Rex Stout (8 page)

Brownell stopped. Questions came at him. What emerged was again the quiet voice of Lewis Wardell:

“Ten o’clock was five hours ago, Mr. Brownell. The responsibility you welcome is a heavy one.”

The secretary nodded. “Of course. The President was to go to the Capitol at noon. Up till that hour we thought we had reason to suppose that he would appear there. When he did not, for two hours we pursued another line. At half-past two I telephoned you gentlemen.”

Oliver, Secretary of War, put in, “You had reason to suppose he would appear at the Capitol? What does that mean?”

“It means …” Brownell started, and stopped. He took a step forward and resumed sharply: “Gentlemen, we’re wasting time. To you, this group as a whole, I offer no explanations and no details. I shall answer for my conduct to the proper person at the proper time and place: namely, the
President of the United States when he is back where he belongs. Yes, I waited five hours to tell you; and I have not reported to the Chief of the Secret Service or the police or anyone else. Why not? Because I don’t trust them. I trust no one! You know Washington and you are acquainted with the present crisis, but I doubt if all of you together know as much as I do of what has gone on here for the past two months: the crescendo of fear and greed, of demands and appeals noble and ignoble, of hatred and avarice, of threats veiled and open. I know, for instance, what happened in the President’s study last Friday evening, when one of you gentlemen now present sat not disapproving while three of your brother statesmen in elective offices told him that if he did not come out for war within a week he would be impeached. I trust no one! I suppose the Cabinet has—”

The interruption came from Lewis Wardell. “Mr. Brownell. You might save the oration for later. If the President has been kidnapped, let’s find him.”

“Yes, sir. I was saying, I suppose the Cabinet has the legal authority. If you will delegate that authority to one of your number who can be depended upon for loyal, prompt and aggressive action, I am ready to tell him all I know and suspect. Otherwise I tell only what I must, and I take whatever action I think necessary on my own responsibility if you don’t lock me up. To act as a group would be too cumbersome anyway. Will you name a man?”

Oliver muttered something to his neighbor Liggett. Billings admonished the secretary: “Take it easy, Harry, we don’t fancy pushing.” Theodore Schick, the fat and shrewd Secretary of Commerce, with his eyes half shut, spoke between a squeak and a growl: “In the absence of the President … I presume … the Vice-President …”

Two or three heads were seen to shake negatively. Molleson almost stuttered: “N-no, Theodore. Not me, boys.” He controlled himself to a judicial tone. “It is not a constitutional absence.”

A heavy silence. The eyes of the members of the Cabinet looked uneasily around, each at his colleagues, and there was suspicion in all of them. Mrs. Stanley rose from her chair and left the room.

At nine o’clock Wednesday morning the District of Columbia was under martial law. All rights of citizens were suspended; to walk on a sidewalk or drive a motor car or buy an ice-cream soda was no longer a right but a privilege and might or might not be rudely interrupted. Soldiers were seen on the streets of Washington, but not in numbers; they were on post at intervals throughout the city and merely stood, armed, as much onlookers as the passers-by who stared at them. The search for the President of the United States was being carried on by others, city police and detectives and the Secret Service; that is to say, the official search. Unofficially a hundred thousand citizens joined in the hunt, or a million—there was no telling. The Washington
Record
, the newspaper owned and published by Hartley Grinnell, son-in-law of George Milton, which had been savagely criticizing the President for months, appeared that morning with its entire front page a placard:

The idea caught on. Papers in other towns and cities copied it in special editions; posters conveying it were printed in a dozen states and displayed on walls, fences, and billboards. Any inhabitant might expect at any moment to find his home or office or factory or warehouse invaded by an individual or a delegation demanding “satisfaction” and the right to search. None might refuse, even in those cases where it was evident that a private grudge was taking advantage of an opportunity to make a nuisance of itself. But though there were such cases, and though there was displayed in the aggregate an incalculable quantity of stupidity, intolerance, and plain nonsense, it was yet an impressive demonstration of the temper and spirit of the American people reacting to an unprecedented outrage. They wanted their President back, and they intended to find him. They made incredible fools of themselves, but that may always be expected to happen, anywhere, when any individual or any group, large or small, loses simultaneously its self-consciousness and its sense of humor. They were crusaders, even the druggists and garage-owners in Delaware villages who put revolvers in their pockets when they left their homes for their places of business, and the plumbers in New Jersey cities who, called to fix a leaky pipe, greeted the housewives with suspicious glances and kept their ears open for strange or unexpected noises.

Destruction and violence, pointless but not unnatural, occurred here and there. In Altoona, Pennsylvania, the local leader of the Gray Shirts was left dangling on a tree and his home was burned to the ground. Similar, though usually less fatal, incidents took place in a hundred communities scattered over the nation. In twelve hours a gray shirt had become the most unfashionable garment in the history of the Republic and it was no longer being publicly worn, nor indeed privately either. Reds were hunted and disciplined too, but with less fury and certainly with less reason. In California Japanese were caught and beaten, arrested, chased through the towns and over the hills; it was reported that more than a dozen were killed.

In the section within a few hundred miles of Washington, motorists found it difficult to get to their destinations. They
might be, and were, stopped almost anywhere by almost anyone, questioned, and their cars searched. If at the twentieth such delay they exhibited a little natural resentment, they often regretted it. On the main highway north from Atlantic City a man in a big sedan with another man on the seat beside him—the president of a Philadelphia bank and one of the bank’s directors—stopped at a filling station. After he had pumped in the gas and been paid, the attendant observed, “You won’t mind if I glance inside,” and grasped the handle of the rear door. The banker said that the door was locked and he was in a hurry and a dozen people had already looked inside, and stepped on the starter. The attendant said, “Wait a minute, you’d better unlock it.” The car started forward and away. Four or five shots rang out and both rear wheels banged on flats. From a group of men standing there two, one with a rifle and the other with a shotgun, detached themselves and trotted over to where the car had stopped and the banker had got out, choleric at the outrage. One of the men, pointing the rifle from his hip, said, “Open the door.” The banker, swearing adequately, did so. The man looked inside, yanked the cushion from the seat, and backed away pulling after him a traveling bag, which he opened, dumping the contents over the running-board and the oily pavement. He kicked the shirts and brushes and slippers around a little before he said, “Okay. You’d better learn some manners, mister.” The other man moved to the front of the car and remarked disparagingly, “These tires ain’t much good,” and pulled the trigger of the shotgun twice. That made four flats. The banker, gone from red to white, demanded to know where the town constable could be found. The man with the rifle said, “That’s me.” The banker called to his companion to wait here, walked down the street to a drug store, and telephoned the County Attorney in a nearby town. The County Attorney, after listening to the flood of demands, threats, and protestations, said that the best suggestion he could offer was for the banker to take the next train north; there would be one in about an hour.

That, on that Wednesday, was one of the multitude of comic unnoticed episodes of the search for the President.

Lewis Wardell did not go to bed from seven o’clock Tuesday morning until late afternoon of the following Friday. During that period he took two short naps on a couch in a room adjoining the office of the Chief of the Secret Service, but except for those snatches he was sleepless for over eighty hours.

At five o’clock Tuesday afternoon the members of the Cabinet agreed unanimously upon the following points:

These points were put in writing and initialed by all members. When it came his turn with the fountain pen Theodore Schick, Secretary of Commerce, hesitated. He had strenuously opposed Point 4, and had really not surrendered on it but had merely been overborne by numbers. Now he read it again, and shook his head.

“How can I initial that?” he demanded.

Lewis Wardell said, “It would seem to be necessary for each of us either to initial it or resign.”

Schick smiled at him, then took the pen and added his TS
to the row, observing, “I suppose there’s nothing very binding about it.”

Billings muttered quite audibly, “Only to gentlemen.” There was a little stir, and Liggett mumbled to Billings something about the necessity for unanimity, but the latter muttered again audibly, “To hell with him.” The absence of the catalytic quality of President Stanley’s personality was already making itself evident.

Lewis Wardell was through with that meeting. He was already on the telephone, speaking to the Chief of the Secret Service, telling him to collect his entire available staff immediately and await instructions and authority. He asked the Chief to hold the wire and called to the Attorney General: “Davis, come and tell Skinner I’m his boss. I’m going right over there.” He handed the phone to Davis and turned to the President’s secretary: “Come along, Brownell. Got that agreement? Good.”

On the way through the White House grounds and across to the Department of Justice Wardell fired questions at the secretary. What was the urgent matter that had moved Brownell to seek the President at ten o’clock? Confidential, Brownell said, no possible bearing on this. Wardell darted a glance at him, but did not insist. What was the alarming evidence which he and the Secret Service man had discovered? A chloroformed handkerchief which the Secret Service man had found under a spirea bush, and some trampled grass nearby. Where was the handkerchief now? In Brownell’s pocket, in a paper bag to keep the smell in. What other evidence or clues had they found? None. Absolutely nothing, and the Secret Service man, Cramer, was competent and probably to be trusted.

They were on the sidewalk.

What people or vehicles had been seen? A guard patrolling the drive at some distance. A sentry at the rear entrance to the grounds. Neither of them had seen the President. Two gardeners working some eighty yards away from the White House. The President had walked up and spoken to them, apparently soon after he went outdoors, and had walked back the way he had come. They had subsequently heard or seen nothing. Two employees had entered at the gate between eight-thirty and ten o’clock, a cook and the secretary of Mrs. Stanley’s secretary; and a messenger from the State Department and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. A truck, Callahan’s, had entered around nine o’clock to deliver groceries
and departed as usual; the driver was known to the sentry and had been recognized by him; and about nine-thirty a car had come with plants and shrubs for the gardeners. No one had seen the President after he left the two gardeners.

“Here we are,” said Wardell. “I’ll want more from you later.” They entered the Department of Justice and took the elevator.

Phil Skinner, head of the Secret Service, came to them in the anteroom and took them inside. He was big and heavy but not awkward, imperturbable but alive, with gray doubting eyes and very blond hair. In his own room, when they entered it, a dozen men were standing and sitting around. He said, “Get out, boys. Wait outside. Dick, go and help Birdie with the telephone. Get everybody here—Birdie will tell you.”

When the men had gone out and the door had been closed behind them Lewis Wardell said, “Skinner. We can forget the ‘Misters,’ if you don’t mind. President Stanley has been kidnapped.”

Skinner looked at him, looked at Brownell, then back again at the Secretary of the Interior. “Sure,” he said. “It uses a lot of time standing on ceremony. Sit down.” He took the seat at his desk, swinging it to face them as they drew up chairs. He went on: “So the President’s been kidnapped.”