The Striker by Clive Cussler (ebook reader web TXT) 📕

So I asked questions. Turns out, I was not the only man sweet on her.”

Clay was listening closely.

Bell said, “I’ll bet you boasted to her, hoping to impress her— She was the kind of girl a fellow would do most anything to impress. You did brag, didn’t you? Bragged how you had partnered up with the most powerful man in Wall Street.”

“I didn’t brag.”

“Maybe you got puddingheaded when she slipped you the knockout drops.”

“How do you know about that?”

“Give Van Dorns some credit. The pharmacist she bought the chloral from told me. You gave Mary Congdon’s name, didn’t you?”

“I must have.”

“You signed her death warrant.”

Clay looked at Congdon, who was slumped behind his desk. “Did you hurt her?”

Congdon said, “It’s a trick, you idiot.”

Clay looked to Bell. The color of Bell’s eyes had darkened to a steely blue. He directed them straight at the rogue detective. “We never give up,” he said softly. “You know that better than anybody. It was Mr. Van Dorn’s motto from the beginning, wasn’t it?”

Clay stared. Then he lowered his eyes and nodded agreement. “Yes, from the beginning.”

Isaac Bell said, “It took me ten years to trace her steps from Pittsburgh to New York, to Wall Street, to this building, to this office. You know your business, Clay, you know how it works. A word here, a hint there, a memory, a glimpse. It’s easier when it’s a pretty girl who struck the eye. Ticket agents. Train conductors. Landladies. A unionist finally out of prison. Bits. Pieces. Bits of nothing. Suddenly, you get lucky with a clerk who makes change for the El. Right around the corner. A hundred feet from this building. Then back to bits of nothing. Finally, a stroke of luck.”

Bell turned to Congdon.

“The brokerage house of Thibodeau & Marzen went bankrupt in the Panic of ’07. There were lawsuits by the dozen. Judge James Congdon’s name surfaced in court. Turned out you owned the broker. And thanks to an old detective who once told me that sometimes dead ends turn around, I had in my files a copy of a private wire transmitted on Thibodeau & Marzen’s leased telegraph line to Henry Clay’s alias, John Claggart.”

Bell turned back to Henry Clay. “But I still had no final absolute, provable connection. Until, one night, I got lucky again. An elevator runner, a temporary filling in that evening and who left town the day after, was all of a sudden back ten years later. His uncle was still the superintendent of the building. The nephew’s hopes hadn’t panned out. And his uncle gave him a job.”

Bell shifted his gaze to Congdon for a long moment, then back to Henry Clay.

“The lucky detective stopped by—as he had regularly—and this time found the new elevator runner and recognized him as the temporary who had been working that night ten years ago.

“‘Sure, I remember that girl. She was a looker. But, boy, did she look mad.’”

Bell’s voice thickened. “I asked, ‘When did you take her back down?’

“‘Didn’t,’ he said. ‘She never come down on my shift and I was on for darn near ten hours straight.’ And I asked again, ‘You ran her to what floor?’

“‘Top floor. Mr. Congdon’s own private floor.’

“‘Are you sure?’

“‘Sure I’m sure. Orders were, you had to call ahead to go to Mr. Congdon’s floor. I called ahead. Mr. Congdon said, “Bring her up.” I brought her up.’

“Mary Higgins died right here in this office. Right beside your boss’s statue.”

“It was self-defense!” Congdon shouted.

“What?” said Clay.

“She did not come here to ‘confront’ me. She came to kill me.”

Isaac Bell said, “I never doubted that Mary Higgins was a woman of the highest moral standard. You just confirmed it with your confession that you thought she intended to kill you.”

“I made no confession.”

“I just heard it from your own lips.”

“It’s your word against mine.”

“And his,” said Isaac Bell.

Henry Clay, who was listening stone-faced, asked James Congdon, “Did you kill Mary?”

Congdon pulled a pistol from his desk. Clay stared at it, his face lighting with recognition. “She told me she could never kill anyone. I believed her. I still do.”

“She changed her mind,” said Congdon. “A lady’s prerogative.”

“Where did you get that gun?”

“I’ll explain after we tend to Mr. Bell.”

“That’s a Colt Bisley. Mary took mine.”

Congdon heard the threat in Clay’s voice and whirled with his pistol.

Clay dove to the carpet with astounding speed, scooped up the gun he had dropped, and shot first, lacing two bullets into the old man’s chest. Congdon tumbled backwards, jerking his trigger as he fell. His bullet struck The Kiss, shattering the marble. Congdon’s eyes locked in mourning on the ruin.

Clay stood over him. “But how did you move Mary’s body to the steamboat in Pittsburgh?”

James Congdon answered with his dying breath.

“You weren’t the only ambitious fool who worked for me.”

Henry Clay’s shoulders sagged as Congdon’s had in his defeat. He shook his head in dismay. Then he turned to Isaac Bell. “You never gave up, and you got the man who killed Mary.”

“But Judge Congdon didn’t kill Terry Fein, Mike Flannery, young Captain Jennings, Black Jack Gleason, and countless others caught in your schemes. Henry Clay, you’re under arrest.”

Clay’s amber eyes were dead with defeat, but his pistol was rising with superhuman speed. Isaac Bell shot it out of his hand. It fell on Congdon’s chest. Clay gazed at it a moment, clutching his fingers. His empty gaze shifted to Bell’s derringer, and his eyes came alive.

“Looks like a .22,” he said. “And only one shot left. Do you think you can stop Henry Clay with one bullet?”

The door behind him banged opened and a big voice boomed, “Isaac could stop you with one shot between your murderous eyes. But I made him swear to me that I would get the first seven shots if you gave us the slightest excuse to pull the trigger.”

Henry Clay looked over his shoulder and down the barrel of Van Dorn’s Colt M1911 semiautomatic pistol and raised his hands.

“Pick up that telephone