The Man

by Irving Wallace

  “And so you found it necessary to dismiss Arthur Eaton? Why, Mr. President? Why, specifically, did you remove this veteran public servant from office?”

  “Because I was determined to preserve our government’s system of checks and balances, which requires that our three branches-the executive, the legislative, and the judicial-remain separate and strong. I learned, and had proof of the fact, that the Secretary of State, with the approval of the legislative branch of our government, was attempting to usurp the powers of the Presidency and conduct the business of the White House from the offices of the Department of State. To save the Presidency, I had no choice but to get rid of him. I fired him. In retaliation, I presume, he and his associates impeached me.”

  “Mr. President, since the memorable moment you took the oath of office, do you believe you have performed your tasks diligently, soberly, honestly, without prejudice, with consideration for the rights of all men and a sincere concern for the welfare of the United States, and have you attempted to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and this democracy?”

  “This I believe-I have tried. To the best of my ability I have tried, Mr. Manager.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  Douglass Dilman’s grip on the chair relaxed. He thought that he detected the slightest smile on Nat Abrahams’ face as Abrahams nodded at the bench, then turned and went back to the defense table.

  Dilman had so concentrated on his friend’s questions that he had been unable to observe or evaluate the reaction to his replies in the silent, alert Senate Chamber.

  But now the Chamber seemed to come alive, and then the Chief Justice’s gavel fell.

  “The senators will be attentive. The counsel for the House of Representatives will proceed with his cross-examination.”

  For the first time since assuming the Presidency, since his travail and then trial had begun, Douglass Dilman found himself face to face with the custodian of all the hatred that had been directed toward him.

  Zeke Miller’s mocking gray eyes boldly met his own unblinking gaze. Miller’s veiny nostrils were dilated, and his mouth fixed in a crooked line. He hooked his thumbs into his lapel buttonholes, assumed his favorite spread-legged stance, and appeared to be inspecting his quarry with a huntsman’s pleasure.

  Dilman’s shoulder and chest muscles involuntarily contracted, as if preparing for a blow. Warily, he waited.

  “We-ll, Mr. President of the United States of America, I did not expect to see you come down among us. This is a surprise and a privilege for us, an historic occasion, and we welcome you, heartily welcome you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Manager.”

  “However, at the risk of seeming downright inhospitable after your taking this trouble to ride to the Hill, I am afraid I must pose some questions that may give you discomfort, questions that your friend and counsel overlooked asking, in his blindfolded search for the truth about your behavior and competence. I hope you will be as tolerant of Zeke Miller’s questions, the questions the House has requested me to propound, as you were of your friend Nathan Abrahams’ questions.”

  “I will do my best to be tolerant of your questions, Mr. Manager.”

  “Well, now, I guess it would be fitting to take up the matters under review in the order your own friend and counsel arranged them. Would that be suitable to you, Mr. President of the United States?”

  “As you wish, Mr. Manager.”

  “Like perhaps starting with the youngest in your official family, and then reading from left to right. This boy of yours, Julian, who pledged himself with his blood to a terrorist program of violence against the elected government and who pledged himself to extract from all of us white people an eye for an eye-has he ever engaged in similar violence before?”

  “No, not before, and not now either.”

  “Well, I am not saying he did any grave violence, like his boss Hurley, I am only saying he pledged himself to do it, but didn’t get time to carry out his pledge because the able Attorney General of this country stamped out-despite your interference-these extremists, before your boy could march with them. You knew all along that your son Julian was a member of that subversive gang, didn’t you, Mr. Witness?”

  “I have already denied, under oath, that I knew he was a member.”

  “Forgive me, a slip. I didn’t mean to say that you ‘knew,’ only that you had ‘heard’ he was a member-I meant you knew because you’d heard. Who’d you hear that from?” A Turnerite?”

  “Yes. From someone I later learned was a Turnerite.”

  “Want to tell us who your informant was, Mr. Witness?”

  “I see no point in that now. The Turnerites are disbanded. Their leader has been executed.”

  “Am I to understand you won’t reveal to us the name of your Turnerite friend informant who tipped you off about Julian?”

  “It would serve no useful purpose.”

  “Okay. You keep your little secrets. Not important. Well, so you heard Julian was a Turnerite and you confronted him with the fact?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, the first time Attorney General Kemmler demanded that you outlaw that vicious Group, you refused. You refused, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, against the advice of the Attorney General, you got your Nigra lobbyist and tenant rent payer, Reverend Spinger, to talk privately with those kidnaper-murderers, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You had no tricky self-serving, family-protecting deals in mind, did you? Just acting on your own for the good of the country, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, Mr. President, what we have is this-you heard your son was a Turnerite, true? You heard the Turnerites were a Communist, anti-Christian violence society, true? You tried to delay their being banned, true? You sent a Nigra personal friend to call them up and negotiate something in privacy, true? Is all of that true?”

  “That much of it, yes, that much is true.”

  “Then I say to you, Mr. President of the United States, I say Article II of the House impeachment-charging you with the high crime of violating the laws of the land by hindering justice against a subversive society-I say Article II is true.”

  “I say it is not, Mr. Manager.”

  “Then let the august Senate in its wisdom here on earth, and the Lord of all of us in Heaven, judge which of us speaks truth and which of us speaks falsehood. Let us proceed, as your friend and counsel has done, with Articles I and III. What have we here? Ah, Miss Wanda Gibson. Yes, we have heard Miss Gibson’s little tale on this stand today. You have a great and good friend in her, Mr. President. You won’t find many women so loyally ready to go to any ends or take any risk, ready to say anything, to protect someone who is not legally their own mate. Well, now, you’ve known our Miss Gibson intimately for five years?”

  “I have known Miss Gibson for five years.”

  “You have held her hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have embraced her?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have kissed her?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have done all of this for five years, sixty months, more than 240 weeks, but you have never illicitly touched her? Is that right, Mr. President?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet, could I describe your relationship with her as a close one, a warm one?”

  “You might. I think so.”

  “Sure enough, we know you couldn’t keep away from her person very long. The first day you were moved out from under the same roof with her, to be President, you came hurrying back that night, thinking you’d given everyone the slip. You did run back to see Wanda Gibson the first night after you moved into the White House?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You tried to get her into the White House, too, didn’t you? You invited your lady friend to come to the State Dinner for President Amboko of Baraza, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “
Sounds like a close enough relationship to me. And the two of you, when you were together, you had your long chatty talks, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Seeing her after you became President, talking to her on the telephone, you told her what it was like to be President, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And she, working for the Communist Front Vaduz Exporters, she talked about her boss and her work sometimes, too, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you two, holding hands, hugging and kissing, you two talked about your jobs. You talked about what it was like being President with all the problems of that office, and she, she talked about what it was like being at work for a spying company fronting for the Soviet Union, but despite all the talk and talk, and emotional involvement, you kept your lips sealed when it came to what was top-secret that you knew about as President. True?”

  “Yes, that is true.”

  “And I say, and the House says, untrue-un-true! No human on earth can be so long intimate with a single lady, being single himself, and being close to her flesh, and whispering and baring every emotion, and still control and shut off certain things while saying others, as any psychologist on earth will tell you. I’m not saying you set out with your mind determined on committing treason. I’m saying you are a frail human, and a frail human person, be he Nigra or white, suffers from his flesh being weak, and I’m saying from the evidence on hand that you committed inadvertent treason, but serious, real treason nevertheless, against the flag and the country. But you alone will not admit to your flesh being weak. You will not admit your sin.”

  “There is nothing to admit to, Mr. Manager. The charge is rigged up from hearsay, deductions, suppositions, wishes, an effort to make two and two add up to five, but it is unsubstantiated by factual evidence. Because no such evidence exists.”

  “There is evidence enough, Mr. Witness, and none of this protesting too much will pull the wool over the eyes of the able, learned, honorable members of the Senate. There is evidence for Article I as there is evidence for Article III. Let’s take the charge of your proved record of habitual intoxication. You deny it. Your lady friend denies it. Two impartial sources like you two deny it. But the documents, Mr. President, the exhibit documents attest and affirm to the truth of it. Were you or were you not, in Springfield, Illinois, once a registered occupant in a sanitarium for alcoholics?”

  “I was, yes.”

  “Along with your poor deceased wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were a patient there?”

  “No, I was not. My wife was a patient. I was a guest. I checked in there to live with her, be beside her, help her. I was not a patient. I was a resident guest.”

  “The photostatic evidence introduced as exhibits show clearly, irrefutably, you were a registered ‘patient,’ meaning, by definition, one who was under treatment or care by a physician, in this case for alcoholism.”

  “I don’t care how I was registered. I know why I was there.”

  “Mr. President, I assure you the public cares and the Senate cares how you were registered. There is no disgrace in having been registered for alcoholic cure, once the cure has been successful and a person’s health, good sense, and dignity restored. But when a person has attempted to be cured, and not succeeded, has continued to be the servant of this debilitating master, and raged through the President’s House of this glorious nation in a condition such as Senator Watson’s daughter has described, I say the public must care and the Senate must care, and the addict must be curbed and quarantined, if not for his own sake, then for the survival of the nation entrusted to his leadership. Enough! It is time we discuss a charge no less evil, and far more shocking… Mr. President, the House of Representatives has charged you with improper assault upon the person of your helpless young social secretary, Miss Watson. The lady has confirmed, under oath, your misbehavior. Miss Watson, the only daughter of a great and senior Senator whose adherence to truth is a byword in the land, Miss Watson was raised up to gracious ladyhood under the guidance of this noble Senator. Miss Watson, I repeat, confirms the charge of your scandalous behavior. You deny it. Whom are we to believe? What are we to believe?… Mr. President-answer this, sir-can we believe that you and Miss Watson were alone together in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House on the night in question? Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we believe that you had her alone in there, were alone with her, the entire period of time?”

  “Yes.”

  “You did not send for the valet or housekeeper? You remained alone with Miss Watson?”

  “Yes. Because of Miss Watson’s unsettled state, I rang for no one. I still hoped to protect her good name, for her father’s sake as well as her own.”

  “You claim she invaded your room, yet you summoned no one. I consider that highly unnatural and abnormal. On the other hand, had you brought her to your room, kept her there, your reluctance to call for outside assistance would be more understandable. In any event, no third party was summoned, no third party intruded, and there were the two of you behind closed doors and four walls. That is correct, is it not?”

  “I have already agreed that is correct-the fact of it, not the implication.”

  “Then, Mr. President, what followed, the truth of it, plainly comes down to our acceptance of Miss Watson’s word on what took place or your own. Whose word shall we believe? Shall we believe the word of a naïve, unworldly young lady, educated, of unblemished reputation, the only child reared to the blossom of youthful maturity by the most revered legislator in the land, who has nothing to gain from the unpleasant ordeal of giving testimony here today? Or shall we believe the word of a witness who, according to the serious indictment voted by the House of Representatives, had secret dealings with a gang of Nigras bent on mongrelizing and weakening the nation, who kept intimate company with an unmarried female friend for half a decade, who was frequently under the unholy influence of alcoholic spirits? Mr. Witness, whose word shall it be? This you cannot answer, nor can I. We will let our peers, dedicated and objective men, steeped in human insight, decide this question. And for ourselves, we will undertake to discuss the final Article of Impeachment… Mr. Witness, the morning after our beloved T. C.’s tragic death, upon your assumption of the Presidency, you did meet with the members of the Cabinet?”

  “I did.”

  “Mr. Secretary of State Arthur Eaton was, by rank, the first member of that Cabinet, was he not?”

  “He was.”

  “Was the purpose of this meeting a desire, on your part, to inform the Cabinet members to stay on their jobs? In fact, did you request them to stay on and serve you as they served T. C.?”

  “I did.”

  “And the Secretary of State, and the other members, they agreed to remain at their posts?”

  “They did.”

  “Why did you desire Secretary of State Eaton to continue as the head of the Department of State and as the leading member of your Cabinet?”

  “At the time, I thought him competent in his office and useful to the government. There was no reason to replace Eaton or anyone else under the circumstances.”

  “But after several months, you found reason to fire your Secretary of State, contrary to the law of the land, and to replace him with an underling?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You knew, of course, that Secretary Eaton was a close friend of the late President, dedicated to promoting T. C.’s ideals of government, did you not?”

  “That was the talk. I had heard it.”

  “Of course, you were aware, you knew, that should you suffer disability or death, it was Secretary Eaton who would become President of the United States in your place?”

  “Yes.”

  “As time passed, could you see that Arthur Eaton, through the integrity of his behavior, because of his adherence to the policies of T. C., was growing in popularity as a national figure?”
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br />   “I would have no way of evaluating that.”

  “In fact, that as Arthur Eaton’s popularity dramatically increased, so, conversely, your own popularity, Mr. President, drastically decreased?”

  “That may be. I repeat, I would have no way of knowing the truth.”

  “No way of knowing you were rapidly becoming the most unpopular President in history? Unpopular among those of your own race as well as among whites? Come now, do not make mockery of the intelligence of the learned senators by pretending you had no way of knowing that the electorate disapproved of you and fully approved of Secretary Eaton. Weren’t you hooted into silence by those of your own race at Trafford University? Did not one of your own color, a fellow Nigra, make an attempt to assassinate you? Answer me that.”

  “Yes.”

  “In your recent trip around the nation, weren’t your public appearances greeted with booing and catcalling? Weren’t you castigated and threatened? Answer me that.”

  “Yes.”

  “And did not all this unpopularity, along with Secretary Eaton’s obvious popularity, convince you that you might be forced and pressured by the American people to resign from your office, so that at last they could have for President a man whom you’ve just called competent and useful? Weren’t you afraid that as long as Arthur Eaton was in public office, you might be thrown out and be replaced by him, and therefore-?”

  “That is an utter falsehood, Mr. Manager, a false assumption, and a vicious accusation.”

  “You fired Arthur Eaton because his presence was a threat to you. You also fired him because you could not manipulate him, bend him to accept your prejudices, and you tried to replace him with Mr. Stover, who would gratefully comply with any policy and order you wished to impose on the people. I say-”