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“A bitter man and a lunatic.”
“But still her father and still her sister. She is beside herself with grief and guilt and confusion.”
“Is interviewing me supposed to be some sort of rest cure?”
“It is my last hope.”
“That’s all you ask?”
“That’s all I demand.”
“I never submit to interviews,” Rockefeller repeated. “You are demanding a lot.”
“She is worth it,” said Isaac Bell.
—
Isaac Bell drove Edna Matters to Rockefeller’s Westchester estate.
They were building a fence around Pocantico. The man at the gatehouse said that a six-foot-high iron barrier twenty miles long would surround the entire property. There was talk of moving the railroad. Gunfire echoed in the woods. The gamekeepers had orders to shoot stray dogs.
The fence caught Edna’s attention. “What happened?” she asked Bell. “Has JDR gone mad?”
“He’s afraid.”
“He should be afraid. He should hide in terror. He drove my poor father mad.”
The house where Rockefeller was living while work continued on the main mansion came into view.
“Stop your auto!” Edna cried.
Bell stopped the Locomobile. She was deeply upset.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Edna said. “In fact, I know I can’t. Take me back to New York.”
Bell held her hands in his and looked her in the eye. “Why not?”
“I never suspected my father. I never suspected my sister. My own blood. Some ‘woman newspaperman’ I am. How can I trust my judgment?”
“The richest, most powerful business man in the history of the world is offering a unique opportunity to a wonderful writer. No one else can do it but you. You owe it to history.”
“How did you talk him into it?”
Isaac Bell took Edna in his arms. He held her close for a long time. Then he whispered, “I told Mr. Rockefeller that he would never get a better chance to leave an honest account of himself.”
EPILOGUE
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, 1940
POCANTICO HILLS, WESTCHESTER
Isaac Bell swept through the front gates of Pocantico Hills in a midnight-blue Bugatti Type 57C drophead coupe and raced up the long driveway. Silvered hair lent dignity to his natural elegance, but he still looked too rugged to be diminished by his years. If that threat hovered on time’s horizon, it did not seem to trouble him.
The Bugatti, a roadster with sculpted lines as smooth as oil, rounded the final bend, holding the road as tightly as if on rails, and Bell stopped in front of a mansion. Well-proportioned and solidly built, the house looked like it had stood overlooking the Hudson River forever, although he recalled passing by in his Locomobile when the stone masons were laying its foundations.
“Daddy!”
A flaxen-haired coed bounded out the door, juggling a portable typewriter, a bulging briefcase, and an overnight bag. The estate librarian followed with an armload of books. “Come back anytime, Amber.”
