Lincoln's Ransom

by Tim Champlin

  “I guess the penalty for counterfeiting is worse than for grave-robbing,” she observed somewhat wistfully, as if she were comparing the wages of sin.

  He detected a note of regret in her voice, and pressed ahead. “Actually, it is. Bogus money hurts the country...cheats people who innocently accept it. A grave-robber steals the remains of somebody’s loved one. It may seem like it’s against common decency, but the bodies provide medical schools information that will help mankind.”“I always thought grave-robbers just stole jewels and valuables buried with the bodies.”

  “Sometimes a client hires me for that reason,” he nodded. “Usually it’s a relative who knows about a bracelet, a gold ring, or something like that. Then the coffin is re-interred.”

  She shook her head incredulously. “That’s such a macabre occupation. It just doesn’t sound like you. Maybe I don’t know the real Sterling Packard. If anything, I would have pictured you in some dangerous occupation.”

  “Well, very often the family puts an armed guard on the grave for the first few weeks,” he said, repeating what he’d read in an old copy of Leslie’s Illustrated Magazine. “So it can be very dangerous as well as illegal.”

  “But not as illegal or dangerous as counterfeiting,” she mused.

  “You’re right,” he said, seeing an opening. “I guess your husband has a central location in Chicago where all the bogus bills are printed and distributed from?”

  “No. He doesn’t tell me much, but I know he doesn’t stay in one place long. I’m so tired of being in hiding and moving from place to place to avoid detection, and not being able to meet other people except a few shifty characters in the same line of work. He spends all of his time with his business associates, meeting with men from Saint Louis or New Orleans or some place. I never know where he is or when he’ll be home. At first it was a lark. The danger and the secrecy of it was exciting. It was almost like a game of hide and seek when I was younger.”

  “Is that why you left me in that cabin in Georgia after you’d saved my life?” he asked, in spite of himself. “You thought I’d turn you in, if I found out what you were doing there?”

  Her face took on a pained expression in the dim light. “No. That wasn’t it at all...at least, not on my part. It was Jim’s decision to pack up and leave. I wanted to stay and nurse you.”

  It took the rest of his eroded will power to keep from reaching for her again. He swallowed hard, and, before he could speak, she said: “There was another man there, too, who was working with us, and he was in a panic to get out before the troops came and found us. That man left us shortly after. He’s dead now. He went to robbing stores and got shot before the war was over.”

  “It’s funny how a person’s life just progresses from step to step until one day we look around and wonder...how did I get here?”

  She nodded solemnly, looking off into the windy darkness. “I know. Sometimes I wish I had it all to do over again.”

  “What would you change?”

  “I wouldn’t get married until I found a man who worshipped the ground I walked on. And then I would want to have children.”

  Her incisive, straightforward answer jarred him for a moment. She’d said nothing about finding a man with a legitimate occupation. He knew counterfeiting had allowed her and Kinealy to live very well, so maybe money was not even a consideration in her plan for happiness. She’d mentioned the two things she would have changed in her life, and one of them gave him a hint that she was disappointed in her marriage. While he was thinking of an answer, the door beside him burst open, and Kinealy shouldered his way out.

  “Oh, there you are.”

  Packard didn’t know which one of them he was talking to.

  “Packard, get back inside.” Kinealy glanced quickly around, but the three of them were alone on the platform. “We’re not supposed to know each other, remember?” he said in a deep voice, glowering at the two of them. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  Packard nodded and, with one last look at Janice, stepped around Kinealy and opened the coach door. What would Janice tell him of their conversation? He was confident of her discretion as he noticed the coming dawn paling the sky behind them. What would the new day bring? They were less than an hour from Hannibal.

  Chapter Nine

  Janice returned to the car a few minutes later, her face flushed, mouth set in a grim line. Her eyes were downcast as she resumed her seat.

  Big Jim came in shortly thereafter and flopped down across from Packard, his face like a thundercloud. Packard figured he might have been part of whatever transpired between them but just ignored the sinking feeling and tried to act nonchalant. He was even able to relax enough to doze off again for a short time.

  The cars jolting together awakened him as the train slowed for the Mississippi River bridge. The coach creaked and swayed as the train crawled carefully onto the narrow structure. He rubbed his gritty eyes and looked out the window at the iron girders sliding past in the morning mist. Not far below, the mighty, slate-gray river swirled and eddied, sliding the ponderous weight of its mile-wide channel down the middle of the country.

  Glancing around, he saw that nearly everyone in the car was now awake, shuffling dunnage under their feet, rubbing their eyes, standing up in the aisle to stretch, preparing to get off in Hannibal. Janice and Rip Hughes were sitting quietly alert. McGuinn and Kinealy were also awake, but looking like they’d slept on their faces. Packard felt pretty rusty himself but was determined to keep a low profile and not give Kinealy reason to see anything askance. His cover was still intact, but he had to proceed with great caution from this point on and play his rôle as the professor’s assistant. The lump of the holstered Colt under his jacket gave him a reassuring feeling.

  A few minutes later they were stepping down onto the dépôt platform, their breath steaming in an icy morning fog. He’d noticed from the train window that the Missouri shore just south of here was mostly high bluffs, but the town of Hannibal was built on an irregular shelf of land that gradually sloped down to a riverboat landing. Even at this hour, the dépôt was a busy place with porters pushing luggage carts and freight along, debarking passengers being met and hugged by relatives. As the door to the dépôt opened and closed, Packard could hear the faint rattling of a telegraph key from somewhere inside. The sound made his stomach tense up as he realized the news of the great Lincoln tomb robbery could be coming in over the wire at that very moment.

  Kinealy shrugged his shoulders in McGuinn’s wool jacket, raked his fingers through his thick hair, and said: “Gentlemen, we have a mummy case to transfer, and we’d best get to it.”

  Packard followed him forward along the bustling platform to the baggage car where the messenger, Roscoe, had the side door open and was handing down several boxes to a waiting porter to be stacked onto a push cart with large iron wheels. They waited a couple of minutes until he finished and the porter had moved away.

  “Here we are, gents, safe and sound as promised,” he said cheerily. “Ancient Egyptians travel safe with their gold by Wells Fargo.”

  McGuinn jumped up and helped him slide the canvas-wrapped box to the open doorway while Kinealy hailed a porter with a baggage cart. While they were sliding the load down, Packard glanced up and saw Janice and Hughes walking away from them across the street toward a building that had a sign over the door: Hot Meals. Only then did he realize how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten since noon yesterday, and even then a nervous stomach had allowed him only to nibble a few bites. But food would have to wait until they got this cargo aboard the baggage and freight car of the Hannibal & St. Joseph train.

  Kinealy tipped the porter to trundle the cart with the coffin to the far end of the platform and park it next to the brick dépôt wall for the moment.

  “The train to Saint Joe is making up in the yard and won’t be ready to go for more’n two hours,” the porter answered in response to Kinealy’s question. “You got plenty of time to get you some breakfast at that
eatin’ house over yonder.” He pointed at the building that Janice and Hughes had entered.

  “Thanks,” Kinealy said. “We can handle it from here.” When the porter had moved away, Kinealy said: “Packard, stay here on guard while I go in and get our tickets to Saint Joe and pay the freight on this.”

  Packard nodded as Kinealy and McGuinn walked away. So far, so good. He took a deep breath and leaned against the wall, resting and watching all the activity swirling around the dépôt. But he didn’t have long to relax. Less than five minutes later a newsboy came around the corner of the dépôt from the street, hawking papers. “Extra! Extra! Body of Abraham Lincoln stolen from tomb!”

  The adolescent voice was like an alarm bell in the night that set Packard’s heart to racing.

  “Grave-robbers grab Lincoln’s body!” the boy yelled.

  Several people stopped the boy and thrust coins into his hand, and he was handing out copies of the thin tabloid as fast as he could jerk them out of a canvas sack slung across his chest. Packard was right there with them, getting one of the last copies before he sold out.

  He moved back to the wall and glanced around. No one was taking any notice of him. Nevertheless, he had to dig out a bandanna and wipe his clammy forehead. His hands were shaking so he had to spread the newspaper out on the edge of the push cart to read it.

  LINCOLN’S BODY STOLEN the banner headline screamed. And in slightly smaller type beneath it: Grave-robbers Snatch Martyred President’s Body From Springfield Tomb. Then, in descending size of type, Ghouls Elude Police Trap and Bold Robbery Pulled Off During Presidential Election.

  Packard’s mouth was so dry, he had trouble swallowing as his eyes scanned down the column, reading the hastily composed article that contained several typographical errors. The news had leapt across the wires ahead of their speeding express train. They’d gotten far enough away from Springfield so that maybe trains in Missouri wouldn’t be searched, unless the law knew where to search. And that brought to mind Mullins and Boston Corbett. Even though Packard was on the side of the law, he found himself fervently hoping that Mullins had stranded Corbett far enough away from civilization so that he had not been able to spread his story. Or, if he had been able to get his tale of kidnapping and body-snatching to somebody’s ears, no connection would be made between that and this caper. It seemed a forlorn hope. Even though Corbett was crazy, most policemen would have enough sense to make the connection. And that meant a telegraph message to sheriffs and constables ahead of them to stop and search the train. Even if Corbett’s story didn’t get out, Packard had no faith in Mullins. He was probably drunk right now and bragging to somebody how he had been one of the major players in the great tomb robbery that was making headlines across the country. Packard took a deep breath of cold morning air. Maybe they would have time to get across the state to St. Joe before any of that happened.

  He looked back at the article, trying to pick up more details of what was known by law officers, but details were sketchy. Journalism hadn’t changed; getting a story out rapidly still took precedence over detailed accuracy. The same thing was just repeated in different words, along with editorial lamentations about the audacity and gruesomeness of the business and speculation about whether the robbers would demand ransom. The report stated that the inept lawmen had sprung their trap on an empty tomb and wound up shooting at each other and wounding one Pinkerton man. There was no indication that the authorities knew where the robbers had gone, or possibly the police and Secret Service had not divulged the full story to reporters.

  Then another thought stopped Packard. What about those drunks at Kinealy’s saloon? They had seen the lead coffin. Kinealy had slugged one of them before running off with the box. Even as drunk as they were, they must have put two and two together after the story broke and told the police what they saw. So the law probably knew it was Kinealy’s gang. The only hope was they didn’t know what direction the robbers had gone. They had seen the body-snatchers drive north in the wagon, and that was it. As nearly as Packard could recall, he had seen no one else before they got out of town. And, with any luck, no one had seen them.

  His fear of being caught was almost equal to his fear of not being caught. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand up under the pressure of this ruse. He almost wished some lawman would come up and arrest them right now. It would be a great relief. On the other hand, he wanted to stick it out and see Kinealy and his men put away for a crime greater than destruction of property, or petty theft. He wanted to see them get the body concealed somewhere at the end of their flight and nail Kinealy for extortion when the ransom demand was made. Yet he could almost see the hurt look in the dark eyes of Janice Kinealy when his real identity was finally revealed. Lying to criminals was one thing, but to a beautiful woman he was smitten with...well, that was another matter entirely. He couldn’t silence a voice in the back of his head that kept reminding him Janice was a counterfeiter as well. If not actively engaged in the business herself, she had condoned the work of her husband all these years and had lived on the illegal profits. She’s a thief, the voice whispered to him. She’s no better than any of the others — just better-looking and more desirable.

  “Damn!” he said aloud in frustration.

  “What’s the matter?” Kinealy’s voice asked.

  He jumped and turned around. “Oh, you startled me.”

  “Something wrong?”

  He handed over the paper without answering. Kinealy took it and scanned the page, his face a map of weathered seams. For the first time, Packard noticed the puffiness around his eyes in the harsh light of early morning. It was as if the vivifying force that normally effused his whole being had suddenly drained out, leaving Packard staring at the husk of a tired, middle-aged man.

  “About what I expected,” he said, handing back the paper. “I just didn’t think it would be this quick.” He smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “But what is this to us? Professor Desmond must get the mummy of Rameses to San Francisco for the exhibit. And, to that end, I have our tickets to Saint Joseph right here.” The mask had slipped for only a few seconds, but long enough for Packard to catch a glimpse of the vulnerable man beneath. “Let’s get this loaded, and then we’ll get some breakfast,” he said, glancing around for a porter. “There’s the train, backing in, three tracks over.”

  * * *

  A quarter of an hour later Kinealy, Packard, and McGuinn were seated in the eatery across the street from the station. Hughes and Janice were just finishing up their meal two tables away. They didn’t look up, and Packard tried not to be obvious when he rested his tired eyes on her alluring face and form. They placed their orders with a mustachioed waiter who looked as if he hadn’t been long out of bed. But the cooks must have been ready for rail passengers because the food — steak and eggs and fried potatoes — was prepared and served quickly. The desultory conversation ceased while they consumed their meal. After he’d washed it down with three cups of hot coffee with cream, Packard could feel his strength coming back. Confidence rose with his energy, and all morbid worries that had plagued his mind an hour before evaporated like mist in the rays of the rising sun.

  Janice and Hughes paid their bill and left while the other three were eating. Janice raked Packard with a sloe-eyed look as she passed his table. This kind of flirting was as exciting as if he had been a young man, but it made him very uncomfortable, too. Her husband was sitting right there, and, even if he hadn’t been, Packard wanted to maintain the appearance of a professional relationship while they were on the run.

  The news of the tomb robbery had a few of the waiting passengers talking when the three returned to the dépôt, but the ticket agents, trainmen, and porters were still going about their jobs as if nothing had happened. They could no more take time off to hash over this news than they could any other sensational happening the newspapers trumpeted on a daily basis. Seeing these men work at their routine chores calmed Packard’s nerves. It was good to rea
lize the world wasn’t going to stop just because of what had been done last night. It was all a matter of perspective.

  Even so, the hands of the dépôt clock hardly seemed to move at all during the next hour. Packard killed some of the time by going across the street to a barber shop for a shave. Tilted back in the barber chair, his face wrapped in the comfort of steamy towels, he nearly went to sleep. Thirty minutes later he came out, feeling clean and smelling of bay rum. He was in the act of purchasing a handful of slim cigars from a street vendor when he looked up to see Rip Hughes, eyeing him from the dépôt platform. He felt himself tense. Was he watching to make sure Packard didn’t run off? They weren’t supposed to know each other. It wasn’t likely Kinealy, who was the boss, had told Hughes to keep an eye on him. Something had aroused Hughes’s suspicions, he thought, as he purposely walked out of sight behind the corner of a building and waited a few seconds. When he stepped out again, Hughes was walking swiftly toward him across the street, looking anxiously left and right.

  “Lose something?” Packard asked.

  “Uh...no,” he said, pulling up short, and trying to act casual. “Actually, I saw you over here, and it gave me the idea of buying a few cigars before we get on the train.”

  “Help yourself,” Packard said, gesturing toward the street vendor.

  Two short blasts of the steam whistle announced the Hannibal & St. Joseph was ready for boarding, and Packard walked quickly away. Hughes was humorless and didn’t talk much. But Packard felt something he’d said or done had triggered Hughes’s curiosity. It was just another reason to be on his mettle.

  Chapter Ten

  The squat mogul locomotive of the Hannibal & St. Joseph lay panting quietly, its black bulk beaded with the sweat of condensation, brass trim reflecting the sun that was burning off the cold morning mist. Packard had read that the locomotive’s six drive wheels, the last two beneath the cab, made it a better machine for pulling loads over hills than the American-type locomotive with its four large drivers. And, as he followed McGuinn’s broad back up the steps into the coach, he thought they would probably need that stronger engine to traverse the long grades and rocky hills of north central Missouri, a rugged change from the undulating farmland of Illinois. Every turn of those powerful drive wheels would take them and their morbid cargo farther from the scene of the crime. Strangely enough, he had reached the point where he was constantly thinking like a member of the gang.