by E. J. Blaine
“That we can,” Duke agreed. “We’ll catch up later. Mr. Edison wanted to see you the moment you arrive.”
They all went inside, and Duke knocked on the doors to the main parlor. Jack heard what sounded like a contentious meeting going on behind them. After a moment, Thomas Edison himself emerged, and Duke and Deadeye went in and closed the door.
“Let’s go across the hall,” said Edison. “I could use a break from in there. Nobody can agree on what to do.”
“What’s the crisis, sir?” Jack asked.
“Soon enough,” said Edison. “Soon enough. It’s good to have you back with us, Jack. Dorothy.” He led them into a side room and closed the door. Jack thought he looked tired, noticeably older than he had a year ago.
“Eamon Cobb died this afternoon,” said Edison.
Jack knew the name. “I’m sorry to hear it, sir,” he said.
“He was murdered,” Edison said. “Poisoned, they think, though no one’s identified the poison.”
Jack glanced over at Doc, and her expression told him all he needed to know. Poison was a sore subject with her.
“And he’s not the first,” Edison said. “There have been three other deaths while you were away. All important industrialists or financiers. And Eamon Cobb was a friend. God knows he could be a stubborn old bastard, but he helped AEGIS. His company made that foam steel that’s going into your airframe.”
“What do you want us to do, sir?” Jack asked.
“AEGIS can’t be a tool for my personal quests,” Edison said. He walked to the wall, lined with photographs of himself with famous and powerful men, the men who had helped him build AEGIS. “But these were friends of mine. And Dorothy, I know your expertise in rare poisons all too well. I want you to investigate this. I want to know who’s doing this, and I want them stopped.”
“We’re on it,” Doc said, her voice firm.
“It’s the right thing for AEGIS to do,” said Jack.
Edison turned to face them. “Thank you,” he said. “The Bureau of Investigation is handling this. They’re at the estate now. I pulled some strings, and they’ve agreed to brief you as a favor to me. You can use the Lincoln. Find out what you can, and take whatever action you feel is appropriate from there.”
“Understood, sir,” said Jack.
“As you can imagine, this has thrown a wrench into AEGIS business,” Edison added. “I should get back in there and keep everyone on course. But I want to know what you learn.”
Outside, they walked back down the drive toward the Lincoln.
“Are you sure about this?” Jack asked. He’d missed the excitement, but they had a daughter to think about now.
“Positive,” said Doc. Her voice was tight, but Jack heard her determination. “I’m sure I’m not the only one with a hunch about who we’ll find behind this.”
“Let’s keep an open mind,” Jack murmured. “See what the facts say.” But he knew what Doc was thinking because he’d thought it himself. And if that hunch turned out to be right, well, then they both had scores to settle.
Chapter 2
It was almost midnight by the time Jack and Doc made it back across the city again and out to Long Island, but the Cobb Estate was a bright beehive of activity. At the gates they identified themselves to a patrolman who called up to the house then passed them through and told them where to park. The place was packed with police cars, ambulances, and unmarked vans. Portable floodlights swept the ground as a long line of uniformed policemen moved slowly across the front lawn searching for evidence. Jack parked the Lincoln where he’d been told, and another officer was waiting to take them inside.
They followed him through the open doors and into a large room off the front hall. Gun cases and the mounted heads of wild game lined the walls. A group of men in suits and trench coats were clustered at the far end of the room. They stood beside a heavy mahogany billiards table and argued in hushed voices. They took no notice of the new arrivals.
“Agent Shelby,” the officer said after a few uncomfortable moments.
The men turned as one and stared in annoyance.
“Who’s this?” said one of them—Jack assumed he must be Agent Shelby.
“Edison’s people,” said the officer.
“Yeah, all right.” He sighed and gestured them over. “Come on, then.”
The others drifted off with a few incurious glances at Jack and Doc, and the cop followed them out. Clearly they weren’t wanted here. Jack could sympathize. These men had a job to do. In their place he could understand why they’d be annoyed to have a pair of civilians thrust on them to humor some distant bigwig. The best thing to do, he decided, was to be polite and helpful and not waste their time.
“Agent Shelby,” Jack said, offering him his hand. “Jack McGraw. This is Doctor Starr. Thanks for agreeing to see us.”
“Wasn’t my idea,” said Shelby. “Word came down to show you every courtesy. So here you are. And let me say that’s a really nice tie you’re wearing.”
Jack laughed it off. “We’re not here to get in your way,” he said. “We may be able to help. Doc here is an expert in rare poisons.”
“We also have some thoughts about who might have done this,” said Doc. “Can we see the body?”
“Coroner’s already got the body,” said Shelby. “And we know who did it.” He picked up a sheaf of papers from the billiards table. “Cobb’s company was having a dispute with the miners’ union in West Virginia,” he read. “There was an explosion a few months ago. Some miners were killed. Few more maimed. The labor unions have been up here raising hell ever since.”
“Is there evidence connecting that to Cobb’s death?” asked Doc.
“Looks pretty clear to me,” said Shelby. “Bunch of trade unionists up here, mixing with intellectual socialists. Probably being used as a front for International Communism.”
The way he said it, Jack could actually hear the capital letters.
“So he was poisoned by communists?” Jack said in disbelief. “How did they do that?”
“We’re working on that,” said Shelby. “Two possibilities. One, he was known to make himself a scotch on the rocks every day when he arrived home. His habit was to shut himself in his study with orders not to be disturbed until he finished his drink and came out. That’s where he died.”
“So they poisoned his scotch,” said Jack.
“Or the ice,” Doc added.
“Except the bottle was half empty,” said Shelby. “So it wasn’t poisoned somewhere else and sent in here. He’d drank plenty of shots from it already. That means whether it was the scotch or the ice, they would have had to get into his study to plant the poison, and there’s no evidence they did that. No signs of a break in, and the staff hasn’t seen any strange characters hanging around.”
“Well, that’s conclusive,” Jack muttered under his breath.
Shelby rolled on without noticing. “Second possibility. There was a scuffle outside Cobb’s office when he was leaving. He was hit by a thrown rock. Broke the skin. We’re thinking the poison was introduced that way. Coroner will tell us for sure.”
Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I just want to be sure I’ve got this. Your theory is that communists threw a poisoned rock at him?”
Shelby looked at him, his lips a tight line across his face.
“Not really their style, is it?” Jack added. “They’d lean more toward shooting him or blowing up his car in my experience.”
“We’re Federal agents, Mr. McGraw,” he said at last. “We know what we’re doing. This isn’t the first of these murders we’ve investigated.”
“Mr. Edison said this is the fourth?” Doc offered.
“That’s right,” said Shelby, keeping his glare on Jack. “And what they had in common was that all of them were major league businessmen. What does that tell you? Who’d want to kill America’s leading capitalists? Trade unionists and socialist agitators, that’s who.”
“May
I offer an alternative theory?” Doc said softly. Jack recognized that tone, and he knew what it meant when she started speaking so formally. He prepared to rein her in if she seemed about to get them both arrested.
“By all means,” said Shelby. “Educate me, Doctor.”
“The victims had something else in common,” Doc said. “They were supporters of an organization called the American Enterprise Group for International Security, or AEGIS. Thomas Edison formed it to protect America and promote world peace following the war. Henry Ford was a founding member, Harvey Firestone. So were the other victims, and so was Eamon Cobb.”
“Yeah, I’m sure these guys all go to the same parties,” Shelby offered.
Doc ignored him and went on. “AEGIS has enemies. Chief among them the Astrum Argentum, or Silver Star, a secret society founded by a British occultist named Aleister Crowley. The Silver Star has immense resources and an equally immense thirst for power. We’ve thwarted their plans on numerous occasions, and eliminating AEGIS is their first priority.”
Jack put a hand gently on her forearm.
“And while exotic poisons may not be a major weapon in the arsenal of the United Mine Workers, I can assure you, Agent Shelby,” Doc said, slowly and distinctly, “from direct personal experience, that they are very much part of the Silver Star’s.”
She fell silent and leveled a defiant glare.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Shelby said after a moment. “We’ll keep that in mind. Did you have any other questions?”
Doc started to say something, but Jack squeezed her arm and she let it drop.
“Can you tell us the time of death?” Jack asked.
Shelby flipped through his papers. “Cobb arrived home about half past four, went straight into the study, and shut the door. When he hadn’t come out by a quarter to six, the Butler knocked and let himself in. He found the body. So sometime between then.”
Jack nodded. “Thank you, Agent Shelby. We’ll get out of your way. If we have anything to offer, we’ll be in touch.”
“You do that,” said Shelby. “Have a nice night.” He slapped the sheaf of papers back down on the billiards table and walked out of the room. “Make sure these two make it back to their car okay,” he said to an officer in the doorway.
After the officer saw them outside, they walked back to the Lincoln.
“Bureau of Investigation,” Doc said in disgust. “What an idiot! You should have let me take him apart.”
“He’s the idiot in charge,” Jack observed. “We want anything out of them, we need to get him on our side.”
“I don’t want him on our side! He’s a liability!”
Jack shrugged. “It doesn’t exactly sound like they’re on the verge of a breakthrough,” he admitted. As long as Shelby and his agents remained obsessed with their communist agitators theory, he doubted they’d turn up anything useful.
“We need to call the Coroner’s office,” Doc said as Jack started up the Lincoln and headed back down the drive. “At least the autopsy should tell us something.”
###
The next morning Doc called the County Coroner, who proved eager to consult with someone with Doc’s experience with poisons.
They parked around the corner from the nondescript brick building and met an orderly who led them through the offices and downstairs where the morgue and the autopsy rooms were located.
“This is as far as we go,” the orderly said at the bottom of the stairs. A beige hallway stretched ahead of them with double doors on either side. But the hallway was blocked by an empty gurney with a hand-lettered sign that read “Danger, Keep Out.”
“What’s going on?” Jack asked.
“Doc Finley will take you back,” the orderly said. He shouted, “Doc! They’re here!” Then he retreated back up the stairs. Jack thought he’d never seen someone so eager to get out of a hallway.
A pair of doors on the far side of the gurney opened, and a figure stepped out into the hallway. It took Jack a moment to realize what he was looking at. The County Coroner looked like some medieval plague doctor in a floor-length rubber apron, rubber gloves, and a gas mask.
“Doctor Starr,” he said, his voice an eerie drone through the mask. “Glad you could come. Edwin Finley. Good to meet you.” He stopped at the other side of the gurney and took off the gas mask. Finley was a man of about forty, Jack estimated. He was stocky, his hair just starting to go gray at the temples. He looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep.
“Doctor Finley, what in the world’s going on?” Doc asked. “Is this that dangerous?”
“I have no idea,” said Finley. “So I’m not taking any chances. Whatever we’re dealing with…well, you wouldn’t want to get it on you. You’ll find aprons and masks on your right there. Suit up and I’ll show you what we’ve got. Got to warn you, it’s not pretty.”
As promised, they found more gas masks and protective gear in boxes in a small room across the hall. Jack and Doc quickly put them on and rejoined Finley. He led them into the autopsy room.
Jack’s peripheral vision was lost to the mask. It smelled of chemicals and felt hot and sticky against his skin. Men had worn these in the trenches while they waited, wondering if a gas attack would come, and whether the mask would really protect them if it did. It must have been torture.
The body was on a table in the center of the room, but it took Jack a moment to realize that. “Oh,” Doc said suddenly. “Oh, that’s horrible!”
The body of Eamon Cobb was a deep purple, almost black. His clothing had been removed, and he lay on his back. Jack saw long, deep cracks in his extremely swollen skin. He looked like something that had been cooked over a low fire. Jack had seen his share of horrible things, both in the war and elsewhere. Not much frightened him. But the thought of something that could do that to a man from the inside out…“A poison did this?” he asked.
“That’s what the government people tell me,” said Finley. “But I don’t know what to think. Apparently he went from perfectly healthy to this within about an hour at the outside. That’s no poison I ever heard of. Not that we deal with a lot of poisonings around here, accidental or otherwise. But if it’s not, honestly, I can’t even tell you why the man’s dead.”
“There’s no localized focus of damage?” Doc asked. “It had to be introduced to his body somewhere and then spread from there, right?”
“Heh,” Finley let out a breath. “Abdominal cavity looks like a bomb went off in there. Organs are practically melted.” He turned to a wheeled side table nearby and read from a notebook that lay there. “Massive, generalized tissue damage prevents identification of point of origin. Extreme metabolic acidosis with subsequent internal and external blistering.”
“Acid buildup in his tissues,” Doc translated for Jack. “That might explain some of the swelling, but not that much.”
“Look at his wrist,” Finley said. “Swelled around his watchband until his skin tore. We had to cut the watch off him. I’m assuming massive hyperthermia as well. Though I don’t have a reason for it.”
He flipped a page of the notebook. “It spread through the circulatory system. One of the few things I can still make out is hardening and discoloration of blood vessels, right down to the capillaries. But it had to be a lot faster than the speed of circulation.”
“So it wasn’t physically carried through the bloodstream to new parts of the body,” Doc mused. “It…it cascaded! It was a chemical process. That’s how it worked so quickly.”
“I don’t follow,” said Jack. He noted that Doctor Finley said nothing.
“Most poisons only harm tissue they come into direct contact with. That can still be fatal, of course. Cardiac agents shut down the heart. Muscle relaxants can paralyze the diaphragm and stop breathing. But those are secondary effects. The poison itself is very localized. Think about a snake bite. The damage is worst at the bite site, and it spreads slowly from there.”
“This didn’t work like that,” said Finley. “I mean
look at him. This wrecked his whole body, and it did it fast. So you’re saying it’s a chemical reaction. In the body itself?”
“It’s got to be.” Doc was getting into her subject, Jack saw. She was pacing back and forth as ideas spilled out of her. “That’s the only way it could happen so fast. It sets off something in the victim’s body and then that reaction spreads on its own. My god, a fatal dose could be microscopic! So what happens next? There would be an initial heat flush. Maybe nervous system convulsions.”
“Or maybe outright paralysis,” said Finley. “This much acid unleashed in his tissues, it had to hurt like hell. He should have been screaming bloody murder but nobody heard anything. So I’m thinking he couldn’t.”
They fell silent. Like him, Jack assumed, they couldn’t help imagining what a horrible death they were describing. Jack didn’t like to think that someone would deliberately do that to another human being. Unfortunately, he knew of people who were all too willing to use something that awful against innocent victims. He was more convinced than ever that they would find the Silver Star at the bottom of this.
It was Doctor Finley who finally spoke. “I don’t like to admit it, but I’m out of my depth here. I was really hoping you folks could help. Have you ever seen anything like this, Doctor Starr?”
“I’m sorry,” said Doc. “Believe me, I’d remember.”
“I bet,” said Finley. “I know I will.”
“Can we have a copy of your report, Doctor?” Doc asked.
“Of course. Though I don’t know that it’s going to do you much good. But I’m done here. Government wants me to box him up and ship him off to the Army Hospital in Washington. They can deal with him.”
They left the room behind and removed the protective gear. When they came upstairs to Finley’s office, they found him on the telephone. He waved for them to come in.
“Yes, sir, here they are now,” he said, “just a moment.”
He put his hand over the receiver and said excitedly. “It’s Thomas Edison! He wants to talk to you!”