C Street glistened with mist. The Pennsylvania House looked a little bit more dismal than usual as George Atzerodt came out, looked up and down, then crossed to the other side and started up Sixth Street. He was sleepy, and dirty, and penniless. He had a hangover. He was sick, soul and bone. The morning air was chill. He dug his hands into his trouser pockets and walked up toward the Mall.
“Mr. Atzerodt. What brings you out so early?”
The carriage maker jumped. He looked up. A colored boy from the hotel was coming back after seeing a lady guest off on the morning train.
Atzerodt’s grin was forlorn. “Well,” he said, “I have got business.”
Mr. Atzerodt had business all right. He wanted to hide. In bed he had thought of many places, and now he had made up his mind to hide in the little town where he had first started in America. He knew that this was not a good place in which to hide, but he reasoned that, no matter where he hid, no matter how far away, the news would reach that place and they would come and get him. The world dealt harshly with cowards. A judge would not believe that he, George Atzerodt, could not kill anyone. So he had to hide. And, not having any money with which to ride, this conspirator was going to walk.
He would walk westward, through Washington City, through Georgetown, until he got to his little town. There, the people liked George Atzerodt. They were not like the people of Port Tobacco. They knew him as a harmless buffoon, a beaming, perspiring drunkard. He would hide there, listening and laughing and maybe drinking until some men came and asked him if he was George Atzerodt.
When he got to the Mall, he turned on Constitution Avenue and he walked and walked and walked, the furtive piggish eyes dancing, the dampness on his round hat. This was a stupid conspirator. He was doing what no other conspirator would—walk through the enemy lines the day after the high crime. It wasn’t brazenness. Nor courage. The man had no other place to go.
In Surratt House Louis Wiechman had breakfast with Mr. Holahan. Wiechman was talkative and Wiechman was righteous. The police would have raided the place a long time ago if they had listened to him. He had suspected what was going on and if Booth plotted this dangerous thing, and John was foolish enough to get into it, then John deserved whatever he got out of it. Thank God that he, Louis Wiechman, had not become part of it; had, in fact, gone on record as reporting his suspicions months ago.
Now, today, he was going to do his duty as any self-respecting citizen should. He was going down to police headquarters right after breakfast and he was going to offer his services to the police. He would help them to track down his dearest friend, John Surratt, no matter whether the trail led across the Eastern Branch to Surrattsville or up north to Canada.
Holahan pushed his plate away. He had little to say. He might have reminded Louis that he had heard more secessionist talk from him than from the others. He didn’t.
Mr. Holahan stood and said that he had some things to do. Wiechman finished the breakfast Mrs. Surratt had prepared for him and then walked off to the police station. He had an excellent memory and he could quote old dialogue as though it had been uttered yesterday. He would talk and talk and talk until the police tired of listening.
He was a hanging witness.
A few streets away, James Ferguson was finishing breakfast when Mr. Gifford, chief carpenter at Ford’s Theatre, walked in looking irritated.
“You made a hell of a statement last night,” he said. “How could you see the flash of the pistol when the ball was shot through the door?”
Ferguson was puzzled. The stage carpenter said that the authorities had discovered that Booth had fired the fatal shot through the door of Box 7, and he had seen the hole to prove it.
“Mr. Gifford,” said Ferguson fervently, “that pistol never exploded in any place but the box. I saw the flash.”
“Oh hell!” said Gifford walking out. “The ball was shot through the door. How could you see it?”
Old Gideon Welles had sat with his President as long as he could. He needed a stretching of aging limbs, a breath of air. He got his coat and, when he put it on, fluffed his white whiskers outside the lapels, jammed a broad-brimmed felt hat over his long brown curls, and walked outside.
The chatting sentries on the walk snapped to attention. Mr. Welles walked slowly around the block, noting that small groups of people huddled against the buildings in the drizzle. They were waiting for news. Final news.
They recognized the old Secretary of the Navy and some looked at him expectantly, but he said nothing. Sometimes, a person would ask timidly: “Is there no hope?”
Once or twice, he said “No,” and kept walking. Once he said, “The President can live but a short time.” He was affected by the colored people, who stared at him, unable to ask the question except with their eyes. He noted that there were more of them standing this death watch than white. On some faces, he saw the varnished furrow of old tears. To one group, without being asked, he was so moved that he said it would be better now if the President did not live.
Mr. Welles finished his tour and walked up the small steps at Petersen House and went back into the bedroom. Outside, two sentries made a game of trying to remember the names of all the important people who had come to this house this night. They remembered thirty. There were 46: Hugh McCulloch, Edwin M. Stanton, Gideon Welles, John P. Usher, William E. Dennison, James Speed, Andrew Johnson, William T. Otto, Robert King Stone, Joseph K. Barnes, Thomas T. Eckert, John B. S. Todd, Schuyler Colfax, Robert T. Lincoln, Charles Sumner, Maunsell B. Field, Leonard J. Farwell, Isaac N. Arnold, C. H. Liebermann, Charles H. Crane, John F. Farnsworth, John Hay, Gilman Marston, David K. Cartter, J. C. Hall, Charles S. Taft, Christopher C. Augur, Charles A. Leale, Henry R. Rathbone, Almon F. Rockwell, Louis H. Pelouze, E. L. Dixon, Thomas M. Vincent, Clara H. Harris, Constance Kinney, Richard J. Oglesby, Edward H. Rollins, Montgomery C. Meigs, Mary C. Kinney, Isham N. Haymes, Benjamin B. French, Phineas D. Gurley, George V. Rutherford, Lyman B. Todd, Henry Halleck, Laura Keene.
Now a new sound could be heard. Newsboys, carrying the morning papers, were shouting the bulletins up and down Tenth Street and the soldiers out front were buying the papers. The story, running down the left side of page 1, looked like this:
ASSASSINATION
President Lincoln
The President Shot at The Theatre Last Evening
Secretary Seward
Daggered in his Bed
But
Not Mortally Wounded
Clarence and Frederick Seward Are Badly Hurt
Escape of the Assassins
Intense Excitement In Washington
At one of the police precincts, the man nobody missed showed up. John F. Parker, unseen since ten o’clock last night, walked into the station with his contribution to justice. He had a prostitute by the arm and he told the sergeant of her crimes. She was Lizzie Williams. The sergeant looked her over. She was scared and drunk. He shrugged and refused to book her. She was ordered to get out of town.
Parker did not offer to tell the sergeant where he had been all night, and the sergeant did not ask. The policeman did not ask the condition of the President, nor did he offer to file a report about the assassination. The sergeant advised him to go home and to get some sleep. Parker left. He remained a policeman in good standing for three more years. He was not tried and no charges were filed against him.
Corporal Tanner had finished his work for Secretary Stanton and he stood, picked up his notebooks, crushed his hat under his arm and, in leaving, passed through the bedroom where the President was. His uniform was rumpled and baggy and he tiptoed to the bed, standing between Generals Halleck and Meigs. He looked at the face that would be no more, and he studied the two doctors who sat on the bed.
Nobody looked at Corporal Tanner; no one spoke to him. He watched Stanton, at the foot of the bed, pressing a fist into a palm. Robert Lincoln, dry-eyed, stood behind the bed. The corporal put his uniform cap on, saluted, and walked out.