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Clay started toward him, saying, “I’ll get so close, I can’t miss.”
“Be careful!” Congdon shouted.
As Clay turned to assure him, Bell whipped his two-shot derringer from his hat.
“Drop it!”
Henry Clay stopped in his tracks. His startled expression seemed to shout Where the hell did that come from?
Bell said, “Live and learn. Toss your gun over there, on the carpet.”
Clay shrugged with a faint knowing smile and did as Bell ordered. Then he looked at Judge Congdon. The old man caressed the bronze statuette on his desk. “You’re wrong, Chief Inspector. The statue you’re hiding behind is not my favorite. This is my favorite.”
“I can’t believe you prefer that little thing to this magnificent marble.”
In answer, the financier jerked the steam lever.
* * *
Isaac Bell, Henry Clay, and James Congdon all looked up at the ceiling.
Only Bell smiled.
He stuck out his hand. Warm water dripped onto his palm.
“It appears to be raining in your office. And on your parade.”
Congdon jerked the steam lever again. Nothing happened. Frantically, he tugged the statue again and again, slamming it down, jerking it upright, slamming it down.
Bell said, “I thought it sensible to shut the steam-conditioning valves to your office.”
Congdon’s long, thin frame sagged, and he slipped off his feet into his chair.
“But how did you know?”
Bell moved swiftly forward and swept the guns off the desk onto the floor before Congdon or Clay got any ideas. “Judge Congdon, you are under arrest for the murder of Mary Higgins.”
Henry Clay’s expression shifted from flummoxed to deeply puzzled.
“You were out of the room earlier, Clay. You didn’t hear me charge your boss with murdering a young woman in 1902.”
“Are you crazy, Bell?”
“I wish I were,” Isaac Bell answered sadly. “I would give anything to be wrong. But she died a horrible death right here in this office.”
“Mary died in Pittsburgh.”
“Mary Higgins was found in Pittsburgh. Many were led to believe that Mary was scalded to death helping you blow up the militia’s steamboat.”
Clay shook his head. “Mary didn’t help me. I had no idea she was aboard. She must have used that boy disguise she used in Denver.”
“She was never aboard the Vulcan King. Not alive. She died here, in New York. Mary’s brother swore that she could not have been in Pittsburgh because Mary wrote him that she was going to New York to confront the saboteur’s boss — your boss. No one believed Jim Higgins. But why would he say it unless he was addled with grief or telling the truth? So I asked questions. Turns out, I was not the only man sweet on her.”
Clay was listening closely.
Bell said, “I’ll bet you boasted to her, hoping to impress her— She was the kind of girl a fellow would do most anything to impress. You did brag, didn’t you? Bragged how you had partnered up with the most powerful man in Wall Street.”
“I didn’t brag.”
