On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  At his desk in the large central office, Lon wrote his report on the Chicago & Galena affair. Himself a writer of voluminous reports, Pinkerton demanded that his operatives write them too. Sledge said Lon had the education to write for both of them.

  Lon finished about noon. He looked for his partner and found him in an adjoining room, experimenting with false mustaches from one of the agency’s disguise kits. Sledge held a droopy mustache to his upper lip.

  “What do you think?”

  “What are you supposed to be, a Chinese mandarin?”

  Sledge threw the mustache back in the box and chose another, shorter, neater. “I’m posing as a gent renting a fancy rig for an outing. Someone’s stealing expensive horses from a big livery out in Rockford.”

  Lon nodded. “That one fits.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Nothing yet.” Lon didn’t tell Sledge he intended to resign.

  Timothy Webster, the bearded and dignified senior operative, came in from the rogues’ gallery to ask if Lon wanted to have lunch. The agency had pioneered in building a fact and picture file on known or suspected criminals. Tim Webster had the latest wet-plate print in hand. On the back, information was inscribed in a fine copperplate hand.

  “Who’s that?” Lon asked.

  “Ralph McSwiney, otherwise known as James Smithfield and Samuel Smythe. Travels as an itinerant portrait photographer. His palaver and equipment get him into fine homes where he proceeds to cosh the owners and strip the place. Lunch?”

  Lon made excuses; he needed time to rehearse his resignation speech. He left through the frosted-glass door with the big painted eye staring at visitors over the slogan THE EYE THAT NEVER SLEEPS.

  A sudden thaw had turned the unpaved streets to brown sludge. The sunny day was fouled by coal smoke and the smell of manure piles on every other corner. A mild breeze off the lake added the stench of the lakefront slaughterhouses. Traffic was horrible, made worse by drovers herding their cattle, and pigs running everywhere, seemingly with no supervision. In the constant din, loudest of all were the throaty horns of the lake boats and the shriek and puff of the trains.

  In spite of the squalor and disorder, Lon loved the sprawling city he’d fled to when he ran away from southern Ohio. A frontier trading post that had turned into a metropolis, Chicago was a booming grain, meat, and rail center; home to more than one hundred thousand people. Among the mobs of pedestrians, Lon cut a noticeable figure in his English-style, knee-length coat, which he’d bought from a pushcart peddler because of the stylish black velvet collar. The coat complemented a rakish black felt hat, shallow-crowned with a narrow red silk band and wide curled brim. Unlike most of his colleagues, Lon didn’t wear a beard. Beards itched.

  Unfortunately he chose the wrong saloon for a sandwich and some reflection. When he returned to the office at twelve forty-five, both cheeks were purpling. One of the hip-level pockets of his coat was ripped, hanging like a panting tongue. A slim and smartly dressed brunette in her late twenties came out the door before he could open it.

  “Hello, Kate.”

  “My heavens, what happened to you?”

  “I got into a discussion about Fort Sumter.”

  “A discussion?” she said with an eye on his bruises.

  “Well, an altercation. Two of them, one of me. I didn’t realize there were so many slaveocrats in Chicago.”

  “Everywhere,” Kate Warne said. “Except in this office.” Kate was in charge of the agency’s several female operatives. She’d come to the boss as a young widow in 1856, intent on a career in police work. No city force would hire a woman, but Pinkerton saw the wisdom of having female investigators and hired her immediately.

  “On a case?” Lon asked.

  Kate batted her eyes. “Just a poor single woman off to consult a lawyer. Two of the lawyer’s clients say that he defrauded them of a big settlement. We’ll see.” Waving, she went down the stairs.

  On his way to Bangs’s desk Lon met John Scully, an operative most of the others regarded as a Pinkerton mistake. The disheveled Scully said, “’Lo,” and stumbled by, trailing his usual cloud of whiskey fumes.

  “He’s returned,” Bangs said before Lon could ask. “He’s waiting.”

  The boss’s corner office was large and almost overwhelmed by books, files, and piles of correspondence and case reports. It was saved from chaos by Pinkerton’s passion for organization. Each neat stack was identified by a sheet of foolscap with a notation. The one clear area was the long polished table behind Pinkerton’s desk. There he kept a small American flag in a wooden stand, a photograph of himself with his wife, Joan, and their sons, a few books including a collection of the speeches of Frederick Douglass, and a leatherbound copy of the agency’s “Statement of General Principles,” which Lon had been required to read and agree to before Pinkerton would employ him. The document said the agency handled no divorces or “scandals.” It accepted no contingency fees, gratuities, or “special rewards or incentives.” Pinkerton had founded the business ten years ago. It was the first of its kind in the United States. He considered himself a professional and insisted on being treated, and paid, accordingly.

  Allan Pinkerton’s eyes fixed on his visitor. Gray-blue, they were a shade lighter than Lon’s. “I have your report. I’ll read it tonight. Excellent work, Alonzo.” Pinkerton employed maximum formality with his employees. After six months, Lon had told the boss he despised his given name, but the boss couldn’t be moved. He couldn’t be moved on anything he believed strongly.

  “Philo too, sir. He acted bravely.”

  “Philo too,” Pinkerton agreed, though a flicker of his eyelids suggested he didn’t altogether approve of Sledge or his methods. “Take a chair. Where did you get those bruises?”

  “A small discussion of slavery where I ate lunch. I shouldn’t have joined in, but I did.” Pinkerton tilted his head, his equivalent of an approving nod. Lon was on safe ground; twice he’d been invited to Pinkerton’s house on Adams Street to meet escaped slaves. Pinkerton was a foreman on the Underground Railroad. Foremen operated the stations, forwarding the packages or freight, the runaways, to the next station on the route to Canada.

  Lon admired his boss in many ways. It would be hard to work for a man of his disposition if you didn’t admire him. Pinkerton seldom smiled and he wasn’t smiling now. He demanded absolute loyalty from his operatives, but he returned it. As Tim Webster said, “He’ll storm the gates of hell for you, but cross him and he’ll leave you to burn there.”

  Pinkerton waited for Lon to begin. “Sir, I’ve come to offer my resignation.” Pinkerton sat back and folded his hands. “I want you to know first that I have no dissatisfaction with my work. In fact I love it more every day.”

  “Then what prompts you?”

  “I believe war’s coming. I don’t know where, or when, but all that I read and hear convinces me the South’s controlled by a few fanatics who won’t back down.”

  “All Southerners are fanatics,” Pinkerton said. Lon distrusted Southerners because his preacher father had raised him to hate slavery. Pinkerton not only hated the institution, he hated those who practiced it, every last one. “I agree with your feeling about a war. But why should that make you resign?”

  “Men will be needed for the Army. It’s my duty to go. Of course I’ll stay on the job until it’s time to enlist.”

  “Your sentiments are admirable, Alonzo. But they lead to a misguided conclusion.”

  Puzzled, Lon said, “Sir?”

  “I had a letter from the Captain last week. If war comes, the Captain expects to be called up, along with other West Point graduates. Some of the secesh from the Academy will turn traitor and go South. The lot of them will be fighting each other soon enough.”

  Pinkerton turned in his swivel chair—always well oiled, never a squeak. He gazed at a framed photograph on the wall above the credenza: Allan Pinkerton standing with the Captain, G. B. McClellan, in the Illinois Central yards o
n a sunlit day. The men were about the same height, five feet eight, two inches shorter than Lon. McClellan was youthful, in his early thirties; Pinkerton had turned forty a couple of years ago, with lines in his face to show it. McClellan’s expression was pleasant, Pinkerton’s typically dour. Pinkerton wore an undistinguished beard, McClellan a handsome mustache and small Napoleon-style imperial. The photo dated from McClellan’s time as chief engineer of the railroad. He’d hired the agency to protect I.C. real estate and rolling stock. Recently he’d gone to Cincinnati as superintendent of the troubled Ohio & Mississippi. His annual salary was rumored to be an incredible $10,000.

  The close friendship between the two men puzzled everyone in the office. McClellan was urbane, well educated, widely traveled. Before resigning his Army commission, he’d campaigned in Mexico, risen slowly from lieutenant to captain, been honored with a posting overseas to observe the war in the Crimea. Pinkerton, with little schooling, had come out of the slums of Glasgow. Lon had dined with the Captain once; he knew McClellan relished fine food, wine, and cigars. Pinkerton didn’t smoke, drink, or curse. It was an unlikely friendship but for one thing. Both men were driven by ambition and fierce devotion to hard work, long hours, the myriad details of business. Lon guessed that must be their bond.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t see what Captain McClellan’s future has to do with us.”

  “Intelligence. Military intelligence. The Army general staff has no department to provide it. Each general must shift for himself. The Captain is way ahead of the pack. He wrote to say that when he’s called back, he will hire this agency for special duty.”

  Was it a trick of the sunlight through the spotless window, or did Pinkerton almost smile? Lon couldn’t be sure. The word spy leaped to mind but he didn’t utter it.

  “Alonzo, as soon as war comes—and like you I believe it will, it must, to punish those vicious madmen down South—the Captain is sure to become a general, and he is already recruiting us. Any man can die in an infantry charge, but nowhere else in this country, or in the world so far as I know, will you find men who can do what we do. Men ready to be of service in a secret war. Don’t leave the organization when you’re needed most.”

  The blue-gray eyes held a tinge of fire. Lon pondered no more than five seconds. He withdrew his resignation and left the office, convinced he would soon enter a new, unmapped area of his profession. He was excited about it all day, and for days afterward.

  3

  January 1861

  Fingal’s Crab House overlooked the inner harbor from Pratt Street. The original shop was a waterman’s shack filled with so many lobster pots and crab traps there was no space for tables. It had crept outward like moss, growing to its present state: a maze of connected rooms and sheds catering to a large and steady clientele. The furnishings were plain but the fare delicious. Margaret ate Baltimore crab cakes, her father fresh oysters.

  “When do you plan to go back to Washington?” Calhoun Miller asked as he opened another shell with an oyster knife.

  “Tomorrow afternoon, I think.” Margaret dabbed the corner of her mouth with the square of butcher paper provided in lieu of a napkin. Candles in oddly assorted bottles and jars lit the scarred tables. Snowflakes flying against the windows glowed like fireflies before they melted.

  “You’ve hardly been home three weeks.”

  “You bought the other town house so that we could enjoy the capital, Papa.”

  “I bought it primarily to help the paper. It keeps me closer to the Congress.”

  “And I’m quite comfortable there.”

  “Living by yourself. No servants. Gadding about wherever and whenever you please. I’m old-fashioned, Margaret. I don’t consider it seemly for a girl your age to do that sort of thing.”

  Margaret reached across to squeeze her father’s hand. She loved him for his concern, stifling though it was sometimes. “You know you can trust me to behave, and to be cautious. But cities don’t frighten me. Men don’t frighten me. I am twenty-two, after all.”

  “With no mother to guide you for the past nine years,” Miller said with a sigh. He was a huge, dignified man, six foot four; Margaret had inherited her height from him. Thick silver hair always in need of trimming curled over his collar. He bought fine clothes, then stained every cuff and shirtfront with ink from his quill or the presses. The right sleeve of his tan frock coat was no exception.

  “That’s why I learned to fend for myself,” she said.

  “I still don’t understand your need to rush away.”

  “The holidays are over, Donal’s gone off on another tour of the company offices—”

  “Where is he, by the way? Nassau? Savannah?”

  “I’ve no idea. Donal’s not one for writing letters. I don’t want to miss the rest of the Washington season. Besides, I’m worn out with all the secession talk in this town.”

  Not merely talk, but displays of pro-Southern sentiment, everywhere. In the room nearest the street, the proprietor had tacked up a South Carolina flag and two engravings, one of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, the other of Baltimore’s harbor, as if to suggest a connection.

  “You won’t escape it in Washington, my girl.”

  “Rose doesn’t allow hotheads in her salon, just gentlemen and ladies.”

  “There’s another thing. That Greenhow woman. I thought she was in mourning for one of her daughters.”

  “It’s true. She isn’t going out yet, but she still receives visitors.”

  “I grant you that she was generous to take you up, introduce you to people—”

  “She likes me. She’s from Maryland, and she supports the South as strongly as you.”

  Her father studied the golden inch of lager at the bottom of his glass. “She has a reputation for less than perfect morality.”

  “Oh, Papa, that’s gossip. People resent women with forceful opinions. Rose is a respectable widow. Her youngest daughter, little Rose, lives right there in the same house. And the best of Washington comes to call. Senators, congressmen, Army officers—President Buchanan is one of her most faithful visitors.”

  “Old Buck,” Miller said gloomily. “He dithers and prays and does nothing about the crisis.”

  “Frankly I wish it would all go away. If there’s a war, I’ll just spit. So many things would be interrupted.”

  “No sane person wants armed confrontation. But it’s my duty to write and publish what I believe. Maryland must secede and join her Southern sisters. We are more Dixie than damn Yankee in this state.”

  Margaret took a last sip of the second-rate claret Fingal’s served. She never ordered more than one glass of wine and seldom drank more than half. “Do you really think Maryland can secede peacefully?” she asked.

  “That is the position I’ve taken in the paper, that it can, and must.” As owner and chief editorialist of the Baltimore Independent, successor to another Independent in western Virginia where they’d lived before, Calhoun Miller defended his native state, South Carolina, and the entire South. He argued his case with a businessman’s practicality. The North and England needed Southern cotton. Northern industry needed Southern markets. Until the South’s peculiar labor system withered naturally, as he believed it would, it should be left alone, in deference to profits, and to the principle of states’ rights, the passion of the great John Calhoun for whom Miller’s parents had named him. In recent months, Margaret had seen her father move from that position of accommodation to a belief that Northern hostility was now too great, forcing the South to declare its independence. He didn’t go so far as the Richmond papers that called on Marylanders to seize the nation’s capital, but he promoted secession.

  Miller noted her empty plate. “May we go?”

  “Of course. You must be tired after another long day.”

  From a wall peg Miller retrieved his daughter’s cloak, a fashionable dark green burnous with vertical white stripes. She tied her small, round English porkpie hat under her chin; green flirtation
ribbons trailed down behind. Margaret was a handsome, long-legged young woman, with an attractive full bosom. Her long dark hair was done up in a stylish bun netted in black velvet. Her outfit featured a smart fitted skirt; she thanked the Almighty for driving stiff, steel-hooped crinolines out of fashion. Because of her upbringing in the house of a journalist and her education at Mount Washington Female College, she was unusually sophisticated for her age.

  She linked arms with her father. On the way out Miller consulted his pocket watch. “Simms should be here. I told him seven sharp. Ah, there he is.” Their black houseman was bundled in a greatcoat on the driver’s seat of Miller’s splendid six-passenger rockaway. The roof extended forward above him but gave little protection from the spatters of snow. If he felt the damp and the chill, like a good servant he didn’t show it.

  “We’ll go home, Simms,” Miller said as he helped Margaret in.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Simms always took orders by thanking the giver. A freedman in his sixties, he wanted no truck with abolitionists. Margaret assumed the turmoil in the country baffled or frightened him; he never discussed it.

  Miller closed the door and drew a lap robe over them. A ship’s horn sounded distantly as they bumped down Pratt Street, leaving the harbor.

  “Was your brother home earlier?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I’ve no idea. Cicero tells me nothing about his odd comings and goings. Surely he doesn’t have midnight meetings at the firm.” After graduation from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, Margaret’s older brother had decided to read law with a prominent local attorney. He’d spent four years at it, with little progress, and no apparent desire to hurry. Margaret had long ago given up trying to understand him, except in the most basic physical terms—his injury.

  “If Donal returns when you’re in Washington, shall I tell him where to find you?”

  “I suppose you must.”

  “Such rampant enthusiasm,” Miller said with a laugh.