Alice and the Assassin

by R. J. Koreto

  “No, I don’t,” he said, looking a little amused. “And I don’t think I want to know more. But good luck to both of you. Sergeant, if you get an evening off, join me for dinner some night. We can talk about old times. I’m thinking of selling up. There are opportunities for ranching in Argentina. We could go into it together.”

  “I’d like that, sir.”

  “Mr. St. Clair can’t go to Argentina, not for a while. He has to watch over me,” said Alice.

  I shrugged. “You heard what Miss Roosevelt said, sir, and as you well know, I always oblige the ladies.” We both laughed at that, while Alice looked a little miffed at being left out of an inside joke. “Thank you again, sir. We’ll have that dinner, and once again, your debt is paid in full.” We shook hands, and then he saw us out.

  The front door had barely closed when Alice said, “What was that all about?”

  “About obliging a lady? Just a joke about a Cuban barmaid. Soldier banter.”

  “Not that—although, were you close with her, this Feliciana?”

  “How long do you think I was in Cuba? All I can say is that I probably spent less time with her than you have with Preston.”

  And that quieted her for a few moments—no easy feat. “We’re off the subject. What I meant to ask about was that debt. What did Mr. Everton owe you? Is this just left over from some card game?”

  We were in the motorcar, and I started it up. It was back to the East Side to Lexington Wine & Spirits to find Dora Compton’s next of kin. If nothing else, this investigation was teaching me a lot about New York geography.

  “No, it wasn’t a card game,” I said.

  “What then?” she persisted.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I said.

  “Don’t patronize me, Cowboy.”

  I knew she’d go on and on until I told her, and it was easier to discuss while I was driving.

  “During a battle, Captain Everton was shot and went down. Maybe you noticed how he doesn’t use his left arm much. He had dragged himself to the side of a farmhouse, and we were falling back in the face of a Spanish counterattack. He could barely move and ordered us to leave him behind. But I disobeyed. I stayed there and I emptied my rifle. Then his rifle. And his revolver. By that time, the Spanish decided it wasn’t worth it and went around us. Eventually, we were found and the captain said he owed me, and someday he would pay me back.”

  Alice thought about that for a while.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Why did I stay with him? I told you that you wouldn’t understand.”

  “No, not why you stayed. I never doubted your physical courage, Mr. St. Clair. Why did you settle the debt for something that I wanted? You’ve seemed pretty clear that you’re just humoring me. So why spend so much? Wait, I know. It’s because you know how important this is, that my father himself could be in danger.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s it.” But she continued to stare at me curiously.

  “Actually, I think you really did it for me, to make me happy,” she finally said. “Thank you very much, Mr. St. Clair.” She kissed me on the cheek. I wasn’t going to disagree with her. I wanted to protect the president. I wanted to keep Alice happy. I wanted some excitement myself. And Alice could believe . . . what she believed.

  “You’re welcome, Miss Alice.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Lexington Wine & Spirits looked like a good outfit with a wide selection on clean shelves, and some well-heeled gentlemen were looking over the goods. The sales clerks were dressed in good suits, and one of them came over to us. As he got closer, I could see his eyes light up. It was always fun to watch the expressions of those who recognized Alice Roosevelt, and I knew Alice never tired of it.

  “Miss Roosevelt, I am honored to have you in our store. I’m Mr. Letchworth, the manager. How may I serve you today?”

  “Thank you. My father does not drink excessively and does not admire men who do, but he does like an occasional mint julep, which I believe he makes from rye whisky. Can you help me?” Mr. Letchworth was delighted to help, and soon we had an excellent bottle, which he said he’d send to the Caledonia.

  Then he looked up at me, hoping to make another sale.

  “Oh, this is Mr. St. Clair, my Secret Service bodyguard.”

  “Can I guess your drink, sir?” said the cheerful manager. “I can always tell. You’re a bourbon man?”

  “Very good,” I said, laughing.

  “As a reward for your good guess, I’ll also buy a bottle of bourbon, your finest for Mr. St. Clair. You can ship it with the rye.”

  “Happy to oblige, Miss Roosevelt. I’ll just ring up your purchases.” He disappeared for a few moments.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, coloring slightly.

  “One more thing,” said Alice when Letchworth returned. “As long as we’re here, I believe I know one of your employees. His brother—or was it cousin—works for a friend of mine, and I just want to pass along my regards. An Albert Compton?”

  He seemed a little surprised but wasn’t about to question a Roosevelt. “Oh, ah, of course, very nice of you. Mr. Compton is the dispatch clerk. Been with us for a number of years. You can find him on our loading dock, which you can reach through that back door.”

  We thanked him again and walked through the back door. Business must’ve been pretty good for Lexington folks, because there were several delivery trucks being loaded, and a slightly built man about my age, in a suit also not that different from mine, was checking shipments off one by one. We waited until the last truck left, then approached him. Looking back at it, Alice’s greeting may not have been the best idea, but I think anything would’ve set him off.

  “Mr. Compton? Could we have a word about your late sister, Dora? We’d just like—” But he was off like a jackrabbit. This time, I was the one who had to decide to leave Alice alone. I had a second to consider just how dangerous it might be to let this probable witness to an assassination get away and how unlikely it would be that Alice would be assaulted in a respectable store in a good neighborhood, and I took off.

  Even so, he might’ve gotten away if he had headed to the street and lost himself in the crowd, but instead he turned into a warren of service streets that ran behind the houses. It was only a matter of time before I caught up to him behind a butcher shop, and he found himself hemmed in between a tall fence that separated the next property and a rack of pig carcasses.

  He had absolute terror in his eyes, the look of a man who realizes he’s made a terrible mistake and isn’t going to get another chance. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a nasty-looking knife with a six-inch blade.

  “I—I know how to use this,” he said, but he obviously didn’t.

  “Just settle down,” I said. I pulled out my badge. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m with the US Secret Service, and I just want to talk.”

  “You’re here to kill me,” he said. Despite the cold weather, he was sweating, and he wiped his coat sleeve across his brow. His hand was shaking so badly I doubted if he could swat a fly.

  I opened my coat to show my Colt. “Listen, pal, if I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead. First rule: don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. Again, I’m Secret Service. You saw I was with a lady. You think I’d bring a lady if I was going to kill you?” I saw the doubt in his eyes, then I stepped over to him and took away his knife. “Come on, someone wants to speak with you. I think we can help each other.”

  I took him by the arm and led him back to the loading dock, where Alice was waiting and tapping her foot.

  “I was wondering when you two would be back. It’s freezing out here. Is there a place we can talk inside?”

  It turned out that Albert had a little booth, barely big enough for the three of us to stand, where he kept his paperwork, and it was reasonably warm.

  “Are you really Secret Service?” he asked, finally showing signs of calming down and realizing he wasn’t g
oing to die, at least not by our hand.

  “Yes. And this is Alice Roosevelt. She has some questions for you. I’d advise you to answer them completely and truthfully.”

  “Am I under arrest?” he asked.

  Alice fielded that one. “Mr. Compton, your possible arrest is the least of your worries right now. You are involved with some very unpleasant people, and I know this because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t have run like that when we asked you a civil question, and you wouldn’t have threatened Mr. St. Clair with that knife he obviously took away from you. Your only hope right now is cooperation.”

  “You’re really Alice Roosevelt?” he asked. “But I don’t understand . . .”

  “You don’t have to understand. But you do have to talk to us. We’re here about your sister, Dora.”

  Albert sighed deeply and wiped his brow again. He reached under a cabinet, and I moved my hand to my revolver, but he only came up with a bottle of gin. He took a long swig, and that seemed to steady him. He also remembered his manners and offered some to me and, God bless him, to Alice too, and he shrugged when we turned him down.

  “Very well. Dora was my sister and a good kid. I could’ve helped her find work in the city, but the Van Schuylers were offering good wages for workers willing to move upstate. It’s mostly men up there, but they also needed women to work kitchens at work sites, run laundries, things like that. She wrote me that the work was tough and the managers were strict, but she was saving her money—and then she got involved with a man. I know . . . I should’ve gone up there like a good brother and checked him out, but we’d been on our own since we were very young, and I thought she could take care of herself . . .” He drank more gin.

  “What was his name?” asked Alice.

  “She didn’t say. She just wrote she had found a sweetheart, a real gentleman, at least at first. She was a very pretty girl, you see.” He looked mournful for a moment, before shaking his head and continuing. “She knew he wasn’t married—she had the sense to make sure of that, she told me. But as she wrote more, it was clear things weren’t so good. He was becoming more and more demanding and short-tempered, and although she hoped he’d marry her, he kept putting her off. But that’s the way of rich folks, isn’t it?”

  “Not all of us,” said Alice.

  “I beg your pardon. Not all of you,” he said. “But a lot of them, for sure. And then he started to ask her to spy on other Van Schuyler workers and report back to him. He said he was afraid of anarchists.”

  “Wait—this gentleman suitor was with the Van Schuyler company? It sounds like he was, if he was afraid of anarchists,” said Alice.

  “That’s what I figured,” said Albert. “At any rate, he was a rich man, and they’re all afraid of anarchists.”

  “Was your sister an anarchist?”

  “Certainly not! She was a good, honest girl, but that’s when things went bad. She wasn’t going to spy on every hardworking man or woman who just happened to make a complaint after a long day’s work. But it got worse. In her last letter to me, she said . . . well, she said she was frightened. He was not only pushing her for information but pushing her neighbor, too, for information on anarchist agitators.”

  “That neighbor was Leon Czolgosz, wasn’t he?” said Alice, and Albert looked like he had been slapped.

  “How the . . . who told you—”

  “Nevermind that. Just let it be a lesson to you that secrets are harder to keep than you think.”

  “I guess so,” he said. “But you can imagine why I wanted to keep that to myself, how I realized my sister was in great danger. I had decided that it was time for me to go up there, even before the assassination. And then . . . it happened. I heard Dora’s neighbor, Leon Czolgosz, had killed the president.”

  “Did she say anything about him? What was he like?”

  “Rather like a stray cat, according to Dora,” he said with a rueful smile. “She didn’t say much, however—just how ridiculous it was for her suitor to try to harass Leon. She said Leon called himself an anarchist, but she thought he was just posing, showing off. That anyone would find him a real threat was silly, she said. I don’t think she thought—that anyone thought—he would really kill the president.”

  Alice nodded. “So you must’ve been very surprised when you heard?”

  “Absolutely. I tried to reach her—and I found out she had been killed, and the police were investigating. I was out of my mind. I didn’t know what to think.” He buried his face in his hands, and I started to feel bad for him. I had a sister, too, and he had lost his under horrific circumstances.

  “Can you imagine?” he said, looking up. “My sister dead, her friend and neighbor a presidential assassin, and some mysterious suitor whose name I didn’t know but who may have killed her. I was afraid to even make inquiries. And then, about a week after she died, I received a package in the mail. There was a short note from Dora asking me to keep it safe until we were together again. Judging from the postmark, she was killed the day after she sent it.”

  “A package?”

  And now Albert, who had started our meeting in fear and progressed to grief, began to exhibit craftiness.

  “I didn’t know what it was at first. But as I looked at it, I realized they were reports, not all that different from what I do here. Reports about Van Schuyler people and materials at various Great Lakes ports, with dates through last summer.” Alice and I met each other’s eyes. I had told her about Bolton’s clerk saying another employee had been killed for betraying the Van Schuylers. That seemed to be Dora.

  “I think it was Dora’s revenge on her suitor,” he continued, “stealing important papers from him. Her suitor was part of, or at least connected to, the Van Schuyler family. And I think they’ll pay to get these papers back.” He looked proud of himself, and even though I felt a little sympathy, I didn’t much like his plans to make money from his sister’s death. And I don’t think Alice did either. Revenge isn’t pretty, and when you mix it with greed, it’s only worse.

  “Why do you think those papers are valuable?” Alice asked.

  “Dora wasn’t stupid,” he said. “She knew they were worth something. And I can guess what they’re about. I’m betting the family was crooked—things being moved where they shouldn’t be and lying about it. Goods smuggled or even stolen. I’ve been a clerk for a long time, miss, and I know the sins reports like this can hide, if you know how to read them.” He looked more and more crafty as he spoke.

  “I am making allowances for your feelings,” said Alice. “You are probably right about the importance of those papers. If anything, you may be underestimating their importance. They have to go to the proper authorities. I will see that happens. Do you have them with you?”

  Albert looked out of the little window in the booth, into the distance, and he gave a small smile, just for himself. “I knew I had to be patient. I had to wait until things were a little quieter. And then I sent the company president, Mr. Henry van Schuyler, a letter and asked him to reply to a general delivery post office box. It’s only been two weeks. He’ll pay up, I know. I can wait.”

  “No,” said Alice. “He will find you and kill you. And you know it. You thought we were from the Van Schuylers, or you wouldn’t have run. You wouldn’t have armed yourself. You’re a fool. And they will find you. You have no idea what you’re up against. Now give me those papers.”

  His answer was more gin. Alice snatched it out of his hand, and before either of us could react, she opened the window and threw it out to smash on the loading dock. Albert looked forlorn, but then he shrugged and rallied. “I admit I’m nervous. But the fact is that you weren’t with the Van Schuylers. I’ve been staying in a little room above the shop, and there’s a night watchman here. My apartment in Brooklyn is under a friend’s name. And that’s where the papers are.”

  “I found you, Mr. Compton. It’s true I am very clever. But the Van Schuylers are clever, too, and they will find you, and they’ll get their pa
pers. And then they’ll kill you. This is your last chance to live. Now, let’s go get those papers.”

  He was still looking out the window, but not at the broken gin bottle, and I don’t even know if he was aware we were there anymore. “Yes, Miss Roosevelt, I will. But not until I’m done getting the money from the Van Schuylers. They’re going to pay.”

  “You idiot!” she shouted. “Don’t you understand who they are, what they’re going to do to you? You can’t win.” In another circumstance, it might’ve been amusing watching a young girl threaten a man like that, but with the set of her mouth and eyes as hard as a New York cop, I knew she was serious. “No one is going to pay you. You’ll be either giving it to me or giving it to the Van Schuylers. Think about it. Deal with me, and you’ll live. We’ll be back. Come, Mr. St. Clair.”

  And we left him to his emotions—grief, rage, regret. But mostly fear, and I didn’t blame him.

  CHAPTER 23

  We got back into the motorcar.

  “He told us the same thing as Emma Goldman,” Alice said, and I didn’t immediately get the reference, but she continued. “Remember? She never thought Czolgosz could’ve done it. And now we see Dora Compton apparently didn’t either. Maybe Goldman was actually right. We’ll have to think about that. Anyway, this idiot’s lack of cooperation is just a temporary setback,” she said. “We know a lot now, and if Dora really did steal Van Schuyler reports from her lover, who I’m guessing was the Archangel, there may be a copy somewhere else, too. And we will get them—Albert Compton is very much mistaken if he thinks he can thwart me. I’ll lean on Preston, too. Back to the University Club. Preston has some decisions to make.”

  I just nodded and put the motorcar into gear. Alice was good and angry, and at least for now, she wanted to take it out on Preston.

  We were quiet for a while, and Alice steamed, but then she looked a little curious. “Mr. St. Clair, you may be my bodyguard, but that’s not what the Secret Service mostly does. It handles financial crimes, I believe—counterfeit money and so on.”