The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

“What are you talking about?” the detective blustered. “How dare you assault a man of the cloth.”

The train was rolling, the side of a coach brushing Bell’s shoulder. “Tell the thin man in the frock coat and his fat friend in the derby next time they follow me, I’ll punch both their noses.”

Bell ran to catch up with the Royal Blue.

“And that goes double for the clergy.”

—

Voices were raised when Isaac Bell walked into the club car looking for a well-earned cocktail. The loudest belonged to a red-faced United States senator in a dark sack suit, a florid necktie of the type President Roosevelt was making popular, and a hawser-thick gold watch chain draped across his ample belly. He was hectoring the only woman in the car, Nellie Matters, who was wearing a white shirt, a broad belt around her slim waist, a straight skirt to her ankles, and a plain straw hat adorned with a red ribbon.

Bell ordered a Manhattan and asked the perspiring bartender, “What is going on?”

“The suffragette started it.”

“Suffragist,” Bell corrected. “Seems to be enjoying herself.” Her eyes were bright, and she had dots of high color in her cheeks. Bell thought he had never seen her quite so pretty before.

“They were debating enfranchisement, hammer and tongs, before we even got rolling.” The bartender filled his glass. “We don’t often see a lady in the club car, it being a bastion, shall we say, of ‘manliness.’”

“The gents appear willing to make an exception for a looker.”

“But the senator prefers an audience to a looker.”

“Yet another reason not to trust a man who enters politics,” said Isaac Bell.

The senator loosed a blast of indignation. “I read in the newspapers, Miss Matters, you intended to fly your balloon over the Capitol and drop torpedoes on the Congress! And would have dropped them if the wind had 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.”