On Secret Service (6 page)

As a young man in Scotland, Mathias Price was attracted to the doctrine of God's universal love preached by John Wesley. It offered hope to the masses who lived without it in the rookeries of Glasgow, his home. He was converted at a revival in Bristol, England, and ordained before he was twenty-three. He chose to answer the call of Methodism in America.

He stepped onto American soil at Charleston and there saw a searing sight: a slave whose naked back had felt the whip many times. Stripes of scar tissue crisscrossed black flesh “like a relief map of hell,” Mathias said.

In the 1830s the Methodist church in America was already reeling toward a schism over slavery. The Reverend Mathias Price would never serve in what he called the benighted South. He accepted a small pastorate in the village of Lebanon, Ohio, not far above Cincinnati. He'd been recommended by a first cousin, Dora Filson, and her husband, Silas, a prosperous farmer.

Mathias found a wife in the German community of Cincinnati. A year after their marriage, Christina Price died bearing their only child. The boy knew his mother only as a smudged pencil portrait made by an itinerant artist. His father kept it in an oval frame on his desk.

Mathias Price was a spare, strong man whose Christianity was as muscular as his body. He didn't preach comfortable complacency about the next world, but militant reform of this one. Prominent in the parsonage was an embroidery he'd asked Dora to sew. It was his amended version of a verse from Isaiah 58:

He preached not only from the Bible, but from philosophers such as Emerson: “I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. We must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.” He quoted Wesley to condemn “that execrable sum of all villainies called the slave-trade.” Southern sympathy was strong this close to Kentucky. Some in his congregation asked the bishop to remove Mathias. He fought back, held on, raised his son, Alonzo, to love kindness, intelligence, and above all, liberty.

Between Sunday sermons, the Reverend Mr. Price often disappeared for days. Sometimes he returned scratched and bruised, accompanied by black men or women he hid in the root cellar until the next morning, when they were mysteriously gone. Young Lon took this more or less for granted, and accepted it when his father avoided direct answers to questions.

When his father was away, Lon ate and slept at cousin Dora's farm. Silas, Dora's husband, came from Paducah, Kentucky. He opposed the Reverend's antislavery activity because the South couldn't survive without slave labor. Dora objected on different grounds. “He'll injure himself, or someone will kill him. It's dangerous work.”

“But what kind of work is it?” Lon asked.

“Work that a man of the cloth shouldn't be doing.” She would say no more.

The Reverend's small library was a place of refuge and happiness for the growing boy. He did his schoolwork there and read his father's books. He loved the chivalry and derring-do of Scott, the thrills of James Fenimore Cooper's Leather-Stocking Tales, the jollity and melodrama of Charles Dickens. He had a vivid memory of standing in a crowd with his father outside a Lebanon inn called the Golden Lamb as the great literary lion alighted for an overnight stop on his first American tour.

Lon discovered Edgar A. Poe, whose unusual tales appeared in obscure literary quarterlies that came into the house. Particularly fascinating were the adventures of Poe's Parisian detective, Dupin, who solved crimes with brainpower and observation. A Cincinnati newspaper article led Lon to the lurid memoirs of Vidoçq, founder of the Sûreté, the French criminal investigation bureau. Lying under a shade tree on hot summer days, Lon invented stories about himself as a clever policeman. In one of his first boyish love affairs—he was eleven, Patience ten—he said, “I want to be a detective like Dupin or the other one, I don't know how to pronounce his name.”

He and Patience were strolling a country road. She said, “Are there detectives like that in America?”

“I don't know.”

“Then how will you become a detective?”

“I don't know.”

“If you don't know, Alonzo, why do you bother to think about it? You should be a storekeeper, or a farmer like Silas Filson.”

“That would be too dull.”

“Then what will you do instead?”

“I don't know,” he cried, vexed. The romance soon withered.

Growing toward adolescence in the 1850s, Lon slowly reached an understanding of what his father did during his absences. Lon overheard people discuss something called the Underground Railroad, which wasn't really a railroad but a secret route to Canada for runaway slaves. Black men and women continued to appear for their brief residence in the root cellar. Sometimes they came with little darky children Lon would have liked to play with, but his father said the children didn't dare show themselves in daylight.

When Lon was twelve, he worked up the nerve to ask his father, “Do you work for the Underground Railroad?”

The Reverend gazed at his son by the light of a whale-oil lamp smoking on the parsonage desk. “Yes, I do. I'm what's called a conductor. This home is called a station. I've wondered when I should tell you.”

“You think slavery's wrong.”

“It is an abomination in the eyes of God.”

“Cousin Dora says that what you do is dangerous.”

The Reverend absently touched his left eye, brilliantly discolored by a purple and yellow bruise, a souvenir of his last trip. “Dora would like me to give it up. Silas thinks Africans are natural slaves, and the institution essential to the livelihood of all those misguided people down South. ‘If we stop it,' they cry, ‘what will we do? How will we survive?' I say find other work, or starve. Slavery is evil.”

“Why, Pa? Aren't slaves happy?”

“No man can be happy in bondage. What if I chained you up so you couldn't go into the village for a licorice if you had the money? What if I kept you sweeping out the barn and cleaning the privy all the time?”

“I wouldn't like it.”

“No, and that's slavery.” The Reverend was silent a moment. “Come down to the cellar with me.”

In the cool darkness, a black family ate from tin plates by candlelight. The Reverend asked the man to bare his back, and Lon saw a hideous mass of scars that glistened and smelled of strong ointment.

Mathias pointed to the scars. “That is slavery, Alonzo. Never forget the sight, or what it means. When we fight slavery, we do God's work.”

 

One time Mathias Price came home on horseback, barely conscious, his arm in a bloody sling. Down on the Ohio River, Dora said, a slave-catcher had put a bullet in him. She was horrified. “It could have gone in his heart.”

The national strife grew worse. People argued over the fugitive slave laws. Members of Congress attacked each other with words and even with canes. In “bleeding Kansas” men killed each other over slavery. Lon heard about something called secession, which Silas said was “coming for sure.” Then one day in the winter of 1857, when Lon was eighteen, the Reverend returned from a trip with a high fever. Lying abed and alternately sweating and freezing, he explained to his son, “I waited six hours in an icy creek for the freight that was due from Kentucky.”

“The freight?”

“The package. The shipment. Three Negroes. They never arrived. I don't know what happened. Oh, God have mercy, how I ache.”

The doctor diagnosed pneumonia, which worsened. Without being told, Lon knew his beloved father was dying. One night when a blizzard howled, Mathias called him to the bedside. A lamp burned low. Lon kissed his father's stubbly cheek. It was hot as fire. Weak fingers sought his.

“Alonzo, I'm going to my reward. I will soon see whatever God has in store for us. You can make your way on your own. You're grown, you're smart, and there's goodness in you, so I have no fear. I want you to promise me that whatever you do with your life, you will always stand up for righteousness. Never compromise. Slavery must end. Work only for men who believe that. Abhor and fight those who don't. Promise me.”

Lon's eyes filled with helpless tears. “I promise.”

The feeble fingers squeezed again. The blizzard tore a shutter off the house with a crash. When the lamp went out, Lon stayed at the bedside. Soon after, with day breaking and the storm quieting, the feeble hand he held went limp.

Silas took charge of Lon. He was almost gleeful about giving the boy long hours of grueling labor on the Filson farm. Whenever Lon's work didn't satisfy Silas, the older man marched him to the barn and took a long hickory wand to his bare backside. Lon endured the punishments and the drudgery until the day Silas whipped him so hard his buttocks bled. Lying on his belly that night, he was struck with a new thought. He was no better than a slave. Slaves were treated the way Silas Filson treated him.

He thought of turning all the livestock out of the barn and setting fire to it. He couldn't bring himself to do it because he suspected that somewhere, somehow, the Reverend would be watching. So he just stole away up the moonlit pike to Dayton with a few possessions tied in a yellow bandanna. From Dayton he went to Chicago, a city rapidly becoming the beef, wheat, and rail center of the nation.

He found work mopping floors in a hotel, then unloaded canvas-covered wheat wagons at a grain elevator. His shortest job was night watchman at one of the abattoirs lining the lakeshore of the booming city. In a week the stenches and the bloody slaughter of the dumb cattle and swine drove him to quit.

He hired onto a work gang that maintained track in the yards of the Illinois Central railroad. It was brutal work, but it was outdoors, in the vigorous, progressive atmosphere of shuttling locomotives and freight cars loaded with grain and produce and manufactured goods. One day a vice president of the line, a Mr. McClellan, made an inspection tour with a smaller, more severe companion who seemed interested in testing the strength of locks and chains on freight cars. Lon asked his foreman who the man was. “Runs some new kind of private police agency. The line has him on contract to protect the yards and rolling stock.”

That was all Lon needed. He saved every penny, slowly accumulated better clothes in a box under his narrow cot in the dank dormitory where he roomed with drunkards, drifters, and others of disreputable character. He associated with none of them.

When he had saved enough and bought a secondhand suit, decent shoes, and a clean cravat, he went to the address of the Pinkerton police agency, a second-floor office on West Washington Street at Dearborn. He was directed to a Mr. Bangs, whom he asked for a job.

“No, we have nothing. Not unless you have police force experience.”

“That's the kind of experience I want to get, sir.”

“Sorry.”

He went back twice more. Each time it was “Sorry.” The fourth time, Mr. Bangs looked him up and down. “Here again, Mr. Price? Determination is a worthy trait. How old are you?”

“Nineteen. Almost twenty.”

“Can you read and figure?”

“Absolutely.”

Bangs narrowed his eyes, a critical inspection. “We need a records clerk. I will set you up to see Mr. Pinkerton.” Lon's heart beat like a bass drum in an Independence Day parade.

“Yes, sir! I'm ready.”

Bangs actually smiled at Lon's enthusiasm.

Allan Pinkerton had clean, manicured nails, a precise part in his hair, a perfect knot in his cravat. Maybe Lon was just scared, but he felt like he was conversing with a block of ice. Pinkerton asked a few brusque questions to determine that Lon could read and figure and had ambitions to be a detective. Then he said, “Is Chicago your home?”

“No, sir. Southern Ohio. My father was a Methodist minister there after he left Scotland. He died last year. He caught pneumonia helping escaped slaves.”

“Very admirable. What part of Scotland?”

“Glasgow, sir.”

“Have you heard of the Gorbals?”

“It's a terrible slum. My father was born there.”

“So was I. Was your father ever a Chartist?”

“No, sir. He told me he believed in the movement's goals for poor working people, but he said the Chartists were too violent.”

“Some were not—the so-called moral force faction. I was a physical force man. When machines replaced decent men who were left to rot on the streets, there was no recourse but violence. The law was chasing me when I left Scotland. I don't know as I ever met your father, but I might have if he bought a barrel or cask from William McCauley's cooperage. I was apprenticed there.”

“I can't say if he did or not, sir.” Lon swallowed and took the leap. “I really would like to work for you and learn this business. I've read all about the man who started the Paris police force.”

“François Vidoçq. A scoundrel, but a pioneer.” Pinkerton inked his pen, scratched something on foolscap. “We'll engage you for a month's trial. If you're honest, diligent, and I find no serious faults in your character, we will accept you as a permanent employee.”

Lon jumped out of his chair and shot his hand out so energetically, he almost upset the inkpot. For the first time, Pinkerton smiled as he shook hands. Maybe there was a real person inside the block of ice.

 

The agency routine excited and fascinated Lon. The Pinkerton office was a kind of theater. Operatives used disguises and played roles to carry out assignments. Sometimes they went armed but often they didn't, relying on quick thinking rather than force. The four female operatives supervised by Kate Warne never carried weapons.

Unvaryingly, Pinkerton was at his desk by seven. The English detective Pryce Lewis told Lon that the boss rose before daylight, took a cold bath and a long walk, and was on his way to work by half past six. Lon liked Lewis, a cultivated young man who'd sold books before joining the agency. They discussed literature on their lunch hour if Lewis wasn't busy on a case.

Several times a day Pinkerton marched out of his office to meet clients, summon operatives, pile reports on this or that desk. Pinkerton wrote reports that almost qualified as short novels. The employees joked about it, but never to his face.

Working as a clerk, Lon soon changed his mind about the boss. Pinkerton was not forbidding so much as firm. He followed a rigid work ethic and expected it of others. Though Pinkerton was humorless and straitlaced, Lon decided that Mathias Price would have liked him because of his devotion to the abolitionist cause.

By the fourth week Lon was in a state of nerves. He feared he'd be let go. He'd made no major mistakes, but no one had commented on his record keeping, favorably or otherwise. It was almost an anticlimax when Mr. Bangs approached Lon's desk at closing time on Saturday. “Price, you're to come in Monday, and every day thereafter. Mr. Pinkerton authorized it.”

A thrill raced up Lon's back. He wasn't aware that Pinkerton had noticed him at all the past month. The agency symbol, the unblinking eye that saw everything, was appropriate.

With a permanent job Lon could afford better quarters. He rented a clean room in the house of a couple in the Irish patch across the Chicago River. He acquired a second, better suit and soon had his sights on a different job, that of a regular operative. He mentioned it to Bangs, and to several others, with no result.

Lon and Philo Greenglass got acquainted. Lon and the ex-policeman were completely different but they liked each other. Sledge quizzed Lon about books, table manners, geography, simple mathematics—all apparently missing from his boyhood education. Where Lon was restrained, Sledge was boisterous, with a reputation for roughness. He almost always went armed.

Dreary winter gripped Chicago. Mountains of snow piled up. When it melted, the streets ran like dirty rivers. The wind off Lake Michigan was fierce and biting. It was a dark, depressing time for everyone except Pinkerton, who seemed unusually animated toward the end of February 1859. No one knew why.

On Friday evening, March 11, Lon was still at work at half past seven, finishing up the payroll ledger. Pinkerton burst out of his office. “Where is everyone?” He checked his pocket watch. The silent desks, the single lamp burning near Lon's inkstand, answered him.

Pinkerton handed Lon a sealed envelope addressed to Colonel C. G. Hammond, the general superintendent of the Illinois Central. “I need this delivered immediately. If Hammond's at home, wait for his answer and bring it to me at my house.” Pinkerton paused before going on. “I needn't have the answer in writing. I'm sure I can trust you. I am asking Hammond to provide a special railcar to carry some people to Canada. They could be in danger if they remain in Chicago. That's why I need Hammond's response right away.”

Lon reached for his cap and woolen scarf as Pinkerton added, “You know where I live?”

“Adams Street, near Franklin.” Lon had never been invited to the house, but everyone knew the location.

“I'll wait for you, even if it's midnight or later.”

Another storm was raging. The wind blew stinging sleet almost horizontally. Lon was stiff and frozen by the time he reached the Hammond mansion. The colonel was home. He told Lon to warm himself at the parlor fireplace while he read the letter. Finished, he destroyed it in the flames.

“You may tell Mr. Pinkerton he'll have his special car by five p.m. tomorrow. Do you know who is traveling to Canada?” Lon shook his head. “It isn't my place to tell you, but if he does so, you'll understand the urgency.”

Once more Lon set out through the dark, nearly deserted streets. Chicago lay under a white blanket that muffled sound and created a false sense of peace. A half hour's trudge brought him to the clapboard cottage where the boss lived with his wife, their two sons, and a small daughter. Through the oval glass of the door Lon saw a startling sight: two black youngsters darting across the hall, playing tag.

Pinkerton answered the bell. “You're very prompt. Step in, Joan has a kettle on the hob. I imagine you need some tea to thaw out.”

Lon craved hot tea but politeness compelled him to say, “That isn't necessary, sir. I'm not cold.”

“Oh? Your lips are naturally blue? You'll have tea, no argument. What is Hammond's answer?”

“The car will be ready by five tomorrow afternoon.”

“Splendid. Joan, some tea for Mr. Price,” Pinkerton called to the rear of the house. “Take off your boots and come meet our guests. I will trust you not to reveal to anyone that you saw them.”

“No, sir,” Lon said. Boots left behind, he followed the boss to the parlor with a feeling of puzzlement.

The first astonishing sights were eight black faces. The five men and three women wore poor but clean clothes on their backs and looks of shy friendliness on their faces. They clustered behind a tall, bearded white man in a black frock coat and string tie. Blue-gray eyes sunk into his craggy face gleamed with reflections of the hearth.

“These people have traveled six hundred miles in a covered wagon,” Pinkerton explained as his wife brought a steaming cup of tea to Lon. Joan was a plain, warm woman, from Glasgow; Lon had met her once at the office. “They were protected at every step by this gentleman, Mr. Brown.”

Lon almost spilled the tea. He recognized the white man from magazine engravings. He was in the presence of John Brown of Kansas, the man who had killed proslavery men at the famous Osawatomie fight. Brown was a national figure, a hero to many. Others called him a murderer.

“Mr. Brown's companions are former slaves. They are going with him to Canada.”

“Where I have established my provisional government,” Brown said with an unforgettable madness shining from his eyes. “Then I have important work to do in the East.”

“I've been raising money for that work, and for provisions for the trip,” Pinkerton said.

Lon met each of the escaped slaves but was so overwhelmed by their leader that he couldn't remember the names. When he was ready to leave, Brown took his hand in huge, gnarled fingers.

“Young man, lay in your tobacco, cotton, and sugar because I intend to raise the prices. My revolution will bring the South to its knees and purge its sin in blood.”

Lon didn't fully understand the statement until months later, when Brown's small force attacked the government arsenal at Harpers Ferry, only to be captured by Marines from Washington led by Colonel R. E. Lee. Brown was put on trial. The South called him a madman, the North a saint and martyr. Pinkerton frantically raised money for his defense but it did no good. Brown was hanged, and the boss was in a bleak mood for weeks.

 

In April of 1860, senior operative Timothy Webster was assigned an embezzlement case in Indianapolis. Adam Roche, a pipe-smoking German, was to go with him but fell ill. No other operatives were available. Bangs remembered Lon's ambition and sent him along with the Englishman. Lon wasn't permitted to carry a gun.

On the southbound train, Webster explained the case in his clipped English accent. “Twenty thousand dollars has vanished from the bank that engaged us. The vice president, a Mr. Thor Knudsen, is suspected by his employers. It's our job to locate some or all of the money so Knudsen can be turned over to the authorities and charged.”

“Why is he a suspect?”

“Behavior. Knudsen was always a man of regular habits, with a passion for perfection, neatness. Then his wife of many years passed away. He brought a young Swedish girl to his residence as housekeeper. An affair is suspected. The bank president says Knudsen has grown secretive, erratic in his work and manner. The housekeeper may have inspired and encouraged his thievery.”

In Indianapolis, Webster grayed his hair with theatrical powder and they drove out to the village of Carmel on a sunny Saturday. Webster carried a document that looked official but wouldn't bear close inspection.

They climbed down from the buggy in the crushed-stone driveway of Knudsen's large white house. Hedges and tree branches were showing buds; a smell of spring earth sweetened the air. Hard to believe they were chasing a criminal.

Webster observed carriages in both bays of the stable at the rear of the property. “We may have caught him home. I'd have preferred it otherwise. Keep a sharp lookout inside. Watch for anything unusual.”

With the confidence of an experienced actor making an entrance, Webster marched up the porch steps and knocked loudly. A stocky young woman with a wide red mouth and enormous breasts under her white apron opened the door. Webster tipped his hat.

“Good morning, miss. I am Mr. Bainbridge from the office of the county building inspector. This is my colleague Mr. Harris. We're here for a routine inspection of this residence. Our credentials.” Webster showed the official-looking document for all of three seconds. “Is the owner at home? A Mr. Knudsen, I believe?”

“Not here,” the young woman said in accented English.

“Too bad. We'll try to make short work of this.” Webster stepped across the sill, forcing her back before she could object. Lon noticed a small framed landscape hanging at a slightly crooked angle above the hallway umbrella stand.

Webster flashed a charming smile as he looked around. He indicated the dining room. “In there, Mr. Harris, if you please. I'll inspect the parlor. You're welcome to follow us, miss. This is really quite routine.”

“Hurry up,” she exclaimed, almost strangling on the words. She was frightened by guilt and fear of discovery, Lon guessed. That didn't mean they'd find evidence.

Every piece of dining room furniture was correctly placed and free of dust. Lon felt he was inspecting a museum. He went back to the parlor where Webster was jotting notes in a little book. “Everything satisfactory,” Lon said.

“And here also. Let's inspect the—what is it?” Lon was staring at a portrait of an older woman in a dark dress.

“That's the second crooked picture. There's another in the hall. Everything else is in perfect order.”

“Maybe I'll have a look.” As Webster approached the portrait, the housekeeper bolted, crying, “Thorvald!”

Webster pulled the picture from its hook, turned it over. The brown paper backing had been slit along one edge. “Something was hidden in here and removed in a hurry. Check the other picture.”

Lon heard a commotion upstairs: pounding footsteps, a man's angry voice. He inspected the landscape and ran back to the parlor. “Same thing. Do you think he hid the cash in the pictures?”

“Yes, and I'll wager there's more in others he didn't have time to cut.” They heard noise and jumped into the hall. A stout man in his sixties was lunging down the stairs, his vest and collarless white shirt unbuttoned, his thin gray hair disarrayed. Lon and Webster were in the direct line of fire of his shotgun.