Emma Donoghue Two-Book Bundle (31 page)

Hughes nods, but soberly. “I don’t mind allowing I’ll be glad when this is all over, Boyd’s back at his bogus, and I can return to honest work.”

Morrissey sniggers. Hughes’s head shoots up. “I only meant—I never heard it called that before,” says the young man.

“You, sir, move in certain circles—horse thieves, burglars, and the like,” says Hughes, “and I in others.”

“What, ain’t counterfeiters crooked?”

“Only technically. We do no harm to our fellow man.”

“Oh, Jack, lay off your sham,” Mullen puts in.

“Money’s not real gold anymore,” Hughes insists. “It’s only a kind of paper that the government calls precious; it’s a trick in itself. Well, I say Boyd’s bad notes are just as good. Who am I robbing, tell me, if I buy a horse with a queer bill?”

“Well—”

“The man I pay can buy something else with it, if his luck holds. It all goes round.”

“Tell that to the Secret Service,” says Mullen with a broad grin. “He was arrested back in August, for shoving the coney,” he tells Morrissey.

Hughes sighs. “After a dozen years of being careful, never going out with more than one note on me …”

“Skipped bail, too. That’s how come he’s let his beard grow into such an ugly bush so he can hide behind it.”

“I was thinking,” says Hughes, “when it comes to freeing Boyd and getting our reward, why couldn’t we ask for the settlement of my own little case to be thrown in?”

Mullen shrugs. “You better take that up with Big Jim.”

“I might well. I could eat like all wrath,” says Hughes after a minute. “I’m going downstairs for a plate of oysters.” The others follow him out of the room, but he turns. “We can’t all go: three together could attract attention.”

“On a night like this,” scoffs Mullen, “you’d have to run bare-assed along Main Street to attract attention.”

“No, he’s right,” says Morrissey, “I’ll go eat elsewhere, check Brown’s got us a wagon. See you back here at half past eight.”

In the dark, the three of them walk along the streetcar tracks north of Springfield. Mullen is humming “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” He’s got an ax over one shoulder that he took from outside the tavern, on a whim. He pauses to adjust something in his armpit.

“You armed?” Morrissey asks him.

“Always. And it doesn’t take a great deal of provocation to make me shoot.”

“Mullen’s an all-fired desperado, all right,” says Hughes with a snort.

Morrissey hawks tobacco juice into a bush.

“So Brown will be at the cemetery by half past nine?” Hughes asks him.

“Yup, he’s borrowed a three-spring wagon and a rattling good pair of bays. He’ll tie them up in the woods, then come to the Monument and give the whistle.”

Oak Ridge Cemetery is ahead. They jump the fence and move round through the trees. One small light flickers. “That’s the custodian’s lodge,” murmurs Hughes.

At the top of the hill, on a small plateau, the Monument rears up in the patchy moonlight: an obelisk with statues of soldiers and horses swarming round its base. “Like something out of Old Egypt,” Morrissey marvels. “It must be two hundred feet high.”

“It’s a solid-looking pile, all right,” says Mullen.

“That bit that curves out the front is a little museum. The crypt is at the back,” says Hughes.

Their approach is up a steep ravine, bare except for a single oak. Hughes pauses to take out a small bull’s-eye lantern, rip the paper off, and light it. The wooden door has a simple lock; it doesn’t take Morrissey long to pick it. Inside is another door, iron this time, with a steel bolt secured by a padlock. Mullen pulls out a jimmy and fits the sections together. He works on the padlock for some minutes. “Damn thing’s too big for the staple.”

“Try a steel saw,” advises Hughes.

“That’s just exactly what I was about to do.” But the metal resists his squealing blade. “Tarnation seize this good-for-nothing lock. I’m going to take the ax to it.”

“That won’t work.” After a few more minutes Hughes taps Morrissey on the shoulder, making him jump. “You and I should check the front, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case there’s a guard posted, or the custodian’s got a notion to sit up with his President. Old men can’t sleep.”

“Hey,” protests Mullen, “where’re you fellows going with the light?”

“Can’t you saw by starlight for a minute? You could hardly make a poorer fist of the job …”

Morrissey and Hughes go round to the front. The museum is quite dark. Hughes takes out a pistol. Morrissey slides open the shutter of the lantern, holds it against the outer bars and peers through the glass pane. “Nothing stirring.”

When they get back, Mullen’s saw has cut about a third of the way through the padlock. They lean against the wall and watch him. Suddenly the blade snaps. He hurls down the pieces. “This cock-sucking saw! I could cut steel better with a penknife.”

“Don’t blame the damn tools when it was you who chose them,” says Hughes. “Here, try with a file.”

Hughes hugs the bars to hold the padlock quite steady while Mullen goes to work with a three-cornered file.

“We can take turns if you get tuckered,” offers Morrissey.

“I’m not tuckered,” grunts Mullen. “Just you keep watch.”

“I believe I’ll take another tour around the Monument.”

Morrissey walks silently round the side of the building. At the door of the museum he reaches through the bars and taps three times on the glass. A long pause, and then the door opens a crack. “Chief?” he whispers.

“I’ll get him” comes the reply.

In a minute Chief Patrick Tyrrell puts his meaty-jawed head out, hisses, “What’s the delay?”

“They’re having trouble with the padlock.”

A sharp sigh. “We’d better hang on till they’ve got the tomb open; otherwise it’s only breaking and entering.”

“How many of you are in there?” asks Morrissey, peering through the gap.

“Five, plus the custodian and a reporter. We’ve got these ghouls dead to rights,” says Tyrrell, his voice gravelly with anticipation. “Tonight’s operation is going to break the back of counterfeiting in the United States.”

Morrissey is looking down: “How come you’re in your socks, Chief?”

“We were afraid of making noise,” Tyrrell hisses; “the marble echoes like the blazes. Go on back, before they come looking!”

Back outside the crypt, Morrissey finds Mullen working at the lock with a pair of pinchers, twisting it like taffy. He breaks off with a grunt and rubs his hands to warm them. “You ever tried this kind of business before?” he asks Hughes.

“What, lock breaking?”

“Grave robbing.”

Hughes shakes his head.

“There’s nothing to it, once we’re in,” Morrissey assures them. “We don’t even have to dig, just get the lid off.”

“If it wasn’t for the need to spring Boyd out of jail,” mutters Mullen, “I wouldn’t quite like disturbing a man’s rest.”

“Oh, he’s sleeping too deep to care,” the older man tells him.

“Are you superstitious, Mullen?” jeers Morrissey.

A shrug. “No more than the next fellow. Old Abe himself did some table rapping. I heard it was spirits told him he had to free the slaves.”

“I’ve got no bone to pick with the great man,” Hughes tells him.

“No bone—I get it,” says Mullen with a snigger.

“It’s a bone for a bone, in this case,” says Hughes, “a body for a body. There’s a kind of justice to the exchange. The people of America will get their sainted Abe back in a week or two, as soon as we get Ben Boyd.”

“Plus the two hundred thousand bucks,” says Morrissey.

“Well, yeah. That’s about how much the people of Illinois spent on this here eternal Monument,” says Hughes, craning up at the obelisk, “so the contents must be worth at least as much.”

“Plus, we’ll get fame,” adds Mullen, “and the respect of our fellow Americans!”

Hughes rolls his eyes at Morrissey.

With that, the lock finally cracks and falls. “All set,” crows Mullen, “let her rip!”

Hughes hushes him. The door scrapes open. Morrissey hangs back, lets the other two go ahead.

“Morrissey!”

“I reckon I should keep watch …”‘

“Get in here and hold the light.”

There in the middle of the crypt is the great marble sarcophagus, its end slab inscribed
LINCOLN.
Below, it says
With Malice toward None, with Charity for All.
The men approach slowly. “Well, here we are with our revered leader,” murmurs Morrissey.

Mullen fingers the thin slab on the top, and the thinner one below it. “I don’t reckon we’re going to need the drill and gunpowder. I could smash this open easy,” he pronounces. “Why, I could kick it open!”

“Exactly how much did you have to drink?” Hughes inquires.

“Just a little nerve tonic.”

“This one here says Willie,” says Morrissey, holding the lantern over the other tombs. “And here’s Tad, and … little Eddie.”

“Losing three sons out of four, that’s no luck,” comments Mullen, shaking his head.

“Can we get this done sometime before dawn?” demands Hughes.

“This one’s blank,” Morrissey points out.

“For Mrs. Lincoln,” Mullen tells him.

“Didn’t the other son put her in a nuthouse?”

“Naw, she skedaddled.”

“You loafing bums,” Hughes barks, “we’ve got a tomb to open. Shut pan and get to work.”

Mullen heaves the stolen ax over his head.

“Hold up there,” says Morrissey rapidly, grabbing the barman’s arm.

“Watch yourself! I nearly had your hand off.”

“The custodian’s not so far off, he might hear you. And I reckon if we can prize the slab off in one piece, we can put it back afterward and then no one will know what we’ve taken, for a while anyhow.”

“There’s a plan,” Hughes decides.

Sullen, Mullen shoves the edge of his ax under the marble, and it lifts with a creak. “Would you look at that, there’s nothing but plaster holding it on!”

Between the three of them they drag the great slab to one side and rest it against the tomb set aside for Mrs. Lincoln. Now Mullen goes to work on the thinner slab with the ax blade. Morrissey uses a chisel. They manage to break the cement and pry the lid up at one corner, but it won’t come off. “Let me smash it,” says Mullen longingly.

“Wait a tick.” Morrissey has found some copper dowels holding the sarcophagus together. “If we can just lift it clear of these pins …”

Grunting and growling, they manage it, and lay the marble across the tomb. “There she lies,” says Mullen, peering in.

“She?”

“I meant the casket. The cedar.”

Hughes is examining the end slab. “If we can pull this piece off, we can slide the thing out instead of having to lift it … Mullen, where’s your jimmy?” He crowbars the copper ties, and lays the end slab on the floor. He and Mullen take hold of the coffin by its edges, and pull it about two feet out of the sarcophagus. Hughes straightens, wheezing a little. “I reckon it weighs about five hundred pounds.”

“Let’s take the lid off,” suggests Mullen, eyes glittering.

“What for?” asks Hughes.

“Yeah,” Morrissey laughs, “we can hardly have got the wrong fellow.”

“Just to see. I bet he’s all dark by now, like a bronze of himself. Do you reckon he still has his little chin-beard?”

“Half the men in America have his little chin-beard by now,” Morrissey quips.

“Feel that,” says Mullen, grabbing Morrissey’s fist and putting it to his waistcoat. Morrissey pulls away. “My heart, it’s going like a rattle.”

“You skeery?” sneers Hughes.

“No I am not. Just excited. This is a historic moment. The real thing. Abe Lincoln in the flesh!”

Morrissey shakes his head. “It’s only his mortal coil, that he shuffled off a long time back. The bird has flown.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Why, don’t you believe you have a soul, you heathen?”

“I remain to be convinced. What am I, exactly, if I’m not this?” Mullen asks, grabbing a fistful of his arm. “Anyhow, I knew a pickpocket with an Indian skull for a paperweight, he never had any luck.”

“I saw the Hottentot Venus in a freak show,” Morrissey told him, “her corpse, I mean.”

“How big was her quim?”

“Not as big as they said it would be.”

Hughes has yanked out his watch. “Where’s Billy Brown?”

“Yeah,” says Mullen, “we should have heard his whistle by now.”

“With all the ruckus you’ve been making, we wouldn’t have heard the Last Trumpet.”

“I’ll go find him, I bet he’s waiting in the trees,” Morrissey volunteers, handing Hughes the lamp.

“Hold on—”

“We’ll lift it easy with four,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves the crypt. He heads down the ravine, skidding slightly on the frosty grass, then circles the Monument and climbs up the other side.

This time when he taps at the glass, it is Chief Tyrrell who opens. “Ready?”

Morrissey nods.

The detectives file out, pistols drawn. “Wait a minute, men,” says Tyrrell. “It’s so dark—tie your handkerchiefs round your arms so we can see not to shoot each other.”

This procedure takes a little while. Tyrrell is still in his socks. Then they file round the corner of the Monument, Morrissey in the rear.

A shot, deafening.

“What the devil was that?”

A stammering voice. “Sorry, Chief, my cap went off.”

“Get a move on!”

They break into a run. Somebody stumbles and falls with a yelp. When they reach the crypt, Tyrrell shoves the door open with his pistol butt. “Whoever’s in there, come out!”

Dead silence.

“Just you come on out and surrender.” After a long pause, he strikes a match and steps in. “Gone,” he groans.

Ten days later, in the Hub, Mullen is tending bar in a clean apron and Hughes is dozing by the stove. “I still don’t get it,” says Mullen. Hughes yawns.

“Tilden got three hundred thousand more votes than Hayes, am I right?”

“I keep telling you, there’s more to it.”

“No, but you can’t tell me that three hundred thousand men don’t matter.”

“It’s the Electoral College that matters,” Hughes insists.

“Aw, this is all gum.”

“If you’d pay attention—”

“It’s bunkum, plumb and plain. More fellows voted for the Democrat.”