The Gangster

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 have to shave the splendiferous sideburns he had cultivated for twenty years.

* * *

Ten men and women dressed in shabby workers’ clothes got off the day coach train from Jersey City and marched out of Cornwall Landing and up the steep road to Raven’s Eyrie. When they were stopped at the front gate, they unfurled banners and began to walk in a noisy circle. The banners demanded:

HONEST WAGES FOR AN HONEST DAY’S WORK

and accused the Philadelphia Streetcar Company, owned by the United Railways Trust, of unfair treatment of its track workers.

The workers chanted:

“Wall Street feasts. Workers starve.”

The Sheriff was called. He arrived with a heavyset deputy, who climbed out of the auto armed with a pick handle. Two more autos pulled up, with newspaper reporters from Poughkeepsie, Albany, and New York City.

“How’d you boys get here so fast?” asked the Sheriff, who had a bad feeling that he was about to get caught between the Hudson Valley aristocracy and the voting public.

“Got a tip from the workers’ lawyers,” explained the man from the Poughkeepsie Journal.