The Lunatic Fringe: A Novel Wherein Theodore Roosevelt Meets the Pink Angel

by William L. DeAndrea

  In amassing that fortune, however, he’d learned that of all the proverbs his mother had taught him, only two really applied: “Anything worth doing is worth doing well”; and “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” It took, he had discovered, an extraordinary amount of rendering to do business well.

  “Do you trust him with such an expensive piece of machinery, Avery?” his companion asked. “I must say, this is a daisy of a machine; a daisy.”

  Hand smiled shyly for a fraction of a second. “Good of you to say so, Reverend. This was made to my order by the Duryea Brothers. It is twin to the one that won the Chicago to Waukegan fifty-five-mile endurance race last winter. The gasoline engine stood up to the cold better than Benz’s electric could.”

  The clergyman was proud. “That’s American handiwork for you,” he said. “That,” he repeated, “is American handiwork.”

  White haired, bright eyed and bearded, the Reverend Mr. Lewis Burley might have resembled a prophet from the Bible, had he taken himself that seriously. As it was, he resembled only himself—a good natured, if somewhat pompous, Nebraska clergyman with the annoying habit of repeating himself every time he spoke. It was something he’d started doing back at the theological seminary, where his assigned sermons always seemed to be twelve minutes short. Then one day, it occurred to him to repeat phrases at random, and it had worked so well, he had never stopped.

  “No, Reverend,” Hand said. “I don’t worry about the well-being of my machine. Baxter is quite as good a driver as I am. It’s a pity men of his station will never be able to purchase their own. Though they may want them badly enough. That’s why I purchased a mastiff to protect it. The dog has the run of the property at night.”

  Reverend Burley was a staunch believer in Progress. “Oh, surely, Avery, with time, the common people ...”

  Hand shrugged. “An auto mobile is a work of art. There’s a fellow named Ford who has some scheme to mass-produce them, but I told him what a dreamer he was, and sent him on his way.”

  The Reverend removed gloves and goggles, cap and duster. “I know nothing of business, nothing at all. But perhaps, perhaps Avery, after the election, and you are—”

  A woman started screaming horribly.

  “What was that?” the clergyman demanded. “What was it?”

  Hand couldn’t breathe. He wanted to rush into the house, to make sure nothing had happened to Cleo. But he couldn’t with Burley there. Burley mustn’t know about her, ever.

  Hand took control of himself, and with the same alertness that had helped him corner the market in india-rubber last year, improvised a story.

  “One of the servant women, Reverend. The poor woman was putting up preserves, knocked over the pot, and scalded herself quite badly with hot wax, or whatever it is they use. The doctor refused even to let her be moved to a hospital. She is in great pain, and sometimes she cries out.”

  “The poor soul,” Mr. Burley said. “The poor soul. Take me to her, Avery. Take me to her.”

  Even as he said it, the screaming stopped.

  Hand sighed with relief. “She—ah, wouldn’t see you, Reverend. She is of the Roman faith. Superstitious. A good woman, but sadly, ah, misguided in spiritual matters.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, then, I shall pray for an end to her pain. I shall pray fervently.”

  “You are a good man, sir,” Hand said. “It will be an honor to join your family.” It wasn’t pleasant, Hand reflected, to string the old gentleman along this way, but it was necessary.

  “It will be our honor to have you. Our honor. And I have news, excellent news, from William. He says he will try to rearrange his schedule so that he may be here next Sunday when you and my daughter are wed. He is my dear, dear friend, as you know. As he is yours.”

  “Oh, yes, Reverend,” Hand said. He knew it, all right. “Perhaps we might change the wedding to a date in March, and Mr. Bryan will let us marry on the lawn of the White House.”

  “Ho ho,” laughed Mr. Burley. “I’m afraid you will be too busy by then, Avery, far too busy.”

  He laughed; Hand joined in. It would indeed be out of the question. If things went according to plan, by March, T. Avery Hand would be Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, and too busy by far for frivolities like weddings on the White House lawn.

  V.

  “In short, Muldoon,” Captain Herkimer concluded, “you are dismissed.”

  “Dismissed! What is this, a flamin’ joke? I was standin’ right next to Mr. Theodore Roosevelt himself when he was sortin’ out evidence. The girl was there, Captain! Mr. Roosevelt said so! She went down the fire escape, just like I said. Then, durin’ the confusion, while the landlady and me was callin’ for reinforcements, she climbed back up the fire escape, only this time she went into old Mr. Harvey’s rooms. Don’t you see, that’s why she couldn’t be found durin’ the searchin’ of the streets.

  “Now, I don’t know what she was plannin’ to do with him—she was carryin’ me gun, though I can’t believe she’d go harmin’ the old man—but she got a stroke of luck, what with Mr. Harvey mistakin’ her for the ghost of his wife.”

  “The ghost of his wife,” the captain said.

  “Yes, sir. I’ve seen a daguerrotype of the late Mrs. Harvey, and there’s a passin’ resemblance.”

  Herkimer nodded slowly. “I presume this Mr. Harvey was holding a séance? He’s an Egyptian, perhaps? A professional spiritualist?”

  Muldoon explained about Mr. Harvey’s drunken visions. “And last night bein’ the anniversary of his wife’s passin’, he’d be all the more ready to believe it was her he was seein’.”

  “Go on, Muldoon,” Herkimer said. Let the young fool hang himself, he thought.

  “Not much more to be tellin’. She waited till the coast was clear, then started the paintin’ of her to burnin’ in the fireplace, and made her getaway in Mr. Harvey’s clothes. The two of ’em are of a size; he’s a very small man.

  “Mr. Roosevelt and I saw her leavin’! Of course, we didn’t realize it at the time.”

  “Muldoon,” the captain said, “have you ever thought of consulting an alienist?”

  “A what, sir?”

  “An alienist. A mind man. A crazy-doctor, Muldoon.”

  “I never,” Muldoon said with restraint, “have felt an over-powerin’ need to see one, Captain.”

  “Uhh,” Herkimer grunted. “Mr. Roosevelt was with you. That is your position, is it not?”

  “It is.”

  “And he will support your word?”

  “Sure as we’re standin’ here. They’re mostly his words, after all. He be tellin’ them to you himself, as soon as he gets here.”

  “He will, will he?” Herkimer’s voice suddenly exploded. “I’m weary of you, Muldoon! Roosevelt has been here and gone, and this is what he left!”

  He thrust the order at him. Muldoon took it and read it, paralyzed with disbelief. “What kind of blasted crooked game are you runnin’ here?” he said at last.

  “You are dismissed, Muldoon. I hope never to be inconvenienced by your presence again.”

  “You’ll be a damn sight more than inconvenienced, and this Roosevelt with you!” Muldoon told him. “I’ll be nobody’s patsy. I’ll get the truth of this thing if I have to tear the city down rivet by rivet. Then we’ll see what Mr. Hearst will be makin’ of it, or Mr. Pulitzer, or one of the others.”

  “Now, see here, Muldoon—”

  “How clean are your skirts, Captain?” Muldoon waited two seconds for an answer that didn’t come. He leaned over the desk and shook a finger under the captain’s nose. “Beware the fury of a patient man, Herkimer. An Englishman said that, but it’s true all the same. And that’s me one and only warnin’.”

  Muldoon stalked out, mumbling. Try to do your duty, and look what happens. Might as well have stayed at the brewery. What could he ever do about this ungodly mess?

  He cussed under his breath all the way home. He paid little attention to wher
e he walked. Even the incredible clamor of traffic at Union Square failed to distract him. The place where Broadway, Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street met was one of the city’s busiest intersections. Muldoon was almost crushed between two horse cars at Dead Man’s Curve, that section of track at the south end of the Square where the trolleys and horse cars whipped around at such speeds they frequently tipped over.

  Muldoon jumped out of the way, considered the state of his life, then thought of jumping back in. After reflection, though, he decided it would be just too much to commit suicide on a Sunday, and proceeded home.

  VI.

  His sisters had some interesting news for him when he arrived.

  “Well, it’s himself,” Kate said. “A gentleman came callin’ for you while you were out.”

  “A very important gentleman,” Maureen added. Her eyes were bright.

  “Dennis, you should have let on to us how you’ve been movin’ in such elevated circles.”

  Muldoon narrowed his eyed. “Are you tryin’ to tell me Roosevelt was here?”

  Katie nudged her baby sister. “Mind, Maureen, how well your brother does in hobnobbin’ with the upper crust. He don’t even have to give the man a ‘Mister’.”

  “Of all the chrome-plated nerve!” Muldoon threw his hands in the air. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it!”

  Katie and Maureen wanted to know what the matter was.

  “Never mind that, for the moment,” Muldoon said. “Just let it rest at this: After what happened this mornin’ at the precinct, I’d sooner expect to be seein’ the Grand Sultan of the Ottoman Turks come knockin’ at that door than I would Mister Theodore Roosevelt. When was he here?”

  “About an hour ago. Katie said we wouldn’t mind his waiting for you, but you were an awful long time coming home.”

  “I was takin’ a walk. I had a lot on me mind.”

  “He stayed for a little while. He—he helped me a bit with my Shakespeare. He said you were a good boy.”

  Muldoon rubbed his chin. “Called me a boy, did he?”

  “I don’t think he meant any offense, Dennis.”

  Muldoon snorted. Maureen went on, “Anyway, after a bit, he pulled out his watch, said he had an appointment, and left. He said he’d be back sometime early in the evening.”

  “Ah, so he’s comin’ back.” Muldoon smiled shyly and sat in his favorite chair. He slipped off his Sunday shoes and leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head.

  “But tell me, me darlin’s,” he said, “how did you know this was the real Theodore Roosevelt come callin’?”

  Katie sniffed. “He ain’t hard to recognize. You’ve been talkin’ about him enough since you joined the Force, and I see the newspapers, too. A big walrus of a man with a moustache to match, dressed like a dude, wearin’ spectacles, and all the time goin’ ‘hsssssst!’ through his teeth, who else should I be takin’ him for? Besides, he had a visitin’ card. I’ve saved it somewhere.”

  She opened her sewing basket and removed the card. Muldoon took it, looked at the engraving on the front. There was a message on the back, as well: “Muldoon, I must speak with you as soon as possible—T.R.”

  It had been the genuine article at the door, all right. That was the same handwriting that had dismissed Muldoon from the Force. He told his sisters all about it.

  Maureen was close to tears; Katie was as angry as Muldoon himself. “What are we goin’ to do about this, Dennis?” she asked grimly.

  “We’re goin’ to have a pleasant Sunday afternoon,” Muldoon said. “Just the three of us. And we’re goin’ to wait until Mr. Theodore Roosevelt decides to return.”

  VII.

  “Sit down, Baxter,” said T. Avery Hand to his employee. “Reverend Burley has left.”

  “It wouldn’t be proper, sir.”

  “Hang what’s proper. I realize there is a certain set of standards a man of substance is expected to adhere to, but most of them are silly, and I will not be held to them in private.”

  Baxter sat on one of the chairs around the ornate dining table (a French king had once eaten off it) where Hand was having his second breakfast. Hand ate seven meals a day. Sometimes he ate to the point of nausea, and hated the whole process. But one of the things the public expected from a man of substance was that he have as good a corporation between his suspender-straps as he had on Wall Street. And since Hand’s was a nervous constitution, it was all he could do to maintain the minimum corpulence for respectability.

  “Did you want me for anything special, sir?” Baxter inquired through a smile. Hand frowned. Baxter was often smiling at things Hand didn’t find amusing in the slightest.

  The millionaire conveyed a bit of steak to his mouth with a gold fork. He had once calculated that the cost of one of those forks would pay one of his factory hands for a week. That, by God, was Wealth.

  “You know perfectly well what I want you for, Baxter,” Hand said.

  “What’s that, sir?” Baxter asked. He pointed politely at Hand’s moustache. “A piece of egg.”

  “Curse it,” Hand said. Eggs fried in ambergris had been the favorite food of Napoleon the Great, and Hand was fond of it, too, but it tended to make his moustache smell for the rest of the day.

  “The woman, Baxter. The woman. I know that voice, though it scream the house down. Where did you find her? How did she come to be here?”

  It was hard to read Baxter’s smile. Baxter had come to him over a year ago, with excellent references from his previous employer, an American living in London, and had made himself indispensable to the industrialist. Still, there was something reserved about him, something Hand found made him uneasy.

  “I wish I could say I found her. Someone else did. He told me Crandall was dead—”

  “Crandall dead!” Hand hardly dared believe it. Crandall had held the millionaire’s future hostage.

  “Yes, it was in the papers. I suppose it’s just as well you and the Reverend didn’t stop for one coming in from your outing in the country.”

  Hand finished his eggs. “I never could have restrained myself.” Hand lowered his voice. “I love her, Baxter,” he said simply. “But for the accident of birth, she might ...”

  “She doesn’t think kindly of you at the moment,” Baxter warned. “She doesn’t understand the bargain you struck with Crandall.”

  “I would have gotten her back, curse it. Couldn’t she have had a little patience? Dammit, Baxter, I’m going to make her the mistress of the richest man in the world. These things take time.”

  Baxter regarded him with what Hand took for wonder. At last the butler said, “I’m sure she’ll come around, sir.”

  Hand leaned back, patted his swollen stomach, and stifled an eructation with an embroidered napkin. “Of course, she will. She’s ... ah... a smart girl.” He paused a few seconds. “Ah ... do you really think so?”

  “I haven’t told you how she came to be here,” Baxter said, cracking his knuckles.

  “Ah, yes, please do.”

  “It was a mysterious telephone call. Someone calling himself ‘Rabbi’.”

  “A Jew?” Hand snorted. “How much money did he want?”

  “He didn’t mention money.”

  “I am astonished,” Hand said, and rose from the table. “Well, if he calls back and asks for some, give it to him.”

  “He did mention something else, Mr. Hand.”

  “Yes?”

  “He suggested you speak to the young lady about the bill of sale.”

  Hand sat back down. “The bill of sale? D-didn’t she have it with her? Didn’t she take it along?”

  “No, sir,” Baxter said flatly.

  Hand turned white, and stared blankly ahead of him. Without the bill of sale, his plans were still in grave jeopardy.

  Sometimes, just sometimes, the opulent mansion of T. Avery Hand would slip from his eyes, and Hand would perceive how much his life had been and still was a figment of his own imagination. At such moments, he was a
mazed at his own audacity. To even think that he could capture the command of the Treasury of the United States and run it as a branch of his business enterprises, when such a tawdry thing as love (and oh, he did love her) could cause such complications. It seemed to be the scheme of a lunatic.

  But dammit, he had been born too late. The money and the power that came easily had been gobbled up by Gould and Morgan and the Van Derbilts years ago. His whole empire had been based on long-shot gambles, and this was to be the greatest.

  Suddenly he had an idea. “Baxter, bring me the telephone.” When he had received the instrument, he told Central to get him a certain police precinct. When the precinct answered, he asked for Captain Herkimer.

  “Yes, Herkimer,” he said. “Avery Hand, here. I just wanted to tell you, friend to friend, that if I owned a few shares in bicycle pumps, I’d expect to be a happy man in a couple of months. Don’t mention it.”

  “Now, I understand there was rather a bizarre ...” He looked at Baxter.

  “Suicide,” whispered the butler.

  “Suicide,” Hand said. With two fingers he drew patterns on the tablecloth while Herkimer told him of the death. “Renegade officer, eh?” he said after a while. “Good, slap him down, make an example of him.

  “Now, this Crandall, I understand, kept some odd things, something a—a friend of mine may have lost. What’s that? No? Well, my—my friend will be grateful to whoever finds it. Do you follow me, Herkimer? Good. Good day.”

  He dropped the earpiece. Baxter retrieved it and put the telephone together properly. Hand was back to staring into space.