The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy Read online

  “Right away, Mr. President. Gentlemen?” Robert and Wickersham stepped forward and the phalanx parted for them, but one stubborn Secret Service chief refused to budge. He stared at Taft in disbelief. “Are you nuts?” he asked.

  “Mr. President,” Taft corrected.

  “Mr. President, are you nuts? There’s no way I’m going upstairs. You nearly got us killed on the way over!”

  “Mr. Wilkie, we both know there is no one more sacred to me than my wife and family. Please guard them with your life while I take care of things here.”

  “Mr. President,” Wilkie seethed, taking a step forward.

  “Upstairs, Wilkie. Now.”

  The Secret Service chief was boiling over with outrage. “I’ll be back,” he insisted.

  “No, you won’t,” Taft replied as Wilkie stomped up the steps. “See to it he doesn’t come down, Brooks. Unless I’m in a real pickle, of course!”

  “As you wish, Mr. President.” The custodian bowed and escorted Robert and Wickersham up the stairs.

  Taft wiped some sweat from his forehead before calling, “Agent Sloan?”

  “Mr. President,” he replied quickly.

  “Jimmy, I want you to round up whatever Secret Service agents we have in the mansion and bring them down here. Also, please bring Mr. Brooks along with you. Have him meet me with those valets whenever he’s ready.”

  “Right away, sir.” Sloan hurried up the stairs.

  “Ike!”

  Mr. Hoover scampered to Taft with his enormous gun still in hand. “Yes, Mr. President.”

  Taft started walking down the Entrance Hall with Hoover as Agents Jervis and Wheeler followed closely beside them. “Ordinarily, I’d speak to Mr. Brooks about this, but since he’s a better bearer of bad news than you are, his services are more needed upstairs for the moment.”

  “Yes, Mr. President. I understand completely.”

  “Of course you do, Ike.” Taft slapped the agitated usher on the shoulder so hard he nearly discharged his shotgun. “So, can you please explain what the holy hell happened while I was gone?”

  “Mr. President,” Ike said, trembling, “it’s that accursed automaton again! Mrs. Taft had some of her friends over to play cards around lunchtime. All was peaceful, until…” Mr. Hoover tried to collect himself. “Mr. President, the creature’s face started sliding off of its skull!”

  “Yes, I know. It’s been an Indian summer all year.11 Why didn’t you just turn on the air conditioner?”

  “Mr. President, the air-conditioning does not work. It never works.”

  “Ah, yes,” Taft remembered. It was one of many reasons why he preferred spending summer on the airship. “We’ve really got to do something about that.”

  “I am so sorry, sir. We had no choice but to put the android on ice in the Master Bath. However, the ice melted, sir, and then a few ice cubes—”

  “It’s all right, Ike,” Taft interrupted. “You don’t need to remind me just how personally I think Thomas Edison is a pain in my backside. Today is the last day you’ll ever have to deal with my decoy. I’m here to retire it.”

  Mr. Hoover looked like he had just been given a new breath of life. “Oh, thank you so much, Mr. President!”

  “It’s no problem, Ike. I just need you to answer two big questions for me. Number one, where is the handsome bastard?”

  “It’s in the Blue Room, Mr. President.”

  Taft stopped walking and looked at the double door in front of him. “He’s in there?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. Mrs. Taft and her guests were in the dining room when the automaton came down the stairs.”

  “Did he do anything?”

  “Mr. President,” said the usher, his voice fading, “please don’t force me to relive the details. Just know that many of the ladies ran out of the mansion screaming. We were able to shoo the beast into the Blue Room with some brooms, but Mrs. Taft refused to abandon the White House. We had no choice but to stand guard until you returned.”

  “Why no soldiers or fire crew?”

  “Mrs. Taft did not want to raise suspicions that the mansion is in use, sir. She is supposed to be on vacation with you, if you remember.”12

  “Ah! Very clever, that gal.” The president winked. But as Taft looked down both ends of the crimson Cross Hall and then back to the phalanx, he added, “I don’t understand, though. Why didn’t Nellie just leave the building?”

  Hoover was silent. He did not want to answer.

  “Ike?”

  “Because she did not want her reputation sullied, sir. When Dolley Madison fled the mansion, it was because the British were set to burn down the city. That was war, Mr. President. Not this strange new type of”—Hoover’s eyes widened—“monstrosity!”

  Taft raised his eyebrows and looked back at the two doors to the Blue Room. There was no damage or barricade, but he could hear the faint sound of piano keys mashing.

  “Well, I guess that more than answers my first question,” said Taft. “Question number two, what’s for dinner?”

  Mr. Hoover thought he misheard something over one of the chiming grandfather clocks. “Excuse me, Mr. President?”

  “I bumped into a fish cart on my way over. It whetted my appetite for a little bit of whatever we have.”

  A confused Hoover slowly raised his arm and pointed off to the right. “There’s a buffet in the State Dining Room, sir, but it’s been sitting there all day.”

  “All right, we’ll start there.” Taft signaled Agents Jervis and Wheeler to lead the way to the vast room through the Cross Hall’s lush curtains.

  If John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Theodore Roosevelt was a faithful rendering of the former president’s likeness, the State Dining Room served just as well as a window into the active man’s mind. The room’s green rug and curtains may have resembled the Taft Oval Office, but the mounted menagerie overhead was all Roosevelt’s doing. An entire zoo of dead animals, each one shot by the famous huntsman himself, encircled the room’s wooden walls as if it were Noah’s Ark gone terribly wrong. If these mounted bears, bucks, and bull moose still had working eyes, they might have observed the overturned chairs and playing cards scattered around the dining room’s small central table. The banquet spread on the room’s long north table, however, appeared perfectly edible to Taft, despite having been uncovered all afternoon on a hot summer day. The president daintily helped himself to the feast one little nibble at a time while Agents Jervis and Wheeler inspected the area. Both of their Colt Police Positive Special revolvers were out and up.

  “Mr. President, both doors to the Red Room are open,” said Jervis. “So is the south door to the Blue Room.”

  “That’s fine,” said Taft through a mouthful of smelts. “Just make sure the dining room is secure.” Both agents sneaked into the Red Room while Taft moved down the buffet and helped himself to some peach salad.

  “Mr. President?” asked a familiar voice.

  “Yes?” Taft turned his head to see Attorney General Wickersham enter the room. “Georgie! What are you doing here?”

  “Mr. President,” he spoke curtly, “Agent Sloan and Mr. Brooks are in the hall with their men, awaiting orders.”

  “Can you tell them to wait a bit longer?” Taft asked as he sipped some persimmon beer.

  “Mr. President,” said Wickersham with restrained urgency, “I must insist that we secure the mansion before Archie arrives with the airship.”

  “Come, come now! Let’s not be too picky,” Taft said as he picked at some beef tenderloin and deviled almonds.

  “Will, enough of this dillydally. John Wilkie is becoming very impatient.”

  “Ha!” Taft laughed, sending chewed bits of food flying. “He’s always impatient.”

  “And I don’t blame him one bit! This is no time to … What are you doing?”

  The president’s expert hands were at work. Taft took a cheese sandwich, placed six strips of bacon on it in a crosshatch, added a breaded salmon cutlet with some
black pepper and lemon, ladled a generous amount of lobster bisque over the salmon, paused to pop a salted almond into his mouth, added six more strips of bacon and some lettuce, pressed the whole thing together with a second cheese sandwich, and then took a mighty bite. The president smiled with complete satisfaction.

  “I thought you were supposed to be on a diet,” chided Brooks as he entered the room.

  “I am dieting!” Taft insisted. “I’m watching everything that I eat. See?” He held the sandwich so both men could see it, and then took an even larger bite out of it.

  An unamused Wickersham waved in Agent Sloan from the hallway. He was followed by Secret Service Agents Bowen and Murphy from upstairs, Ike Hoover, and the four armed valets from earlier. “Mr. President, we’re ready,” said Brooks.

  “All right, all right.” Taft put his great sandwich on a plate and handed it to Wickersham. “Hold this for me, would you? I’ll be right back.” The president fluffed the bread crumbs from his mustache while the attorney general accepted the high-piled plate in disgust. Taft cracked his knuckles while the men around him readied their weapons. Every chamber was loaded, every grip tightened, and every heart pounding. Agents Jervis and Wheeler peeked in from the Red Room and signaled the president. It was time. Taft nodded, and the nine men slowly filed into the Red Room.

  Only Ike Hoover remained in the State Dining Room with Wickersham, the former still nervously clutching his Remington Model 1900. The attorney general, knowing full well what was about to unfold, thrust the plate with the president’s sandwich into the chief usher’s hands and just as impatiently robbed the man of his shotgun. Wickersham marched out of the dining room and hurried up the Grand Staircase.

  Hoover mindlessly discarded the plate’s contents back onto the buffet table.

  His eyes were fixed on the Red Room.

  Chapter VIII

  Taft vs. Taft

  President Taft and his bodyguards cautiously crept into the Red Room to the monotonous din of mashed piano keys. The men moved quietly under the watchful eyes of John Adams, James Monroe, Martha Washington, and the Lansdowne portrait of George Washington hanging over the fireplace. This painting, which Dolley Madison famously rescued from British torches during the burning of Washington, was of particular interest to Arthur Brooks. Without speaking, he directed two valets to take the portrait and bring it upstairs. Taft did not notice this motion, and for good reason. Brooks was operating under the personal orders of Nellie Taft to mitigate whatever damage was awaiting the White House.

  In front of Taft, Secret Service Agents Jervis and Wheeler peered into the Blue Room. The president could hear the drumming of piano keys grow louder with each step he took. Deep down, he hoped the sound was actually one of his Victrola discs skipping, and not that lovely piano the Baldwin Piano Company had generously given to Nellie. Once Agents Sloan, Bowen, and Murphy joined their two colleagues, the five huddled in discussion, nodded, and then slowly stepped into the parlor. From his angle, Taft could not see where the agents fanned out, but Agent Sloan was clearly framed in the doorway taking aim at a target. Seconds later, Agent Jervis opened the door on Taft’s left from inside the Blue Room. Brooks moved into the room through this entrance with his two other valets. The men had fear in their eyes and quickly raised their weapons. Whatever everyone was aiming at, it was not in the direction of the Victrola. The president gulped.

  With all eight men in a crescent and ready to fire, Agent Sloan turned his head and nodded to Taft. The president took a deep breath and squeezed through the Blue Room’s tight doorway.

  There are many reasons why the Blue Room is frequently praised as the most beautiful salon in the White House. It is the largest of the three parlors on the State Floor, has a distinct oval shape, and offers a stunning view of the South Lawn and the Washington Monument from its three windows. Such luxuries make the Blue Room a uniquely personal space in the White House to decorate, as demonstrated by Nellie Taft’s decision to transform the parlor into a music room.13 Music had always played an important role in Will and Nellie’s life since that fateful garden party when a twenty-five-year-old Nellie Herron complimented a slightly overweight Yale graduate’s singing. If those days were the Dickensian best of times for Will Taft, imagine the look on his face as he watched his exact double destroying his wife’s beloved grand piano.

  “Is it trying to play something?” Brooks winced as the automaton pounded the dying Baldwin. Its empire design and gold trimming were reduced to splinters under its attacker’s brass fists.

  “Actually, I think he’s trying to sign my name,” Taft responded. “It was the only thing he was ever good at.”

  Like so many bad ideas, the presidential automaton started off as a good one. How else could Nellie sign bills into law and outwit the press into thinking her husband was not out of the country for weeks at a time? An automaton was the best solution Secretary Norton’s predecessor, Fred Carpenter, could come up with. Specifically, something resembling those remarkable eighteenth-century automatons built by Swiss watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz and family. “These androids are over a hundred years old,” Fred had told Taft, with a copy of The New York Times on the table.14 “Imagine what Thomas Edison could build for us!” One year later, was it any surprise that this man no longer worked at the White House?

  “Well,” Taft clapped, “let’s have a look-see-daisy, shall we?” Every armed man in the room lowered his weapon as Taft moseyed over to examine the android. “Let’s see … hmm … no … Where is it … Aha! Here’s the culprit!” The president lowered the android’s trousers to reveal a corporate emblem stamped on its rear:

  Edison Manufacturing Co.

  Est. 1889

  “Got any BRIGHT ideas?”

  Taft turned around and pointed his thumb at the stamp. “If I ever see this man again, I swear to God I’m going to murder him with a lightbulb.”

  Aside from the droning piano, the room remained quiet.

  “Mr. President, would you please resolve the matter with your decoy?” Brooks urged.

  Taft grinned cheerfully. “Yes, yes! I’m getting there. I just need some help removing its pants. Dick? Jimmy?”

  Secret Service Agents Jervis and Sloan holstered their pistols while Taft took off his jacket. Together, the three men pulled the android’s slacks down to the room’s tiger-skin rug.

  “There we are!” said Taft proudly as he admired the specimen. Anatomically, the android looked no different from a doll under its clothes—except for the prominent exhaust vent in the automaton’s backside. “Boys, I think you’ll want to stay clear of this thing.” Sloan and Jervis backed away from the android as the president addressed the assembled.

  “Gentlemen!” Taft began as he held his suspenders. He carried himself like a third-grader about to give a book report he was particularly proud of. “As many of you know, the chief structural flaw in my clockwork counterpart here is and always has been its thermal exhaust port. I first discovered this after returning from a round of golf at the Chevy Chase Club with General Edwards, John Hays Hammond, and, naturally, Captain Butt. And before I continue, I must add that Mr. Hammond and I crushed our opponents in our little Yale versus Army reunion.”

  Aside from the president, not a single person in the room was moved by this feat.

  “Anyway, we were informed of the malfunctioning android as we pulled in to the White House. According to Mrs. Jaffray and Maggie Rogers, the brass menace was in the laundry drying yard, frozen in place like the Tin Woodman. Since neither Mr. Hammond nor General Edwards had seen the machine yet, I decided to take advantage of the situation and asked my friends if they would like to meet it. It was such a beautiful day and the location so neatly concealed behind bedsheets that the gentlemen could not possibly say no. Ever vigilant, Captain Butt insisted that the valets bring our golf clubs—a wise precaution.

  “After examining the machine with my chums, one of them—whose name I prefer not to mention—deduced that the villain was not
a foreign object lodged in the android’s exhaust port, but rather some internal water damage caused by its recent hosing and scrubbing. So, I asked Captain Butt for one of my woods and took a swing at the android right here”—Taft pointed at the Edison insignia—“and zounds! It worked like magic, just as I will demonstrate right now, you GODDAMN STUPID MACHINE!”

  The president delivered a hard kick to the android’s posterior. The machine emitted a deep rumble similar to the rev of an engine, but continued assaulting the piano. Surprised, Taft delivered a second, more surgical punt to its rump. This time, all the men in the room heard several gears fall into place. Convinced he could end this with one more kick, the president put all his weight into a third and final blow to the Edison emblem on the automaton’s backside.

  It worked.

  Every coil and gear in the machine sprung into action, causing a tremendous explosion to shoot out its exhaust port like a cannon. “There it is!” Taft shouted as the force of the blast sent him backward. All three of the Blue Room’s tall windows were shattered. The hairs on the parlor’s tiger-skin rug were singed. Every valet and agent in the room was taken aback by the burst. Even the Victrola was shaken into readying a recording of Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, K. 183, first movement.

  As the smoke cleared, Taft regained his footing and hurried back to the automaton. The machine was motionless and the piano silent.

  “What did I tell you! Zounds!” the president cheered to the coughing ushers and agents. “It worked just like magic! Hey, Brooks, if we ever do this onstage, you and I could put Houdini and Le Pétomane out of business!”

  “That’s fantastic, sir,” replied the irritated custodian. “I’ll ring the cleaners and the piano tuner immediately.”

  “Oh, but I’m just getting started,” Taft boasted as he leaned against the piano. “For my next trick, I’ll—urk!”

  The automaton snapped its hand and seized Taft by the necktie just as the Victrola filled the Blue Room with Mozart.