He sat up, his eyes showing anger. “I could never have promised anything of the sort!”
“You did.”
“Then I was wrong. I was so mad for your love I was ready to promise anything!”
“And now that you have possessed me, you do not think you need keep your word?”
He looked shamed and placed an arm about her, bringing her naked body close to his. “You know that is not so,” he said and kissed her gently.
“Then why?”
“I cannot desert my friends in the South,” he told her. “They depend on me.”
She eyed him soberly. “For secret information? Information you wheedle out of your Washington friends at parties.”
John Wilkes gave a small groan. “There is much more to it than that. Do you realize the South is in desperate need of food and medical supplies?”
“You are supposed to be neutral. As an actor you are allowed to cross the lines.”
“I realize all that,” he said. “But I cannot turn my back on what I believe to be right!”
“Where were you today? Out riding somewhere to pass along some information to a Southern spy?”
“I had to see someone a distance outside Washington,” he said. “Never mind why!”
“I’m terrified for you! For us! What will happen if you are discovered to be a spy?”
“That will not happen,” he said.
“And that dreadful little man who follows us about, the hunchback! I know he is one of your
Confederate spies. That is why he is always lurking about!”
“Believe what you like!”
“I can only pray that we will soon move on to
New York,” she said. “At least you will be further away from the conflict there.”
The actor gave her a moody glance. “I’m not sure I want to play in New York.”
Her eyes widened. “But that has always been your ambition!”
“It can wait.”
“You’ll never have another such chance,” she reminded him. “Not when your brother Edwin returns.”
“From what I hear he may remain in England a long while.”
“You can’t count on that,” she told him. And then quite shamelessly lifting his hand and placing it on one of her breasts again, she asked softly, “There is also the chance you might lose me to someone else.”
“Then it shall be New York!” he said hoarsely as he drew her close again and their lips met.
It was their last week in Washington. Nancy Ray came to her at the hotel and in an apologetic tone told her, “I’m afraid I will not be able to go to New York with the company, Fanny.”
Fanny stared at the pretty blonde girl. “Whyever not?”
“Tom,” Nancy said quietly.
“Oh,” she said, remembering. “The blind boy at the military hospital.”
“Yes. I can’t desert him.”
Fanny said, “He was once an actor himself. He knows the claims the business has on us. Is he not able to understand your leaving him?”
There were near tears in the eyes of the fragile, bonneted actress. “I don’t wish to leave him,” she explained.
Fanny moved to the window of her hotel room and gazed down into the street where a small formation of men in blue were marching along with an officer at their side. She said, “So you wish to remain here near him?”
“Yes,” the girl said. “He will be leaving the hospital in a week or so. He will need somebody.”
She looked across the room at the other girl and said gently, “You are ready to sacrifice your career for this Tom Miller?”
“Yes. I can get work in the company which is coming into our theatre. In that way I can stay in Washington with him.”
Fanny sighed. “I shall miss you. As an actress and as a friend. But what can I say?”
The rose-bonneted Nancy got up from her chair and ran impulsively towards her and threw her arms around her. “Dear Fanny! I knew you’d understand! You will tell Mr. Booth also.”
“I will,” she promised.
Nancy’s eyes were bright with a happiness she could wish for her own, as the girl said, “Tom is following your suggestion. He is composing a play. I’m helping him put it down. A truly funny comedy!”
Fanny laughed. “Good! Remember I have promised to give it a production.”
“He’ll send it to you as soon as it is finished,” Nancy promised.
Fanny was sorry to learn the pretty ingenue’s decision. It meant one less close friend to be with her. Nancy had been one of the first people she’d met after arriving in America.
In the last days of their Washington engagement Fanny was constantly concerned about the absences of John Wilkes Booth. He vanished after the play one Saturday night and did not show himself again until shortly before curtain time on Monday evening. She knew he had ridden somewhere behind the Southern lines. It was certain he was still supplying the Confederates with all the secret information he could secure in Washington.
Her only comfort was that they were moving on to the engagement in New York. One night he left the theatre without waiting for her and this was unusual. He normally had a carriage for them both. She asked the stage manager to get her a carriage and waited by the stage door until he came back to tell her it was waiting.
She thanked him and went out the dark alley and the old stage manager helped her inside the carriage and gave the driver the address to her hotel. It was not until the vehicle was on the move that she was horrified to discover she was not the only passenger in it!
Seated across from her in the near darkness was the figure of the hunchback in the stove pipe hat and brown suit. The ugly, little man’s face wore a grin of triumph.
“Not expecting me, Mrs. Cornish,” he said softly.
She drew back. “Leave this carriage or I will scream for help!”
“You’d better not!” he warned her. “We are all playing the same game, Mrs. Cornish. You and I and John Wilkes Booth!”
She knew he was making a veiled reference to the spying of her lover. She said, “I don’t wish to be dragged into any of it.”
“Do you have any choice?” the hunchback asked, leaning over to her.
“Please!’ she begged him, near tears. “I have nothing to tell you!”
“You could be useful to us, Mrs. Cornish,” he said. “I suggest you think it over.”
“No.”
“Do not be hasty.” he warned her. “You can easily be ruined. You and your wild-tempered lover.”
She said angrily, “You have made John a party to your game! Do not expect me to help.”
The hunchback laughed softly. “You do not understand me, I fear. When you are needed you will be called upon! And you will do as you are told!”
She gasped as he reached out and took her arm in an iron grip. He held it for a long painful moment and then with a cruel smile on his ape-like face he let her go. In the next instant he threw open the door and leapt out of the slow-moving carriage.
Fanny stared after him in the darkness and he was lost in a moment. She managed to shut the carriage door and lay back on the seat with her heart pounding from the frightening experience. This was the boldest move yet on the part of the Southern spy ring to involve her. She could only be grateful that in a few days she would be safely in New York. But would it be safe?
She waited up for John Wilkes Booth that night. He arrived in their room shortly after midnight and showed some surprise at finding her fully dressed.
He put down his tophat and cane and said, “I expected you would be in bed.”
Fanny moved towards him. “You hoped I would.”
“Sorry to be late,” he said. “I met some friends. The big talk tonight is that General Ulysses S. Grant has been named commander of the Union Army.”
“Why should that be a vital concern of ours?”
The handsome John looked surprised. “You must be interested? Grant is known to be a drunkard! With some lucK he wil
l destroy the Northern cause!”
“You think so?”
“My friends do and I agree,” he said.
She said, “You left me at the theatre tonight. I had to find my way home alone.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I had to meet someone. I was late for the appointment.”
“I can imagine,” she said bitterly. “Perhaps it will interest you to know that on my way home in my coach I was attacked by one of your southem spies!”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You’d better,” she said. “That hunchback! The one who followed me and kept waiting around the theatre! The one I saw you talking to! He secreted himself in the coach and made threatening advances towards me!”
John Wilkes Booth looked shocked. “The hunchback,” he echoed.
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much that made sense.”
Her lover was plainly agitated. “You must try and remember! What did he tell you?”
“About the value of the work you were doing and that I would have no choice but to help, should he call on me!”
The actor looked amused. “He said all that to you?”
“Yes. And he twisted my arm painfully!”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing.”
“You are sure?” Booth worried. “You must recall word for word what you said to him.”
“I said very little!”
“Did you mention me?”
“No! At least hardly anything. I did say you were party to his game!”
“And he said?”
“That we were all in it together. He become angry when I told him I wanted no part of it.”
John ran a hand through his thick dark hair and moved away looking worried. “I’m sorry for what happened.”
“You should be!”
He gave her a troubled glance. “That hunchback is a madman. A bill collector who thinks himself a secret agent. A lunatic!”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t believe you!”
He came to her and took her in his arms. “I swear to you the fellow will not bother you again.”
“What have you been mixed up in, John?” she asked him.
He laughed softly, the mad light showing in his eyes again, as he said, “In the South they call me Dr. Booth!”
“Dr. Booth?”
“Can you guess why?”
“No.”
“A doctor has a certain familiarity with quinine!”
She stared at him. “And?”
“You would not know,” her lover said. “You have kept yourself ignorant of what is going on. The hospitals in the South are desperate for quinine!”
“And you are part of a ring smuggling it to them?”
“I have organized the ring,” he said proudly.
“But that is wrong!” she protested.
“Would you rather the sick and wounded suffered? Is the pain any less for those in Southern hospitals than for those in the North?”
She hesitated, knowing that he had some reason to argue. At least he was not dealing in arms. She said, “How do you manage it?”
“In horse collars and so forth,” he said with one of his charming smiles. “You’d be surprised at what an expert smuggler I’ve become.”
Fanny shook her head. “You know this must end as soon as we reach New York. All your efforts must go into making the theatre season a success.”
He laughed softly and held her close. “I promise! We shall be the royalty of the New York stage. When brother Edwin returns he will find his crown worn by me!”
She listened with a feeling of melancholy and fear. She was certain he was merely telling her what she wanted him to say. That when the time came his allegiance would not be to her and the company but to his network of spies.
Major Furlong and his wife hosted a fine party for the company following their last performance in Washington. It was a glittering affair with the ladies in lovely gowns and most of the males in colorful uniforms. Optimism was in the air, with word that the new General Grant was turning out to be a genius. John Wilkes Booth proved himself an excellent actor offstage as well as on, by pretending to receive this information with enthusiasm.
“Could mean the final blow for the Feds,” Booth suggested to his host.
Major Furlong gravely agreed. “It is past time. Hospitals on both sides of the border are filled to overflowing and the count of the dead is sickening. There must soon be an end to it!”
Nancy Ray was there with the blinded Tom Miller, who had been included on the guest list at the request of Fanny. The young man now wore smoked glasses and his youthful face lit up when he was introduced to John Wilkes Booth.
The blind young man said, “I still have my interest for the stage. Soon I will have a play ready to offer.”
Fanny smiled at the proud Nancy, who held onto the blind actor’s arm, and then told John Wilkes Booth, “Tom has promised to give us the first reading of it.”
“Good!” John Wilkes Booth enthused. “Just be sure there is a good part in it for me!”
“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Booth,” Tom said. “I have always admired your acting!”
Later Fanny and John enjoyed a waltz together. She said, “Thank you for being nice to the boy. He is pinning a great deal of his hope on this play.”
He asked, “Is Nancy going to marry him?”
“She will if he asks her. She cares deeply for him.”
“That is why she is remaining in Washington?”
“Yes.”
John swung her around and nodded to another couple with a pleasant smile. “Then we must try and produce the play if it is any good at all.”
“I think it will be,” she said.
“Let us hope so,” her partner agreed as the waltz ended. He applauded the orchestra and said, “I shall miss these fine Washington parties.”
“There will be New York.”
“I’m not so sure about New York,” he said. “I hear they are in a much more somber mood. We may not get invited out as we have been here.”
She gave him a knowing glance as they left the ballroom floor. “And being invited out in New York might not be as helpful to you as being invited out in Washington, where nearly everyone is in government and the war effort.”
John Wilkes Booth gave her a mocking look and said, “You suggest I’m more interested in the information I receive than in the company?”
She nodded. “Yes, Dr. Booth,” she said with meaning. She had not forgotten his reference to his being a smuggler of quinine and other medical supplies to the Feds.
The actor had no opportunity to make a reply to this as Major Furlong came to join them and handed Booth a sealed envelope. He said, “This came for you just now. It was delivered by a messenger.”
Booth raised his eyebrows. “He did not wait for a reply?”
”No,” their host said. “Possibly no reply is needed. But I felt I should get it to you at once.”
“Thank you,” Booth said absently and as Major Furlong moved away he tore open the envelope and studied its contents. A grim look crossed his handsome face as he scanned the single sheet. Then he glanced up at her. “I shall have to leave!’
“What is wrong?”
He folded the note and placed it in an inner pocket. “I have to meet someone at once!’
“Who?”
“Does it matter?” he asked, almost angrily. “I can only assure you it is urgent.”
“More of your spying,” she said in a low voice.
“I do not wish to discuss that,” John Wilkes Booth told her. “You may remain here for the balance of the party. I’m sure we can find someone to accompany you back to the hotel.”
She made up her mind quickly, “No,” she said. “I will go with you.”
He frowned. “I’d rather you didn’t. There might be some danger!’
“I’ve known danger before.”
The handsome actor eyed her worriedly. “You would be better out of this! I promise you!”
“If you are bound to take risks I would like to share some of them,” she said. “It would seem to be the only way I can discourage you with this mad business.”
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