AFTER THE FACT

by Fred Saberhagen

  "Colonel," said one of the men behind Jerry. It was only a kind of verbal salute, for the sandy-haired one responded to it with a casual gesture of his right hand, after he had set down his lamp beside the lantern on the desk.

  Unhurriedly the Colonel seated himself, adjusting both lamp and lantern so that he remained in comparative darkness, while a maximum amount of glare was directed toward the prisoner. The prisoner, accustomed to electric light, might under other circumstances have found laughable this attempt to make him squint.

  Then the man behind the desk leaned forward in his chair, putting his blue-gray eyes and sandy whiskers in the light. When he spoke he came straight to the point. "Who're you really workin' for, Lockwood?"

  "Sir, whoever you are, my name is Paul Pilgrim. I don't know why these men brought me—"

  One of the men who was standing behind Jerry cuffed him on the back of the head, hard enough to make his ears ring. A hard voice behind him said: "Stow that. Give the Colonel a fair answer, or, by God, you'll wish you had."

  The Colonel was smiling now, and this time his voice was confidential, almost warm and friendly. "Who're you workin' for?" he repeated. By this time Jerry had no doubt that this was Colonel Lafayette C. Baker. Right now Jerry was ready to settle for Stanton.

  Jerry was also close enough to hysteria to imagine that he was able to see the humor in the situation. He had to laugh, and he did.

  They let him laugh for a little while, the men standing behind him taking their cue from the appreciative grin on the Colonel's face. Jerry in turn appreciated their tolerance. After a while he got himself under control again and said: "I'm working for myself, if you want to know the truth."

  Colonel Baker took his statement in good humor. "By God, ain't it the truth, though? Ain't we all doin' that?" He indulged in a chuckle of his own, then rubbed his bearded chin as if to mime the behavior of a deep thinker. "I'm all for adopting a philosophical viewpoint in these matters." His voice had become less countrified, as if adjusting to match Jerry's. "Yes, I'll go along with that." The Colonel's eyes altered. "Long as you realize, in turn, I mean to have a little more out of you than just philosophy."

  "Oh, I'll tell you more than that," said Jerry, not wanting to get hit again. But even as he promised information, he was wondering just what sort he was going to provide. It certainly wasn't going to be the truth. There would be no safety for him in that.

  "I know you will, son," said Baker in a kindly way. "Sometime tonight… say, don't I know you from somewhere? Ever been in San Francisco?"

  "No sir."

  "How 'bout the army?"

  "No."

  "Mebbe not. Don't suppose it matters." The sandy-haired man squinted at Jerry a little longer, then put out a hand on the desk and pushed most of Jerry's property, the hat and coat and boots and valuables, out of his way, toward one side. Then from the cluttered desktop Baker's hand picked up another item that Jerry had not noticed until now. It was, Jerry saw, slightly flexible, long as a rolling pin and almost as thick. The Colonel's fingers toyed with this cross between a club and a blackjack, turning it over, then rolled it gently back and forth on the worn wooden surface.

  Jerry began to wonder whether the special talents Pilgrim had talked about might really save him if he was killed, or whether he and perhaps Pilgrim had dreamed them up. Of course he might come to wish he was dead, long before these people killed him.

  The Colonel showed a few yellow teeth. Leering as if it might be the start of a dirty joke, he asked Jerry, "You know a woman calls herself Colleen Monahan?"

  Jerry let himself think about that question. "No," he said at last, and wondered how long he was going to be able to stick to that.

  "Goddam." The Colonel expressed an abstract kind of wonder, as if at some amazing natural phenomenon. "You're still thinkin' you can tell me lies and not get hurt for it." The man behind the desk marveled at such an attitude, as if he had never encountered any precedent for it. His manner and expression said that he was entering uncharted territory, and he was going to have to think a while before he could determine what best to do about it.

  But of course there was only one thing to do about it, really. At last he took the truncheon in hand decisively and stood up and came around from behind the desk. Then he paused, as if suddenly aware that more thinking might be required. And then, meeting the eyes of his two henchmen and making a gesture, he silently indicated that he wanted them out of the room.

  "Sir?" the one with the gray mustache questioned, doubtfully.

  "Go on. I'll yell if I need help." And then without warning Baker swung his little club in a hard overhand stroke.

  A perfect street-fighter's move; Jerry had just time to think. He also barely had time to get his arms up into a blocking position, fists clenched, forearms making a deep V, so that neither arm took quite the full force of the weighted weapon. The left arm took most of it, too much, high up near the wrist. Jerry felt first the numbing shock and then the pain; he was sure that a bone must have been broken. He collapsed helplessly to one knee, holding his wrist, eyes half-closed in a grimace of pain. It's broken, was all that he could think.

  Dimly he was aware that the two henchmen, without further argument, had gone out of the room. Colonel Baker was locking the door behind them. Then he turned back to Jerry, as friendly-looking as ever.

  "Now, Son Lockwood. Nobody but me is gonna hear it when you tell me who you and that bitch Monahan are really workin' for. I got my own reasons for confidentiality. Actually I know already, but I want to hear it from you. And I want to hear who else might be on my tail, workin' directly for the same person."

  Jerry, gradually becoming able to see and think again, got to his feet. He backed away slowly as Baker advanced on him, gently swinging the club in his right hand.

  There wasn't much room in this office to maneuver, forward, back, or sideways. And Jerry's left arm was useless whether it was actually broken or not. He couldn't, he absolutely couldn't, hit or grab or block anything with that arm just now. Not if his life depended on it.

  He wasn't going to be able to block another blow from that club, with either hand. He'd have to dodge instead. And then—

  "You can't hide behind that desk, son. You can't hide at all. Know where I'm gonna put the next lick? Right in the kidneys. You'll piss blood for a month or so. And you'll feel the next one, too. That last one didn't hurt a-tall."

  Jerry moved behind the desk, then out from behind it on the other side. The man was right, there was no use his attempting to hide behind the furniture. He shifted his feet, kicking aside a tobacco-stained little rug to make a smoother footing.

  Baker, pleased to see this little preparation for some kind of resistance, was moving forward, supremely confident. "Tell you what, son—"

  Jerry's roundhouse kick with the right foot came in horizontally under Baker's guard, at an angle probably unexpectable by any nineteenth-century American street-fighter. The ball of his foot took its target in the ribs. In practice Jerry had seldom kicked any inanimate target as hard as this; he thought from the feel of the impact that he might have broken bone.

  Lafe Baker's bulging eyes bulged even more. The round red mouth above the ruddy beard opened wider, in an almost silent O of sheer astonishment.

  Jerry stepped forward, shifting his weight, and fired his right hand straight at that bearded jaw. His victim was already slumping back, and down, and the punch connected under the right eye. Jerry could feel a pain of impact in his practice-toughened knuckles. Baker's backward movement accelerated. He hit his head on the side of his own desk as he went down, and his head clanged into the brass halo of the spittoon.

  For a moment Jerry hovered over his fallen enemy, resisting the impulse to kick him again; the Colonel would not be getting up during the next five minutes. Baker's head rested against the side of the heavy desk, and the spittoon, half tipped over, made a hard pillow for him. The sandy beard was beginning to marinate in stale tobacco juice. Only an uneven,
shuddering breathing showed the man was still alive.

  A moment longer Jerry hovered over him indecisively, trying to think. Then he sprang to the desk and began to reclaim his belongings, putting on the clothes and stuffing the other items hastily into his pockets. No use, he thought, trying to find the money. The all-important watch was still ticking away serenely, and he kissed it before he tucked it into his watch pocket and secured the chain. And there, safely in his hands again, were the theater tickets for Friday night.

  Now Jerry hesitated briefly once more. Was there something else?

  On impulse he crouched over Baker once more, reaching inside the man's coat, coming up with a large, mean-looking revolver. He also discovered and abstracted a fat bunch of keys.

  Dropping the keys in his own pocket, Jerry grabbed the Colonel by his collar and dragged him behind the desk where he would be a great deal less conspicuous. Then, with the revolver in his right hand held out of sight behind him, Jerry went to the door. He turned the lock—he found that he could use his left hand a little now, as long as he didn't think about it—and stuck his head out into the badly-lighted hallway.

  A ragged black man carrying a mop and bucket went by, carefully seeing nothing. Two white men, leaning against the wall and chewing tobacco, looked at Jerry with real surprise.

  Jerry looked back at them as arrogantly as he could and gave them a peremptory motion of his head. "He wants you both in here, right away."

  The two of them filed in past Jerry, looking round them uncertainly for the Colonel, and Jerry closed the door on them when they were in. The two had reached a position near the desk by now, and in a moment they were turning around, about to ask him what the hell was going on.

  At that point he let them see the revolver. "Just turn back and face the desk, gentlemen. That's it. Stand there. Just like that."

  His blood was up, and he was acting with a ruthlessness that almost surprised himself. One after the other he tipped the men's hats forward from their heads onto the desk; one after the other he clubbed their skulls with the revolver barrel. The first victim, he of the gray mustache, sank to the floor at once. The younger man clung to the desktop, struggling against going down, and Jerry hit him again, a little harder this time.

  He stuck the gun into his belt; he could hope that under his coat it would not be noticed. Then without looking back he let himself out of the room, and turned down the hallway to the left, in which direction he thought that he had glimpsed an exit. There was the black man with the mop, using it on the floor now, still seeing nothing. The pain in Jerry's left arm had abated to the merely severe, and he thought he might soon have feeling again in the fingertips. At best he was going to have one terrific lump on that forearm.

  The back door of the prison was locked, with no latch to turn it open from inside; but one of the keys on Lafe's ring worked, letting Jerry easily out into the night. No one had taken note of his departure. It was still early in the evening, for the street lamps were still lighted.

  There was the Capitol, its gaslighted dome glowing against the stars, to give a fugitive his bearings. His recovered watch ticked in his pocket. In a few hours Good Friday was going to begin.

  Jerry started walking, anywhere to get away from the vicinity of the prison. One thing was sure, he couldn't go back to the hotel.

  FOURTEEN

  From now on Baker and his people were going to be hunting Jim Lockwood with all their energy. So would whatever forces Stanton and Colleen Monahan had available—and Stanton had armies at his command if he wanted to deploy them for that purpose. Jerry supposed that damned near everyone in the District of Columbia would be looking for him now, and he had to stay out of sight for approximately twenty-four hours before the play even started at Ford's. The task would be made no easier by the fact that every cent of his money had been taken from him. He swore under his breath, realizing only now that the men he had left unconscious would certainly have had some money in their pockets. Very likely his money. Well, it was too late now.

  He had eased his left hand into a coat pocket, the better to nurse his throbbing wrist; he moved it again now, slightly, trying to find the easiest position. He was going to need help.

  There was Pilgrim, of course. But Pilgrim had given him no active assistance at all up to this point, and Jerry saw no reason to expect that he would do so now. Nor was there any native of this century to whom Jerry could turn for help. He did not even know anyone here, unless he counted his new-made enemy Colleen Monahan…

  But then Jerry, striding northward away from the prison, came almost to a full stop on the dark wooden sidewalk. It was true that he had formed no alliances or even acquaintances here that might serve him now. But it was not true that he knew no one. There was one man he did know here in Washington, an able and resourceful and determined man who was no friend of Colonel Baker, or Secretary Stanton either. A man whom Jerry had scarcely met, but of whom he nevertheless had certain, deep, and important knowledge. Not very thorough knowledge, true, but in a sense quite profound…

  It was not yet eight o'clock of a cool April evening when Jerry found himself standing in front of the boarding house on H Street. His first impulse on thinking of John Wilkes Booth had been to go directly to the National Hotel, but he had promptly rejected that idea. Any halfway competent counterintelligence system operating in Washington, including Baker's and/or Stanton's, must have eyes and ears more or less continually present in each of the major hotels. He thought now that had been foolish to try to stay at Willard's when those people were looking for him. Not that he had had a whole lot of choice, but it was surprising that he had gotten away with it as long as he had.

  Lights were showing in several windows of the rooming house on H Street. The front of the house was dark at ground level, and so Jerry approached the building from the rear, where a couple of saddled horses were tied at a hitching post. Pausing on a walk of loose planks that ran close beside the house, he was able to look at close range into a lighted kitchen where a woman sat doing something at a table. He tapped on the door.

  She was only a girl, really, he saw when she came to investigate his knocking. Dark-haired, not bad looking, no more than seventeen or eighteen. She had jumped up eagerly enough to answer the door, but looked warily at the strange man when she saw him. Evidently someone else had been expected.

  "What do you want?" she asked in a cautious voice.

  Jerry took off his hat, letting the girl get an unshaded look at what he hoped was an innocent, trustworthy face. He said urgently. "I want to talk to John Wilkes Booth. You must help me, it's very important."

  Her caution increased, her face becoming mask-like. "No one by that name lives here."

  An older woman, small and rather grim-looking, came into the kitchen from the front of the house. Her lined face still bore a notable resemblance to the girl's. "What's going on, Annie?"

  The girl turned with relief. "Ma, this man says he wants Wilkes Booth."

  Jerry was leaning against the doorframe, letting his weariness and the signs of prison show. He appealed to them both: "Can you let me come in and sit down? I've been hurt." He raised his left forearm slightly, easing his hand out of the coat pocket, then let it hang down at his side.

  The older woman studied him for a moment with shrewd calculating eyes. "Come in, then. Annie, get the gentleman a cup of water."

  "Thank you, ma'am."

  Seated at the kitchen table, Jerry could hear other voices, men's voices, coming from the front of the house, where they must be sitting talking in the dark. Annie put a tin cup of water on the table in front of him, and he drank from it thirstily.

  Now another young woman appeared from the direction of the front room, to look briefly into the kitchen before retreating. She was succeeded in the doorway by a figure that Jerry somehow recognized—yes, it was the whiskey-marinated carpenter from Ford's. Tom Ray bold in the auditorium had called this man Ned. The next face in the parade was even more quickly recogni
zable. It was that of the powerful, sullenly handsome youth who had been visiting Booth in his hotel.

  This man shouldered his way forward into the kitchen, to stand close beside the table looking down at Jerry. His voice when he spoke to the visitor was southern-soft, though not as friendly as that of Colonel Baker: "Who are you? And why should you think that Wilkes Booth is here?"

  "My name is Jeremiah Flint. I thought he came here sometimes."

  "And if he did?"

  "I have reason to think—to think that Mr. Booth might be disposed to help a gentleman who has got himself into some serious trouble with the abolitionists who are now in control of this city."

  There was a silence in the kitchen. But it was not a shocked silence, Jerry thought. Not for nothing he had spent those long days and nights on railroad cars, listening to arguments among people of every shade of political persuasion.

  The tall young man leaned forward suddenly, a move not exactly menacing but still pantherish, shot out a hand and extracted the pistol from Jerry's belt. "You won't be needin' that in here," he explained mildly.

  "I trust I won't." Jerry spoke just as softly. He tried to smile. "I don't believe I find myself among the friends of Old Abe at the moment."

  "There are no friends of tyrants here."

  This was in a new voice, resonant and easy to remember. Jerry turned to face the doorway. There was the actor himself, elegantly dressed, standing with a hand on each side of the frame and regarding Jerry with a slight frown. Booth went on: "I believe I have encountered you somewhere before, sir."

  "Jeremiah Flint of Texas, Mr. Booth. We met at your hotel yesterday, and you were good enough to autograph a playbill for my sister."

  "Ah yes."