“Doesn’t a financier of your stature hold secret controlling interests in firms that lease private wires?”
Congdon ignored the flattery and demanded, “But what do you get out of this scheme?”
“Reputation. By rights, you will pay me handsomely when I succeed. But if you don’t — if you cheat me — it will not matter. I will be a made man.”
“How?”
“Henry Clay Investigations will become the detective agency to presidents and kings when the men who run this country learn who smashed the unions. When you are president, I, too, will be very big in Washington.”
Congdon mulled over Clay’s proposal. He was a famous judge of character. The detective, a robust physical specimen, possessed the steady gaze of a valuable man capable of finishing what he sta
rted. “What makes you so sure that this would appeal to me?”
“I have studied you, Judge Congdon. I understand you. I am a very good detective. I am the best.”
“You think you know me, do you? Have another look at my statue. Look close at The Kiss. Do you see anything unusual?”
Henry Clay did as Congdon ordered. He leaned close to the marble and let his eyes roam over the man and woman in passionate embrace. “I see a magnificent statue.”
“It draws you closer, doesn’t it?”
“It does. I am actually standing closer to it than I was a moment ago. But what is it you want me to see?”
“Look up.”
The skylight that illuminated the marble was ringed by a plaster frieze studded with tiny holes one-tenth the diameter of a dime.
“I see holes in the frieze. They’re barely visible.”
“Now look down.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Look down.”
In the pattern of the marble circle on which he was standing were dozens of similar holes. “I still don’t understand.”
“I will teach you two things about wealth, Mr. Best Detective. Wealth attracts lunatics. My old enemy Frick was shot and nearly killed in his own office by a lunatic ten years ago, which set me to thinking of my own safety. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“You said two things about wealth.”
“Common wisdom holds that coal is the source of all wealth. Like most common wisdom, that’s dead wrong. Coal is only fuel. It happens to be the best fuel at the moment, but it will be replaced by a better fuel. Oil is the coming fuel until the scientists come up with something even better, which they will. The real source of wealth for the past hundred years, and hundreds more to follow, is steam — hot steam made by boiling water with the cheapest and most efficient fuel available — wood, coal, oil, and whatever science dreams up next. Steam pushes pistons that drive locomotives. Steam whirls turbines to spin electricity. Steam storms through pipes under city streets to heat modern buildings like mine.”
Congdon reached for the bronze statuette of his current wife. He stroked it with his gnarled fingers.
“Steam scalds flesh. Steam from a mere teakettle will sear your hand with the most painful burn imaginable. Shortly after the attack on Frick, a six-inch steam riser in a building like this one ruptured. Escaping steam blasted through the walls as if they were made of paper. Every man and woman in the office died in an instant. They were found still seated at their desks, scalded head to toe, horribly disfigured, cooked to death inside and out. That set me to thinking about the lunatic attack on Mr. Frick. What he should have installed in his office — and what I have installed in mine — is a steam-powered lunatic stopper.”
Congdon tightened his grip on the bronze statuette.
“Do you notice anything peculiar about this statue of my new wife?”
Clay looked more closely and saw what he had missed earlier. The bronze was hinged to the top of the desk. “I see a hinge.”
“The hinge makes it a lever. When I move this lever, it will open a valve that will deliver a scalding hot three-hundred-and-fifty-degree blast of steam straight from the central boiler plant on Cortlandt Street to your skin, Best Detective Clay.”
Henry Clay eyed the holes in the floor and the ceiling.
“Scalding jets of high-pressure steam will cook you to death in seconds. The longest and worst, most painful seconds of your life.”