The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt Read online

  The train rocked while I did my business in the lavatory with particular care. As I turned back toward my compartment, I glanced over my shoulder. The conductor was striding toward me when Forney’s huge hand stuck into the aisle, crossing his body, a ticket between his thick fingers and a thumb. The conductor took the ticket, examined it, and returned it into Forney’s hand.

  His left hand.

  I hurried back to my compartment and sat at the edge of my bunk.

  A left-hander had killed David Pratt from behind. It was Forney. This wasn’t proof, but I knew beyond a doubt that it was true. A left-handed gunman had attacked me, as well, albeit with a gun instead of a knife, and he hadn’t killed me, as he had killed Pratt. Had chosen not to kill me. I was alive because of his … beneficence? Unlikely. Probably he was following instructions.

  That made sense. All right, then, whose instructions? Every conspiracy has a brain, and it wasn’t Samson’s. The only way to find out was to confront him. Better yet, to follow him and keep him in my sights.

  Should I sleep? Could I? Might he leave the train in Philadelphia or Wilmington or Baltimore? No. I was sure of that. His destination was the same as mine: Washington. Lafayette Square. In his case, the president’s house. A stone’s throw from mine.

  My heart was beating so hard I heard the thumping in my chest. I tried to think of anything else, which ensured that I wouldn’t. My back ached—nerves, for certain—no matter which way I twisted. What passed for a bed was like the battlefield at Bull Run or a gingko’s gnarled roots, something I had seen but never fought or slept on.

  I lay in the dark, trembling, and I knew why: a killer was in the next car. A real-to-life hound, a fiery beast, a Satan of nature.

  Why would he want to kill David Pratt anyway? That was easy: to cover up a conspiracy to assassinate the president by murdering the man who tried. And he might have hated David Pratt, as David Pratt must have hated him, for cuckolding his son-in-law and fathering his grandson. Maybe other reasons, too. The indignities between master and servant no outsider could guess. But why would Samson want to hurt or frighten little ol’ me? Also easy: to halt my investigation. I was flattered, I must say. As a detective, it meant I was effective enough to threaten but not enough to kill. At least so far, I am pleased to report.

  The wheels rumbled beneath my bed. I tried to pretend they were Lindgren’s hands. No luck. Or Clara’s. That worked better. I felt warm inside. I dozed but woke up in a sweat. The wheels screeched like a toddler with a flute.

  “Baltimore!” the conductor cried.

  As I tried to slip back into sleep, I wondered if I would be waking from a dream into a new nightmare.

  * * *

  The train shuddered to a stop and I awoke in a fog. My darkened dream vanished, like the floating dust.

  “Sixth street station!” the conductor called.

  I was home. But not alone.

  It was the middle of the night and felt like it. I was muddled and disengaged, as if reality were a foreign country and I was stuck at the border, playing rummy, looking in. Sleeping in my clothes was grittier than I liked. Trying to shake myself awake didn’t work. Caffeine might help, or a punch in the face, but neither was immediately available. I was on my own. That would have to suffice.

  I sprang from the … I hesitate to call it a bed … from the cot. My legs functioned as well as before. Still reasonably fast, adjusted for age. Samson’s were sure to be faster.

  I carried the valise on my shoulder, paused at the end of the corridor, and peered into the next car. No sight of him. I panicked. Had I lost him already, by my reluctance to rise? Sherlock would have wreathed himself in tobacco and stayed awake. Maybe I was too damn lazy to be a detective. I needed my sleep.

  My pocket watch showed thirteen minutes before five. I eased down the steps and landed lightly on the platform—and froze. Samson was standing a dozen feet ahead, his back to me, hunched over. I held back, eyes alert, muscles poised, pursuing my prey. After a moment, he reached down for his cardboard-sided suitcase and exhaled a plume of smoke from a cigar. He glanced furtively to each side, as if looking for someone, and walked on.

  Rain clattered like artillery shells on the corrugated aluminum roof. I kept two or three people between us. A burly man squiring an unruly boy lunged in front of me just as Samson was hurrying away. He had seen someone.

  I scampered around the family that might or might not see better days and weaved between the groggy passengers. I knocked into a white-haired lady with my valise—she kept hold of her daisy-bedecked hat—and mumbled an apology. I hurried on, searching for Samson.

  I left the din outside. The waiting room was gloomy and shockingly quiet, an omen of a world that no longer includes you. My footsteps echoed on the marble. The pews were empty at this hour; it must be too early to leave and too late to come home. The passengers from my train seemed to have gone up in smoke. Except for Samson. Through the far door I caught sight of him rushing out—into the ladies’ waiting room next door. He was not alone. A tall, cloaked figure scuttled along at his side.

  As I bolted across the main waiting room and into the ladies’ haven, my valise bouncing into my ribs, I caught sight of the pair rushing through the exit door, onto Sixth street. I tore after them. I took pains to sidestep the golden star that marked Garfield’s murder, but I glanced down as I ran by it. Lights bounced from the ceiling, and I noticed a heel print at the center of the star. It looked fresh in the surrounding dust. Its shape was unmistakable: a hexagon.

  My eyes went wide. I had seen this shape before—Nellie Bly had pointed it out—in the heel print outside of William Turtle’s door. The figure in the cloak was a woman. Maybe the woman the Willard desk clerk had seen rush by amid the chaos after Turtle was shot. And maybe the woman I had heard back in Turtle’s bedroom.

  “You!” Turtle had exclaimed.

  How I hoped against hope it wasn’t Lizzie. But I had a stomach-heavy feeling that it was.

  I dashed through the Sixth street door and looked frantically in every direction, but they were nowhere in sight. The rain had eased to a drizzle but, judging by the smell, was soon to revive. It was deathly dark; either the gas lamps on the Mall had been extinguished at midnight or the city’s budget had run dry. Other than a carriage nearing the corner of B street, all was still.

  I stepped into the roadway. Which way should I search? Suddenly, I heard a rumble behind me, like a beast in a Jules Verne nightmare. I turned. The headlamps were blinding; the machine hurtled straight at me. I leapt out of the way just in time.

  I swiveled. Filling the back window were two familiar silhouettes.

  My breath heaved, but I gave chase. The effort was absurd. The horseless carriage reached B street long before my legs could. I watched helplessly as it sputtered for another short block, to Pennsylvania avenue. It turned left.

  I stood in the middle of Sixth street and howled. Nobody heard me, and it served no useful purpose. I took two deep breaths and then got practical and ran into the middle of the avenue. The scene was lovely, had I time to admire it. The Capitol, its dome illuminated, was glowing through the mist.

  I waved my arms at the first vehicle I saw. The one-horse dray veered to miss me, not slowing in the slightest. The driver shouted something I was pleased not to hear. The headlamps of the next carriage flickered a block to the east. I positioned myself in its path, albeit close to the curb. The driver was wielding a whip on a pair of white horses. Exactly what I needed. Maybe they could catch an automobile.

  Theodore would have been proud of how I stood my ground, even as the carriage—a fine barouche, from the front view—kept coming at me. I stared up at the driver, who sat on the box in a knitted shawl and silk hat. Here, a street lantern was lit, and I felt sure he could see me. Sure enough to wager my life? Nope. But I still had time to—

  I was about to spring out of the way when the driver shouted, “Whoa, gents! Whoa!” With an impressive suddenness, the horses slowed and cam
e to a halt a few feet in front of me.

  “Police business!” I shouted as I stepped up to the driver’s box. “I need the use of your carriage.”

  “Yer badge?” He was a young man with sculpted cheeks and a whimsical brogue. Thatches of hair, presumably red, curled from beneath a woolen cap.

  “I don’t have one, I’m afraid.” I introduced myself and offered a business card, which sounded silly—worse, implausible—even to me.

  “I seen yer pitcher in the paper,” the driver said. “My rig is yer’n.”

  I heard urine before I realized his generosity. “Thank you, thank you,” I said. I climbed up onto the driver’s box—this was where Big Bill Craig had sat. “We need to overtake an automobile.”

  His smile had a surprising delicacy. “A piece o’ fun, sir. Ronan,” the driver said, extending his hand, which I would have preferred remained on the reins.

  “John,” I replied, with a quick, firm handshake. “Turn here.”

  The side of the Central Market smelled of last night’s rotting produce and leftover meat, its vendor stalls boarded up until dawn. Pennsylvania avenue was eerily quiet. The shuttered shops, the greasy restaurants and liquor outlets, the boardinghouse and shabby hotels, the secondhand furniture store, the Christian mission—the capital’s most famous boulevard had grown too desolate to hold its ambitions.

  I heard a horn toot, two or three blocks ahead of us. An automobile, all but certain. Ronan shook his fist and applied the whip with joy in his eyes. Two horses can run no faster than one, of course, but they can run longer at maximum speed. They surged along the avenue, kicking tar from the roadway into the air, intimidating any carriages that might be counting on north–south traffic’s having the right-of-way. Thank the Lord, nobody else was on the road. The erratic wind, laced with raindrops, pricked my face.

  Lizzie Cameron (God forbid!) and Frank Forney—what an incongruous pair! The political duchess and the liveryman’s servant; the doyenne of Washington and Samson of the Berkshires. What on earth was their connection? Had she known him before? Not if her description of events at the Georgetown wharf was accurate. (If.) But didn’t conspirators need to know one another? How had they ever become acquainted? Somebody must have introduced them.

  “Still see it?” I said.

  No reply but the whip.

  I looked as hard as I could, and I, too, saw it. Heard it, more like: a metallic sputtering that kept threatening to die. What sounded like squeals of delight was probably the pistons or whatever the hell those parts were called.

  “Not too close,” I said. “I don’t want them to—”

  “I’ve done this before.”

  “Oh?”

  “Over a beer someday, John.”

  I threw my head back and laughed. I was in capable hands.

  Past Eleventh street, the new post office clock tower stood like a sentinel against the black sky. Only the Willard showed any signs of life—the lights inside, the unending hubbub at the curb. The automobile was nowhere in sight, but Ronan seemed to know where he was heading. He nodded his head toward the Treasury Building, straight ahead, at night a somber, unscalable wall. Ronan pulled on the reins, applying the whip with precision, mindful of the chase yet also of the turns to come. I marveled at his skill and at his willingness to be cruel and wondered if excellence required both. At Treasury, we turned right and then slowed for a left, to follow the avenue. I knew where we were heading.

  Lafayette Square.

  Where all roads in the capital led. Where I lived. Worse, where the president lived. Why not kill him in his bed? Easier than on a trolley track in Pittsfield. If a single guard was at the door, how hard would it be for assassins to shoot their way past him?

  “Hurry!” I shouted—unnecessarily.

  The turn back onto the avenue brought the machine smack into view. It was halted a short block ahead of us, at the closest corner of Lafayette Square.

  I whispered fiercely, “Stop!”

  Ronan tugged on the reins and the horses obeyed. If only people did that, I thought. I clasped Ronan’s shoulder in admiration and shook his hand in thanks.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

  I thanked him again and left my valise on the seat.

  Would I be more noticeable in a top hat or in no hat? I decided on none. I climbed down from the barouche and checked for the derringer in my waistcoat pocket.

  Two dark figures had emerged from the automobile. One was wide; both were tall.

  Wait. Why would potential assassins want to approach the temporary White House from the opposite side of Lafayette Square? To cloak their presence, perhaps, or to check for an agent in the park. By the time I reached the corner, their machine had driven away and the two silhouettes had sidled into our heart of darkness. The statue of the Marquis de Lafayette, shunted to the corner of the park, rose like a fiery angel. I walked past.

  The bower of trees shaped Lafayette Park into a funnel, pulling me in. The park was empty except for the two figures, side by side, pacing purposefully ahead. I tried not to scrape my boots on the gravel, and I kept to the side of the path; if one of my prey turned around, a tree could hide me. At the center of the park, Andy Jackson reared up on his horse, and the silhouettes circled around to the right of it. They took the radiating path, toward the northwestern corner of the park. The temporary White House was in the middle of the block. My prey either would reach Jackson Place and turn south or, more likely, would circle around to the west.

  I considered trying to intercept them and then saw the folly. It would be two against one, and my two-shot derringer against Samson’s … armory. Better, I could head them off. I veered off the path and headed across the grass toward the president’s town house. If a Secret Service man was lurking and didn’t shoot me first, he might help.

  Later, I would feel proud of my lack of hesitation. Maybe I was as brave as Theodore would want me to be. But no one else, good or evil, was skulking in the park. My boots dragged through the twisted wet vines, and I looked across Jackson Place. No bodyguard stood on Theodore’s porch; I hoped one was inside. Also no sign of a scraggly-haired giant or a woman in a cloak. I heard only crickets.

  As I crossed the outer-ring path, I headed toward the president’s residence, to warn the agent inside. A bulky man stepped from behind an oak. He wore a rough tweed overcoat and a military-style cap. He carried a gun—quite a large one, pointed at me.

  “Halt!” he said.

  I did not consider doing otherwise.

  “Where are you going?” he said. His nose looked like it had been broken multiple times.

  “To warn the president,” I replied.

  “About what?”

  “You Secret Service?”

  “Who are you?”

  I told him. The man scrutinized my face and decided to believe me, apparently because my claim was too outlandish to be a lie.”What do you want?” he said gruffly.

  “Two people are coming for—might be coming for…” I pointed toward the corner of the park. “Now! I need to talk to—” I started to pass him, and he blocked my way.

  “You can talk to me,” he said.

  “I just did.”

  “We are aware of this already.”

  “Oh?”

  “From a barouche driver, a couple of minutes ago.”

  Hurrah for Ronan. “Have you seen them?” I said.

  “Only you.”

  “Shouldn’t we warn—” I tried again to edge past him.

  “You just did. Thank you.”

  “But they’re still—”

  “Thank you.”

  I turned back the way I had come. The rain had stopped. Behind Andy Jackson, the sky glowed. I turned north at the outer-ring path. Still no sight or sound of Samson and his hexagonally heeled companion. I was a predator who had lost my prey.

  What else could I do but go home?

  The naphtha lamp at the corner was lit. I glanced at Henry’s house. A light was on be
hind his library’s high windows. The screens were down. Two silhouettes bobbed behind them—the silhouettes I had seen in the back window of an automobile and then striding across Lafayette Square.

  I gulped.

  A third silhouette entered the frame. To my horror, I recognized this one, too. The sweeping forehead and the cultured nose, the pointed beard. It was Henry. The silhouette with the straggly hair was reaching for his neck.

  I rushed across H street and under the low stone archway, and I pounded on Henry’s door. I pressed the handle. The latch gave way.

  The entrance hall was dark. Fortunately, I knew where everything was, and so I avoided the armoire and the umbrella stand and ventured down the hallway. I took care not to brush Clover’s photographs along the walls. The staircase was near the rear. I got ready to mount, and then I became aware of a presence on the bottom step. A lamp at the top put the face in shadows.

  The figure turned at my approach. The hood of the cloak had slipped.

  The face was not Lizzie’s.

  It had the coarse, peasant-like features of Margaret Hanna.

  I had an instant to take this in before she punched me in the mouth and kneed me in the groin. I went down. The lower pain radiated, and I opened my eyes in time to see a six-sided heel throttling toward my forehead. I slipped my head aside, grabbed at her ankle, and whipsawed it. She shrieked and fell back onto the staircase. Her head landed with a thump. She looked like a rag doll sprawled on the stairs, breathing in fits and snorts. Then she was quiet.

  I heard a shout upstairs. It sounded like Henry. I forced myself to my feet, stepped over Margaret, and reached the landing as the quarreling grew louder. I reached the second floor and rushed toward the front of the house.

  “You damn well better!” That was Frank Forney’s voice.

  “I can’t. Not to-night … I simply … No! No!”

  The library, on my right, was the center of Henry’s universe. It was a large, comfortable room overflowing with books and Chinese bronzes and Henry’s baubles from exotic lands. Frank Forney had backed Henry against the fireplace and was waving a black Oriental vase, which he smashed against the onyx mantel. The crash was as loud as a gunshot. A thousand pieces sprayed across the floor. I jumped, and Henry let loose a sob. I held my derringer in my right palm and pointed it at Forney. Like a character in Owen Wister’s next Western, I announced, “Drop it.”