Bell rented a Ford auto at the livery stable, and followed directions for several miles to the Frost camp. The first he saw of it was the gatehouse, an elaborate structure built of boulders and a grillwork of massive logs under its steep roof that gave the lie to the term “camp,” an Adirondack affectation similar to dubbing a Newport mansion a “cottage.” The gatekeeper’s living quarters, a large, handsome bungalow, was attached to it. No one came when he called and pounded on the door.
He drove under the stone arch and onto a broad carriage drive. The drive was surfaced with crushed slate and graded in a manner far superior to the muddy, potholed public road from town. Piercing mile after mile of forest, the level roadbed gouged through hillsides and was carried across countless streams and brooks on hand- hewn stone culverts and bridges ornamented in the Arts and Crafts style.
Bell drove through five miles of Harry Frost’s land before he finally saw the lake. Across the water stood a sprawling house of timbers, shingles, and stone. Large cottages and outbuildings surrounded the house, and in the distance were the barns and silos of the creamery. As the smooth slate drive skirted the lake and drew closer to the compound, he saw numerous outbuildings: blacksmith shop, smokehouse, laundry, and, at the far end of a broad lawn, an aeroplane hangar – a large, wide shed recognizable by the front elevators of a biplane poking out the gable end.
Isaac Bell stopped the Ford under the porte-cochere of the main house, accelerated the motor slightly, and opened the coil switch. The place seemed deserted. With the motor off, the only sounds he could hear were the faint ticking of hot metal and the soft sigh of a cool breeze blowing off the lake.
He knocked on the front door. No one answered. He tried the door. It was unlocked, a massive affair.
“Hello!” Bell called loudly. “Is anyone home?”
No one answered.
He stepped inside. The foyer opened into a great hall, an immense chamber brightly lighted by tall windows. Twenty-foot-tall stone fireplaces dominated each end. Rustic chairs and couches clustered on woven carpets. Gloomy European oil paintings were hung in gold frames that glittered. Timbers soared high overhead. The walls and ceiling were papered with birch bark.
The tall detective stalked from opulent room to opulent room.
Anger began to heat his breast. Scion of a Boston banking family, and bequeathed a personal fortune by his grandfather, Isaac Bell was accustomed to the accoutrements of great wealth and no stranger to privilege. But this so-called camp had been paid for with riches founded on the suffering of innocent men, women, and children. Harry Frost had committed so many crimes forging his empire that it would be difficult to single one out were it not for a Chicago depot bombing he had engineered to destroy a rival distributor. Frost’s dynamite had killed three newsboys waiting for their papers. The oldest had been twelve.
Bell’s boot heels echoed though an empty corridor and down a stairway.
At the foot of the stairs hulked a heavy oak door, studded with nailheads.
Bell jimmied the lock and discovered a vast wine cellar carved from the living stone. He strode among the racks, noting excellent vintages from the last twenty years, a large number of the fine ’69 and ’71 clarets and some astonishingly rare bottles of 1848 Lafite, laid down nearly twenty years before Baron Rothschild bought the Medoc estate. Frost had even purchased a long row of Chateau d’Yquem bottles of the 1811 Comet Vintage. Although, based on the low quality of the art hanging upstairs, Bell suspected a crooked wine merchant’s variant on fake Academy paintings.
Upon leaving the wine cellar, he stopped suddenly, arrested by the sight of a wedding photograph on a center table. Harry Frost, dressed up in top hat and morning coat, glowered truculently at the camera. Expensive tailoring could not hide his bulk, and the top hat made him appear even wider. Bell studied the photograph closely. Frost, he realized, was not the fat man a first glance might suggest. There was something lithe and long-legged about his stance, a man poised to spring. Violent as a longhorn, Joe Van Dorn had characterized him. Quick as one, too, Bell suspected. And as strong.
Josephine stood like a child beside him, her youthful face expressing bravery, Bell thought, and something more – a sense of adventure as if she were embarking into the unknown and hoping for the best.
Arrayed stiffly behind the couple was a family of what looked like farm folk dressed for church. Bell recognized the stone fireplace behind them. They had been married here at the camp in this vast, echoing room. A strong resemblance in all the faces, but Frost’s told Bell that no one but Josephine’s own family had attended.
He went outside. He circled the house and inspected the outbuildings. A carriage house had been converted to a firing range, with an arsenal of pistols and rifles locked in a glass case. Similar cases held collections of swords, cutlasses, flick-knives, and daggers.
The garage contained expensive automobiles – a Packard limousine, a Palmer-Singer Skimabout, a Lancia Torpedo – and several motorcycles. The stable of vehicles fit the picture forming in Bell’s mind of Frost as a restless recluse. He lived like a king but also like an outlaw. The camp was as much a hideout as it was an estate, and Frost, like all successful criminals, was prepared for a quick getaway. It seemed as if Harry Frost knew that, despite his wealth and power, it was only a matter of time before he would commit an atrocity that would make him a fugitive.
Bell looked into the blacksmith shop. The forge was cold. In the smithy’s scrap heap he saw horseshoes that had been twisted out of shape. Harry Frost’s Chicago calling card, Bell recalled, bent with Frost’s bare hands to demonstrate his almost inhuman strength, then thrown by his thugs through the bedroom windows of his rivals. It was an article of faith among the drunks in the West Side saloons that Frost had killed a Clydesdale with his fist.
Hanging above the twisted shoes, grimy with smoke, was a framed award that Frost had received for contributing money to a civic group. Bell turned on his heel and walked into the sun, whispering the newsboys’ names: Wally Laughlin, Bobby Kerouac, Joey Lansdowne. It had been an elaborate funeral, their fellows maintaining the newsboy tradition of hiring hearses and mourners and paying clerks to write obituaries and letters of condolence. Wally Laughlin, Bobby Kerouac, Joey Lansdowne, barely out of childhood, priests promising their mothers they’d find a better place in Heaven.
Bell entered the boathouse at the edge of the lake. Inside, he found flatboats and canoes and a sailboat with its mast shipped. From the boathouse he walked through tall grass to the aeroplane hangar. It contained enough parts to assemble several flying machines. But the machine he had seen through the open end was missing its engine and propellers.
He heard voices in the direction of the smokehouse.
Bell walked quietly toward them, keeping the squat windowless stone structure between him and whoever was talking on the other side. He stopped beside it. A voice was droning on and on. It sounded like a middle-aged or older man, talking some trapped listener’s ear off. Bell’s own ear was struck by the accent. The speaker spoke the flat
The subject of his monologue tagged him as a denizen of the notorious Levee District, where crime and vice were daily fare.
4
“YOU WANT TO MAKE A PILE MONEY, you get yourself a bordello – What’s that? No, no, no.
“I gotta go do my chores,” said a younger, slower voice.
Bell removed his broad-brimmed hat to venture a quick glance around the corner. The middle-aged talker was sitting on a barrel with his back to him. He had a bottle of beer in his hand and was wearing a city man’s derby, shirtsleeves, and vest. The younger was a farm boy in a straw hat. He was clutching a bucket and a
