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“I would like to eat dinner,” said Nellie Matters. “I’m hungry, and it’s my turn to take you.”
—
At Central Station, the twelve-year-old boys peddling the Washington Post Late Extra Edition were shrill as a flock of jays.
“Tourist falls from Washington Monument.”
“Extra! Extra! Tourist falls!”
Archie Abbott tossed pennies for the paper and ran to the horse cabs. Mr. Van Dorn had sent a wire care of the Danville, Virginia, stationmaster ordering him to report the instant his train pulled into Washington. Top hands like Isaac Bell took direct summons from the Boss for granted, but this was his first one ever.
“Willard Hotel. Fast as you can.”
Upon arrival, he dashed up the stairs into the Van Dorn offices.
“The Boss wired my train at Danville. Said to come right over.”
The front desk man spoke calmly into a voice tube. A blasé apprentice walked Archie into Joseph Van Dorn’s office. With his coat off and his sleeves rolled up his bulging forearms, Van Dorn, Archie thought, looked less the company proprietor than a prosperous bricklayer.
“Abbott, you’re a Princeton man.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve got something right up your alley.”
“How can I help, sir?”
Van Dorn nodded at the extra edition that Archie had tucked under his arm. “The ‘tourist’ who fell from the memorial shaft was not a tourist, and I don’t believe he fell. The papers don’t have it yet, but it was Clyde Lapham.”
“Standard Oil?”
“Rumor has it, he jumped. If he did, I want to know why. If he didn’t jump, I want to know who helped him out the window.”
“May I ask, sir, what makes you think he didn’t jump?”
“Our investigation has established that not one of the Standard Oil Gang has a guilty bone in his body. On the remote chance that one was ever stricken with remorse, it wouldn’t be Clyde Lapham. He had no doubt that making money was his divine right. Something’s fishy. That’s where you come in.”
“Yes, sir,” Archie said, wondering what it had to do with being a Princeton graduate.
“They won’t let our men near the monument. Were it a Navy facility, I would have no trouble gaining access. But I am not so well connected with the Army, and I’ve run head-on into a snob of a Colonel Dan Egan, who looks down on private detectives as not worthy of his exalted friendship. Do you get my drift?”
Archie was suddenly on firm ground, with intimate knowledge of the fine distinctions of the social order. “Yes, sir. Army officers are more likely to be ill-bred and have chips on their shoulders than their Navy counterparts.”
“This particular officer is carrying a chip bigger than a redwood. Fortunately, I’ve learned he has a son attending Princeton. I’m betting he’ll be mightily impressed by the fact that you matriculated, as well as by your manner, which is less that of a private detective than a privileged layabout. Not that I’m suggesting you lay about, necessarily, but I suspect you can act the part.”
“I’ll rehearse,” Archie said drily.
“You don’t have time,” Van Dorn shot back. “Colonel Egan is at the monument right now, in the middle of the night, leading what the Army optimistically calls an inquiry. Get over there and sweet-talk your way in before they trample the evidence and insert words in the mouths of witnesses.”
Archie doubted he’d make much headway walking up to a full colonel and saying he went to Princeton. He ventured, “This might require more than ‘sweet talking,’ Mr. Van Dorn.”
The Boss stared, his eyes suddenly hard. “The agency pays you handsomely to do ‘more than sweet talking.’”
“I’ll do my best.”
“See that you do.”
14
