The Lincoln Conspiracy

by Timothy L. O'Brien

  “No, you should not. You have others to thank for that, and I’m rather certain they’re anxious to hear your gratitude in person. I imagine they’re looking for you.”

  “And they’re Scots, like you?”

  “No, trust the Scots, through and through. Trust us. They’re Yanks, the lot of them.”

  “And if they knew where to look, they would have already found me, so I think I’ll be safe a shade longer.”

  “I’m sure it helps that my men are watching the streets and this rat hole that your mate Pint calls a home. But let’s quit this game,” the man said as he stopped rocking and let his chair slam back into the floor with a thud. “I’m after the papers that you snatched at the B&O, and we need to speak directly with each other.”

  Fiona bolted upright as the man’s chair hit the floor.

  “Temple?” she asked, looking down at him.

  “Hello, my Fi.”

  “You’re with us now?” she asked. “Away from Dublin?”

  “All yours again, I’m afraid,” Temple said as he eyed the other man. “We’ve a new friend here.”

  “His name is Allan Pinkerton.”

  Temple struggled to raise himself up on his pillow and rubbed his eyes, still halfway between Dublin and the District, with a ripping pain in his shoulder. He stared back at the stranger, who was leaning toward him across the foot of the bed. He didn’t know the man, but he knew of his notoriety.

  “Ah, things make more sense now,” Temple said. “The private eye. Hanging above the entrance to his agency in Chicago is an all-seeing eye, Fiona. An eye for hire in private business matters, and usually for the railroads. Mr. Pinkerton, it is said, never sleeps.”

  Pinkerton stood up and walked to the head of the bed, standing over Temple and pulling his pocket watch out to check the time.

  “Oh, I sleep, Mr. McFadden. What I like to say is ‘We never sleep.’ And I say that because we are many in my company and as one, united, we need no sleep. It is of value to those we serve.”

  “And who are your clients now, beside the railroad men? Are you still gathering information for the government and for General McClellan?”

  Pinkerton’s attention remained centered on his watch, his lips moving wordlessly as he tracked the movements of the hands spinning on its face. He snapped the pocket watch closed, and the wheels of the locomotive engraved on its cover chugged silently back into the darkness of his vest pocket. Pinkerton patted the watch and left his thumb hooked on the lip of the pocket.

  “I don’t like my time to be wasted, and I’ve particular interest in the papers you possess,” he said to Temple. “I seek them for my own design entirely, not for any client.”

  “Well, I need to be with my wife now,” Temple replied. “When I am fully recovered, perhaps then we can speak of these papers?”

  Pinkerton, small and coiled, drew closer to the bed, his jaw trembling and his hands balled into fists as he struggled to contain himself. Temple thought the man’s eyes, inky pools creased in the corners with lines, were beginning to tear in something other than rage. They were the eyes of someone who appeared to be in mourning.

  “You’re mucking in something quite above you. You haven’t the luxury of being selective,” Pinkerton said. “Please appreciate that. Give me the papers and we can end this matter.”

  “I need to be with my wife.”

  Pinkerton walked to the door. As he swung it open, he turned to Temple: “I’ll return tomorrow afternoon. I expect by then you’ll have reached a decision.”

  “Indeed, I hope we have a decision by then as well. Good day.”

  “Good day to you.”

  Fiona bent toward Temple’s ear, whispering quickly, and Temple raised his arm toward Pinkerton, wincing again at the pain in his shoulder.

  “Wait,” Temple said. “My wife tells me I owe you my life. Thank you for that.”

  “Give me the papers and I’ll consider your debt repaid,” Pinkerton said, pausing in the doorway.

  “Whose horse was I on?”

  “A right strong horse, wasn’t it?” Pinkerton responded, locking eyes with Temple. “You’ve gotten in deep, you have.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon, then,” Temple said.

  After Pinkerton closed the door, Fiona bolted it. She returned to the bed, throwing her arms around Temple and pressing him into his mattress.

  “That hurts,” Temple said.

  “I believe I’ve earned the privilege, my mending defective.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE HUMBUG

  “Mr. Pinkerton! Mr. Pinkerton! Open up.”

  Pinkerton awoke to the pounding. He answered the door of his room at the Willard in a crimson dressing gown, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

  “The hour’s late, Mr. Walsh,” Pinkerton said.

  “Yes, sir, but we Pinkertons never sleep.”

  “No smarts now. What’s your say?”

  “The McFadden couple is on the move. They left their rooms in Foggy Bottom about twenty minutes ago and are headed toward Georgetown. We espied them as soon as they came down to the street. Three of us were on them; I split away to get you.”

  “You have a horse for me?”

  “I do.”

  “Momentarily, then, and we’ll be off. I’ll meet you downstairs on Pennsylvania.”

  Pinkerton pulled on his clothes, stuck a pair of knives in his boots and a brace of Colts in custom-made shoulder holsters from Potter Palmer’s, and descended. Even in the dead of night Washington is moist, Pinkerton thought as he walked through the lobby. The Union army was still using the Willard as its headquarters, and despite the hour more than a dozen officers were perched on velvet and mahogany sofas scattered about the lobby, some of them sharing drinks and cigars with politicians and wheeler-dealers. Several correspondents from the Atlantic Monthly mingled at the tables and settees, gabbing about Mr. Lincoln’s murder, but Emerson, Longfellow, and Lowell weren’t among them, thank the Virgin. Hawthorne was the only trustworthy one of the Atlantic’s abolitionist lot, and he’s dead now. All the dead, tied to this swamp of a place. My Mr. Lincoln has passed, too, mercy shine upon him. First time in Washington together was here at the Willard, when the president asked me to escort him from Chicago and Baltimore, both of us outfitted in a right pair of disguises. Got Lincoln into safekeeping here for that first inauguration, and then the Willard charged him $775, no less, for only a ten-day stay! He had to wait until he got his first presidential disbursement before he could pay the bill. At least Mr. Lincoln settled his bills, unlike his missus, with her needs and her moods and her shopping debts.

  Pinkerton pushed through the hotel’s oak and glass doors, finding Walsh waiting for him at the corner of Pennsylvania and 14th.

  “Mr. Pinkerton.”

  “Walsh?”

  “The McFaddens were on a horsecar.”

  “It’s two in the morning, Mr. Walsh. Horsecars don’t run in the District after dark.”

  “They were on a car, sir. They came out of the building as a group, with McFadden propped up by his wife and Gardner. McFadden could barely walk, was bent clean over his cane, and they went up Twenty-fourth to Pennsylvania. There was a horsecar there waiting for them. They helped McFadden climb into the back of the car, and it rolled off toward Georgetown.”

  “And that’s all the detail?”

  “The woman had a shovel. And they tied a long handcart to the back of the car.”

  “Curious.”

  THE HORSE PULLING the Washington and Georgetown Railroad Company car whinnied as the driver reined it to a stop at 30th and M streets. Fiona slid off the bench inside the long green car, scooped up her shovel, and climbed down to the street. She couldn’t see anyone as she looked back down M, which crested into a little hill at Wisconsin before sloping down to where it met Pennsylvania. But she could hear hooves, just beyond the hill, and they stopped thumping the ground somewhere off in the dark as soon as she alighted from the car.

  “We’re c
ertainly being followed,” she whispered to the others, “so no talking until we get to the cemetery.”

  Gardner glanced up at the two Samuels brothers, one handling the horse from a small booth at the front of the car, the other hanging off the back near the photographer’s handcart. The twins smiled back at him. He had made the two dwarves the most well-known drivers in Washington by photographing a series of cartes de visite of them in front of their WGR car. After that, the twins and Gardner traded favors. Gardner created more souvenirs, and the twins let Augustus and Temple get Sojourner Truth onto their car first when she began campaigning against the District’s lily-white transit system; after Gardner produced yet another batch of mementos, the twins sometimes let him use their car in the wee hours to transport his photographic equipment. Tonight, after he got word to them, the twins came yet again, no questions asked. Gardner nodded to the pair, untied his handcart from the back of their horsecar, and pulled it behind him as he set off behind Fiona on 30th Street.

  PINKERTON HAD WATCHED Gardner and the McFaddens enter Oak Hill Cemetery, but from a distance, with his horse trotting at a slow, measured gait. Once the group got inside the cemetery grounds, he had lost them. They had moved up 30th Street at a crawl, and on two occasions it looked like McFadden was going to collapse. Still, they were walking farther than they had ridden on the horsecar, so why had they bothered with the damn car to begin with? A three-story redbrick gatehouse blocked the view into the cemetery, so Pinkerton and his men moved closer. Walsh picked the lock on the door of the gatehouse and Pinkerton’s group went inside, hurrying to the upper floor so that they could get a view across the entire cemetery. This perch made things easier. There was no moon tonight so Pinkerton couldn’t use his field glasses to track the group. But their profiles were visible as they moved among the cemetery’s obelisks and tombstones, inky figures barely outlined against tall, pale needles and thumb-shaped rocks.

  “Like specters traversing among the dead,” Pinkerton muttered aloud.

  The McFadden woman stopped near one of the largest obelisks and paused, bending forward to examine it more closely. Then she took out her shovel and pressed its point into the ground.

  “Why do you suppose these Americans picnic in cemeteries, Walsh?” Pinkerton asked.

  “I think to be with their loved ones who’ve gone beyond, sir,” Walsh replied.

  “I find it passing strange. The dead at Antietam reeked of their passing, rotting in the field, and no one could have downed a bite of food around them. Cemeteries adorn the rot, but the rot is still there. The dead don’t rise to sup or to commune.”

  Walsh stepped back, regarding Pinkerton quizzically. Pinkerton stared blankly out the window a moment longer and then turned toward Walsh.

  “Walsh, I know now why the McFaddens have the horsecar here,” Pinkerton said.

  “Sir?”

  “They are digging something up here that is going to be too heavy to carry back. That’s why they have the handcart and that’s why they secured the horsecar. We’re going to need more people here. I want you to go back to Foggy Bottom and pull the other two men off the house where McFadden was staying. Bring them here. Hurry.”

  When Pinkerton gazed down again, the woman had stopped digging. She leaned her shovel against a tombstone and moved toward an ornate limestone rotunda a few yards away. The other two followed her there, with McFadden hobbling along on his crutch, and all of them sat down on the edge of the rotunda, not saying a word.

  “Well, they couldn’t have dug very deeply yet,” Pinkerton said to the two men still with him. “We’ll wait up here along with them to see who or what they’re waiting for.”

  When Walsh returned about forty minutes later, with Pinkerton’s two other men in tow, Gardner and the others were still sitting on the edge of the rotunda.

  “They’re silent as the dead,” Pinkerton said.

  “Sir, the other men here say they’re afeared of this place,” Walsh said. “So you might best refrain from ghoulishness, please.”

  “My apologies to all of you,” Pinkerton snapped back. “But we’ll descend into the cemetery now, so I hope you all have your manhood about you.”

  Pinkerton and the others wound their way among the tombstones, edging closer to the spot where the McFadden woman first began digging. No one in her group moved or said a word. The sky had turned from jet to a light purple as dawn approached, and Pinkerton could begin to see faint outlines of all the faces around him. As he neared them, the woman raised her head.

  “Mr. Pinkerton, you’ve decided to join our dig,” Fiona said.

  “It’s not healthy or sane to be in a cemetery late at night, Mrs. McFadden,” Pinkerton said. “I felt you might all need protection.”

  “The sun arrives, Mr. Pinkerton. The light will keep us company.”

  “But it will be harder for you to get your casket or your bags or whatever you will out of here in daylight, will it not?” Pinkerton said, beaming, proud to let the McFaddens understand that he had an unusual ability to make connections. “You’ll need extra hands to help you move it, yes?”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Pinkerton. We’ve completed our digging.”

  “And why are you here, then?” Pinkerton asked.

  “We are just here,” Fiona said. “We are here to be here.”

  Pinkerton stepped farther forward. Gardner was staring straight back at him, amused, as was the woman. But her husband still sat slumped on his cane, his head bent toward the ground.

  “This can’t be a healthy place for your husband, Mrs. McFadden,” Pinkerton said. “He’s still recovering and he clearly lacks strength.”

  A loud snore emerged from beneath the brim of McFadden’s floppy hat and his cane dropped to the ground. Not a cane really, but what looked like the leg of a table, broken off at its wide end. Curious.

  Curious.

  Curious.

  “Oh, Mrs. McFadden. Your husband is not here after all.”

  “Indeed he’s not, Mr. Pinkerton. Your powers of observation have triumphed again.”

  Pinkerton stepped forward and yanked the hat from Pint’s head. Pint kept snoring, oblivious to everyone around him.

  “Humbug,” Pinkerton said.

  “What do you mean, Mr. Pinkerton?” Walsh asked.

  “All of this. A humbug, Walsh. We’ve been tricked. Mr. McFadden undoubtedly left the house in Foggy Bottom as soon as you pulled the other men off it.”

  “The horsecar, sir?” Walsh asked, confused.

  “Temple said if we were elaborate, you would become careless, Mr. Pinkerton,” Fiona said, answering Walsh’s question. “You must agree, we’ve been elaborate.”

  Pinkerton didn’t answer. He pulled his jacket back, revealing the Colts strapped to his sides, and he pulled one from its holster. Gardner kicked Pint in the leg, stirring him, and rose. Pinkerton cocked the hammer back and aimed his gun at Fiona’s head.

  “Alexander, by the time you took a step she’d be dead,” Pinkerton said. “So don’t wander.”

  The rest of Pinkerton’s men spread out around Gardner, Pint, and Fiona, encircling them.

  “None of us has the answers you want,” Fiona said. “I have no idea where my husband’s gone to, or even what exactly he has. But if one of us was to be harmed in any way, I’m certain that you’ll never see a shred of what you’re after. And my husband can be a determined man when his loved ones are preyed upon, Mr. Pinkerton.”

  Pinkerton’s lips tightened. He paused a moment longer, then eased down the hammer of his Colt and lowered the weapon back into its holster.

  “Your husband still doesn’t recognize what surrounds him,” Pinkerton replied, signaling to his men to follow him out of Oak Hill. “Humbugs or not, I have men all over the District. Your husband can’t get far without being sighted, and what he is secreting is far, far beyond him.”

  TEMPLE WAS DRESSED and seated on the edge of Pint’s bed, waiting in the dark. His boots were clean and dry—not a word this time f
rom Fiona about getting them wet and slathered in mud—and he had a fresh shirt and trousers. Fiona had also brought along a light linen jacket she got for him from the boardinghouse before she packed their things yesterday. “If they’re watching you here, then they’ll follow us to our house,” she warned him. “So we must decamp from there.” His wounded left shoulder felt stiff, and if he moved that arm too much, he felt the same flashes of pain that always flared up in his leg. But he was clear-headed, rested, and fed.

  Take a look at me now, with my back to a wall

  Singing and playing for nothing at all.

  Augustus slipped open the door and looked in on Temple. He nodded, and Temple pressed his cane into the rotting floorboards, rising from the bed. Temple no longer felt dizzy when he stood.

  “The last two have gone from out front,” Augustus whispered.

  “Off we go, my friend.”

  When Augustus and Temple got to the first floor of the building, they passed down a hallway and through a small kitchen. Behind Pint’s building there was a small, murky courtyard, laced with traces of the smog that clung to Foggy Bottom from the swamps and gasworks. A pile of abandoned bricks sat in the middle of the yard, and a pig was sprawled against it, sleeping. Clothes were drying on a line stretched across the courtyard, and hanging from a nearby tree branch was a large metal triangle that one of the matrons rang to summon everyone for dinner and supper. Any of the Irish or Germans who found Augustus roaming around here at this hour was likely to kill him, especially with Pint gone off with Fiona and Alexander.

  None of Augustus’s friends dared meet them here. But there was a safe house nearby that he knew from the Underground Railroad, at 25th and I, and they could get horses there. As they neared the barracks that the army had set up in houses around Snow’s Court, Augustus paused. It was late, and two Union soldiers patrolling the neighborhood approached them.

  “Who’s the dapper nigger?” one of the soldiers asked Temple.

  “Homo sum,” Augustus said.

  “How’s that?” the soldier asked.