The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy Read online

  “Mr. President! Mr. President!” The Secret Service agents rushed in. The two valets raised their rifles, but Brooks held them back with both arms.

  “No shooting!” he ordered.

  The prizefighter struggled helplessly as the android stood tall and slowly clicked its arm upward. Taft was forced up from the piano and onto the tips of his toes. Agents Sloan, Wheeler, and Jervis raced desperately to support Taft lest his neck snap under his weight. Despite their best efforts, there was little they could do to restore the president’s airway. Taft was already turning as blue as the walls around him.

  As Agents Bowen and Murphy tried fruitlessly to sever Taft’s necktie, the automaton slowly turned its head like a ticking clock. Just as Hoover described, half the android’s wax face was melted away and hideously distorted. Taft could see his own terrified face reflected in the android’s lifeless doll eyes. With all his remaining strength, Taft reached out and clawed at the monster. His fingernails ripped off the android’s left cheek, revealing a brass jaw and a grinning death’s head of ivory teeth. The Mozart faded from Taft’s ears. The whole world around him was vanishing.

  But then, the Blue Room’s north door was kicked open. “CLEAR!” a voice shouted. All five Secret Service agents hit the floor. A gunshot rang through the air and severed Taft’s necktie, sending the president tumbling into the arms of the valets. As oxygen returned to Taft’s lungs, he limply looked to his left. There, standing in the Blue Room’s broken doorway, was Secret Service Chief Wilkie with a smoking gun in his hand and a thick cigar in his teeth. He glanced at Taft, but only for a split second. His eyes, mind, and pistol were aimed at the android.

  “READY!” Wilkie shouted. Mr. Hoover and a phalanx of rifles assembled behind him.

  “This way, Will!” Attorney General Wickersham rushed in from the Red Room and pulled Taft to safety.

  Mozart’s strings quickened.…

  “FIRE!”

  The Blue Room exploded in a symphony of gunfire.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Taft hollered as he was dragged through the Red Room. “George! Did you see what happened?”

  “I did!” Wickersham and two valets helped the president back onto his feet. “Has anything like that happened before?”

  The Blue Room cackled with gunfire, killing the Victrola.

  “Of course not!” Taft shouted. “I don’t believe it. That thing tried to murder me! Here! In the White House! I’ve never heard of such—”

  The conversation was interrupted by valets and Secret Service agents rushing into the Red Room. There was a deep thudding behind them that shook the paintings on the wall. Without saying a word, Agents Sloan, Wheeler, and Jervis seized Taft and forced him into the State Dining Room. Wickersham followed with Hoover’s mighty shotgun gripped tightly in his hands.

  In the dining hall, plaster fell from the ceiling and the chandelier shook with each terrible crash from the Red Room. The Secret Service agents made a wall in front of Taft as all the riflemen from Brooks’s militia flooded in from the Cross Hall. Wilkie bustled in with them, fuming mad as he emptied his revolver’s spent shells. Ammunition clips were tossed through the air and nearly every piece of furniture was overturned. In a matter of seconds, the State Dining Room was converted into a fortress.

  Amidst the cacophony of their approaching attacker, Wickersham took off his glasses and turned nervously to Taft. “I think you need this more than I do.” The attorney general handed his president the enormous Remington scattergun.

  “Thanks, George,” said Taft, albeit somewhat uneasily. He gripped the weapon like a cudgel while every other gun homed in on the Red Room.

  There was a clang of metal against stone that caused the dining room’s southeast wall to protrude. Seconds later, the automaton knocked through the Red Room’s small fireplace and demolished the wall. The instant the creature was visible, every rifle and revolver in the room tore its fleshy exterior to pieces.

  “How are we supposed to kill this thing?” shouted Brooks through the melee. The android was unaffected by his buckshot, and ammunition was running low for everyone.

  “Hold your fire!” Taft shouted. The president pushed his Secret Service agents aside and squared shoulders with his adversary.

  “Mr. President, stand down!” Wilkie barked. “That’s an order!”

  “I have not yet begun to fight!” Taft boomed.

  The president gripped the shotgun with both hands and marched toward the brass menace. Once he was close enough to see the teeth in its gears, Taft uppercut the automaton with his gunstock. The shotgun exploded, breaking into two pieces and blasting a large hole through the ceiling. It was an unorthodox maneuver that nearly took down the chandelier, but Taft managed to knock the hulking android a step backward.

  “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Wilkie hollered across the room.

  “I’m trying to knock it on its back!” Taft replied as he walloped his decoy a second time. “Assist me!” Brooks was the first fighter to volunteer. After discarding his spent shotgun, he picked up an overturned chair and charged into the beast.

  “Everyone, back away!” Wilkie ordered. “You’re in my line of fire!” The Secret Service chief’s shouts were ignored. With the exception of his five agents, everyone in Brooks’s home guard was beating the android side by side with their president.

  A frustrated Wilkie holstered his firearm and looked at his agents. “Stay here and help them. I’ll be right back.” The Secret Service chief rushed through the door behind him to the Butler’s Pantry while his agents turned over the buffet table to use as a ram.

  Wilkie moved through the pantry like a burglar, opening and slamming every cupboard around him in a determined search for the White House’s liquor. He bit his cigar in frustration as the situation grew dim, thinking all the booze in the White House had been relocated to the airship. But then, just as the shouting and clattering in the dining hall became savage, Wilkie found the cupboard he was looking for. He rummaged through the mansion’s liquor stores until he found a bottle of rum given to the Roosevelts from the Royal Canadian Navy. The harsh liquid was 150 proof. Wilkie ripped off its cork and poured some K C Baking Powder into the bottle, the whole time puffing a voluminous cloud of smoke. He then shook the bottle and plugged it with his handkerchief, using the chewed end of his cigar as a stopper. In a matter of seconds, his rum-soaked handkerchief ignited. Wilkie darted back into the dining room to see the buffet table split in half against the automaton. The machine seemed to weigh as much as a bronze statue.

  Wilkie whistled. “Brooks! Move Wickersham and your men upstairs! All agents, stand back!”

  A battered, sweating Taft spied the bottle in the Secret Service chief’s hand. “Wilkie, whatever you’ve got there, now’s not a good time.”

  The Secret Service chief had no time to respond. He hurled his lethal cocktail through the air and hit his target head-on. The android erupted in flames and half its torso burst open. The fire spread everywhere.

  “John, are you mad?” Taft screamed. “You’re going to burn down the whole mansion!”

  Wilkie rushed to the president, shouting commands to every agent he passed on the way. “Mr. President, come with me!”

  “The hell I am!” Taft yelled right in the man’s face. “You’re out of line, Wilkie!”

  The Secret Service chief pointed angrily at the burning machine. “Just take a look at the thing! All its guts are exposed.” Wilkie’s five agents were taking targeted, timed shots at the android, staggering the advancing automaton with each slug. “My men can now shoot at its insides! In a few minutes, this beast will be dead.”

  “In a few minutes, we’ll both be dead!” Taft shouted, grabbing the Secret Service chief by his jacket.

  “Mr. President! Mr. Wilkie!” Sloan shouted through the encircling flames. The approaching android and its fire had both men surrounded. Sloan tried to fell the beast, but his gun clicked without firing. Every Police Positive Special in the roo
m was empty.

  Except Wilkie’s.

  Wilkie seized Taft by the collar and forced the president into the dining room’s fireplace. As the android approached, the bodyguard spun around and raised his revolver. There were only three bullets left in its cylinder. Wilkie fired his first shot at the machine’s chest, but the bullet passed harmlessly through it. He fired a second shot at its abdomen, blasting a long trail of brass gears and springs behind it. The machine slowed and seemed about to collapse, forcing Wilkie’s third shot to accidentally hit the lurching automaton in the head. The bullet bounced upward and knocked the room’s stuffed moose head off the wall. The trophy landed squarely on Wilkie, staggering the Secret Service chief until he fell over, unconscious.

  “John!” the president shouted as the flaming android advanced. Without a thought for his own safety, Taft picked up his protector and stepped over the moose head through the fire around them. He thrust Wilkie into the arms of Agents Bowen and Murphy, ordering them to “Take him to safety!” As Wilkie was rushed out the door, Taft turned and watched with his three remaining agents as the skeletal automaton trudged through the roaring fire. The machine seemed unstoppable.

  “What are your orders, sir?” asked Sloan.

  Taft followed the smoke and flames to the chandelier overhead. “Give me a boost,” he said.

  “Mr. President?” asked Wheeler.

  “The chandelier! Get me up there.”

  The three agents looked up at the chandelier and then back at Taft. “I don’t think we can manage that, sir.”

  The president’s mustache drooped. “Well then, steady that for me!” he ordered, pointing to an overturned table surrounded by burning playing cards. The agents brought the table to Taft as he planned his attack: He would leap off the table, swing on the chandelier, and then drop-kick the automaton onto its back, crippling it. Unfortunately, the president failed to take the gravity of his weight into consideration, never mind the huge hole he shot by the chandelier earlier. Taft jumped off the table and seized the chandelier, accidentally pulling it down along with a good chunk of the ceiling. Instead of felling the android, a rug and a chair and a chest of drawers from the overhead room fell onto Sloan, Jervis, and Wheeler. The agents were able to avoid them, but the fresh kindling trapped them in an impossible maze of fire.

  Taft fell to the floor, winded and stunned. He was surrounded by flames with nothing between him and the automaton. As the clinking, screeching, droning monster approached, the president could do nothing but scurry backward on the floor like a scared child.

  But then, as the android walked under the great hole in the ceiling, Taft could hear a deep rumbling above him. He looked up as an enormous bathtub was pushed through the hole, crushing the android and sending water to every corner of the dining hall. Nearly all the fires in the room were extinguished. Taft cautiously crawled toward his aggressor; its wheels were silent. The killer android was defeated.

  “Are you all right, Mr. President?” someone called from above. Taft looked up to see Captain Butt and Robert Todd Lincoln staring down at him from what used to be the Master Dressing Room.

  “Captain Butt!” Taft beamed. “Mr. Lincoln. I assume this was all your idea?”

  Robert shook his head. “It was a team effort,” he insisted.

  “A Harvard-Yale effort!” said John Hays Hammond, sticking his head into the frame.

  “Jack!” Taft smiled. “Thanks for joining us! I hope we’re not inconveniencing you at the moment.”

  “Not at all, Will! It’s a pleasure to be here.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. We need you,” said Taft as he looked over the wreckage around him.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, President Taft and his ensemble—including a revitalized John Wilkie—were saluting their victory with cigars in the ruined remains of the State Dining Room.

  “There is no way this automaton could have attacked you unless it was designed to do so,” said Robert.

  “I agree, Mr. President,” observed Wilkie, whose head was bandaged under his boater. “That thing went straight for you the entire battle. I think you’ll agree that this amounts to an assassination attempt.”

  “I’m afraid to say it, but I think you’re both right,” Taft acknowledged. “But who would want me killed? I’m this century’s Falstaff.”

  “Mr. President.” Brooks entered from the Cross Hall.

  “Yes?” Taft turned around to see two women descend the Grand Staircase. They were wearing afternoon dresses and assisting a third lady behind them. She was led down the stairs, one lady to each arm, while her escorts wielded Winchester Model 1897 shotguns in their other hands. She was wearing a white evening gown with silver embroidery and a decorative, almost medieval green bodice wrapped tightly around her chest. She wore white gloves, pearl earrings with a matching pearl choker, and her brown hair was worn up like a geisha. At one point, her brown eyes glanced in the president’s direction. Taft quickly discarded his cigar as she walked down the Cross Hall and through the blackened remains of the dining room’s once emerald curtains.

  There, in full regalia with two of her four sisters beside her, was Helen Louise Herron “Nellie” Taft. She was not smiling.

  The gentlemen in the room lowered their cigars and politely bowed in reverence, but Taft panicked. Not knowing what to do, his eyes fell on a bottle of Heidsieck & Co. Monopole on the ground.

  “Champagne?” Taft offered as he pulled the bottle from its lobster bisque bowl.

  Nellie turned her head to inspect the damage done to the State Dining Room: the burnt carpet, the crushed furniture, the water-damaged wood floors, the enormous hole in the ceiling, the shattered chandelier, the ruined Red Room fireplace, the overturned banquet, the broken windows, the spent bullet casings, the innumerable bullet holes, the upstairs bathtub that was downstairs for some reason, the felled automaton, and the burning curtains Mr. Hoover and some butlers were desperately trying to control with seltzer bottles.

  She looked over this mess and then back at her husband.

  “I need a beer,” she responded.

  Chapter IX

  “Madam President.”

  “Mr. Lincoln.”

  Robert respectfully excused himself from the room so he could return to the airship hovering over the White House. He was followed closely by Captain Butt and John Hays Hammond while Brooks escorted Wickersham and Wilkie out of the mansion. Nellie was determined to have a word with her husband. Alone.

  “Nellie…” Taft started.

  “Downstairs,” she ordered.

  * * *

  The location shifted from the dining room to the White House Kitchen for privacy. And for a tall pint of porter for Nellie. She was on her second glass and third cigarette by the time her husband was done rambling about bad weather, Halley’s comet, gold pocket watches, Alaska, little green men, defective car brakes, and malfunctioning automatons. He ran out of breath several times in his desperate defense, but Nellie did not interrupt him. Not even when the brazen remains of the android came crashing down through the charred dining room floor. It landed in the downstairs hallway, shaking the ash from Nellie’s cigarette.

  As always, her restraint remained nothing short of remarkable.

  “You have done more damage to this poor house than anyone since the British.”

  “You have to believe me, Nellie, it was an assassination attempt!”

  “How could it be an assassination attempt if you triggered it?”

  “I don’t know! Because…” Taft’s eyes moved over the innumerable pots and pans hanging over the table and the neat row of knives laid out in front of Nellie—including a cake knife. Taft never liked being down here for arguments. It made him equally nervous and hungry. “Because Wilkie said so!” he remembered.

  Nellie’s gloved hand tightened its grip on her cigarette holder. “John Wilkie? You realize every room in this mansion stinks of burnt hair because of John Wilkie.”

  “Oh, com
e now! You hated those silly trophies more than anyone in the city.”

  “Not enough to set them ablaze in the dining room of the White House.” Nellie’s voice quivered like a bowstring as she spoke those three words. “This has gone on long enough, Will. John Wilkie is the loosest cannon in Washington. He cannot be trusted and must be discharged.”

  Taft drank despondently from his empty champagne glass. He had finished the whole bottle of Monopole about halfway into his defense. “I can’t in good faith fire someone who saved my life twice in one day. Both times were due to my errors. My faults. And Nellie…” Taft paused. “We cannot spare him. He fights!”

  Nellie focused intently on her husband. Above all his other qualities, she knew that her husband was just. “In that case, he can stay. But I still don’t like or trust him.”

  Taft chuckled. “Nellie, you never trusted him.”

  “Wilkie is not a trustworthy man, Will. You knew this before you even met him. He’s a tabloid journalist whose life is shrouded in mystery, and we’ve been seeing a lot less of him since ‘the Colonel’ returned from Africa.15 Does that not seem suspicious to you?” Nellie blew a long snake of smoke as if to wrap up her case with a question mark–shaped ribbon.

  Taft didn’t see where she was going with this. “What?”

  “I think he’s a spy working for Teddy Roosevelt.”

  Her husband laughed. “Nellie, you think everyone is a spy for Teddy Roosevelt!”

  “Not everyone. Just those who are clearly more interested in seeing Teddy elected to a third term than you elected to two.”

  “Teddy does not have every baseball fan in the country in his corner!” Taft touted. “Besides, his allies are not as cancerous as you claim.”

  “What about Alice?” Alice Roosevelt Longworth, or “Princess Alice,” as the newspapers called her, was Theodore Roosevelt’s eldest daughter and hated Nellie with a passion. The feeling was mutual.

  Taft shrugged. “What about her?”

  Nellie’s eyes widened. “She buried a Voodoo idol in the South Lawn the day we moved in!”16