Lincoln's Ransom

by Tim Champlin

  Then the name and the face merged in Packard’s mind. “Ah, yes, I remember seeing his picture a few years back.” He nodded, studying the head bobbing above the crowd. A scraggly mustache and forked goatee surrounded the mouth.

  “He’s mad as a hatter,” the stranger said. “In fact, that’s apparently how he became mad...working as a hat maker in various factories for years. Absorbed a solution of mercury through his skin.”

  “You seem to know a lot about him,” Packard commented.

  He nodded. “I’ve followed his wanderings since the war.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I have a personal interest.”

  “My name’s Sterling Packard, by the way.” He offered his hand.

  The man gripped it. “Robert Lincoln.”

  “Not Robert Todd Lincoln, by any chance?” Packard asked, his eyes widening slightly. “The late President’s son?”

  “The same,” he replied with what appeared to be a slight grimace.

  “Sorry. I’m sure you get that all the time.”

  “No matter. I’m used to it. It comes with being the progeny of a famous man.”

  Packard knew that Robert Lincoln was now a successful Chicago attorney.

  “The man who shot my father’s assassin...,” he mused, his voice trailing off as he shook his head. “I just wish...well, no matter.”

  “What’s that?”

  Robert Lincoln continued to stare at the preacher as he replied thoughtfully: “I only wish he had not killed Booth. By putting the actor on trial, we probably could have learned much more about the conspiracy.”

  “Corbett disobeyed orders when he fired,” Packard said. “I remember reading his testimony at the conspirators’ trial that God Almighty had ordered him to shoot.”

  “That’s right,” Lincoln replied. “He justified it by saying that the Lord had directed his bullet in an uncommonly excellent shot through that crack in the barn and hit Booth in almost the same spot as the bullet hit my father. Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, saw to it he was made into a national hero, instead of being court-martialed for disobeying a direct order not to shoot. But I suppose none of that matters now,” he added in a lower tone. “That man up there is pitiful. He should be put away in an insane asylum.”

  “Well, his religious fervor doesn’t seem to be hurting anybody,” Packard remarked, noting that a few of the casual listeners had begun to drift away.

  “You painted street-walking Jezebels...repent!” Corbett thundered, pointing over the heads of the crowd toward a few women. Apparently embarrassed, the curious female onlookers hastily retreated.

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Lincoln said, nodding toward the women. “He’s been run out of at least a dozen different churches for being too extreme.” They were silent for a few seconds, before Lincoln continued: “But, I’ll have to say, in spite of his strange delusions, the Glory to God man, as they called him, was one terrific soldier in battle. He always said he would pray for those Rebels’ souls, then pop ’em off.”

  “Wasn’t he a prisoner at Andersonville?” Packard asked, referring to the notorious Georgia prison stockade.

  “Sure was. Mosby’s raiders captured him after one hell of a fight. He was in Andersonville for several months. Tried to convert the whole camp, I hear. Even escaped through a tunnel once, but the dogs hunted him down.”

  “Amazing fella.”

  “I guess it takes all kinds,” Lincoln said. “But the man makes my skin crawl. A fit subject for All Hallow’s Eve tomorrow night. I’d like to know what goes on behind those wild eyes.”

  “What brings you to Springfield, Mister Lincoln?” Packard asked, abruptly shifting from an obviously painful topic.

  “Oh...,” he paused and shook himself as if coming out of a dream. “I came down to bring some things to my mother. She lives with her sister here now.”

  “She’s well, I hope,” Packard said cheerfully.

  “Actually, she’s been quite ill for several years,” he replied, and Packard could have bitten his tongue when he remembered that Robert Lincoln had had his mother committed to an insane asylum the year before. She had been released after only a few months when another doctor declared her sane. “I’m afraid the tragedy of my father and the deaths of my younger brothers have taken quite a toll on her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He gave a slight shrug as both of them began to move away from the crowd and leave the preacher still ranting and quoting scripture. “As Boston Corbett might say...it’s the will of God,” he finished in a resigned tone.

  It was difficult for Packard to picture the former Mary Todd, whom he had read about as a society belle from a good Kentucky family, now living as an aging eccentric, going on buying binges and railing at various public officials.

  Robert Lincoln looked at Packard. “This may be indelicate, but I believe I detect a trace of Southern dialect in your speech.”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir. Middle Tennessee, born and reared.”

  “Ah, a border state, like Kentucky where my folks were from.”

  “Yes, sir. I fought for the Confederate cause. Took a ball at Chickamauga. All for naught, I’m afraid.”

  “Not at all. The whole thing was a terrible tragedy for both sides. But I firmly believe this country has become the stronger for it. It was a national boil that had to burst before it could heal. But the world moves on....”

  It seemed strange having this conversation with the son of Abraham Lincoln, and all the while Packard was deep into a plot to foil the theft of his father’s body.

  “Well, Mister Packard, I must go to catch my train,” he finally said, thrusting out his hand. “It was a pleasure making your acquaintance.” His eyes were honest and appraising behind the clear lenses.

  “The pleasure is mine, Mister Lincoln,” Packard replied, returning his hearty handshake.

  Then Robert Lincoln slipped away among the pedestrians toward the dépôt. A vague feeling of sadness for the past and unease about the future crept over Packard as he watched the late President’s oldest son disappear into the gathering gloom.

  Chapter Four

  Janice Kinealy wrapped her cloak closely about her and edged away from Rip Hughes, keeping her small, black, leather grip between them as they stood on the platform of the Decatur, Illinois dépôt. She tried not to be obvious about it, but Hughes caught the movement and muttered under his breath: “We’re supposed to be man and wife. This isn’t going to work, if you keep acting like I’ve got the plague.”

  “We’re not on our honeymoon,” she retorted quietly, forcing a smile and turning her head away as he leaned close to her. Freshly bay-rummed and pomaded, his sweet scent was overpowering. His hair was neatly parted on one side and slicked back, giving off a dull, black sheen in the lantern light. “Just blend in and be anonymous,” she added.

  She hoped he would take the hint. She had an uneasy feeling about Hughes and his overt advances. It was partly her fault, she knew, since she had made the mistake of using her beauty to tease and tempt him for several weeks before Packard had come on the scene. Hughes was smart, and he wasn’t bad-looking, but to her it was strictly a cruel form of entertainment she had indulged in since her teen years. She would never have let it go very far in any case, but this man had apparently taken her flirtations seriously, even though she was married — and to his boss, at that. But it was like teasing a wolf with a piece of steak — one didn’t break off the game, leaving him snarling and hungry.

  She should have insisted that Sterling Packard accompany her on this trip. It was much more pleasant to think of him, than of the man beside her. But Packard was needed to help rob the tomb. It was going to be a long trip of a night and a day and another night before they reached St. Joe. Since the midnight express from Toledo didn’t stop in Springfield, she and Hughes had ridden the train east thirty-five miles to Decatur that morning to board the westbound express in the evening. Hughes would have plenty of time and opport
unity to be alone with her, even though they would be sitting up in day coaches all the way, as no Pullmans were available. And this man was one who mistook “no” for coyness. Rejection would be a blow to his self-declared reputation as a womanizer, she thought. He wouldn’t dare try to rape her in public, but she would have to be constantly on the alert to ward off his hands during the long, dark hours of the night when she couldn’t readily get away from him.

  Hughes picked up both their bags and preceded her up the steps of the last coach. He selected a seat near the back on the left-hand side, and she slid in next to the window while he wrestled the two grips into the overhead rack before sitting down next to her. He patted her hand affectionately, but her thoughts were already far away as she stared out the window into the darkness.

  Sterling Packard. He was pleasant to look at — lean and handsome in a rugged sort of way. More her own age than her husband. When they had met again, some four months ago, she had felt as giddy as a schoolgirl. It was almost as if she had rediscovered an old flame. A strange feeling, since she had known him for only a few days thirteen years earlier, and he had been unconscious most of that time. She had learned to trust her own instincts and rarely tried to reason things out, but this attraction bothered her. She sensed an innate decency in Packard that was lacking in most of the other men she’d met in recent years. It was strange how his reappearance had triggered thoughts and memories that hadn’t come to mind in a long time. And many of these thoughts brought twinges of loss for times past.

  She had met Jim Kinealy, a dashing twenty-four-year-old, at her graduation from St. Vincent’s Academy at Nazareth, Kentucky in the spring of 1855. Even though he was not a Catholic himself, he had come down from Illinois to see a cousin graduate from the boarding school run by the Sisters of Charity. A classmate had introduced Janice to her cousin, Jim. Their attraction was mutual and immediate. She blushed even now to think how she’d considered herself, at age seventeen, to be worldly and sophisticated. In truth, she knew very little about anything beyond the limited experiences of her life at her parents’ home, and then at the girls’ school. But she felt a nostalgic pang for those simpler, pleasanter days.

  After a whirlwind courtship of picnics and socials, they became engaged. And, before the leaves were gone from the trees that fall, they were married. He took her off to Chicago where he was a partner in a printing business. Even then, without her knowledge, he was being drawn into a small circle of men who were making and circulating phony paper money. Several months later, when she had first discovered what he was doing, she was appalled. This had led to harsh words and the beginning of the rift between them. But there was no changing his mind. In order to keep the marriage intact, she had tried to ignore his activities. Then, as the money began to flow in, she gradually acquiesced to the point of spending it and looking the other way. Although dishonest and illegal, counterfeiting was relatively safe in those pre-war years. It was as common as distilling untaxed whiskey in the Kentucky hills. For one thing, there was no government agency whose sole job was to track down and arrest counterfeiters. For another, there was such a vast number of widely varying bills and notes produced by both the federal government and the many state banks that hardly anyone could tell real currency from the fake. It was a hodgepodge of hundreds of different kinds of bills, made even more numerous by Confederate currency after the war began. That was how she and Kinealy had come to be in the Georgia farmhouse when the battle of Chickamauga had swept in around them. With the drop of the Southern merchants’ confidence in the value of the Confederate “shinplasters,” U. S. currency had become even more sought after. And Kinealy was there to supply that demand.

  When she had found the seriously wounded Packard, she herself was barely a year past the one and only pregnancy of her marriage that had ended in a miscarriage after four months. She had very nearly bled to death and was never able to conceive after that. The experience still seared her memory. It had left a terrible void in her life — an emptiness which she had tried to fill over the last dozen years with beautiful clothes, diamonds, and gold jewelry, a personal masseuse, a phaëton drawn by a pair of matched grays and driven by a coachman, a passion for gambling, plays, anything to take her mind off a life that seemed devoid of love. Her female friends were many and brief — more like passing acquaintances because of Kinealy’s frequent moves to elude and confuse the law. From city to town, from state to state, they never spent more than a few weeks or months in the same place. Only once had they settled into a small house in Chicago where they’d lived for two years before the great fire drove them out.

  During most of her married life, she had remained in the background, letting her husband handle the delicate and dangerous business of counterfeiting, while she entertained herself. But, mainly due to Packard’s presence, she had wheedled Kinealy into letting her take part in this risky caper. He had acted surprised, as well he might, since their relationship had long since deteriorated into what one of her women friends had termed benign neglect.

  Her thoughts were interrupted as the train jerked into motion and her leg brushed against Hughes. Almost immediately, she felt his hand sliding along her upper thigh. She gasped in sudden surprise and looked to see if anyone in the coach was watching, but the few passengers had settled down for the night. Just as she started to react, the portly conductor came in from the far door and swayed along the aisle. Hughes removed his hand.

  “Do that again, and I’ll shoot you,” she said quietly, sliding a nickel-plated Derringer out of the pocket of her cloak just far enough for him to see it.

  “Well, aren’t we getting high and mighty all of a sudden!” he snorted. “You were a lot friendlier a few weeks ago before that damned Packard showed up.”

  She didn’t reply, knowing he spoke the truth. But the laugh in his throat choked down to a cough, and he seemed suddenly to lose interest in her, reaching across the aisle for a magazine someone had left on the seat.

  She kept her hand on the gun in her pocket, thinking that it was going to be a long trip. At least, her part would be easier than that of her husband’s, Packard’s, and the other two who should be breaking into the massive Lincoln tomb just about now. She swallowed to relieve the dryness in her throat, wondering if the perilous burglary was going well. She would have prayed for them, but it had been years since she’d uttered a prayer of any kind. Besides, how does one ask God to bless a crime?

  Chapter Five

  “Let me take a turn at that,” Packard said, nudging Stan Mullins aside. “Here...hold this so I can see.” He shoved the bull’s-eye lantern at him and took the file from his hand. Mullins willingly stepped back so Packard could move up to the chain and lock that secured the wrought-iron gate to the mausoleum. Placing the edge of the file in the groove that had been worn in one of the heavy links, he filed quickly for a couple of minutes as the tiny metal shavings glittered in the lamplight. They’d already broken a hacksaw blade trying to cut through it.

  “Whew!” Packard paused to rest a moment, flexing his hand. “Should have a triangular file for a job like this.”

  “Well, you’re the expert grave-robber. You should have brought one,” Kinealy said from the darkness.

  “Most of the graves I’ve robbed are not as well secured as this one. Usually a crowbar, a pick, and a shovel will get the job done.” Packard grunted as he filed rapidly.

  “Well, you cased the place a couple of times,” Kinealy persisted, sounding irritated. “You should have known.”

  “You’re right,” Packard said evenly, to keep from riling him. “But as long as we use the edge of this flat file, I think it’ll do just as well. There...we’re over halfway through already.”

  “Let McGuinn have a go at it,” Kinealy said.

  Packard stepped back and handed the file to the ex-boxer, glad that Kinealy couldn’t see him in the darkness or he might have suspected something was amiss. Packard had more than an average case of nerves, as evidenced by the perspira
tion pouring off him in spite of the cold November night.

  They were all armed with revolvers, but Packard’s stomach was in turmoil because no more than sixty feet away on a straight line from this spot were six men — three Secret Service operatives, two Pinkerton detectives, and the caretaker of this monument. They were waiting for Packard’s signal to grab these grave-robbers in the act.

  The monument, in the cemetery two miles outside Springfield, was set on the summit of a low hill. Built mostly of marble, it was composed of a huge square base, about seventy feet on a side, and some fifteen feet high, the top surrounded by a stone railing. This base supported a sixty-foot high stone obelisk. At the north end, where they were, was a semi-circular room containing the remains of Lincoln, while a circular room on the opposite south end housed a museum known as Memorial Hall. It was in this museum that the six men were hiding, waiting for his signal.

  He was vainly trying to keep a grip on his emotions and think of what he had to do. Because of a maze of corridors and stone walls between the two rooms, the men on the south end could neither hear nor see the burglars. They were depending on Packard to relay a password to them when the time was right for their ambush. The word they had agreed on that morning at a meeting in the St. Nicholas Hotel was — “Wash.” — as part of the name of Elmer Washburn, Midwestern chief of the Secret Service, who was one of the six waiting men. Robert Lincoln had been informed of the plot and had approved of the plans to foil it, but it was doubtful he knew that he had been talking to a Secret Service undercover agent on a Springfield street only the week before.

  It was Tuesday, November 7th, a Presidential election day that had generated plenty of excitement around Springfield. Men and women had been flocking into town from the surrounding countryside all day by horseback and wagon so the men could vote, and there was a festive atmosphere in the restaurants and hotels. But, for Packard, the day had been one of unrelieved anxiety that this whole secret operation would go off properly and the trap would be sprung without anyone getting hurt or killed. The weather had been heavily overcast and gloomy with a biting north wind swirling dead leaves in the streets and whipping American flags from at least a hundred balconies and windows. Although Packard hadn’t seen them, the six lawmen were to have gathered one or two at a time in the museum shortly after five o’clock as soon as darkness had closed down this short winter day. He had to believe they were now in position and ready, even though Packard had made a pretext of checking the museum door with the lantern when they first arrived.