The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

“I’ll cover him,” said Matters. “He’s got a revolver in his shoulder holster. And if I’m not wrong, I think you’ll find a derringer in his hat.”

“Reach higher and stand very still,” said Rivers. He pocketed his gun and took the Bisley from Bell’s shoulder holster. “Fine pistol!”

“Keep it,” said Matters. “Detective Bell doesn’t need it.”

Rivers stuck it in his belt with a grin.

Bell said, “If you like that, wait ’til you see my derringer.”

Rivers knocked Bell’s hat off his head. He snatched it from the grass, dipped into the crown, and removed the miniature, custom-built single-shot derringer Dave McCoart had lent him while he built him a replacement for the two-shot Bell had lost in Russia.

“Wow! You’re a high-class walking arsenal. Look at this—”

Rivers had made two mistakes. In picking up the tall detective’s hat, he had placed himself partly between Bell and Matters. And he had already let Bell distract him. In the split second before Matters could move to clear his field of fire, Bell kicked with all his might, rocketing his left boot deep into the prizefighter’s groin. Then he dropped to the grass and reached into his right boot, drawing and casting his throwing knife in a single motion.

Bill Matters cried out in shock and pain. The heavy Remington six-shooter fell from his convulsing fingers and he stared in horrified disbelief at the razor-sharp blade that had passed between the bones of his wrist. The flat metal shaft quivered from the front of his arm and a full inch of the point protruded red and glistening from the skin on the back.

Bell picked up the Remington and brought it down like a sledgehammer on Rivers’ skull as the gasping butler tried to straighten up. Then he whirled back at Matters and landed a blow with the old pistol that knocked the oil man flat.

He had one pair of handcuffs. He secured Matters to an iron ring in the oil rig, took the guns from the unconscious Rivers, removed his whiskey flask and his bootlaces, dragged him forty feet away, and tied him to the rig by his thumbs. He returned to Matters.

“What are you going to do?” asked Matters.

“Take my knife back, to start,” said Bell. He yanked it out of his wrist, wiped the blood off on Matters’ shirt, and sheathed it back in his boot.

“I’ll bleed to death.”

“Not before you answer a heap of questions.” He screwed the cap off Rivers’ flask and poured whiskey into the wound the knife had slit. Matters sucked air. “Beats infection. Now, Bill, let’s talk.”

The rage that Bell had seen explode on the Bremen boat train flared red-hot in Matters’ eyes. Bell said, “It’s over. I’ve got you dead to rights. There is no escape. It’s time to talk. Where is your assassin?”

Slowly, the fire faded.

“Where? Where is the assassin?”

“You’re looking at him.”

—

“You shot your old partner Spike Hopewell? What about Albert Hill and Reed Riggs, and C. C. Gustafson in Texas?”

“Them, too.”

“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

“Hunting in the woods. I was a natural. Good thing, too. Bloodsucking bank foreclosed when Father died. The sheriff drove off our pigs and cows and turned my mother and me out of the home. We lived on the game I shot. Later, I ran away to the circus and a Wild West Show.”

Isaac Bell reminded Bill Matters that they had been sitting together in the Peerless with Rockefeller when the assassin fired at them in Baku.

“I paid a Cossack a thousand rubles to throw off suspicion.”

“Did you pay him to wound me or kill me?”

Matters looked Bell in the face. “Wound. My girls were sweet on you. I reckoned it might turn out well for one of them.”

“No one ever denied you were a loving father. Did you arm the Cossack with one of your Savages?”

“I didn’t have any with me. He used his own rifle.”