Finally, at 2:00 A.M., the band was out of breath. The lights dimmed, the guests applauded, and the president gave his final good-byes. When the last guest left the grounds, Taft rose from his chair and walked with Major Butt back to the White House. As they approached the South Portico, the soldier made a motion toward the Yellow Oval Room. The president looked up and saw Robert staring at him from a window.
The last son of Lincoln smiled. Wilkie had come through for him after all.
* * *
“So, another job well done?” asked Agent Wheeler. All the off-duty Secret Service agents were joining Wilkie for cigars outside the East Wing.
“Well, the president still has a pulse,” their boss boasted, “so I’d say that’s worth at least a huzzah.”
“Huzzah!” The agents laughed.
“Mr. Wilkie?” interrupted the policeman Wilkie had scolded earlier. “That gentleman you asked about is being moved to Washington Asylum Hospital.”36
Without acknowledgment, the Secret Service chief slowly turned his back on the officer. “Well, that’s a disappointment,” Wilkie observed. The saddened policeman sulked back into the building.
“That nut was as cracked as the Liberty Bell,” said Sloan. “A trip to the lunatic asylum will do him well.”
“Maybe so,” said Wilkie, “but I don’t like taking policemen off guard duty just so they can fit some joker in a new straitjacket.”
“Nobody was taken off guard duty,” corrected Agent Joseph E. Murphy.
“What are you, on opium?” Wilkie laughed. “I saw it happen with my own eyes!”
“No, he’s right, sir,” said Sloan. “A wagon full of cops arrived right after you left us. Their timing was perfect. We were never short a man the entire evening.”
Wilkie, thinking for a minute, asked with his cigar between his fingers, “Are you absolutely sure it wasn’t the same Black Maria that took the vagrant?”
“Positively. Why do you ask?”
“Because I know for certain that nobody put in a call for an extra wagon.”
* * *
“Bob!” The president greeted his aging friend with open arms. “It’s so good to see you again. I was afraid you and Mary left before Nellie and I could thank you for your gift!”
“Think nothing of it.” Robert smiled. “Also, congratulations to you and Nellie.”
Taft, still amazed by the anniversary present, continued, “Bob, the machine is ingenious! You simply must tell me how you built it!”
Robert raised his hand, insisting, “It can wait.”
* * *
“Hey, Officer Darling. What time did you—”
Wilkie walked into the Police Room to find the same officer reading the same crumpled magazine as before.
“You lummox!” the chief shouted as he snatched the lovely lady a second time.
* * *
“So the watch did belong to your father,” spoke a seated President Taft.
“Yes, Will. There’s no denying it anymore. It slipped out of his pocket in my room right before he left for Ford’s Theatre. That’s why he had the fob with him.”
“And you saw the watch. You held it. You saw its strange inscription?”
“I did. Only seconds before I was notified about the assassination,” Robert sighed.
* * *
Wilkie sprinted through the darkened White House while his agents fanned in all directions.
“Archie!”
In front of them, the major emerged from the Blue Room with Arthur Brooks.
“Why is your pistol drawn, Mr. Wilkie?”
“Major,” the chief panted in the bloodred Cross Hall. “Our security has been compromised!”
* * *
“Well, considering everything that happened,” Taft spoke with sincerity, “I think it’s a miracle you remember that much.”
“A miracle?” Robert gasped with widened eyes. “Will, do you have any idea how miraculous it is that we are even able to share this conversation? If everything had gone according to plan; if I had been with my father that evening…”
* * *
The major unsheathed his sword and drew his pistol. “Protect the president!”
* * *
“If General Grant had come to Ford’s Theatre, as he was offered…”
* * *
“Alert the military!” Major Butt shouted. “Someone wire the Washington barracks! Send men here immediately!”
* * *
“During simultaneous attacks against Secretary Seward, his son Frederick, and the intended assassination of the vice president…”
* * *
“I want this place locked like the Panama Canal!” Wilkie ordered. “Sweep every room for thugs and bombs. Brooks! Bring out the guns!”
* * *
“… every single one of us could have been murdered, the pocket watch might have been stolen, and worst of all, I don’t think the Constitution would have survived the evening.”
* * *
“Upstairs! They’re upstairs!”
* * *
The president turned his head. “Did you hear that?”
Footsteps filled the hallway. The table lamp next to Robert was trembling. “What’s going on?”
At that moment, Major Butt charged through the doors with more than a dozen Secret Service agents behind him. After a panicked look at the president, he shouted, “Secure the first family!”
Taft leapt to his feet. “Archie! What is this?”
“Security breach, Mr. President! We need to evacuate the mansion.” Secret Service agents swarmed into the room and secured every window.
“How bad is it?” Robert asked.
The major’s jaw clenched. “I think we need to get airborne.”
“Mr. President!” Wilkie ran into the room with a cigar in his mouth and a gun in his hand. “Where the hell are your kids?”
“You keep away from my children!” ordered Nellie Taft, shoving her way past Wilkie. She was wearing a flowing black evening robe and was followed closely by guards.
“Madam President, this is urgent!” Wilkie continued.
“They should be upstairs on the Sleeping Porch. I already sent my sister Jennie to find them.”
“Nellie, are you all right?” The president took his wife into his arms.
“I’m fine, Will. Could someone please explain what’s going on?”
Wilkie, knowing he had to choose his words carefully, reported: “As many as ten men disguised as police officers slipped through security when the party began. They were clever. They caused a diversion at the east entrance while we guarded you on the South Lawn. This was a well-planned, coordinated operation. We have to assume the worst.”
“Why did they choose tonight?” Nellie glowered angrily. “We have family here. Children!”
Wilkie fidgeted his cigar nervously. “Best guess: to cause as much mayhem as possible.” The Secret Service chief lowered his gaze and quickly scanned the sitting room. He whistled to his men. “This space is safe! Search every other room in the mansion.”
“How long must we stay here?” asked Robert, his mind awash with bad memories.
Wilkie: “Until Archie’s boys ready the zeppelin.”
“How long will that take?” asked the president.
“They’re moving as fast as they can,” said Major Butt as he closed the window curtains.
“You’d better start your stopwatch, Mr. Lincoln,” said Wilkie to a stunned Robert.
But then: “Chief Wilkie!” shouted an agent from the hallway.
“Excuse me a moment.” The chief darted out of the room, leaving the presidential couple and Robert surrounded in a busy hive of men with guns.
After an agonizing minute of silence, Agent Sloan entered the Yellow Oval Room. He had a look of death on his face.
“Jimmy, what is it?”
“Mr. President, you’d better take a look at this.”
Taft tightened his wife’s hand. “I’m not leaving yo
u,” he vowed.
“Good, because I’m not sitting here.” A determined Mrs. Taft led her husband out the door.
“Nellie, wait!” He scampered after her.
Chapter XX
The Family Plot
“Where’s my sister?” Nellie fumed. “Brooks, please go upstairs immediately. I want my children brought down here.”
“Yes, Madam President.”
Family member after family member from the Tafts and Herrons was hurried down the Center Hall, some of them barefoot upon the hall’s white rugs.
“Mama, Papa, what is this?” asked an alarmed Helen Taft.
“Helen, find your brothers and stay together!” her mother instructed.
“What is this confusion, child?” an impossibly old Delia C. Torrey asked her nephew.
“It’s nothing, Aunt Delia,” Taft placated. “Just a late-night parlor game.”
“Oh … in the White House? That sounds delightful.…”
“Yes. Boys?” The president directed Agents Wheeler and Jervis to escort the ancient lady to the West Sitting Hall. It was as far away as possible from the trouble brewing in the Treaty Room.
Chief Wilkie emerged from the study through a wall of armed men. He was smoking like a chimney and his eyes moved like a cat’s. “Take Mr. Lincoln to the West Sitting Hall, Sloan. I want two men on him.”
“Right away, sir.”
“What? Why me?” Robert resisted.
“It’s for your own protection,” Wilkie promised as the man was dragged off.
The Secret Service chief’s eyes then shifted back and forth between the Tafts. “Mr. President, Madam President: I’m afraid only one of you can enter this room.”
“What!” Taft gasped. “Why?”
“If whatever’s in here is a bomb, we’re going to need one of you on hand to brief the vice president due to the … constitutional peculiarities of your copresidency.”
The presidential couple was outraged. “This is madness!” Taft shouted. “How dare you say that on such a sacred day!”
“Mr. President,” Wilkie growled, “there’s nothing sacred about what’s on the other side of these doors.”
“Mr. Wilkie, if the situation is dire, let me go in,” Major Butt volunteered.
“You’re not going anywhere, Archie,” the chief dictated. “If someone dies tonight, the country’s going to need you more than ever.”
“John, this is a democracy, not a dictatorship. I am ordering you to stand aside!” Taft thundered.
“I cannot allow that, Mr. President.”
“God damn it!” Butt shouted. “The president just gave you an order!”
“I’m trying to protect his life!”
The situation collapsed into a shouting match that ended only when Nellie Taft stepped forward. She said, in a low, controlled tone, “Enough of this. Major, help Mr. Brooks take a head count of the household. Mr. Wilkie, allow my husband through these doors while I observe through the doorway.”
A concerned Taft turned to his wife. Although he was always ready to die for her, he was not prepared to say good-bye to her. Not on this evening. “Nellie, I—”
The first lady threw her arms around her husband and kissed him on the lips. “I won’t be out of your sight. Now, go!”
“That’s good enough for me,” said Wilkie. He snapped his fingers and the Secret Service agents opened the doors to the Treaty Room. As Taft peered into the room, Wilkie searched through his jacket and produced his flask. “Take this,” he offered the president.
Taft seized the flask and guzzled it. “Thanks, Wilkie,” he replied.
“I meant wear it over your heart. It’s bulletproof,” the chief instructed.
“Oh…” Taft did just as he was told and nodded.
“All right,” Wilkie told his agents. “We’re moving in.” One by one, the United States Secret Service joined their chief in the president’s study.
The White House Treaty Room was a setting of enormous consequence to the Taft presidency. As the site of Spain’s recent peace treaty following the Spanish-American War, the room had transformed the United States into a world power, eventually sending both Taft and Roosevelt to the presidency. Théobald Chartran’s painting of this historic moment hung on the room’s west wall, and it resonated deeply with the Secret Service agents present due to President McKinley’s prominence in the picture. In this painting at this moment, the slain McKinley appeared to be looking down on some of the same agents who failed to protect him ten years ago—Chief John E. Wilkie in particular. It was a room of great victories and devastating defeats, and it was not chosen for this evening by accident.
It was impossible for Taft to enter the Treaty Room without being bombarded by old memories. Some of the president’s most cherished Yale memorabilia filled the space. Wrestling trophies lined his bookcases, as did law books he had been using since his college days. The walls were covered with photographs of old friends and family, some of them long gone. The study was not the airship or the Oval Office, nor the Morgan Library or Robert Todd Lincoln’s Hildene. Taft’s entire life was in this room, and stepping into it was like walking into his heart. Such was the site of the most inhumane desecration to befall the White House since its burning.
“Dear lord…” said the president.
Atop the Resolute desk, a gift of goodwill to the president and people of the United States, was a skull. A shimmering, silver-plated human skull. Grinning. Reflecting the horrified look of every man in the room.
Using his saffron handkerchief, Wilkie took a piece of paper off the desk. “This was under it.” He showed the president.
The note, in immaculate handwriting, read:
Mr. President:
You have 48 hours. Otherwise, the next skull in our collection will be Robert’s.
Regards,
The Gentleman from Brussels
The blood drained from Taft’s face as he read the note. “They’re after Lincoln?” he asked.
Wilkie shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Then who—” Taft’s face froze and his heart stopped. “No. NO!”
“Will? What are you looking at?” asked Nellie through the doorway.
The president spun in panic. “Don’t come in here!” he yelled.
Nellie saw the silver skull. “My God…”
A bloodcurdling scream rang through the hallway. Nellie saw her tearful sister Jennie racing toward her with Major Butt and Arthur Brooks. “Bob is nowhere in the mansion!” Jennie sobbed. “They took him, Nellie! They took your boy!”
Nellie slowly turned her head and stared helplessly at her husband. She tried to speak, but there was no breath left in her.
“NELLIE!” Taft screamed as she fainted.
Fortunately, Major Butt rushed in and caught Nellie just before her head hit the floor.
Chapter XXI
The Skull
How could this have happened?
Taft sobbed helplessly at his wife’s bedside, just as he had for so much of his presidency. Any thought of moving Nellie from the mansion was now completely out of the question. Helen and Charlie wept with their parents, desperately longing to be reunited with their older brother. The grieving households of Taft and Herron were powerless to comfort the first family. Hundreds of men in uniform combed the White House for clues, but there were none to find. Chief Wilkie burned through the early morning hours shouting orders. Major Butt put every base in the nation on high alert. Gunboats patrolled the Potomac and closed the Chesapeake Bay. In secret, a stunned cabinet prepared for a Constitutional crisis. The president of the United States had been brought to his knees.
For Robert Todd Lincoln, the once blissful evening had transformed into a living nightmare of his father’s murder. Once again, there was little he could say or do to repair the ruined world around him. He stared vacantly from the open window of the Closet Hall: the slender corridor where his father delivered his last public address. Robert did not know wh
at to make of the horrific situation. From his vantage, the nation’s future appeared as frozen as the lifeless pocket watch in his hand.
Then there was a knock, and Robert pocketed the timepiece. “Come in,” he said in a pained, scratchy voice.
Chief Wilkie entered the tiny room, closing its doors behind him. “Hello, Bob. I just wanted to check in. How you feeling?”
“Weak, useless,” said a wounded Robert Todd Lincoln. “There are no words of mine that can alleviate this family’s loss.” He turned his head to face the chief. “I want to help, but I don’t know what I can do.”
Wilkie stepped forward, illuminating the darkened hallway with every breath through his cigar. “Care for a smoke?” he offered, producing a Meridiana Selecto from his jacket.
Robert raised an eyebrow, tempted by the fine Havana. “Thank you,” he accepted.
“Just so you know,” said Wilkie, lighting Robert’s cigar, “your wife is safe and sound. Archie has two men guarding her at the Willard.”
“I appreciate that.” Robert exhaled. “Mary and I were together during my father’s assassination. It’s terrible to subject her to this all over again.”
“You can rest assured she’s taken care of. That is, assuming you rest at all.”
“I’m accustomed to evening hours.” He sighed. “I just wish they were more productive.”
Wilkie, sensing his opportunity, moved closer. “Bob, I know you and the president like to keep your work private. I respect that. When you took your little Alaskan excursion, I didn’t mind.” Wilkie innocently pursed his lips for a second. “However, I need to ask if there was anything you and the president discussed tonight that could be related to his son’s disappearance.”
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy Page 17