"You're welcome. It was a lucky coincidence," Henry said. "The killer should be dead, but I didn't aim for the head."
"That rifle you used..." Garfield began, his curiosity getting the better of him.
"Magic," Henry said with a simple smile.
Just then, fifteen guards rushed out from the mansion.
William, having regained his composure, began to issue orders. "Charlie, Daniel, go and check on the assassin. If he's dead, don't touch him. Melham, go and get Tom from the Pinkerton's office. Simon, get Dr. Baker for this wounded man."
He then turned to Garfield and Henry. "Gentlemen, let's go up to the second floor for some tea and wait for their report."
Garfield gave a few quiet instructions to his remaining guard, then nodded to Henry, and the two of them followed William inside.
After half an hour, Tom, the unassuming private investigator, arrived to give his report.
"The assassin has been identified as 'The Lone Wolf' Phillips, a former lieutenant in the Confederate sharpshooter corps. The two Whitworth rifles he was using bore his personal mark."
The Whitworth rifle was a unique, muzzle-loading weapon with a hexagonal bore that fired a corresponding hexagonal bullet. It was incredibly accurate, with an effective range of over 1,000 meters, and had been the standard weapon of the Confederate sharpshooters.
"Phillips was a legendary killer," Tom continued. "He was credited with dozens of Union kills during the war. He fled to Brazil after the surrender and hasn't been seen in fifteen years."
Garfield and William understood the implications. For a man like Phillips to reappear after fifteen years, armed with two heavy rifles, and to have the exact location and timing for an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate… he was not working alone.
But his luck had run out. He had come up against the living legend, Henry Bruce.
After the investigator had left and Garfield had been escorted back to the Astor House, William and Henry sat and talked for over an hour. The old tycoon was deeply impressed. He found Henry to be not just a warrior, but a man of wide-ranging knowledge and keen insight.
It was after 5:30 PM when Henry finally took his leave. He had a dinner engagement at the Semma family's estate at 7 PM.
He had no sooner left the Vanderbilt mansion than he sensed them: the three spies from before, back on his trail. He ignored them for the moment and returned to the hotel.
Back in his room, he barricaded the door and used the new green pearl he had acquired from the assassin. He was flooded with a new talent: Self-Healing LV 1, which increased his natural recovery rate by fifty percent. A powerful, life-saving gift.
He then changed into his formal suit and went to the Semma family's estate. The Semma family was another of the old, powerful clans, their influence reaching into every corner of American industry.
While Henry was attending the dinner party, in a hotel in Midtown, a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard, a man named Abine, was carefully assembling a rifle.
He had spent the afternoon reading the last five days' worth of the New York Sun, studying every article about Henry. Before every major assassination, he performed this ritual, meticulously cleaning and oiling his beloved weapon. It was how he became one with the gun.
It was a custom-built Whitworth rifle, with an effective range of over 1,180 meters. With this rifle, he had taken countless lives—outlaws, nobles, heroes, and villains. It had earned him his fearsome moniker: "The Eye of Balor."
The Semma family's dinner party ended at 10 PM. After a final, half-hour conversation with his host, Mark, Henry departed. As he stepped into the waiting carriage, he gave a quiet instruction to the driver, Leon.
The carriage traveled for a few minutes at a leisurely pace. Henry, his senses on high alert, caught the familiar, unpleasant scent of one of his tails. He opened the carriage door, slipped out into the darkness, and closed it behind him. The driver, on Leon's signal, immediately sped up.
Henry waited for the carriage to round a corner, then summoned his brown quarter horse and charged. The thunder of his horse's hooves was a drumbeat of doom.
He caught up to the first stalker in seconds. The man heard him coming and turned, his face a mask of terror in the gaslight. Before he could even react, Henry was on him, his rapier a blur of motion, a single, silent thrust to the neck.
He didn't slow. He used his lasso to catch the man's riderless horse, stored both it and the body, and then spurred his own horse onward, in pursuit of the second.
He dispatched the second man in the same manner.
The third, he took alive. A single, carefully placed blow from an iron shovel sent the man tumbling from his saddle, unconscious.
He dragged the man to a deserted, unfinished construction site and tied him to a heavy oak table. He woke him with a splash of cold water to the face, then began the interrogation.
The man was a Pinkerton. His name and badge confirmed it. Henry used a water-soaked towel to persuade him to talk.
The terrified detective told him everything: their orders had come from the branch chief, Alston. They reported their surveillance by leaving notes in a dead drop in a newspaper box on Fifth Avenue, with a coded knock on a nearby apartment door to signal the drop had been made.
Henry now knew how they were communicating. He knew where their hub was.
And he knew what he had to do next.