Perish from the Earth

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  “But the gambling was out in the open,” I said. “We all saw the monte.”

  “Some of it was. Maybe not all of it was.” Bingham turned to me. “Will you be steaming on the War Eagle again?”

  I nodded emphatically. “They were going up to the Rock Island Rapids and turning around for the final southerly run of the season. They should get back to Alton in a few days. I’ll be waiting on the wharf for them.”

  “Pound keeps meticulous financial records,” Bingham said. “Every time I sold a drawing on board, I had to go straight to his office with his share of the proceeds, and he’d immediately record the amount in a ledger. If I were you, I’d look to see what else is in there.” I nodded, thinking back to the figures Pound had been studying when I’d first come upon him.

  “We’re going to need witnesses if we’re to set you free,” said Lincoln. “Any more ideas for us to pursue?”

  “There’s one person—maybe two—you should try to find. There was a shabby fellow lurking about in the corridor as I departed Jones’s room that last time.”

  The guard raked his walking stick across the bars of Bingham’s cell. “Two more minutes,” he barked.

  “A member of the crew?” Lincoln asked. “Another cabin passenger? Had you seen him before?”

  Bingham shook his head. “‘No’ to all three questions. He must have been traveling as a deck passenger. Anyway, I think he may have gone into Jones’s cabin after I left.”

  “You said there might be a second person to look for as well?”

  Bingham paused. “After I left Jones, I went up to the forecastle. I was agitated, and I hoped the night air would clear my head before I turned in. I’m not positive—but I think I saw someone in the distance, in the river, swimming toward shore from the direction of the boat.”

  “Which shore—Illinois or Missouri?”

  Bingham closed his eyes, trying to remember the scene. “Illinois—definitely Illinois. The figure was off the ship’s starboard side as we went upriver.”

  “Could it have been the same rogue who you saw going into Jones’s cabin?”

  “Perhaps.” Bingham shrugged. “It was so far away—even in the moonlight, I didn’t get a good view of whoever it was. It even could have been a floating log, I suppose, breaking the surface of the waters.”

  “What did the rogue in the corridor look like?” asked Lincoln.

  There was a jangling from the door as the prison guard searched for the right key to open the cell.

  “I can draw him better than I can describe him.” Bingham reached beneath the threadbare blanket on his cot and pulled out his drawing pad and a stick of charcoal. He made several graceful, assured marks on one sheet and then another.

  “There, I’ve drawn Tessie as well,” he said as he handed the pages to me. “Not that you could mistake her beauty.”

  I glanced first at the sketch of the rogue. Bingham had depicted him from a side view, and I guessed at once this was because the artist considered his profile to be particularly distinctive. The drawing showed an unshaven man, with a cheap cap pulled low and hooded brows. As I turned to the drawing of Tessie, I felt a hand grabbing at the pages and I thrust them into my pocket.

  “Either you two leave at once or you can take up permanent residence with your friend,” sneered the guard, inside the cell and now in full officiousness. “I can tell you—the winters in here ain’t something that can described or drawn. They can only be experienced.”

  “I’ll do my best to get you freed, my friend,” Lincoln said. “If not this afternoon, then as soon as I can manage.”

  “I’m depending on you, Mr. Lincoln,” Bingham replied, his voice cracking with emotion. “And Tessie is too, though she doesn’t know it.”

  The artist clasped Lincoln’s arm with both hands and was unwilling to let go until the turnkey forcibly broke the two men apart. My last sight of Bingham, as the turnkey escorted us from the cell, was of him sunk down on the edge of his cot, his head hung in despair.

  CHAPTER 8

  As we followed the turnkey down the steep hill toward the prison gates, the town of Alton and the glittering ribbon of the Mississippi spread out spectacularly below us. A side-wheel steamer headed down the river at full throttle, fine lines of smoke trailing out behind each giant stack.

  “I’ll give the men who constructed this place credit on one account,” said Lincoln. “This landscape must make the terms of confinement feel twice as long.”

  “Thrice,” said the turnkey. He sniggered with laughter.

  “Have you got a name?” asked Lincoln.

  “Runkin.”

  “Tell me, Runkin, do you think my client Mr. Bingham can get a fair trial here in Alton?”

  Lincoln leaned over toward me and, cupping his hand near my ear, added in a whisper, “Never hurts to sound out the local populace to get a sense of the jury.”

  “Most of us ain’t got use for courts and such,” Runkin replied. “Most of us, we know a guilty man when we see him. We know how to pick him out, and we know how to punish him too.”

  “Like your brothers across the river in St. Louis,” said Lincoln.

  “Exactly,” said Runkin, nodding eagerly. He either missed the censure in Lincoln’s tone or chose to ignore it. “I imagine you’re thinking of what happened last summer to that worthless criminal McIntosh. Oh, boy, that was a good one. I’m just sore I missed the mobbing myself. But I heard all about it. Heard it straight from two of my fellows who were right there in the middle of it.”

  “Who’s McIntosh?” I asked.

  Lincoln opened his mouth, but before he could answer Runkin said, “A boatman from Pittsburgh who was causing trouble on the levee in St. Louis. A free half-Negro. Thought it was his right to interfere with the police. Stabbed a deputy sheriff right through the neck—stabbed him dead. The boys there in St. Louis, they didn’t need no court to tell them he was guilty. They knew it. They lynched him up but good.”

  “His name was Francis McIntosh,” said Lincoln somberly. “A mob of five hundred men pulled him from jail, chained him to a locust tree, stacked wood around him, and set him on fire. He burned to death in open day in the midst of the city.”

  “Burnt to a crisp, the way I heard it,” said Runkin. He smacked his hands together with glee. We had reached the front gate of the prison, which he unlocked and led us through. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Lincoln. For a white man like your Mr. Bingham, I expect the courts will do just fine. Don’t think we need to start gathering the wood, not yet at least.”

  Runkin gave a shout of laughter and retreated into the prison, locking the gate behind him. We took the path leading down the ravine toward town.

  “That’s an awful tale,” I said, “but if it’s true he’d killed a policeman, I’m not sure what else he could have expected. He was going to die at the scaffold if not the stake.”

  “You’re missing the larger point, Speed,” Lincoln said. His voice cracked with emotion, and I turned to stare at him. “No matter the crime, we can’t substitute the furious passions of the mob for the sober judgment of the courts. We are a nation of laws and must remain so. If men take it into their heads to burn murderers today, they’ll be as likely to burn innocent men tomorrow. And if the government cannot protect its people from the rule of the mob, the government itself will be disregarded before long.”

  “I think you’re worrying about phantoms.”

  Lincoln shook his head but did not respond, and we walked along in silence. There was no need for either of us to say more. Lurking just beneath the surface of our conversation, as with so many these days, was the issue of slavery. For that smoldering controversy raised squarely the question of whether men could follow what they believed to be the natural order of society or whether instead the government could impose contrary rules from on high.

  Early in our shared residency, I had expressed to Lincoln my conviction, borne of having been raised on my father’s plantation, that the Negro class laboring
for the European one was the natural order of things and, indeed, the only benevolent way to treat that disadvantaged race. Lincoln had responded sharply that he considered the institution unjust under all circumstances. We had reached an unspoken agreement to avoid the subject, and the very different ways we saw the sorry story of Francis McIntosh did not make me eager to breach our truce.

  The hill we had been traversing down began to ebb as we neared the shore. “It’s a funny thing,” said Lincoln, breaking our silence, “about Bingham and Jones having met in Commerce. Back in ’31, I visited that very area for several weeks.”

  “You did? You’ve never told me that.”

  “You never asked,” he said with a laugh. “I ended up lodging in the home of Colonel William T. Ferguson, self-described hero of the Battle of New Orleans. Quite a character. I should tell you the story sometime.” He shook his head and smiled at the memory.

  “So do you think Bingham’s innocent?” I asked.

  “I think he’s not guilty until the prosecution provides convincing proof of it. That needs to be my position, every time I represent a defendant. And his story did have the ring of truth. Come with me to court now. Let’s see what Judge Thomas makes of the plight of Mr. G. C. Bingham, painter of fine portraits.”

  “I have an errand to accomplish first,” I said. “I’ll meet you over there.”

  Lincoln nodded and headed across the hump of the next ravine, while I turned back toward the Franklin House. The hotel reception was empty except for an elderly woman of generous size, who was spread out on a high-backed chair near the entrance. Some work rested on her lap, and the clacking of her knitting needles filled the still air. I bowed.

  “Good morning, madam. Do you know if innkeeper Kemp is about?”

  “He won’t be back for another half hour,” she replied in a friendly voice made rough by age. She knitted a row, her needles dancing. “Can I help you?”

  “I was hoping to speak with Kemp . . . I had a question about where to find something—someone—in town.”

  “Try asking me,” she said as she finished another row and absent-mindedly pulled at the pile of yarn on her lap. Her face was heavily lined and covered with liver spots. “You’re Mr. Speed, aren’t you?”

  “I am. Have we met before?”

  “I was sitting here yesterday, doing my work, when you came in and gave your name to Kemp. And I was here in the evening when you went out for a stroll with those two lawyers, including the very tall one, Mr. Lincoln. Who’re you looking for?”

  “I’m in need of a messenger boy,” I said, vaguely recollecting her presence in the then-crowded lobby the previous day. “A fast rider. And dependable. I need him to deliver a note to my sister in Springfield and to wait for the reply and ride back at once. Do you know—”

  “You’ll do well with Joey S.,” she said. “At this hour he’ll be finishing milking his pa’s cows, I should think. Up the hill, first lane on the right, the red house with the large barn out back. You can’t miss it. He’ll ask you for a silver dollar, but you tell him Nanny Mae said he’d do it for seventy-five cents.”

  I smiled and touched the brim of my hat. “I shall do. I thank you kindly, Mrs.—I suppose it’s Mrs. Mae.”

  “Don’t bother with the ‘Missus,’” she returned, her needles dancing once again in time to their own music. “Everybody calls me Nanny Mae.”

  I found Joey S. just where Nanny Mae had said. He was a lanky boy of twelve or thirteen with a squat face and long black hair falling across his eyes. He had just finished his milking chores, and after a brief negotiation, I engaged him at the price dictated by the old woman.

  “You’re to give this personally to Miss Martha Speed and no one else,” I said, handing him a note I had scribbled out on the way. “She lodges at the sheriff’s house, Sheriff Hutchason, in Springfield. She’ll pack two saddlebags with my belongings once she reads what I’ve written, and you’re to ride back at once with those bags. Do you understand?”

  “Yessir,” the boy mumbled.

  “You must ride very fast, and you must not tarry. I need to board a ship, with those bags, that’s docking here in three days.” In reality, I did not expect the War Eagle’s return for another four days, but I wanted to give myself a margin. “So you’ll need to return by midnight, the day after tomorrow, at the latest. I’ll give you that extra quarter dollar if you return by then.”

  “Yessir,” he mumbled again, blowing the hair out of his eyes. It flew up for a moment, lingered, and fell down again.

  Joey S. jammed my letter into his worn jeans and darted inside his house, shouting. In a few moments, he returned, saddled up a fine looking horse who’d been watching our conversation eagerly, and set off.

  I made my way across the ridge toward a long, thin two-story brick building perched on the hillside overlooking the river. Alton did not have a courthouse. Instead, Captain Ryder let the judge use his shipping offices whenever the circuit was in town. I imagined the captain hoped to get a favorable ruling from the judge someday in return for his hospitality.

  Ryder’s building was chaotic and cacophonous. In the front reception area, a blackboard nailed to the wall charted the whereabouts of Ryder’s fleet of flatboats, ferries, and skiffs. A clerk stood by the board, chalk in hand, erasing the current positions and noting new ones whenever a messenger boy entered with an update. Meanwhile, Lincoln’s fellow circuit traveler Ninian Edwards, whose strong, arched eyebrows and blunt nose set him apart in a crowd, leaned against the opposite wall and consulted with two men who were gesturing excitedly at a sheet of writing. They had to talk loudly, however, to hear themselves over Judge Thomas, who was busy conducting a hearing in the back part of the offices, the judge standing in between two narrow floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the busy river, while the lawyers sat in a ragged semicircle of chairs around him.

  As I neared the rump court in the back of the room, my attention was diverted by a man who was standing a few feet behind the lawyers, watching the proceedings closely. He was older, somewhere in his fourth decade, and dressed like a gentleman, in a tie and tails, with a full, proud face and hair receding on top and bushy on either side, obscuring his ears. But the printer’s ink stains on his fingers gave away his true status as a member of that wretched, much-reviled class: a journalist.

  Lincoln noticed my arrival and indicated an empty chair next to him. Prickett was in the midst of an impassioned presentation to the judge. Prickett was the state’s attorney, responsible for bringing criminal prosecutions on behalf of the people of the state of Illinois. I gathered he was arguing the fate of a young millworker from Alton who had pilfered a barrel of flour from his employer.

  Logan was apparently arguing the millworker’s brief, as he sat poised on the edge of his chair, ready to unleash his counter-arguments as soon as Prickett paused for breath. I noticed that Avocat Daumier was present too, lingering in the shadows and looking very much like a cat who thought he was about to pounce on a helpless mouse.

  After a few minutes of argument, Judge Thomas announced that the millworker was to return the barrel, warrant that the flour was unspoiled, and pay a five-dollar fine. Prickett made a notation in a book he held open on his lap, while Thomas felt through his pockets to find a new cigar. He struck a match and took several long, restorative pulls.

  “All right, what’s next?” the judge asked as he blew out a large cloud of smoke.

  “We’ve a new one to add, Your Honor,” said Prickett. “It wasn’t on the original circuit list for Alton, but it’s arisen just in time. The People against George Bingham. The charge is murder, with malice implied from circumstances showing an abandoned and malignant heart.”

  “Murder, you say? Let’s finish out today’s list and then come back to it,” said the judge.

  “As you wish.”

  So I sat and listened as the assembled lawyers argued out the case of an unpaid promissory note (Prickett’s client prevailing over Logan’s), a trespass
case involving a mill dam (Edwards over Lincoln), a suit seeking to regain possession of two mares (Lincoln over Logan), and a dispute regarding cancellation of a land sale (Lincoln over Logan again).

  All the while, I thought about what Bingham had told us. I had suspected that Pound was not being forthright about the ship’s finances, of course, but I was furious to learn he had lied to me so baldly. I was eager to get back onto the ship to confront him and examine his records. Whether or not Bingham was a murderer—and, like Lincoln, I tended toward not—I was grateful to him for his suggestions on how to pursue Pound and my father’s missing money.

  I pulled out Bingham’s sketch of the mysterious deck passenger and studied it again. What leapt from the page was the hooked shape of the man’s nose, arching just below the bridge and looping to an end in elongated, flared nostrils. It was an incisive portrait, and I thought I would recognize him if I came across the subject in the flesh.

  Judge Thomas’s voice cut through my contemplations. “That does it for today,” he said, “except for your new murder case, Prickett. You’re standing for the defendant, Lincoln?”

  “Correct, Your Honor.”

  The other lawyers scraped back their chairs and got to their feet, gathering up papers and satchels that had been strewn about during the day’s proceedings. No doubt one of the grog shops opposite the levee was their next destination. Judge Thomas inhaled deeply from his cigar, waiting for them to depart. Soon only Lincoln and Prickett remained in the semicircle of chairs in front of the judge. Daumier left his position against the wall and prowled onto an empty seat next to the prosecutor.

  “You may proceed,” Thomas said, nodding at Prickett.

  “Your Honor, the decedent, evidently a Mr. John W. Jones of the State of Tennessee, was found last night on the riverbank near town. He had lately been seen aboard a northbound packet steamer, the War Eagle, in the company of the defendant, Bingham. Bingham’s trade card was found on Jones’s person. Bingham admitted to the local levee copper he went to Jones’s room on the night of the latter’s death and that the two argued violently. The two men had a long-running feud, it seems, over a young woman. The People are prepared to prove up our full case at trial, but that about summarizes it.”