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By Root 1673 0

speak with the woman personally. His first stop was the law office of Charles Banks, for a “consultation.” Banks was a prosperous lawyer, the senior partner in the Westchester County firm of Banks and Henderson. When he had taken ownership of the Pioneer two years before, he had announced that henceforth he would run the newspaper “in the interests of the Republican Party.” So his political bent was evident to everyone who read his newspaper. Through Banks, the Pioneer had become a reliable puppet of the state and local Republican political machine. It had been three days since the telegram about Maria had been sent to the publisher of the New Rochelle Pioneer, and nothing had happened. When Ball told Banks the purpose of his visit, Banks must have been shocked to learn of the existence of the telegram—and the treachery of his office staff. Undoubtedly, heads would soon be rolling at the Pioneer. Ball took his leave, telling Banks that he wished to visit with Mrs. Halpin alone, and set for James Seacord’s house.

He found the house on Main Street. It was, as the expression went, a “plain address”—an unpretentious New England colonial made of timber and clapboard siding, with a picket fence surrounding the property. It was a fitting home for a humble village carpenter. Ball walked up four steps, opened the gate, and knocked on the front door. James Seacord opened it, and Ball introduced himself. Seacord shook his head. There was no way he was letting anyone see Maria. The two elderly gents eyed each other warily. Ball tried to explain who he was and the essential role he was playing in this national crisis. He said he was there to help. But Seacord was not hearing any of it. The carpenter stood his ground, blocking Ball’s path, and even though Ball used all his gifts as a communicator, Seacord would not step aside. At last, Ball turned away in “disgust” and took the next train out of town. Irritated beyond words by his encounter with Seacord, he was nevertheless more convinced than ever “of the truth of the story.”

Not knowing whom to trust, Seacord was mistrustful of everyone. He was staring out the window, looking up and down the street, when he saw some curious activities. There were men who didn’t look like they were from New Rochelle positioned at the corner. They seemed “very sharp” and seemed to be keeping an eagle eye on the comings and goings at the Seacord house. When the carpenter confronted them, one man claimed to be an “antiquarian” interested in researching the gravestones in the church cemetery next to Seacord’s property; another acknowledged that he was a detective. Obviously, Maria Halpin was under twenty-four-hour surveillance.

Inside the house, Maria tried to make sense of the confounding turn her life had taken. This was a nightmare. Grover Cleveland was the Democratic nominee for president, and the entire country was now aware of her disgrace. It had been ten years since she had given birth to Oscar Folsom Cleveland and eight years since she had been run out of the city of Buffalo, three hundred miles to the northwest. As for the account in “A Terrible Tale,” Maria had read it; and when a New Rochelle neighbor asked her whether the stories were true, she answered, “They are, and God knows they are true too.”

Maria’s nerves were shot to hell, and she asked Dr. Bevin, her New Rochelle physician, to do what he could to calm her. Her eldest son, Frederick Halpin, went to the Seacord house to lend his mother support. Frederick was now a fine young man of twenty-one, working for the Erie Lackawanna Railway, but with aspirations of working his way up to locomotive engineer. He stood about six foot two, with a muscular build and his mother’s dark good looks. He showed her a telegram he had just received from Albany, from William Hudson, Cleveland’s political counselor. In it, Hudson asked Frederick to meet with him at the Hoffman House in Manhattan.

The Hoffman House was a handsome Italian Renaissance hotel at Broadway and 24th Street. It took up an entire city block and was centrally located near all the