Harry got to the door first and tried the handle. If it was locked, they would have to risk some noise jimmying the bolt, but it wasn’t, at least not from the inside. The full-time servants—two maids and a cook—slept in rooms at the top, so there was no one who should be down here at this hour. Even a guard was unlikely. Still, Harry pulled the handle down very slowly, and then opened the door the tiniest crack to peek through. The basement hall was dimly lit and there was no one about. For the first time, Harry and Walter began to feel just a bit of confidence that TR and Wilkie had played straight with them.
But now was when the battle would be joined. They had to hope that any of Hawkesworth’s minions who had drawn the night shift were stationed separately. They would need to be taken out one at a time, in a way that did not draw the attention of the others. Once that was done, whoever was asleep in the house would need to be dealt with. The servants could be locked in, but the more dangerous employees would demand special attention.
Harry and Walter made their way down the hall, two big men making no more noise than falling snow. There was a dim light about ten yards ahead, thrown from a staircase that led to the first floor. They climbed the stairs, but paused at the top before peeking out. Whenever they were out on an operation like this, Harry carried a tiny mirror attached at a forty-five degree angle to a small rod. At floor level, Harry poked the mirror out, turning it one way and then the next. He turned back to Walter and nodded that all was clear.
When they made their way down the first floor, suddenly they heard the murmur of voices, coming from somewhere toward the rear of the house. At a turn, they saw a small shaft of light through a set of what appeared to be double swinging doors. Men, talking in the kitchen. They listened for a few minutes. Two voices only.
No matter how well trained a man is, tedium can do him in. Night after night of sitting up, doing nothing but watching and waiting, listening for sounds when there were no sounds, looking for movement when there was no movement. These two were apparently the night watch, taking a break to grab some food or make themselves coffee. What’s a few minutes off during an interminable night? While there might be a third man awake, sitting alone elsewhere in the house, it was unlikely. He wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation. It also meant that Wilkie and Roosevelt had played straight with them after all.
So how to take them?
They would come out either one at a time or, more likely, both at once. In either case, they must be silenced before they could raise an alarm. There was a recess under the stairs just outside the doors big enough for Harry to crouch in the shadows. Walter would wait at the bend of the hall.
The murmuring continued for another few minutes, and then, “Okay, back to work,” could be heard distinctly. The doors swung open and two men appeared. One had his arm in a sling, a souvenir of the bullet from Harry’s Colt. The two men were walking abreast. When they reached a point about halfway between Harry and Walter, Harry sprung out from the recess and Walter leapt from around the corner.
They were on the two guards before they could make a sound and a second later each of them was sinking to the ground, a knife wound between his ribs, and a hand over his mouth until he could no longer call out.
That had been their deal with Wilkie. No one who had been involved in the plot to murder President McKinley and blame it on the vice president could remain alive. The story could not be allowed to get out.
Harry and Walter dragged the two bodies to the recess that had hidden Harry and deposited them. Blood had soaked the dead men’s clothes, but the wounds had been too clean and they had been moved too fast for blood to have made it to the floor. By day, of course, the bodies would be plainly visible, but no one walking through the house before dawn would notice them.
There would be others in the house to be dealt with—or at least one. The house had eight bedrooms on the second floor, and he would be in one of them. Both Harry and Walter were willing to wager that it was the one across the hall from Hawkesworth. And it would not be locked, just in case the master needed him, as Hawkesworth’s would not be locked in case he was needed.
But first, the other bedrooms would need to be checked, just in case. They made their way up the stairs, then listened carefully at the door of each one, before peeking inside. Nothing. They returned to the bedroom across the hall from Hawkesworth’s. With a glance, they turned the handle silently and slipped inside. There he was.
Perhaps it was training or just a tiny draft from the door moving, but Tillman, or whatever his real name was, was awake as soon as it opened. Had Walter and Harry been an instant slower, they would have been nailed by the pistol that Tillman withdrew from under the covers. But they weren’t slower and Tillman saw he had no chance. He lowered his weapon. Walter, without crossing in front of Harry, quickly moved to retrieve it. Then he turned on the room light and quietly closed the door so nothing could be heard across the hall.
“Well, well,” Tillman said with a sneer. “Snookered by a four-flusher and two ghosts.”
“You’re gonna be the ghost,” Harry growled.
Walter touched Harry on the forearm. “What do you mean? Who’s the four-flusher?”
“I gotta draw you a picture? It’s Wilkie.”
“Because he let word out that we were dead.”
“Yeah, George. Why do you think there’s only two other men here? You took care of them, I take it.”
Walter didn’t answer.
“Dead, huh? Well that figures. So I’m next?” Tillman shrugged. He was still under the covers but his hands were visible. “Nobody lives forever.”
“Care to answer a couple of questions?” Walter asked.
“Gonna make a difference?”
Walter couldn’t help but smile a little. Hard not to respect a man so tough. And Tillman was that. He was tough and he was good. Hawkesworth had chosen well.
“Not to you.”
“Didn’t think so. Whaddaya wanna know?”
“What’s your real name?”
“Can’t help you there.”
“Where did you learn . . . everything?”
“Not here.”
“How many of you know the real story of what happened?”
“After me? Nobody.” Tillman gestured with his head to across the hall. “Except him, of course. Gonna kill him too or is he too rich?”
Walter didn’t answer. Instead, he asked. “Why did you do it?”
Tillman barked out a single laugh. “Why do you think? For the money. Couldn’t interest you two in a similar arrangement, could I? He’s got buckets full.”
Neither Walter nor Harry budged.
“Didn’t think so. Two patriots. What a joke.” Tillman got serious. “All right. Get it over with.”
So they did.
43
That left Hawkesworth.
After Harry wedged in the servants’ doors, they stood outside the master bedroom, waiting for a moment, and then Walter turned the handle and they walked in. The room was wired for electricity and there was a switch on the wall. When Harry turned it, the immense room, at least eight hundred square feet, glowed to life as the bulbs in the chandelier built up a charge.
Hawkesworth was alone in a massive four-poster bed, covered with a canopy. Walter thought with some amusement how the bed resembled pictures he’d seen of the sleeping arrangements of kings. Hawkesworth blinked awake and when he saw Walter and Harry standing inside the door, he reached instinctively for the pull rope next to the bed, but Harry pulled his Colt and shook his head.
“Don’t bother. They’re all dead.”
Hawkesworth looked one way and then the other as he tried to wake up. He seemed small, gray, and insignificant in the giant four-poster, but within a few seconds, he had regained his bearing and, even in nightclothes, once again appeared to be every bit the killer he was.
“I assume you gentlemen wish to chat before you kill me. Would you mind if I got out of bed and put on a bathrobe?”
“Not at all, Mr. Hawkesworth,” Harry replied. “But if you’re thinking of grabbing a gun you have stashed somewhere, I’d advise against it.”
“Never crossed my mind.” Hawkesworth was smiling. He did not appear even the least bit afraid.
“And we’re not here to kill you,” Walter added. “Although we were instructed to get a signed statement.”
Hawkesworth kept his eyes on Walter as he pushed his way out of bed—he had to reach with his feet to get the floor—and padded across the room to grab the robe tossed across the back of an overstuffed armchair. He was light on his feet with no sign of the shambling walk common to men in their sixties. There were a pair of leather slippers on the floor, which he slid his feet into. He then settled into the chair, leaning full against the back to maintain excellent posture.
“A statement? Which will be used how? I would rather die here than on the gallows, and death is certainly preferable to prison.” He directed his conversation to Walter.
“I don’t know how it will be used, Mr. Hawkesworth,” Walter replied, “but I have a hard time believing anyone is going to want to see you stand trial. Our orders are simply to get a signed statement.”
“And your orders about the others?”
“We followed them,” Harry said.
“So then, gentlemen, you are asking me to take your word that you have no orders to similarly dispatch me once you have what you want.”
“I think that’s a risk you should take, Mr. Hawkesworth,” Walter offered. “If I were in your position, I’d think it more likely that we would . . . dispatch you . . . if you refused to cooperate.” That, in fact, had been their instructions.
Hawkesworth considered his options. “If I come through this, Mr. George, I wonder if you’d consider working for me.”
Walter shook his head.
“I thought not. Pity.” Then he smiled. “I am the man responsible for you being here, you know. You too, Mr. Swayne, although only by association.”
“I’m not certain I feel indebted to you for that, Mr. Hawkesworth.” Harry was seething at being made out to be some sort of servant, but knew enough not to interrupt.
“Be that as it may. I checked very carefully to find someone clever enough and persevering enough to follow an obscure trail . . . manufactured though it may have been. Manufactured with great care, I might add. Every detail had to be precisely as it would have been if it were true, with just enough crumbs to keep you moving in the right direction. And you did not disappoint me, Mr. George . . . until now, of course. It turns out I underestimated you. I don’t make mistakes of that sort very often.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” grunted Harry.
“Don’t be sensitive, Mr. Swayne. You were quite good too. It’s just that Mr. George has that rare combination of high intelligence and unwillingness to give up on a question until he has the answer.”
“You mean he’s pig-headed,” Harry replied. “You had him right there.”
Hawkesworth leaned forward and let his hands drop between his legs. “All right, gentlemen, here it is. This is my offer. I will give each of you one million dollars in whatever manner you wish if you agree to end this right here and now. And I don’t mean by pulling those triggers.”
One million dollars. Neither Harry nor Walter was willing to speak without looking at the other.
“Sorry, Mr. Hawkesworth,” Walter said. “We wouldn’t know how to spend it.”
“You’d learn. It’s quite easy.” Hawkesworth sighed. “But very well. The signed statement it shall be.” He gestured to a desk against the far wall. “May I?”
“Would you be willing to answers some questions first?”
“For you, Mr. George? Of course. What would you like to know?
There was a lot Walter wanted to know, more about the man than the crime. “Why did you do it? You’ve already got more than enough money.”
Hawkesworth chuckled. “That’s how I got it, Mr. George. And how I keep it. My father was born wealthy. He inherited a thriving lumber business from my grandfather. He wasn’t a bad businessman, exactly, but he was weak. Thought the business would run itself. It did not. By the time I was old enough to begin working, it had lost well over half its value. That is the price of weakness, Mr. George. Loss of what one holds dear. That fool McKinley was going undertake a disastrous misadventure in Nicaragua. It would have failed miserably. I would have lost a good deal of money, it is true, but the nation would have suffered grievously as well. There would have been no Central American route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the wasted expenditures could easily have set off another stock market panic. We have barely recovered from ’93 and ’96.”
“So you consider yourself a patriot?”
Hawkesworth looked surprised. “Oh yes. Most definitely. The nation needed to be saved from McKinley and I did it.”
“For which you will be richly rewarded.”
“Of course. Doesn’t one always deserve to be compensated for services rendered? Don’t you two expect to be rewarded for undertaking this thankless task?”
“We hadn’t thought about that.”
Hawkesworth smiled. “You should have.”
Walter decided to move on to specifics. “Was Mark Hanna involved in any of this? He favored the Panama route as well.”
“Oh no. Senator Hanna would never have betrayed his friend and I would never have suggested such a thing to him. But there was also no need to enlist his support. Nor Secretary Hay’s. As you know, both of them favored Panama. With McKinley no longer involved, and Vice President Roosevelt also removed, the option would have sailed through. There was the matter of dealing with the Colombians, if they become difficult, but there are always . . . alternatives.”
“Such as?”
“There are many in Panama who wish to be independent of Colombia. Who knows but that those freedom fighters might find a reservoir of support they did not know they had?”
“You would foment a revolution.”
“Not at all. Sometimes things just happen on their own.”
“Yes. You often seem to be the beneficiary of coincidence, Mr. Hawkesworth, although not with our new president.”
“Mr. Roosevelt? Don’t be naïve, Mr. George. Mr. Roosevelt wanted very much to be president and wishes to remain so. All this talk about trust busting . . . there is only so much he will do to alienate the people who make the real decisions in this country. Those like me will be just fine. And Panama . . . he will be a welcome ally now that he has seen the situation properly. No, no. Things may not have worked out quite according to plan, but they did work out.”
“And you?”
Hawkesworth turned his hands palms up. “That remains to be seen.”
“You don’t seem concerned.”
“When you reach my age, Mr. George, you accept events as they come.”
Walter blew out a breath. Harry looked a bit deflated as well. Hawkesworth had succeeded in robbing them of any sense of triumph, any feeling that they might have done something important by bringing a presidential assassin to justice. If they had indeed brought him to justice. That was far from clear.
“Just one more question, Mr. Hawkesworth. Where did you find your . . . employees?”
“Ah yes. You had a great deal of difficulty there, if I am not mistaken. Identifying them, I mean. I had equal difficulty in locating men who were . . . suitable. Who would not be squeamish about the task at hand. Europe seemed a better alternative than the United States. I thought men who had already left the country . . . and were possessed of the appropriate skills . . . were a better alternative than those still here. I found these men . . . soldiers of fortune, I believe they are called . . . in St. Petersburg, working as the personal guard of a grand duke. I persuaded them to take on this assignment. Thanks to you, they won’t get to enjoy the source of that persuasion.”
“Too bad,” Harry said.
“I am still willing to offer you gentlemen similar persuasion.”
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“No deal.” This time Harry didn’t wait for Walter to agree.
“Very well, then. If you have no further questions, I should get to my statement. I would like to finish in time for breakfast . . . unless, of course, you gentlemen were not telling the truth about your assignment.”
“We were,” Walter replied. “Go ahead and write.”
With a nod and a smile, Anthony Hawkesworth rose from the chair, walked to the desk, and calmly set to writing the tale of how he set in motion a plot to murder the President of the United States.
44
Hawkesworth wrote for almost ninety minutes. Harry and Walter moved to the far side of room and sat in two ornate armchairs, waiting for him to be finished. If the document said what it was supposed to say, they were to place a telephone call to Washington, where Wilkie would be waiting. If it did not, they were to . . . dispatch . . . Hawkesworth.
But Anthony Hawkesworth was no fool and did precisely what he had been asked to do. When he was done, Walter inspected the five-page letter and, seeing it contained all the information Wilkie or Roosevelt could ask for, allowed Hawkesworth to place it in a sealed envelope on which he wrote his name. Harry placed that envelope inside a larger envelope, and wrote, “To be opened only by Director, Secret Service Division.” Wilkie apparently did not want his name on it.
Hawkesworth had installed a telephone line in his downstairs parlor. Harry left Walter to sit with the banker and went to place the call. It took almost five minutes for all the trunk lines to be connected, but when Harry heard Wilkie’s voice—or some garbled version of Wilkie’s voice—on the other end, he simply said, “It’s done. We have what you wanted.”
He heard Wilkie thank him and say that he and Walter would soon be relieved by a special detail sent to take Hawkesworth into custody. And then, after a “Well done,” the call was ended.
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