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Knowing this did not prevent him from assuming the worst.
Leaving the window, he carefully walked back to the hallway, where there was almost no light to give him guidance. He worked from memory, from the map in his head of a house he’d visited dozens of times before, though he’d rarely seen these private chambers upstairs, where the aging couple spent their quieter days.
At the end of the hall was an oversized dumbwaiter—or that’s what Gideon had jokingly called the thing when he and Wellers had installed it together last June. It was a closet with a floor built on a lift, an elevator large enough to hold Lincoln and his chair, and perhaps one other person. The structure of the house would permit nothing larger, unless Mary could have been persuaded to give up part of the kitchen pantry. And as it turned out, she could not.
The last room on the left before the elevator was the guest room. Gideon peered through the narrow slit in the curtains, but saw nothing he didn’t already know. Men in the woods. Shadowed figures, distinguished mostly by their movement—and occasionally by a glimmer of brass buttons, the hardware on a gun, or the glint of a spyglass lens.
The hints of spyglass worried him.
He could not tell if the glass was only for observation, or if it was affixed to the barrel of a weapon. Gideon fervently hoped that none of the new recruits were sharpshooters, but he couldn’t count on it; he couldn’t count on anything, not tonight. So he remained wary of any seams in the cloak of darkness they’d forced upon the house. He’d turned off all the gaslights and electric lights, and forbidden any torches—electric or otherwise. Any light within would tell the men without where they were, and offer up a target. It might be a vague target, but it’d be a direction in which to shoot.
Two more rooms to check—and then he was done, and the second story was clear. Back down the stairs he traveled, announcing himself with incautious footsteps, and then calling softly, “Mr. Grant? The upstairs is as tight as I can make it. ”
“Good,” came the reply by the front door. But it sounded distracted.
Gideon kept his back to the wall until he reached the president; then he slid down into a sitting position beside him. “They’re collecting more men. ”
“I know. And we’re not. ”
“They know. ”
“It’s only a matter of time, now,” Grant said, low and quiet, “until they come inside. ”
“We can hold them off a while longer, put on a show for another hour or two. ”
Grant nodded, scratching his salt-and-pepper beard. “I don’t suppose that big brain of yours has come up with any plans, has it?”
Only stalling tactics, but he offered them anyway. “We need to spread out. Put Polly and Mary upstairs, at opposite ends. Let them play sharpshooter, or at least make a lot of noise. By sound alone it’s hard to tell a couple of shooters from half a dozen or more. With them taking the second story and us on the first, we can mount a satisfactory defense that may look like a much better one. And, besides, it gets the women upstairs, where they’ll be marginally safer. ”
“Any thoughts how we might send a message?”
“A few. None of them good. We can’t spare a runner right now, and even if we could, we’d be sending someone on a suicide mission … which is why you wouldn’t let Polly go in the first place,” he said, giving a voice to something he’d suspected. Grant didn’t contradict him, so he continued. “Wellers is willing to make a dash for it, but he’d never make it. Mary would have the best chance; she’s a little old lady, and a well-known one at that … but I don’t suppose that’s on the table. ”
“No, it isn’t,” Grant said fast. Then, after a pause, “She’d do it if we asked her, though. We’ll work around it. ”
“The cellar is a fortifiable position of a kind, but it’s a dangerous one. Only two ways in or out, but, once in, we’d never be able to mount any kind of response. It should be considered, but only as a last option. Not least of all because we’d have to carry Mr. Lincoln down those steps. ”
“Doesn’t he have an elevator?”
“Yes, but it only goes between the first and second floors. Structural issues prevented us from sending it any lower or higher. ”
“Higher?” Grant’s eyebrow lifted.
“There’s an attic, but it won’t be of any use to us. Just another place to get ourselves stuck. And the cellar is more defensible. I think. ”
“I think you’re right. ” He sighed. “It’s a damn shame we don’t have that machine of yours here and handy, isn’t it? We could just ask it what to do, and it’d tell us. ”
“That’s not how it works. ”
“No?”
Since the president seemed genuinely curious, Gideon told him, in brief. “The Fiddlehead collects information, and sorts out the possible results into levels of probability. It can tell you what’s likely to occur, but if you prefer a different outcome, it’s your responsibility to find another path. ”
“Ah. Sounds complicated. ”
“Of course it’s complicated. If it wasn’t, you’d already have one in every parlor. But,” Gideon added more warmly, afraid he’d been too cold, which wasn’t called for, “it’s a useful kind of complicated. Just not useful to us, personally, right now. ”
Outside, they heard men scrambling back and forth, their boots scraping the gravel or whispering through the grass. The wind that had hidden their movements before had all but died, and now the night was a quiet place, and the Lincoln house was listening.
