Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem Read online

  Crossing into the shadow of a large oak tree, Henson was certain he was being followed. The man had come out of an Helmbold drugstore doorway three blocks back and though keeping a distance between them, his presence was more evident as they went through the expanse of the park. The man was black, in plain clothes but his hat was expensive, Henson noted. This suggested to him the clothes had been put on to blend in, but the hat no doubt went with the suits this fella normally wore. Walking on, Henson quickly ascended a set of terraced steps. The Grange, Alexander Hamilton’s house which was on the grounds, was visible through the foliage in the distance

  The man on his tail had to speed up or risk losing Henson who’d already crested the top of the steps and was now out of view on the other side of the rise. He breathed through his open mouth, looking around. Off to the side in a semi-isolated section of shrubbery and trees, an old man with a full mane of grey hair like the abolitionist Fredrick Douglass sat on a bench in baggy pants and wrinkled shirt. He threw pieces of bread on the ground for the pigeons gathered about him. There was a book about mathematics beside him on the bench

  “Hey, old timer,” the man said as he approached the elderly resident, “you seen a guy in grey pants and dark shirt?” He flashed a fifty-cent piece. “I can make it worth your time.”

  “The gentleman you’re looking for is right behind you,” the old man said in a surprisingly clear voice.

  “The hell,” the man said, turning to see Henson there with his hands on his hips.

  “Who sent you?” Henson said.

  “Back off,” his shadower said.

  Henson came toward him, stirring some of the cooing pigeons into the air. “Maybe you didn’t hear me.”

  The man who’d tailed Henson produced a folding knife from his back pocket that opened with a practiced flick of his wrist. “Let me make another hole in your head so you can hear me better, chump.”

  “There’s no need for violence, young man. Merely an inquiry as to your employer.”

  He turned his head slightly to say, “Stay out of this, grey head, go back to feeding them flying rats.”

  “Would that I could,” the older man said, bowing his head slightly. “But you’re having a profound negative effect on them.” He shook his head, sighing. “He indeed proves to be an obstreperous sort, Mathew, as befits one of his rung in our society.”

  “Hey, what gives, you two know each other?”

  “Most assuredly,” said the older man.

  The man with the knife took a step back and turned in such a way to keep the two of them in sight. He jiggled the blade at the sitting older man. “On your feet.”

  “Where do you intend to take us?” the older man said.

  “Never you mind. Up,” he signaled with the knife.

  As the older man rose he hesitated, pausing in a hunched over position. He breathed raggedly, his face was sweating, and he looked paler. “Oh my,” he gasped, rocking backward and forward.

  “What’s going on with him?” The knife man said, panic coloring his voice.

  “He’s having one of his attacks. He’s got a bum ticker,” Henson said

  “Help me,” the older gent said hoarsely. “I, I…” he tottered on his feet and his collapse seemed imminent.

  “Dammit, get this sonofabitch up,” he barked at Henson. “And if you have to carry him, you better.”

  Henson came over his friend. “Yes, sir.” He got an arm around the older man’s chest and in this way held him upright on shaky legs.

  “This way.” He gestured in a direction with the tip of the knife and the three began walking. He fell in behind the two along a pathway through the park. But as they were now entering a more populated area, he put the knife back in his coat pocket, holding it there.

  “Where you taking us?” Henson asked over his shoulder. “I should get him to a sawbones.”

  “Keep walking,” the man said.

  A woman pushing a baby stroller approached from the opposite direction. She smiled at the trio.

  The three men moved to one side as the woman and baby passed. The older man abruptly stopped, and the knife man came up short behind him.

  “Watch it,” he said, between clenched teeth.

  Henson rearranged his grip around the older man, who was sagging. But Henson spun him around, the old man thrusting his leg out, striking the knife man. Onlookers gaped.

  The man was removing the knife from his pocket when Henson latched onto him. He had a hand on the other man’s forearm, jamming the hand in the pocket. With his free arm, Henson threw an elbow into the man’s Adam’s apple.

  The knife man hacked and coughed as he sought to get air down his throat again. Henson punched him in the stomach and doubling over, he socked him in the jaw. He staggered back, wobbly on his feet.

  “Somebody help that man,” a woman declared. “he’s being attacked.”

  Henson’s suddenly healthy older associate held up both his hands and in a decisive voice said, “Be assured, my dear citizens, Matthew Henson is doing yeoman’s work in the service of us here in Harlem.”

  The one with the knife recovered, and running, grabbed a hold of the woman and her stroller. He had the knife to her throat. The woman began to cry. Henson and the old man came forward.

  “Please don’t hurt my baby.”

  “All right Amos n’ Andy, back the hell off or the frail gets it, got me?”

  “Okay, take it easy,” Henson said, a hand up.

  His blade pressed against the woman’s breastbone, he backed up with her, his other hand pulling her stroller. He kept backing up, Henson, the old man and a few others following at several paces. They reached the sidewalk, a streetcar clanging as it approached along the adjacent thoroughfare. The roughneck shoved the woman hard to the pavement. The baby carriage rolled lopsided on two wheels and crashed over on its side. The baby tumbled out, wailing, and at the same time the knife flew at Henson, who dived out of the way. In three bounds the hood had leapt onto the back of the streetcar and rolled away.

  “It’s okay, it’s all right,” the old man said, cradling the frightened baby. He gently squeezed the child’s pudgy arms and legs, checking of any broken bones. He handed the baby to his equally frightened mother.

  “I believe other than a little shook up, he’s fine,” he said.

  Tears on her cheeks, she stared lovingly at her child.

  “When you need a cop, there’s never one around,” she said, earning nervous laughter from passerby.

  As the people returned to their normal day, Henson and the old man talked, walking toward another park bench.

  “What was that all about, Matthew?” The older man, Lionel “Slip” Latimore asked.

  “Roundaboutly, I think it has to do with what I was coming to see you about.”

  Latimore had done some freelance work for Queenie St. Clair, obtaining hard-to-get information on a few of her adversaries. He was a master pickpocket, a known consort of underworld types, a safecracker of some adeptness, and had the curious ability to appear deathly ill. This latter oddity added to his other skills had earned him his nickname long ago. He’d even escaped a lynching once, or so he proclaimed.

  “Well let’s feed a few pigeons and hear what you have to say.” He produced more bread from a pocket and the two sat and talked and threw pieces of bread the birds pecked at as they did so.

  Meanwhile, another friend of Matthew Henson was putting an experimental airplane through its paces over the Central Valley wetlands near Newark, New Jersey. Aviatrix Bessie Coleman had just come out of a barrel roll when the silver-plated plane’s engines stalled and the craft, the “Skahti”, started freefalling out of the clear sky.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Bessie, Bessie, are you in trouble?” The man’s worried voice crackled through the radio’s mesh grill in the cockpit. “Bail out, bail out!” he pleaded.

  Eyes on her controls, she said, “Don’t get your blood
pressure elevated, Hugo. I expected this.”

  “Expected? You expected to crash the plane?”

  “I expected there was a problem with the induction vents adjusting properly should you have to make an evasive maneuver.” Coleman’s gauges informed her the aircraft’s systems were functioning as they should, so she pressed the ignition button. The propellers cranked, but the engines didn’t catch. Still, she pulled back on the stick, trying to get the nose of the craft. The Skathi, named for one of the moons of Saturn, shook and rattled, but Coleman kept cool as the plane swopped through a cloud bank and as it exited, began to assume a more normal flight profile.

  “What?’ Hugo Renwick said from the control tower below. “Bessie, please, for God’s sake, get out of that death trap.”

  “I thought you were a Buddhist.”

  “Bessie, please. It’s not worth it.”

  “Hold on, I’m not done yet.”

  Due to the advanced aero design of the Skathi, including innovations in its aluminum hull that made it lightweight yet resilient, Coleman had righted the plane. But even in glide mode, she was still losing altitude too fast. Taking her hands off the controls, Coleman reached under the control panel and grasped the wires leading to the ignition. She pulled these free as Renwick yelled over the radio.

  “Bessie, you’re getting awfully close to the ground.”

  “Thank you, Hugo, my altimeter is working perfectly.”

  Getting enough of the wiring exposed beyond its casing, Coleman wrapped the two exposed wires together, a spark singeing her fingers. The propellers turned again, coughing and belching black oil-soaked smoke from the exhausts. There was also a propeller mounted on the rear of the fuselage, but that was for stability and only operated at specific times.

  “Come on…” she urged. Air whooshed past the cabin. Yet because it was an advanced aircraft and soundproofed accordingly, she barely heard this as she continued dropping.

  “Bessie, what’s happening?” came Renwick over the radio.

  “Come on…” she took the controls again, and calculated how badly the plane—and her— would crack up making a dead-stick landing. She pressed the ignition. First the starboard side engine coughed and caught, then the one opposite.

  “Holy smokes,” she laughed.

  “I can’t take this,” Renwick said over the radio.

  An elated Coleman flew across the landing field where her mechanic Shorty Duggan waved his arm at her. She banked around the squat two-story control tower, climbed the Skathi back into the air, then circled around to bring the craft in on the runway. Her intent wasn’t a traditional landing.

  “That lass sure is something, ain’t she?” Duggan said, as Renwick fell in step beside him as the two headed toward the descending aircraft. The seasoned mechanic was pot-bellied, perpetually whiskered, in his fifties and bow-legged. The forty-six year old Renwick was rangy, high cheekboned with combed back black hair and round, rimless glasses.

  “Careful, Shorty, Bessie would eat you up and spit you out for breakfast.”

  Duggan smiled yellowed teeth. “Ah, what a time it would be. But you rest easy, Mister Tycoon, I think of ‘er as the daughter I never had, don’t you know?”

  “Yes, I do,” Renwick said solemnly.

  Duggan took out a well-worn pipe from his pocket and stuck it between his teeth on the side of his mouth. He made no effort to light it as he and the man financing this operation watched Coleman bring the craft the ground, for it was unlike any other plane currently in existence.

  The wings of the craft tilted upward. Coleman was thankful those switches weren’t malfunctioning. The rear rotor simultaneously turned in sync with the twin modified Pratt & Whitneys which were now pointing straight up. In this way, the plane hovered in midair much like an autogyro, but not requiring a massive overhead propeller suspended over the cockpit. The craft touched down vertically on the runway and she cut the engines. The gearing in the wings whined as they lowered in place horizontally for takeoff.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Renwick said as she came out of the cockpit onto the built-in rungs.

  “What happened?” Duggan said, concerned for her, but also anxious his work had been inferior and the reason for the engines quitting.

  She repeated what she’d told Renwick.

  “Ah, well,” a relieved Duggan said, “damn engineers.” He took his pipe out and pointed the much-chewed stem at the two of them. “Didn’t I say fiddlin’ with those louvres to gain more speed in the lift would have consequences?”

  “You did, Shorty,” Renwick admitted. “But we’re pushing the boundaries.”

  “Physics is still physics, Mr. Renwick, and it’s fair Bessie’s gorgeous hide on the line when you push them there boundaries.”

  “I know what I’ve signed on for,” Coleman said, carrying her leather helmet and goggles in her hands, radio wire dangling from it. “And, anyway, the engines would have started right up again if not for the ignition switch.”

  Duggan stopped. “It failed?”

  She shrugged. “These things happen.”

  “I put that switch in the Scotty meself last week, Bessie.” Biting down hard on his pipe he marched back toward the experimental craft and inside the cockpit.

  Standing several feet back from the craft, an observer might mistake it for a Ford Tri-Motor, though its body was more of a tapered design. The plane had a motor mounted under each side of its hinged wing but instead of a propeller in the center there was an oval. Set inside of that was a row of circular louvers that fronted an axial-flow turbojet based on a design by the French engineer Maxime Guillaume. The Frenchman had been paid for use of his patent, which existed as drawings only, no prototype. He hadn’t yet solved the problem of making compressors that didn’t fail due to fluctuations in air pressure. Renwick’s brain trust had made progress in that regard, at least to the extent that the turbojet bestowed greater speed to the plane. But most importantly, when the plane was switched over to land vertically, the center turbine helped keep the craft aloft in a temporary stationary position.

  Inside the hanger, they walked past various internal and external pieces of aircraft as well as a DC and gas-powered electrical generators. On a workbench Duggan took the switch apart and stared at it. He pointed the tip of his screwdriver at the insides. “The contact points have been removed. When I put the switch in last week, I tested it, and it worked fine.”

  “None of us doubt you, Shorty,” Renwick said.

  Bessie Coleman folded her arms. “Sabotage. But subtle-like. Done by someone who counted on us always tinkering with the Skathi.”

  “Easy enough to observe us from the woods around here,” Duggan noted. The private airfield was in a bulldozer cleared area in the wetlands.

  “You don’t exactly lack for enemies, Hugo,” Coleman observed.

  “Cutthroat usually has other meanings from the boardroom types,” Renwick said. “They use their lawyers to entangle you through legal maneuvers.”

  “Maybe they don’t have time for that. Or maybe they simply like the more direct method,” Coleman said.

  “And let’s not forget there are plenty of flyboys who feel a woman—especially a colored gal—ain’t got no business in the air,” Duggan wryly noted.

  She’d received her pilot’s license two years before Emilia Earhart. Though Earhart had gained additional notoriety as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, it was as a passenger and not lead or co-pilot. A French speaker, Coleman was the one who knew about Guillaume’s pioneering theories.

  Renwick said, tapping the switch, “There’s plenty of my rivals would love to derail this effort. Aviation is a field with vast potential and to be the first with this kind of airship, well, one’s reputation would be made.”

  “Aye, like Cook versus Peary?” Duggan said, looking at Renwick. “Who gets their first or can make his claims stick, is all that counts.”

  The man gave him a
wan smile. “Still, I assumed our isolated location would be protective cover, but I see I better bring on some guards for all concerned,” the industrialist added.

  “I hope you’re not talking about Pinks,” Duggan said. “Just ‘cause it was a silver-tongued Scotsman who started them, I don’t hold much truck with them railroad boss siding, strike breaking bastards.”

  “Amen, Comrade,” Coleman said straight-faced.

  “They’ll be hand-selected by me,” Renwick said.

  “Okay. Let’s go over the Scotty to make sure nothing else is amiss.”

  “You read my mind.”

  “I’ll see you two a little later,” Renwick said.

  The pilot and the mechanic said their goodbyes and walked back to the experimental craft. Renwick drove away in his Chrysler roadster. He stopped in town to get an egg cream and use a pay phone in a drugstore as there were no phone lines out where the airfield was.

  “Hello, Dash, is that you?” he said, after he’d settled in the booth and got the operator to dial the number he wanted after consulting his pocket address book. “It’s Hugo Renwick...yes, that’s right, how are things? What are you working on now?’ He listened for several seconds then spoke again, “Huh, all about a black falcon statue you say, sounds damn interesting. Look, I wanted to pick your brain for some thick necked chaps for a spot of guard duty. Hush, hush stuff. But that must be reliable. Right, no, they don’t have to have been in harness.”

  Renwick took another sip of his soda and began jotting down a few names offered by former Pinkerton detective, and current teller of hardboiled tales, Dashiell Hammett.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The gaunt white man had slept longer than he’d intended. Though not heavy, the rusty springs squeaked as he swung his legs over the side and, his rather long feet on the floor, he got his bearings. He’d run out of laudanum the day before and had told himself that he didn’t need the drug to get his work done. That, really, he should do his best to keep clear-headed and able-bodied. This was not a new argument. But no more. Too much was at stake.