Miss Barton valiantly tottered along as she managed two of the bundles. “Certainly I could have found some items at my boardinghouse and surely some of the other boarders there might have donated something—but I doubt I could have scared up this much in one trip.”
“I’m very happy to have met you as well.” Sophie said, struggling to sling one of the bundles over her shoulder. “Otherwise, I might have been merely sitting around and—”
Her voice choked off as a large figure detached itself from the shadow of the building, stepping menacingly into their path. “And where might you ladies be going?”
CHAPTER 8
“MR. QUINN! OH MY GOODNESS, HOW YOU STARTLED ME.” Miss Gates had sucked in her breath when she saw him, but her companion had gasped and reeled backward, holding up a large parcel as if to ward off attack.
Thank the Lord. Adam felt a rush of relief that he’d found her safe and intact, followed immediately by a rush of irritation. He surreptitiously slipped his revolver into its holster and did his best to keep his voice even. “Miss Gates. It’s not advisable for a woman—or two women”—he nodded at her companion—“to be going about at night in a city soon to be invaded.”
He had to grit his teeth to keep from saying more that might not have been so polite. Had he not had a similar conversation with her just last night, when he’d come over to find out who had a light on in the Smithsonian? Why didn’t she understand it simply wasn’t safe for a woman—or anyone, truthfully—to be about alone in Washington right now?
And it had happened again tonight, as he was watching a loud troop of men march strategically across and near the Long Bridge: he’d seen a flickering light in the castle. And it had moved around between at least two towers, arousing his suspicions.
This was after he’d spent too much time attempting to find her by searching throughout the Executive Mansion. He’d originally wanted to talk to Miss Gates about the discovery that Johnny Thorne was a woman, and to find out if she’d learned anything by talking to the servants and ladies of the household.
But his concern mounted when the exasperating woman had been nowhere to be found. Nor had she been seen by anyone since before supper—which she’d definitely missed, according to Mrs. Lincoln. When he saw the light in the towers, he’d vacillated between worry that it wasn’t her, exasperation over her risk-taking if it was, and the hope that she had, in fact, just gone home and was safely there despite how risky it might have been.
Miss Gates, whose bonnet was crooked, straightened up to her not-very-threatening full height and appeared to be ready to argue. But then she surprised him. “Perhaps it was a bit foolish, but the soldiers were in need. I knew we could retrieve some things for them from here, and I wasn’t thinking about what time it was or the fact that it was getting dark. I was thinking of their comfort.”
“All right.” How could he argue with that? “I reckon you’ll need an escort wherever you’re going. Are you taking all of that with you?” He eyed the four large bundles they were slogging between the two of them. “To the soldiers? Which ones?”
“The Sixth Massachusetts.” The other woman spoke up for the first time. “Many were injured during the riot in Baltimore, and Miss Gates and I helped some of them to the infirmary after their train arrived. Then we discovered their lack of bandages and other supplies, and Miss Gates offered to obtain some from her home. Incidentally, my name is Miss Clara Barton,” she added with a firm tone—clearly expecting an overdue introduction.
“I’m sorry, Miss Barton,” Miss Gates said hastily. “This is Mr. Adam Quinn. He works for Mr. Lincoln.”
Despite the introduction of the president’s name, Miss Barton still seemed wary of him. Or perhaps she was simply shy, Adam amended, noticing how she hung back a bit so that her face was obstructed by her bonnet. Nor did she join the conversation as they began to walk.
He’d swung up two of the bundles, slinging one over his left shoulder where he maneuvered to clamp and anchor it with his false hand, then held the other by the strings used to tie it up in his right. This left him unable to reach his revolver quickly and easily, but he certainly wasn’t going to allow them to struggle alone with the awkward packages. How on earth had they expected to make it all the way to the hospital with them? Women were so nonsensical at times.
“Thank you, Mr. Quinn,” said Miss Gates in a prim voice, as if she could read his uncharitable thoughts. She lugged the valise she’d brought to the White House yesterday, but it appeared much heavier tonight.
As they walked, she described in more detail the arrival of the soldiers and what had happened at the infirmary. By the time they reached the hospital, he could tell she was tiring because of the way her sentences slowed and shortened, and the pauses between each thought.
“Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Quinn,” said Miss Barton as they stepped into the infirmary. “And for the escort.”
“I’ll see you home as well, Miss Barton,” he said. “It’s not safe for anyone to be out at this time of night with the Rebels breathing down our neck.”
“Miss Barton! Oh, Miss Barton, they said how you was here.”
She looked over at a tall, spindly man who looked like he was barely twenty. Her face—flushed from the exertion of their walk—brightened with a smile. “Kenneth! Mr. Norton told me I might see you.” She turned back to Adam. “Thank you for your offer, Mr. Quinn, but I believe I’ll stay here for a while. I know many of these men—and Kenneth is the son of a family friend from North Oxford. I’ll find someone to bring me to my boardinghouse, or I’ll locate a cot here. If the city is invaded, I venture to say I’ll be safer here amongst a troop of soldiers than at my boardinghouse. Thank you again. Miss Gates, it was a pleasure to meet you. Have a good night, and pray the Confederates are stayed.”
Before Adam could speak, she swept off to speak to the young man. He looked down at Miss Gates, whose face seemed too pale and the skin under her eyes shadowed. The shallow bonnet she wore had been knocked even further to the side—he guessed because of her exertions with the bundles of donations.
“I reckon I’d best get you back to the house. You look tired on your feet, Miss Gates.”
“Yes, but just one more moment. I want to check on Mr. Eldritch.”
Adam chafed a bit as she went off, then looked around the infirmary with a wary eye. Having spent far too long in one, he’d discovered he didn’t care for hospitals—even as a visitor and not a patient. The very smells of laudanum and other medicinals made his stomach flip like his mother’s flapjacks. One of the patients was groaning in pain from somewhere, and that sound along with the familiar smell of an abundance of bodily fluids and the sight of a long row of cots made his throat dry. An ache began in what remained of his left arm, then moved like a phantom into the missing part below his elbow. His head began to throb.
“Mr. Quinn?”
Adam started a little when he realized Miss Gates had caught him just before he slipped into that dark tunnel of the past. But he was seasoned at collecting himself quickly, and he just said, “Are you ready to leave at last?”
“Thank you for waiting,” she said in that voice of hers that made him think she was somehow teasing him. “Yes, I believe I am quite ready to go home—well, to go back to the—er—house.”
The White House was only about ten blocks west of the hospital, nearly straight down E Street. The alphabet streets weren’t nearly as busy or well-lit as the broad, diagonal avenues that radiated out from Capitol Hill—Pennsylvania being the busiest of course. But despite the fall of night and the imminent threat of invasion, there was a smattering of bystanders along the way.
Many of them spilled onto the narrow street from public houses or smaller hotels and boardinghouses. Most every person Adam saw was a man—and many of them drunk and rowdy, clearly expecting some sort of military activity—though there were a few prostitutes leaning against random buildings. He was even more relieved that Miss Gates hadn’t attempted to walk ba
ck by herself at nearly ten o’clock. This thought lodged in his mind, and he couldn’t keep himself from speaking it.
“How on earth did you think to manage getting back to the mansion alone, Miss Gates? Safely?” he said after a particularly drunk man tottered into their pathway and leered at her, making a clumsy swipe as if to take her arm as he called her “Daisy-Lou.”
Adam dispatched him with a sharp word, and took possession of her arm himself.
She sighed wearily, curling her fingers around the crook of his elbow. “I admit, I didn’t think far beyond the moment of helping the soldiers. If it came to it, I suppose I would just have done what Miss Barton intends—to sleep at the infirmary.”
Adam gave a rough laugh. “I reckon a ward filled with wounded men in various states of injury and consciousness isn’t going to be much safer than E Street, filled with drunks and bravados.”
He paused to maneuver her to his other side, using his good hand to curl her fingers around his false forearm. This left his right hand free to settle over the butt of his revolver.
Men anticipating war—a battle, either victorious or no—were not predictable. And from the snatches of conversation he heard, many of those celebrating were doing so in anticipation of a Southern victory in the city tonight or tomorrow. Thus, he kept sharp eyes scanning the street from both sides as they made their way along.
That was the reason he saw Leward Hale an instant before the other man saw him. Adam’s stride hitched, and his hand went to the revolver as he met the other man’s eyes.
Hale was in conversation with three other men—not great odds, Adam noted immediately; especially since he was short an arm and had Miss Gates with him—and they all appeared to have had a few drinks if the giddy light in their eyes was any indication. But the glint of pistols stowed in each man’s holster were a cold warning that he would have to take care.
“Adam Quinn,” said Hale, swaggering out of his group just far enough that they couldn’t pass by. “Last time I seen you was back in Lawrence. When you was hiding behind a lady’s skirt.” He snickered, and his friends joined in.
“Leward Hale,” Adam replied, curling his fingers around the butt of his gun, fighting back the nauseating fury that rose in his throat. “Last time I saw you, you were using what little ingenuity you own to kill a three-year-old boy.”
His words were sharp and filled with disgust, but came nowhere near expressing the loathing he had for the man in front of him. He was aware of Miss Gates stiffening next to him, and actually felt the way her attention flitted back and forth between him and Hale, but he couldn’t spare a look at her. He was too busy keeping his eye on the four pro-slavers; two of whom he’d seen earlier today on the street corner.
The lean, carrot-haired Hale laughed, displaying a misleadingly charming dimple. “Sorry about the boy, but at least he won’t grow up to be a nigger lover like you and Crazy Jim Lane. I heard’at Lane’s been trying to round up a few old men to protect that nigger-kissing ape in the White House.” He settled both hands on his hips, his fingers fluttering toward the butt of his pistol.
Adam held the other man’s eyes as he withdrew his revolver. He didn’t lift it, didn’t aim it, but the sharp click of the hammer cocking beneath his finger said all he needed to say.
“That’s all right,” Hale replied, his eyes gleaming as they swept over to Miss Gates, then back up to meet Adam’s. He might have been in his cups, but his gaze was hard and gleaming with fanaticism. “When the White House burns and our kinsmen come over the bridge, we’ll be here to cheer them on . . . and help collect the spoils of war.” He looked at Miss Gates again, this time more slowly.
Adam’s breath caught at the audacity of the man, and he heard his companion’s shocked gasp. Then she tensed more, drawing in a breath, and he was afraid she was about to speak—good Lord, that would be all he needed—so he pressed in his left arm hard, trapping her hand against his side in warning.
“I reckon we’ll see about that,” he told Hale coolly. “You know the Jayhawkers better than your Virginia brethren do. You know what your kinsmen will be facing. You know Jim Lane’s men offer no quarter—especially to woman- and child-killers.” He held the other man’s eyes, boring into them with his own as he blocked away everything but the two of them: the other men, Miss Gates, the fact that he was now one-armed, and the roaring hatred that threatened to send him leaping at the bastard and taking his chances anyway. “Step aside.”
Hale looked up at Adam just long enough so as not to appear too easily cowed, then turned abruptly away to join his friends. He said something and the group rumbled a derisive laugh, but no one made a move toward Adam and Miss Gates.
Nonetheless, Adam met the eyes of each of the men as he walked past, giving them the same silent warning he’d given Leward Hale: mess with me and live with the consequences. He kept his pace easy and steady, neither hurrying nor dawdling, and when Miss Gates’s curiosity got the best of her and she drew in a breath to speak, he merely gave a sharp jerk of his head and compressed her hand tightly against his side once more.
He couldn’t speak even if he’d wanted to, for his throat had gone to dust now that the moment had passed, and the wave of grief made his eyes sting. Just seeing Leward Hale and his smug, ugly face brought him straight back to that day in Lawrence.
That sunny, bloody day.
Not until they were several blocks away, when he was certain no one had followed them and he felt he could trust his voice, did he permit Miss Gates to speak. And then he immediately regretted it.
“Who was that? What an odious man! What was he talking about? I’ve seen one of those men before, I’m sure of it. Is he the one who—who took your arm?” And then, more hesitantly but no less nosily, “Was the boy your son, Mr. Quinn?”
“Leward Hale. An incident in Kansas. In a matter of speaking. No.” He paused, then gentled his voice. “My godson. Carl. Along with his parents, who I was very close to.”
“I’m so very sorry.” Her fingers tightened around his arm in a heartfelt squeeze.
They walked another block in silence, approaching Pennsylvania Avenue. The Treasury Building rose to the right, its marble blocks cool and bone-white in the moonlight. The President’s House was just off to the left where the Avenue intersected E Street at a dog’s leg angle, and it too reflected pristine in the moonlight. A single hackney trundled by, and someone shouted in the distance. The earthy, mucky scent from the swampy land down the slope from the White House filled the air, along with wood smoke. It was, in spite of everything unpleasant hanging over the city and filtering through Adam’s thoughts, a beautiful, balmy spring night.
He wondered what tomorrow would bring. A city overrun by soldiers, filled with gunfire and heavy smoke . . . death, violence, victory?
Or another quiet, tense dawn, with the city and its inhabitants holding their collective breath and waiting for what was surely inevitable?
Now they passed the Treasury and were close enough that he could see—because he knew where to look—the guards posted on the White House roof. And as they started up the curving drive to the mansion, a voice called out from the darkness.
“Who goes there?”
“It’s Quinn. Is that you, Benson?”
“What’s the password?”
“Springfield.”
“All right, then. Evenin’ Quinn. Yes, it’s me, Benson.”
“All is well, then?”
“Yes it is. So far.”
They walked past the guards and Miss Gates murmured, “There’s a password?”
“It changes three times a day,” Adam replied, then chuckled. “The first night the Frontier Guard was settled here, before they all went to bed, Mr. Lincoln meant to go in and greet them. He walked up to one of the men stationed at the door to the East Room—James Cody, it was—and Cody stopped him with a bayonet and demanded the password. As it turned out, no one had told the president what it was . . . and Cody wouldn’t let him through.”
“Oh my,” Miss Gates said in a shocked voice. “What happened? Was it possible he didn’t realize it was the president?”
“He knew. I reckon he was just demonstrating how serious he was about his post. But I don’t think the president was suitably impressed,” Adam said with another little laugh. “Finally Cody let him through.”
“I should hope so.”
They were approaching the house now, from which two windows on the top floor—Lincoln’s office and that of the anteroom—glowed softly, and Miss Gates said, “Mr. Quinn, I don’t know whether you’re as tired as I am, but I doubt I’ll get much sleep tonight. Waiting. Watching.” She drew in a heavy breath. “And . . . I have things to tell you about Johnny Thorne.”
“You missed supper,” he replied. “And I reckon it was a challenge to help a lame soldier walk all the way from the depot to the hospital. It’s no wonder you’re tired.” And that your bonnet is crooked.
“Not to mention lugging that bundle of blankets back to the infirmary,” she said with a strange sort of giggle. It almost made him want to smile—the sound of that little, light bit of laughter that he reckoned came from her being overtired and nervous. “If you hadn’t come along, I truly don’t know what we’d have done.”
“It’s finished and over,” he replied. “All worked out for the best. I reckon I need to hear what you’ve learned, but it needs to wait until morning—depending what happens tonight. I have the eleven to two o’clock western watch, and I reckon it’s getting near time for it by now. I’ll need to speak to General Lane and Major Hunter first.”
“And so by tomorrow morning, Johnny Thorne might not be relevant?” She stopped, forcing him to do the same, and looked up at him. “If the Confederates come?”
“No,” he replied, a little stung that she would think so. “But if the Confederates do come, I expect we’ll all be busy trying to keep ourselves alive.”
“That’s what I meant,” she replied a little defensively; then she gave a short laugh and flapped her hand. “Forgive me. I am tired—I didn’t sleep a wink last night, I think, what with listening and waiting for something to happen—and I missed both dinner and supper today. Thank you again, Mr. Quinn, for helping me and Miss Barton tonight. And for walking me back here.” She gave a little shiver as if just realizing what sort of danger she might have been in, had he not been available or come looking for her. “I hope your watch is uneventful, and that you do get some sleep when your shift is over.”
Murder in the Oval Library Page 15