The Judges of the Secret Court (32 page)

And so it was. Yet what special providence was there in Wilkes, who had snared them all? What providence in Asia, Sleeper Clarke, Mrs. Surratt, Mary Ann, Dr. Mudd, himself; in Mary Todd, that other Mary, his first wife, who had died so soon, or in Lincoln? What providence was there in Johnson, Stanton, Spangler, Arnold, Payne, or John Surratt? All of them, and so many deaths. He could see none. They had merely been caught before their time. Hence the Judges of the Secret Court. He began to perceive that he owed Miss Althea Lathrop Lec a good deal. Her play might be twaddle, but she had given him his explication.

And yet, before him, somehow, he seemed to see Mr. Lincoln's slow, sad, warm, and understanding smile. Death, too, had made him a judge, and yet he smiled.

So Edwin smiled, too. Everybody knows Tom Fool.

It was Julia Ward Howe who once asked Charles Sumner if he had heard of young Booth yet.

“Why no, Madam,” said Sumner. “I long since ceased to take any interest in individuals.”

“You have made great progress, sir,” Julia told him. “God has not yet gone so far—at least according to the last accounts.”

Tucson
November
1959-
April
1960

THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

www.nyrb.com

Copyright © 1961 by David Derek Stacton

Introduction copyright © 2011 by John Crowley

All rights reserved.

Cover image: Burt Barr,
The Gun
(detail from video still), 2007; © Burt Barr, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

Cover design: Katy Homans

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stacton, David, 1925–1968.

The judges of the secret court: a novel about John Wilkes Booth / by David Stacton ; introduction by John Crowley.

p.cm.— (New York Review Books classics)

1. Booth, John Wilkes, 1838–1865—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3537.T1178J83 2011

813'.54—dc22

2011009961

eISBN 978-1-59017-471-5
v1.0

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