Death Shall Overcome

by Emma Lathen

  “Me neither,” he said with a half-smile. “But I do have to go in today. No, it isn’t just heroics. There’s something important I’ve got to do at the office.”

  20 miles away from the luxurious environs of Katonah, a variant of this scene was being enacted in Greenwich.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go in today,” said Mrs. Dean Caldwell, automatically fluttering her eyelashes while at the same time efficiently shoveling oatmeal into her younger son’s mouth.

  “Now, Varena,” Caldwell replied. Hysterical youth though he might be in the office, in his own home he was very much the paterfamilias if not the Old Massa. In fact, a good deal of trouble would have been avoided had the rest of the world accorded him the respect and admiration that Varena did. There were drawbacks to this role: Dean Caldwell was still wondering how to tell Varena that he was now a member of the Great Army of the Unemployed.

  “I just get so worried, Dean honey,” she continued, carefully wiping her son’s chin. “And, young Dean, you finish your toast!”

  Old Dean looked around his kingdom, recalled Robert E. Lee’s moving observation about his footsteps guiding the young and, persistent in error, attempted something equally memorable.

  “A lot of colored rabble can’t make trouble for a Caldwell,” he declared with quiet dignity. He remained pleased with the apothegm until young Dean spoke up.

  “Then what can, Dad?”

  The accent of Greenwich, Connecticut and the spirit of dispassionate inquiry were alike offensive to Caldwell.

  Quickly, his wife said, “Now that’s enough from you, young man!”

  “Gee, what’d I say?”

  Only after an ungenteel wrangle could Dean Caldwell resume the subject.

  “. . . and besides, Varena. I have to go in today. I’ve . . . got something important to do.”

  Four miles away, Mrs. McCullough called to her husband, who was rummaging through the closet for his coat.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go in today.”

  “Oh, the March will be orderly,” he murmured.

  Julia did not hear him. Nor, it developed, was she concerned about his well-being. She rarely was. “The storage people are coming for the crates. Then I promised the real estate people that I’d get an estimate on that garage door, and if that isn’t enough, I’ve got to have lunch with Dot Pervin, and you know what that means! She’ll be furious about our selling the house . . .”

  “I’ve got something important to do at the office,” McCullough said.

  Julia was still talking when he left.

  And as the clock crawled on, the access routes to Manhattan began to swell, to choke and to jam with the millions of toilers in that vineyard. They came by the IRT and the BMT, by the Independent and the Hudson & Manhattan tubes, by the Long Island Railroad and the New York, New Haven & Hartford. They came on roads, through tunnels, and over bridges, and in their midst they floated thousands, coming for another reason.

  At Union Square, one of the preliminary rallying points, the last of the Connecticut buses had arrived by eight o’clock.

  “You’re in the group over there,” shouted a young Black man, hurrying up and consulting a master plan on his clipboard. “They’ve already got your banners.”

  300 people started moving toward the standard:

  CONNECTICUT CASH WANTS CONFIDENCE IN WALL STREET

  They passed the Washington, D.C., representatives, already milling around in place.

  CAPITOL CASH FOR CAPITAL WITHOUT COLOR

  Having arrived on the five-thirty Pennsy, Washington, D.C., was raring to go, and scornful of late-arriving Connecticut.

  “C’mon, let’s get this show moving!” shouted one of its members, owner of a substantial amount of IBM.

  His exhortation was drowned out by the roar of three large open trucks that came lumbering in and ground to a noisy halt. Approximately 75 Black people began clambering down.

  “Is that the best that Delaware could do? I mean, trucks?” asked the assistant director for New Haven; he was still smarting from D.C.’s scorn.

  “Delaware!” the young man with the clipboard shouted. “Oh, good! We were afraid that breakdown with your bus might have held you up. You’re over there . . .”

  He gestured to a distant placard:

  DELAWARE WANTS COLOR-BLIND DIVIDENDS

  “Oh, I don’t like that . . .”

  “Now’s no time . . .”

  “ATTENTION!” boomed an authoritative voice through a megaphone. “We’re about ready to get started!”

  A chorus of cheers rose from the ranks.

  “. . . we’re picking up the New York representatives at our rendezvous point on our way downtown . . .”

  Cheers, laughter, cries of “Hurray for New York!”

  “Now, before we get started . . .”

  “C’mon let’s go, go, go!” This was a shout from Delaware. The delegation, though small, was spirited.

  “ATTENTION! Now, I just want to review some last minute reminders . . .”

  “We know, we know . . .”

  “First, keep together while we’re at Washington Square. There’ll be a lot of students, and we don’t want to be separated. That’s our official starting point, and each state will be notified of its position in the lineup. Second, remember the route. Down Broadway, over to Foley Square, through City Hall Park and then right on down to Wall Street. And last, keep in ranks until we get down to the Exchange itself, Orderly ranks. The police will be lining the route so there probably won’t be any trouble, but if anybody starts anything, it’s up to you to stop it as fast as possible.”

  The assorted stock and bondholders listening to him nodded vigorous agreement, but there were faint catcalls from a small clutch of white folk singers who, though totally devoid of any investment in American business, were bringing up the rear. They, frankly, were itching to encounter the American Nazi Party; they were folk singers second, the University of New Hampshire football team second squad first.

  “Fine. Now, if anybody feels faint, or gets overcome by the heat . . .”

  Since it was a clear, bitterly cold morning that promised to become a clear, sunny, and cold November day, this caused a Cleveland, Ohio, dentist to turn to his neighbor, a teacher from Philadelphia.

  “What’s he talking about?”

  “He learned the ropes at the March on Washington,” the teacher explained knowledgeably. “I’ll bet he doesn’t realize that this is a roast beef crowd. That’s the trouble with these specialists.”

  He was right.

  “Red Cross stations are at Washington Square, City Hall and Trinity Church,” said the speaker. “Now what else? . . . oh yes! Lunch at Battery Park after the March. No chicken, egg or tuna sandwiches . . .”

  The assemblage had already been instructed to the point of exhaustion. Moreover, it possessed mimeographed sheets presenting essentials both more clearly and in greater detail than the speaker. It stirred restively.

  Even though he was not particularly sensitive, and a man who makes a career directing demonstrations cannot afford to be too sensitive, the speaker registered this reaction.

  “OK. That’s all. I just want to tell you that there will be over 10,000 of us marching . . .”

  Deafening cheers!

  “And I’ve just received news that we’re not alone. Our friends in Paris are staging a sympathy sit-in at the Bourse. The eyes of the world are on us!”

  On signal, the band struck up “Marching through Georgia.” Eagerly the ranks surged forward.

  At eight-thirty on the dot, John Putnam Thatcher was straggling into Centre Street Police Headquarters against a similar eager surge, this time, blue-coated, determined policemen charged with the onerous task of keeping order on Wall Street.

  “Without anything which could, under any circumstances, be construed as brutality, by anybody!” the commissioner had said emotionally, thus contributing to the general thanklessness of police chores.

  The
powerful wave of blue had wedged Thatcher into a corner when suddenly a flashbulb exploded at him.

  “New York Times!” shouted a voice above the others. “What are you doing here, Mr. Thatcher?”

  “I have nothing to say,” he barked, jamming himself forward as a circle of newsmen turned their attention from the police to him.

  “Is the Sloan expecting trouble?”

  “Why are you here today?”

  “Nothing to say!’ Thatcher shouted.

  “Can we quote you?”

  Thatcher turned to snarl, and in so doing caught sight of a disheveled Stanton Carruthers.

  “John!”

  “Not a word here,” said Thatcher, indicating the New York Times, busy demonstrating its superiority by abandoning the police and sticking with a vice-president from the Sloan.

  “Certainly not!” said Carruthers, offended.

  A few low words with the desk sergeant told them what they wanted to know.

  Not until they had driven off the Times and were alone in the dusty second-floor corridor, did Thatcher discover why Nathaniel Schuyler had abdicated in favor of Stanton Carruthers.

  “It was Min Schuyler. She got the whole story out of Nat when he got home and decided that it wouldn’t do to have him come down here. She said,” Carruthers quoted carefully, “that the excitement might harm his health.”

  Thatcher snorted.

  A full-scale riot wouldn’t disagree with leathery old Schuyler. What Min really meant was obvious; she didn’t want a Schuyler mixed up with the whole distasteful affair. He personally wished that a Thatcher weren’t mixed up with it. And a fat lot of good that was doing him.

  “. . . so I came along to help,” said Carruthers. “Once we lay this information before them, we can let the police . . . er . . . do their disagreeable duty, and . . .”

  “Get back to our own business,” Thatcher finished for him.

  “Certainly not. We’ll join Hugh Waymark at the Exchange.”

  At first this program moved smoothly. It took but 10 minutes to lay certain financial facts before the poker-faced individual behind the desk. Scrupulously, Thatcher simply outlined technical information, without once mentioning murder or Arthur Foote.

  “We wondered about him. Everything was clear, except the motive,” the policeman said, after giving him a long hard look. He spoke slowly, but he was pressing buttons in his intercom. He snapped orders into it. “And now you’ve given us the motive. We’ll pick him up before he gets into the building,” he said.

  And that, it appeared, was that. After the officer hurried out, both Thatcher and Carruthers delayed leaving; it is no little thing to deliver up a murderer.

  “Well, we’d better get over to the Exchange,” said Thatcher, recovering.

  It was precisely 30 minutes later that he first began to wonder if he had indeed delivered up a murderer.

  He and Carruthers were still on the fringes of City Hall Park, trying to battle their way down Park Row. The sidewalks were solid with humanity, not the inadvertent solidity of men and women hurrying from different directions to a standstill, but the contented motionless solidity of viewers and spectators. The narrow streets were given over to official vehicles; there were squad cars, ambulances, motorcycles, two Red Cross mobile units, three television trailers, several radio transmitter cars, a Civil Defense truck and—for no reason that John Thatcher could dredge up, a Brinks armored car.

  Over the talk, the occasional mysterious noise of officials communicating with each other, and the roar of the motorcycles, the beat of a band was distantly audible. A brass band. A marching band.

  By strenuous exertions, Thatcher advanced about six paces.

  “We made a mistake,” he said to Carruthers.

  “What was that . . . oh, sorry. Yes, Madam, I am truly sorry that I trod on your foot . . . good heavens! What did you say, Thatcher?”

  “We made a mistake,” Thatcher declared. “The police won’t be able to get to Schuyler & Schuyler in time. When he sees that those files are gone, well, he’ll know . . .”

  His hat knocked rakishly over one eye, Carruthers pointed out that giving the police certain financial information which, incidentally, enabled them to identify a murderer was really the extent of their duties. Apprehension of the miscreant today, or in the near future, was a police problem.

  “. . . and it doesn’t concern us, at all, thank God . . . ouch!” In a savage undertone he continued, “I wish you would tell me why that woman needs an umbrella on the finest day in weeks.”

  His grumbling was submerged by a clash of cymbals as the CASH band strutted by, on the move again, followed by the stern leaders of the movement, including Richard Simpson and Mrs. Crane, Thatcher saw over intervening heads. Mrs. Crane was in precise step with the music. Simpson, all too predictably, was not.

  Next came a uniformed group representing veterans who were presumably also stockholders; then a contingent of school-children; then, as far as the eye could see, row upon row of other marchers.

  “We’ve got to get to the Exchange before they do.”

  With judicious use of the elbow and aided by a general seepage southward, they managed to inch themselves through the crush while CASH members from 50 states, so it seemed, strode by in stately array on Lower Broadway, which was being kept clear for this purpose by at least four hundred policemen. Across the street, far behind the police lines, Thatcher could see a small group of pickets. They had no more chance of disturbing the parade than did the distant but also hostile governor of Mississippi. Vin McCullough had assured his wife that the March would be orderly, and it was.

  The trouble period, however, was still ahead, at the technical terminus of the March where 10,000 marchers would be assembled, however peaceably, before the New York Stock Exchange, an area definitely not designed to accommodate such gatherings.

  Would Richard Simpson be able to resist the temptation to say a few words? Thatcher very much doubted it, although the police had expressly forbidden any speeches before Battery Park.

  Yet, under the circumstances, what would the police be able to do?

  And, more germane to John Thatcher’s responsibilities, what would the Stock Exchange do?

  “Sorry, I have to get through,” he said frigidly to a stenographer who was audibly wondering who he thought he was, shoving that way.

  Their painful voyage to the Stock Exchange was accompanied by other freely voiced criticisms. Accordingly, neither Thatcher nor Carruthers was feeling particularly peaceable or even orderly when they reached the first of 20 concentric semicircles of security forces well ahead of the March.

  “My God, they’re not planning a siege!” Thatcher shouted in exasperation to an obtuse and unyielding member of the Exchange’s own guards. Fortunately, at this moment, Hugh Waymark emerged.

  “Let ’em through, Powers,” he ordered. “Good man, Powers,” he continued, dropping his voice. “I’ve deployed only veterans out there. Come on in . . .”

  With the density outside approaching disaster proportions, Thatcher was happy to do so.

  Hugh Waymark had been assigned or had assumed the military precautions at the Stock Exchange. Within the building, Thatcher discovered, somebody else had decreed that it was to be business as usual.

  Somebody, Thatcher decided, following Waymark upstairs, without much horse sense.

  “Volume’s way down,” Waymark remarked over his shoulder.

  Thatcher glanced into the pit; there were traders and specialists as usual, if perceptibly fewer; there were the familiar druggists’ jackets. But business? No. This site of so many frenzied scenes, normally abuzz with men rushing in and out, with buy or sell orders falling like snow onto the Floor, was a study in lethargy.

  “How’s Vita Cola?” he asked.

  “They haven’t opened yet . . . what is it?”

  For Stanton Carruthers had suddenly stepped forward to grip Waymark’s arm, halting him.

  “Look!”

 
Following his pointed finger, they saw a member of the New York Stock Exchange stroll onto the Floor.

  “Why not?” Waymark asked curiously.

  “Because he’s a murderer, that’s why!” Thatcher said grimly. He had been right. One look at the looted office had been enough to sound the murderer’s alarm. He had fled—into a street swarming with police. And now—here.

  Hugh Waymark instantly became the leader of a posse. “We’ll just go down . . .”

  Stanton Carruthers kept his eyes fixed on the trim figure. “He’s behaving quite normally,” he said. “Possibly he doesn’t know the police are after him.”

  “I doubt that, Stan,” said Thatcher.

  ‘I do too,” said Carruthers. “And, Hugh, this man is a murderer. This is police business.”

  Waymark, looking mulish, launched into protest but Thatcher was thinking rapidly.

  “There’s no use calling the police,” he said, turning to return to the stairway. “If their lines aren’t jammed, ours certainly will be. The thing to do is to get some of those men outside.”

  “I’ll do it!” Hugh Waymark cried, bounding athletically ahead, briefly so transfigured that he forgot one of his favorite possessions, his tricky heart.

  With resignation, Thatcher watched him sprint ahead. This, as he was subsequently quite ready to concede, was one of the most serious errors he had ever committed.

  Waymark reached the heavily guarded entrance just as the last of the March on Wall Street had snaked 10,000 members of CASH, actually 8,495, onto New Street. Richard Simpson had assumed a commanding position in the shadow of the Stock Exchange’s angled brass doorway, and was now turning to face his followers.

  Police, on the one hand unwilling to let him flout the law, and on the other hand extremely sensitive to the delicacy of the whole situation, were trying to close in on Simpson, and move him off, without actually touching him. Just as they began their deliberate stalk, Simpson seized his advantage; flinging his arms wide, he bellowed:

  “We demand to be heard! We must talk to the Board of Governors! About rights for Edward Parry!”

  A huge roar went up from the multitude, including those on the steps of the Treasury Building, those around the corner on Broad Street and those hanging out of every window in the district.