Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [11]
Seated inside, Hanna resisted further blandishment. He said that he would support the Roosevelt Administration only as long as it remained an extension of McKinley’s. As to the question of the Republican presidential nomination in 1904, that was “something for the future to decide.” Roosevelt replied, “I understand perfectly,” and escorted the Senator back to his carriage. Hanna drove away without so much as a wave.
That evening, George Cortelyou announced that there would be a private memorial service for McKinley at the Milburn House the next morning, Sunday. Roosevelt and his Cabinet officers would attend, and remain in Buffalo until Monday morning, when a funeral train would depart for Washington. On Tuesday, there would be further memorial exercises at the Capitol, followed by an interment ceremony Wednesday in Canton, Ohio. Mrs. McKinley would vacate the White House at her convenience. In the meantime, Roosevelt would stay at his sister’s house on N Street.
While Cortelyou talked, Roosevelt ate an early dinner, then went exhausted to bed.
SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT in New York City, three hundred miles away, John F. Schrank began to dream. He was twenty-six years old, short, and reclusive. He lay above a saloon that had employed him once, before the Sunday-closing crusade of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. Since that crusade (and because of it, Schrank believed), he had been unable to get a job.
Now, as he dreamed, his shabby surroundings were transformed into a funeral parlor full of flowers. An open coffin stood before him. President McKinley sat up in it and pointed to a dark corner of the room. Schrank, peering, made out a man in monk’s raiment. Under the cowl were the bespectacled features of Theodore Roosevelt.
“This is my murderer,” said McKinley. “Avenge my death.” Schrank woke, and checked his watch. 1:30 A.M. Almost immediately, he went back to sleep. McKinley did not speak to him again that night. Indeed, the appeal would not be renewed for another eleven years—until the same hour of the same night of the week, in another gruesome September.
Sunday
ROOSEVELT AWOKE REFRESHED early the next morning. “I feel bully!” He went out onto the porch for some air, unaware that he was being minutely observed through the fence. His tanned skin stretched over his jutting jaw. His teeth gleamed through thick, half-parted lips. His neck, too squat for a standing collar, merged with weight-lifter shoulders, sloping two full inches to the tip of his biceps, and his chest pushed apart the lapels of his frock coat. He tugged at his watch chain with short, nervous fingers, shifting his small, square-toed shoes. Here, palpably, was a man of expansive force. When he breathed, the porch seemed to breathe with him.
Breakfast, laced as usual by vast infusions of caffeine, served only to stoke Roosevelt’s energy. A sheaf of congratulatory telegrams further stimulated him: one read simply, VIVE LE ROI. He managed to look solemn on the way to Milburn House, but his mind was seething with politics. During the memorial service, he caught sight of Herman H. Kohlsaat, publisher of the Chicago Times-Herald, and whispered urgently, “I want to see you.”
Kohlsaat followed him back to the Wilcox Mansion. He was shown into the library, and found Roosevelt exchanging compliments with a beaky, fortyish professor from Princeton. “Woodrow, you know Kohlsaat, don’t you? Mr. Kohlsaat, let me introduce you to Woodrow Wilson.” The professor bowed out. Roosevelt got straight to the point.
“I am going to make two changes in my Cabinet that I know will please you,” he said. Kohlsaat began to preen. He was a journalist of large influence, and even larger vanity. But what he heard next did not please him at all. “I am going to let John Hay go, and appoint Elihu Root Secretary