The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

“No one but the messenger you sent to blackmail me,” said Matters.

“I didn’t tell him everything. Just enough to scare you to make you pay.”

“You did that all right.”

“Where is he?” she asked, eyes locked on the flame.

“Who? Your blackmail messenger? He died. After he told us where to find you.” Matters turned to the assassin, who was watching intently. “She believes me, and now I believe her.”

Mrs. McCloud’s entire body sagged with despair, and she whispered, “My son.”

“Ask her,” said the assassin, “how she traced me to you.”

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nbsp; Bill Matters said to Mrs. McCloud, “You heard the question. What made you think I was the one to blackmail?”

The widow suddenly looked twenty years older and had tears in her eyes. She whispered, “My son followed the old man to his office. He saw you together. He saw you meet every day in a tearoom. Like you had secrets away from the office.”

“Your son was a good guesser.” To the assassin he said, “I believe her. Do you?”

The assassin stepped closer and stared into Mrs. McCloud’s eyes.

“Say it again: No one else.”

“No one else. I swear it.”

“Do you believe her?” Matters asked again.

“I told you, I believe her.”

“All right.”

“But,” said the assassin, “she will never leave you in peace until she dies.”

Bill Matters pondered in silence. Suddenly he heard his own voice babbling foolishness. “What could she say? Who would believe her?”

The assassin said, “They will dig Comstock up and administer the Marsh test. What do you suppose they will find in his remains?”

Matters shook his head, though he knew of course.

“Poudre de succession! That is French, you poor man, for ‘inheritance powder,’ which is a euphemism for ‘arsenic.’ In other words, they will hang you for poisoning Averell Comstock.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” said Mrs. McCloud. “I promise.”

Bill Matters kept shaking his head. He could not abide the woman’s fear. Mary McCloud’s scornful contempt had underscored the deadly threat of blackmail. But her fear pried open his heart. He did not doubt that most men were his enemies. But not women. Twice widowed, father of daughters given to him by women he loved, he heard himself whisper a coward’s confession.

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

“That’s what you have me for,” said the assassin.

16

When Isaac Bell got back from Washington, D.C., he borrowed a Stanley Steamer from a good friend of Archie Abbott, a well-off New Yorker who, as Archie put it, “passed his days in a quiet, blameless, clubable way.” He drove north of Manhattan into Westchester, passing through Spuyten Duyvil, Yonkers, and Dobbs Ferry. The road, paved with concrete in some sections, asphalted in others, graveled here and there, and along a few stretches still dirt, passed country clubs, prosperous farms, and taverns catering to automobilists from the city. He arrived in North Tarrytown in a traffic jam of farm wagons, gasoline trucks, and autos all packed with workmen.

It was Election Day, the town constable explained. The wagons, trucks, and autos were ferrying three hundred of John D. Rockefeller’s estate gardeners, masons, road builders, laborers, and house servants to the North Tarrytown polls to vote for Rockefeller’s choices of trustees.

“Will he win?” Bell asked.