The Assassin

by Clive Cussler

  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 approach
ed. “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 tr
ain 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.”