Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [76]
Booth then creeps down the hallway. Booth’s second act of preparation that afternoon was using a pen knife to carve a very small peephole in the back wall of the state box. Now he looks through that hole to get a better view of the president.
As Booth already knows, the state box is shaped like a parallelogram. The walls to the left and right of Lincoln slant inward. Booth sees that Clara Harris and Major Rathbone sit along the wall to his far right, at an angle to the stage, and the Lincolns sit along the railing. The Lincolns look out directly onto the stage, while Clara and her beau must turn their heads slightly to the right to see the show—if they look directly forward they will be gazing at Mary and Abraham Lincoln in profile.
But it is not their view of Lincoln that matters. What matters is that Booth, through the peephole, is staring right at the back of Lincoln’s head. He can hear the players down below, knowing that in a few short lines Harry Hawk’s character Asa Trenchard will be alone, delivering his “sockdologizing old man-trap” line.
That line is Booth’s cue—and just ten seconds away.
Booth presses his black hat back down onto his head, then removes the loaded Deringer from his coat pocket and grasps it in his right fist. With his left hand, he slides the long, razor-sharp Bowie knife from its sheath.
Booth takes a deep breath and softly pushes the door open with his knife hand. The box is dimly lit from the footlights down below. He can see only faces. No one knows he’s there. He presses his body against the wall, careful to stay in the shadows while awaiting his cue. Abraham Lincoln’s head pokes over the top of his rocking chair, just four short feet in front of Booth; then once again he looks down and to the left, at the audience.
“You sockdologizing old man-trap” booms out through the theater.
The audience explodes in laughter.
CHAPTER FORTY
FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865
WASHINGTON, D.C.
10:15 P.M.
A few blocks away, someone knocks hard on the front door of the “Old Clubhouse,” the home of Secretary of State William Seward. The three-story brick house facing Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, took that name from its day as the headquarters of the elite Washington Club. Tragedy paid a visit to the building in 1859, when a congressman shot his mistress’s husband on a nearby lawn. The husband, Philip Barton Key, was a United States attorney and the son of Francis Scott Key, who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Key’s body was carried inside the club, where he passed away in a first-floor parlor.
That tragedy, however, will pale in comparison with what will happen in the next ten minutes.
There is another sharp knock, even though it’s been only a few seconds since the first one. This time the pounding is more insistent. Secretary Seward does not hear it, for he is sleeping upstairs, his medication causing him to drift between consciousness and unconsciousness. William Bell, a young black servant in a pressed white coat, hurries to the entryway.
“Yes, sir?” he asks, opening the door and seeing an unfamiliar face.
A handsome young man with long, thick hair stares back from the porch. He wears an expensive slouch hat and stands a couple inches over six feet. His jaw is awry on the left, as if it was badly broken and then healed improperly. “I have medicine from Dr. Verdi,” he says in an Alabama drawl, holding up a small vial.
“Yes, sir. I’ll take it to him,” Bell says, reaching for the bottle.
“It has to be delivered personally.”
Bell looks at him curiously. Secretary Seward’s physician had visited just an hour ago. Before leaving, he’d administered a sedative and insisted that there be no more visitors tonight. “Sir, I can’t let you go upstairs. I have strict orders—”
“You’re talking to a white man, boy. This medicine is for your master and, by God, you’re going to give it to him.”
When Bell protests further, Lewis Powell pushes past him, saying, “Out of my way, nigger.