The Angel's Trumpet by James Musgrave

Author:James Musgrave [Musgrave, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9: Spiders’ Webs

Willard Hotel, 1401 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D. C., May 15, 1887, 9:45 AM.

T he telephone was on the small table in the center of the hotel suite. Surrounding it, seated in a concentric, ever-widening circle, were the people appointed by the President of the United States to protect and to retrieve his twenty-one-year-old wife and, coincidentally, Clara’s teenaged son.

She knew it was doubly worrisome because May 15 was David Milton’s sixteenth birthday. She understood his sensitive ways, and the prospect of his being kept prisoner by gangsters, or other criminal outlaws, was making her panic inside, as she realized her time to solve this case was dwindling steadily.

In addition, once the authorities retrieved the First Lady, they would soon forget about her son. It was up to her and her group to find him, and she was going to achieve her goal to the best of her abilities.

She was so focused on finding him that she could not tell her family in San Francisco what had happened. Money from Mrs. Mary Hopkins arrived, so there were, thankfully, no money problems, but she could not answer the birthday greetings and telegrams from her family back home.

She saw that the Secret Service had placed Detective Abercrombie next to the telephone because he was responsible for the delivery of the ransom gems. All members of her team were briefed as to what would happen, but she knew that life was not as straightforward as our plans. Any number of unforeseen circumstances could occur to cause a disastrous result. Isaiah taught her well, however, and she knew the only way to succeed in the pursuit of the hunted was to understand their motives and their methods.

She was seated in the circle of chairs which contained her team: Dr. McFarland, Isaiah, Sarah, and Laura. Today would determine how they would pursue the case. Her compiled evidence pointed in one direction, but the present direction held the most promise. She actually hoped this was going to be the answer, but her intuition told her it could become something quite different.

The telephone rang. It was five minutes before the kidnappers were supposed to call.

Detective Abercrombie answered.

“Hello?”

She watched his face. He smiled.

“Thank you, Fitz. We can now assemble our theories. I must hang-up. I am awaiting a most important call.”

Abercrombie looked directly at her.

“The medical examiner isolated the poison in the brains of the two women. It was a deadly liquid made from the Angel’s Trumpet flower. I shall detail its toxicity and effects later.”

Her mind became a colorful, Chinese revolving puzzle. Several images flashed from her memory and from her notes to click into place. The effect of this information was like an implosive sequence of insights, and her body felt as if it might levitate. She had a difficult time containing her urge to discuss these insights with Dr. McFarland at that very moment.

The telephone rang again. She could see it was exactly ten on the wall clock.

“This is he. Yes, I know that location.

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