1876
A rainy October night at the Hub on Chicago’s West Madison Street. Mullen, the jewel-eyed little barman, smoothes his thick mustache and tops up Morrissey’s glass. He leans one elbow on the sodden plank bar, considers the young man, then jerks his head toward the back. Morrissey has been fraternizing at the Hub for some weeks, telling stories of his time in Wisconsin State, but this is the first time Mullen’s invited him into his office.
It’s as plain as the front but smells better. There’s a sad-eyed character there already, sandy beard half-covering impassive features. “Hughes,” says Mullen, with only a trace of a brogue, “this is Morrissey that I was telling you of.”
The older man sticks out his hand.
Morrissey shakes it, and accepts a broken-backed chair. “So what’s on?”
Hughes looks sideways at the Hub’s proprietor. “He knows nothing?”
“I could hardly go into it at the bar.” Mullen sits down and pours three shots.
“I’m hoping you gentleman have a mind to bring me in on some business,” Morrissey volunteers.
“What kind of business?” asks the older man.
“Oh, come on, Mr. Hughes. The coney trade, the bogus; shoving the queer.”
“Knowing the lingo doesn’t mean knowing the business,” observes Hughes.
“I never claimed to. The proverbial blank slate, that’s me. You need a shover, is that it? I could pass bad bills with a straight face.”
Hughes releases a sigh like air from a tire. “The business is all done in.”
Morrissey looks taken aback. “You say?”
“Time was, there was more queer than good floating round Illinois,” Hughes laments. “With all those newfangled notes and greenbacks the Government printed during the War between the States, who could tell bogus at a glance? But since they formed this Secret Service to crack down on us, trade’s turned tight as blazes.”
“It used to be you could bribe them to turn a blind eye,” Mullen contributes, “but these days …”
“And now they’ve banged up our Michelangelo.”
The young man blinks at Hughes. “Your—”
“Ever hear of Ben Boyd?”
“Can’t say as how I have,” admits Morrissey.
Another sigh. “In any other field of art or industry, the man’s name would be on every child’s tongue. But Boyd works on the quiet, like some angel.”
“A friend of yours?”
“Ben Boyd is only the greatest living engraver of queer. Living or dead,” Hughes insists.
“We’ve never met him in the flesh,” Mullen adds.
“But by his works we know him.”
“You’d swear you’re looking at a genuine silk-thread Federal banknote,” Mullen tells Morrissey. “Big Jim wholesales them all over the Mid West. You know Big Jim?”
“Well, sure; I know of him.” Big Jim Kinealy is the Hub’s silent partner, the mover behind all business conducted in this room.
Hughes takes up the story. “But nothing’s moving these days. Since January, Ben Boyd’s been in Joliet State, doing his first year of ten.”
The young man winces. “So your best supply’s been cut off.”
“The only coney worth a bean,” Hughes corrects him. “What’s out there wouldn’t fool a nun.”
Silence; they all drink their rum.
“I’m truly sorry for your troubles, gentlemen,” says Morrissey, “but where do I come in?”
“Not just for our own sakes but for the sake of the whole profession,” says Hughes, “Boyd must be sprung.”
Morrissey lets out a small laugh. “Horse stealing or a touch of safe-cracking, and I’m your man, but—”
Mullen waves one finger to shut him up. “Big Jim has a plan. We’re going to spring Boyd, make our fortunes, and go down in history, all at the self-same time.”
“Is that a fact,” murmurs Morrissey.
“Are you in?” Hughes wants to know.
“Oh, come on, now, it’s only white to tell a fellow what he’ll be getting into first.”
The barman curls his lip. “You think I’m going to lay out our design and have you walk away and blab it all over Chicago?”
Morrissey spits to show what he thinks of blabbers. “I’d be considerable of an idiot to say I’m in till I hear the details, but my lips are sewn.”
“Go on,” Mullen tells Hughes, “he’s all right.”
Hughes shifts his chair a little closer to the table and tops up his glass. “What would you say is the perfect swag?”
Morrissey stares at him.
“Take a guess. The ideal booty.”
“Something worth a lot … that’s easy to take, and fits in your pocket,” hazards Morrissey.
Hughes shakes his sandy head. “If it’s worth a lot, and if you’re tumbled, you’ll do a lot of time.”
“But if it’s not worth much … why trouble?”
Mullen sniggers.
Hughes delivers the answer like Scripture: “The perfect swag is something worth nothing, that people will pay high for.”
Morrissey looks between the two men. “Is this some class of a confidence trick? Like, the mark thinks there’s a diamond in the empty box?”
“No,” says Hughes, stroking his beard, “no deception’s involved.”
“Think it through,” Mullen teases.
“I am doing.” Sulky now. “Something worth nothing … what, nothing at all, like water or dirt?”
Hughes raps the table. “You’re getting warm.”
“Dirt.”
“You’ve a mind to steal dirt?” Morrissey asks.
“A special kind of dirt.”
“A body of dirt, you might say.” Mullen grins as he slicks back his hair. “Dust to dust!”
“Oh, I get it.” Morrissey lets out a whistle, then lowers his voice. “You’re talking to a veteran body snatcher, as it just so happens. Back in Wisconsin I dug up a dozen or so, sold them to the medical school.”
“We heard that story,” Mullen tells him. “That’s why we figured you might want to make a stake with us.”
“But selling to doctors is not our game,” says Hughes with disdain. “You ever hear of the Trojan War?”
“I reckon.” Morrissey’s voice is uncertain. “This one fellow did for another fellow, and then he went one better on it, because he ransomed the corpse back to the fellow’s pa for its weight in gold.”
“Naw!”
“And the best thing is, the State of Illinois’s got no law against the stealing of a cadaver,” Mullen puts in. “It’s nobody’s property once it’s stopped breathing. The most we could be pulled for is the price of the coffin, and that can’t mean more than a year in jail.”
“But whose coffin?” asks Morrissey. “Just what body are we talking about?”
“No need for names,” says Hughes before Mullen’s got the first syllable out. “Come on out to the bar for a minute.”
“You jokers are just pulling my leg,” says Morrissey, pushing back his chair. “What, is he one of the regulars?”
Mullen shakes his head. “He took a bullet eleven years back.”
The Hub is filling up when they emerge: six men at the billiards table, another dozen hanging on the bar, getting impatient. Hughes lets his eyes flicker to the wall above the bottles. Morrissey follows his glance to the plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln.
November 6, the night before the election, the three men press through a Democratic torchlight parade to the station. They get on the nine o’clock train to Springfield, taking over an empty carriage. Mullen drops a clanking tool bag.
“Mind my foot,” objects Morrissey, pulling it out from under.
“Put it up in the compartment, Mullen,” says Hughes. “Are you drunk?”
“Just a little jollified, in honor of our venture,” Mullen tells him. “Accepted three Democrat shots and four Republican ones.”
“You’ve got to play fair,” agrees Morrissey, grinning.
“It’s a sad fact about our line of business that it requires a nomadic sort of existence, since laying low prevents registering to vote,” remarks Hughes, making himself comfortable by the window. “If it were otherwise I believe I’d give my ticket to Governor Hayes, seeing as he’s a war hero.”
Mullen snorts. “Uncle Sammy Tilden’s going to sweep in and clean house. High time we pulled our troops home and left the South to solve its own hell-fired problems.”
Hughes’s eyebrows soared. “The barman is a citizen of views,” he told Morrissey. “Most of them claptrap.”
“I reckon this election will be the closest thing that ever was, anyhow,” contributes Morrissey.
“Five bucks, says Tilden,” mutters Mullen.
Hughes bursts out laughing.
“What now?”
“Five bucks? What a small-timer you are, Mullen. By the time this job’s done, as well as getting Boyd out, we’ll each have bagged a sixth of two hundred thousand dollars!”
The figure seems to make the air in the carriage ripple.
“Yeah, but five’s all I’ve got in my pocket just at present,” says Mullen.
Morrissey’s smooth forehead is wrinkling. “A sixth of it? There’s four of us, counting Billy Brown …”
“Right, but Big Jim planned it with Nelson before ever we came in, so they’ve earned their cuts of the ransom.”
“I suppose,” says Morrissey. “Though we’re the ones risking life and limb.”
Mullen makes a chicken squawk and punches Morrissey in the arm. “We’re risking nothing, boy. On Election Night, with all creation in the streets, who’ll notice another wagon heading out of Springfield? It’s a perfect time for a daredevil trip. A damn elegant time.”
“You’re drunk,” Hughes observes again. “Bridget says if you turn up pie-eyed at the church, she’s going to walk away.”
“Who’s Bridget?” Morrissey wants to know.
“My dear and only widowed sister,” says Hughes.
“My fiancée,” Mullen corrects him with a wide grin. “Hey, with my share, I’ll be able to buy her such a mansion, she’ll thank me on bended knee.”
“You may be going to marry her,” mutters Hughes, “but you don’t know her.” He turns to Morrissey. “You still huffed about your share?”
“Naw, that’s all right.”
“There’s six men in this mob, so six is how it cuts. Nobody’s out to swindle you. Thirty-three thousand, son—that’ll take you the rest of your life to blow.”
Morrissey nods, summons a grin.
The engine lets out a long, hoarse whistle, and they fall silent. “I saw his funeral train pull into Chicago,” remarks Hughes.
“Whose?”
Hughes gives Morrissey an exasperated look. “Honest Abe’s, of course, eleven years back. The Lincoln Express, hung with black drapery and evergreens. It zigzagged all the way from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, going no faster than a boy could run. You never saw such a procession: all along the tracks were crowds standing to pay their respects, day and night.”
“Fancy that.”
“I even joined the line at the courthouse, saw his face.”
“How was he looking?” Mullen wants to know.
“Not his best. This was a full fortnight after the assassination,” Hughes points out.
“But hadn’t they—I mean—”
“Embalmed him? Of course they had: pickled like a cucumber.
They don’t let the famous rot. But his face was greenish.”
“How—how do you reckon he’ll be now?” murmurs Mullen. “Just bones?”
“Naw, I’d say still pickled. A mummy, near as like.”
“We haven’t got to take him out of his casket, do we?” asks Morrissey.
Hughes shrugs. “I hope not. But it’s lead inside cedar according to the custodian; sounds heavy.”
“Hughes and I did the full tour, to scout the place out,” Mullen explains.
“If it proves too much for us three and Billy Brown, we might have to pull him out and bag him.” Hughes shows them a burlap sack.
The other two stare at it. “I hope it’s long enough,” says Mullen. “Wasn’t he a giant of a man?”
“Six foot four inches in his socks,” says Morrissey.
“Six six, I heard.”
“We’ll double him over, then,” Hughes snaps.
Mullen sniffs. “We’d better take care of him, if he’s worth so much, that’s all I’m saying. They mightn’t like to pay full price if he’s in pieces.”
The men from Chicago get in at 6 a.m. A cloudy, cold Election Day. Springfield is chaos crossed with carnival. Jollification booths, party ribbons, posters warning of forged voting ballots, bets taken everywhere you look, muscular characters grabbing voters outside the polling booths to whisper in their ears …
Mullen, Hughes, and Morrissey split up to be unobtrusive, leaving the bag of tools with a bartender of Mullen’s acquaintance. They kill the hours somehow; Hughes gets a shoe mended. In the afternoon there’s a fight, and a negro voter gets his throat cut. As the day wears on, crowds swarm round the telegraph and newspaper offices, waiting for returns. Sam Tilden is thought to have it. Even this town—home to the Great Emancipator, the first Republican president—is said to have swung Democrat.
In their room at the St. Charles Hotel, Hughes squints at a map. “You know, I reckon it’s too far to go all the way to the Indiana Sand Hills in this cold snap, we might get stopped.”
Mullen’s arms are folded. “But Big Jim said—”
“I don’t know what he was thinking. You can’t tell me there’s nowhere to hide a body in the whole State of Illinois.”
Mullen unfolds a smaller map of Sangamon County. “See this bridge across the river, just a mile or two east of the cemetery? We could dump the coffin on the upside, it’ll sink to the bottom.”
“What if it floats?” Morrissey asks.
“Lead-lined,” Hughes reminds him.
The younger man flushes at his mistake. “All right, but what if the water’s too shallow?”
“Then we’ll dig a hole in the gravel bar under the shadow of the bridge.” Hughes nods over the map. “The roads will be frozen hard, our horse tracks won’t show. Where’s your friend Brown going to get this rig?”
“He said he’d nab one easy, from some drunken farmer.”
“Why can’t he hire one?”
“He doesn’t have the cash. Don’t worry, he’ll find us a good team.”
“Oh, and I had a notion,” says Mullen, producing a copy of that day’s Catholic Union and Times. He rips off the front page, then tears that along a messy diagonal.
“What are you playing at?” asks the older man.
“Got this tip from an interview with a kidnapper,” says Mullen. “We leave this half in the crypt, right? Then we hide the matching half somewhere safe—say, back in the Hub, inside that hollow bust of Lincoln. When Big Jim’s negotiating, he can use it to prove we truly are the ones who did the deed.”
Hughes nods, but soberly. “I don’t mind allowing I’ll be glad when this is all over, Boyd’s back at his bogus, and I can return to honest work.”
Morrissey sniggers. Hughes’s head shoots up. “I only meant—I never heard it called that before,” says the young man.
“You, sir, move in certain circles—horse thieves, burglars, and the like,” says Hughes, “and I in others.”
“What, ain’t counterfeiters crooked?”
“Only technically. We do no harm to our fellow man.”
“Oh, Jack, lay off your sham,” Mullen puts in.
“Money’s not real gold anymore,” Hughes insists. “It’s only a kind of paper that the government calls precious; it’s a trick in itself. Well, I say Boyd’s bad notes are just as good. Who am I robbing, tell me, if I buy a horse with a queer bill?”
“Well—”
“The man I pay can buy something else with it, if his luck holds. It all goes round.”
“Tell that to the Secret Service,” says Mullen with a broad grin. “He was arrested back in August, for shoving the coney,” he tells Morrissey.
Hughes sighs. “After a dozen years of being careful, never going out with more than one note on me …”
“Skipped bail, too. That’s how come he’s let his beard grow into such an ugly bush so he can hide behind it.”
“I was thinking,” says Hughes, “when it comes to freeing Boyd and getting our reward, why couldn’t we ask for the settlement of my own little case to be thrown in?”
Mullen shrugs. “You better take that up with Big Jim.”
“I might well. I could eat like all wrath,” says Hughes after a minute. “I’m going downstairs for a plate of oysters.” The others follow him out of the room, but he turns. “We can’t all go: three together could attract attention.”
“On a night like this,” scoffs Mullen, “you’d have to run bare-assed along Main Street to attract attention.”
“No, he’s right,” says Morrissey, “I’ll go eat elsewhere, check Brown’s got us a wagon. See you back here at half past eight.”
In the dark, the three of them walk along the streetcar tracks north of Springfield. Mullen is humming “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” He’s got an ax over one shoulder that he took from outside the tavern, on a whim. He pauses to adjust something in his armpit.
“You armed?” Morrissey asks him.
“Always. And it doesn’t take a great deal of provocation to make me shoot.”
“Mullen’s an all-fired desperado, all right,” says Hughes with a snort.
Morrissey hawks tobacco juice into a bush.
“So Brown will be at the cemetery by half past nine?” Hughes asks him.
“Yup, he’s borrowed a three-spring wagon and a rattling good pair of bays. He’ll tie them up in the woods, then come to the Monument and give the whistle.”
Oak Ridge Cemetery is ahead. They jump the fence and move round through the trees. One small light flickers. “That’s the custodian’s lodge,” murmurs Hughes.
At the top of the hill, on a small plateau, the Monument rears up in the patchy moonlight: an obelisk with statues of soldiers and horses swarming round its base. “Like something out of Old Egypt,” Morrissey marvels. “It must be two hundred feet high.”
“It’s a solid-looking pile, all right,” says Mullen.
“That bit that curves out the front is a little museum. The crypt is at the back,” says Hughes.
Their approach is up a steep ravine, bare except for a single oak. Hughes pauses to take out a small bull’s-eye lantern, rip the paper off, and light it. The wooden door has a simple lock; it doesn’t take Morrissey long to pick it. Inside is another door, iron this time, with a steel bolt secured by a padlock. Mullen pulls out a jimmy and fits the sections together. He works on the padlock for some minutes. “Damn thing’s too big for the staple.”
“Try a steel saw,” advises Hughes.
“That’s just exactly what I was about to do.” But the metal resists his squealing blade. “Tarnation seize this good-for-nothing lock. I’m going to take the ax to it.”
“That won’t work.” After a few more minutes Hughes taps Morrissey on the shoulder, making him jump. “You and I should check the front, just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“In case there’s a guard posted, or the custodian’s got a notion to sit up with his President. Old men can’t sleep.”
“Hey,” protests Mullen, “where’re you fellows going with the light?”
“Can’t you saw by starlight for a minute? You could hardly make a poorer fist of the job …”
Morrissey and Hughes go round to the front. The museum is quite dark. Hughes takes out a pistol. Morrissey slides open the shutter of the lantern, holds it against the outer bars and peers through the glass pane. “Nothing stirring.”
When they get back, Mullen’s saw has cut about a third of the way through the padlock. They lean against the wall and watch him. Suddenly the blade snaps. He hurls down the pieces. “This cock-sucking saw! I could cut steel better with a penknife.”
“Don’t blame the damn tools when it was you who chose them,” says Hughes. “Here, try with a file.”
Hughes hugs the bars to hold the padlock quite steady while Mullen goes to work with a three-cornered file.
“We can take turns if you get tuckered,” offers Morrissey.
“I’m not tuckered,” grunts Mullen. “Just you keep watch.”
“I believe I’ll take another tour around the Monument.”
Morrissey walks silently round the side of the building. At the door of the museum he reaches through the bars and taps three times on the glass. A long pause, and then the door opens a crack. “Chief?” he whispers.
“I’ll get him” comes the reply.
In a minute Chief Patrick Tyrrell puts his meaty-jawed head out, hisses, “What’s the delay?”
“They’re having trouble with the padlock.”
A sharp sigh. “We’d better hang on till they’ve got the tomb open; otherwise it’s only breaking and entering.”
“How many of you are in there?” asks Morrissey, peering through the gap.
“Five, plus the custodian and a reporter. We’ve got these ghouls dead to rights,” says Tyrrell, his voice gravelly with anticipation. “Tonight’s operation is going to break the back of counterfeiting in the United States.”
Morrissey is looking down: “How come you’re in your socks, Chief?”
“We were afraid of making noise,” Tyrrell hisses; “the marble echoes like the blazes. Go on back, before they come looking!”
Back outside the crypt, Morrissey finds Mullen working at the lock with a pair of pinchers, twisting it like taffy. He breaks off with a grunt and rubs his hands to warm them. “You ever tried this kind of business before?” he asks Hughes.
“What, lock breaking?”
“Grave robbing.”
Hughes shakes his head.
“There’s nothing to it, once we’re in,” Morrissey assures them. “We don’t even have to dig, just get the lid off.”
“If it wasn’t for the need to spring Boyd out of jail,” mutters Mullen, “I wouldn’t quite like disturbing a man’s rest.”
“Oh, he’s sleeping too deep to care,” the older man tells him.
“Are you superstitious, Mullen?” jeers Morrissey.
A shrug. “No more than the next fellow. Old Abe himself did some table rapping. I heard it was spirits told him he had to free the slaves.”
“I’ve got no bone to pick with the great man,” Hughes tells him.
“No bone—I get it,” says Mullen with a snigger.
“It’s a bone for a bone, in this case,” says Hughes, “a body for a body. There’s a kind of justice to the exchange. The people of America will get their sainted Abe back in a week or two, as soon as we get Ben Boyd.”
“Plus the two hundred thousand bucks,” says Morrissey.
“Well, yeah. That’s about how much the people of Illinois spent on this here eternal Monument,” says Hughes, craning up at the obelisk, “so the contents must be worth at least as much.”
“Plus, we’ll get fame,” adds Mullen, “and the respect of our fellow Americans!”
Hughes rolls his eyes at Morrissey.
With that, the lock finally cracks and falls. “All set,” crows Mullen, “let her rip!”
Hughes hushes him. The door scrapes open. Morrissey hangs back, lets the other two go ahead.
“I reckon I should keep watch …”‘
“Get in here and hold the light.”
There in the middle of the crypt is the great marble sarcophagus, its end slab inscribed LINCOLN. Below, it says With Malice toward None, with Charity for All. The men approach slowly. “Well, here we are with our revered leader,” murmurs Morrissey.
Mullen fingers the thin slab on the top, and the thinner one below it. “I don’t reckon we’re going to need the drill and gunpowder. I could smash this open easy,” he pronounces. “Why, I could kick it open!”
“Exactly how much did you have to drink?” Hughes inquires.
“Just a little nerve tonic.”
“This one here says Willie,” says Morrissey, holding the lantern over the other tombs. “And here’s Tad, and … little Eddie.”
“Losing three sons out of four, that’s no luck,” comments Mullen, shaking his head.
“Can we get this done sometime before dawn?” demands Hughes.
“This one’s blank,” Morrissey points out.
“For Mrs. Lincoln,” Mullen tells him.
“Didn’t the other son put her in a nuthouse?”
“Naw, she skedaddled.”
“You loafing bums,” Hughes barks, “we’ve got a tomb to open. Shut pan and get to work.”
Mullen heaves the stolen ax over his head.
“Hold up there,” says Morrissey rapidly, grabbing the barman’s arm.
“Watch yourself! I nearly had your hand off.”
“The custodian’s not so far off, he might hear you. And I reckon if we can prize the slab off in one piece, we can put it back afterward and then no one will know what we’ve taken, for a while anyhow.”
“There’s a plan,” Hughes decides.
Sullen, Mullen shoves the edge of his ax under the marble, and it lifts with a creak. “Would you look at that, there’s nothing but plaster holding it on!”
Between the three of them they drag the great slab to one side and rest it against the tomb set aside for Mrs. Lincoln. Now Mullen goes to work on the thinner slab with the ax blade. Morrissey uses a chisel. They manage to break the cement and pry the lid up at one corner, but it won’t come off. “Let me smash it,” says Mullen longingly.
“Wait a tick.” Morrissey has found some copper dowels holding the sarcophagus together. “If we can just lift it clear of these pins …”
Grunting and growling, they manage it, and lay the marble across the tomb. “There she lies,” says Mullen, peering in.
“She?”
“I meant the casket. The cedar.”
Hughes is examining the end slab. “If we can pull this piece off, we can slide the thing out instead of having to lift it … Mullen, where’s your jimmy?” He crowbars the copper ties, and lays the end slab on the floor. He and Mullen take hold of the coffin by its edges, and pull it about two feet out of the sarcophagus. Hughes straightens, wheezing a little. “I reckon it weighs about five hundred pounds.”
“Let’s take the lid off,” suggests Mullen, eyes glittering.
“What for?” asks Hughes.
“Yeah,” Morrissey laughs, “we can hardly have got the wrong fellow.”
“Just to see. I bet he’s all dark by now, like a bronze of himself. Do you reckon he still has his little chin-beard?”
“Half the men in America have his little chin-beard by now,” Morrissey quips.
“Feel that,” says Mullen, grabbing Morrissey’s fist and putting it to his waistcoat. Morrissey pulls away. “My heart, it’s going like a rattle.”
“You skeery?” sneers Hughes.
“No I am not. Just excited. This is a historic moment. The real thing. Abe Lincoln in the flesh!”
Morrissey shakes his head. “It’s only his mortal coil, that he shuffled off a long time back. The bird has flown.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Why, don’t you believe you have a soul, you heathen?”
“I remain to be convinced. What am I, exactly, if I’m not this?” Mullen asks, grabbing a fistful of his arm. “Anyhow, I knew a pickpocket with an Indian skull for a paperweight, he never had any luck.”
“I saw the Hottentot Venus in a freak show,” Morrissey told him, “her corpse, I mean.”
“How big was her quim?”
“Not as big as they said it would be.”
Hughes has yanked out his watch. “Where’s Billy Brown?”
“Yeah,” says Mullen, “we should have heard his whistle by now.”
“With all the ruckus you’ve been making, we wouldn’t have heard the Last Trumpet.”
“I’ll go find him, I bet he’s waiting in the trees,” Morrissey volunteers, handing Hughes the lamp.
“Hold on—”
“We’ll lift it easy with four,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves the crypt. He heads down the ravine, skidding slightly on the frosty grass, then circles the Monument and climbs up the other side.
This time when he taps at the glass, it is Chief Tyrrell who opens. “Ready?”
Morrissey nods.
The detectives file out, pistols drawn. “Wait a minute, men,” says Tyrrell. “It’s so dark—tie your handkerchiefs round your arms so we can see not to shoot each other.”
This procedure takes a little while. Tyrrell is still in his socks. Then they file round the corner of the Monument, Morrissey in the rear.
A shot, deafening.
“What the devil was that?”
A stammering voice. “Sorry, Chief, my cap went off.”
“Get a move on!”
They break into a run. Somebody stumbles and falls with a yelp. When they reach the crypt, Tyrrell shoves the door open with his pistol butt. “Whoever’s in there, come out!”
Dead silence.
“Just you come on out and surrender.” After a long pause, he strikes a match and steps in. “Gone,” he groans.
Ten days later, in the Hub, Mullen is tending bar in a clean apron and Hughes is dozing by the stove. “I still don’t get it,” says Mullen. Hughes yawns.
“Tilden got three hundred thousand more votes than Hayes, am I right?”
“I keep telling you, there’s more to it.”
“No, but you can’t tell me that three hundred thousand men don’t matter.”
“It’s the Electoral College that matters,” Hughes insists.
“Aw, this is all gum.”
“If you’d pay attention—”
“It’s bunkum, plumb and plain. More fellows voted for the Democrat.”
“Maybe so,” says Hughes, stroking his beard, “but Hayes is going to be President, and you owe me five dollars.”
Mullen looks up as the door opens. “Morrissey, you scallywag!”
Hughes straightens in his chair. “We thought you’d run off to Canada.”
“Naw, a patriot like me?” asks Morrissey, and they laugh.
But the fellow who has come into the saloon behind him draws and cocks his pistol at Hughes.
“What the hell—”
Mullen reaches for his gun but another man has stepped up behind him silently and has a revolver a foot from Mullen’s head.
“You boys come along with the detectives, now,” says Morrissey while they are being cuffed.
“Why, you piss-pot prick,” Hughes says between his teeth.
Mullen’s blue eyes are wide and crazy. “Morrissey? Did they catch you that night at the Monument?”
“Shut up, you dumb coot,” groans Hughes. “Say nothing.”
“No, but I need to know. Have they been leaning on you hard? Tell me you didn’t give us up too easy.”
Hughes twists in his cuffs to face his partner. “Don’t you get it, you bootlicking idiot? This boy is all bull. He’s been a bogus sham of a fake since the day he walked in here and bought you a drink.”
Morrissey looks Mullen in the eye, one last time, and says, “Now, that’s the truth.”
“Jim Morrissey” was the alias of one Lewis Cass Swegles (born in Michigan in 1849), a thief turned “roper” (undercover agent) for the Secret Service, who drew a wage of five dollars a day for his infiltration of a gang of counterfeiters who broke into Lincoln’s tomb in 1876. This story owes a lot to Bonnie Stahlman Speer’s The Great Abraham Lincoln Hijack (1997) and Thomas J. Craugh-well’s Stealing Lincoln’s Body (2007).
Charged with conspiracy and larceny on Swegles’s testimony, Terence Mullen and John Hughes faced up to eight years in Illinois’s Joliet State Prison, but the jury sentenced them to just one year. After the trial, ten of the twelve jurymen sent a letter to the papers declaring that Swegles deserved a sentence of three years himself for entrapment of Hughes and Mullen. Soon after release, Hughes was sent back to Joliet for three years for passing counterfeit; Mullen, arrested on similar charges in 1880, informed against his former partner Big Jim Kinealy, who had sold Mullen’s bar and vanished with the proceeds.
By 1880 Swegles was in Joliet himself, serving twelve years for burglary. He had a wife, Laura Baker (married back in 1872). He died in New York in 1896 at the age of forty-six.