by A. A. Glynn
Carrington’s Hotel was an elegant establishment frequented by the well-heeled, and it presented its well-bred frontage to equally well-bred and fashionable St. James’s Place.
A little before eleven a.m. Dacers, fitted out to appear in such an environment in a slate grey frock coat, a well-brushed tall hat, and carrying a stick, climbed the hotel’s broad steps and entered, acknowledging the salute of the doorman, who was garbed in a silver frogged coat of military scarlet, velvet knee breeches, and a powdered wig.
He found the Tea Room to be a tranquil place, thickly carpeted and cluttered with potted ferns, while its walls were overburdened with paintings in gilded frames. Tea drinkers sat at ornate tables between which waiters glided silently as if on well-oiled castors.
Roberta Van Trask was sitting at a corner table accompanied by a young black woman in a winter outfit of bonnet and crinoline as fashionable and tasteful as those of Miss Van Trask herself. Dacers approached them, raising his hat, and Roberta Van Trask gave him her warm and modest smile.
“So good of you to come at such short notice, Mr. Dacers,” she said. “This is Esther, my maid. She is perfectly discreet and we can talk quite freely in her presence. She is my friend as well as my maid. I want to keep our meeting rather secret, because I do not wish my father to have word of my trying to get to the bottom of whatever is troubling him so much. He thinks Esther and I are on a shopping trip. Tell me, are you any further on with your investigations?”
Dacers sat down on a vacant chair and balanced his tall hat on his knee. “Let’s say I have had some contact with certain people from over the ocean, and they have something afoot, but I have yet to unravel where their activities fit into Mr. Van Trask’s affairs, if indeed they do. With your permission, I’ll tell you in fuller detail when I know more. Please do not worry yourself. I am doing my very best to help you. I’m sure things will come to a good conclusion.”
He hoped that last sentiment would not prove false, and felt that, for the present, he was unable to tell her anything about a scheme so outlandish as reviving a belligerent Southern Confederacy in case she worried that her father was in some way implicated in the plot.
He needed to know more, and did not yet know what his next move would be. It was his fervent hope that it would not reveal that Theodore Van Trask was entangled in the scheming of Messrs Fortune, Fairfax, and Meakum, and whoever else might be involved.
“I’m content to allow you to do as you think fit, Mr. Dacers,” said the girl. “I wanted, however, to tell you something that might be useful. You will recall that I told you I felt I had seen the man I believed to be a hunchback before, the one I glimpsed in the carriage on the day that man Fairfax attacked my father—well, I’ve remembered where I saw him.”
“Really? Where?”
“In Willard’s Hotel in Washington. Willard’s is a kind of crossroads. In the war. everybody of note and some dubious people lived or met there: politicians, officers of the army and navy; newspapermen; contractors looking for government business; and mysterious men and women possibly spying for one side or the other. Virginia, in enemy territory, lay on the other side of the Potomac River and, in spite of all the precautions of both sides, secret agents from both the Union and the Confederacy managed to cross the river quite frequently. Willard’s Hotel was always a hotbed of rumour and dubious goings-on. And that’s where I saw the man, deep in conversation with Colonel Baker.”
“Who’s Colonel Baker?” Dacers asked.
“Colonel Lafayette Baker was one of the most powerful and intriguing men in Washington, and there were always whispers about him,” said Miss Van Trask. “Some suggested he was not wholly loyal to the Union, and there were ugly rumours about his past. Before the war, he was said to have been a leader of the San Francisco Vigilantes, who pursued suspected criminals and even hanged them from lampposts without trial. During the war, he headed the National Detective Police Force, which he founded and, in fact, he was the Union’s spymaster. More recently, further rumours have been flying because he posted a man at the box in Ford’s Theatre to guard President and Mrs. Lincoln, but he deserted his post, allowing John Wilkes Booth to enter and shoot Mr. Lincoln. It seems Colonel Baker never punished the policeman. I hear this is much talked of with suspicion in Washington.”
“That is indeed interesting, Miss Van Trask,” commented Dacers.
“And something very puzzling, Mr. Dacers, is that I am absolutely certain that, when I saw the man with Colonel Baker, he did not have a hunched back. He was completely free of any deformity. Here in London, I only glimpsed the man in the carriage as it sped off, of course, but I’m sure he was a hunchback.”
“Possibly, you were mistaken, and they were two different men.”
“No, there was something quite unforgettable about that lean face, those heavy eyebrows, and those glittering eyes. I remember them so well, and, just yesterday, I suddenly recalled the scene in Willard’s Hotel, during the war between the states.”
“Well,” ventured Dacers “There might have been two men—identical twins, one of whom was unfortunate enough to have a spinal abnormality.”
The girl shook her head. “I thought of that but, somehow, it doesn’t ring true. I’m somehow sure he was one and the same man. You can call it a woman’s intuition if you like.”
Dacers went a jump ahead of her. “So, you’re thinking if this man was so clearly one of those associated with the Fairfax fellow, who was definitely from the rebel South, why was he hobnobbing with the Union’s spymaster during the war?”
Dacers determined that, for the present, he would keep her in the dark about his knowing Fortune’s name as well as having some knowledge of his activities on this side of the Atlantic until he had a fuller picture of the plot Fortune, Fairfax, and Meakum were attempting to further. Her revelation of his meeting with Colonel Lafayette Baker might throw some light on his character, if she had not mistaken the identity of the man at Willard’s Hotel.
“Could it be,” he asked, “that the man was playing a double game—spying for both sides; working for Baker on the Union side and for the Confederacy as well? But who can say where his true allegiance lay?”
“Exactly, and there were double agents,” she said. “But what about that hump? How is it that a man is a hunchback when seen in England, but not when seen in America?”
Dacers shrugged. “Who can say? Unless, and I hesitate to suggest it again, you were mistaken, Miss Van Trask.”
But, much earlier in their conversation, he had begun to form an answer to that question, but that was something else he decided to keep to himself for the present.
“Well, for whatever it is worth, I thought I should tell you about it,” said the girl. “I may be prejudiced, but I suppose my long residence in Washington has made me feel that any connection with Colonel Baker makes a thing that much more sinister.” She paused and looked at Dacers squarely, curious about the bruises from the Blue Duck episode on his face.
She frowned and asked: “Mr. Dacers, do I see marks of injury on your face? I do hope your efforts on my behalf have not led you into physical danger.”
Dacers surprised himself by his own out-of-character boldness by replying: “If they did, Miss Van Trask, what are a few bruises if they are earned in the service of a lady?”
Esther, the maid and companion, placed her hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle, and Roberta Van Trask gave a silvery peal of laughter, which was a delight to hear, since she was previously so burdened with care. Then she said demurely: “Why, Mr. Dacers, what a perfect Englishman you are! Such chivalry!”
Septimus Dacers left Carrington’s Hotel with his thoughts on the man who might or might not have a hump on his back, but overriding them was the echo of Roberta Van Trask’s attractive laughter.
And it brought an unaccustomed lightness of heart and a matching lightness of step.
Elsewhere and a little earlier, the activities of Messrs Fortune, Fairfax, and Meakum had begun to have
an effect.
Shortly before Miss Van Trask called on Septimus Dacers in London, a certain Sheffield ironmaster, in his office in the midst of his smoke-choked furnaces and forges, opened a letter addressed to him, marked “Strictly Private.”
It consisted of two sheets of flowery but highly tempting prose under a strikingly engraved heading which embodied the St. Andrew’s cross studded with stars, called “the Stars and Bars,” the standard of the now defunct Confederate States of America, which, in 1861, launched the bloody civil war. As the ironmaster read it, his usually dour face brightened and his eyes became enlivened.
During the war in America, he helped to finance the building of some of the secret sea craft created for the Confederates in British yards to raid and sink U.S. shipping and break the United States’ blockade of the Southern coast and bring out exports, chiefly of the South’s most important commodity, raw cotton. He had also invested heavily in shares in other such enterprises. The financial returns were good and, of course, the ironmaster could make the humane excuse that it was all done to help the workers in the cotton mills of northern England who were on the edge of starvation due to the “Cotton Famine” brought about by the United States’ blockade.
He never heeded the fact that the working men of Manchester had addressed a letter to Lincoln, applauding his anti-slavery sentiments, and saying they preferred hardship to handling cotton made available through the inhuman use of black slaves. Nor, for all his professed charitable concern for the cotton workers of Lancashire, did he consider taking any action to ease the sweated conditions in his own workshops, which were little better than those endured by the transatlantic slaves.
The letter, headed by an engraved depiction of the Confederate flag, surrounded by warlike implements, promised a return to the good times. It opened possibilities for making more money. For it trumpeted the message that the Confederate States were not crushed. A combination of devoted men was working to revive the Southern cause. The letter said they were properly called The Resurgent South, but they thought of themselves as “The Dixie Ghosts,” out to wreak revenge on the Union. Once more, under their inspiration, Southern men would throng to the beloved but conquered banner, eager to fight to create a new and powerful independent Dixie.
It would require finances, of course, but the promoters of the New South, aided by prominent Confederate citizens and former officers of the Southern army and navy, and a wealth of others devoted to the gallant South, confidently expected their old supporters to rally to their aid, unstinting as before.
For the South would fight again, and being now equipped with many advanced devices and inventions of war developed in secret with Southern ingenuity but not released in the war, triumph over Dixie’s enemies was assured.
There was much more stirring prose, which made a powerful appeal to the ironmaster’s strongly developed appreciation of profit.
Then there was the owner of mines in the Lancashire coalfields who received the same letter. Twice, before the British government stopped the use of young children and women in mines, his company had been castigated by official inquiries for their inhuman usage, and his ignoring of even such feeble measures as then protected these vulnerable toilers. Such a man might be expected to support a cause that had slavery as a main plank of its constitution. And he did, giving generous aid to create the secretly built sea craft. Now the high-flown appeal for funds awoke memories of the profits made from his shares in the enterprises that supplied arms and shipping to the rebel states. He began to consider loosening his purse strings yet again.
A retired British Army general in Dorset; a crusty old judge in Berkshire; a one-time high-ranking civil servant in London; and a reclusive old resident of Birmingham, reputed to be a miser, all of whom had invested in shares in the British firms involved in providing warlike supplies and shipping for the Confederacy, also received the letter, which quickened their hearts when they read it.
Such was the appeal to avarice made by the letter that its recipients did not pause to consider the true condition of the Southern states since the surrender of their armies and the fall of their capital, Richmond, Virginia. For the cream of Dixie’s fighting young manhood was dead or crippled; life-giving crops were ruined by marauding Northern forces; poverty and hunger stalked the scene of the defeated South, which the triumphant Union was trying to remake under its policy of “Reconstruction.”
The letter was also received by a solidly built, middle-aged man with a bald head and luxurious muttonchop whiskers in his lodgings in the Toxteth district of Liverpool. In his case, it was sent not by its originators but by a person who enclosed a covering note:
Commander Bulloch, Sir,
This letter is going the rounds of certain gentlemen who are mostly known to yourself and who aided your activities of an earlier date. I think you will agree that it is a barefaced and audacious attempt at a confidence trick. Perhaps you feel that the recipients should be protected from the designs on their funds, which the organisers of the scheme so obviously entertain. You may be inclined to take some action to preserve the good name of decent Southern people, although I know that your present situation means you are severely restricted in what you can do. I, too, am extremely restricted, but I see this scheme as a disgraceful use of the plight of a defeated, grieving, but gallant people for tawdry gain. The promoters are certainly criminals.
You know me, sir, but I prefer to sign myself, simply
A Friend in London.
James Bulloch, sometime an officer of the United States’ Navy, and more recently a commander in the Confederate States’ Navy, having followed his native Georgia in the revolt against Lincoln’s government, stared at the accompanying letter for a few seconds, then gave a bark of laughter which contained no hint of humour. He turned to the tall, slim, younger man with a black moustache sitting across the room.
“Irvine,” he called. “You have to read this. When it comes to confidence trickery, it beats all those tales of sharp Yankees selling gold bricks or all Broadway to yokels for a couple of dollars.”
The younger man, Irvine Bulloch, ex-lieutenant of the Confederate Navy, and the half-brother of the commander was the sailing master of the celebrated Shenandoah, who had navigated that celebrated raider on her last epic voyage to Liverpool. He took the missive, studied its bellicose illustrated heading, then read it with widening eyes. “High falutin’ sentiments, Jim,” he commented. “And there is even a claim that the promoters are in possession of the missing Great Seal of the Confederacy as well as important government documents.” He began to quote:
“We would point out that interest has been shown in our newly developed weapons by a revolutionary brotherhood, backed by strong Irish-American interests and sworn enemies of Queen Victoria and her government. We need hardly tell you that no patriotic Englishman would wish to see them fall into such hands.”
“Outright blackmail!” exclaimed Irvine. “They are suggesting they would sell these imaginary weapons to the Irish Fenians if money is not raised from British sources.”
He continued to read:
“To fortify their claim to act in the spirit of the old Confederate States, the promoters give an assurance that they hold the Great Seal of the Confederacy, believed to be lost since the fall of Richmond. This solid silver work of art is as sacred as the ancient Great Seal of Great Britain, and whoever owns it can claim absolutely to have the right and duty to administer and protect the constitution of the Confederate States as drawn up and administered by the founding fathers and to claim the adherence and loyalty of all citizens of those states.”
Irvine Bulloch frowned. “Why, that’s a damned lie, Jim!” he exploded. “The Great Seal disappeared since the war ended. We’ve all heard the rumour that the Yankees seized it and melted it down for the silver. These scoundrels can’t possibly have it!”
“It’s a lie, all right,” affirmed his half-brother. “I didn’t tell you before, but when I sneaked off to London a few w
eeks ago to see some exiles from Dixie, I made the acquaintance of a Mr. William Bromwell, an impoverished but loyal Southerner, and a former official of our State Department in Richmond. The Great Seal was not seized by the Yankees, for before Richmond fell, Bromwell secured many state papers and the Great Seal and hid them in a most secret place. He alone knows where they are, and nothing will induce him to say where, but he promises to do so when the time is ripe. I’m convinced it was he who sent this letter. He is one of a very small select few who know our address.” Bulloch paused and scratched his bald pate then said thoughtfully: “I think, Irvine, in view of this piece of impudence, we shall soon have to come out of hiding and act if we have any concern for the reputation of our cause and the honour of all those who died for it. I guess we’ll have to take the train for London to consult some friends of ours,”
The bald pate of James Bulloch contained many secrets, a great deal of wisdom, and a wealth of cunning to the effectiveness of which Charles Francis Adams, U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, could attest.
For the senior Bulloch had been the Confederacy’s chief undercover agent in Great Britain during the Civil War. It was he who raised funds for and organised the creation in Britain of ships to attack the vessels of Lincoln’s navy.
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, had entrusted him with handling large sums of money, every cent of which he had carefully accounted for.
Thanks to Bulloch, the rebel states acquired “rams,” used to batter in the hulls of blockading ships. There was the clipper Sea King, which Bulloch acquired and, in Liverpool, converted into the raider Shenandoah, the vessel in the news the previous year for making her way back to Liverpool six months after the war, still defiantly flying the rebel flag of Dixie.
And there was his masterpiece, the Alabama, created in secret in the Laird yards at Birkenhead to eventually sail all seven seas, sinking and capturing U.S. ships and earning a fearsome reputation. Her end came in the English Channel in 1864 when she clashed with the USS Kearsarge, which had trailed her into European waters. The Alabama was sunk in a tremendous battle off Cherbourg.
