The Assassin by Clive Cussler (epub ebook reader .txt) 📕

not blown your balloon the other way!”

“I made a terrible mistake,” said Nellie Matters, her clear voice carrying the length of the car.

“Mistake?”

“I forgot to read the weather report. A balloonist must always keep track of which way the wind blows.”

“Good lord, woman, you admit you intended to bomb Congress?”

“Nonsense!” Nellie’s eyes flashed. She tossed her head, and every man in the club car leaned in to hear her answer. “I would never harm a soul—not even a senator.” She turned and opened her arms wide as if to take everyone in the car into her confidence. “My only purpose in soaring over the Congress was to expose the members for the idiots they are.”

That drew chuckles and catcalls.

Isaac Bell raised his voice in a strong baritone: “How could flying your balloon over senators and congressmen do that?”

Nellie flashed him a smile that said Hello, Mr. Bell, thanks for setting up my next line: “My balloon soars on gas or hot air. I had no fear of running out of either in their vicinity.”

The car erupted in laughter. Business men pounded their palms pink. Salesmen slapped their thighs. From every direction, dyed-in-the-wool anti-woman-voters vied to buy her a glass of wine.

“No thank you! I don’t drink.” She cast Bell a glance that clearly said Except, of course, when dining on jackrabbit in Texas. “But, gentlemen, in lieu of your glasses of wine, I will accept contributions to the New Woman’s Flyover.”

“New Woman’s Flyover?”

“What’s that?”

“The New Woman’s Flyover is a stunt when a fleet of red, white, and blue balloons full of suffragists take to the sky to boom an amendment to the Constitution enfranchising women voters.”

“Never heard of it.”

“I just thought it up! And you gentlemen are going to make the first contributions, aren’t you?”

“Open your carpetbag, Miss Matters,” Isaac Bell called. “I’ll pass the hat.”

He whipped his hat off his head, deftly palmed the derringer holstered within, and walked the length of the club car like a deacon until it was brimful with contributions. Nellie opened her carpetbag wide. Bell poured the money in.

Nellie called, “Thank you, gentlemen! Every suffragist in the nation will thank you, and your wives will welcome you home warmly.”

“Another coincidental meeting?” Bell asked. “But no crime this time. At least none yet.”

“It’s no coincidence.”

“Then how do we happen to be on the same train?”

“I asked the clerk at the Willard Hotel for your forwarding address. The Yale Club of New York City.”

“Were you planning a trip to New York?”

“I decided to visit my father.”

“Spur-of-the-moment?”

“Whenever I like,” she smiled back.

Bell said, “I would like to meet your father.”

“How should I introduce you?” Nellie asked. “Father will not cotton to a private detective investigating his corporation.”

“I’m not on the commission case anymore.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a long story,” said Bell.

“We have time for a long story. It’s six hours to New York.”

“Let’s just say it won’t be an official visit,” Isaac Bell lied.

Only part a lie. The chance to observe Spike Hopewell’s former partner in his own home would be absolutely official, but it would not require much pretense to act the part of a man who desired to visit Bill Matters’ daughter. Either daughter.

“Why don’t you introduce me as a gentleman caller?”

“Father won’t believe you. He knows I am not the sort of woman who sits at home waiting for gentleman callers.”

“Then tell him I’m a man hoping for a ride in your balloon.”

“You can ride in my balloon anytime you’ll make a speech for women’s votes.”

“Actually, I rode in a balloon once, in the circus. Is that where you discovered balloons? In the circus?”

“I prefer theaters to circuses. They’re more fantastical.”

“I don’t agree. I ran away to a circus when I was a boy.”

“You must tell me about the circus sometime.”

“How about now?”

“Spur-of-the-moment?”

“Whatever you like.”

“I would like to eat dinner,” said Nellie Matters. “I’m hungry, and it’s my turn to take you.”

—

At Central Station, the twelve-year-old boys peddling the Washington Post Late Extra Edition were shrill as a flock of jays.

“Tourist falls from Washington Monument.”

“Extra! Extra! Tourist falls!”

Archie Abbott tossed pennies for the paper and ran to the horse cabs. Mr. Van Dorn had sent a wire care of the Danville, Virginia, stationmaster ordering him to report the instant his train pulled into Washington. Top hands like Isaac Bell took direct summons from the Boss for granted, but this was his first one ever.

“Willard Hotel. Fast as you can.”

Upon arrival, he dashed up the stairs into the Van Dorn offices.

“The Boss wired my train at Danville. Said to come right over.”

The front desk man spoke calmly into a voice tube. A blasé apprentice walked Archie into Joseph Van Dorn’s office. With his coat off and his sleeves rolled up his bulging forearms, Van Dorn, Archie thought, looked less the company proprietor than a prosperous bricklayer.

“Abbott, you’re a Princeton man.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve got something right up your alley.”

“How can I help, sir?”

Van Dorn nodded at the extra edition that Archie had tucked under his arm. “The ‘tourist’ who fell from the memorial shaft was not a tourist, and I don’t believe he fell. The papers don’t have it yet, but it was Clyde Lapham.”

“Standard Oil?”

“Rumor has it, he jumped. If he did, I want to know why. If he didn’t jump, I want to know who helped him out the window.”

“May I ask, sir, what makes you think he didn’t jump?”

“Our investigation has established that not one of the Standard Oil Gang has a guilty bone in his body. On the remote chance that one was ever stricken with remorse, it wouldn’t be Clyde Lapham. He had no doubt that making money was his divine right. Something’s fishy. That’s where you come in.”

“Yes, sir,” Archie said, wondering what it had to do with being a Princeton graduate.

“They won’t let our men near the monument. Were it a Navy facility, I would have no trouble gaining access. But I am not so well connected with the Army, and I’ve run head-on into a snob of a Colonel Dan Egan,