“I know I’m not supposed to admit this, but I read that one, too. Finished it.”
Theatrically, she lowered her head gazing up at Henson. “Oh, my.”
“You’re making progress on this one, though.”
“I read each story twice, thinking about it hard in between,” she said. “I’m surprised you made it by today.”
“Yeah?”
“Matt, you do know your exploits of earlier today are all the talk, don’t you?”
“Oh, that.”
“Now I know you aren’t as aw shucks as you pretend to be.”
“You see right through me, huh?”
She straightened a stack of sheet music. “A girlfriend of mine is having a rent party tomorrow night. I might need some bodyguarding what with reds, labor agitators and wild-eyed poets falling through.”
“Happy to earn my keep, Miss Stevenson.”
They smiled at each other over the counter. Henson noted an unusual-looking object with wires attached on the shelf in the glass counter. “What is that?’ he asked, pointing. “Looks like a little motor of some kind.”
She took the object out. “It’s a timer device I’ve been working on. The idea being it would turn on a light in the shop afterhours to discourage a burglar.”
“You’re full of surprises.”
“My mom’s side of the family were friends with Garrett A. Morgan. He was self-taught, inventor of the gas mask and the traffic signal.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Henson said.
“When other little girls were playing with dolls and shucking peas, ‘Uncle’ Morgan taught me how to take an electric drill motor apart and put it back together. I got hooked on tinkering.”
“Wow,” he said, impressed.
Stevenson cocked her head, looking past him. He followed her gaze to the door which opened again, bell jangling. Two men in suits and ties stood in the doorway. A silver and grey Duesenberg which made no more sound than a sewing machine idled at the curb.
“Queenie wants to see you, Mr. Henson.” This one had the carriage of a middleweight, boxy shoulders and a crook in his nose from it being broken at some point. He enunciation was that of an English teacher.
When Queenie St. Clair sent her men for you, it was a request you were meant not to turn down, Henson observed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After telling Destiny Stevenson he’d call her later to check in, the three men rode in silence to the E-shaped, thirteen-story, red-brick building on Edgecombe Avenue in Sugar Hill. This was where Queenie St. Clair maintained a penthouse. Walking through the lobby, Henson spotted two doormen in long dark tunics, and he had no doubt that underneath their attire were weapons in easy-to-draw rigs. The other man who’d brought him over rode up in the elevator with him. This one had uneven features, a thin mustache and eyes slightly too close together.
The elevator doors hissed open, and Henson found himself in a foyer of deeply-veined marble and jade. Against the wall opposite was a table of Rococo design, and upon that, a bust of Hannibal of Carthage.
“To the left,” the man said. He rode back down in the elevator.
Henson heard a voice as he entered a converted office where there was a blend of more Rococo furnishings, complimented with Art Deco touches like the sleek chrome and grey desk the policy queen sat behind talking on an Eiffel Tower phone. The Martinique native was speaking French into the handset and was leaning back in her banker’s chair. She looked at Henson to acknowledge his presence as he walked across a plush Assyrian-patterned carpet. Behind St. Clair, a window offered a view across Harlem River Drive and the river, as well as a portion of the Bronx.
Sitting in a plush chair before her desk, Henson amused himself wondering if she ever dragged out a telescope to spy on Dutch Schultz.
A pretty tan woman in a man’s suit appeared near him. “Coffee, tea, or something stronger, Mr. Henson?”
“Coffee would be fine.”
“One lump or two?”
“Black.”
She dipped her head slightly and left. St. Clair continued on the phone, occasionally using English, but not more than a word or two at a time. The younger woman reappeared carrying a china cup and saucer and placed this on the desk before Henson. She went away again, her form swallowed into the soft gloom of a nearby hallway. St. Clair hung up, rising to greet her visitor.
“Mr. Henson, we meet again.” In her accent, she pronounced his name “Hin-Son”.
He stood, leaning forward to shake her extended hand. She was a good-sized woman, handsome and clear-eyed. “Good to see you again, too.” Their paths had crossed a few times in the past, but this was the first time he’d been summoned to her headquarters.
“I’m going to have a little tiger’s milk,” she said, traipsing over to a cart with bottles of liquor and mixers on it. She poured herself a sizeable dose of scotch and came back to her desk and sat down.
“I understand you had a run in with a couple of Dutch’s boys.”
“I did.”
“Having to do with that fine brown gal, Daddy’s daughter.”
She already knew all this but he replied, “Yes.”
St. Clair put her drink down. “I hear you got word where Schultz’s men were holed up from one of my runners.”
“That’s right.” Toliver had told him Dutch Schultz had taken his daughter. Henson knew St. Clair made sure anybody in her employ would eyeball Schultz’s men trying to poach on her territory here in Harlem.
“And you knew once they told you, they had to tell me.”
“Of course.”
“Now you’re guarding her.”
“Your silent partner is naturally concerned about the welfare of his child.” Was St. Clair miffed that Daddy Paradise hadn’t asked to have her men in on the rescue?
“And that’s all you signed on to do?”
“Miss St. Clair, if there’s—”
“Queenie will do.”
“What do you want to know, Queenie?”
She made a face. “Just want to make sure my associates are getting what they pay for.”
Henson tried his coffee. It was tepid. “You think I’m up to some kind of double cross?”
“No, no,” she said. “But you know this Henrik Ellsmere, don’t you? He’d been with you on one of your expeditions. The one where you brought back that big piece of rock and sold it to the Natural History Museum. But the excursion took its toll on him, didn’t it? All that cold and ice and bleakness. He had some sort of breakdown, yeah?”
“He did. He’s better now. How do you know about that?”
“My little Venus is quite the reader and retainer of facts. Comes in handy when you don’t want to write certain things down.”
Henson assumed Venus had been the woman in the man’s suit. “What’s your interest in Henrik?”
She gestured. “Less than two days after you fabulously rescued the girl, there’s a shootout involving you that’s got everyone’s tongue wagging in Harlem. Knowing you were engaged by Charles, I was curious as to who this white man you were seen with could be. Though our people don’t own much in the way of property uptown, we nonetheless stake claim to this territory as ours, by virtue of the bend of our backs and force of our culture, n'est-ce pas?”
“And you think Henrik tells me what to do?”
“It was said you were deferential to him.”
“Like I was with Peary?” He meant to sound sarcastic, not bitter.
She held up her hands.
“Henrik is my friend. I’m especially protective if I’m trying to avoid them getting hurt at my expense. Were those Schultz’s men in the masks?”
“He is not a man given to whimsy.”
“But you have an idea who they worked for?”
She sipped her drink. “What can I say?”
“I’d be curious as to your guess.”
She smiled enigmatically. “I wouldn’t want t
o speak out of turn. Was it just an old adversary looking to settle a score with you, or was it also about taking the professor?”
“Now I’m the one who has to demur.” He wasn’t about to let on she knew more about what was going on than he did.
She chuckled. “Very good, then.” St. Clair rocked back in her chair.
He took his last sip of the coffee and stood up. “Thanks for the java.”
“My man can take you back.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Yes, you will.”
After Henson left, Venus Melenaux, came back in. “What do you think, Queenie?” She sat on St. Clair’s side of the desk, raking out a Gauloises cigarette and placing it in an ivory cigarette holder. She did so with a surgeon’s precision.
“I think we need to determine who hasn’t been dealing square with us, chérie. Better get our Irish friend on the blower.”
“Sounds right.”
“Certainement.” The rackets’ boss looked up at the younger woman, who lit St. Clair’s cigarette, took it from her fingers and, after taking a puff a puff, handed it back. Their eyes lingered for several more moments then Melenaux moved away, withdrawing her hand from where it rested on the other woman’s shoulder.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The following morning Henson got over to the Beaumont where Henrik Ellsmere had been staying. His lawyer Ira Kunsler had asked around, given he knew from Henson that Ellsmere had been staying on the lower east side, and what with his German accent, his previous location hadn’t been too hard to pinpoint. Two dollars passed from Henson to the desk clerk told him the room number.
“You won’t need no key,” the haggard-looking man said. “It’s already been broken into.”
“Yesterday?” Henson said.
“Yeah, locksmith’s coming sometime today.”
“The cops?”
Shrugging he replied, “Big shouldered gees like you.”
Upstairs, Henson entered the obviously searched room, the door hung lopsided on hinges kicked loose from the frame. He stood just past the threshold for a moment, taking in what little there was to see. The drawers of the chesterfield had been pulled out and dumped, containing a few items of Ellsmere’s clothing. The lone chair and table had been upturned, and the shades pulled off their rollers in case the professor had hidden anything that way. If there had been of value here, it had been taken. But the condition of the room lent credence to what Kunsler had speculated, that Ellsmere was now in the hands of the government. But the authorities were not the ones who’d held him at the mansion in Poughkeepsie.
Henson hadn’t come here to look for what Ellsmere was working on —he knew what, in a general sense. What he wanted to know was who’d had him and sent masked hoods to get him back. That meant he had to backtrack to identify his quarry. Securing the door as best he could from nosy passersby, Henson went down on all fours, probing the lower quadrants like a sled dog out on the trail. He went about like that, not self-conscious at all. Behind the chesterfield which had been pulled away from the wall, below the window, then over to a far corner. He didn’t turn up anything. Back over by the bed frame, the mattress having been tossed aside, he noticed the rear leg seemed slightly higher than the others.
Henson got up and, turning the frame over, saw that the tubular end of the leg could be pulled free and he did so. He then lifted the entire frame and shook it. Nothing. He assembled the leg again and put the bed back down. Mouth twisted in concentration, Henson took a last circuit around the room. He paused, then went back to the chesterfield. Several coins were on the top, some atop the others. He lifted what looked like a quarter off the other coins. It was silver—only it wasn’t money. The disk was larger than a half dollar, but could easily be overlooked among the other coins if you weren’t paying close attention. It was an emblem of some sort. On it was stamped a futuristic-looking cityscape and the words “Weldon Institute” arching above the image. Back and front were identical.
Whistling a sea shanty, Henson quit the room carrying the item in his pocket. Back outside, he made a call to his lawyer but got no answer. Thereafter Henson made several more inquiries by phone or in person. He stopped at a florist to have flowers delivered to May Maynard as a way to say thanks, then made a trip to a brownstone on the upper west side.
“Help is addressed at the side door,” the butler sniffed after answering Henson’s knock.
“Tell Lacy it’s Matt.”
The butler, a sallow-faced reedy white man of maybe sixty glared at this upstart negro. “Be gone with you.” He started to close the door.
Henson stiff armed the door. “You best tell Miss DeHavilin I’m here or it’ll be your hide. You know how she tolerates us dusky bohemians.” He laughed heartily.
Unsure of what to do, but recognizing the accuracy of what Henson had said, the butler relented. “Remain where you are.” He closed the door, footsteps retreating through the foyer. Soon, through the frosted glass of the front door, Henson noted a shadow approaching. The door was flung open.
“Matt, darling,” Lacy DeHavilin said, a toothy smile on her face. She was a fifty-plus zaftig white woman who dressed in swirls of scarfs, shawls and bursts of color. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him tight.
“Come in, come in.” She pulled him in. The butler stood to one side, stone-faced yet somehow managing to suggest a sneer.
“Bring us some refreshments, Solworth. Some of that chicken with asparagus and dill from last night will be fine. You like it cold, right, Matt?”
“Sure,” he said.
“And white wine, of course.”
“Of course, madam,” Solworth said.
“We’ll take it in the study.” She led the way, taking Henson by the hand.
The two walked deeper into the house, original paintings by Jacob Lawrence elbowing for space next to a Pablo Picasso, these over sculptures by up and comers like Augusta Savage and collections of surrealistic works. In her study, one wall was filled with first editions and another wall was adorned with various totems and symbols of the occult. They sat on the couch, DeHavilin tucking a leg under.
“Matt, you’ve stayed away too long, you must bring me up to date on your activities. I was just at a meeting of the editorial board of Opportunity the other night and damned if your name didn’t come up.” Opportunity Magazine was published by the Urban League.
“I’ve been meaning to get back in touch, Lacy.”
“Liar,” she said, “but I forgive you.”
The door opened, and the butler wheeled in cold roasted chicken, red potatoes—also unheated—and drinks. He looked at neither Henson nor his employer as he served portions on their plates and left. They ate, plates on their laps. She nibbled, and Henson, hungrier than he realized, ate with vigor.
“But I know you too well, Mr. Henson. You didn’t simply drop by to renew old acquaintances.”
“I’m afraid you got me, Lacy.”
“We’ll see.”
“I might be wading into the thickets on something and came to find out what you know about the Weldon Institute. Word is you were invited to one of their soirées a few months ago.” He munched heartily on his food.
DeHavilin was filing her empty wine glass. “In a nutshell, it’s a utopian enterprise run by Hugo Renwick.” She paused. “No, I’m being too dismissive. Hugo is more grounded than that, though he did back a project called Llano del Rio in the California desert several years ago. It was an attempt at a socialist commune that, sadly, didn’t succeed.”
“I know that name,” he said. “Renwick was one of the backers of a Fred Cook expedition.”
“You hold a grudge?”
“No,” he said. “But is he a kind of socialist, like Asa?” He referred to their mutual friend A. Philip Randolph, the radical head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The largest black labor union in the country.
“Oh, I think your gorgeous self makes you the most dan
gerous negro in America. Or at least, in my boudoir when I can get you in it.”
“You can’t tell, I’m blushing.”
Smiling, she continued. “Hugo’s a capitalist, but one with vision, a futurist to borrow that term from the painters. Our version of a Fabianist I suppose.”
“He wants to better our country for all.”
“Technology being the tip of the spear to accomplish that,” DeHavilin added.
She sat back holding her glass, taking him in. “Among other things, he employs an old friend of yours, Bessie Coleman.”
“Doing what?”
“Apparently test flying some sort of science plane of his.”
“He has real money, then.”
“Indeed he does. Steel, tires, and construction. And he has a degree in engineering.”
“What else do you know about his institute?”
She drank him in deep. “You’ll have to force that out of me.”
“Lacy…”
“Matt…” She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss and got up.
DeHavilin went to an assortment of records in a free-standing walnut cabinet that housed her gramophone. She selected a 78 platter, removed it from its sleeve and placed the record on the turntable after powering up the machine. She deftly set the needle in place, a minimum of hisses and pops accompanying the revolving disk as the music played. He expected to hear a swing jazz tune as such was a favorite of hers. But rather than an up-tempo blast from a clarinet, he heard chimes, cymbals, an organ and, coming in and out, an instrument he couldn’t identify.
“What is that?” Henson said. “It sounds like electric wind.”
“The inventor named it after himself, a thereminophone by Leon Theremin. Isn’t it simply transcendent?” DeHavilin sprayed some perfume on from an atomizer. “The organ player is an Indian gentleman named Chandra Mutrhraji, and you simply must accompany me when he comes back to town for a concert.” She walked to the study door and turned the lock. She closed the drapes and lit some candles and incense, humming a tune. Then without further preamble, DeHavilin began undressing.
Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem Page 7