The Ironclad Alibi Read online

  Dropping the paper to the veranda floor, Harry abruptly stood up, overwhelmed by a sudden panic, looking up and down Pearl Street as if a squad of Confederate dragoons were about to ride up and snatch him.

  There was only a brewer’s cart, with horses laboring uphill, and a few pedestrians. His companions on the sunny porch hadn’t even seemed to notice his sudden start.

  He calmed himself and sat down, finishing the article.

  “The arrest of Stearns was accomplished through the instrumentality of a detachment under Captain Porter, assisted by detectives Maccubbin and Clackner.”

  No wonder he hadn’t been bothered or shadowed by Maccubbin that night. The gentleman was well occupied elsewhere.

  There was more.

  “In addition to the parties above-named, the following well-known residents of Richmond were also arrested: Valentine Heckler, a butcher; John M. Higgins, grocer; Burnham Wardwell, dealer in ice; Lewis Dove and Charles J. Mueller. These, too, were arrested at their residences, and confined with those first named in McDaniels’s private jail.”

  Harry turned the page, pretending to read of other matters, but his mind was elsewhere. Pinkerton and Leahy had told him to repair to “Tree Hill” and seek the assistance of distiller Stearns if anything went awry. Oddly, they’d told him nothing of Elizabeth Van Lew, nor she of him.

  Had they told Stearns to expect him?

  Caesar Augustus at last appeared just shy of eleven a.m., dragging himself up the hill in the manner of someone ending a long journey. His head hung down a little, which was rare. Caesar Augustus was normally given to walking proudly and demonstrably erect, especially when in the company of white folk.

  Lamentably, Harry would now be required to diminish that pride even more.

  He waited until the black man had drawn near, then leapt to his feet.

  “You damned wretch!” he shouted, for half of Richmond to hear. “Do you know the hour? Where in hell have you been?”

  Caesar Augustus held back from a reflexive anger, but only barely. He was about to shout back at Harry—certainly not the first occasion he would have done so—but then hesitated; doubt and confusion clouding his gaze.

  “Damn you!” said Harry, raising his walking stick in threatening fashion. “I asked you where you’ve been?”

  The black man carefully mouthed his reply, so that it could be heard by no one but clearly understood by Harry, nearsightedness notwithstanding: “Don’t go too far, Marse Harry.”

  With that, Harry lowered the stick to his side, looked carefully about them, then stepped forward and grabbed his servant by the arm. “Come with me, you layabout,” he said. “There’s something I want you to see to with my horse.”

  In this manner, they crossed the street, descended the hill a little, then turned down an alley toward the livery where Caesar Augustus had quartered their mounts.

  Harry dropped his hand from the other’s arm. “And just where were you last night, if you don’t mind?” he said, pleasantly.

  “All that shoutin’ was just for show?”

  “Of course. But where were you?”

  “Visitin’ folks.”

  “Anyone of my acquaintance?”

  “I came back around sunup but they told me not to bother you because you were entertaining a guest.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Man on the stairs. Seemed like he worked for the hotel.”

  Or the Confederate government.

  They stopped before the stable door. “If you were back at sunrise,” Harry asked, “where have you been since?”

  “Down along the waterfront by Rocket’s Landing. Tryin’ to learn somethin.’”

  “About the ironclad?”

  “Yessir. Darkies down there say they loaded the last iron plates on a boat for Norfolk some days ago. They figure to be seeing the ironclad soon.”

  “Not likely. She’ll be of small use up here. If that thing is anything like it’s been described, she’ll be headed for federal shipping. Bust the blockade. Head up the Potomac for Washington.”

  “You say so, Marse Harry.” He glanced at the stable. “What you want me to do for you with your horse?”

  “Nothing. That was to get us to where we could talk.”

  He could see a stable boy eyeing them from within; so attentive he’d stopped raking straw. Harry moved nearer to Caesar Augustus. “We need to find out more,” he said. “Go where you think best. I don’t want to linger in this city a minute longer than we have to, but we have to be certain. Be back by this evening, as I will need you to attend upon me.”

  “And what will you be doin’ the rest of the day? Entertaining guests some more?”

  “I’m going to try to find myself a poker game—one with some Rebel officers in it. People get amazingly talkative sometimes, when the cards are running well.”

  The black man turned to go, then halted. “Why you need me this evenin’?”

  “I have a most important dinner invitation. It came last night. I’ll need you to accompany me and hold our horses, but I’m afraid you can’t join me at table as you did at Miss Van Lew’s.”

  “Why not?” Caesar Augustus said, mockingly, as though it was a commonplace in Richmond for black slaves to take dinner with white masters.

  “Because it’s at the residence of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.”

  Harry found a game going in the barroom of one of the city’s seedier hotels, a place below Main Street, near the river. The day was bright, but this chamber was dark and foul with cigar smoke and the smell of burnt grease.

  There were two army officers at the table, one a captain, the other a lieutenant. Neither they or the three civilians in the game were known to Harry. All seemed to be well practiced at cards.

  Harry was ahead five dollars before any of them got curious about him.

  “You new in Richmond?” asked one of the civilians, a beery-faced, squinty-eyed man with bushy sidewhiskers and a wool vest so thick it seemed made of bristles.

  “Newly returned,” Harry said, raking in a small pot. “I lived here until a few years ago.”

  “Where you been since?”

  Harry gave a quick glance over the group, then told the truth—partially. “I have a horse farm up near Martins-burg.”

  “That’s behind Yankee lines,” said the captain.

  “Sometimes,” Harry said. “Maybe General Jackson has turned the tables on them again.”

  “You don’t look like a farmer to me.”

  This voice, full of suspicion, belonged to the other officer—a man about Harry’s age whose lieutenant’s insignia appeared quite new.

  “I own the farm,” Harry said. “I don’t work it. Have hired help for that.”

  “Hired? You have no slaves?” asked the captain, an older man with spectacles and a professorial mean.

  “One,” Harry replied, after a pause. “He’s with me here in Richmond.”

  “You’d better keep him out of trouble,” said the lieutenant. “They’re grabbin’ loose Negroes and puttin’ them in labor battalions.”

  “The country needs every man—black or white,” said the captain.

  He stared at Harry’s expensive civilian clothes. Harry kept his eyes lowered, watching his cards as a new deal commenced. “Maybe we won’t need so many once we sic the ‘Monster’ on them,” he said, picking up his hand.

  “What ‘Monster?’” asked the captain.

  “The ironclad vessel down in Norfolk.”

  “What do you know about that?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Only what I read in the newspapers.”

  He’d read nothing about it in the newspapers.

  “And which would these be?” the Captain asked.

  “Yankee papers. Frederick, Maryland, for one.”

  “They know about the ironclad?” the lieutenant interjected.

  “Rumors. I’m told Washington City is full of them.”

  Both officer
s were looking at him hard, but one of the civilians, a grumpy-looking fellow who’d been chewing on a cigar, came to his rescue.

  “Don’t matter no how,” he said. “That damn thing’s just going to sink with all that metal they’re hangin’ on it. Come on. Let’s play cards.”

  Harry looked at his hand. There were three aces. He discarded one, along with a deuce, and drew two cards. He lost the hand after three raises. Within the next fifteen minutes, his winnings vanished and he was ten dollars down, most of it going to the captain. When he’d lost twenty—not long after—he quit the game. On his way out, he bought a round of whiskey for the table. He hoped at least to leave some friendly memory of himself.

  When he had resided in this city, such happy weather often prompted him to a walk along the James. It did so again. Proceeding down the street, he remembered another alley that led past some wood yards down the hill toward the river. Turning into it, he walked perhaps fifty feet, then halted, reaching to light a cheroot. He was not really interested in a smoke. Upon leaving the saloon, he had noted someone rising from the far end of the bar to exit behind him. Whoever it was, Harry sensed that he’d turned into the alley as well.

  Harry was not wearing his eyeglasses, but didn’t want to take the time to fetch them out from his pocket and put them on. He was a poor shot at all events, and armed with nothing more dangerous than his pocket Derringer, which had an effective range of about six feet with his aim.

  Taking the little pistol firmly in one hand, he shook out his match with the other, tossing it with a swift, sweeping gesture to the side. As he did so, he spun to his right, pulling the Derringer forth and thrusting it in the direction of where he sensed his pursuer to be—hoping all the while that it wasn’t Nestor Maccubbin, who doubtless was a crack shot.

  Indeed not. He found himself aiming his pistol at a small mouse of a man with a bushy moustache and lumpy suit who was pointing a very heavy military-looking revolver at him.

  They stood there, neither of them shooting or even moving, looking like participants in some daft, cowardly duel.

  “Give me your valuables, and you won’t get hurt,” the smaller man said, his voice a little high and nervous, and German accented.

  The gunman was short, his moustache too large for his face, and he had lank, greasy hair hanging messily over his ears. With his small, darting eyes, he altogether resembled a muskrat. A nervous one at that. There was something about the loose, gingerly way he held his large pistol that gave Harry encouragement.

  Keeping his Derringer to the fore, Harry took a step toward the man, and then another.

  “There’s no sense both of us getting killed,” Harry said, trying to sound steadier than he felt. “Or even one of us. Not on such a lovely day.”

  The small man hunched down a little, the revolver wavering in his hand. He seemed to be wrestling with himself.

  “No need at all,” said Harry, taking more long steps, and stopping with the Derringer just a few inches from muskrat’s large nose. With his left hand, Harry grasped the revolver and yanked it loose.

  He stepped back and examined it. There was rust everywhere. He rotated the cylinder, noting with some amusement that the chambers were empty.

  The man began to run. The very last thing Harry wished to do was fire a gunshot or cause a commotion by chasing after the would-be robber, but he wanted to talk to him. Taking up the old pistol in his right hand, he threw it hard. His eyesight was poor but his aim was true. Spinning through the air, the gun hit the man at the top of his back.

  It caused him no great apparent injury, but possibly some pain. He halted where he’d been struck, a few paces from the end of the alley, and stood there, quivering.

  Harry strode up to him, grabbed him by the collar, and spun him around, shoving him against a wooden fence and bringing up the Derringer again. “You’re name, sir!” he demanded.

  “Atzerodt,” he said. “George Atzerodt.”

  “Are you a professional cutpurse, or have you some honest livelihood?”

  “I’m a boatman. From Port Tobacco, Maryland.”

  The town was on the Potomac, not far from Chesapeake Bay.

  “That’s Union territory. What are you doing here?”

  “The Yankees may claim it, but we are with the South.”

  “You come down here to enlist?”

  The very mention of that word seemed to make the fellow shake all the more.

  “No, no. Because of the blockade—the Yankee patrols on the river—I can make no money. I come down here but it is all the same. I saw you in the bar, playing cards. You looked rich—free with your money.”

  “So you decided to take some?”

  He nodded, so sheepishly he seemed about to weep.

  “You have a family?”

  Atzerodt nodded, perhaps with too much vigor.

  Harry released him, and stepped back, returning the Derringer to his pocket. From another, he pulled out a five dollar gold piece and gave it to the man.

  “Feed your family,” he said. “If I should ever be in need of a boatman and encounter you again, just remember that I was generous to you when I could have blown out your brains.”

  “Yes sir. Thank you sir.”

  “Now go. And remember that an unloaded pistol is far more dangerous than none at all.”

  The wretch scurried off, very much the rodent. Harry retrieved the rusty pistol and tossed it over the fence.

  He felt certain of two things—that the man would eventually turn smuggler, and that he’d never hear of him again.

  Richmons’s wharves were downriver from the center of town, running alongside the terminal and tracks of the York River Railroad. It was a place Harry had avoided when he’d lived in the city, as it was considered dangerous, though it was not far from the wealthy precincts of Church Hill.

  Walking the wharves now, he saw no one he recognized, and encountered few willing to talk with him. Those who did were of small help. Harry asked how far down the river was clear of Yankee gunboats, explaining he came from a Charles City County plantation and wanted to return home by boat. He was told, variously, that the James was Yankee-free all the way to Norfolk, that the Union blockade had moved on upstream past Jamestown, and that there were Federal troops moving up from North Carolina who might well have reached the James, that the Union Army could be in Richmond in days.

  None of them seemed to know or care much about the fearsome Confederate ironclad, though one dock worker offered the opinion that if there was such a vessel on the river, it would have a hard time with the shoals.

  Feeling futile, Harry wandered away, hoping he’d not asked too many questions. If Nestor Maccubbin was even half as diligent as Allen Pinkerton, he’d have a man on Harry’s trail at all times.

  None such seemed much evident. Ascending the embankment by the York River Railroad depot, he followed the shoreline toward the other end of town, passing first the long horse- and footbridge across the James and then the covered bridge that carried the tracks of the Lynchburg rail line. A bit further along, where the river tumbled down steps of rapids through a watery field of rocks, was a pretty, partially wooded place that harbored some happy memories for Harry.

  Most involved pretty ladies, now one in particular. It was here he had first kissed Arabella, when both were in their teens—having arranged a secret rendezvous during a trip she had made to Richmond with her parents. It was here he had gone with her to say farewell before he had left for the North, an interlude of truce in their quarreling.

  There had been more to that evening than mere truce.

  Harry stood on that spot now, looking across the wide, wind-ruffled river, remembering how he had held her tightly in his arms, feeling the warmth of her cheek against his neck.

  The future had seemed so absurdly simple in that youthful time of first kisses—simple, and absurdly wonderful. Any prophesy back then of the vast calamity that now gripped the nation, but most particularly the South, would only have seem
ed the most insane fantasy.

  She was indulging in fantasy with him now—ignoring the reality of the enormous chasm of circumstance and sensibility that now divided them. How well, if at all, did she really know him?

  Of course, she might not be concerned at all with what and who he had become. She might only be using the fact of him as a tool in dealing with some other problem in her life. He never thought her marriage to Palmer Mills would turn out to be a happy one. Palmer was a man who acquired women, rather than loved them. He was full of the airs of the “Virginia chivalry,” but he could be a disagreeable fellow.

  In her girlhood, despite the primitive notions of racial superiority she’d learned from her parents, Arabella had been playful and sweet, at times even poetic. Her eyes always shone when Harry came round.

  It was so long ago.

  A short distance later he came to the mouth of the Kanawha Canal that bypassed the worst of the James rapids and extended more than a hundred miles west to Lynchburg. Walking along its towpath, he eventually reached a point where the narrow waterway intersected with the wide mouth of a creek. There was a bridge across the canal here that carried the Petersburg Railroad tracks, and then another, smaller span, wide enough only for a large wagon to pass. It led onto a large island formed by the canal and the James.

  Crossing it, his boots loud upon its wooden planks, he ultimately reached the top of a rise with a view of the river and the sprawling jumble of brick buildings, spewing smokestacks, mill races and iron waterwheels, railway cars, stacks of cannon, and piles of shot and ball. The Tredegar Ironworks had been the largest industrial complex of its kind in the South before the war. Now it was the virtual heart of the Confederate war machine, turning out cannon, rifles and muskets, railroad rolling stock, bridge trusses, even swords and pikes.

  And armored siding for a warship called “the Monster.”

  The great, dark, heap of buildings rose above the river as might the fortress castle of some evil prince in a storybook, the effect heightened by the smokestacks fouling the clear, late winter air with sulfurous black billows.

  Harry stood contemplating the establishment. It was said to employ more than eight hundred workers, many of them free blacks. Women were employed there as well, mostly as office clerks. There was enormous activity about the place—including comings and goings through the main gate. He noted four cars and an engine on one railroad siding, but the cars were carrying coal, not iron plate.