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He found the rifle in the closet.
Eddie Edwards watched J. B. Culp’s train crew coal and water the tender. The locomotive had steam up. The cook received deliveries from a butcher wagon and a bakery.
“He’s ready to go somewhere,” he reported to Isaac Bell. “I’ve got fellows at the Delaware & Hudson and the New York Central checking whether Culp’s ordered clearance for a special. But I can’t count on them since Culp owns most of the lines around here.”
Bell asked, “Is Culp’s auto still in his garage?”
Edwards nodded. “Harry’s got little Richie up a tree with field glasses.”
USS Connecticut’s great white hull turned majestically in midstream, hauled around by tugs at her bow and stern, and before she followed her icebreaker back down the Hudson River, the battleship bid the President godspeed with a twenty-one-gun salute. The final retort was still reverberating from the hilltops when a grinning Theodore Roosevelt jumped from the 20-foot gasoline dory that had sped him ashore.
As if propelled through the air by the warship’s thunder, thought Joseph Van Dorn.
Roosevelt landed nimbly on the Military Academy pier. He shook hands with the commandant. He waved to the citizens crowding the ferry wharf and the West Shore Railroad Station. He saluted the ramparts of the stone fort on the bluff, which were gray with cadets in their full-dress coats. Then, surprising no one, especially Van Dorn, he gave a speech.
He thanked the Army grandly for its welcome, the citizens of West Point for turning out to greet him in such a bitter cold, and the United States Navy for its “hearty salute, which reminds all Americans gathered here that we look forward to the day when disputes between nations are settled by arbitration, but, until then, Connecticut’s mighty twelves will do our arbitrating for us.”
It fell to the chief of the President’s Secret Service corps to spoil the mood with an abrupt change of plans. “We will not board the train—with your permission, Mr. President—but embark directly from here in the White Steamer.”
“Why? Storm King expects me on the train, not in an auto.”
“That is precisely why, sir. To confuse any enemy counting on you to arrive as scheduled at the station. The drive is only five miles and the road isn’t bad.”
“Whose idea was this?”
“It was Joseph Van Dorn’s idea.”
“I should have guessed.”
“When I told him that you might not be one hundred percent pleased, he said that a war hero like yourself would recall the power of surprise.”
“I am in the hands of the professionals,” President Roosevelt intoned, but a dangerous glint in his eye informed the chief of his protection corps not to take any more liberties.
Joseph Van Dorn waited beside the big White Steamer, wearing a slouch hat, a polka-dot bandanna, and wire-framed spectacles. He held the automobile door for the President and said, “I would appreciate it if we would raise the top.”
Roosevelt looked him over sharply.
“What happened to your face?”
“I shaved my sideburns.”
“What are you up to, Joe? You don’t wear specs, but you’re wearing specs—without glass in them. And what’s that hat doing on your head? You weren’t a Rough Rider; you were a United States Marine.”
“Confusing the enemy,” said Van Dorn.
“Has it occurred to you that if you confuse them too successfully, you’ll be the one shot?”
Van Dorn answered with a straight face. “The voters spoke loud and clear, Mr. President. Not one of them voted for me.”
“The top stays down.”
Van Dorn said, “Would you read this wire from Detective Bell?”
LOST BRANCO
CULP’S 1903 SPRINGFIELD GONE
“The 1903 Springfield is—”
