Time Out of Mind

by John R. Maxim

  “It's me and some friends. Is Beckwith in there with you?”

  “He's down the cellar. They got a bleedin' dungeon here just like bleedin' Newgate.”

  The deputy swung his shotgun onto Billy O'Gorman's chest. Sullivan, who had drifted to one side in apparent disinterest, made a lightning slash at the shotgun's breech, his little finger jamming under the twin hammers, then snatched away the weapon as the hammers slammed down harmlessly. Within the same instant, Billy O'Gorman's knife came up under the younger deputy's chin as Teddy's hand snaked forward to relieve him of his weapon.

  Sullivan glowered at the man whose shotgun hammers still pinched his little finger. “Did you hear who I said I was just before? Did you hear me say I was champion of the world?”

  “You'll be champion of Sing Sing if you don't give back that gun. Anyways, you're a damned liar. You're both too small and too sober to be John L. Sullivan.”

  “Hmmm.... Gentlemen ...” Teddy stepped forward but Sullivan waved him off.

  Sullivan recocked the shotgun and offered it back to the deputy. “That's a champion's speed that stopped those hammers.” He leaned his face close into the other man's. “Would you like to try me again? Except this time, by God, I'll show you a champion's right fist as well.”

  “I'll take his keys first if you don't mind.” Teddy reached for a ring on the deputy's belt.

  “Won't do you no good for the cellar. The chief constable carries those and right now he's fishin' for shad up by Poughkeepsie.”

  “You've kept the man in a basement cell for two weeks?” Roosevelt asked quietly as he opened the cell block door. “We're told he was hurt. Has he received any care?”

  “This ain't my doin'.”

  “Answer my question, sir.”

  “He gets fed. Most days he eats what we push through the trap.”

  “When did you last see him?” Teddy handed the keys to O'Gorman, who disappeared toward Larry Donovan's cell.

  “When they toted him in here.”

  Teddy reached for the deputy's arm with a gentleness that brought a scowl to Sullivan's face. “Come. Show me the way to the cellar,” he said. John Flood did not scowl. He knew what the soft voice meant. He knew that Teddy's touch would not long be gentle.

  Charley Murtree groaned to his feet at the sound of the door chime. The color around ,his left eye had faded to a light mustard shade and the swelling had gone down around the cuts on his knuckles, but his ribs would need two more weeks before he could hope for a decent night's sleep on them. Still, he was better off than old Calicoon. Calicoon, he got rocked back into one of them hot water kettles and it just rolled over on him like a fat lady on a rope bunk. Never heard Calicoon make so many different sounds in his whole life.

  Murtree shuffled to a bay window and peered out at the two men who waited at Jay Gould's front door. Just two. Both of them dressed proper. All four of their hands showing. The little one carrying what looked like a coil of chain. He glanced at the brougham they'd arrived in. Weren't no station hack, that's for sure. A rich man's carriage. Had a curly little gold R on the side but no livery on the driver. They're probably all right. That little one looks awful familiar. Roosevelt. That's who it is. It's that Roosevelt feller. And the other one—damn ... damn if he ain't a ringer for.... naw ... naw, it couldn't be.

  He picked up his Winchester and checked that a round was chambered before setting the hammer on half cock. That done, he approached the front door and shifted the rifle into his left hand so that the door would conceal it when opened.

  “Good afternoon, sirs.” He raised a hand, indicating that they should remain outside the threshold. “Would you say your business, please.”

  Teddy held out the coil of chain. “Give this to Mr. Gould, if you will, and tell him that Mr. Theodore Roosevelt would like five minutes of his time.”

  “He ain't in today, sir. If you want to leave that thing and your card, I'll see he gets ‘em.”

  “He is in residence today, is he not?”

  “Maybe.” Charley Murtree never liked this part. A man's in or he ain't. “The word I have is he ain't receivin' for anything short of the second comin' and that's where it sits.”

  “This manacle is from the Ardsley jail. He may change his mind when he notices it's empty.”

  Charley understood. One way or another they busted out that Tilden feller. Couldn't say he was sorry, but it wouldn't brighten Mr. Gould's day any. “Like I said, I'll give it to him soon as he decides he's here. Ain't no polite way to do this but I got to close the door on you now.”

  Sullivan, who had been eyeing this man oddly, stepped past Teddy Roosevelt and thrust his face forward. “Do you know who I am, sir?”

  Feller sure did look like John L. Sullivan. Except... ”I keep repeatin' myself If you ain't Jesus, you ain't on the list.”

  ”I am not Jesus,” the champion snarled, “and I am not the king of England, but I am no more accustomed to having doors closed on me than they are. I am John L. Sullivan and I am the heavyweight champion of the world.”

  “Damn.” Murtree smiled. ”I would have thunk you'd be bigger.”

  It wasn't that Murtree saw the punch coming because he never did. But someplace in there, between saying what he did and seeing that front door zooming away from him like the view off the back of a train, and feeling the floor bounce under him, the little bit of daylight left in Charley Murtree's brain told him he'd picked exactly the wrong thing to say. He never would figure out why.

  Teddy Roosevelt threw the leg manacles on Jay Gould's library desk, scarring it badly. Gould barely looked up. He lifted the chains onto a leather desk mat and touched his fingers sadly to the wounds they had made.

  “It would seem, Mr. Roosevelt, that you and Mr. Beckwith both take pleasure in destroying beautiful things. He wrecked my greenhouse, you know.”

  Roosevelt glanced back at Sullivan, who waited just outside the library door, and nodded. Sullivan quietly closed it and, arms folded, took a sentry's position outside. From where he stood he could see Billy O'Gorman through a tall, leaded window. O'Gorman remained on the driver's seat of the brougham, the deputy's shotgun hidden beneath the duster he'd borrowed from Teddy's driver.

  “Whatever he's done, whatever you've done, Gould, it ends today.”

  Gould's eyebrows shot up. “Are you quite serious, sir?”

  “Dead serious, I promise you.”

  Jay Gould fingered the chains. “Do you mind my asking how you accomplished this? I dare say no judge in the county would have written a release order without consulting me.”

  “We kicked in the door. Some friends and I.”

  “But not the door of the isolation cell, I think. My question, sir, is not asked without admiration.”

  “We were fortunate in that another prisoner was gifted in the locksmith's art.”

  Gould nodded slowly. “The one who came by the jail this morning. Asking questions. You do move with vigor, don't you, Mr. Roosevelt. Can I assume that Mr. Murtree has been incapacitated by that bruiser outside my library door?”

  “You can.” Roosevelt noticed the bell cord behind Gould's right shoulder. “The man who bested him is another of Tilden's friends who also happens to be the heavy-weight boxing champion of the world. I tell you this so that in all fairness you will not find your man deficient. Another of Tilden's friends waits on my carriage with a shotgun. I tell you this lest you endanger more of your people by pulling that cord before we have completed our business.”

  “What business is that, sir?”

  ”I told you. This ends today.”

  Jay Gould gazed at Roosevelt in a long look of amused disbelief. He rubbed his eyes, then clasped his hands and rested his chin upon them. “Let me test my grasp of this situation, sir. A member of the New York State Legislature, in the company of various hoodlums, has broken into a proper jail and released two prisoners who were in the custody of legally constituted authority. From the look of your knuckles, I gather there was a
physical assault as well.”

  Roosevelt said nothing. But he had, true enough, asked to be left alone with the deputy once he saw Tilden's desperate condition. He resisted an urge to check his watch. John Flood and the safecracker Donovan should have him over the county line by now and within an hour of Bellevue Hospital.

  “You then come to my house, you add trespassing and another assault to your growing list of indictable offenses. I suspect that threatening comes next and extortion not far behind. And you tell me that all this ends today as if by a mere act of your aristocratic will.”

  “Add theft, Mr. Gould. I stole the jail's log.”

  “The jail's log,” Gould repeated.

  “The one that records arrests and incarcerations, sir. I could find no entry of any kind for Mr. Beckwith. Or for the man arrested this morning, for that matter. I would recommend that you spend a quiet hour one day reading the Constitution of the United States except that I think I prefer your ignorance of it.”

  “Mr. Beckwith was awaiting my decision on how I would prosecute the matter.”

  “Your decision.” Roosevelt brought both fists down upon the desk. “This is a nation of laws, you arrogant ass. You detained Tilden Beckwith illegally on at least three particulars. That was not an arrest, sir. That was a kidnapping.”

  “That rather depends,” Gould said dryly, “on whose judge hears the argument, does it not, Mr. Roosevelt.”

  Teddy closed his eyes. ”I bring you three messages, sir. The first is from Tilden. You will be relieved to know that he has no intention of prosecuting you on the charge of kidnapping.”

  “That does lift a great weight from my heart.”

  “Tilden, in fact, invites you to do your worst as far as he himself is concerned. But if you in any way harm Mrs. Corbin or her son, Jonathan, or if they are even made sorrowful by any act that is traceable to you, or if harm or sorrow come to them through any unknown agency or suspicious accident, Tilden will be left with nothing but the satisfaction of putting a bullet between your eyes.”

  Gould answered with only a weary smile. A bullet. How many times had he heard such a threat. How many hundreds of times.

  Teddy returned the smile, acknowledging Gould as if saying, I know, the delirious ravings of a sick and beaten man. A man with no heart for such an act no matter how the cards were played.

  “In all candor, Mr. Gould, I find myself wanting to share your skepticism. There is, however, the second message. It comes from a rather disreputable fellow who, for reasons unknown to me, has chosen to admire Tilden greatly. I can tell you that he has been arrested six times on suspicion of murder and eleven times on a charge of atrocious assault, the specific atrocity being the gouging of human eyes. He intends to have yours as well, sir. I'm afraid he intends to have them regardless of the outcome of this interview.”

  “Would that be the same fellow who called upon Colonel Mann a year or two ago? If it is, you might tell him that threats, like sauces, carry greater effect when used sparingly.”

  Teddy had resolved that he would not pass on the second part of Billy O'Gorman's threat. That what happens to Tilden's own will happen to Jay Gould's own as well. That Jay Gould's wife and children have eyes as well. Teddy kept that resolution with more difficulty than he'd expected.

  “The third message, sir, is from me.” Roosevelt leaned forward until his face was no more than a foot from Gould's. “Do any further harm to Tilden Beckwith or to those dear to him, or to those he chooses to befriend, and I will fight you. With all the resources at my disposal, with all the laws, with all my friends in business or government who will unite in their common contempt of you, I will by fair means or foul hound you for all your remaining days.”

  Gould blinked. “What part of that is new, sir? By all accounts, you have hardly been my friend in the legislature. Or in the financial community for that matter.”

  “Fair means or foul, Mr. Gould. I have been fair thus far. I have not, for example, dashed a glass in your face whenever we have encountered each other at Delmonico's or Rector's or in the home of an undiscriminating host. I have not bribed any employee of yours to keep me informed of your activities. And when information has come my way I have not passed it on to Morgan or Harriman or any of the others who would take pleasure in thwarting your designs.”

  The dark little financier rose from his chair and stepped toward one of several orchid-bearing plant stands that were placed about the room. He stopped and studied the largest of the blossoms, first thoughtfully, then touched it with a tenderness that surprised Teddy Roosevelt.

  “The glass has been replaced,” he said distantly. “The damaged plants will grow again. Tilden Beckwith will heal.”

  Teddy waited.

  ”I will see that no charges are placed against you. I will, however, place charges against Mr. Beckwith but only within the jurisdictions of Irvington and Ardsley. He can avoid arrest by staying away from my house.”

  “Fair enough. I'm sure you'll do him the same kindness.”

  “I will also yield on the matter of his child and his whore. They are nothing to me.”

  “You will take that back, sir.” Roosevelt took a step toward him.

  “His child and his lady, then.” Gould waved him off, then touched his fingers to his temples. This conversation was becoming annoyingly familiar.

  “And the affairs of Beckwith and Company?”

  “That, sir, is a matter of business. I will yield nothing. From Mr. Beckwith's own mouth I am invited to do my worst. If it pleases me to do so, I shall take him at his word. In any event, I will not have you calling me to account every time some ordinary transaction of mine happens to affect the fortunes of Tilden Beckwith.”

  “Fair as well,” Roosevelt answered. “And he will, of course, continue to support Cyrus Field if it pleases him to do so.”

  Gould was silent for a very long moment. Then, as Roosevelt watched, the smaller man's shoulders began to quiver. A hand groped at his trousers pocket, finally producing a handkerchief too late to stay the spasm of coughing that was overcoming him. The cough had a terrible, desperate sound. It put Teddy in mind of the dry sucking of a pump whose hose did not quite reach the drowning fluids. Gould turned away from him and stayed hunched against one of his tapestried walls until he was sure the fit had subsided. When at last he righted himself and dabbed at the tears on his cheeks, Teddy saw a pair of eyes that seemed reddened by much more than the pain of his chest. The eyes seemed haunted.

  “Cyrus lives in Ardsley,” Gould said in a choked whisper. “‘You have agreed that Beckwith will stay away from Ardsley.”

  Teddy agreed that it was so.

  “He never comes here.”

  “Who never comes here? Field?”

  “It is nothing.”

  Teddy narrowed his eyes. “What in heaven's name is it between you and Cyrus Field? I know Tilden tried to ask you this, but why can you not just leave the man alone?”

  Jay Gould's head jerked curiously. An unmuscled arm waggled at a plant stand at the far side of the room. “That variety,” he said. “It is named for me, you know.”

  Immortality. The word formed from nowhere in Teddy Roosevelt's mind. Ask about Cyrus Field and you learn about orchids. Talk about orchids and you soon begin to find, as others have observed, that Jay Gould sees his very soul in them. His soul as he wishes it could be. It is said that there is a certain fine madness in every man. Gould's own madness, and certainly his obsession, seemed to be his orchids. But where was the tie with a sick old man named Cyrus Field? He must come to me, Gould had said to Tilden. He must come to me and I will raise him up. Redemption? Redemption was the word Tilden used as they bathed him at the jail in Ardsley. Teddy had barely listened at the time, putting it down as the raving of a fevered brain. But perhaps Tilden had seen a great truth in his two weeks of darkness. Perhaps he saw that in a frightened dying corner of his own fevered brain, Jay Gould believed the raising up of Cyrus Field, a builder, a giver, a better man by le
agues, would bring about his own redemption.

  “Did Tilden ask you ...” Teddy's voice was kindly in spite of himself. “Did Tilden ask why you don't simply go to Field and offer your hand?”

  If there was an answer to that question, Jay Gould could not bring himself to give it. The haunted look was again in Jay Gould's eyes. If he turns me away, they seemed to be saying, then what is left for me? Teddy had no way of knowing what thought, that or another, was in this man's mind at that moment. But he thought he knew nonetheless. And he knew a madness, more desperate than fine, brought on by a lifetime of denied humanity, was there.

  “Good day, sir,” Gould whispered.

  Teddy hesitated. It seemed that more should be said. Or that pity once felt should be spoken.

  “Go*od day, sir,” Gould repeated. The blood-sprayed linen square remained in a hand made anxious by the knowledge that another seizure was building inside him. The eyes were becoming wet again, but harder as well.

  “Good day,” Teddy answered. He turned and strode toward the library door.

  “I'm bound . ..” Gould swallowed a cough. “I'm bound to say that your interest in this matter baffles me.”

  Teddy stopped. “Tilden is my friend.”

  “Your friend, indeed. Is he a true friend? One who would never play you false?”

  Roosevelt opened the door without bothering to answer.