I Am Abraham (23 page)

“That’s damn foolishness,” I said. “Told you what I was carrying inside.”

He must have seen the anger in my eyes—and for the first time in his life, Bob flinched. I was half a trigger away from striking my boy. I’d inherited Pa’s
hate
, that penchant to flair up and hurt whoever was in front of him.

“I’m awful sorry, son. But when did you last see that gripsack of mine?”

“Sir, I left it with the hotel porter—I think.”

So we rushed downstairs to the lobby, Bob and I, and rummaged through all the bags behind the manager’s desk, but my sack was gone. No one, not even my escorts, dared look at me. Folks moved as far as they could from the President Elect. I didn’t have the heart—or the enterprise—to rewrite that address.

And then a porter appeared. He’d found my gripsack behind a chair. I rummaged inside and recognized my own scrawls.

“Boys,” I said to
everyone
in the lobby with a smile, “that darn thing contains my certificate of moral character, written by myself.”

Bob wasn’t fooled. All that reserve of his had come back. He’d sniffed out something he’d never seen in his Pa, and he was mortified. He put a Harvard ribbon round his neck and wore it for the rest of the ride, like some talisman that would protect him from his own Pa.

I
HAD
TO
HEAR
from the tap of a telegraph clerk that Jeff Davis was inaugurated while I was still riding the rails. It was an uncommon insult. I’d have to wait until the fourth of March to be sworn in. So it seemed like some savage delusion that the country—or part of it—had a new President, housed in Montgomery, Alabama. Folks on the Victory Train figured I might not be inaugurated at all—that a bomb might explode, or our car could be derailed by a team of saboteurs. I didn’t want my boys to suffer on account of their Pa’s foolish wish to seek out the Presidency. Seems there was a plot afoot in Baltimore to assassinate me after our entourage arrived. Even Baltimore’s marshal of police was involved in the plot. Was the whole country
gambling
against me? That’s what some of the railroad men believed.

“Where did you get such candid information?” I asked.

“From Allan Pinkerton,” said a vice president of the B&O line.

“And who in thunder is this Pinkerton feller?”

A detective in a derby hat, with a cigar in his mouth, said, “I am.”

I had heard of Pinkerton—and his accomplished fleet of spies—who protected the railroads from every sort of sabotage and broke many a skull. But I was stupefied when I learned that this pugnacious detective and his spies had been summoned by the railroad to protect my life and limb.

It turned out that the Presidential train was loaded with
Pinkertons
; Tad and Willie even played with a couple. And a journalist who pretended to be in the employ of
Godey’s Magazine
& Lady’s Book
was a Pinkerton, too. She was a rough, rawboned creature who advertised herself as Mrs. Small. The boys took a shine to her, and she was the one female on the Presidential tour who didn’t arouse Mary’s jealous nature.

Pinkerton used her as a “firefly” to prey on certain nefarious men. Mrs. Small, it seems, had slipped into Baltimore and insinuated herself inside that little band of plotters, who had their own militia company. She’d become
intimate
with the leader of the plot, a Corsican barber named Cypriano Ferrandini; he was a captain of the militia who worked at Barnum’s Hotel and was sympathetic to the South. It disheartened me to hear that tale of Mrs. Small lending her body and soul to such a rascal. Allan Pinkerton seemed to take some pride in her sacrifice, but Mrs. Small was much more sensitive than her boss and noticed my dilemma.

She blushed behind that hard bark of hers. “It was dreadful, Mr. Lincoln, being around that skunk.”

The barber and his band meant to meet our train at Baltimore’s Calvert Street Station, where the Presidential car had to be pulled across town to Camden Street by several teams of horses and connect up with the Baltimore & Ohio train to Washington. The barber would create a scuffle at Camden Street, divert the marshal of police and all his men, and while our party drove through Baltimore, the barber’s men would attack the Presidential car and tear us to pieces.

It had all the ardor of
Beadle’s Dime Novels
.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Small, but even the barber’s name is difficult to swallow.”

I’d offended this lady detective, I could tell. I kissed her hand, but she wasn’t looking for gallantry. Mrs. Small rolled up one sleeve and revealed where the barber had scratched her arm with a razor—it was an awful funny way of handling her.

“That’s how he wanted to buy my devotion,” she said.

Then Governor Seward’s own son appeared at my hotel in Philadelphia with a note from his Pa and General Scott, who watched over the Union from his headquarters in the District. The note mentioned that infernal barber and the marshal of police. Baltimore had been given over to the rabble, according to Seward and Scott. The
Secesh
would soon be in a position to strike, and if the whole of Maryland fell, the District would be in danger.

“Mr. Lincoln,” said the railroad detective, with that cigar still in his mouth, “you’ll have to leave Philadelphia at once—under cover.”

But I had to address the Legislature tomorrow at Harrisburg, and I wasn’t going to shift my plans on account of a rebellious barber and his accomplices in the police, not while the Union was unraveling right in front of my eyes.

“We’ll leave from Harrisburg,” I said. “But I’ll have to tell my wife.”

“Sir, you cannot tell a living soul, or our own plans will run awry.”

“I’ll still have to tell my wife.”

So we summoned Mary to our salon at the Continental Hotel. She could read our faces before I said a word. I showed her the report from General Scott. Mary plummeted into a chair.

“I will not leave my husband alone, not during such a calamity. Bob can look after Willie and Todd.”

“Madam,” chortled the railroad detective, “there are Confederate spies in Philadelphia this very moment, watching our every move. We’ll have a disaster on our hands should we signal to them any change in your husband’s itinerary.”

It was then Mary must have noticed that Mrs. Small, who sat in the salon with us, wasn’t a journalist from
Godey’s
.

“I suppose you’re covering this event for the
Lady’s Book
, Mrs. Small. Well, you can ask me all the questions you want on our clandestine ride to Baltimore.”

“Mother,” I said, “be quiet.”

Mary sat seething in her chair, while I turned to the detective.

“And what will happen when the Presidential train arrives in Baltimore with my wife and three boys on board? That barber could hold them hostage.”

“Not at all,” said Allan Pinkerton. “By that time the cat will be out of the bag.”

I had to travel in a soft felt hat, with an unfamiliar coat hunched around my shoulders. We left Harrisburg like thieves in the night, on a special two-car train, with not a single light turned on. My sleeping berth was much too small for my legs. So I had to sit up half the night with my two detectives. I learned a lot from Pinkerton. He told me that every other damn train in the area had been
stalled
until ours got through. And the telegraph lines going in and out of Harrisburg had been cut, so the Confederate spies would be
wireless
until I reached the capital.

Pinkerton and his lady detective were smoking pitch-black cigars. They cleaned all their armaments with a little rag. I could see that something was pestering Mrs. Small.

“I listened to your speech at Trenton,” she told me. “And you said you were the humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and his almost chosen people. Now why is it we were
almost
chosen?”

I could have spent half my canvassing on that single word.

“I’m not so sure. We all see ourselves as the chosen ones. And it ain’t the evil of slavery that separates us. The foul smell is in all our bones. Perhaps it will always be there, on both sides.”

W
E
ARRIVED
IN
B
ALTIMORE
at 3½ in the morning. The sky was black as a coal bin without a bottom, but with a gray edge like the mouth of a furnace lit long ago and with a residue of ash. The Calvert Street Station was deserted, except for one man—the marshal of police. He stood there all alone, with silver notches in his uniform. He was very tall. He must have been looking for some train that had been rerouted. He was clever enough to realize we might have come in under a secret schedule.

Pinkerton didn’t panic. He sent Mrs. Small out to greet the marshal, who recognized her as one of the barber’s sweethearts. But what was she doing here at this haunted hour, stepping off a train that wasn’t even lit? He was about to blow his whistle when Mrs. Small cracked him on the head with a slung shot that was a kin to the kind Duff Armstrong liked to carry around his wrist.

That marshal dropped to the platform like a bolt. Mrs. Small hid him behind a gigantic bin. Then the barber arrived out of nowhere—in a cape, like Prince Hamlet. Cypriano Ferrandini was trussed up with pistols and knives and bullet pouches. He hadn’t come alone. He had five of his militiamen, who were also trussed up. The barber had a broad mustache. He couldn’t have been older than thirty. He pecked at his teeth with a metal pick. I’d never seen a feller with so much sauce. He bowed to Mrs. Small and clapped his hands.

“Bravo, my sweet. I took you in. I branded you, like my own little cow. None of my boys ever laid a finger on you. And this is how you reward me? You’re a government tart. I should have figured as much.”

Pinkerton clutched my arm. There was a harsh fire in his eyes.

“Don’t move,” he said. “You’ll get her killed.”

“But he’ll butcher her on the spot,” I said. “I won’t be able to bear it.”

“Lincoln, sit still!”

And he kept me there with the curious cadence of his voice. I was caught in Allan Pinkerton’s spell. He was master of this car, not the President Elect. I peered through the window. The barber had plucked a razor with a pearl handle out of his coat. Mrs. Small wasn’t under its sway. She smiled at the barber.

“Cyp,” she said with a soft growl. “It won’t be the first time I’ve been cut by a man.”

Her smile immobilized the barber and unmanned him for a minute. Then all his meanness came back. He strutted around Mrs. Small with the weaponry he was wearing. He cut her once with the razor—it was the lightest of nicks. I was mortified. I was witnessing some kind of lovers’ spat. He nicked her again. I knew the cuts would grow deeper and deeper.

I shoved Pinkerton aside and climbed out the car.

“Captain Ferrandini, I’m the feller you’re looking for.”

The barber was bewildered.

“Almost didn’t recognize you without your tall hat.”

“That little lady is a friend of mine,” I told him. “And if you touch her again, you’ll swallow your own razor before I’m finished with you.”

Mrs. Small was shivering. It wasn’t on account of the barber. She’d been paid to protect my life. And I’d come waltzing out of the car, but the barber had forgotten her—and that was fatal. He’d never even noticed the sailor’s awl cupped in her hand. I could see it flash in the dark like a silver tooth before she dug it deep into his neck. It startled him. He couldn’t seem to get rid of that silver tooth. He caressed its wooden handle and wavered in the dark while Mrs. Small whispered to me, “Get back into the car.”

I stood there. The five militiamen froze as the barber twisted about and fell. And then they ran. I got back into the car with Mrs. Small. She wouldn’t allow Allan Pinkerton to wipe the blood from her face.

“Mr. Lincoln,” he said, “you must never repeat a word of what happened here. That barber doesn’t exist.”

If anyone yapped about the plot, Pinkerton and his agents would be compromised. They’d never break into another gang. The B&O would have to admit that it couldn’t protect a President Elect along its lines. And General Scott, with all his medals, would seem like an impotent child.