“I wouldn’t call that definitive proof that Branco’s holed up with him.”
“Eddie’s brakeman is courting a housemaid at Raven’s Eyrie. She tells him, and he tells Eddie, that Culp is sticking unusually close to home. She also says the boxers don’t live there anymore. And we already knew that Culp’s wife decamped for the city. Add it all up and it’s highly likely that Branco’s in the house.”
“Yet Branco’s been to town, and he’s still bossing his gangsters.”
Bell said, “I have your Black Hand Squad working round the clock to find how he gets out and back in.”
The letter was waiting for Joseph Van Dorn when he got to the New Williard.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
December 1, 1906
Joseph Van Dorn
Van Dorn Detective Agency
Washington, D.C., Office
The New Williard Hotel
Dear Joe,
Your Isaac Bell has a given me a bully idea. I will deliver only one prepared speech whilst inspecting the Catskill Aqueduct. In so doing, I can concentrate all my efforts on a big splash to boom the waterworks enterprise.
So before I go down the Storm King Shaft to fire the hole-through blast, accompanied by the newspaper reporters, I will speak to assembled multitudes on the surface. To this course, I have asked the contractors to gather their workmen at the shaft house and build for me a raised platform so all may see and hear.
“May the angels preserve me,” said Joseph Van Dorn.
Hearty Regards,
Theodore Roosevelt
P.S. Joe, could I prevail upon you to accompany my party on the tour?
Deeply relieved by the unexpected glimmer of common sense in the postscript, Van Dorn telephoned a civil servant, a former Chicagoan who now led the Secret Service protection corps. “The President has asked me to ride along on the Catskills trip. I don’t want to get in your way, so I need your blessing before I accept.”
His old friend gave an exasperated snort, loud enough to hear over the phone. “The Congress still questions who should protect the President and whether he even needs protection. Nor will they pay for it, so I’m juggling salaries from other budgets. And now they’re yammering that one of my boys was arrested for assault for stopping a photographer from lunging at the President and Mrs. Roosevelt with a camera that could have concealed a gun or knife. In other words, thank you, Joe, I am short of qualified hands.”
“I will see you on the train,” said Van Dorn. And yet, in his heart of hearts he knew that when some bigwig persuaded the President to let him stand beside him, the founder of the Van Dorn Detective Agency would end up too far away to intercept an attacker.
Between the Raven’s Eyrie wall and the foot of Storm King Mountain, the estate’s telegraph and telephone wires passed through a stand of hemlock trees. Isaac Bell and a Van Dorn operative, who had been recently hired away from the Hudson River Bell Telephone Company, pitched a tent in the densest clump of the dark green conifers.
Bell strapped climbing spikes to his boots and mounted a telegraph pole. He scraped insulation from the telephone wires and attached two lengths of his own wire, which he let uncoil to the ground. He repeated this with the telegraph wires and climbed back down, where the operative had already hooked them up to a telephone receiver and a telegraph key.
An eight-mule team hauled a heavy freight wagon up to the Raven’s Eyrie service gate. A burly teamster and his helper wrestled enormous barrels down a ramp and stood them at the shoulder of the driveway. They were interrupted by a gatekeeper who demanded to know what they thought they were doing.
“Unloading your barrels.”
“We didn’t order any barrels.”
The teamster produced an invoice. “Says here you did.”
“What’s in ’em?”
“Big one is flour and the smaller one is sugar. Looks like you’ll be baking cookies.”
The gatekeeper called for the cook to come down from the kitchen. The cook, shivering in a cardigan pulled over her whites, looked over the flour barrel, which was as tall as she was. “This is a hogshead. There’s enough in it to feed an army.”
“Did you order it?”
“Why would I order a hogshead of flour and a full barrel of sugar at the end of the season?” she asked rhetorically. “Maybe they’re meant to go to 50th Street. That’s their winter palace in New York City,” she added for the benefit of the teamster and hurried back to her kitchen.
“You heard her,” said the gatekeeper. “Get ’em out of here.”
The teamster climbed back on his rig.
“Hey, where you going?”
“To find a crane to lift ’em back on the wagon.”
The gatekeeper called the estate manager. By the time he arrived, the wagon had disappeared down the road. The estate manager gave the hogshead an experimental tug. It felt like it weighed six hundred pounds.
“Leave it there ’til he comes back with his crane.”
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
December 3, 1906
Joseph Van Dorn
Van Dorn Detective Agency
Washington, D.C., Office
The New Williard Hotel
Dear Joe,
Further the booming of the aqueduct enterprise, a White Steamer automobile will be carried on the special train to deliver me to the various inspection stops, and particularly the Hudson River Siphon Shaft, so the workmen at the shaft house may see me arrive.
“Good Lord,” said Joseph Van Dorn.
Hearty Regards,
Theodore Roosevelt
PS: I’m back on my battleship, but only as far as the icebreaker can open a channel. The train can meet us there.
VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY
KNICKERBOCKER HOTEL
NEW YORK CITY
Dear Mr. President,
I do hope I may accompany you in the auto. May I presume you will wear a topper?
Sincerely,
Joseph Van Dorn
Whether the President wore a top hat, a fedora, or even a Rough Rider slouch hat, Van Dorn would wear the same—and wire-framed spectacles—to confuse a sniper. He would even
