“We are knowing gun.”

“I had an inkling you might.”

Wish jumped to the road, gathered the heavy weapon in his arms, heaved it off the Peerless, and laid it gently on the ground. He left the one remaining ammunition belt, then he got back behind the steering wheel and drove after Nellie’s car.

Bell watched with the Savage 99 braced against his shoulder. Before they reached the funicular station, Josef’s gang had pounced on the Maxim, loaded it into a phaeton, and whipped up their horses.

“What a pleasure,” said Wish. “The simple act of buying tickets compared to fighting across Azerbaijan and eastern Georgia while straying into stretches of Armenia.”

Isaac Bell was looking forward to buying more tickets: The train to Batum. The steamer to Constantinople. The Orient Express to Paris. And an ocean liner home.

The railway carriage from below climbed into the station. A smattering of tourists got off with curious looks for the road-weary, dust-caked travelers waiting to descend. Bell guided everyone into one of the passenger compartments and closed the door. The seats were pitched at an angle to keep them horizontal.

The carriage started rolling down the embankment.

“Isaac!” Nellie gripped his arm and pointed across the bare and rocky slope. With her sharp eye for terrain, she had spotted Josef’s phaetons struggling down a steep road a half mile away.

“You’ll regret giving them that gun,” said Rockefeller.

“We didn’t give it,” said Wish, “we traded it.”

It took six minutes to descend the funicular railway’s nine hundred feet to the lower station.

An electric tram waited at the bottom, which they rode through the old city to the big, central Erevan Square that Bell had seen from above. He sensed the instant he alighted that despite the presence of up-to-date shops, government buildings, and an enormous Russian bank, there was a palpable tension in the air. People walked hurriedly with their heads down and avoiding eye contact. There were many police and soldiers on patrol.

“The faster we’re out of here, the better,” he told Wish.

Rockefeller spotted a telegraph office. “I must send a cable.”

“Wait until we get to the train station.”

They found another electric tram, which took them across the river and up through newer parts of the city to the Central Railroad Station.

Mobs of Georgians, Armenians, and Russians milled in the concourse.

Rockefeller spotted the telegraph office and strode through them like a heavy cruiser parting the waves.

Bell said, “Wish, keep an eye on him. We’ll be at the ticket windows.”

The lines were long. Travelers shouted and gesticulated. Ticket agents shouted back and shook their fists.

“Five one-way tickets to Batum.”

“No trains.”

“What do you mean, no trains? The yard is booming.”

“No passenger trains.”

Bell already had money in his hand. He slipped it across the counter. The agent wet his lips. It equaled a month’s pay. “Go to booking office. Ask for Dmitri Ermakov. Tell him I sent you. It will cost.”

The booking office was next to the telegraph. Wish was at the door. “He’s still at it.”

“We’ll be in here.”

Dmitri Ermakov made them wait twenty minutes, by which time scores of people had stormed in and out of the office. At last Bell was ushered in. He held out three times as much money as he had given the ticket agent. “I need five tickets to Batum.”

Ermakov took the money. “You must understand, sir, there are no passenger trains. Only oil trains.”

“There must be one or you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

“When fighting was feared to break out in Baku, Baku send many oil trains.”

The result, Chief Agent Ermakov explained, was that so many oil trains had rushed out of Baku when trouble started that they were carrying more oil than the Batum refineries could cook and had to be held in Tiflis. Then revolutionaries cut the pipe line and suddenly stocks were running low in the refineries and shipping piers.

“Now every train west is oil train. But one special train tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. Show papers.”

“What papers?”

“You need special pass. Government train visas.”

“Where do I get them?”

“You get issued by my friend Feltsman, high official. Russian. You must pay him.”

“Where is Feltsman?”

“Government building. Erevan Square.”

“Where in Erevan Square? Which building?”

“Next to Russian State Bank.”

Isaac Bell stood to his full height and stared down at the Russian train official. Then he opened his coat just enough to allow a glimpse of the Bisley nestled in his shoulder holster. “If I can’t find the government building — or if I can’t find Mr. Feltsman — I do know where to find you… Is there anything else you want to tell me before I go back to Erevan Square?”

“I am remembering,” said the chief agent, reaching for his telephone, “that it would be best if I personally telephoned Feltsman to tell him to expect you. That way he would not be out to lunch or somewhere when you arrive.”

“A wise precaution,” said Isaac Bell. He waited for the call to be completed and left somewhat surer now that the papers would be forthcoming, but considerably less certain that tomorrow’s special passenger train would materialize in the chaos.

“Hold it!” said Isaac Bell.

They had just stepped down from the tram to Erevan Square and were hurrying across the busy plaza toward the government building next to the Russian State Bank when Bell saw the gleaming black pompadour that crowned the Social Democrat Josef.

“Is that who I think it is skulking at the tram stop?” asked Wish.

“Josef.”

With a furtive glance over his shoulder, revealing beyond a doubt that it was he, Josef ran to jump on the tram leaving for the railroad station.

“What’s he up to?” said Wish.

Rockefeller started to make a beeline for the telegraph.

“Grab him, Wish.”

Wish snared the plutocrat.

“What? What?”

“Just wait,” said Wish. “Something’s up… What is it, Isaac?”

Bell had spotted three or four workmen in the crowds whom he might possibly have seen with Josef earlier on the road. Aware that he was sensing more than seeing, he looked up and scanned the tops of the two- and three-story buildings that bordered the open space. He could feel stress in the air, almost as if every person bustling about his business was about to stop breathing.

Suddenly two enormous carriages raced into the square. Thundering alongside them, Cossack outriders brandished lances and rifles. Heavy as freight wagons yet high-wheeled and fast, they were pulled by teams of ten horses. Their coachmen, enormous three-hundred-pound men in greatcoats, hauled back on their reins and the carriages and outriders came to a banging, clashing halt in front of the elaborately decorated stone edifice that housed the Russian State Bank.

Bell motioned urgently to Wish.

Moving as one, they backed their people away.

The Cossacks looked formidable and others in the crowds retreated, too. But the men Bell had noticed a moment earlier edged closer. Others, dressed in urban working garb, converged on the carriages. Bell looked up again. Now he saw men on the roofs.

“Isaac!” said Wish.

“I see them,” said Bell. “It’s a bank robbery.”

29

Expropriation,” said Wish Clarke, “is the word favored in the revolutionary lexicon.”

“Bank robbers!” said John D. Rockefeller. “We must inform the police… Officer!” He stepped into the street, waving at a Cossack.

“No,” said Isaac Bell, blocking him and forcing his arm down. “They’ve got twenty men around the square and on the roofs. The cops can’t stop it. They’ll only make it bloodier.”

“You should not have given them that gun.”

“It would appear that way,” Wish said serenely.

“Speaking of the devil…” said Bell.

The tall detective drew his revolver and herded Edna, Nellie, and Rockefeller toward the nearest street out of the square as Wish forged ahead, clearing a path for their retreat.

“Here he comes.”

A two-horse phaeton charged into the square.

A gunner and a belt feeder hunched over the Maxim gun. They had perched the Sokolov mount up on the high back bench where the driver ordinarily sat. The revolutionary handling the reins had shifted to the lower front bench.

The gunner triggered the weapon with an unearthly roar.

Shooting over the driver and horses’ heads, he tried to aim at the bank carriage. People ran from the noise, which was amplified and echoed by the buildings, and fled the galloping horses, whose iron shoes threw sparks from the cobblestones.

The phaeton leaned into a sharp turn, tall wheels skidding. Bell hoped the weight of the machine gun would capsize the inherently unstable vehicle. But just as it seemed it would spill the attackers to the ground, the wheels slid on the cobbles and it righted itself.

A bomb sailed from a roof, trailing the smoke of a fuse. It detonated in the air with a flash and a loud bang that scattered the Cossacks on rearing mounts. A second bomb flew from a roof. It landed on the cobblestones, bounced under the team pulling the lead money carriage, and exploded, blowing open the doors of the carriage.

Men, women, and animals screamed.

The revolutionaries dove into the maelstrom. Firing pistols, they ran to the carriage. One man leaped into it and threw bulging bank sacks to his partners. The Maxim gun kept firing.

The phaeton lurched and skidded and the gunner and belt feeder held on by clinging to the weapon. Bullets aimed at the bank carriage raked the rooftops instead. Then the driver got his animals under control and pulled up short. Still firing — the weapon had never ceased roaring since they entered the square — the gunner lowered his barrel. The torrent of flying lead stitched a path down the building’s stone walls.

The Maxim exploded with a thunderous Boom! and a ball of fire.

“Darn,” smiled Wish Clarke.

Sheets of flame enveloped the gunner and the belt feeder, the driver and the phaeton itself. The horses bolted. The burning wagon raced across the square and tipped over suddenly. The traces parted. The horses galloped away.

“What happened?” shouted Rockefeller.

“Their gun blew up,” said Wish Clarke. The detective shook his head in mock dismay. “The medicos keep telling me that demon rum plays havoc with one’s powers of memory. I hate to admit they’re right, but it appears that when I filled the Maxim’s cooling sleeve, I must have mixed up the cans of water and gasoline.”

“Railyards,” said Isaac Bell. “Now!”

“But there is no train until tomorrow,” Rockefeller protested.

Bell gripped his arm. “Social Democrat revolutionaries just tried to rob a Russian State Bank. Soldiers were injured. The revolutionaries escaped. The authorities will surround the city and close the roads to capture the criminals and recover the money.”

“But there is no train—”

“We’re taking a different train.”

“Never, never, never jump on the back of a moving railcar,” said Isaac Bell. “Always hop the front of the car.”

“Why?” asked Edna.

They laid flat on a ballast embankment beside the train tracks a mile west of the Tiflis yards, waiting for an oil train. Bell had chosen the spot for the sharp curve in the tracks that would shield them, though only briefly, from the sight of the engineer and fireman in the locomotive and the brakemen in the caboose. Behind them, a neighborhood of tenements and small factories baked in the sun. No one had ventured out to take an interest in them so far. But they could not count on that, as the police were fanning out from Erevan Square.

“If you slip and fall from the front of a car while trying to hop on,” Bell explained, “you’ll fall to the side of the train. If you fall from the back of a car, you will fall under the wheels of the next car, which will run you over.”

“A memorable thought,” said Nellie.

“Nellie and Edna, you two will go first. I’m afraid you’re on your own. Wish and I will take care of the old man. If either of you can’t get on, the other jumps off again. We stay together. Wish and I won’t make our move until we see you’re both safely on. Nellie, you’ve still got Wish’s gun?”

“Yes.”

“Edna, you’ve got my derringer.”

Edna patted a pocket.

“It appears to be a well-run line, so the brakemen very likely will walk beside the train whenever they stop to inspect their trucks and air hoses. The locomotives I’ve seen are up-to-date Baldwin ten-wheelers with oil-burning fireboxes. They’ll stretch their water stops to about every hundred miles and fuel and relief crews to two hundred. But they’ll have to stop in the mountains to couple on extra pusher engines. Whenever they stop, stay out of sight.”

Wish came running from the head of the bend. “Train coming.”

The locomotive hauling the oil train to Batum rounded the curve under a massive crown of thick black smoke. She was an oil burner, all right — no self-respecting fireman would allow such smoke from a coal furnace — a modern, ten-drive-wheeled, Pennsylvania-built “decapod,” moving faster than Bell would have liked for the first attempt by novice hobos. But they weren’t likely to get a second chance to hop a freight before the authorities started searching even oil trains for the bank robbers and the money.

The powerful Baldwin approached where they hid on the ballast slope, accelerating as it threw off the eight-hundred-ton inertia of thirty heavily laden tank cars. The locomotive passed them, trailed by its fuel-and-water tender. Then came the first car, which was comprised of a long, cylindrical, six-thousand-gallon tank laid horizontally on a flatbed. Bell pointed out the niches where the tube-shaped tank was braced on the flatbed and shouted over the thunder, “Get inside that brace where they can’t see you.”

He looked Edna in the eyes and saw a healthy mix of fear and determination. Nellie, by contrast, showed no fear. When he gauged Rockefeller’s ability to take the chance, the magnate said sternly, “I am counting on you, Mr. Bell, that one day I may relate this incident to disbelieving great-grandchildren.”

The locomotive disappeared around the bend in the tracks.

“Go!” Bell said to Edna.

30

Edna Matters scrambled up the embankment. Nellie followed, overtaking her and reaching back to help her up. They clasped hands, attained the flat roadbed, and ran along the crossties beside the moving train.

Isaac Bell took John D. Rockefeller’s arm. “Wish and I have you, sir. Just do what we tell you to.”

The Van Dorn detectives heaved the two-hundred-pound Rockefeller between them like a scarecrow stuffed with straw and sprang up the embankment.

Nellie Matters vaulted nimbly onto the flatbed of the rolling car. She grabbed a strut that braced the tank and, as Edna jumped, reached to join hands with her. Edna stumbled. For a second she dangled from Nellie’s hand, her feet frantically trying to push off as she ran along the stone ballast and wooden ties. She planted one foot and tried to jump again. Bell saw his two-shot derringer fall from her pocket and bounce on a crosstie and under a wheel.

Nellie screamed with effort and lifted her aboard. The women rolled under the tank, out of sight, which was Bell and Wish’s signal to hoist Rockefeller onto the next car.

Wish, with two working arms, went first.

The train had come down from the final mountain pass to a switching yard, where they stopped to uncouple the pusher engine, and Bell began to believe their luck would hold all the way to Batum when a lone brakeman walked slowly beside the car, shining a bull’s-eye lantern at the trucks. They had, all five, shifted by then to one car, the second back from the tender. Suddenly the brakeman straightened up with a cry and began stomping at the ground. He stopped, breathing hard, and picked up a dead snake in his glove. He tossed it away and his lantern beam hit John D. Rockefeller full in the face.

Isaac Bell and Wish Clarke reached toward him with both hands. Each held a pistol in one and gold in the other.

The brakeman blinked. Then he jerked off his heavy glove, snatched the coins, and ran into the dark.

Wish held tight to his gun. “Think he’ll come back?”

“Not if he’s an honest man,” Bell answered, still holding his. They waited, ears straining for the sound of the brakeman coming back with reinforcements and praying for the train to start. The locomotive whistled. Then it huffed. It was moving. The couplers clanked as the cars took up the slack. Suddenly they heard footsteps pounding, overtaking them, as the train began to roll.

The brakeman ran alongside, spotted them again. His face lit with a triumphant grin. He was carrying something and he thrust it at them. It quivered like something alive. For a second Bell thought it was an animal or a baby. Wish Clarke recognized it for what it was and held on tight. “Gracias, amigo!” he called to the Georgian.

He held it up for the rest to see. “Wineskin!”

Down from the mountains at last, the oil train raced west, stopping only once for fuel and water. The day dawned bright and sunny. The air grew humid as the train descended toward the river delta from which had been carved the harbor of Batum. Wish, who had put a sizable dent in the wineskin, thrust it at Rockefeller. “Have a snort?”

“I don’t drink.”

“You’ll love it,” said Wish. “They sealed the skin with naphtha. The wine tastes like oil.”

Bell leaned out from the tank car to look ahead. He spotted the Black Sea.

The Constantinople steamer blew its whistle as Bell herded his people out of their phaetons.

“There’s Father,” cried Nellie.

Bill Matters was on the dock, heading for the gangway. When he saw his daughters, his grim features melted in a smile of relief and he scooped Edna and Nellie into his big arms like they were little girls.

“How did you make out in Moscow?” Rockefeller greeted him.

Matters’ expression hardened. “I was doing fine until they suddenly clammed up. Next day, they refused to see me at all. I pressed an official I had given a lot of money to. He claimed they were angry. They told him they had been betrayed — by you, Mr. Rockefeller.”

“How?”

“They wouldn’t tell me. Any idea why?”

“None at all,” said Rockefeller.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. Don’t you understand? They threw dust in your eyes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You gave up. You left Moscow too soon.”

“Do you want me to go back?”

“Wait until the disturbances settle down. For now, we’re going home.”

31

At Budapest, Isaac Bell surprised the party and he hoped the assassin, if he were nearby, by unexpectedly transferring everyone onto the Orient Express’s new section to Berlin.

“Berlin? You’re taking us the long way to Paris,” complained Rockefeller, who had insisted again on carrying his own bags to save European luggage fees when they boarded the Orient Express in Constantinople.

Bell took the heaviest from him. “We are not going to Paris. We’re joining SS Kaiser Wilhelm II at Bremen. There’s a boat train in Berlin.”

“Much better,” said Rockefeller, happily mollified. The North German Lloyd passenger liner held the Blue Riband for the fastest time across the Atlantic Ocean.

The boat train to Bremen steamed out of the German capital on Monday night, gathered speed through the suburbs, and highballed into the dark at sixty miles an hour.

Isaac Bell, Wish Clarke, Edna and Nellie Matters, and John D. Rockefeller gathered in the dining room that occupied the front half of the observation car. They were studying menus and discussing, longingly, the prospect of soon eating American food again when Bill Matters burst into the car. He stormed past the club chairs and stopped short at their tables. His eyes were wild, his jaw clenched.

Bell saw he had crumpled a yellow telegram in his fist.

“Father!” said Nellie. “We wondered where you had gotten to.”

Edna asked, “Are you quite well?”

Matters ignored them both. “Mr. Rockefeller! We must speak.” He lowered his voice. “In private.”

“It is rather late to discuss business. Why don’t you sit down and have some supper with the rest of us?”

Matters said, “It is not too late to discuss the Peerless autos you brought for the shah.”

Rockefeller rose silently from the table and led Matters out of the dining car.

Isaac Bell watched them disappear through the vestibule door. His suspicion that Matters had not known about the bribes was proved correct. Then, according to Rockefeller, Matters had been elsewhere on “other business” during the all-important meeting with the Persians that Bell had eavesdropped on at the Hotel Astoria. Matters had not heard Rockefeller promise to pay off the shah’s loan from the czar. Shortly after Rockefeller had sent him to Moscow.

Clearly, John D. Rockefeller had gone to Baku with one purpose only: to strike a bargain to pay off the debt in exchange for a license to build Matters’ pipe line across Persia. The cables he’d been so desperate to send while escaping Russia must have completed the deal and cut Matters out of it.

Bell sprang to his feet and strode to the vestibule door. He pushed through it onto the gangway, where the observation car and the sleeping car behind it were coupled. The eight-foot-wide, twelve-foot-long space was enclosed by flexible leather-and-canvas gangway connectors. While they muffled the noise of the speeding train, it was still louder than inside the cars.

Matters was shouting, gesticulating, and waving the telegram.

“You knew! You knew all along.”

Rockefeller stood still as a stork, head inclined as if straining to listen over the rumble of the wheels and the rushing wind of the boat train’s passage.

“Knew what, Mr. Matters?”

“You knew when you sent me to Moscow. That’s why you sent me. To get me out of the way.”

“Knew what?” Rockefeller repeated more sharply now. Neither man seemed to take notice of Isaac Bell who stood by, boots balanced lightly on the swaying floor plate, his eye on Matters, who looked angry enough to strike the older man.

“You knew that you were closing a private deal for the pipe line,” Matters yelled.

“How I choose to negotiate for Standard Oil is my affair, Mr. Matters,” Rockefeller answered in a firm voice that cut through the racket. “It was my judgment that one man speaking for the company rather than two would do a better job of cutting through heathen mendacity.”

“We had an agreement!” Matters yelled. “The Persia pipe line was not for Standard Oil — it was for us. We would then sell it to Standard Oil.”

“I signed no such agreement.”

“You led me to believe—”

“You believed what you wanted to.”

Face contorting, Matters sucked great gulps of air. Suddenly he shouted, “You busted up my pipes.”

Bell saw that Rockefeller knew instantly what Matters meant. “Is that what is troubling you? You’re blaming me, unfairly, for some event that occurred back in 1899?”

“You stole the Hook.”

Rockefeller turned to Isaac Bell as if the three were golfers strolling to the next tee and explained offhandedly, “Constable Hook. The refinery we just finished building next to Bayonne. It’s our largest — the most efficient in the world.”

“You stole it from me and Spike.”

“I paid you.”

“Pennies!”

“I paid you in Standard Oil stock. I made you rich. You ride around in a fancy private car. Even I don’t go to that expense.” Again he turned to Bell as if in a threesome. “I’m quite content to charter cars when the need arises.”

“You busted up my business,” Matters shouted.

“Right there!” Rockefeller rounded on him. “I thought you were not one of those who are controlled by the insane idea to destroy the Standard Oil Company. Clearly, I was wrong. You are a miserable failure who will go to your grave an unhappy man.”

Matters lunged at Rockefeller with the speed and power of a Komodo dragon.

Bell seized his wrists. But by then Matters’ big hands were clamped to John D. Rockefeller’s throat. He yanked Rockefeller’s two hundred pounds off the platform and rammed him toward the connector curtain. Unable to break his grip, Bell let go and sank his fists into Matters’ kidneys with a hard left and a harder right.

The crazed Matters gasped. His hands opened convulsively. He let go of the struggling Rockefeller. But Bell’s powerhouse blows didn’t stop him, only slowed him, and he shoved his back into the tall detective, smashing him with all his weight against the opposite gangway connection. Bell bounced off the springy curtain and hurled himself on Matters as Matters lunged at Rockefeller again.

Too late, he saw that Matters’ explosion of rage was not as impromptu as it had seemed. Before he stormed into the diner, he had removed the vertical pins that locked the adjoining cars’ gangway connectors. Then he had lured the old man onto the gangway to throw him off the train.

The connectors parted like a theater curtain. The black night thundered past at sixty miles per hour. John D. Rockefeller tumbled backward through the opening.

Isaac Bell rammed past Bill Matters and jumped.

32

Isaac Bell had a single instant to wonder whether his injured arm had the strength to save their lives. By then he was committed to the lightning move, with his good hand gripping Rockefeller’s belt and the other clamped on the steel-rimmed edge of the observation car’s gangway connector. He was hanging off the rear end of the car. Pain lanced from his shoulder to his fingertips. If he lost his grip, they would fall under the wheels of the sleeper behind it.

The slipstream beating the side of the train slammed them flat against the connectors. Bell tried to take advantage of the rushing air with a Herculean twist of his entire body. Combining his every muscle with the power of the slipstream, he hauled Rockefeller close and swung him back through the narrow opening into the train.

Bill Matters was waiting on the gangway.

Isaac Bell saw an instance of indecision flicker on the angry man’s face. Who would he attack first? His enemy, the old man sprawled at his feet? Or his enemy’s bodyguard, who was barely hanging on to the side of the car? He chose Bell, braced himself with both hands, and cocked a foot to kick the fingers Bell had clamped around the connector. Bell was already in motion.

A gunshot — a clean, sharp Crack! — cut through the thunder of wheels and wind. Matters fell back with an expression of astonishment that Bell had somehow managed to draw his revolver and fire. Hanging by one arm as he triggered the Bisley, Bell missed his shot. He fired again; another went wild. Matters whirled away and fled toward the back of the train.

Bill Matters raced down the first sleeping car’s corridor, burst out the end door, through the gangway and into the second. Near the end of the car was his tiny stateroom. He locked the door, put on his coat, grabbed a bag, already packed with several thousand in gold, British ten-pound notes, and German marks, and his Remington pistol. Then he opened the window on the locomotive’s smoke and thunder and reached high in the corner of the cabin where the emergency communication cord swayed with the train’s motion and yanked its red handle.

The communication cord activated the boat train’s air brakes. From the locomotive on back, curved steel shoes slammed down hard on every wheel of every car. The effect was swift and violent.

Matters kept his feet by ramming his shoulder against his stateroom’s front partition to brace for the impact. From the compartments ahead and behind his came the thud of passengers crashing into bulkheads, the clatter of flying luggage, cries of pain, and frightened screams. Steel shrieked on steel under the hurtling car as the brake shoes bit and locked wheels slid on the rails.

The train bucked like a giant animal. The cars banged couplers into couplers. The speed dropped from sixty to fifty in an instant, and dropped as quickly to forty. Matters squeezed through the window, dragged his bag after him, and tried to gauge a safe landing by the beam of the locomotive headlamp. He could see in the distance four cars ahead, the beam flickering through a forest that hugged the tracks. To jump would be to run headlong into a tree.

Suddenly the headlamp disappeared.

For a second, Matters was baffled. Then the train whistle gave a strangely hollow, muffled shriek, and he realized that the locomotive had entered a tunnel. The car he was clinging to would be next into the narrow opening after smashing him against the stonework that rimmed it. He heard a crash. His stateroom door flew open. Isaac Bell blasted through it, revolver in hand, eyes locked on the window.

In the most decisive move of his entire life, Bill Matters dropped off the train.

Isaac Bell thrust head and shoulders and gun out the stateroom window and looked behind the train. The night was black, the spill of window light negligible, and he could not see where Matters had landed. The train whistle sounded oddly muffled. Bell started to turn his head toward it when he sensed something immense hurtling at him. He shoved back inside Matters’ stateroom, and the next second saw smoke-blackened masonry inches from the window.

The boat train screeched to a stop inside a tunnel.

Bell bolted from the stateroom and out the back of the sleeper car, past shaken passengers in pajamas and dressing gowns, through the last car, and jumped off the back of the train onto the crossties. A brakeman was running frantically with a red lantern to alert the next train that the boat train was blocking the tracks.

Bell followed him out the tunnel and along the railbed, searching for Matters and fully expecting to find his body smashed against a tree. Instead, one hundred yards from the tunnel portal he found a break in the forest. It looked like a meadow, but at that moment the clouds parted and he saw moonlight gleam on water.

“Good-bye,” said Edna. “We’ll see you in New York.”

“Good-bye?” asked Bell. “We’re on the same ship.”

“We’re sailing Second Class. You’re in First.”

“No. Stay with me. I’ll pay the difference.”

“We will not sit in the same dining room as that man,” said Nellie, turning away without another word to walk briskly to the Second Class gangway.

Edna said, “We can barely stand to be on the same ship. But it’s the fastest way home. I’ve promised a full report to the Sun, and Nellie has got to take command of the New Woman’s Flyover before a certain suffragette tries to steal it. Apparently, Amanda Faire’s husband bought her a balloon.” She lowered her voice, though her sister was far beyond earshot. “Nellie is so distraught about Father. I’ve got to get her home and busy.”

Bell said, “I hope you understand that I’m terribly sorry about your father.”

“You cannot be as sorry as we are,” said Edna. “We’ve lived in fear of this day and now it has happened.”

“You expected him to attack Mr. Rockefeller?”

“We expected him to hurt himself. Since the day Rockefeller broke up his business and stole the pieces. We expected him to kill himself. What you call an attack, Isaac, had exactly the same effect.”

“It is highly likely,” said Bell, “that your father is still alive.”

The German police had dragged the pond beside the tracks and searched the forest with hunting dogs and found no body. They had visited every farm within twenty miles and canvassed doctors and hospitals. Bill Matters had thoroughly disappeared.

“Good-bye.” Edna started after her sister, then turned back and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Isaac.”

“What for?”

“Engineering my job on the Sun.”

“They weren’t supposed to tell you.”

“No one had to tell me. I figured it out on my own. Very flattering.”

“The Sun was lucky to send you to Baku.”

“I meant flattering that you wanted me to come along.”

“Last stop,” said Isaac Bell.

Tugboats jetting clouds of coal smoke were working the Kaiser Wilhelm against North German Lloyd’s Hoboken pier.

“Not precisely,” said John D. Rockefeller. “We still have the train to Cleveland.”

“My last stop,” said Bell. He took a letter from his traveling suit and handed it to Rockefeller. “Here is my resignation.”

“Resignation? I am dismayed. Why are you quitting?”

“Standards.”

“Standards? What standards?”

“You had no need to rob Bill Matters. I will not condone his crimes, but you mistreated him badly and for no purpose other than beating him.”

Rockefeller’s lips tightened in a flat line. He looked away, gazing at the harbor, then he looked Bell in the eye. “When I was a boy, my father sharped us to make us strong. He taught us how to trade by taking us again and again. Every time I was soft, he took advantage and beat me in every deal until I learned how to win. It made me sharp.”

“It made you a bully.”

“It’s a habit,” said Rockefeller. “A habit that served me well.”

Bell appeared to change the subject. “I understand your father is still alive.”

A look of genuine affection warmed Rockefeller’s cold face. “Ninety and going strong.”

“Men live long in your family.”

“The lord has blessed us with many years.”

“Many years to break bad habits.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve been allotted more years than most to break habits you should break,” said Isaac Bell.

Rockefeller bridled. “I am using my years for philanthropy — for all the good it’s done me. They still think I’m a monster.”

“They think you’re a bully. And they’re right. But if you ask me, you’ve made a good start with philanthropy. I’d keep at it.”

“Would you, now? You are not familiar with business affairs, Mr. Bell. You’re like certain writers, theorists, socialists, and anarchists — so ready to determine how best they can appropriate the possessions of others.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Rockefeller.”

“You can’t leave me defenseless. You took a job and signed a contract to protect me. What if Matters surfaces and tries to kill me?”

“I’ve assigned Wish Clarke to escort you home to Cleveland. There, your bodyguards will be provided by Van Dorn Protective Services.”

“Van Dorn? Are you going back to Van Dorn?”

“I never left.”

“What? You never left Van Dorn’s employ?”

“Never.”

“You’re still working up the Corporations Commission case! You tricked me.”

The trace of a smile moderated Bell’s stern features. “You are not familiar with detective affairs, Mr. Rockefeller. It’s my job to trick suspects. In fact… you could call it a habit.”

Rockefeller’s eyes flickered as if he were trying to recall how much information he had given away. But when he spoke, all he said was, “How long will these guards protect me?”

“Until you feel safe.”

“How will I ever feel safe from that murderer?”

“You will feel safe when he is hanged.”

“What makes you so sure he will be?”

“Another Van Dorn habit. We never give up.”

True to form, John D. Rockefeller did the unexpected. He laughed. “That’s a good one.” He thrust out his hand. “I prefer friendships founded on business. I’m glad we’ve done business, Mr. Bell.”

The grim atmosphere in the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s New York field office reminded Isaac Bell of the night riots broke out in Baku. “Himself” was back in town, Joseph Van Dorn, hulking like a bad-tempered sphinx in the back of the bull pen where Bell, who had just raced from the ferry pier, had summoned his assassin squad to bring him up to date.

Archie Abbott looked miserable and was sporting a black eye. The anxious glances he kept shooting at Van Dorn told Bell that Archie had learned nothing about the Army deserter who won the President’s Medal.

Grady Forrer, directing head of the gunsmith hunt, was watching Van Dorn as if the Boss were a rotund cobra.

Wally and Mack typically were not intimidated; the old guys had known Van Dorn too long and the self-satisfied Weber & Fields grins on their gnarly faces gave Bell hope. They looked more confident than their grasping-at-straws cable report about Spike Hopewell’s so-called tricks up his sleeve. Maybe good news.

Bell glanced at Van Dorn and stepped out the door. The Boss lumbered after him.

“What’s up?”

“You’re spooking my boys.”

“Your boys aren’t delivering.”

“Why don’t you let me buy you a drink at the Normandie after I straighten them out?”

Bell returned to the bull pen alone.

“When I left for Baku, you were pursuing various leads on the Army sharpshooter, the gunsmith who improved the assassin’s Savage 99, the exhumation of Averell Comstock’s body, and the tricks that Spike Hopewell claimed to have up his sleeve. That no news awaited me in Constantinople or Berlin or Bremerhaven on my way home suggests unfruitful pursuits. Did the situation improve while I steamed across the Atlantic?”

Wally and Mack grinned. The rest were silent.

“Archie. How’d you make out with the general’s daughter?”

“No dice.”

“Who gave you the shiner?”

“She took a swing at me.”

“Why?”

Wally Kisley laughed. “The young lady took insult, misled that Princeton, here, was romancing her. Just when the spooning should commence, Princeton says he has business with her father.”

Archie hung his head. “I misinterpreted her motive for inviting me to visit when he was out of the house.”

“Boom!” said Wally. “Smack in the eye.”

“When I went back to try again, the butler said she was ‘not at home.’ So what I’m thinking, Isaac, is maybe it’s time for me to get back to work in Chicago. Rosania is—”

Bell said, “Write down her name and address for me.”

He turned to the head of Van Dorn Research. “Grady. How did you do with Dave McCoart?”

“We’ve eliminated every gunsmith in the country except for two in Hartford and one in Bridgeport. But none of those fellows have panned out yet.”

“None of them ever worked on a 99?”

“None that admit it. I’m fairly convinced that the Hartford gunsmiths are in the clear. Fairly convinced. But the detective I sent to Bridgeport — a pretty good contract man we’ve used in Connecticut — was suspicious. But he could not shake the guy’s story, and he was smart enough to back off before he tipped his hand. It will be worth sending a regular man.”

“I’ll go,” said Bell. “How did we do with the New York coroner?”

“He won’t exhume Mr. Comstock without a court order. The court refused on legalistic grounds that essentially came down to the judge’s belief that an eighty-three-year-old should have been dead anyway.”

“But what about Mrs. McCloud in the fire and her son in the river?”

“The judge expressed no faith in the likeliness of connections joining the Five Points Gang, the West Side Gophers, and the Standard Oil Trust.”

“Sounds like we need another judge.”

“The next judge concurred with the former’s incredulity.”

Bell turned to Weber & Fields. “Wally and Mack, you look pleased with yourselves.”

“Always, Isaac, always,” said Wally.

“It’s hard not to be,” said Mack, and the two broke into Weber & Fields mode. “A very pretty girl who was promised by refiner Reed Riggs that he…”

“… and therefore she…”

“… by extension…”

Bell said, “Gents, I’m losing patience with your antics. What did you find?”

“… would be rich soon.”

“Riggs was an independent oil man,” said Bell. “They all think they’ll be rich soon.”

“Not like this. He told the girl that a certain party highly placed at Standard Oil was going to, quote, ‘Pungle up big.’ Not only would he get a bunch of money, his refinery would be bought with Standard Oil stock.”

“What certain party?” Bell asked.

“She wouldn’t say.”

“Wouldn’t or couldn’t?”

“Wouldn’t.”

“Why would this party shell out big money?”

“Blackmail. The girl said Riggs had something big on him.”

“Why would he tell a girl? Who was this girl? Where did they meet?”

“Miss Dee’s on North Wichita Street, Wichita, Kansas,” said Mack.

“Arguably the finest ‘female boardinghouse’ in the state,” said Wally.

“Which is saying a lot for a state that’s home to Topeka and Kansas City,” said Mack.

“Not the sort of ‘ten-dollar parlor house’ the likes of me and Mack could afford without Mr. Van Dorn covering our expenses,” said Wally. “But you of the silver spoon could be familiar with it.”

Grady Forrer rumbled deep and dangerously in his barrel chest, “You are reporting that Riggs got drunk and bragged to a pretty girl in a brothel? A girl whose income depends on keeping you two happy?”

Mack Fulton returned a look of ice. “Listen closely, young fellow, and one day you’ll grow up to be a detective, too.” He turned back to Bell. “The lady didn’t think Riggs was bragging. She thought he felt guilty. Like blackmail wasn’t something Riggs would do if he weren’t pressed to the wall. He was having second thoughts when he fell under the train.”

“Are you sure about her?”

“Positive. She did not want to talk.”

“She was kind of sweet on Riggs,” said Mack.

“How’d you get her to talk?”

“We had to spend a full week at Miss Dee’s,” said Mack.

“Never gave up,” said Wally.

Archie Abbott rolled his eyes. Grady Forrer furrowed his brow. Isaac Bell said, “But after a week she still wouldn’t tell you the name at Standard Oil?”

“That would be a job for younger men than we are,” said Mack.

“Archie,” said Bell. “Go to Wichita.”

“Wichita? Sure you don’t want to go, Isaac?”

“Get on the fastest mail train. Wire me the second you know whether Reed Riggs was blackmailing Bill Matters… Wally and Mack! Go find Matters’ private railcar.”

“That’ll take forever.”

“Before Matters makes it back from Europe.”

Bell put on his hat, pulled the brim low over his eyes, and headed out the door. “Anyone needs me, I’ll be at the Normandie.” It was time to tap the deep well of the Boss’s experience with criminals and their crimes.

The Normandie Hotel’s ground-floor bar at Broadway and 38th catered to out-of-town salesmen and the wholesalers whose warehouse lofts occupied the West 30s side streets off the hotel district. Joseph Van Dorn’s corner table commanded the room, the long bar, and the steadily swinging saloon doors. On the table stood a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Operating in affable-businessman mode, peering about benignly, the founder of the detective agency could be mistaken for a top salesman, a “commission man” who paid his own expenses.

“If Riggs was blackmailing Matters, and if Spike’s so-called trick up his sleeve was to blackmail Matters, does throwing John D. Rockefeller off the Orient Express make him our assassin?” he asked Bell.

“Matters was sitting in the same auto, three feet away, when the assassin shot me in Baku.”

“He could have staged it. Paid a rifleman to shoot, pretending he was the assassin.”

“That could explain why he missed an easy shot,” Bell said. “But no, they’re not the same man. Matters is the mastermind, not the assassin.”

“If I were you,” said Van Dorn, “I would worry less about Matters than the assassin.”

“Bill Matters was gripped by a killing rage,” said Isaac Bell. “I guarantee he will make his way home from Europe and attack again.”

Van Dorn shook his head. “Matters is a business man on the run, not exactly his strength. The assassin is operating in a world he’s chosen.” He splashed Bushmills in both their glasses. “Don’t you find it curious we haven’t caught him?”

“Yet,” said Bell.

“This killer has taken every chance in the book,” said Van Dorn. “Shooting his victims in broad daylight. Shooting in public places. Staging elaborate scenarios — the Washington Monument monkeyshine was positively byzantine.”

“Clyde Lapham.”

“But hardly a singular event if you consider his shooting-duck trick and the killings of Reed Riggs and the poor fellow who fell in the oil vat.”

“Albert Hill.”

“Not to mention that woman who burned to death.”

“Mary McCloud.”

“And still we haven’t caught him. Either he is the luckiest devil alive or we are the sorriest detectives alive.”

“There’s another possibility,” said Bell.

“What’s that?”

“He’s not afraid of getting caught.”

“If he believes that,” said Van Dorn, “he is crack-brained and we should have hanged him long ago. There is no ‘perfect crime.’ And certainly no string of perfect crimes. No matter how craftily they plan, things go wrong and criminals get caught.”

“This killer is not afraid. He’s like the drunk who falls down but doesn’t get hurt; never tightens up, just lands soft in a heap.”

“Maybe he’s not afraid because he’s nuts.”

Bell said, “If he’s nuts, he’s a very slick nuts. Nothing fazes him. He never panics. Just changes course and slides away like mercury.”

“He would not be the first murderer without a conscience. Could it simply be that he’s not afraid because he doesn’t feel guilty?”

“Or can’t imagine getting caught.”

“Delusions of grandeur?”

“It’s almost as if he’s enjoying himself.”

Van Dorn’s eyes narrowed at the sight of a well-dressed gentleman who pushed through the swinging doors. He shot a glance across the busy barroom at the floor manager. The floor manager followed Van Dorn’s warning nod, belatedly recognized the new arrival for the type of grifter who preyed on out-of-town customers, and guided him out to the sidewalk.

Van Dorn said, “I want to know why the assassin takes such chances. Among others, he left his rifle — a unique weapon. Any progress tracing it?”

“I’m about to interview a gunsmith the boys found in Bridgeport.”

“Took them long enough.”

Bell leaped to his people’s defense. “They investigated eighty-four gunsmiths across the continent.”

“I was not aware there were so many. I’ve been stuck in Washington.”

Bell said, “If the assassin is not afraid, maybe he wants to get caught.”

Van Dorn snorted like a walrus. “Subconsciously? You’ve been reading that Viennese blather… You know,” he added after a moment of reflection, “there is such a thing as luck. Luck is real. For a while. So far, he’s been lucky.”

“He’s pushed his luck every kill.”

“You’ve been lucky. This man who had hit a dime at seven hundred yards has missed you three times. Why does he miss you?”

Isaac Bell grinned. “Maybe he likes me.”

Van Dorn did not laugh but answered soberly, “He won’t miss if you ever manage to put his back to the wall.”

“When I do, I won’t miss either.”

The underage probationary apprentice Eddie Tobin slipped quietly through the saloon doors. Van Dorn gave a brisk nod and the boy approached. “Message from Mr. Warren for Mr. Bell.”

Bell slit open the sealed envelope and read quickly.

“Tell Mr. Warren I said good work and thank you.”

Tobin left as unobtrusively as he had arrived.

Bell said to Van Dorn, “Bill Matters made it back to New York.”

“What? How’d he get here as fast as you did?”

“The Kaiser Wilhelm holds the Blue Riband.”

“He was on your ship?”

“According to Harry Warren,” Bell answered, face grim.

“You never saw him? Where was he hiding? Steerage?”

“I had Rockefeller persuade the purser to show me the manifests. I walked the ship night and day. I checked every man in First Class, Second, and double-checked Steerage.”

“Did he stow away?”

“He did better than that, according to Harry Warren. He wrangled a job on the black gang. Sneaked across the ocean shoveling coal in the ship’s boilers five decks under my nose.”

“Resourceful.”

Suspicion caromed through Bell’s mind. Had Edna and Nellie brought him decent food or visited him or let him rest in their cabin? Not likely on a strictly run German liner. They allowed no mingling of the classes, much less passengers and crew.

“I gather from your expression,” said Van Dorn, “that Harry Warren didn’t arrest Mr. Matters.”

“Matters brained a customs guard who spotted him sneaking off the ship. Harry Warren caught wind of it, traced him to the black gang, where he got a description from the engineers, and put two and two together.”

“So he’s somewhere in New York.”

“Or boarding a train going anywhere in the country.” Bell stood from the table. “I better warn Wish just in case he’s headed to Cleveland.”

“Do you think he’ll take another shot at Rockefeller?”

“He’s had a week to stew while shoveling coal in a hundred-ten-degree stokehold. And he knows we’ll catch him in the end. He’ll want to wreak more damage than killing one man.”

“Wanting and doing are two different things. Like I said, Matters is a business man on the run. Even if he’s a mastermind, being on the run makes him a fish out of water.”

“Until he joins up again with his personal assassin.”

33

Isaac Bell knew the great industrial city of Bridgeport well, having gone down to college in nearby New Haven. Bridgeport had provided Yale students carousing grounds beyond the long arm of the chaplain. More recently, he had bought his Locomobile at the company’s Bridgeport factory.

He parked the big red auto in front of the Zimmerman & Brassard gun shop. The partners Zimmerman and Brassard had long since retired on fortunes made from the Civil War, leaving the shop to a talented apprentice with the business acumen to retain the famous name that was set above the door in gunmetal letters. He was middle-aged by now, a slight, precise man with a pencil-thin mustache and wire-rimmed spectacles.

“Mr. Beitel?” asked Bell.

Beitel turned from the electric lathe, where he was working, and nodded. He was wearing arm garters to keep his shirtsleeves above his wrists and a four-in-hand necktie snugged under a shop apron. Physically, he appeared the opposite of the powerful Dave McCoart, with one exception: like McCoart, the casually able manner in which he hefted a cutoff tool said he was an artist, a man who could already see the shape of what he would fashion from the length of metal stock that was turning on his lathe.

His workshop was as neat and precise as he. It had a sturdy bench with drawers and a lip around the top to keep things from rolling off, several vises, a chest for small tools and parts, and a converted bedroom bureau with large drawers. He had just opened one, and Bell saw pistols waiting to be repaired, sandpaper, abrasive cloth, and steel wool. There was a power grinder with stones and a wire brush, a drill press, and an all-angle drilling vise for mounting telescope sights, a motor sander, and the long bench lathe where he was turning a rifle barrel.

“Good morning,” said Bell. “I was at the Locomobile factory — ran into a little trouble on my way to Hartford — and they told me you were a particularly fine gunsmith, so I figured I’d stop on my way. My card. Jethro Smith.”

“Hartford?”

“Head office. My territory is in Oregon.”

“Who told you I was a fine gunsmith?”

“One of the mechanicians.”

“Really. Do you mind me asking which one?”

“The factory was a madhouse. They’re all excited about the Number 7 auto they’re entering in the Vanderbilt Cup. It’s next month, coming up soon.”

“Oh, I know. Everyone in Bridgeport’s planning to take the ferry over to Long Island… Which mechanician was it who mentioned me?”

“Let’s see… His name’s on the tip of my tongue.” It had been worth the six-hour drive through crowded towns to get his story straight at the auto factory. He snapped his fingers. “Gary! Gary… Crisci. Know him?”

“Gary Crisci? I sure do. That is, I know of him. They say he’ll be Number 7’s mechanician. He’s a top hand. I’m honored he’s heard of me. What’s your interest in guns, Mr. Smith?”

“Rifles.”

“Are you a marksman?”

“I shoot in the occasional match,” Bell answered modestly.

“Where?”

“Out west. Oregon. My territory.”

“Are you looking to buy a rifle?”

“I need a telescope mounted.”

Bell lifted his carpetbag onto the counter and opened it. He watched the gunsmith’s face as he pulled out the assassin’s Savage 99 and methodically inserted the barrel into the chamber.

The gunsmith was no actor. But not even the great Edwin Booth could hide his feelings if the blood drained out of his face as it did from Beitel’s, and Isaac Bell knew he had hit pay dirt at last.

“Are you all right, sir?” Bell asked solicitously. “You look pale.”

“It’s warm in here,” Beitel murmured.

“Warm subject,” said Bell.

The gunsmith took off his apron and folded it neatly on a chair. Bell extended the rifle. Beitel appeared to shrink before Bell’s eyes. But he took the gun, cradled it a moment, and laid it on the counter. Then he turned around as if Bell weren’t there and faced his lathe. He picked up a cutoff tool, fitted it to the tool rest, and pressed the bit to the stock turning on the machine. His hands were shaking. Sparks flew where the tool grooved the metal.

The motor whined as he adjusted a switch lever, gradually increasing the speed to two hundred revolutions per minute.

He looked up from the work and gazed slowly about the shop.

“I love this,” he said, addressing Bell over his shoulder.

Isaac Bell spoke very gently. “I cannot promise, but it is possible that this could work out in such a way that you could keep your shop. If you help me find the assassin for whom you altered this weapon.”

“The assassin?”

The gunsmith bent closer to the work as if seeking refuge in a familiar task. He seemed so rattled, he didn’t notice his loose necktie dangling close to the turning stock.

“Careful of your tie,” said Bell.

Beitel whispered, “I love h—”

“What did you say?”

“Go to hell!”

Isaac Bell vaulted over the counter. He was twelve inches from the man when Beitel deliberately let his tie touch the rapidly turning stock. It grabbed the cloth, which wrapped around it faster than the eye could see, and jerked him down hard on the lathe. His neck broke with a loud, dry snap.

Bell switched off the machine. He hung Beitel’s CLOSED sign in the window, lowered the front shades, and searched the shop thoroughly. When he was done, he telephoned the police. “It looks like there’s been an accident.”

“I’ve got a tough one for you, Grady,” Isaac Bell said when he telephoned Forrer long-distance from the Bridgeport train station.

“How tough?”

“The assassin’s telephone number.”

Beitel’s death had been no accident, and the assassin to whom Beitel had been so loyal that he had killed himself instead of betraying him had left no sign of his identity at Zimmerman & Brassard. But Beitel had not trusted his memory and had hidden on the back of a sheet of sandpaper a telephone number written so minutely that Bell needed a magnifying glass to read it.

Bell read it to Forrer. “The Bridgeport operators don’t know it. I don’t want to telephone until I know who will answer and where he is.”

“It could take a while.”

“I’ll be at the Sage Gun Company in two hours. If you don’t know by then, wire me care of Washington when you do. And pass it straight to Archie, and Weber & Fields, Wish Clarke, and Texas Walt.”

Bell shipped his Locomobile back to New York in a freight car and booked the first train to Grand Central. Hurrying across Manhattan to the ferry to New Jersey, he stopped at the Sage Gun Company on West 43rd, where he opened his carpetbag and handed Dave McCoart the Savage 99 and a narrow felt-lined box. McCoart removed a long, finely machined steel tube and whistled. “Where’d you get this?”

“The assassin’s gunsmith.”

“You can’t buy a better telescope than Warner & Swasey.”

Bell handed him the Savage 99. “Mount it on this, please.”

“I’ll get right to it.”

“I found Beitel’s notebook.”

It was bound in black leather. The pages were filled with drawings and formulas written in a precise, artistic hand.

“Turn to the end, last four pages.”

McCoart read slowly and carefully, tracing drawings with a blunt finger.

“What’s he up to?” asked Bell.

“I think the guy is designing an exploding bullet.”

“Like an artillery shell?”

“In principle. But a heck of a lot smaller. I mean, this could be chambered in a .303.” He glanced up at Bell. “Like this Savage…”

“Do you think it will work?”

“If he’s able to execute what he’s drawn, yes. Judging by his quality work on this”—McCoart assembled the Savage’s chamber and barrel with a flick of his wrist and broke it down as swiftly—“the man is very, very good.”

He scanned the drawings again.

“Grisly imagination. A near miss with one of these would not be a miss. As for a ‘flesh wound,’ call the gravediggers.”

“More likely, the assassin’s imagination.”

“Did he happen to say how far he’s gotten with it?”

“He’s dead. His lathe grabbed his tie. Broke his neck.”

“Damned fool wearing a tie around a lathe.”

“He meant to kill himself.”

“There’s loyalty, for you,” said McCoart. He handed Bell back the notebook. “Well, at least he’s not going to finish this awful thing.”

“I reckon he already has.”

“Did you find any fulminate of mercury?”

“Plenty.”

“Did you find any cartridges?”

“There are none in the shop.”

“Hopefully, he was still experimenting.”

“I’m not counting on that,” said Isaac Bell.

“Did he say anything?”

“He said he was in love.”

“In love? And he killed himself? Are you going to talk to her?”

“I couldn’t hear her name.”

Like most upper-crust brothels, Miss Dee’s ten-dollar parlor house on North Wichita Street was a hangout for politicians and prosperous business men. Compared to New York or Chicago, its setting was less than glamorous, on a street bordered by a lumberyard, a blacksmith, a foundry, gas storage tanks, and tenements.

Wichita, thought Archie, where expectations were modest.

“Come right in,” the madam greeted him warmly. Wealthily dressed men made good customers. Handsome, wealthy customers with exquisite manners were a rare treasure. She remarked that she had not seen him before. Archie said he was not from Kansas. She said that she was not surprised and asked what in particular she could do for him.

“Would it be possible to make the acquaintance of a young lady named Jane?”

“Very possible, we have several Janes.”

Archie drew on Mack and Wally’s description. “Jane of hair as red as mine and eyes like lapis lazuli.”

“That Jane.”

“Is she still here?”

“Still here,” the madam said grimly.

“You don’t sound pleased,” said Archie.

“She’s tough on the business. The old geezers fall hard for her. One of these days, fisticuffs in my parlor will end in a heart attack.”

“I hope I’ll be immune,” said Archie.

“Frankly,” said the madam, “I hope you fall so hard, you take her home with you…”

Archie popped the question on the train to Chicago, a city that the round and bright-eyed Jane told him she had always wanted to visit. Archie had promised a paid vacation and a shopping trip (at Van Dorn expense). If Mr. Van Dorn balked, he would hit Isaac up for the dough. Any luck, Jane’s gratitude would materialize as the name of her dead admirer’s blackmail victim. Best of all, while in Chicago he could sink his teeth back into the Rosania case.

Archie waited until they were highballing out of St. Louis before he asked about Reed Riggs. Jane’s lapis lazuli eyes darkened, turning a sad, stony blue.

“Reed was a good man. A gent like you, Archie. Not fancy like you, but a gent in his heart. That’s why he couldn’t follow through. He was no blackmailer. It just seemed like a good idea to save his refinery, but when push came to shove he couldn’t do it.”

“Did he ever actually approach the victim?”

“He told me he went to New York and talked to him.”

“At 26 Broadway?” Archie asked casually.

Jane laid a plump hand on the back of Archie’s. “Stay a gent, Archie. Don’t try to trick me.”

Archie said, “I understand that you would never dishonor Reed Riggs’ memory by betraying the name of the man he decided not to blackmail. But what if I told you that the man we think it was just tried to kill John D. Rockefeller?”

Jane said, “Most people would think he had a pretty good idea.”

“And if I told you that we suspect he killed Mr. Riggs?”

“Reed died in an accident.”

“It is possible it was not an accident.”

“Can you prove that?”

“I cannot prove it was murder,” Archie admitted, “though we have a pretty good idea how the killer did it.”

Jane looked out the window. Her beautiful eyes had recovered their natural color and her spirits had risen. It was cheerfulness that the geezers fell for, Archie guessed, as much as her round shape. “Archie, what you just said rings true. When Reed died, he left me the only thing he possessed. His decency. I hate to think of the poor man dying in fear. When they told me he fell under the train, I decided he had fainted.”

Archie said, “If he was killed the way we believe he was, he never knew what hit him, or even saw it coming. One moment he was alive, the next he was not.”

“How can you know that?”

Archie described in detail the assassin’s shooting perch that he and Isaac Bell had discovered in a Fort Scott train yard.

Jane turned from the window and touched Archie’s cheek. The conductor passing through the car noted their red hair and his stern face broke into a smile as he wondered, mother and son off to Chicago? More likely, maiden aunt and her favorite nephew.

“I will speak one name aloud,” said Archie. “Only one. Can you please nod if he’s the man Reed changed his mind about blackmailing?”

“Part of me wants to cover my ears.”

“No need,” said Archie. “I won’t say his name until you agree.”

“I still want to cover them.”

“I will say this. If it is who I think it is, then I can guarantee that Reed died just as I described and never felt a thing.”

She looked at him and believed him and Archie exulted. Jackpot!

34

Bet you a duck I can hit four in a row.”

“Bet a duck? What are you talking about?”

“If I hit four ducks,” said the assassin, “you give me one.”

It was too hot to stroll at the Hudson County Fair — ninety-five degrees even after dark. The midway was deserted except for ice cream stands and an enterprising kid selling chips of ice to press to sweaty foreheads. The heat made people cranky, and the owner of the shooting gallery, whose parade of moving ducks had attracted no gunfire for hours, was in no mood for jokers.

“You hit the duck, you win a prize. You win a cigar — if you’re old enough to smoke ’em.” He peered dubiously at the short, slight boyish figure leaning on the counter. “Or you get a dog.” He pointed at a plaster bulldog painted blue. “You hit the duck four times, you win a teddy bear for your girl — if you got one. The duck’s the target. You don’t win the target.”

“Afraid I’ll hit four?”

“You won’t hit three.”

“For the duck.”

The assassin dropped a nickel on the counter for five shots and fired three so quickly, the rifle bolt seemed to blur. Three moving ducks fell down and popped up. The owner nudged a hidden lever and the parade speeded up.

The assassin smiled, “Faster won’t save you,” fired again, and hit a fourth, then shifted slightly so that the barrel angled in the general direction of the man who owned the stand. “Do I have any left?”

“One.”

“Give me my duck.”

A butler wearing the uniform of a United States Army orderly showed Isaac Bell into a reception room off the front foyer of the Mills mansion on Dupont Circle. Brigadier Mills’ daughter, Helen, was every bit “the looker” Archie had made her out to be — a tall, lean brunette with long arms, demanding brown eyes, and an intriguingly low voice.

Bell went straight at her. “It is a pleasure to meet a lady with a famous left hook.”

A puzzled Helen Mills arched both her eyebrows.

“Should I duck?” asked Bell. “I’m a friend of Archie Abbott.”

She looked Isaac Bell over, inspecting him closely. “Only if the louse sent you to apologize.”

“I came on my own.”

“Are you on Mr. Abbott’s mission?”

“Mr. Abbott was on my mission. And to be straight with you, it’s your father, Brigadier Mills, I must meet.”

“What is the matter with you men from New York? Why don’t you just call at my father’s office? His bark is worse than his bite. He is actually quite approachable.”

“Not on this subject. It is deeply personal.”

“At least you’re honest about it. Archie was misleading.”

“To be fair to my old, old friend,” said Bell, “we must assume that when Archie laid eyes on you, he was swept off his feet and therefore not operating at his best.”

She did not appear to dislike compliments. She inspected Bell some more and smiled as if she liked what she saw. “I’ll make you a deal, Detective Bell. Stay for lunch. If you’re still here when my father gets home, I’ll introduce you.”

“What time does he get in?”

“We dine late.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” said Isaac Bell, “but how can I resist?” It occurred to him that if Edna Matters wasn’t whirling in his brain, and Nellie Matters not pirouetting on the edges, he might half hope that the Army would post Helen’s father to Indian Territory for the weekend.

Helen’s alto voice made her sound older than Archie had reported she was. Much older. She turned out to be a girl starting her second year at Bryn Mawr College. She admitted over lunch to being at loose ends about her future. But one thing for sure, she told Bell. She was determined to do more than marry and raise children.

Bell discovered that newspaperwoman E. M. Hock and suffragist Nellie Matters were heroes to Helen and her classmates; that he knew both women made him almost as heroic in her eyes. He offered advice, and before her father got home, he had convinced her to aim her studies toward a career even bolder than Edna’s and Nellie’s.

Brigadier General G. Tannenbaum Mills had fathered young Helen at a late age. Short, wide, and stiff-necked, he looked old enough to be her grandfather but was in fact as vigorous as a longhorn, and as ornery. Helen made him a cocktail, and at her urging he invited Bell into his study. The walls were hung with swords, dueling pistols, and Bowie knives.

Bell found it tough going trying to convince the old mossback that hanging a murderer was more important than shielding the Army from the embarrassment of a years-ago desertion. Mills repeated his argument in a voice trained to be heard over the thunder of a cavalry charge. “The Army is a more fragile institution than civilians suppose. Reputation is all. To suffer a black eye and deliver that black eye to the president is—”

“Lieutenant K.K.V. Casey,” Isaac Bell interrupted.

“What?”

“Private Howard H. Gensch… Sergeant Clarence Orr.”

“Why are you—?”

“They are marksmen.”

“I know that!”

“Lieutenant Casey won the President’s Medal in 1903. Private Gensch won the President’s Medal last year. Sergeant Orr won this year.”

“Why are you bandying their names?”

“Surely the United States Army isn’t ashamed of such marksmen.”

“What do they have to do with Private Jones?”

“That’s what I’m asking you, sir. Neither Lieutenant Casey, Private Gensch, nor Sergeant Orr are Private Billy Jones. Give your soldiers their due and help me hang a killer.”

“How?” Mills growled.

“Have you ever heard of a Standard Oil executive named Bill Matters?”

Mills put down his glass. “I wondered if you would ask.”

“You know of him?”

“Oh, yes.”

Isaac Bell leaned closer, which put the veteran officer in mind of a cougar about to land on him with all four feet. “Tell me how.”

“When we investigated Billy Jones’ desertion,” Mills said, “we discovered certain items the boy had left behind that we were able to trace — or so we thought. I went, personally, to the man that our investigation revealed was very likely Billy Jones’ father. That his son had disappeared around the time that Private Jones joined the Army seemed to cinch it.”

“What ‘item’ did he leave behind?”

“Ticket stubs from an opera house. Shakespeare shows. We traced them to Oil City, Pennsylvania.”

“Bill Matters lived in Oil City. He raised his daughters there before he moved to New York.”

“He still maintained a home in ’02. For all I know, still does. Anyway, I found him in Oil City.”

“Why did you go personally?”

“I would not put the officers under me in the position of offending a powerful man who might well have had no connection with the deserter other than the fact he was grieving for a missing son who had run off back in ’98 to enlist for the war.”

“Was the marksman Bill Matters’ son?”

Brigadier Mills looked Isaac Bell in the eye and Bell found it easy to imagine him as a young officer leading his men into a storm of lead. “I’m not proud of this,” he said, “but it was my job to cover things up. I went to Matters’ house. I spoke with him in private. He was alone there. I found him sitting in the dark. Mourning the boy.”

“In ’02? But that was years after he disappeared.”

“He still mourned him. I promised that nothing we discussed would leave the room. I made my case. The cross-grained SOB refused to believe me. He was certain — dead certain — that the marksman was not his missing son.”

Bell said, “Detectives run into similar denials by the parents of criminals.”

The general’s answer was uncharacteristically roundabout. “I’ve led men my whole life, Bell. Gettysburg. The west. Cuba. The Philippines. I can read men. I know what they’re thinking before they do. Bill Matters was telling the truth! The marksman Billy Jones was not his boy.”

“And yet?” Bell asked.

“And yet what?” Mills fired back.

“And yet I sense your, shall we say, disquiet? If not doubt?”

Angered, Mills looked away. He stared at his collection of weapons. He hesitated, face working, as if he was debating the merits of shooting Bell versus running him through. Finally, he spoke.

“Maybe you read men, too. You’re right. Something was off there. I don’t know what, but something was way off, out-of-kilter.”

“What?”

“Bill Matters knew that his boy was not the marksman. But he was not surprised that I had come calling.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was not surprised that I had connected him to the marksman who won the President’s Medal of 1902. Even as he sat there in the dark denying the theater stubs were his.”

“Maybe they weren’t.”

“I found him in a back parlor. He refused to leave the room or turn on the lights. So we talked in the dark. My eyes adjusted until I saw that the room was filled with toy theaters. You know what I mean?”

“Paper stage sets. You can buy them in New York theaters.”

“His parlor was full of them. But he sat there steadfastly denying that the theater stubs were his.”

Bell said, “You seemed to be suggesting that Matters knows who the deserter is.”

“I am not ‘suggesting,’ I am telling you that Matters knew beyond doubt that the marksman who deserted was not his missing boy.”

“Why?” asked Bell. “How could he know?”

“Either he knew exactly where his missing boy was in 1902 the day Billy Jones won the President’s Medal or—”

“Or he knows the marksman,” said Isaac Bell.

The brigadier said, “In my firm opinion, the deserter was not his boy. He is someone else.”

Isaac Bell was tumbling possibilities in his mind when he heard the old general say, “And now, sir, what are your designs on my daughter?”

“Helen? I’ve already proposed an offer.”

“Proposed? The girl is barely eighteen. She’s got college ahead of her.”

“I made every effort to convince her and she agreed to apply for an apprenticeship at the Van Dorn Detective Agency as soon as she graduates.”

“What the devil makes you think my daughter could be a detective?”

“Helen’s got a mean left hook… Could we go back to reading men, sir?… I believe something is still on your mind. Something you’ve left unsaid about the marksman.”

Mills nodded. “It’s only speculation. I can’t offer proof.”

“I’d still like to hear it.”

“I’d bet money that Matters was shielding him.”

35

Are you sure you want to blow this all to smithereens?” asked the assassin.

“Sure as I know my name,” said Bill Matters.

They were standing out of sight of the street in a glassed widow’s walk on the roof of The Hook saloon five stories above the Standard Oil Constable Hook refinery’s front gate. Originally erected by a sea captain who made his fortune in whale oil, the widow’s walk was festooned with wooden spires and elaborate bronze lightning rods fashioned like harpoons. Matters was safe here for a while, even with Isaac Bell closing in, for he owned the saloon lock, stock, and barrel.

He could see the gut-churning proof that the refinery had prospered just as he and Spike Hopewell had dreamed it would when they built the first stage on the neck of land that thrust into New York Harbor north of Staten Island. After stealing it, the Standard had enlarged it repeatedly on the same lines they had surveyed. Orderly rows of tanks and stills covered the hilly cape. Seagoing tank steamers lined up at the oil docks. And the village had grown these last six years from a raucous boomtown into a jam-packed city of tenements and factories, shops, churches, and schools — home to twenty thousand workers and their wives and children.

The assassin swept binoculars from the biggest naphtha tank across the city and up the tank-covered hill to the top of the tallest Standard Oil fire company tower, then back down the slope, over the rooftops, and back to the naphtha tank, which the red duck marked for a bull’s-eye.

The heat had intensified and the humidity had thickened. Old-timers were comparing it to the deadly temperatures of ’96, even the heat wave of ’92 that killed thousands in the seaboard cities. It was stifling inside the widow’s walk, and the heat shimmered so violently from the tanks that everything seemed to be in motion. It would take every ounce of the assassin’s skill to calculate how it would bend the flight of a bullet.

“Would you consider disappearing instead?”

“I have disappeared. I don’t like it.”

“What if I were to shoot Rockefeller?”

“No! Do not kill him. I want him to see this destroyed.”

“He’ll build again.”

“He’ll be too late. I invested in refineries at Philadelphia and Delaware and Boston and Texas. When I’ve blown Constable Hook off the map, I’ll control seaboard production. I want him to see that, too.”

This was startling information. It was also deeply disconcerting, for to be surprised was to admit a severe lapse in the sharp awareness that made a hunter a hunter instead of prey. Bill Matters was reinventing himself. But this hadn’t happened yesterday; he’d been reinventing all along.

“You’re like Rockefeller,” the assassin marveled.

Bill Matters laughed. “Master of the unexpected.”

“Then you’ll disappear?”

“To Europe… in style.”

“May I come with you?”

“Of course,” Matters said without hesitation. “I’ll keep you busy. I’m not retiring, only starting over.”

Movement in the street below caught the assassin’s eye. A strong man in overalls was rolling a wooden spool of copper cable. He disappeared below the overhang of the roof as he rolled it into the alley that led to the back of the saloon.

Matters asked, “What the devil is that?”

“Copper wire.”

“I can see that. Where’s he taking it?”

“The cellar.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s for me.”

Bill Matters looked hard at his assassin. “Now what game are you playing?”

“The unexpected. Just like Rockefeller. Or should I say, just like you.”

“What game?”

“Fast and loose.”

“With whom?”

“Isaac Bell.”

Heat lightning flickered repeatedly under a sullen midnight sky.

Gun in hand, Isaac Bell approached Bill Matters’ private railcar on foot. It was parked on a remote Saw Mill River valley siding of the Putnam Division twenty miles from New York City and less than ten from John D. Rockefeller’s Pocantico Hills estate.

Bell ignored the sweat burning his eyes and mosquitos whining around his ears. He walked on the wooden crossties so as not to crunch on the railbed ballast. But the flashes from distant storms threatened to give him away.

Van Dorn Research had traced the telephone number Bell had found at the assassin’s gunsmith to the private car platform at Pittsburgh’s Union Station. The Pittsburgh field office had learned that the telephone in Bill Matters’ car had been connected twice in the past six months to that platform. Wally Kisley and Mack Fulton had known which New York Central Railroad dispatchers to bribe to nail down its current location in Westchester County.

The detectives assigned to stand watch from a distance thought they had seen one figure enter the car hours ago just after dark. They had seen no one leave. Research procured Pullman Palace Car Company blueprints of the car’s floor plan. Bell memorized them, ordered the detectives out of sight, and went in alone.

He saw a sliver of light shine through the curtains as he drew close. A chimney stack broke the smooth roof line silhouette marking the galley and dining room in the front of the car. Those windows were dark, as were the windows in the rear.

At fifty feet away, he heard music. At twenty, he could distinguish the words of the hit song “Come Take a Trip in my Airship” playing on a gramophone.

The tenor Billy Murray was starting the last chorus. Bell sprinted forward to take advantage of the cover before the cylinder ran out.

He climbed onto the rear platform.

He opened the door. The music got louder.

He was inside, back pressed to the door as he closed it quietly. This was the rear parlor, where the plush velvet seats could be converted to beds. He glided forward, toward the light, which was filtered by a curtain. The music was coming from the middle section, which the Pullman Company had configured for Matters as an office.

Suddenly a figure pushed through the curtain.

Bell slammed his arms around it in a vise grip.

36

A shriek brought Edna Matters bursting into the parlor with her .410 shotgun.

She saw Bell and lowered the gun.

“Thank God, it’s you.”

It was Nellie in Bell’s arms. He could feel her heart pounding fearfully. He let go. She gathered herself with repeated deep breaths.

“Hello, Isaac. We figured you’d show up. You could have knocked.”

“Our father is not here and we don’t know where he is,” said Edna.

“Would you tell me if you did?”

“No, Isaac. We would not.”

Nellie said, “Not until you understand that all he did was blow up in anger. Thanks to you, he didn’t kill Rockefeller. You saved him from committing a terrible crime in a grip of rage. No damage was done. We are grateful to you for that. But does he deserve jail, considering all he suffered?”

“What happens next time when I’m not there to stop him?”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Will his anger evaporate? I don’t think so.”

“He’ll get over it. He’s not a cold-blooded killer.”

Isaac Bell said, “He prepared a killing field. He opened the gangway connectors. He lured Rockefeller out there. He planned ahead of time how he would kill him. Any jury will call that premeditated murder.”

“It’s Rockefeller’s fault for cheating the poor man,” Nellie shot back.

“Father must have had a nervous breakdown,” said Edna. “It all comes back to Rockefeller driving him mad.”

“I’m sorry, Edna, Nellie, but what he did in Germany was much worse than ‘blowing up in anger.’”

“Would you accept him being placed in an asylum?”

“Locked in an asylum.”

“Where they would treat him,” Nellie said eagerly. “With doctors. And medicine.”

“Maybe lawyers could convince a judge and jury to see it that way,” said Bell, “particularly if he were to turn himself in. Do you know where he is?”

They shook their heads, and Nellie said, “No. We honestly don’t know.”

“Has he been here?”

“We don’t think so,” said Nellie.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s nothing of his in the car. We searched every closet and cabinet. Nothing.”

“How do you happen to be here?”

“We’re using Father’s car for headquarters,” said Nellie.

“Headquarters?”

“For the New Woman’s Flyover. Don’t you remember? I chartered a locomotive to move us to North Tarrytown in the morning.” And suddenly she was talking a mile a minute. The balloons, she said, were arriving from near and far. They were gathering in a hayfield she had rented from the owner of the Sleepy Hollow Roadhouse.

“For a dollar, Isaac, can you believe it?”

“I’ve met him,” said Bell. “I can believe it.”

She barely heard him. “Right next to Pocantico Hills! He hates Rockefeller. And he loves the idea of us soaring over his estate. He even persuaded the new village trustees to pipe gas out to the site — so we don’t have to generate our own, which is wonderful, it’s so much faster to inflate from mains — and he’s invited the women to pitch tents, and he’s opened the roadhouse baths to all of us. It’s a delightfully civilized campground. Except for this infernal heat. But we’ll rise above the heat, won’t we?”

It was understandable, thought Bell, and a good thing, that she was hurling herself into the Flyover scheme to escape from facing her father’s grim future. “How about you, Edna? Are you ballooning, too?”

Nellie answered for her. “Edna got a job reporting on the Flyover for the Sun. The editor was thrilled by her Baku story.”

“How did you happen to find the car?”

“Easy as pie,” Nellie said. “This siding is one of Father’s favorites. It’s very pretty in the daylight and quiet. There’s never much traffic on the Putnam Division. He calls it his cottage in the country.”

“And you found no sign at all of your father?”

“None. Poke around, if you like. But look what we did find.”

Edna asked, “Do you remember when we were talking about my brother joining the Army?”

“Of course.”

“Look what we found,” said Nellie.

Edna said, “I was flabbergasted when Nellie showed me.”

She took a leather pouch from a drawer and laid it on the desk.

“May I?” Bell asked.

“Go on, pick it up.”

Bell held it to his nostrils. “Does your father smoke Cuban cigars?”

“No,” said Edna, and Nellie said, “He prefers a two-cent stogie. Open it, Isaac. Look what’s inside.”

It contained a medal, a fifty-dollar bill, and a sheet of fine linen-based stationery folded in quarters to fit the pouch. The medal was an extraordinarily heavy disk of gold engraved like a target, which hung by a red ribbon from a gold pin labeled “Rifle Sharpshooter.” The fifty was a treasury note.

“Turn it over,” said Nellie. “Look at the back.”

Bell saw that President Roosevelt had signed the back above the treasurer’s printed signature.

“Read the letter.”

Bell unfolded it carefully, as the paper appeared weakened by being opened many times. The letterhead jumped off the page:

Bell’s eye shot to the recipient’s address on the bottom left of the page.

He read:

The president had closed:

And signed in a bold hand:

Nellie said, “He has to be our brother, don’t you think? Still alive in ’02.”

“How did this end up in your father’s car?”

“Billy may have hidden in the car when he first deserted. He knew the various places Father would park it.”

“He might have turned to Father for help,” said Edna.

“Would your father have ‘shielded’ him?” asked Bell, deliberately repeating the word that Brigadier Mills had used to speculate about Bill Matters and the deserter.

“Of course,” said Edna, and Nellie nodded vigorously.

“Would your father have tried to talk him into going back?”

Nellie said, “Father would have done whatever he thought was best for Billy’s future.”

“Where do you suppose Billy is now?” Bell asked.

Edna said, “I suspect he enlisted, again, under a different name. But if he did, maybe the reason we’ve heard nothing since is he died fighting the Filipino guerrillas.”

“I doubt he died in the Philippines,” said Bell. It looked to him that Brigadier Mills had read his man wrong… “Could I ask you something?”

“Which one of us?” asked Nellie.

“Both. If this marksman Billy Jones is your brother, Billy Hock, could you imagine him turning his skill to murder?”

“Are you asking is our brother the assassin?”

“I am asking do you imagine he could be?”

“We haven’t seen him in years,” said Edna. “Who knows who he’s become?”

“Could the boy you remember become a murderer?”

“No,” said Edna.

“Yes,” said Nellie.

“Why do you say yes, Nellie?”

“I knew him better than Edna. Isn’t that true, Edna?”

Edna said, “Yes, you two grew very close.” To Bell she added, “So close that I was jealous sometimes.”

Bell asked again, “Nellie, why do you say yes?”

“He was afraid. He was always afraid. So when you ask can I imagine him turning his skill to murder, I have to imagine him lashing out — first out of fear, then because lashing out banished fear, and finally…”

“Finally what?” asked Bell.

Edna echoed, “Finally what, Nellie? How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m just speculating.”

“But you just said you knew him well,” Bell pressed, convinced she was onto something.

Nellie shrugged. “What if finally lashing out banished fear? Then maybe lashing out could become… what? Pleasurable? Enjoyable? Something to aspire to.”

“We’re talking about murder,” said Edna.

“We were talking about our brother,” Nellie said sharply.

“But who could find murder enjoyable?”

“A madman,” said Isaac Bell.

“We were talking about our brother,” Nellie repeated. “We’re speculating about murder…” When she resumed speaking, she made an effort to lighten her tone, as if asking with a hopeful smile could eliminate the worst possibility. “What do you think, Isaac? You’re the detective. Is our brother the assassin?”

“I can’t sugarcoat it for you,” said Bell.

His sober tone stopped the conversation. Lost in private thoughts, they listened to the night sound of locusts singing in the heat. After a while, after mentally couching questions he knew that they could not answer, Bell rose abruptly. He found his hat and said good-bye.

“Where are you going?” asked Nellie.

“I have to catch a train.”

“Will you be back in time for my Flyover?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Edna called after him. “What do you mean by a ‘madman’?”

Bell stopped in the doorway. “A person without conscience. Without fear.”

“Who ‘banished fear,’ like Nellie says?”

Bell answered, “All any of us can really know about a madman is that he will be unpredictable.”

“If that’s true, how do you catch such a person?”

“Never give up,” said Bell, but stepped into the night with his mind fixed on a deadlier device. Be unpredictable, too.

The houses on either side of Bill Matters’ Oil City mansion looked abandoned. Their yards were overgrown, their windows blank. The garden in front of the Matterses’ house was baked brown. The curtains were drawn, reminding Isaac Bell that Brigadier Mills had described Matters grieving in the dark. They could be closed against the heat. It was even hotter in western Pennsylvania than New York. The train conductor informed Isaac Bell with grim satisfaction that since weather traveled west to east, New York was soon in for “the hinges of hell.”

No one answered when he pressed the buzzer button at the front gate. He picked the lock.

No one answered his knock on the front door and he picked that lock, too.

“Anyone home?” he called up the front stairs and down a hall.

He thought he smelled a faint aroma of cooked food and worked his way back to the kitchen. It was empty, with a single skillet of congealed bacon grease sitting on the range. He checked other rooms and found the parlor with the paper theaters that Mills had mentioned. As in the other rooms, the curtains were drawn. There was no Bill Matters sitting in the dark.

The kitchen door led into the backyard, which was as big as the gardens of a country house and concealed from the streets and neighbors behind high wooden fences and dense fir trees. It was then that Bell realized the neighboring houses on either side were empty because Matters had bought and closed them, then fenced them off and added their backyards to his. He could hear the surrounding Oil City neighborhood but not see it.

There was a ramshackle quality to the place. An abandoned wooden derrick lay on its side tangled in vines next to lengths of wooden pipe almost as if Matters was contemplating a museum of early Pennsylvania oil history. He walked around the derrick and found a pond, its water thick with algae. Beside it was a marble gravestone. No name was chiseled on the stone, only an epitaph, which Isaac Bell recognized as William Shakespeare’s.

From behind him, Bell heard, “Shakespeare’s not really buried here. The girls surprised me for my fortieth birthday. Raise your hands before you turn around.”

37

Isaac Bell raised his hands and turned around.

Matters was pointing his old Remington at him, and he was not alone. Rivers, the fit and remarkably unscarred old prizefighter, was holding a Smith & Wesson like a mechanical extension of his fist.

Bell addressed Matters. “They say no man is a hero to his butler. You must be the exception if Rivers gave up a cushy job in Gramercy Park to join you on the lam.”

“Mr. Matters gave me the cushy job when I was on the lam,” said Rivers. “Fair is fair.”

“Are you a murderer, too?”

“The jury thought so.”

“I’ll cover him,” said Matters. “He’s got a revolver in his shoulder holster. And if I’m not wrong, I think you’ll find a derringer in his hat.”

“Reach higher and stand very still,” said Rivers. He pocketed his gun and took the Bisley from Bell’s shoulder holster. “Fine pistol!”

“Keep it,” said Matters. “Detective Bell doesn’t need it.”

Rivers stuck it in his belt with a grin.

Bell said, “If you like that, wait ’til you see my derringer.”

Rivers knocked Bell’s hat off his head. He snatched it from the grass, dipped into the crown, and removed the miniature, custom-built single-shot derringer Dave McCoart had lent him while he built him a replacement for the two-shot Bell had lost in Russia.

“Wow! You’re a high-class walking arsenal. Look at this—”

Rivers had made two mistakes. In picking up the tall detective’s hat, he had placed himself partly between Bell and Matters. And he had already let Bell distract him. In the split second before Matters could move to clear his field of fire, Bell kicked with all his might, rocketing his left boot deep into the prizefighter’s groin. Then he dropped to the grass and reached into his right boot, drawing and casting his throwing knife in a single motion.

Bill Matters cried out in shock and pain. The heavy Remington six-shooter fell from his convulsing fingers and he stared in horrified disbelief at the razor-sharp blade that had passed between the bones of his wrist. The flat metal shaft quivered from the front of his arm and a full inch of the point protruded red and glistening from the skin on the back.

Bell picked up the Remington and brought it down like a sledgehammer on Rivers’ skull as the gasping butler tried to straighten up. Then he whirled back at Matters and landed a blow with the old pistol that knocked the oil man flat.

He had one pair of handcuffs. He secured Matters to an iron ring in the oil rig, took the guns from the unconscious Rivers, removed his whiskey flask and his bootlaces, dragged him forty feet away, and tied him to the rig by his thumbs. He returned to Matters.

“What are you going to do?” asked Matters.

“Take my knife back, to start,” said Bell. He yanked it out of his wrist, wiped the blood off on Matters’ shirt, and sheathed it back in his boot.

“I’ll bleed to death.”

“Not before you answer a heap of questions.” He screwed the cap off Rivers’ flask and poured whiskey into the wound the knife had slit. Matters sucked air. “Beats infection. Now, Bill, let’s talk.”

The rage that Bell had seen explode on the Bremen boat train flared red-hot in Matters’ eyes. Bell said, “It’s over. I’ve got you dead to rights. There is no escape. It’s time to talk. Where is your assassin?”

Slowly, the fire faded.

“Where? Where is the assassin?”

“You’re looking at him.”

“You shot your old partner Spike Hopewell? What about Albert Hill and Reed Riggs, and C. C. Gustafson in Texas?”

“Them, too.”

“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

“Hunting in the woods. I was a natural. Good thing, too. Bloodsucking bank foreclosed when Father died. The sheriff drove off our pigs and cows and turned my mother and me out of the home. We lived on the game I shot. Later, I ran away to the circus and a Wild West Show.”

Isaac Bell reminded Bill Matters that they had been sitting together in the Peerless with Rockefeller when the assassin fired at them in Baku.

“I paid a Cossack a thousand rubles to throw off suspicion.”

“Did you pay him to wound me or kill me?”

Matters looked Bell in the face. “Wound. My girls were sweet on you. I reckoned it might turn out well for one of them.”

“No one ever denied you were a loving father. Did you arm the Cossack with one of your Savages?”

“I didn’t have any with me. He used his own rifle.”

“Really?” said Bell. “The 1891 Russian Army Mosin is about as accurate as a pocket pistol. The short-barrel Cossack version is worse— You were never the assassin. Why are you trying to protect a hired hand with your own life?”

“What hired hand?”

“It’s not in your character to protect the assassin. You are not an honorable man. Will you look me in the eye and tell me you’re an honorable man?”

“Honorable never put game on the table.”

“Then why are you protecting your hired killer?”

“There is no hired killer. I did my own killing.”

“And poisoned Averell Comstock and threw Lapham off the monument?”

“I did what I had to do to advance in the company.”

“You’re trying, and failing, to protect a hired killer.”

“Why would I bother?” asked Matters.

“Only one answer makes sense.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“The assassin is your stepson.”

“My stepson?”

“Billy Hock.”

“You could not be more wrong.”

“Your stepson who ran away and joined the Army.”

“I never thought of Billy as my stepson. He was my son. Just as both my daughters are my daughters.”

“Call him what you will,” said Bell, “he became the finest sharpshooter in the Army. You made him a murderer.”

Matters’ expression turned bleak. There was no more anger in him. “My son is dead.”

“No, your son is your own personal murderer.”

“I know he is dead.”

“Your daughters don’t know. The Army doesn’t know. How do you know?”

“I found his body.”

38

The tall detective, who was leaning close to interrogate the handcuffed criminal, rocked back on his heels. He stared, eyes cold, mind racing. He paced a tight circle, cast an eye on the still-unconscious Rivers, gazed across the pond, and down at Matters. The man was as skilled a liar as Bell had ever encountered. And yet…

“If Billy was dead, why would Edna and Nellie tell me that he ran away from home and joined the Army?”

“That was my story. I told them that. It was better to let the girls think he died a soldier.”

“How did he die?”

“He drowned in that pond.”

“Here? In your backyard? But you never reported his death.”

“I buried him myself.”

“Why?”

“To protect the girls.”

“From what?”

“He committed suicide. The poor kid tied a rope around his neck. He tied the other end to a concrete block. Then he picked up the block and waded into the pond until the mud got him and the block dragged his head under. I saw his foot. His trouser leg had trapped air and it floated. Don’t you understand, Bell? The girls loved him. The idea that he was so unhappy that he would commit suicide would destroy them. I know, because I still ask myself every day what did I do wrong? What could I have done better?”

“Spike said you were never the same after that.”

“Spike was right.”

“Why did you have Spike shot?”

“Spike wasn’t as dumb as I thought. Or as ‘honorable.’ He figured out what I was up to, and when the Standard started breathing down his neck in Kansas, he threatened to tell Rockefeller that I was out to destroy him. He thought I could help him, that I could stop the Standard from busting up his business… Before you start blaming some other innocent, I repeat, I didn’t ‘have Spike shot.’ I shot him myself.”

“No you didn’t,” said Bell. “You were a thousand miles away at Constable Hook at your regularly scheduled meeting with Averell Comstock.”

“I was not at Constable Hook. I was in Kansas.”

“Van Dorn detectives read it in Comstock’s diary,” said Bell. “You were not in Kansas the day Spike was shot. And before you cook up a new lie, Comstock’s secretary confirmed that indeed you did show up for that meeting, on time, as always…”

Matters tugged at the handcuffs. In a bitter voice he asked, “When did you start checking up on me?”

“We checked up on all the new men who were in a position to attack Standard Oil from within the company. After you tried to kill Mr. Rockefeller, we naturally focused full attention on you. Where did you bury Billy?”

“Right here.” Matters pointed at the headstone. “Shakespeare’s grave.”

Bell peered at the stone, imagining the sequence of events. The boy was dead. The headstone was already there. Matters dug a hole. The stone marked an unmarked grave.

Matters said, “Funny thing is, he never wanted to come to the theater. Hated it. Poor kid never could fit in. Fidgeted the whole play.”

“You buried him right here when he drowned himself?”

“Like I just told you. You can dig up the poor kid’s bones if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe that you buried him. But I don’t believe that he drowned himself.”

“He drowned,” Matters repeated doggedly.

“Drowning was the least likely method Billy would have chosen to kill himself. If he drowned, he was not a suicide.”

“He drowned.”

“Then someone murdered him.”

“I would never hurt him.”

“I believe you. But you found his body.”

“I told you.”

“Did the girls mention that I knew Billy slightly at college?”

“They told me you stood up for him.”

“As bullies will, they found his worst fear and used it against him. Do you remember what that was?”

“What do you mean?” Matters asked warily.

“The crew boys were throwing him in the river. Billy was rigid with fear. Absolutely petrified — he looked like his skull was popping through his skin — screaming he couldn’t swim. They’d have pulled him out in a second, but he was so terrified of water, he couldn’t see it was just college hijinks. There is no way on God’s earth that boy would have killed himself by drowning…”

But even as he spoke, Bell remembered Billy’s courageous attempt to conquer his fear by asking the crew to let him train to be coxswain. Could he have tried again and triumphed in a final deranged act?

Isaac Bell found himself staring intently at the Shakespeare gravestone.

“Did you say that Billy didn’t like the theater?”

“Hated it.”

Bell could hear old Brigadier Mills thundering in his mind. Ticket stubs from an opera house… Shakespeare shows… We traced them to Oil City, Pennsylvania. The thunder shaped a bolt of lightning. Why would the boy keep ticket stubs to plays he hated?

“I asked why you didn’t report Billy’s death.”

“I told you. To protect the girls.”

“Which one?”

39

Which one?” Bill Matters echoed Isaac Bell.

“You’re protecting one of your daughters. Which one?”

“What do you mean, which one?”

“Edna? Or Nellie? The one who killed Billy.”

“Killed him? You’re insane.”

Not insane, thought Bell. Not even surprised, looking back. He himself had remarked on the New York Limited,Strange how the three of us keep turning up together where crimes have occurred. And when he engineered Edna’s job covering Baku for the Evening Sun and the editor asked Mind me asking which sister you’re sweet on? some sixth or seventh sense had already made him a sharper detective than he knew: Let’s just say that with this arrangement, I can keep my eye on both of them.

Not insane. Not surprised. Only sad. Deeply, deeply sad.

Bill Matters was shouting, “They loved him. Why would one of them kill Billy?”

“Because she’s a ‘natural,’ to use your word.”

“Natural what?”

“Assassin.”

“She snapped,” Matters said quietly. “That was the first thought in my mind when I saw them. She snapped.”

“Who?” Isaac Bell asked. “Was it Nellie? Or Edna?”

Matters shifted his eyes from Bell’s burning gaze and stared at the pond.

“Who?” Bell asked, again. “Nellie? Or Edna?”

Matters shook his head.

“Who did you see?”

“She was out there. In the water. I thought she was floating on a log. ’Til I saw his leg. I leaped in, grabbed her, tore her off him. Pulled him out, dragged him onto the grass. He was incredibly heavy. Such a little guy. Deadweight.”

“Dead?”

“I held him in my arms. She climbed out and stood behind me. I kept asking her why. Why did you do it? She didn’t deny it.”

“She admitted that she drowned him?”

“She said it was Billy’s fault. He was a coward. Wasted his opportunity.”

“What opportunity?”

“Of being a man. Men are allowed to do anything.”

Bell realized he did not fully believe Matters. Or didn’t want to. “No one saw? No one in those houses?”

“Night.”

“You saw them.”

“Full moon. Lunatic moon.”

“Who? Was it Nellie? Or Edna?”

Matters shook his head.

“Which of your girls is innocent?” Isaac Bell demanded.

“Both,” Matters said sullenly.

“One is guilty. Is it Nellie, your blood daughter? Or Edna, your stepdaughter?”

“I love them equally, with all my heart.”

“I don’t doubt that you do. Which is the assassin?”

“I can only say neither,” said Matters. “Even if they hang me.”

“Oh, they will hang you, I promise,” said Bell.

“Your question will hang with me.”

Isaac Bell realized that if somehow the assassin were to stop killing and commit no more crimes, then he could spend the rest of his life wondering and never truly knowing which of them was the woman she seemed to be and which had been a murderer. But why would she ever stop? How many more would die before he caught her?

He was struck suddenly by a terrible insight. He saw a way, a way as cruel as it would be effective, to force Bill Matters to confess.

“There is no question you will hang, Bill.”

“I don’t care.”

“The only question is, will the girl who hangs beside you be the right one?”

“What do you mean?” asked Matters. But Bell saw that he knew exactly what he meant. The blood had drained from his face. His jaw was rigid. His hands were shaking so hard, they rattled the cuffs.

“The only truth you’ve ever told is that you love both your daughters.”

“I do. I do.”

“Your assassin covered her tracks so cleverly that she could be either of them. Either Edna. Or Nellie. But justice must be done.”

“Hanging the wrong one won’t be justice.”

“Sadly, justice makes mistakes. In this case, the better liar — the natural — will go free.”

40

Grim-faced Van Dorns in dark coats and derbies flanked Isaac Bell as he strode the grassy field across the road from the Sleepy Hollow Roadhouse. The ancient tavern was still surrounded by mud. The hayfield was a verdant, boot-pounded carpet under a multicolored fleet of gas balloons in various stages of inflation.

Nellie Matters’ yellow balloon was the tallest, its bulbous top rising higher than the trees at the edge of the Pocantico estate. It was fully inflated, and she was ready to soar under a gigantic billboard for equal enfranchisement.

To VOTES FOR WOMEN she had added NELLIE MATTERS’ NEW WOMAN’S FLYOVER almost as if to ask When you get the vote, will you vote for Nellie?

Other balloons were almost filled or half-filled, hanging odd rumpled shapes in the still air. The suffragists who had brought them had added the names of their states to VOTES FOR WOMEN and phrases aimed at Rockefeller in hopes of persuading the Standard Oil titan to put his influence behind their push to amend the Constitution to give women the right to vote.

Newspapermen and — women wandered among them, invited under the rope that held at bay the public, for whom a tiered fairground grandstand was provided. Typewriters pounded away on picnic tables in an open tent. Photographers swarmed, lugging glass-plate cameras on tripods and waving smaller Kodak instruments that allowed snaps on the run.

Bell spotted Edna Matters darting about in a white cotton dress and made a beeline for her. She had perched a New York Sun press card at a jaunty angle in the hatband of her straw boater and was jotting notes in a pocket diary. Seen from behind, the wisps of chestnut hair trailing her graceful neck could have belonged to a boy until she turned toward him and a smile lit her beautiful face.

“Hello, Isaac! What a day Nellie’s made! Everyone came. Even the dread Amanda, in a scarlet balloon.”

Bell took her arm. Edna saw the Van Dorns. “Hello, Mack, Wally. Lovely to see you again. You’re just in time. They’re about to soar. Nellie’s going first, then the rest will follow.”

Bell said, “The boys will escort you to New York.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I am terribly, terribly sorry, Edna, but we have your father at our office.”

“Is he—”

“A doctor’s patched him up. He’s all right. I will hold off turning him over to the police until you have a moment with him.”

“I better get Nellie.”

“I’ll get Nellie.”

He saw Nellie watch him coming.

She gave him a warm smile and a big wave, as if inviting him to join her.

It had been years since Bell’s one ride in a balloon, but he recognized the working parts from her exuberant stories: the ten-foot-diameter wicker basket of tightly woven rattan; her bank of “emergency gas” steel cylinders containing hydrogen under pressure that she could pipe into the narrow mouth of the envelope; the “load ring,” the strong circle that rimmed the mouth, holding the fabric open and anchoring the basket that hung from it; and the giant rope net that encased the towering gasbag.

The controls were simple: three levers on the edge of the basket were linked by wires to drop sand ballast to ascend or release gas to descend. The dragline to reduce weight and stop descent was coiled in the bottom of the basket. A fourth, red-handled lever was connected to the bank of cylinders of emergency gas.

Nellie was smiling in a shaft of sunlight that shined down through the fabric dome eighty feet overhead. She reminded Bell of a sea captain about to set sail — in command, confident, and alert. She stood with one hand inside her vest in the classic pose of Admiral Lord Nelson. Or Napoleon, he thought grimly. And he thought, too, that he had never seen her more beautiful. She had high color in her cheeks and excitement blazing in her eyes.

Bell vaulted into the basket. The bask ropes — the shrouds that suspended the basket from the load ring — were quivering, vibrating from the power of the gas straining to lift it.

“Hello, Achilles’ heel,” she greeted him cheerfully.

“What?”

“You’re my Achilles’ heel. Every time I try to shoot you, I miss.”

“If you want to be mythological, Nellie, say hello to your Nemesis.”

“Her, too. But if you weren’t my Achilles’ heel, you would be dead already. Somehow I could never bring myself to kill you.”

“Too late to change your mind,” said Bell.

Nellie drew her hand from her vest. Her pearl-handled derringer was already cocked. She aimed at Bell’s heart. “Don’t get close.”

“It’s over,” said Bell.

“Get out of the basket before I shoot you. You know I will.”

Bell moved toward her.

Nellie said, “I will pull the trigger this second if you do not sit on the floor. Now! You will die and it won’t change a thing and I’ll still get away.”

“How far do you think you’ll get in a balloon?”

“Last chance, Isaac. You’re bigger and stronger. I can’t let you close.”

He crossed his ankles and lowered himself into a cross-legged sitting position, poised to spring the instant she looked away. She loved to talk. It would not be hard to keep her talking.

“The wind is dead calm,” he said, “you’ll go straight up. When the gas dissipates, you’ll come down within a couple of miles from here.”

“I will go higher and higher until I find the wind. The troposphere. The stratosphere. The exosphere! As high as I have to to catch the wind.”

“You can’t breathe up there. You’ll die.”

“The wind always swings west. My body will be blown out to sea.”

“Do you want to die?”

“How would you like to die in prison or hang, Isaac? Tell me.”

“First tell me something.”

“Anything, Isaac.” She actually seemed on the edge of laughing. “What can I tell you?”

“Whose idea was it to kill for your father? His? Or yours?”

“I volunteered.”

Bell shook his head. He had tried to convince himself that her father had somehow coerced her. “Why did he accept? His own daughter?”

“He knew I could deliver. He’d seen me in action.”

“When you murdered your brother?”

“Stop asking silly questions, Isaac. Ask something important.”

“How did you learn to shoot?”

Nellie answered as if telling a story she had read in a book. “I ran away from home when I was fourteen. Like you. I joined a circus. Like you.”

“Your father told me the same story. The sheriff drove off his mother’s pigs and cows. What’s your excuse?”

She ignored the question. “By the time Father found me, the trick shootist had taught me everything she knew. I had a talent for guns — steady hands and a keen eye. I can see farther than any human being. And I can concentrate; most people can’t.”

“A natural?”

“As natural as breathing.”

“And lashing out to banish fear?”

“I’m never afraid,” said Nellie. “By the way, I see you gathering your legs to jump… Don’t!”

Bell made a show of relaxing his legs. “Is that your rifle in the bag?”

“I’m at my absolute best with the rifle.”

“Loaded with explosive bullets?”

“Stop showing off, Isaac. Everyone knows you’re a crack detective.”

“Who’s it for?”

“Who do you think it’s for?”

“Rockefeller.”

“For what he has done to my father, John D. Rockefeller will pay with much, much more than his life.”

“What could be more than life, Nellie?”

“What Rockefeller loves most. Do you have any other questions, Isaac?”

He had to keep her talking. “A young soldier was commended by the President of the United States for winning the highest shooting metal in the nation. Why would he desert the Army?”

“She saw no future in the Army.”

“There is a long, brave history of women serving their country disguised as men.”

Suddenly she was bitter, her cheeks taut, her voice harsh. “I had no choice. How else could a girl win the President’s Medal? I knew I was the best shot, better than any man. How else could I prove it?”

“But how hard it must have been fooling men in their barracks. How did you do it, Nellie?”

She was all too ready to boast and the bitterness dissolved. But she never took her eyes from him. Nor did her derringer waver as she demonstrated planting her legs apart, lowering her voice to mock him and the people she fooled: “Manly tones; theater tricks like skullcap and wig, trousers, boots. A detective must know that men believe what they assume is true.”

“But why did this young sharpshooter desert?”

“She won the medal. Why stay? It was time to move on. I always move on.”

“Or was she afraid they would find her out? Just as she feared she would be found out when her brother was murdered and she joined the Army disguised as a boy?”

“She was never afraid.”

“After she learned that her father loved her so much, he would forgive her of anything…?”

“Or refuse to believe his worst fear,” Nellie replied coldly. “Even when he saw it with his own eyes, all he could say was how much he loved my mother.”

The derringer remained rock-steady as she hiked herself up to sit on the rounded edge of the wicker basket while clutching her carpetbag under her arm. “Billy was only Father’s stepson.”

“And your half brother, your own mother’s child.”

“I never knew my ‘own mother.’ She died when I was a baby.”

“But why did you kill Billy?”

Nellie’s eyes bored into Bell’s. “Lots of reasons, Isaac. He was such a coward. I was trying to get rid of his silly drowning fear. I made the mistake of confiding in him. I told him I was running away to join the Army… I loved him, Isaac. I loved him very much. But he would have ruined everything if he told. And I couldn’t stand him being afraid.”

“How did you kill him?” Bell kept waiting for her to look away, but her eyes were fixed on his.

Suddenly the women in the nearest balloon called, “Nellie! We’re almost ready.”

She waved to them, the gun tucked to her side, neither turning her head nor taking her eyes from Bell.

“How could a girl drown a boy as big as she? Didn’t he fight back?”

“He was groggy.”

“You poisoned him.”

“I didn’t poison him,” Nellie said indignantly, “I gave him a little chloral hydrate.”

“Chloral hydrate? That’s knockout drops.”

“Just to calm him down. Not poison.”

“Calm him to kill him?”

“I was helping him beat his fear. I knew if he swam once, he could swim forever. But it didn’t work. He was a hopeless coward.”

“Did he pass out? Is that how he drowned?”

“Aren’t you listening, Isaac? He was groggy. He didn’t pass out.”

“You drowned him.”

“He was a hopeless coward.”

“You drowned him.”

“Let’s just say the chloral hydrate created an opportunity.”

“Was that how you drugged the old man who fell from the Washington Monument? Slipped him knockout drops?”

“Chloroform.”

“What did you feed Comstock?”

“Arsenic.”

“Where did you learn—?”

“I worked as a pharmacist once. I’ve done lots of things, Isaac. I love different things. I was an actress for a bit. Every time I ran away, I found a fascinating job. I went back to the circus and became an acrobat. For a while. I was a medical student, one of the first girls at Johns Hopkins. I didn’t stay long.”

“Long enough to know your poisons.”

“And anatomy,” she smiled, reaching to touch the back of her neck.

Bell’s hat flew from his head. Before it touched his shoulder his derringer filled his right hand, the barrel aimed at her face. He saw shock in Nellie’s eyes but no fear even though she knew he would fire before she could. Still, she was lightning fast.

There was a part of Isaac Bell, the part that beat deepest in his soul, that held innocents sacred. Until this moment, that part could never have imagined triggering a gun at a woman. He knew full well that Nellie Matters was no innocent but a cold-blooded murderer trying to kill him. He pulled the trigger. He was not entirely surprised when his bullet missed her head by a full inch and broke a control wire that parted with a musical twang.

The close call caused Nellie to flinch and her shot whizzed past Bell’s ear.

For a microsecond that stretched like an eternity, they stared at each other. His gun was empty. Her two-shot had one bullet left. He gathered himself to charge, reasoning that a wild shot would more likely wound than kill him. Nellie aimed the derringer directly at his face. Then she gave him a big “Nellie smile.”

“I guess you missed because Van Dorn detectives bring their suspects in alive? Or are you just a lousy shot?”

“You missed, too,” said Bell. “Again. So if you can’t shoot me and I’m not about to swallow poison for you, how will you stop me from taking that gun away from you?”

“Gas!”

She jerked the red emergency lever and held tight. The tanks spewed their compressed loads of hydrogen. The gas roared up the mouth of the already full envelope and the balloon lurched like a rogue elephant breaking its chains. Then Nellie pulled the ballast lever, releasing the total weight of the sand all at once, and somersaulted backward to the grass.

Isaac Bell sprang to his feet. Halfway out of the basket, he saw the ground vanish beneath him as if he were suddenly peering down the wrong end of a telescope.

The balloon was fifty feet in the air, five stories high, too high to jump, and soaring toward the clouds.