AFTER THE FACT

by Fred Saberhagen

  Mose waited, silent, watching, judging. He was bigger than Jerry.

  Jerry did his best. "She has probably told you how important my work is, though not exactly what it is."

  "Yes sah. She has said something to that effect."

  "I was supposed to meet someone here—near here. But something has gone wrong. Miss Monahan will be putting herself in danger if she tries to help me directly now, and… the fact is I would much rather that she not."

  Mose nodded slowly, reserving judgment; anyone watching would see only a servant painfully trying to make sure he had his instructions right.

  Jerry pressed on. "The problem is that I must hide somewhere until dark. Somewhere where Baker's men, in particular, will not be able to find me. Several of them know what I look like."

  "That could well be a problem, Mistah Lockwood."

  "Mose, will you help? Do you know someplace where I can hide? I must have until midnight tonight."

  The black youth confronted what was evidently a new level of responsibility for him in the Secret Service game. Finally he grappled with it. "Lord God, Mistah Lockwood. Follow me. We gone out this market by the back way.'

  Jerry followed Mose north, with alternations east and west, along one side street after another. At intervals Jerry nervously checked his pockets, making sure that his theater tickets and his watch were still secure.

  He wondered hopefully if Pilgrim might be looking for a chance to contact him as well. There was still an enormous amount of information that Jerry needed for tonight but did not have. He might have to be alone for Pilgrim to be able to get through… there was no use worrying about it.

  Mose led him up an alley near Tenth Street, right past the rear of Ford's Theater. Jerry observed this without surprise. There were black-inhabited shacks here; Jerry could deduce the color of the inhabitants before he saw them, from the mere intensity of the squalor.

  Mose came to a stop in front of one shack, of a size that would have made an ample children's play-hut back in twentieth-century suburban Illinois. The youth took a quick look around then tapped on the unpainted wall beside the heavy curtain that did duty as a front door. A moment later he stuck his head inside, and Jerry heard words exchanged. A moment after that, he was bidden to enter.

  The interior was a single dirt-floored room with a back doorway that opened onto a shallow closet or shed. The only light entered through a single small translucent window of what Jerry supposed might be oiled paper. Two or three small children were underfoot; at the potbellied stove in one corner a black woman of indeterminate age, shabby and barefoot, her hair tied up in a kerchief like that of Scarlett O'Hara's Mammy, turned to the visitor a face stoic in its wrinkles.

  Mose and the woman—Jerry could not tell if she was his mother, or what—conversed briefly. Jerry thought he could catch an English word at intervals, but most of the dialogue, at least to his perception, was truly in some other language.

  Presently Mose turned back to him. "You can stay here, Mistah Lockwood. For a few hours anyway. I shall be back when it gets dark, if not before."

  "Thanks. If you see Colleen—well, she will be safer if she does not know where I am."

  Mose looked troubled, but he nodded.

  "Thank you for your help, Mose. This will be a very great help to me indeed."

  The youth, turned suddenly inarticulate, nodded again. Then he was gone.

  Jerry retreated into the hut, and sat down on one end of the only bed; he couldn't see anything else to sit on, except a small table that was fully occupied at the moment, with pots and pans that looked as if they might have been salvaged from a scrap pile. He smiled tentatively at the woman, and tried to speak to her, but she remained deadpan silent.

  Time passed. Eventually slow footsteps were heard outside the curtain, which was pushed back. The woman hurried to greet the new arrival, a graying man as ageless as herself who was carrying a rusty shovel. The new arrival was not as poker-faced as she, and his expression on seeing Jerry went through a whole actor's repertory of responses.

  The two held conversation in what sounded to Jerry like the same dialect used by the woman and Mose. At length the graying man put down his shovel and went out. He returned in a few minutes, bringing water in a battered bucket, and offered Jerry a dipperful.

  "Thank you." Jerry reached for the dipper, while his host and hostess smiled and nodded welcome. Jerry was thirsty, and the water tasted good—though the look of the pail and dipper suggested the possibility of typhoid. That, thought Jerry, would probably be among the least of his problems, even if he caught it. Meanwhile the man had produced a chair from somewhere and invited the guest to sit in it. There seemed to be a general reluctance on the part of the householders to speak to him at all; it was hard for Jerry to believe they could not manage something close to white folks' English if they tried. But now that he was here, and his presence had been acknowledged by the offering of water, they seemed to prefer to ignore him. Not a bad attitude, Jerry realized on second thought, to take with regard to a guest who must be somehow involved in intelligence work. Only the tiny children, grandchildren here probably, two of them entirely naked except for shirts that had once been cloth bags, interrupted their play now and then to stare at him with frank curiosity. At last he had to smile at them; and felt in his pockets, only to be reminded that his only money was the small amount remaining from what Colleen had given him. Only a little more than two dollars, and he might encounter some unforeseen expense in the five hours remaining before show time. Still he decided that he could spare a penny for each child.

  Whatever the reason for the shy silence of the adults, he was willing to respect it. Sitting in the hard chair, he took out Pilgrim's watch and flipped the lid—a quarter after three. Jerry imagined the ticking was getting louder. The air in the hut was beginning to turn oppressively close. Little light and air came in through the innumerable crevices in the walls. His left arm was beginning to ache again.

  Soon the woman began cooking something on the stove, boiling potatoes with some kind of greens—the man, coming back into the shack from one of his trips outside, offered Jerry a plate, but he turned it down with thanks, thinking from the looks of the cookpot that he had eaten more for lunch than these people were likely to get today altogether. He drank another dipper of water, and asked his host about an outhouse. Reminding Jerry with a grim look that he was supposed to be in hiding, the old man brought him a chipped chamber pot, and pointed him through the back door into the attached shed.

  Between distractions, Jerry did the best he could to lay his plans for the evening. He decided that a few minutes before eight o'clock, when he judged a more or less steady flow of people would be arriving for the play, he would slip down the alley to Tenth Street, go to the door of the theater, present his ticket as inconspicuously as possible, and walk in. He could think of no reason why anyone should be looking for him at Ford's, unless Pilgrim had come up with another nasty surprise for him. And somehow the day passed. At a quarter to seven by Jerry's watch the sun was setting.

  The curtain was supposed to go up at eight on Our American Cousin. A few minutes before that time, Jerry said quiet thanks to his hosts and eased out of his hiding place. Trying his best to be inconspicuous, he made his way among the shanties, through the alley, and out onto Tenth Street. Men equipped with ladders, and long candles shielded in metal cans, were going about lighting the streetlamps. Near the theater there was, as he had hoped, already a crowd, with wagons and carriages drawing up in the street, and people walking toward the theater.

  Jerry had a two-days growth of beard, and his clothes, except for the coat, itself unchanged since Thursday morning, were neither neat nor clean. Still the standards of the time were not that demanding, and he thought he could get by. As he walked toward Ford's, trying to appear the casual theatergoer, he did his best to confront his situation realistically.

  On the plus side, Booth would not expect anyone to know his purpose. And Jerry was
armed with Pilgrim's exotic hardware, whatever that might prove to be worth. On the minus side… well, on the minus side was just about everything else.

  First, there was his lack of knowledge. Not only about the timing of the attack, but about other aspects of the situation as well, such as the possible presence of Booth's confederates in the theater or just outside.

  And what about General Grant? The newspaper had said that Grant was going to be here too. That certainly ought to draw a crowd; no one in the city had seen that much of Grant, while the President was a semi-familiar face.

  No one interfered with Jerry as he approached the theater. Baker's people had missed the boat again, it would appear, and so had Colleen Monahan's, if indeed she had any agents beside Mose still in the field. Quite likely, Jerry supposed, she was by now herself in a woman's cell somewhere. Having to do that to her hurt him more than he thought it would, but there had been no help for it if he was to have any chance at all.

  With a stream of other playgoers Jerry passed into the theater and through the busy lobby. The whole interior of the building was now well-lighted, a clean and well-decorated place.

  As Jerry climbed the stairs to the dress circle, where his two seats were in row D, the farthest front. The seats throughout the auditorium were filling rapidly. Horns and fiddles were making the usual preliminary sounds; the theater lacked an orchestra pit, and musicians were occupying the space directly in front of the stage.

  Jerry settled himself in one of his two seats. From here, now that the lights were on, he had an excellent view of the inconspicuous white door through which Booth intended to pass to reach the Presidential box. The only other way to get in would seem to be by the use of a ladder, climbing from the stage itself, and Jerry thought he could dismiss any such scheme as that.

  There was no doubt as to where the Lincoln party would be. The arched openings of the double box seat at Jerry's upper right had now been decorated with thickly draped red, white and blue bunting and a picture of George Washington. Jerry supposed that by this time the fancy chairs mentioned by Raybold had been moved into the box as well.

  But there was no way for an occupant of Jerry's seat, or of almost any other in the theater, to get a good look into the Presidential box. Leaning over the vacant chair to his right, he asked his neighbor in that direction, a stout, bureaucratic-looking gentleman: "Have the President and General Grant arrived yet?"

  Maybe the man was a judge; he gave the question serious thought. "No sir, I don't believe so."

  Though neither President nor General had yet appeared by eight o'clock, the houselights dimmed in unison quite punctually. Jerry realized that the gas supply for the lights must be under some central control.

  He was aware, a minute later, of the curtain going up, and of actors appearing on the stage. But after that he was barely conscious of what they might be doing there. The President was late. Was that usual? Or was history already twisted out of shape? Had he, Jerry, done something already that was going to wreck the world? Had his strange behavior finally worried someone, someone important enough to take precautions to protect the President? He, Jerry, was going to be trapped here in this dreary time for the rest of his life—probably only a few years of miserable existence. Or was it possible—

  From time to time the laughter of his fellow playgoers rose and fell around him, distracting him from his worries, so that he supposed the show was meant to be a comedy. Its characters had names like Asa Trenchard, Mrs. Mountchessington, Lord Dundreary, and Florence Trenchard—that part was played by Laura Keene. Jerry could tell by the applause when she first appeared.

  Jerry pulled out Pilgrim's watch but failed to register the time before his nervous hand had put the watch away. Then he pulled the timepiece out to look at it again.

  It was almost eight-thirty when Jerry heard a sharp murmur run through the audience. Heads were turning. He looked up and saw Abraham Lincoln, six feet four and wearing a tall stovepipe hat, walking almost directly toward him along the aisle that ran from the stairs to the Presidential box. A small party of people followed the President in single file. First came a short man in shabby civilian clothes, who looked as if he was in doubt as to whether he ought to hurry ahead of Lincoln or not. That could not possibly be General Grant. Was history slipping? Jerry couldn't worry about it; he could only press ahead.

  After the shabby man came a woman Jerry supposed had to be Mrs. Lincoln in a low-cut gown, looking younger and more attractive than Jerry had for some reason expected her to be. Following the President's wife came a youthful couple Jerry did not recognize, obviously aglow with the excitement of a very special occasion. And bringing up the rear, a male attendant carried what looked like a folded shawl or robe.

  Behind Jerry a man's voice whispered to a companion: "Looks like Grant couldn't make it. Who are they? The younger couple?"

  "Why, that's Clara Harris, the senator's daughter. Her escort is a Major Rathbone, I believe." The young man was in civilian clothes.

  The tall figure of the President passed right in front of Jerry, almost within arm's length, plodding on with a peculiar, flat-footed gait, huge hands swinging on long arms, nodding and smiling to right and left in acknowledgement of the growing applause. Now he removed his tall hat, carrying it in his right hand, and he waved it to and fro in a kind of continuous salute. Everyone in the theater was standing now. The band had struck up Hail to the Chief.

  On stage, one of the actresses who was playing the part of a semi-invalid had just said something about her need to avoid drafts. "Do not be alarmed," ad-libbed the young man playing opposite. "For there is no more draft!" The applause in the theater built briefly to almost deafening volume.

  The President had now arrived at the white door, which someone was holding open for him. In a moment his entire party had followed him through, and the door was closed again. In a matter of seconds the hesitant plainclothes attendant—if he was a bodyguard, Jerry was not impressed—emerged from the white door again, and took his seat beside it, in a small chair with his back to the box seats, facing the rest of the audience.

  Booth, or anyone else who wanted to approach Lincoln, was evidently going to have to get past that guard. Using violence to do so, thought Jerry, would be sure to alert everyone else in the theater before the assassin—or Jerry—could get close enough to the chosen victim to do anything effective.

  And he, Jerry, was going to have to get past that guard post somehow. Since his tour of the theater on Wednesday had entertained no hope of being able to sneak in early and lie concealed until the proper moment right in the box, or in the inner passage. There simply was no place in there for anyone to hide, and anyway the guard tonight had presumably inspected the site before Lincoln and his party settled in.

  Now the white door was opening again, and Jerry stared as someone else came out. It was the attendant who had been carrying the shawl or blanket. Empty-handed now, the man moved toward the stairs and vanished in the direction of the lobby.

  The play went on, and people laughed at it. Jerry sat on the edge of his seat, watching the door and the guard, and waiting. John Wilkes Booth was going to appear from somewhere tonight, sooner or later, as sure as fate itself, and make his move. Unless history had already been derailed, and Jerry was already doomed to die before the invention of the automobile. No, he couldn't accept that. Booth would come. But exactly how and when…

  And then a familiar form was walking along the aisle toward him. But it wasn't Booth. Colleen Monahan, elegantly dressed for the theater, smiled at Jerry and took the seat beside him as confidently as if he had been saving it for her all along.

  "This seat is not taken, is it, sir?" she whispered politely. Back deep in her brown eyes an Irish harpy danced, waiting her turn to come forward.

  "It is taken," Jerry whispered back desperately.

  "Indeed sir, it is now. By me." And Colleen gave every appearance of settling in with pleasure to watch the play.

  NINETEEN


  And what could Jerry do about it? Absolutely nothing. He sat there holding his tall hat in his lap, his young lady companion beside him, her attention brightly on the stage as if nothing more momentous than this play had ever entered her silly head. It was eight-forty now. And it seemed miraculous to Jerry that the play should still be going on, the performers calling out their lines as confidently as if their world itself was in no danger of having the curtain rung down in the middle of this act, the parts of all the actors on its stage drastically rewritten. As if—

  There was a burst of laughter, somewhat louder than usual, from the audience. Abruptly the shabby guard shifted in his seat beside the white door, then arose briefly from his chair to peer around the edge of the wall that otherwise prevented him from seeing the stage. He gave the impression of regretting more and more being stuck in a place from which he was unable to see the show. But after a moment he resumed his seat.

  Beside Jerry, Colleen, her eyes bright, her lips smiling, was still watching the show, as if she had no other care in the world but this.

  About ten more minutes passed. Then the guard—looking at that man closely now, Jerry would not have wanted to rely on him for anything—repeated his earlier performance, getting up to glance fleetingly at the stage once more, then resuming his seat.

  Eight fifty-five. The guard got up unhurriedly out of his chair, stretched with his arms over his head, put on his hat, and with one more glance in the direction of the stage—the play seemed, after all, not such a big attraction—walked leisurely out of the auditorium.

  Lincoln, as far as Jerry could see, had now been left totally unguarded.

  So that's how it works. The guard is in on the plot, thought Jerry. At least that meant one possible difficulty had been removed for Jerry himself. His legs were quivering now from the long tension, his muscles on the verge of hurling him from his chair. Somehow he forced his body to relax.