CHAPTER THREE
ADAM Steele reined his bay gelding to a halt at the crest of a rise and split his mouth in a gentle smile as he surveyed the lights of the city spread before him. It had been a long ride from Richmond and he spent a few relaxed moments in quiet contemplation of the end of the journey. Then he sighed, and heeled the horse forward down the gentle incline towards a turnpike which led into Washington.
He rode upright, but not tall in the Western saddle. He was just a shade over five feet six inches in height, his build compact rather than slight, and suggested adequate strength instead of great power. Like so many young men who had survived the bitter fighting of the war just ended, he looked older than his actual years, which totaled twenty-eight. He had a long face with regular features which gave him a nondescript handsomeness: likely to interest women though certainly not sweep them off their feet. His mouthline was gentle, his nose straight and his black eyes honest. His hair was pre-naturally grey with only a few hanks of dark red to show its former coloration. It was trimmed neat and short and this was the only obvious sign of the five years he had spent in the army of the Confederate States. A more subtle indication of how he had used the war years could be seen in his clothes. Black riding boots, dark grey pants, oddly slit at the seam about the calf of the right leg; a white shirt with a neckerchief decorated by an ornate pin; a hip-length sheepskin coat in dark brown; a low-crown black hat and black leather gloves. All were brand new with the store stiffness still in the material - purchased immediately upon his discharge to replace the grey uniform of a cavalry lieutenant. All over the country, tailors were growing rich supplying new clothes to men anxious to shed uniform serge.
The city was very quiet as Steele entered the streets of its southern section and he was mildly surprised at this, Washington was the capital of the victorious northern states and he had expected it still to be in the throes of triumphant revelry even this long after Lee's surrender.
But he did not give too much thought to the matter, beyond appreciating that he was spared the expected humiliation of seeing his former enemies rejoicing in the defeat of the Cause. For he had another, more important subject on his mind. And it was this upon which he ruminated as he rode the gelding along the silent meagerly lit streets of Washington.
He had no trouble finding his way to his destination, for he had been a frequent visitor to the city in pre-war days and little had changed during the intervening years. So it was not until he turned onto Tenth Street that he pulled up short in surprise.
The street was as quiet as all the others had been, but there was a difference. Where the others had been deserted, this one was crowded with people. The great majority of them were huddled together in a large group before a house diagonally across the street from the darkened facade of Ford's Theatre. Most of the buildings lining the street were in darkness and this seemed to emphasize the wedges of light falling from the house which held the crowd's interest. In the splashes of yellow, the faces of the people were wan and sad. The rifle barrels of the soldiers ranged in front of the house, keeping the crowd well back, gleamed with an oily sheen.
Occasionally, one or more of the silent spectators would drift away from the crowd. One such was an old woman who stepped unwittingly, in front of Steele's horse as he urged the animal forward. She looked up at the rider, showing no emotion at almost being trampled. Deep shock dwelled behind her moist eyes.
“What's happening here, ma'am?” Steele asked, his voice smoothed by a Virginia drawl, as he touched his hat brim with a gloved hand.
The old woman blinked, and a tear was squeezed from the comer of each eye. “Mr. Lincoln,” she replied tremulously. “They’ve shot Mr. Lincoln.”
Under different circumstances, Steele knew he might have felt a surge of joy and expectation that the event could signal new hope for the South to rise against defeat. But he had come to Washington determined to forget the past and adjust himself to the best future he could make.
Even so, he had difficulty in injecting a degree of the mournful into his voice as he asked: “Is the President dead?”
The old woman shook her head as she turned away to go around behind Steele's horse. “But he's dying. Won't last out the night, they say.”
Steele took a final look down the street towards the house and the melancholy crowd before it, then jerked over the reins to angle his horse towards Elmer's Barroom. It was not in complete darkness, for a dim light flickered far in back of one of the windows. After he had looped the reins over the hitching rail at the edge of the sidewalk, he approached the doors and they swung open in front of him.
“We're closed, mister,” Elmer announced as the newcomer crossed the threshold. “Mark of respect for the President.”
The doors squeaked closed behind Steele and he halted abruptly. He saw Elmer standing behind the bar, using the turned down light of a single kerosene lamp to count the night's takings. He could hear one man snoring and another groaning, but they were beyond the reach of the flickering light. He could smell stale cigar smoke and spilled whiskey. He could sense death.
“I just heard,” he said, moving forward towards the bar, feeling the sawdust beneath the soles of his new boots. “After getting news like that, a man needs a drink. Whiskey.”
He pulled up short again, as something brushed against his shoulder. His pupils had distended to the low level of light now and as he looked up, he could discern the limply banging form of the dead man. The body revolved slowly from where he had collided with a dangling leg.
“Turn up the lamp, bartender,” he said softly.
Elmer continued to chink loose change, taking it from his apron pocket and stacking it on the bartop. “Told you, mister, the place is closed up for the night,” he growled.
The sleeping drunk stopped snoring and smacked his lips as if his imagination was enjoying a good meal.
“The view's lousy anyway,” the old timer rasped, crawling towards the bar and using the rail to push himself on to all fours.
“You don't turn up that lamp, I'll kill you,” Steele said, his drawling voice still pitched low. But it was high on menace.
Elmer's head snapped up and he peered intently through the darkness towards the newcomer. His face in the lamp light was made uglier by a scowl. He could not see Steele clearly and it was for this reason he reached out and turned up the wick. His free hand dragged a Manhattan Navy Model out from beneath the bar. When the pool of light had spread far enough to illuminate Steele and the hanging man, the revolver was cocked and aimed.
“You don't look capable, mister,” Elmer said, noting that Steele wore no gunbelt and his hands were empty.
Steele was staring up at the swollen face of the old man. His own features were empty of expression and when he turned, to look at Elmer and started to walk towards him he still gave no outward sign of what he was thinking.
“What happened here?” he asked, the threat missing from his low tones. But neither was he concerned with the pointing gun in the bartender's hand. He glanced casually to his right and saw the bearded old timer with the bloody forehead climbing painfully to his feet. Then to the left, where the sleeping drunk was just a lumpy shadow against the deeper shadow beneath the table.
Elmer's sullen eyes met Steele's open stare, then took in at close range the man's easy-going features and unprovoking build. He clumped this all together with the lack of visible weapons and decided his unwanted customer had a tough mouth but nothing with which to hack it up. He put the gun down beneath the bar and started to dig for more coins.
“A guy blasted the President over at the theatre,” he rasped. “Got clean away.” He nodded towards the man hanging from the beam. "That guy passed the gun to the murderer. Didn't have the sense to take it on the lam.” A sour grin glowed in his eyes and twisted his mouth. “Me and a few others kinda forced him to hang around.”
The old timer was leaning his elbows on the bar, nursing his broken head in the palms of his hands. “Weren't no
proof of that!” he snapped, without looking up. “Ed Binns and his pals just up and hanged the old man on account of what you told 'em.”
Elmer glowered hatefully at the old timer. “He give the gun to Booth, I'm telling you,” he snarled.
“And you can give me a drink,” Steele said.
Elmer sighed, seemed about to refuse, then swung around and swept a shot glass and bottle from the shelf behind him. He set the glass on the bartop and poured the right measure without looking. Steele proffered no money, and neither did he reach for the drink.
“What if you were wrong?” he asked.
Elmer banged the bottle down angrily. “Just drink your drink and get out so I can close up,” he snarled. “I weren't wrong.”
“You were wrong,” Steele said. With his left hand, Steele tugged at his earlobe. His right hand came fast out of the pocket on that side of his jacket and Elmer's eyes widened with terror as he saw the tiny two-shot derringer clutched in the fist. The gun went off with a small crack. The shattered whiskey bottle made a louder noise. Elmer fell backwards, crashing against the display shelf. His hands clutched at his bulbous stomach. Small shards of broken glass glittered against the dark stains of whiskey covering his apron. He looked down at himself and gasped when he saw the blood oozing between his fingers. The old timer forgot his own pain as he savored the agony of Elmer.
“His name was Benjamin Steele. And my name is Adam Steele,” the man said softly. “That was my father you killed.”
The pain had had time to reach Elmer now, and it overflowed his eyes in the form of tears as he brought his head up to look at the man he had so badly misjudged. Steele held the shocked, stare of the other, as he slid the derringer back in his pocket and used his left hand to draw out a match. He struck it on his thumbnail and in the sudden flare of yellow light his eyes seemed not to be as one with the rest of his features. For the lines of his face had a composed, innocuous set—while the eyes, pulled wide, blazed with a seemingly unquenchable fury.
Then the flaring match was arced forward. Elmer emitted a strangled sob of horror, throwing up his bands. The match sailed between them and bounced against his chest. It fell to the floor, but not before a fragile flame licked up from the whiskey-sodden material of his shirt. He beat at it with a blood-stained band, the motion fanning the fire. Within a terrifying few seconds, as the fury died within Steele, the bartender's massive body was enveloped in searing flames. As shreds of charred clothing fell from him and the intense heat swept over his naked skin, his sobs became strangled cries, pitched so high they sounded almost feminine. He threw himself to the floor and began to roll backwards and forward as he beat at hungry flames. But the whiskey soaked sawdust behind the bar counter only added fuel to the agonizing fire.
The old timer's horror at the lynching was as nothing compared to the revulsion he felt as he watched Elmer's pitifully ineffectual attempts to beat out the flames. But he made no attempt to intervene, conscious of the evil lurking beneath the deceptively gentle surface of the young man standing beside him. “Innocent man getting lynched,” Steele said, still softly. “Fair burns a man up, doesn't it?”
The old timer was at last able to tear his gaze away from the weakening struggle of the human torch. But he discovered that Steele had not been addressing him. Instead, the blank-faced young man had muttered the comment to himself as he turned and moved towards the limp form of his father. He set the table upright and the lifeless body took on a curved posture as the high buttoned boots rested on the top. Steele leaned to the right, bending his leg so that the slit in the seam of his pants gaped open. His hand reached inside and drew from his boot a wooden-handled knife with a six inch blade. There was not a single sign of grief in his expression or his actions as he climbed on to the table. The finely-honed blade of the knife sliced through the hanging rope in a matter of moments. He pulled the noose from around the neck to reveal an ugly red weal in the dead skin. After sliding the knife back into the sheath strapped to his boot, he lifted the slight form of his father in both arms and stepped down from the table. His empty eyes surveyed the old timer across half the width of the barroom.
“You mentioned a name?” he said softly.
The old timer swallowed hard and glanced over the bartop. The charred body of Elmer was still. The smell of him masked the more familiar odors of the room. A wide area of sawdust was smoldering, only needing a draught to explode into renewed fire.
“Sure, Mr. Steele,” he said hoarsely. “Ed Binns. There was a feller name of Logan with them. And I heard Elmer call another guy Carstairs. He was a foreigner. Talked English, but not like an American.”
The weight of the body was no strain to Steele. “Know where I'll find, them?” he asked.
The old timer shook his head. Then said hurriedly: “I used to know Ed Binns' old man. Had a drapery store out in Foothills, Tennessee. Ed always was the wild one: even when he was a young shaver, Mr. Steele. Bigger he got, worser he got.”
“He's got as big as he's going to get,” Steele said. “Grateful to you.”
He turned and walked towards the door, carrying the body of his father as if it weighed no more than a baby. When he pushed out through the doors, frosty night air wafted in and a heap of sawdust exploded into fire with a dull plop.
“It's disgusting,” a woman said shrilly as the swing doors squeaked closed. “The President dying and men get falling down drunk.”
The old timer cast a fearful glance at the spreading carpet of fire behind the bar counter and staggered across to the man sleeping beneath the table. Hoofbeats sounded out on the street as he prodded the sleeping form with his boot. The man grunted and snapped open his eyes.
“Come on, Henry,” the old timer said urgently. “Let's go home. Elmer won't be serving no more drinks.'
CHAPTER FOUR
MIDNIGHT was long gone when Lieutenant George C. Carey rapped his knuckles on the door marked GENERAL MILTON K. DEAN - CHIEF OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE.
“Come in!” the general said curtly and Carey complied, entering a large office with paneled walls and a floor covered with a deep-pile carpet. It was lit meagerly with a single oil lamp on one corner of a large desk. The desk top was littered with sheaves of papers, several unfolded maps, a photograph of the general's wife and another of President Lincoln: the latter not yet draped by the black ribbon which was visible beneath the glass paperweight.
The general, tall and thin, his head bald and the face beneath hung with slack, wrinkled skin, was just sitting down behind the desk as Carey closed the door reverently behind him and saluted.
“Your men are ready, lieutenant?” Dean demanded, touching his deeply scored forehead and then waving the junior officer into the chair before the desk.
“Yes, sir,” Carey replied brightly. “And anxious to leave.” He injected a mournful note into his voice. “Is there any further news from the Peterson House, sir?”
Carey was twenty-five and a war veteran. He had done a great deal of front line fighting in sixty-one and two before being wounded at Antietam Creek. Then he had been assigned to an army post in Indian Territory which was supposed to have been an easy number. And so it could have been, for a man willing to turn a blind eye towards his superiors’ trafficking in arms for the Confederacy. The efficient manner in which Carey dealt with the situation at the fort, severing a vital supply line for the Rebels, resulted in re-assignment to Army Intelligence in Washington, he served with as much distinction as elsewhere.
It was because of this excellent record that Dean had selected the young junior officer for such an important duty.
“President Lincoln is deteriorating fast,” the general said with a sigh, rubbing his weary eyes. “There is little hope. But the doctors think the Secretary of State will survive.”
Carey's lanky body stiffened in the chair and his good-looking face revealed deep shock. “Mr. Seward was shot, too?”
The general shook his head. “Stabbed. With members of his family at home
.” He fixed the young man with a level stare. “And there's more, lieutenant. We have information that there was also a plan to assassinate Vice-President Johnson.”
“My God!” Carey exclaimed. “Mass murder. They're madmen!”
“Unreasoning men with an unreasonable motive,” Dean corrected. “Dedicated to the overthrow by force of the duly elected Government of the United States.”
“Confederates, sir?”
Beyond the confines of the dimly lit office, the city was quiet. Inside the paneled walls the silence was funereal in its heaviness. The general's chair creaked as he stretched out his legs, seeking to relieve the muscle ache.
“We know that many thousands - maybe millions - of supporters of the Southern Cause are disenchanted with the outcome of the war, lieutenant,” he said. “It was to be expected that anti-Union feelings would run high. But the tragic events of this night do not comprise a mere impulsive backlash against defeat.”
Carey leaned forward in his chair, aware that General Dean was reaching his point. All Carey knew so far was that he had been ordered to prepare a cavalry troop to combat readiness. He had surmised that he and the men were required to perform some duty in connection with the crime committed at Ford's Theatre.
“The violence in Washington is part of a well-organized plot,” the fatigued general went on. “Your troop is just one unit of law enforcement being deployed to track down the plotters and bring them to justice.”
Dean levered himself up and began to pace the room.
“But naturally,” he said to the eager-faced lieutenant. “Army intelligence desires to have the honor of capturing these men.” He altered the direction of his pacing and halted at the side of Carey's chair. His face as he looked down at the younger man was momentarily lit by the fire within him. “I don't merely desire it, Lieutenant Carey. I demand it!”
The Violent Peace Page 3
