Homer seized Cooper from behind and yelled for help. Using an elbow, Cooper punched him in the stomach, breaking his hold, shouting over a thunderclap, "The cause of profit. Your own fucking, filthy greed." He laid hands on the display cabinet and pulled.
The delicate blue plates and cups and saucers and bowls began to slide. Ashton screamed again as the Wedgwood pieces dropped, Greek heads exploding, Greek arms and legs breaking. Lightning shimmered. The cabinet fell onto the dining table, where its weight proved too much. The table legs gave way at Huntoon's end. He shrieked as broken jasperware and candle holders and the flower bowl rushed toward him.
The flowers spilled onto his waistcoat. The water soaked his trousers as he kicked and pushed, sliding the chair away, out of danger, while two housemen joined Homer and wrestled the cursing, ranting Cooper to the front door. There they flung him into the rain.
Ashton heard the door slam and said the first thing that came to mind. "What if he tells what he knows?"
"What if he does?" Huntoon snarled. He picked blossoms from his wet crotch. "There was no law against what we did. And we're out of the trade now."
"Did you see how white his hair's gotten? I think he's gone mad."
"He's certainly dangerous," Huntoon said. "We must buy pistols tomorrow in case — in case —"
He couldn't finish the sentence. Ashton surveyed the Wedgwood all over the floor. One cup had survived unbroken. She wanted to weep with rage. Lightning flashed, thunder shook the wet windows, and her mouth set.
"Yes, pistols," she agreed. "For each of us."
81
At seven that same night, Thursday, in the first week of June, Bent reported to Colonel Baker's office as ordered. Baker wasn't there. Another detective said he had gone to Old Capitol Prison to conduct one of his interrogations of an unfriendly journalist who was under detention. "He'll go from there to his hour of pistol practice. He wouldn't let a day pass without that."
Bent settled down to wait, soothing his nerves with one of several apples bought from a street vendor. After two bites, he looked again at a small silver badge pinned to the reverse of his lapel. Baker had awarded the badge, which bore the embossed words national detective bureau, after Bent's return from Richmond. His success there had earned him the token of official acceptance into Baker's organization. The colonel had been especially pleased by the return of the money paid to the albino. Bent stated that he had rendered the spy harmless because he was no longer useful, but he was vague about details and didn't specifically say he had killed him. Baker asked no questions.
Despite the acceptance that the badge signified, Bent had been feeling bad for the past few days. He had caught the moods of the town — apprehension, despondency. Hooker's fighting spirit had proved as substantial as the contents of a glass of water. And while Lee had lost a mighty ally when Jackson fell, he had won not only a splendid victory at Chancellorsville but an ominous supremacy over the minds of many Northerners in and out of the army. There were now daily rumors and alarms out of Virginia. Lee was moving again, but in which direction, no one knew.
Bent was masticating his third apple when Baker reined up outside a window overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. An orderly took Baker's horse, an unruly bay stallion the colonel had nicknamed Slasher. Humming cheerily, Baker strode into the office. He handed Bent a crudely printed broadside. "You may find a chuckle or two in that, Dayton." Fancy type on the front announced that this was the menu for the Hotel de Vicksburg. When he opened the piece, he understood the joke. The broadside contained the menu of a city under siege.
"Very amusing," Bent said because Baker expected it. "Where did this come from, sir?"
"O'Dell brought it back from Richmond last night. He saw large masses of troops moving west of Fredericksburg, by the way. There's truth in those rumors. Lee's up to something — ah!" Among some mail, he found a piece that he immediately tucked in his pocket. "A letter from Jennie." Baker's wife was living with her parents in Philadelphia for the duration.
The man Baker had mentioned, Fatty O'Dell, was another agent. "I didn't realize we had someone else on a mission down there."
"Yes," Baker replied, but didn't elaborate. That was his style. Only he knew all the operatives and what each was doing.
Baker leaned back and clasped hands behind his head. "That broadside is enlightening about attitudes toward Jeff Davis. It helps corroborate something Fatty got wind of from third parties. A Richmond speculator named Powell is agitating very openly against Davis."
Bent picked a bit of apple from his lip. "That sort of thing's been going on for a year or more, hasn't it?"
"Absolutely right. This time, however, there's an unusual wrinkle. Fatty said Mr. Powell's pronouncements include talk of forming an independent Confederate state at some unspecified location." "God above — that is new."
"I wish you would not take the Lord's name in vain. I like it as little as I liked those filthy yellow-backed books I confiscated and burned some months ago."
"Sorry, Colonel," Bent said hastily. "The information surprised me, that's all. What's the speculator's name again?" "Lamar Powell."
"I never heard it mentioned when I was in Richmond. Nor any new Confederacy, for that matter."
"It may be nothing more than street gossip. If they impeached Davis, it would help our cause. It would help even more if they strung him up. And I'd be the first to applaud. But it's probably a vain hope."
He opened a lower desk drawer and produced one of the folders that contained personal dossiers. Inscribed on the front in a beautiful flowing hand was the name Randolph.
Baker passed the folder across the desk. Bent opened it and discovered several pages of notes in a variety of handwritings, plus a number of news clippings. One of the dispatches carried the words By Our Capitol Correspondent Mr. Eamon Randolph.
He closed the folder and waited. When Baker began to speak, he did so in a tone that took Bent into his confidence. Bent's gloom lifted.
"Mr. Randolph, as you'll discover when you read those scurrilous articles, is not a partisan of those for whom we work. Nor is he fond of Senator Wade, Congressman Stevens, or their rigorous program for rehabilitating our Southern brethren after the war. You will find Mr. Randolph's paper, the Cincinnati Globe, to be strongly antiadministration and pro-Democratic. Further, only the peace wing of that party earns its admiration. Randolph doesn't go so far as some in the same camp — no advocacy of removal of Mr. Lincoln by violent means, nothing like that. But he definitely favors noninterference with slavery even after the South capitulates. We cannot tolerate the promulgation of that view in a period of crisis. I have been urged by certain administration officials to — shall we say —" Baker stroked his luxuriant beard "— chastise him. Silence him briefly, not only to remove an irritant but to warn his paper, and others of the same persuasion, to have a care lest the same fate befall them. Your work in Richmond impressed me, Dayton. That's why I've chosen you to handle the case."