Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, June 6.—It was learned to-day that the Administration has been keeping close watch on the doings of the United States Steel Corporation for a long time …28
URGED TO CALL MORGAN.
Steel Committee, However, Believes
It Can Make a Case Without Him.
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, June 10.—There is much speculation in Washington as to whether the Stanley Committee that is investigating the Steel Trust will subpoena J. Pierpont Morgan as a witness. Chairman Stanley has received many letters urging him to call Mr. Morgan, but he has given no intimation as to what he has in mind …29
Robert closed this file and placed it in a desk drawer. However, before he turned off the large lamp on his desk, he decided to leaf through a remaining folder that followed some of his friends’ exploits throughout the year.
TAFT AND NORTON WILL SOON PART
President’s Secretary Will Take Up Private Business in Chicago When He Retires.
SHAKEUP AT WHITE HOUSE
Bill Before Senate to Reorganize Its Force—Norton Said to Have Aspired to Treasury Portfolio.
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 20.—After less than a year’s service, Charles D. Norton, Secretary to the President, will shortly retire and his successor has already been chosen. This much is made known tonight in a statement from the White House in which it has specifically refused to divulge who the successor would be …30
“WE ARE GETTING BETTER EVERY YEAR”
—CHIEF WILKIE.
Head of U. S. Secret Service believes that the average individual is upright. Read of it in
NEXT SUNDAY’S TIMES31
President’s Aide Now Maj. Butt.
WASHINGTON, March 24.—Capt. Archibald W. Butt, President Taft’s military aid, and who served in a like capacity with President Roosevelt, to-day became a full-fledged Major in the army. Capt. Butt passed his examination some time ago, but his commission was not ready to be signed by the President until to-day …32
HAMMOND QUIT YALE SCHOOL
Follows Prof. Huntoon in Resigning
From Sheffield Scientific Faculty.
Special to The New York Times.
NEW HAVEN, Conn., May 31.—The trouble in the Faculty of the Sheffield Scientific School, Yale, which recently resulted in the resignation of Prof. Louis D. Huntoon, has been followed by the withdrawal of John Hays Hammond from the Faculty and the consequent loss of his financial support …
Mr. Hammond is en route to England, where he will represent America at the coronation of George V.33
ROOSEVELT TO AID TAFT IN 1912 FIGHT?
President Is So Assured by a Friend Formerly Connected with Both Administrations.
THEY MEET IN BALTIMORE
And Have a Cordial Ten-Minute Interview—Ex-President is Invited To White House on Friday.
THE COLONEL SAYS HE HASN’T SAID SO.
Col. Theodore Roosevelt, who arrived on the 12:50 o’clock train from Baltimore this morning, was informed at the Pennsylvania Station by a Times reporter of the report that a mutual friend of Col. Roosevelt and President Taft had given the latter assurance that the Colonel would not be a candidate for the Presidency in the next election, but would leave Mr. Taft a free field. The Colonel refused to comment on the statement other than to say with a smile:
“You know I never give interviews.” Then he added: “But any statement purporting to come from me to the effect you have just mentioned is an unqualified falsehood.”
And, closing his jaws with a snap just before opening them again with a smile, he jumped into a taxicab and drove away …34
THE TAFTS TO CELEBRATE THEIR SILVER WEDDING JUNE 19
Second Such Event to be Observed
in the White House, and Mrs.
Taft, Then Miss Herron, Was
Present at the Previous
Occasion.
THERE is to be an interesting gathering of the Taft clan at the White House June 19.
The Herrons, representing the root and branch of the family tree of Mrs. Taft, will assemble there with representatives of the Tafts.
The occasion is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the marriage of William Taft and Miss Helen Herron of Cincinnati. There is to be a silver wedding at the White House …35
This last article was the reason Mary Harlan Lincoln had reminded her husband about their upcoming trip. As Robert closed the folder, he glanced at a nearby invitation calligraphed in copperplate script.
The President and Mrs. Taft
request the pleasure of the company of
Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln
at
The White House
on Monday evening, June the nineteenth
at nine o’clock
Dancing 1886–1911
Just like the presidential seal atop the invitation, the years in its corner were embossed with silver. Robert left the invitation centered on his desk so he would not forget it in the morning.
Finally, it was time for the last son of Lincoln to go to bed.
Robert turned off the lights in his library and walked down the hall to find his wife already asleep in her husband’s large white bed. Robert sighed with disappointment as yet another attempt at a romantic rendezvous was ruined. Not wanting to disturb her, Robert sneaked through the darkened room to his closet for one final, crucial step in his nightly routine. With his back to the window, Robert moved a bag of golf clubs aside and opened a white door inside the closet to reveal a small steel safe. He quickly unlocked it and deposited his pocket watch, fob, and chain on a silk handkerchief next to a paper bundle marked “MTL Insanity File.” They were his mother’s insanity papers, quietly locked away from the world, as she was.
Robert closed the safe and resigned himself to yet another evening with no new information about his father’s murder. Or the pocket watch. Or Alaska. His head was throbbing with questions he feared would never be answered in his lifetime, but there was nothing he could do about them. Not tonight, anyway. He changed out of his suit and staggered back into his room, where he sat upright on his bed beside his sleeping wife.
However, as Robert was about to lie down, something turned his head. It was as if a long-forgotten memory was whispered into his ear.
* * *
Twenty-one-year-old Robert Todd Lincoln sat upright in his bed. He had long ago finished his cigar and was ready for sleep. It had been more than two hours since his father left for Ford’s Theatre, and Robert had passed most of the time chatting with his friend John Hay, the presidential secretary down the hall.
However, as Robert reached for his sleep medicine, he saw something glimmer out of the corner of his left eye. Within the ruffled covers of his bed was a rather magnificent gold pocket watch.
Robert pulled at the shining timepiece by its chain and flipped its lid open. The watch’s busy dial showed that it was several minutes past 10:30 P.M. It did not look like one of his father’s timepieces, and its bizarre inscription was unlike anything Robert had ever seen in the White House. Thinking it belonged to one of the room’s prior occupants, perhaps an ambassador, Robert folded the watch in a handkerchief and walked down the hall. There, in his father’s darkened, vacant office, he placed the ticking timepiece on the president’s desk.
Robert walked back to his room and sat down on his bed. Outside, he could hear the clatter of horses approaching the White House. Thinking it was someone who had arrived too late to catch his father, Robert reached for the bottle and spoon on his nightstand. He was about to pour his medicine when he heard footsteps rush through the hallway.
Thomas F. Pendel, one of the White House ushers, threw open Robert’s door. “Captain Lincoln! The President is shot—the President is shot!”
First the spoon, then the bottle fell from Robert’s hand. Its black liquid gurgled like an open wound onto the carpet.
* * *
In his da
rkened room at Hildene, Robert’s mind raced and his eyes widened. He leaped out of his bed and rushed to his safe, which he threw open as quickly as his fingers could move.
For the first time in half a century, Robert Todd Lincoln was wide awake.
Chapter XIX
“Till death do us part, my dear.”
“It’ll take a lot more than that,” avowed Nellie.
With these whispered words, the president and Mrs. Taft emerged arm in arm from the Red Room to the cheers of more than five thousand friends, family, and guests on the South Lawn.
The Tafts’ silver wedding anniversary was the fairy-tale ending to a journey without precedent in American history. Birthed from the first lady’s first visit to the White House for the Hayeses’ silver wedding, Nellie’s subsequent celebration was a lifetime in the making. Times changed, presidents changed, the century changed. But Nellie? She was the same sixteen-year-old girl she had always been. Only this time, the president of the United States was leading her down the steps of their shimmering castle.
Never before had the White House looked so majestic. The entire mansion was illuminated with innumerable lights. Hundreds of red paper lanterns filled the trees as if to evoke the thousands of cherry blossoms Nellie recently secured for the city. A great flashing American flag hung from the South Portico. The mansion’s grand fountain shimmered with a prism of colors. Huge searchlights flooded every edge of the South Lawn with light. And in the distance, the Washington Monument was lit like a beacon for the whole world to see. If Nikola Tesla should be credited as the man who invented the twentieth century, Nellie Taft had effectively conquered it this midsummer’s eve.
“That’s quite a sight,” observed Secret Service Chief Wilkie. He was standing beneath an elm tree with the years “1886–1911” displayed in white lights above him. “Every single eye in the city is fixed on the president, but not ours. We’re spying from the rooftops with snipers who can shoot a toothpick in half. We’re lurking in the shadows ready to pounce like a panther with a spring in its step. We’re the sorry sons of bitches who make silly shindigs like these run like a Swiss watch. We are the unblinking eye that watches over this nation, and we never sleep. We are the United States Secret Service.
“Gentlemen,” he puffed as he paced back and forth, “we didn’t come for the food or the booze or the women this evening. We came for the deadbeats, the lowlifes, the scum of society. I want you to know everyone in that crowd right down to who’s sleeping with whom. If anyone waves so much as a handkerchief that looks suspicious, I want you to shoot him full of more holes than the Spanish navy. I will not allow two assassinations in less than ten years. You should be wearing your suits prepared to take no fewer than three bullets in them.…”
“Mr. Wilkie, who are you talking to?” asked Bob Taft, the president’s twenty-one-year-old son.
The young man broke Wilkie’s concentration. “Never interrupt a man while he’s working,” he snapped.
“Wilkie?” asked the president in white tie and tails.
“Hmm?” He looked up.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Wilkie looked behind him to find two confused cooks and a cow in the distance. All the agents he was prepping had already formed a receiving line for the president and first lady. “Just securing the area, Mr. President.”
“Why don’t you secure someplace else?” Nellie huffed, swatting the chief’s stinking cigar smoke.
“As you wish, Madam President.” Wilkie bowed.
“Just shuffle off,” Taft shooed. “And watch your language around the children.”
So shuffle he did.
There was a vast cast of suspects for Wilkie to study as he meandered through the richly dressed mob: ambassadors, baronesses, senators, governors, congressmen, religious figures, and plenty of other high-society types the Secret Service chief did not trust any further than he could spit. However, he did tip his hat to Mrs. Wickersham, whose husband was out of town for the evening, and to the secretary of state and Mrs. Knox on his way to the best-dressed man at the party.
“Major Butt,” Wilkie greeted, slinking alongside the dashing officer.
“Chief Wilkie,” the uniformed man acknowledged. “How goes security?” he asked under his breath.
“Oh, I’m pleased as Punch,” Wilkie puffed. “I have eighty policemen outside the south fence and enough detectives on hand to catch the Invisible Man if he tried to sneak in. I imagine every burglar in town is having a field day tonight.” He took a swig from a flask of explosive scotch he had brought in case any killer automatons crashed the party. “And how about yourself?”
“All is well,” the major whispered. “I increased the aides for the president and Mrs. Taft to twelve. They should provide adequate protection as well as a sufficient honor guard.”
“Yes, I can see that. However, I’m more interested in how many soldiers we have on hand in case we need to destroy the mansion again.”
The officer shot Wilkie a disapproving glare, but Wilkie responded with a wink and a smoke ring. “A company of engineers is patrolling the grounds,” the major reported. “Captain Hubert L. Wigmore and Second Lieutenant Richard Park are commanding.”
Wilkie waited for more, but was surprised to hear there was none. “That’s it? What are a merry band of engineers going to do if we’re under attack? Whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence?”
“Mr. Wilkie, I can assure you that this mansion is as unassailable as the moon. Even the storm clouds ran for cover this evening.” The major was quite proud of this last feat. Professor Moore of the Weather Bureau predicted “one chance in a hundred of having a garden party tonight.” Coupled with Nellie Taft’s surprise recovery from a second lapse of illness, the evening appeared to be nothing short of a miracle. The only potential problem was the noticeable nonattendance of the former president and Mrs. Roosevelt. However, Wilkie understood their absence better than most people at the party.
“Well, that all sounds dandy,” the smoking man continued, “but what are your engineers and honor guard going to do if some lunatic shows up without an invitation?” The Secret Service chief had Leon Czolgosz in mind as he asked this. The anarchist assassinated President McKinley in a reception line much like the one moving toward the Tafts.
“Mr. Wilkie,” assured the major, “nothing sinister will befall us because the only way in or out of these grounds is past your guards at the gates. I have no doubt your men are mustard.”
“Are you kidding?” Wilkie snickered. “My boys were breastfed on the stuff!”
With these words, a commotion drew Major Butt and Chief Wilkie’s attention to the east entrance. Both men could hear shouting and saw several policemen racing toward the gate.
“Speak of the devil,” Wilkie hissed. “Stay here, Archie. Let me mop up this mess.” The Secret Service chief pocketed his flask and slipped through the garden party as silently as a snake. Not even the Roosevelt children noticed him. However, “Princess Alice” Roosevelt Longworth did turn her head and smile when she heard him cursing.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Wilkie hollered when he arrived on the scene. Agent Sloan and several detectives were wrestling a man to the ground. “Sloan! Report!”
“We got a real schmuck here!” shouted Sloan as he examined the wallet of the man pinned under his knee. He tossed the leather billfold to Wilkie, who caught it and flipped it open. He found a card inside that matched several scattered across the ground.
George B. Schmucker
Consul of the United States to Mexico City
“Stand him up,” Wilkie ordered. Agent Sloan and his agents forced the man to his feet while two policemen clamped him in handcuffs. Wilkie stood with arms akimbo and took a good look at the man: His hair and suit were a mess, his face unshaven, and the Secret Service chief did not like the crazy look in his eyes.
“If you want my opinion, Mr. Schmucker, I’d say you’re a bag full of nuts.”
“I’m a diplomat!�
�� the man resisted. “I must speak with the president! Take my card! It is urgent!”
“Mr. Wilkie, this chump was discharged weeks ago due to mental illness,” explained Sloan.
“Who are you, his mother?” Wilkie spoke through his cigar. “Just tell me what kind of pistol this crackpot is packing.”
“We searched him, sir,” said Secret Service Agent Bowen. “He doesn’t have any weapons on him.”
“Nothing?”
“Just the wallet,” Sloan confirmed as a police wagon pulled up.
Wilkie glowered at the miscreant and shook his head with disapproval. “You’re no killer,” he surmised. “You’re just a waste of my goddamn time, and time is money to Treasury agents.” Wilkie jammed the wallet into the madman’s mouth and shoved him toward the lawmen. “Get him out of here!” he barked.
Policemen assembled on the vagrant while Wilkie treaded back to the mansion with Agent Sloan. “I don’t want to come here again for this,” said Wilkie, carrying Mr. Schmucker’s card. “No one gets in or out without an invitation or a badge. The next time someone pulls out a card, I want you to pull out your gun. Think you can remember all that?”
“Like the Maine, sir.”
Wilkie smiled. “You’re a scholar, Sloan. Now, if you’ll please excuse me…” The Secret Service director took a long drag from his stogie. “I need to use the can.”
Wilkie left Sloan and moseyed over to the East Wing: a wide white building that closely resembled a Greek temple. The chief plodded past its Doric pillars and through its glass doors on his way to the Police Room, which was conveniently located next to the East Wing’s lavatory.
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy: A Novel Page 16
