The Assassin

by Clive Cussler

  4

  A fifty-thousand-gallon river of gasoline surged through the hole Isaac Bell had ripped in the tank and spilled onto the ground. It flooded down the shallow slope that surrounded the tank and spread in a billowing torrent of rapids and whirlpools.

  “Run!” said Bell and led the way.

  That they were still alive meant he had prevented a catastrophic explosion. But there was no stopping the fire—not with globs of burning crude oil from the exploding oil tanks falling like brimstone. At least, he hoped, people had a chance to escape.

  The gasoline ignited within seconds. It burned fiercely, tumbling great rollers of flame across the prairie. The rollers poured into the gullies and filled them with fingers of fire that raced toward the distant creek and set it ablaze.

  Herding men ahead of it, plucking the fallen to their feet, Bell spotted Hopewell’s headquarters. It was a house he had converted into an office. What must have been its garden was now bracketed by a refinery furnace and a storage tank. Telegraph wires ran from it along the uprooted rail spur to the main line.

  Bell pushed in the front door.

  “Can you wire Washington?”

  The telegrapher gaped at the cliff of flame engulfing the tank next door and jumped out the window. Isaac Bell took over the key and rattled out a message to Van Dorn headquarters as fast as he could send Morse code:

  DISPATCH INVESTIGATORS HOPEWELL FIELD

  MURDER ARSON

  ON THE—

  The key went dead under his hand.

  He looked out the window. The telegraph poles that joined the Hopewell Field to the Western Union system along the main rail line were burning. The wires had melted. The last word never made it, but every detective in the Van Dorn outfit knew that urgent wires from Isaac Bell ended JUMP!

  —

  Valuable men arrived the next day on fast mail trains.

  The volatile gasoline and kerosene had burned off in the intervening twenty-four hours, but the fires still rampaged, feeding relentlessly on the heavy crude oil. Bell brought the first arrivals up to date on what little he had discovered while they were en route and marched them through the destruction.

  “I’m pretty much it for witnesses. Everyone was busy working before the explosion and running like the devil after. As for motive, the independents blame Standard Oil for the shooting and burning.”

  “Anyone offering proof of a connection?”

  “I ran into Big Pete Straub in Kansas City, and there are rumors ‘someone’ saw him yesterday in Fort Scott. The man whose hair I parted with my Winchester fit the ‘big’ part, but I never saw his face.”

  The tall detective was hollow-cheeked and hoarse, having not slept since the killing and the fire. His eyes glittered an angry blue in a face black with soot. Quick thinking and decisive action had saved lives. No one had died after Spike Hopewell. But the fire would bankrupt Spike’s friends, the independents.

  Damage ranged over both the field and the refinery. The heat had been so intense that it melted the stationary engines that powered the drills and twisted steel pipes. Wooden derricks and pump houses had burned to ash. Wells were ruined, with their casing falling into the bores. Of one hundred wells being drilled or already pumping, only a handful had survived with both derrick and pump house intact.

  Van Dorn explosives expert Wally Kisley, who dressed like a traveling salesman in a three-piece checkerboard suit, gave a connoisseur’s whistle of appreciation. “You just can’t beat a refinery fire for utter mayhem.”

  Redheaded Archie Abbott, a socially prominent New Yorker, a master of disguise, and Bell’s best friend, was not at all appreciative and in a foul mood. “I was impersonating a London-based jewel fence in Chicago and was one bloody inch from nailing Laurence Rosania when the Boss pulled me off the case.”

  “This is a thousand times more important,” said Bell, “than a gentleman safe cracker robbing Chicago tycoons’ wives and mistresses. That Mr. Van Dorn pulled you off the case ought to give you a clue how crucial the Corporations Commission’s contract is to the agency.”

  “We’ve got to catch Rosania before he accidentally blows someone’s house up along with his safe.”

  “I let old Hopewell down,” Bell cut him off coldly. “I will not rest until his killer hangs.”

  “You weren’t on a bodyguard job,” said Archie.

  Bell stepped closer with a glacial stare.

  Wally Kisley, their elder by many years, reckoned that Archie Abbott was stretching the limits of a friendship that had started in a collegiate boxing ring. He signaled Archie to shut his trap before it turned into a rematch and spoke before the fool made it worse.

  “Ready when you are, Isaac.”

  Bell said, “First question: Did the same criminals do the shooting and set the fires?

  “Archie, I want witnesses. Someone must have seen the sniper either climb up that derrick or climb down. Carrying a rifle, maybe disguised as a tool. Someone must have seen his damned horse.

  “Wally, I want you to look for any sort of delayed detonation: clockworks or a slow fuse. It’s likely a team of men attacked, though a timing device would allow one man to first prime an explosive, then pick up his rifle. But crack marksmen are specialists. Would such a sniper also know how to rig a timing device?”

  “Any oil driller or refinery hand can turn firebug,” said Wally. “It’s the nature of refineries to explode. Lightning bolts blow them up regularly.”

  “I paced the distance from the derrick where I saw the killer to where Spike was shot. Nearly seven hundred yards. How many common arsonists could shoot so accurately at extreme range? Such marksmanship would take a top-notch sniper, not the sort to dirty his hands and risk capture setting fires. Snipers prefer to operate far removed.”

  “A delayed detonator can be far removed,” said Archie. “Time instead of distance.”

  “Witnesses,” said Bell. “Find witnesses.”

  Kisley interrupted whatever answer Archie was about to utter. “Fire’s cooling down. Isaac, can you point me toward the first tank to catch fire?”

  —

  Isaac Bell traced the rapid click-click-click of a typewriter to a wall tent pitched beside the burned-out ruins of Hope-Hell. It stood next to a buckboard wagon. The mule was out of its traces, grazing on a patch of grass that had escaped the fire. He rapped his knuckles on the tent pole.

  “E. M. Hock?”

  The typewriter kept going.

  Bell ducked his head to pass through the canvas flaps and was astonished to see a woman hunched over the portable machine. She was typing in such a deep state of concentration that he doubted she had any idea he was five feet behind her. She had silky chestnut hair cut so short that Bell could see the graceful line of the nape of her neck. A pale shirtwaist with a high neck snugged close to her long, elegant back.

  The tent contained a folding cot with a bedroll, a Kodak developing machine on the card table behind her, and a stack of typing paper. A straw hat was perched on the bedroll as if tossed there as she rushed to the typewriter. Bell read the top sheet of paper:

  SPECIAL TO THE OIL CITY DERRICK.

  NEW YORK PAPERS PLEASE COPY

  Hopewell Field,

  Kansas

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

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

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

  “I’m looking for E. M. Hock.”

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

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

  “What aroused your suspicion?”

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

  “Edna Matters.”

  “Why keep it secret?”

  “To derail expectations. Who are you?”

  “Isaac Bell. Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

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

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

  “We’re investigating for the Corporations Commission.”

  “Do you know anything about oil?”

  “I’m an expert.”

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

  “No, Miss Matters.”

  “Did you study chemical engineering?”

  “No.”

  “Then how’d you become an expert?”

  “I read your articles.”

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

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

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

  “Thank you.”

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

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

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

  —

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

  “He’s my father.”

  “Would that explain your sympathy for the independents?”

  “Sympathy. Not bias. I believe that the independent business man gives American enterprise spine. Independents are brave, bravery is the foundation of innovation, innovation breeds success. That said,” she added with a thin smile, “I have no doubt that the vast majority of independents given half the chance would be as hard-nosed as Mr. Rockefeller.”

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

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

  Isaac Bell grinned. “I look forward to discussing that ‘something’ when I’m finished investigating murder, arson, and corporate lawbreaking. In the meantime, may I ask, do I understand correctly that your father was in partnership with Spike Hopewell before he joined Standard Oil?”

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

  “Did they part on good terms?”

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

  Bell recalled Hopewell’s emotional telling of Matters’ son, this woman’s brother, running away, and said, “He did not. In fact, he spoke with some sympathy. How did they part?”

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

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

  Bell asked, “Have they spoken since?”

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

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

  “He will take it hard. Very hard.”

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

  “When he’s not traveling.”

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

  Edna ran after the dragline.

  A canvas sack like a bank’s money bag slid down it and landed at her feet.

  She waved it to the person looking down from the basket and hurried back to the tent, where she opened the bag and removed a sturdy buff-colored envelope. Inside was a tin cylinder of the type that contained Kodak roll film.

  “Is that camera film?”

  “My sister snapped an aerial photograph of the devastation.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Half sister. My real father died when I was a baby. My mother married my stepfather and they had Nellie.”

  She stepped inside the tent and emerged with binoculars. “I got the impression you like beautiful women, Mr. Bell. Have a look.”

  Bell focused on chestnut hair cut as short as Edna Matters’, a brilliant smile, and exuberant eyebrows. Edna’s fine features seemed magnified in Nellie’s face.

  “If you find her appealing, Mr. Bell, I recommend you leave her beauty and womanliness out of your conversational repertoire.”

  “Why?”

  “Read.”

  The yellow balloon had drifted on the light wind. Now that it was no longer directly overhead, Bell could read huge black letters on its side:

  VOTES FOR WOMEN

  “A suffragette?”

  “A suffragist,” Edna Matters corrected him.

  “What’s the distinction?”

  “A suffragette tries to convert men to the cause of enfranchisement.”

  “I heard Amanda Faire at Madison Square Garden,” said Bell, recalling a statuesque redhead who had enthralled her mostly male audience.

  “The fair Amanda is a shining example of a suffragette. A suffragist converts women. You’ll get further with Nellie if you understand that women will gain the right to vote when all women agree that enfranchisement is a simple matter of justice.”

  “What about the men?”

  “If they want their meals cooked, shirts ironed, and beds warmed, they will have no choice but to go along. Or so Nellie believes . . . And by the way, you’ll get nowhere if you ever mention Amanda Faire in her company.”

  “Rivals?”

  “Fire and ice.”

  Archie Abbott hurried up, shielding his eyes to inspect the balloon. “Get ready for a speech if that’s Nellie Matters.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “I heard her in Illinois last fall at a county fair. Two hundred feet in the air, she delivered a William Jennings Bryan stem-winder that had the ladies eyeing their husbands like candidates for a mass hanging.”

  “This is her sister,” said Bell, “E. M. Hock . . . May I present my good friend Archibald Angell Abbott IV?”

  The redheaded, blue-blooded Archie whisked his bowler off his head and beamed a smile famous in New York for quickening the heartbeats of New York heiresses and their social climbing mothers and arousing the suspicions of their newly wealthy fathers. “A pleasure, Miss Hock. And may I say that rumors I have heard among journalists that you are a woman are borne out splendidly.”

  Bell could not help but compare the chilly response when he uttered a similar compliment to the warm smile Archie received f
rom Edna.

  “How’d you happen to get here so quickly?” Archie asked her. “The fire is still smoldering.”

  “I was passing by on my way back from Indian Territory.”

  Archie stared at the buckboard. “In that?”

  “Reporting on ‘oil fever’ takes me places the trains don’t visit.”

  “I salute your enterprise and your bravery. Speaking of oil fever, Isaac—I’m sure you’ve heard this already, Miss Hock—the wildcatters are blaming Standard Oil for the fire.”

  “Did you interview any witnesses who presented evidence to support their contention?” asked Bell.

  “Mostly, like you said, they heard that somebody saw Straub, somewhere—that’s Big Pete Straub, Miss Hock, a Standard—”

  “Mr. Straub was just promoted to refinery police superintendent,” Edna interrupted.

  “Which means he travels anywhere he pleases,” said Bell. “Go on, Archie.”

  “I did find one guy who claimed to see Mr. Straub renting a horse in Fort Scott.”

  “Did he see the horse?”

  “Said it was tall as a Clydesdale.”

  “The one I saw was a mighty lean Clydesdale. Are your witnesses suggesting Standard Oil’s motive for setting the fire?”

  “One school of rumor says Standard Oil wants to shut down Kansas production to raise the price of oil by limiting the product reaching market.”

  Bell looked to see Edna’s reaction. She said, “The Standard is still heavily invested in the Pennsylvania and Indiana fields. They’re somewhat depleted, so the oil is more expensive to pump. The Standard will lose money if they don’t keep the price up.”

  “What else, Archie?”

  “Another rumor, a doozy, claims that Standard Oil is laying pipe lines straight through Kansas to tap richer fields in Oklahoma. After they connect those fields to their interstate pipe line, they’ll bypass Kansas oil completely and shut down Kansas production. Then when the producers are forced to the wall, the Standard will buy their leases cheap and lock the oil in the ground for the future. Their future.”

  Bell looked again to Edna Matters.

  The newspaperwoman laughed. “When you grow up with a father in the oil business, you learn that rumors about Standard Oil are always true. And JDR hears them first.”