“Let’s go see Lincoln,” I said. “He may not want our help in defending Truett, but I think he needs it.”
When we reached Hoffman’s Row, court was in session in No. 3. It was a routine hearing, however, as we could see through the closed windows only a few spectators watching the goings-on in front of Judge Thomas. We climbed the rickety stairs to Lincoln’s law office at No. 4.
The fading white lettering on the door announced, “Stuart and Lincoln, Attorneys and Counselors at Law.” I pushed it open and we found Lincoln seated at the square table in the center of the room, hunched over a legal document, his quill pen working furiously. Listing stacks of documents and undone packets of papers were strewn about the table and every other horizontal surface of the room, as if a violent whirlwind had swept through.
A moment later, Lincoln signed the document on which he’d been working with a demonstrative flourish and rose to his feet. “Two Speeds at once,” he said. “To what do I owe this honor?”
I handed him the copy of the Democrat and pointed to the new letter, but he merely nodded. “I’ve seen it already. Simeon was by earlier, ranting and raving about Weber’s scurrilous publication practices. Of course, we both know Simeon would publish the same sort of thing about a Democratic politician if given half the chance.”
“Joshua took us by the Democrat’s offices on the way over,” said Martha.
“I imagine Weber was as welcoming as a mother rattlesnake guarding her nest.”
“Less so,” Martha said with a laugh.
“When I said ‘S.G.’ to Weber,” I said, “he thought I’d said ‘S.D.,’ and he suggested Douglas was the logical S.D.”
“That’s an interesting slip of the tongue,” said Lincoln, his gray eyes alive with thought. “I wouldn’t put it past Douglas. Nothing to do with the killing, of course. But the taunting, too-clever letters? That’s right up his alley. Just look at the slanted press coverage he’s inspired against Truett.”
“It’s S.G., not S.D., and anyway I’m certain it’s not Mr. Douglas,” said Martha with passion.
Both Lincoln and I stared at her. “How are you sure it’s not him?” Lincoln asked, voicing the question on my lips as well.
“It’s not important—I just am.”
“Martha, I told you to keep away from him,” I said sharply.
My sister’s temples were flushed and her cheeks flamed. “You have no right to tell me anything of the sort!” she shouted.
“I most certainly do! You’re here under my protection—”
At that moment, there was a sharp pounding on the floorboards underneath us. Without a word Lincoln dropped to his knees and started digging away at the floor with his fingernails. I came around the table and saw he was fumbling with a latch set into the boards. Then Lincoln gave a push and a three-foot-square section of the floor swung away, and suddenly we were staring down into Judge Thomas’s courtroom through its ceiling. Directly below us, the court clerk Matheny stood with a broomstick in his hands.
“You’re making quite a racket,” said Matheny crossly.
“Is it too much to ask, Lincoln,” called the judge from his end of the courtroom, “that we may proceed with the business of the circuit court without hearing every word of the varied and sundry troubles of your visitors?”
Standing directly above the opening, I had a disconcerting view, from a bird’s eye as it were, of the judge, several attorneys, and the few spectators present for the morning’s court session, all of them looking skyward with craned necks.
“My apologies, Your Honor,” returned Lincoln. He was lying prone on the floor, his waist even with the edge of the opening and his upper torso dangling down into the courtroom below. So much of his body projected through the opening that I feared he might topple in, but then I saw he had taken the precaution of wrapping his feet around one of the table legs to anchor himself.
“Who’s in the box this morning, anyway? Oh, it’s Prickett. Stop up after you’re through, would you, David? I have a new thought about the Thorpe brothers case—our favorite chicken snatchers. Perhaps we can come to an arrangement after all.”
“Very well,” said the prosecutor, his head tipped far back.
“Carry on, Your Honor,” said Lincoln. “We’ll do our best to contain our enthusiasms.”
Before Judge Thomas could respond, Lincoln wriggled back from the opening and swung the trapdoor shut with a thud. Then he bounced to his feet, a broad smile spread across his face, and said, in a more moderate voice, “When Hoffman came ’round to inform me he’d let the ground floor to the judge for the temporary courtroom, he pointed the door out. It was specially installed by the original tenant of Nos. 3 and 4. Actually, it’s come in handy for the judge a few times. When he’s got a jury up here, you see.”
“A jury?”
“They had their own special room over at the old courthouse, but there’s nowhere at Hoffman’s Row for Judge Thomas to put his jury while they’re deliberating. So the county commissioners approached me and Stuart with a proposition. When the court holds a jury trial, they come up here to deliberate—Stuart and I clear out, of course—and when they’ve got a question for the judge, or when they’ve reached their verdict, they just open the trapdoor and shout down. It works surprisingly well, and the commissioners have agreed to pay us thirty-six dollars each term for the occasional use of the place.” He smiled. “I’ll be the only attorney in town who’s sorry to see the court move to permanent quarters, whenever that day comes.”
Martha clapped her hands together and Lincoln gave her a toothy grin. “Let’s start over,” I proposed, “only, in quieter voices.” Both of my companions nodded.
“We’ve come by because we want to help you with your defense of Mr. Truett,” said Martha. “I’ve got a couple of ideas, and perhaps Joshua does as well. What’s your plan for the case?”
“As always, I admire your enthusiasm, Miss Speed,” said Lincoln with a twinkling look. “But as I’ve told your brother, this is one case I can handle myself.”
“I talked to your client the other night,” Martha pressed on. “The baby was fussing and Molly asked if I would mind carrying their prisoner’s dinner out to the cell so she could nurse the little man. Mr. Truett was desperate to tell me he’s been wrongly accused. He wouldn’t let me leave until he’d told me all about the night of the shooting, how he was on the other side of the grounds on Quality Hill when the cannons went off, so he can’t have been the one who killed Early—”
“But he doesn’t have any witnesses who can affirm he was where he says he was at that moment,” broke in Lincoln. “I’ve been through this with him as well, Miss Speed.”
“What about your father?” I blurted, unable to suppress the question any longer.
“Your father, Mr. Lincoln?” said Martha, her eyes wide. “Don’t tell me he’s caught up in this somehow?”
Lincoln gave me a long, unfriendly stare, which I returned without blinking. Then he sighed and, pointedly turning his back toward me, related to Martha what Truett had said about Thomas Lincoln out at the jail cell that night.
“Surely you don’t believe him,” said Martha when Lincoln had finished.
“There’s a lot I would believe about my father,” he replied. “But land fraud? No, I don’t believe that of him.” Lincoln swallowed, then continued, “Now, my stepbrother? I’d believe pretty much anything anyone says about John. And about his ability to steer my father into situations in which he’s got no business being.”
“How did Mr. Johnston first come to live with you?” asked Martha in a soft, sympathetic voice.
“Six months after my angel mother passed, my father realized he had no hope of running the household by himself. We were living in Indiana by then, but he knew of a widow back in Kentucky with three children of her own. They agreed to combine their families. My stepmother Sarah moved into our house with two daughters and a son. That’s John.”
“Were the two of you close growing
up?”
Lincoln frowned. “We tolerated one another. Slept next to each other in the loft in our cabin. Grumbled together when our father ordered us to do the grubbing or hired us out to work in the neighbors’ fields. But we are very different, as you can see.”
“I imagine he means well.”
“I don’t think so at all. He needs to get a job. He’s been living off my father’s resources, meager as they are, for far too long.” Lincoln’s voice cracked with emotion. “And the schemes I’ve seen John dream up … he’s got no sense but a sense for self-preservation. At whatever cost to those around him.”
Martha’s brows were knit together with concentration. “Who’s running the land office,” she asked, “now that Mr. Early is gone?”
“For the time being, it’s Pollard Simmons, the clerk,” said Lincoln. “A few of us got together and agreed we’d wait until after the election before a new registrar is appointed. It’d hardly do to put a new man in place and then have to take him out a few weeks later if the opposite party wins instead.”
“Have you been there to see if you can figure out what Early was looking into?” I asked. “And whether there’s any truth to the suggestion your father was bound up in it somehow?”
Lincoln expelled his breath and shook his head. “I’ve been hesitant to draw attention to the issue. The clerk Simmons is close with a few of the lower-level Democrats. If I go in there, asking for any records involving my father, or John for that matter, it’ll be as good as letting the entire Springfield Democratic Party know there’s something to pursue. But I’ve resolved I must do it anyway, at the end of next week, when I’m back in Springfield.”
“I didn’t know you were traveling,” I said, turning to him in surprise. “I thought you were staying put, now that we’ve entered the campaign season in earnest.”
“It’s the campaign that has me on the road. I’m leaving tomorrow. There’s to be a series of meetings around the county for the voters to hear each of the candidates for the state legislature speak for themselves. There are seventeen of us, running for a total of seven seats.”
From the clutter on the table in front of him, Lincoln pulled out a sheet with several columns of writing. “We’ll be gathering at Bartell’s on Sugar Creek on Saturday. The following week we’ll all be at Colburn’s Mill on Lick Creek, in the southwestern part of the county. There’s another meeting in Berlin the day after. And the final one’s at Walter’s Camp Ground on Spring Creek, two days later.
“At every meeting, each of the candidates will stand up on a tree stump in turn and say his piece—his position on the internal improvements, how he proposes to resolve the banking panic, and so on. With that many men wanting their say, the meetings will last all day. Some might even go into a second.”
“That’s a lot of talking,” said Martha with a laugh. “And we’ll work on your case while you’re gone. Starting with the land office.” Turning to me, she added, “We can say Daddy is considering investing in property here. People will believe that, and it will avoid any suggestion that our questions are related to Mr. Lincoln.”
When Lincoln hesitated, I said, “It seems to me you’ve got nothing to lose by having us poke around. Maybe we’ll find something that helps exonerate Truett. Or, at the least, gives you peace of mind about your father.”
Lincoln’s face relaxed into a smile. “Very well. I guess the Speeds are on the case after all.”
My sister gave a small cheer. A few minutes later we made ready to depart. As we reached the door, Lincoln called out, “One favor to ask of you, Miss Speed.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t share our thinking, or the results of your investigations—or certainly this rumor about my father—with your friend Mr. Douglas.”
Martha blushed. “No. Of course not.”
“He’s our adversary,” said Lincoln. “It’s his job to keep Truett in jail, or worse. It’s our job to prevent it. At all events, you must keep that in mind.”
CHAPTER 13
The land office consisted of a one-room log cabin over on Second Street. Nailed to the logs beside the entrance was a tattered notice from the national government setting forth the terms of the Land Act of 1820 and the Relief Act of 1821. Across the top of the notice someone had scrawled, “No man’s property is safe while the Legislature is in session.” I suspected there were a great many in town who concurred with the sentiment.
On the morning after our meeting with Lincoln, Martha and I pushed open the door and came upon Pollard Simmons, seated on an ancient chair behind an even older desk. The clerk was a heavyset, elderly man with thick glasses pressed against the bridge of his nose, who squinted at us as we entered. The office was windowless and lit by two lonely candles. Boxes overflowing with loose papers and bound books cluttered the floor.
“Good morning,” I began, “we’ve come to buy land.”
Simmons looked up at us and mournfully shook his head. “You cannot do that, sir.”
“This is still the land office, is it not? And you are running the office at present? So I demand the opportunity to purchase land.”
“It is, I am, and you cannot.”
I rocked back on my heels and thought. Then I made a show of reaching into my pocket. “Perhaps if we offer you something for your, er, troubles?”
The man recoiled. “I certainly hope you’re not offering to bribe me,” he said, “for I shall send for Sheriff Hutchason at once.”
“Oh no, I didn’t mean to—”
I was interrupted by the sound of the church bell from down the street. Nine sonorous tones flitted through the small office.
The clerk cocked his head, wordlessly counting the bells. When they ended, he reached beneath his desk and pulled out a small sign, which he fastidiously arranged on the surface in front of him.
“Land Office Open,” read the sign.
“Now, sir, how many acres are you interested in?” he asked.
“We’ve come as agents for our father,” interposed Martha. “Judge John Speed of Louisville. He’s hoping to purchase a large plot. One thousand acres.”
The clerk did not turn to Martha but rather kept his intense stare focused on me. “A thousand acres, you say? We’ve got some remaining tracts in the southwestern corner of the old Military Tract that are that large. All at the federal price of a dollar twenty-five an acre.”
I shook my head. “We were hoping to purchase something a little closer to Springfield. My father shares our optimism about the prospects for Sangamon County, now that the state capital is coming. Perhaps out by New Salem.” It was a guess, based on the little we knew, but we had to start somewhere.
“That area’s all in private hands already,” said Simmons. “You’d have to deal with the landowners directly. And then come register the transaction with me, once you’ve got it surveyed and the price agreed upon. But I doubt you’ll find any one parcel as large as your father’s interested in.”
“Do all those books show the current owners?” asked Martha, gesturing to the volumes scattered across the floor.
“Take a look at the land entry books if you want,” the clerk said to me, again ignoring Martha. “They’ll show the entrymen who own each parcel.”
“I’m standing right here,” Martha hissed into my ear in a not-very-quiet whisper as I took her by the arm and led her toward the disorderly pile of records.
“Of course you are,” I said. “Let’s take a look.”
The monumental nature of our task soon became apparent. The thick, bound books contained a running log of land transactions, including the date, seller, purchaser, amount of cash paid as a deposit, and amount promised on account. Most entries also included the name of the surveyor, a crucial detail, as the jumble of conflicting title claims that characterized the West meant that the surveyor was often a key witness for proving ownership of a given piece of land.
Soon we were awash in a sea of names and figures, dates and dollars. By the time the church
bells struck noon, my eyes were weary from staring at tiny, uneven handwriting on page after page. Martha and I went outside to have lunch and reconsider our plan.
“There’s almost too much information,” I said, squinting into the bright sun after so long in the dimly lit office. “It’s hard to make sense of any of it.”
“Maybe we should make a list of the names that appear most often,” suggested Martha. “If there was some sort of fraud going on, wouldn’t you think it would involve particularly frequent buyers?”
“Or frequent sellers,” I said. “Or false names. Or faked surveys. There could be almost anything hidden inside those books.”
“I saw Lincoln’s name frequently listed as the surveyor,” said Martha.
I nodded. “He once told me he’d been one of the most prolific surveyors in the area, and now I believe him.”
Lincoln had related that surveying had been his favorite of the many assorted jobs he’d held in New Salem, in the time before he read law and moved to Springfield. His surveying career had been interrupted unceremoniously when his surveying instruments were seized by the sheriff because of his failure to make payments on the debt he’d incurred from his failed New Salem store.
“Perhaps Lincoln would be able to make more sense of these records,” I said.
“Perhaps he would,” agreed Martha. “But we told him we’d go through them in his absence. I don’t want to let him down.”
Replenished by a pair of ham sandwiches procured from the Globe, we returned to the office. Martha took out a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and started making notes of the names listed in the transaction logs. I decided to proceed more loosely and flipped from page to page and often back again, hoping some spark of inspiration would kindle and show me the pattern we were meant to see. I soon tired of this and returned to the clerk’s desk. Simmons had been scratching away at a piece of parchment throughout our visit.
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