"Where's Stanton now?" he asked.
Colleen looked hopeful at so sane a question. "Last night he and General Grant were working together at Stanton's house. They're almost busier now that the war is ending than they were when it was going on. I suppose there are a lot of things to be decided—the size of the peacetime army, and so forth."
"I suppose so."
"Officially, Stanton is supposed to be at the War Department at nine this morning. If we're there then we can insist on seeing him. Until then, we'd better keep out of sight."
"I'll agree with that last part." Jerry looked around them. The fog was only beginning to lift. As far as he could see, they had the whole Mall, and the Smithsonian, to themselves. "This looks like about as good a place as any to kill some time."
In the distance somewhere a military voice was shouting orders; some routine drill, evidently, for Colleen took no notice of it.
"The truth is," said Jerry, breaking a brief silence, "I can't see Stanton until tomorrow."
"Whyever not?"
"I told you I had another mission, that came first."
"Holy Mary. A mission for the Union?"
"Of course. Who else?"
"And who gave you this other mission?"
"I can't tell even you that."
"And where do you do this other job, and when?"
Jerry was silent.
"You're a stubborn man, James Lockwood. Stubborn as my husband was, God rest his soul, and I suppose it was his stubbornness in not letting himself be captured by the rebels that killed him at the last." There were tears in Colleen's brown eyes as she brought her hand out of the pocket of her dress. There was a derringer in it.
SEVENTEEN
"I'll tell you the truth then," said Jerry. "I'm not Jim Lockwood."
Colleen's gun-hand twitched, but she couldn't very well shoot him, if that was her intention, with that statement unexplained. Instead she blinked back tears. "Then where is he?"
"You're crying for him?"
"For you and me, you idiot. Mostly for me. For thinking you and I might… where is he?"
"Oh. Oh. I'm pretty sure he's dead, back in Missouri, or Illinois. I didn't kill him, understand. I'm trying to complete the job he started."
"And your real name is what?"
"Flint. Jeremiah Flint. People who know me usually call me Jerry."
"People who know you well must call you a good many things. But you are a Union agent? Stanton's man?'
"I'm Union, yes, all the way. You might even say I'm a strong Abolitionist. The trouble is, though, Stanton will be expecting the real Lockwood and he won't know me from Adam."
"Who hired you, then, if you're not Stanton's man? Who gave you your orders?"
Jerry was silent.
"The only authority higher than the Secretary of War is the President himself."
Jerry said nothing.
"Holy Mother. I'm going to take you to Stanton myself, and show you to him. You tell him what you've told me."
"I tell you, as soon as he sees I'm not Jim Lockwood, he'll lock me up."
"You'll tell him the whole story, of how Lockwood died. You can't refuse to tell him, even if you can't tell me."
Jerry, furiously trying and failing to think, looked at her. "I can't argue with that," he said at last. That at least was the truth; he was out of arguments and lies, and he would have to settle for getting her to put the gun away if he could.
She did put it away, and Jerry heaved a silent sigh of relief.
"The fog is lifting, we can't stay here much longer." She had the tears firmly under control now. "We are going to hide somewhere until a quarter to nine. Then we walk to the War Department. "
"All right." Jerry turned his head toward the Smithsonian, where he could now see figures moving within the thinning mist. "Some people are going in over there."
"There are people who live there, the director and his family. Also some of the learned men who come there to work."
"I didn't know that."
"Still, the Colonel's men will not be likely to look for us in there, I think. We'll go in, if we can."
They rose from their bench and walked to the building. At the front door a sign informed them that visitors were not admitted until eight.
To kill the half hour or so remaining, they strolled among the flower beds. Conversation was limited. Jerry, stealing glances at his companion's face, her hair, her throat, found himself beginning to think what he considered were crazy thoughts. But he went on thinking them anyway.
Colleen passed some money to Jerry so he would be able to pay for their admission when the time came. At eight o'clock a dour ticket-seller let them into the museum, the day's first visitors. The building looked new, but the dim, cavernous rooms were already dusty and had the smell of age. These people, he thought, badly needed lessons in museum management, along with a great many other things.
On impulse he took Colleen's hand, but she pulled it free, saying: "Look at your fine watch now and then. Don't let's dally here past a quarter to nine."
"All right."
The two of them walked among endless glass cases with dark wood frames, arrayed with endless labeled trays of arrowheads and fossil teeth. They looked at skeletons and fosils in cabinets, and had time to stick their noses into the library.
It appeared that Colleen could not remain totally angry at him for long. "Are you a reading man, Jerry?"
"I used to be. I'll be one again, when this is over. The war, I mean—and everything. And what about you, Colleen Monahan? Is that your real name?"
"Colleen's mine. And Monahan's my maiden name, though I've used others." She sighed. "And oh, yes, I would like to be a reader. Sit in a cozy parlor and drink tea and read." She ran her hand along a row of books. "Some day…"
"Listen, I…" And then Jerry ran out of words altogether. It was a crazy thing to do, but he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him fully, and kissed her. How odd that she had to turn her face up at an angle. He always thought of her, somehow, as being the same height he was, and here she was several inches shorter.
Some time passed before she pulled away.
"Colleen, I—"
"No. Say nothing about it now."
"I just—"
"Say nothing, I tell you. Not now. Later."
Hand in hand, now, they continued to tour the exhibits, though Jerry at least looked at them without really seeing anything.
He was certain that the minutes must be racing by swiftly. There were moments when Jerry was almost able to forget his evening appointment at Fords. He pretended to himself to hope that Colleen had forgotten about Stanton.
"Jerry? The time?"
He pulled out his watch and looked at it. No use trying to stretch things out here any longer. "Quarter to nine," he admitted.
"Time to go, then."
"Time to go."
He could feel her reluctance, along with her determination, as they left the museum. Like an ordinary strolling couple, they walked along the Mall toward Washington's unfinished shaft. A few more people were about now. The sun was well up now, the morning fog completely burned away. High cloudiness clung to the sky. Jerry kept expecting Lafe Baker's men to burst into view somewhere, on horseback with guns drawn like a gang of rustlers in an old-time movie. But things weren't done that way in the city, not in the daytime anyway. If for no other reason, there was always too much cavalry around, ready to take a hand in any disturbance.
Colleen led him north on the Fourteenth Street bridge over the canal. From the north end of the bridge it was only one block to the southeast corner of the President's Park. A narrow footpath between the canal and the fence guarding the Park brought them to Seventeenth Street where they turned north again. In minutes they were approaching the main building of the War Department from its publicly accessible side. Now they moved among the usual daytime throng of people.
Colleen knew her way in through the outer obstacles posed by armed u
niformed sentries and plainclothes guards. In a crowded vestibule it took her two minutes to learn that Mr. Stanton was seeing no one this morning, being again closeted in his office with General Grant. Jerry, enjoying the temporary reprieve, could imagine the questions the two men were deciding on how was the great war effort to be shut down: what military contracts should be canceled, and so on. And what size was the peacetime army going to be? That last would depend, of course, on what policy should be adopted toward the conquered South. Probably it would depend to some extent on who was President next week, next year.
Colleen and Jerry waited in the lobby of the War Department, at last finding a place to sit on a bench in a relatively remote hall. Few words passed between them; they had plenty to talk about but none of it was suitable for public discussion. Colleen made sure that from where she sat she could see the door that Stanton would ordinarily use, going in and out. Several times she sprang to her feet, evidently having picked up some hint that the Secretary might be about to appear. But these were false alarms.
At eleven o'clock she went to a desk to try again. Jerry meditated trying to sneak out while she was thus engaged, thus putting an effective end to the possibility of any relationship but enmity. But it would really be better that way, wouldn't it? For both of them? But he held back. There were still nine hours or more before his appointment, and he had no idea of where he would go if he left this building now. Anyway, Colleen kept turning round to smile at him—it was a bitter, knowing smile, not tender at all. He wouldn't have more than a few seconds' start—and, anyway, if he ran out now, and Colleen did not invoke a swift and effective pursuit—or merely shoot him in the back—there would still be Lafe Baker to deal with.
This time when Colleen came back to him from the desk, even her false smile had disappeared; she was fuming. "Mr. Secretary Stanton has gone to the White House. Cabinet meeting. Never mind, maybe we can catch him there. The President is going to want to take a look at you anyway, when he hears your story." She smiled at Jerry wickedly and added softly: "Sneak out on me again, and I'll scream bloody treason. If I do that in here, or in the White House, you may be punctured by a bayonet or two, but you won't run far."
Jerry smiled the best smile that he could muster, and did as he was told.
As they were walking across the broad lawn that separated War Department from White House, Colleen asked him quietly: "How did you get Lockwood's key for the safe-deposit box in Chicago?"
"The two of us were friends, out west. I—owed him something. Before he died he had my word for it that I would see to it that the job he had begun got finished." Jerry had now been long enough in the nineteenth century to feel some hope that a claim like that might be accepted.
"And what about the signature at the bank?"
"I did the best I could to copy the way his signature looked on the page. I don't think the clerk really looked at it anyway."
"Whenever I signed, he only looked at me. Leered at me is more like it." She sighed faintly. "Well, Jeremiah. It's a great mess you've put us both into. But now that the war is over I suppose we might manage to come out of it alive. If this new story that you're tellin' me is true."
"Oh, it's true, right enough."
Now she was looking at Jerry's vest, looped by a silvery chain. "The watch is Jim's too, I suppose."
"The watch? No, it's my own."
"I see." He couldn't tell if that question and answer had really meant anything or not.
There were a dozen people, more or less, hanging around the north entrance to the White House, the door directly below the window from which Lincoln had given his speech on Tuesday night. The gathering right at the door included a couple of guards, and a couple of men arguing with one of the guards. The others present, white and black, well-dressed and poor, were loitering in the background.
Colleen ignored them all, and marched right in with Jerry following. But just inside they had to stop. The aged doorkeeper, addressed familiarly by Colleen as "Edward", informed her that Mr. Stan ton was in a Cabinet meeting upstairs. Edward could not, he said, allow her and her companion to go up the office stairs to the upper floor, and Mr. Stanton would be unable to see them anyway.
"We'll wait," said Colleen, though that did not appear to be a promising course of action, judging by the numbers of people who were already doing it. Once more Jerry allowed himself to relax a little.
Edward's attention was soon engaged with what appeared to be a group of tourists, come like their twentieth-century descendants, but very much more casually, to see what they could of the old house. As soon as the doorkeeper had turned away, Colleen, who evidently knew her way around in here, quietly gestured to Jerry to follow her. She led him down a wide hall toward the western end of the ground floor. At the end of the hall a broad staircase went up.
At a landing whose window gave a magnificent view of the distant Potomac, entrenched among spring-clad hills, the stairs reversed direction west to east. A moment later Jerry and Colleen were at the top of the processional stairs, at the west end of a hallway just as broad and even longer than the one downstairs.
They were getting closer to the business center of the Executive Mansion; there were twice as many loungers here as outside the front door. Here the men standing about and leaning against the walls tried to look busy and important, even as they waited in hope of being able to talk to those who truly were.
But the style of management here was not quite as casual and informal as it looked at first sight. When they reached a gate in a low wooden railing near the eastern end of the hall, Colleen was recognized by a guard and allowed to proceed a little farther; Jerry had to wait for her among the office-seekers and other petitioners.
He leaned against the wall, obscured for the moment in the cigar smoke and chuckling conversation of a knot of idlers. The pendulum of his fear was starting to swing back. Colleen was one resourceful and determined woman, and he would not be at all surprised if she did somehow get herself and Jerry ushered into the Cabinet meeting. Suppose she did return in a moment, take him by the sleeve, and march him in to see Stanton, maybe with Lincoln himself sitting in the same room. Maybe it wasn't really rational to think she could break in on a cabinet meeting like that, but just suppose…
Jerry was sweating. Colleen might be turning her head to look for him as before, but she couldn't see him; there were too many bodies in between. Now was his chance, if he was truly going to do what he had to do. There was really no choice—and in the long run she'd be better off as well.
Lounging nonchalantly along the hall in the direction away from the crowded office, he noticed a black servant open a door and pass through, and he also noticed, beyond the door, what must be a service stairway, going down.
In a moment Jerry had slipped through the door himself and was on his way downstairs. Blessing the sloppy security he came out at ground level, and soon regained the main hall, where he could hear old Edward the doorkeeper shouting at some other difficult visitor. A moment after that, Jerry had successfully attached himself to one of the groups of gawking tourists, just as they began to file into the huge East Room, directly under the offices above.
A few minutes later, the tourist contingent was outside again, back on the Avenue, where Jerry bid them a fond though quiet farewell.
EIGHTEEN
In getting away from the White House, Jerry walked side streets in a loop that brought him back to the Avenue just opposite Willard's. From that point he headed east, under an overcast sky. The atmosphere felt clammy and somehow oppressive. He had no better plan than to get back to where a concentration of markets, stores, and hotels promise throngs of people. It was not quite noon yet, and he still had to avoid capture for more than eight hours before the curtain rose at Ford's.
He bought a newspaper and went into a tavern for something to eat. With a fatalistic lack of surprise he read the front-page notice announcing that General Grant was expected to attend Ford's with the President tonight. Pilgrim had
said there'd be a party of four. Again it was the unfamiliar General and not the President who was really the big news.
Without knowing why Jerry turned his head and glanced toward the window. An expressionless black face was looking in through the glass at him. He recognized Colleen's companion Mose.
The man seemed to be in no particular hurry to rush off and report Jerry's whereabouts to Colleen, or Stanton, or whoever. Jerry finished his lunch and paid his bill—Colleen had either not noticed or not cared about the denomination of the bill she had given him earlier—by which time Mose's face had disappeared from the window. Putting the paper under his arm, Jerry walked unhurriedly, but very alertly, out into the street.
As he walked east again, a glance over his shoulder told him that Mose was following, ten steps or so behind.
In an open-air market just off the Avenue, Jerry turned aside and stopped, as if he were considering some seafood. In front of a group of noisy men who were busily cleaning fish he stopped to talk with Mose, who approached to stand before him in the attitude of a servant receiving instructions.
"Mose, why are you following me?"
The black man's voice was too low for anyone else to hear. His accent was not gone, but greatly modified. "I had thought, Mistah Lockwood, that you were to be speaking to Mistah Stanton at this hour. I wish to see to it that no harm comes to you before you have the chance to do so." There, his look seemed to say to Jerry. Damn me if you will for speaking like a human being, but I have gained the power, and I intend to use it.
"Mose. I'm going to have to trust you."
"Yes, sah?"
Jerry looked about him, like a man about to take a plunge. Which indeed he was. He said: "I have just come from the White House. There is something I must do that even Miss Monahan must not know about. Not just yet."
AFTER THE FACT Page 17