“Poor man?”
“Clyde Lapham was the brightest, widest-awake, most progressive business man. But he was beginning to go down the hill. It finally became apparent that he had had his day because he was losing his mind to dementia.”
“Why did you send him?”
“You apparently know already. Why this charade?”
“I don’t know if I can trust you, sir. I want to hear it from you.”
The old man didn’t like hearing that, and Bell half expected to be escorted off the property. Instead, Rockefeller said, “I asked Clyde Lapham to discuss a contribution of money to a minister who is raising funds to build a monument to President Abraham Lincoln.”
“Thank you,” said Bell. For a moment, he debated asking why Rockefeller paid a secret visit to the Persian embassy, but that would definitely get him thrown out on his ear. He had learned nothing more of it on his quick return to Washington and had left Archie Abbott in charge of probing his friends in the State Department.
“To answer your question,” Bell said, “Clyde Lapham was murdered.”
Rockefeller’s expression did not change, but his shoulders sagged perceptibly. He stepped back, indicating Bell should enter, and without a word led the way through a foyer into a high-ceilinged drawing loft. Draftsmen in vests and shirtsleeves were bent over drawing boards, working in the pure glow of north-facing skylights. Bell saw building plans and landscape designs taking shape. Finished blueprints were spread on worktables, where civil engineers and architects were guiding foremen through the intricacies of upcoming work. Rockefeller paused at a table where a draftsman was drawing the steel frame for a stone bridge, traced a line with his finger, and politely ordered a correction.
He continued down a hallway of shut doors. Not visible until they had rounded a corner was a door with frosted glass in the upper panel. Bell followed him through it and saw instantly that the supposedly retired president of Standard Oil was leading a double life at Pocantico Hills, actively managing vast improvements of his new estate while continuing to command his industrial enterprise.
The frosted-glass door opened on a business office as modern as any on Wall Street, staffed by secretaries and bookkeepers, and equipped with private telegraph, overseas cable, telephone lines, and ticker tape machines. Rockefeller led Bell through the din into his private office, closed the door, and stood behind his desk.
“That you’re here,” he said, “tells me you’ve come to do what I asked: stop the assassin and end the slander of Standard Oil.”
Bell said, “I will concentrate on the assassin and leave the slander to you.”
“How do you know that Clyde Lapham was murdered?”
Bell related the events at the Washington Monument step-by-step.
“Byzantine,” said Rockefeller. “In your experience, have you ever seen a murder as elaborately conceived?”
“Three murders,” said Bell.
“Three?” Rockefeller blinked.
“And an attempted murder. And an elaborate act of arson.”
“What are you talking about?”
“As ‘byzantine,’ to use your word, as the killing of Clyde Lapham was, it was merely an exaggerated version of his earlier crimes.” He described for Rockefeller the deaths of the independent Kansas refiners Reed Riggs and Albert Hill, the elaborate and highly effective duck-target explosion and burning of Spike Hopewell’s refinery, the attempt to shotgun him, Texas Walt, and Archie Abbott. Finally, he reminded Rockefeller of the faked suicide of Big Pete Straub. “By those lights, sniping Hopewell and C. C. Gustafson are his only ‘normal’ crimes.”
“What motivates such complication?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Isaac Bell. “The effect of the straightforward killings is the slander you want to stop, the blaming of Standard Oil. The killings that were masked as accidents don’t appear to fall into that category. Perhaps those people were killed for other reasons.”
A secretary knocked and entered and murmured in Rockefeller’s ear. Rockefeller picked up a telephone, listened, then put the phone down, shaking his head. He sat silent awhile, then said to Bell, “My father used to read aloud to us. He liked the Fireside Poets. Do you know them?”
“My grandfather read them,” said Bell. “Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell.”
“Lowell was Father’s favorite . . .” He shook his head again. “I’ve just learned that Averell Comstock, one of my oldest partners, is dying . . . ‘O Death, thou ever roaming shark . . .’”
Rockefeller looked at Bell, his fathomless eyes suddenly bright with pain.
Bell completed the stanza for him—“‘. . . Ingulf me in eternal dark!’”—wondering whether the old man remembered it was from a humorous poem about a perch with a toothache who was hoodwinked by a lobster.
“Averell became a warm, close, personal friend of mine in the course of business. I will miss him.”
“I’m sorry,” said Bell. “Had he been ill?”
“Briefly. The price of getting old, Mr. Bell. My partners are dying right and left. Most were older than I . . . They go so quickly. One week ago, Comstock was full of vim and push.”
He stood up, laid a big hand on the telephone, and stared across the desk as if the room had no walls and he could see all the way to New York City.
“When poor Lapham began losing his mind, there was time to get used to the idea that he would go. But Averell was a titan. I figured him for another twenty years.”
He’s afraid of dying, thought Bell and suddenly felt sympathy for the old man. But he could not ignore the opportunity to investigate from even deeper inside the heart of Standard Oil.
“Are you afraid the assassin will strike at you?”
“Most people hate me,” Rockefeller replied matter-of-factly. “The chances are, he hates me, too.”
“He strikes me as professional, without emotion.” True of his shooting, thought Bell. True of his deep-laid groundwork. Not true of his impulse to show off.
“Then he’s paid by someone who hates me,” said Rockefeller.
“A trigger finger that won’t shake with personal hatred makes him all the more dangerous.”
Rockefeller changed the subject abruptly. “Can I assume that having broken with the Van Dorn Agency, you are free to travel on short notice?”
“Where?” asked Bell.
“Wherever I say.”
Isaac Bell threw down a bold challenge calculated to impress the
