Carter Beats the Devil

by Glen David Gold

  But the real work occurred in two small offices toward the back, fiercely plain in design, save for personal photographs and, in James’s case, one framed Carter the Great poster he rather liked, an early one celebrating “A Masterful Escape from a Locked Pillory.”

  As was their custom when returning after months abroad, James went from person to person, from the receptionist to the seniormost auditor, ensuring that business was on course. Tom opened mail, the way he had at home, as his demeanor was unsuited for motivational pep talks and chats.

  At 12:30 the office was mostly at lunch. Thus James, regarding the trail of paper pumping from their stock ticker, was alone when he heard Tom yell “Sweet Jesus!” from the back office.

  Tom was prone to such exaltations, so James hardly looked up until he saw Tom standing in front of him, his face ashen, even more ashen than usual. He had in his hand a letter. “So, this arrived this morning, meaning it was at the bottom of the pile, thank you. We don’t need this.”

  James saw it was addressed to him, and to Tom, at Carter & Company, and had spelled their names correctly, thus clearing the first hurdle for solicitations.

  “‘Dear Messrs. Crandall and Carter: I understand you occasionally finance individual corporate development if you judge it worthy. I cannot make any promises as to its worthiness, but I have a working model for a device,’” James got to this point, and whispered, “oh no” before continuing, “‘that combines radio and pictures. It is called television.’”

  James looked at Tom, the blood beginning to drain from his face. Tom said, “Keep reading.”

  I will be publicly demonstrating television this afternoon at 5:00 P.M. at Wheeler Auditorium, on the University of California campus. I have invited many local financiers, in hopes of better understanding what backing, if any, my device will receive.

  I apologize for the short notice, but the brief lead time will discourage copycats.

  Philo T. Farnsworth

  “It gets worse,” Tom said.

  “You always think that,” James returned, and then Tom handed him the financial section of the Examiner. On page three was a public advertisement for Farnsworth’s demonstration, at the University, at five. “We’re going,” James said grimly. “Call out our messenger boys. We need to make sure Charlie’s there, too.”

  In summer 1771, a courier galloping away from Frankfurt-on-the-Main was struck dead by a single bolt of lightning that came from an otherwise clear blue sky. Witnesses—not just simple farmers, but a doctor and a landowner—noted that the body was cooked through to its center, but a leather satchel escaped unharmed. Inside the satchel was a tract, “Original Shift in Days of Illuminations,” a plan to manipulate world events in the name of the previously unknown organization the Illuminati. It was an age where reason and tactical planning was beginning to influence the masses, and the discovery of this secret society horrified the populace, which wondered if spreading secular doctrines—such as democracy—was inherently evil.

  If the tract was a theoretical monstrosity, something more concrete and far more troubling was also found on the body: a silk purse containing a dozen tiny ivory skulls, each with a three-digit gilt number embossed on its jaw.

  The numbers were in sequence, skipping 322, which had been sent to an agent in the rebellious American colonies “so the agents in place there too may contribute to the new world order.”

  When the Skull and Bones society appeared at Yale University, in Lodge Room 322, the connection was ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so, as Bonesmen were devoted to world domination (or so it was said) through secrecy and ambiguity.

  At the noon hour, while Carter sat with Borax, and Tom Crandall was just uncovering Farnsworth’s solicitation, Agent Samuelson was having the telephone conversation of his life with a man three levels his superior. Samuelson sat at a phone booth by a luncheon counter, taking notes furiously. Cologned, hair slicked back with exactly the acceptable amount of cream, a Yale man who made quite the show of never seeming to mention he was a Yale man, Samuelson had been waiting for his entire life for this conversation. He played with his watch fob: ivory, carved in the shape of a human skull engraved with gilt numbers—322.

  The first three minutes of the conversation were a blur to him. He said “Thank you, sir,” so many times he had to stop himself. He could only remember certain phrases the Colonel had used in the beginning, “How is the weather?” and “This requires discretion and flexibility” and “With Agent Griffin’s invaluable assistance, we’ve put together a profile . . .” and, finally, “We could of course continue to use Agent Griffin in this matter, as he’s one of our finest veterans,” and then the slightest hesitation, “but the situation is quite dynamic.”

  Colonel Starling cut to the chase then and there. Though he was no longer suspected of withholding evidence, Charles Carter would probably try to interfere in Treasury Department business being conducted at the University of California at seventeen hundred hours. As a personal favor, would Samuelson mind giving him a nudge? Just detain him at sixteen thirty?

  Samuelson accepted, of course. On its face, it was just a step higher than taking a bootlegger for a ride. But Samuelson was ambitious, and understood what the Colonel meant when he added, “And off the record here, son, the magician has evaded capture that relied on accepted methods.” A pause. “We’d like him off the field for a couple hours, minimum, and, frankly, there is no maximum. Do you follow?”

  “I do, sir. Thank you, sir, for trusting me.”

  The mistake they’d made trying to detain him before was in not treating him like a magician. Samuelson had seen magic shows, like anyone, and knew the protocol whereby magicians bested volunteers. He spent the better part of an hour revising a plan that was just clever enough to get himself promoted. He rehearsed saying “It was nothing, really,” when other agents would ask him about it. “Ultimately we showed Mr. Carter who the best men were.” Said solemnly, like a Skull and Bonesman.

  And fifteen minutes later, in a small room at the Palace, Samuelson was addressing O’Brien, Hollis, and Stutz rationally, laying out every step of the plan. At the end, he added, “We’ll show him who the best men are.”

  Nods all around. Stutz, whose froggy voice had been silent, muttered, “Think we’d have to knock him unconscious?”

  “Well, that could be part of it,” Samuelson admitted.

  Stutz swallowed. “I’ll handle it.”

  Samuelson continued talking, fielding questions with a precision that he had always known was his great, untested skill.

  Walking to the library, Griffin whistled to himself as if careless. He stopped and bought a newspaper; at intersections, he waved at policemen. He was also catching reflections in windows, on parked cars, and looking for faces to show themselves in the afternoon crowd more than twice.

  He had no way of knowing that no one was watching him, and no one much cared how he occupied himself today. But his senses were on alert, and even a simple bureaucratic motion—an assignment in Albuquerque, for instance—seemed tinged with sinister meaning. Would he be met on the train by another agent, taken between cars for a smoke, and then would he, Jack Griffin, career washout, be found the next day on the tracks, a suicide?

  He showed identification to the construction crew at the library and put on his hardhat. When he entered the gloomy newspaper room, Miss White waved gaily.

  “Yoo-hoo!”

  Griffin took a book from his pocket: Anderson’s Fly Fishing. It was his only book, but at least he’d had something in his hand when walking to the library. “Miss White.”

  “It’s so, so good of you to return the book.” She took the book from him and examined the spine. “Ah, Doyle, Doyle, Doyle.” Her voice fell to a whisper, perhaps the loudest whisper Griffin had ever heard. “Follow me.”

  She took him to a small, glassed-in office at the corner of the room. When she turned on the lights, the glare caused Griffin to wince. The walls of the room were covered, floor to ceil
ing, in newspaper headlines from around the world.

  She beamed at him—downward—for even slouching, she still stood an inch taller than Griffin. “Mr. Griffin, you are so clever to actually bring a book, but then again, that’s your job, isn’t it?”

  There was a certain type of woman who liked the Secret Service; warnings were posted about them everywhere. But Miss White was far more intelligent than those women who, Griffin had to admit, never gave him the time of day anyway.

  “The job’s more boring than you’d think.”

  “I can’t imagine anything that you do would be boring.” She said this innocently, her eyes the size of pie plates. “But what happened to you?” She pointed a desk lamp at him. “Were you in a fight? A few days ago? It’s plain as day under these lights—when I saw you the first time, you must have just been in a fight and you didn’t even talk about it.”

  He had no business explaining Eight Righteous Men to an outsider, so he just swallowed roughly. “Did you have something to tell me, Miss White?”

  “Olive. Oh, I do.” Unlocking a deep file drawer, she asked, “How goes your research into Mr. Carter?”

  “We don’t talk—”

  “Oh, of course. I understand. I do understand. Here, this is what I wanted to show you.” It was a bound journal, like the one devoted to Charles Carter. The label read “Warren Harding in San Francisco, Summer, 1923.”

  Griffin opened it. First were headlines proclaiming San Francisco as a stop on the Voyage of Understanding; then updates on his itinerary; then notices about the President’s ill health; photographs of the mayors of Oakland, San Francisco, and Sacramento greeting Harding; an article listing all the canceled appointments due to illness; an interview with J. Phillip Roemer, head chef of the Palace Hotel, promising that only the most healthful of vitals would reach the President (“‘’Twill be no fault of mine,’ he added, wagging his head over shining copper kettles, ‘if the President’s appetite does not improve’”).

  “You’ve probably seen this,” Miss White whispered. Under the thirty-six-point headline was the final photograph of a waxy-looking Harding, propped up in his hotel bed in his dressing gown and pajamas. He wore a shadow of his famous smile and waved as if his arm were made of stone blocks. The Duchess sat in a chair next to him, looking either concerned or sour. The caption: “Though he knows it not, Warren Harding here bids us farewell.”

  Griffin nodded. “I’ve seen this.”

  “But you haven’t seen these.” She opened a large yellow folder and shook out a score of photographs. “The Examiner sends us the negatives and rejected photos of all major events in the city. This leads to problems that you wouldn’t believe—when the photographers found that the newspaper morgue was run by a woman—” Miss White shut her eyes and shook her head. “Those men have a scandalous sense of what photos to send.”

  But Griffin wasn’t listening. Instead, he began sorting though the photographs. Twenty of them, numbered from the negatives. None missing. He arranged them in order; the third and the eighteenth photograph both showed the clock in the corner. The photographs were all taken between 11:35 and 11:42 in the evening of August second.

  The resolution of the Examiner’s printed image was terrible—the original photo had excellent depth of field so that the room was alive with details: in the foreground, Griffin could see the vials of medication, and on the bureau, the playing cards. There, on the dresser, a note, from the size of the letterhead, probably from Hearst, the one about the funny papers.

  “Did you say something about Hearst, Agent Griffin?”

  “What?” He didn’t know he’d been talking aloud. “I know this room pretty well. I’m just looking for . . .”

  When he hadn’t spoken for fifteen seconds, Miss White gently asked him what he saw.

  “Nothing, Miss White.”

  “Olive.” She hummed to herself, adding, “I see you’re looking at the very, very photo I found so interesting.” The photo printed under the headline was the same as the photo he held, but the edges had been cropped. “It’s hard to think of poor President Harding being so ill without wondering why he died. I heard he’d eaten bad fish. But look, here’s his last meal, only they cropped it: not fish, but chocolate cake.”

  “Is that why you called me?”

  “Any irregularity like that suggests foul play, don’t you think?” Her eyes sparkled. The idea was like a mink wrap.

  “The President had fish early, around five thirty.”

  “Oh.” Until now, she’d been smiling every second he’d known her. “I had so hoped I was being helpful.”

  “That’s okay . . . Olive. You’re being helpful.”

  “Why did you stop at that photo yourself?”

  “This’ll be a good photo for the archives.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “I think you’re fibbing to a civilian. What is it that you see?” Griffin should have confiscated the photo then and there, but he also was trying to remember the last time a woman had enjoyed his company, and he moved too slowly. Her hand came out to hold his wrist in place. “Something odd, I’ll bet you.”

  “I should really take this,” he said weakly.

  She gasped. “Oh, Mr. Griffin. Mr. Griffin.” Her eyes were watering. “Look at my skin!” She showed off goose bumps. “Ever since I read Keats, I’ve waited for a moment of wild surmise; isn’t that exactly what you’d call this?”

  “I dunno.” He tugged at the photo. “I should go.”

  “Wild surmise,” she whispered. “The wine bottle means something to you, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t think there’s a wine bottle in this photograph.”

  She pointed at other photos. “Oh, it’s here. And here.”

  While he gathered the twenty photographs back into their envelope, Miss White bit the end of her fingernail.

  “What is it about a wine bottle? Aha! Poisoned wine!”

  “Hey, quiet down a little.” He glared at her. Immediately, she obeyed. And if before she had seemed fascinated, now she radiated something Griffin had never seen in his whole life: complete infatuation. Not with the job, but with him. It almost made him drop the envelope. “Listen,” he whispered, “I’m glad you found this. Is there anything else?”

  “Oh, no. This is everything.”

  “Have you told anyone about this?”

  “Certainly not, Mr. Griffin.”

  “Have any other agents asked?”

  “Is there a cabal formed against you? There is,” she gasped. “The fight you were in!”

  “No.”

  “Does this have something to do with Charles Carter?”

  “I don’t know. I’m leaving now.” Griffin moved toward the door. Their eyes met.

  “Agent Griffin? I have to warn you,” she said carefully, “that I’m falling under your spell.”

  “Okay,” he nodded. He reached to tip his hat, and was surprised to feel his hardhat’s cold ridges. “I’ll come back around, when, y’know.” His legs felt like breadsticks.

  He kept walking, did it successfully, one foot in front of the other. Halfway across the room, he scratched an itch on the back of his neck with the envelope. He had a favor to ask Miss White, but he wasn’t sure if he needed it or if it was an excuse to speak to her again.

  While he was making up his mind, he saw her coming out of her office. She looked hypnotized with fondness.

  “Olive, how long would it take you to find the five, maybe the ten rabbis closest to the Palace Hotel? The ones with big, I mean, you know, really big congregations?”

  “Rabbis?” she asked, putting her large thumb to her lower lip. He watched her for signs of puzzlement. She seemed like she led a sheltered life, and he didn’t want to bring her into the world of the gutter, so he didn’t explain further. Finally, her eyes twinkled. “You are such a delight. Rabbis,” she shook her head, “of course. Wait right here.” She disappeared into her office, laughing “rabbis” to herself, and Griffin tugged at his colla
r, for she’d succeeded in making him uncomfortably warm.

  CHAPTER 18

  When Carter left Borax’s, his plan was to go home and telephone James, but as the trees flashed past him, he realized all he had to report was that he’d spent $750 and Farnsworth was nowhere to be found, neither of which he looked forward to discussing. Further, James would tease him about Phoebe Kyle.

  As Carter approached the Industrial Home for the Adult Blind, his mind’s eye replayed that smug look on James’s face—the “Have fun!” as if he were urging Ledocq to go and try the shellfish for once. So Carter resolved that today he would launch on a lighthearted affair with a pretty girl. They would share banter and kisses and revel in mutual entertainment.

  However, since that approach suited him about as well as bib overalls, his plans were in a shambles before he even turned into the well-manicured circular drive on Telegraph. Dismounting, slapping the dust off his thighs, he approached the Home with an awkward smile and several tactful remarks he would employ in case she turned him away, for Carter carried with him the same thought as many decent men: that it was unlikely a woman he liked could actually like him back.

  The main house, set back at the end of the drive, looked like it had once been a private home. It had high gables, arched windows, and several irregularly spaced cupolas on the second floor, and a wide, airy porch running all around the sides as far as one could see. It looked like a place where band concerts had been held long ago. Flanking it were two hulking, utilitarian-looking dormitories, separated by a brick wall.