On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  “Don’t do that.”

  Sledge clenched his jaw and shoved again. Lon slashed out with the pocket Colt. The gunsight gashed Sledge’s hand, not deeply, but enough to bring blood. Sledge cocked his huge fist; Lon aimed the Colt. Suddenly, with a bewildered shake of his head, he stuffed the pistol in his pants and stared at his partner.

  Sledge’s fist opened. He lowered his hand. The anger in both of them ebbed quickly, but something new and ugly remained. Lon gave voice to it:

  “What the hell are we turning into?”

  He walked away. Behind him, Sledge ripped another book. Scully sang as he broke dining room furniture. If this was meant to be a lesson to Southern sympathizers, it was the wrong lesson.

  23

  September 1861

  Margaret learned of Rose’s arrest two days later. Mrs. Philip Phillips, a woman she knew through Rose’s circle, called on Sunday afternoon to impart the news. She interrupted Margaret at her writing desk where she was composing a letter to Cicero. She hoped to send it to Richmond by courier. Regular mail service to the South had ended in May. Margaret hadn’t heard from her brother since he’d disappeared from Baltimore.

  Mrs. Phillips was agitated and angry. “Rose is surrounded by detectives working for a Major Allen. His men ransacked her house when they arrested her. The same men have worked for the Yankees since the Baltimore riots.”

  Margaret grew pale. Was it possible some of them had a hand in her father’s murder?

  “Are they treating Rose decently?” she asked.

  “She’s confined to her bedroom. She isn’t permitted to close the door, not even when she sleeps. Can you imagine a woman being abused that way?”

  “By Yankees, yes. How do you know all this?”

  Mrs. Phillips managed a sly smile. “Rose is smarter than any ten men. And she has a slew of admirers she doesn’t even know. When I passed the house yesterday, a crowd was gathered outside, showing support for her. Rose smuggled a note to one of them.”

  “Is she allowed visitors?”

  Mrs. Phillips said no and took her leave. Margaret was in turmoil. First Cicero to worry about, now her friend. The Washington press began to report significant developments in the case of the notorious Mrs. Greenhow. Soldiers from the Sturgis Rifles, General McClellan’s personal bodyguard, replaced the civilian detectives, and the house was promptly dubbed Fort Greenhow. Margaret was horrified to read that Mrs. Phillips, her two daughters, and her sister were likewise arrested for “disloyalty” and imprisoned at the house. She began calling there every afternoon. Each time, an armed soldier turned her away. Then, one sultry day in September, she was admitted, without explanation.

  She expected to find the house in ruins. Instead, neatness and good order had been restored, damaged furniture replaced by new pieces. A handsome and personable Army officer introduced himself as Lieutenant Sheldon, in charge of the guard detail. He directed Margaret to the music room adjoining the parlor. Someone was playing “Maryland, My Maryland” on a pump organ. The song, written by a Baltimore expatriate after the riots, was a new rebel anthem.

  Puzzled by the secesh music and the friendly behavior of the soldiers, Margaret stepped into the parlor. She was stunned to see not just Mrs. Philip Phillips, but Augusta Morris, another of Rose’s agents. Augusta put down her Walter Scott novel and gave Margaret a sharp look. Margaret presumed it was a warning to be careful of what she said.

  She knocked at the open door of the music room. Rose broke off in mid-phrase. “Margaret! How grand to see you.” They embraced.

  “I don’t know what to make of all this, Rose.”

  “Typical Yankee bestiality. I feel like Marie Antoinette in the Bastille before they guillotined her. Things have improved slightly since that detective left.”

  “Major Allen?”

  “His real name’s Pinkerton.” In a whisper: “He has arrested Walker, and Colonel Empty. They’re jailed in the Old Capitol.” Walker was a valued agent, a clerk at the post office. “Empty”—M.T., for Michael Thompson, a South Carolina lawyer—was another. “Pinkerton found my diary with Tom Jordan’s ciphers written down, but I have other ways to communicate with the outside.”

  “You mean the soldiers cooperate?”

  “Some do. If they’re gentlemen and look the other way when I ask, I’m happy to consider them friends. If they deny my little requests, they get the back of my hand.” Margaret was in awe. Rose’s charm and determination hadn’t failed her.

  “I may have an errand for you soon.” Rose was interrupted by a bellowing contralto in the parlor. “Good morning, ladies.” No one returned the greeting. Mrs. Phillips gave the newcomer a disdainful glance and went back to her needlework.

  The woman sat down huffily. She was large, with a round, coarse face. Rose whispered behind her hand. “Mrs. Onderdonk. Thoroughly, unredeemably canaille. Lieutenant Sheldon won’t say why she’s been detained. I suspect she was planted to spy on us. I refuse to eat at the same table with her. Come upstairs. I’ll show you a letter I’m writing to Secretary Seward to protest this mistreatment.”

  When Margaret returned two days later, Rose showed something else she’d been working on: a cloth bookmark embroidered with tiny flowers of different colors. “I would like you to take this to Dr. Whyville.”

  “Is he well again?”

  “Yes, though he’s rather weak.”

  “And he needs a bookmark?” Margaret said, amused.

  Rose looked swiftly at the guard in the hall, a blond boy immersed in the Police Gazette. “The colors of the different threads convey a message the doctor will understand and pass on. The detective may have confiscated my cipher book, but he didn’t steal my brains.”

  Margaret drove to the physician’s house that afternoon. She carried the bookmark and her letter to Cicero, addressed care of general delivery, Richmond. As she went in, she noticed a carriage parked in deep shade in an alley across the way.

  Dr. Whyville had lost a great deal of weight. He looked cadaverous and wan. Margaret stayed less than three minutes. When she stepped back into the hot September daylight, Lon Price was striding toward her from the alley entrance.

  The emotions she felt were powerful but conflicting. With mingled guilt and pleasure she remembered the taste and passion of his kiss. To her astonishment, it had stirred something profound within her. Yet the man might be part of the organization responsible for her father’s death. She dared not forget that.

  “Mr. Price.” She hid her nervousness behind a cool nod. “Why are you snooping in this neighborhood?”

  “That’s a mighty harsh term, snooping.”

  “Isn’t it what you do? Aren’t you paid by a detective named Pinkerton?”

  His blue-gray eyes revealed nothing. “I work for Major E. J. Allen of the War Department.”

  “I suppose one name’s as good as another for a spy.” She expected anger and was surprised by his rueful smile.

  “You’re something, Miss Miller, you surely are.”

  It shamed her. She drew a breath. “I do owe you an apology.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The last time we met, I raised my hand to you.”

  He shrugged. “The fencing got a little rough, that’s all. Let’s discuss the man who lives in this house. Dr. Whyville is a known Southern sympathizer, and a suspected Confederate agent. I’m sorry to see you visiting him. It connects you with the wrong people again.”

  “Dr. Whyville is a fine physician. I see him whenever I’m not feeling well.”

  “And he diagnoses and treats you in less than five minutes? Somehow I doubt that.” Before she could reply he said, “Obviously my first warning went unheeded. You just don’t understand the realities. Arrests are being made. People are being locked up.”

  “And damned unjustly.” She was stunned by her own unladylike profanity. So was a black boy rolling a hoop in the dusty street.

  “Justice is in short supply in Washington, Miss Miller. The President’
s suspension of habeas corpus is interpreted very broadly by the authorities. If it’s decided that someone’s behaving suspiciously, due process is forgotten.” With his back against Dr. Whyville’s sturdy picket fence, he scanned the street. It was deserted save for a white-haired woman tending a withered flower bed three houses away.

  “I was assigned to watch the doctor’s residence, but someone else may have trailed you here.”

  “I didn’t see anyone.” The thought alarmed her.

  “I implore you. Go home. Please. Don’t involve yourself any further.”

  “Why are you saying all this?”

  He responded with a smile that struck her as genuine, without dissembling. “Haven’t I told you? I wish I were bright enough to spout some poetry to explain, but I’m not. I’m just a fool chasing moonbeams. I know you don’t care about me.”

  How cruel it was that she liked this man. He was the enemy. She said, “You’re mistaken, Mr. Price. I do care about you, especially your past. In April, in Baltimore, detectives attacked a man speaking at a private meeting of a group called the Knights of Liberty.” Wariness stiffened and then obliterated his smile. “Did you or your organization have anything to do with it?”

  “I’m not permitted to say where we go or what we do.”

  “My father was killed at that meeting. Shot down like a common thief. He was unarmed.”

  “Maybe he was inciting the group to unlawful acts.”

  “Go to hell, Mr. Price. You just go to hell. I think you’ve all but admitted you know about it.”

  “The Knights were dedicated to terrorism against the government. They’ve been broken up. I’m aware that a man named Calhoun Miller died at one of their gatherings, but I didn’t connect him with you. I’m very sorry for the tragedy. That’s all I can say. Now please go home and stay there. Nothing else will protect you.”

  He walked swiftly toward the alley, kicking up yellow dust as he went.

  A week later, a Thursday night, Donal was back in Washington. He had tickets for a performance by Joe Jefferson in his perennial role of Rip van Winkle. Margaret had seen the great actor play the title character, but she was quite willing to see him a second time. Jefferson’s acting might compensate for the dingy atmosphere of the old Washington Theatre at Eleventh and C Streets.

  The box Donal booked was infernally hot. At intermission, Margaret was glad to escape to the portico. Hissing gas fixtures above the main doors showed up the peeling paint on tall white pillars. Donal watched a couple of soldiers cavorting in the street with two painted ladies. Fastidiously, he wiped his lip with a handkerchief.

  “I don’t like the atmosphere in this town. I’d be much happier to wait out the war in New York City or Nassau. I’d like you to consider it seriously, Margaret, for the sake of your own safety and contentment. We could be married. You’ve agreed in principle.”

  “Donal, this isn’t the time.”

  “You still won’t settle on a wedding date? Why not?”

  A hackney coach pulled up across the street. The door opened and Lon stepped down. Sudden dread gripped Margaret as he paid the cabman.

  “Because I have a duty. Rose is being held illegally. She needs her friends standing by.” It was a quick, blessedly convenient way to slip past the marriage issue. Lon strode toward them, his face grim. He greeted them with a polite tip of his hat.

  “I’m afraid I must spoil your evening, Miss Miller. I have to take you into custody.”

  “Custody? What the hell do you mean?” Donal’s shout drew stares from other theatergoers.

  “It’s War Department business. I asked to be the one to do this because I wanted Miss Miller spared the treatment some of our men give to prisoners.” To Margaret he added, “An agent named Scully did follow you to the doctor’s house.”

  Donal said, “What’s he talking about, Margaret? What are you mixed up in?”

  How strange she felt. Frightened, yet oddly elated that, of all people, Lon Price had reprieved her from consideration of a wedding she didn’t want.

  “I’ve only been doing what I thought was right,” she said. “I’ll be safe with this gentleman. He’s a Yankee, but someone taught him good manners.” She slipped her arm in Lon’s, her breast pressing his coat sleeve. Though it wasn’t intentional, she took unexpected pleasure in it.

  Donal shouted again, perhaps hoping others would intervene. “You can’t arrest someone without a warrant.”

  Two portly gentlemen approached, their faces bellicose. Lon opened his jacket to show a pistol in his waistband. “I wouldn’t interfere.”

  The men pulled back. Lon spoke to Donal. “You’re wrong. Washington is under martial law. Anyone can be arrested, anytime, for anything. Miss Miller?”

  Arm in arm, they stepped into the street. Donal McKee watched with an expression of stupefied rage.

  24

  December 1861–January 1862

  “How are you doing, Zachariah?” Lon asked in the alley behind the kitchen of Willard’s. Their cigarettes glowed in the December dusk. Spits of snow mixed with a rainy drizzle.

  “Staying alive,” the tall man said. “Got me a decent room with a widow lady of color.”

  A poultry wagon pulled up in the churned mud. The driver unloaded his delivery—plucked chickens strung from a pole. Going in, he bumped Zach. “One side, nigger.”

  Lon said, “Do you get much of that?”

  “More’n I expected, an’ plenty enough to choke on. If I was to fight every white man who called me a nigger, I’d never eat or sleep. You goin’ to need a black man to go into reb country, like you said once?”

  “If the Army ever moves.”

  George McClellan’s star had risen higher than ever thanks to his deft maneuvering after the October fiasco at Ball’s Bluff. On the Potomac northwest of Washington, a small engagement—some seventeen hundred men on each side—had turned into a Union rout. Most of the men on the Confederate side were already blooded. The Federal troops were not. The minor battle became a major embarrassment for McClellan, who kept a personal printing press churning out proclamations. The one just prior to Ball’s Bluff had said, “Soldiers! We have seen our last retreat! We have seen our last defeat!”

  Congress wanted a scapegoat. McClellan convinced some important senators that the fault lay with Winfield Scott. The general-in-chief was too old, too tired, too sick with dropsy and gout to be effective. The ploy worked. Congress absolved McClellan and assigned blame to the commander at Ball’s Bluff, Brigadier General Stone. On November 1, on Lincoln’s order, McClellan replaced Scott. Washington celebrated with a torchlight parade of Blenker’s German divisions, and red, white, and blue rockets over the Capitol.

  As Christmas approached, McClellan’s troops drilled, huddled in rain-drenched camps, and waited. The line from the government’s daily bulletin, “All quiet on the Potomac,” was spoken derisively. Congressional radicals found Lincoln too patient. They organized a joint committee to investigate conduct of the war. Secretary Cameron’s chief counsel, Edwin Stanton, was scathing about McClellan’s torpor and luxurious living: “The general’s champagne and oyster suppers must stop.”

  Lon said, “Came for some advice, Zachariah. I need a Christmas present for a lady. She’s locked up in a house with seven other women. The government claims she’s a spy. Food is the only gift she can receive.”

  Zach tossed his cigarette in a puddle. The music of a street band playing “Adeste Fidelis” floated to the alley. Despite the weather, and the war, Washington was enjoying the season. The city teemed with inventors and pickpockets, arms dealers and horse wranglers, undertakers and surgeons, all looking for business. The famous novelist Mr. Trollope came to town. And every day, more whores.

  “This lady mean something to you?”

  “When I’m on duty, no. Otherwise…”

  The unfinished sentence made Zach smile. “Cloved ham. Big cloved ham’d be good. Fancy, but not too friendly. Her jailers’d like it too.”


  “Can I buy it from the hotel?”

  “See if I can fix it with the chef. I got to go now. ’Member what I said. I want to do something to smack the rebs.”

  “So do I. I’m sick of questioning deserters.”

  On Christmas Eve, Lon called at Fort Greenhow with the ham wrapped in gift paper. Margaret’s healthy color was gone. She looked thinner, though no less desirable. He wanted to reach out, hold her. A guard was watching them.

  A few greens were strung in the parlor, the only sign of a celebration. Three of the female inmates sat cocooned with their thoughts. According to Margaret, the newest, Mrs. Baxley, could be depended upon for a fit of hysterics at least once a day.

  “How grand of you,” she said when Lon presented the gift in the library. “There’s no way I can repay your kindness, Mr. Price.”

  The sweet aroma of the ham seeped through its bright wrapping. In the corner, little Rose was searching for a book. “I’d like you to call me Lon, though I expect you call me other things.” She laughed. “How are you faring in here?”

  “The days pass slowly. Nights are the worst. I’m squeezed in an attic room with two cots and Mrs. Onderdonk, who snores.”

  Little Rose stuck out her tongue. “Mama says she’s a pig and a dirty informer.” Oink-oinking, she skipped away with her book.

  “It would be a lot worse for you in Old Capitol,” he said.

  “Are they thinking of moving us?”

  “That’s the rumor. Secretary Cameron is on shaky ground. There’s talk of a forced resignation, and Stanton’s mentioned as the likely candidate to succeed him. Mr. Stanton takes a hard line on enemies.” And on slavery, which would pit him against Pinkerton’s patron. The boss was already grumbling about anti-McClellan cliques.

  “Major Allen feels security’s poor in here,” Lon continued. “Mrs. Greenhow is still smuggling messages to the outside.”