Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [94]
So carefree was Guiteau, he was quickly putting on weight. While the president was unable to keep anything down, had literally begun to starve, his would-be assassin ate everything he could get his hands on. By the time the summer was out, Guiteau would gain 10 pounds, a substantial amount of weight for a man who had been only 135 pounds when he was brought through the prison gates.
Guiteau also began to make plans for his future. Although by now he was used to being alone, he felt that it was time to remarry, and that he should take advantage of his newly won fame to find a wife. Having offered his autobiography for publication to the New York Herald, he tacked onto the end a personal note. “I am looking for a wife and see no objection to mentioning it here. I want an elegant Christian lady of wealth, under thirty, belonging to a first-class family. Any such lady can address me in the utmost confidence.”
Guiteau also used his autobiography to announce his candidacy for president, a decision he believed the American people would not only welcome but actively encourage. “For twenty years, I have had an idea that I should be President,” he wrote. “My idea is that I shall be nominated and elected as Lincoln and Garfield were—that is, by the act of God.… My object would be to unify the entire American people, and make them happy, prosperous and God-fearing.”
While Guiteau sank deeper into delusion and the country staggered under the weight of shock and grief, a thin ray of hope shone late into the night, every night, in a small laboratory on Connecticut Avenue. From the moment he had left the White House, Alexander Graham Bell had begun work in earnest, thrilled to be back in his own laboratory, where there was little danger of interruption or distraction. He had often worked under intense pressure, under the threat of humiliation, even professional and financial ruin, but he had never before felt the weight of another man’s life in his hands.
Bent over a long, rectangular work bench made of unpainted wood, Bell stared at the latest incarnation of his induction balance, modified to find a bullet in a man’s back. He had been wrestling with the design for weeks and had solicited advice from some of the world’s most respected scientists. He was in contact with everyone from the British inventor David Hughes to the renowned mathematician and astronomer Simon Newcomb to inventors at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the Scientific American. “Alec says he telegraphed all leading physicists here and in London and all here at least have answered with suggestions and expressions of interest and desire to help,” Mabel wrote to her mother. “No one thinks they can do enough to help the President.”
At this point in his experiments, Bell had made some significant changes to his original design, most of which revolved around the coils. He had tried winding the primary coil into a conical shape. He had adjusted the coils’ size, making them “enormous” at one point, and as small as a bullet at another. Most important, he had decided to borrow an idea from Hughes and use four coils—two exploring and two balancing—rather than two. He was concerned that if he used his original instrument to search for a bullet, especially over a broad area such as the president’s back, the movement might upset the coils’ delicate balance. By using Hughes’s four-coil design, he could rigidly attach the two exploring coils to each other. Any necessary adjustments could be made to the balancing coils, which would sit on a nearby table, undisturbed.
The result of Bell’s experiments was the instrument that sat before him now. The exploring arm of the invention consisted of a handle, rounded at the top and narrower at its base, attached to a disk carved from walnut. On the other side of the disk were the exploring coils, which he had stacked on top of each other—the larger, primary coil against the disk and the smaller,