Empire

Crown, no doubt, in Hearst’s case.

“What happens if Archbold brings charges against you, for theft?”

“I didn’t steal anything. I just copied some letters offered me pro bona publica.”

“Pro bono publico.”

“That’s what I said. I wish I could make more out of Theodore’s letters.” Hearst looked wistfully at the short enigmatic letters from the White House to Archbold. Within the “right” context, they could send the President to jail. But there was no context at all to these anodyne texts. “Of course, one could cook something up.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Blaise firmly.

“I won’t. Until I have something to go on. I have detectives at work, going over his bank accounts. Also, the Republican Party’s accounts, which are almost as bad…”

“… as the Democrats’.”

Hearst looked at Blaise gloomily. From the floor beneath them, they could hear Millicent’s voice, loud and harsh enough to be heard at the back of the third balcony of the Palace Theater. She was at work with her designer, creating if not a pleasure dome, the largest apartment in New York, filled with what was, by now, the largest collection of old and new antiques in the Western world. “I’m going to start off with Hanna and Quay, They’re dead. I’m going to show how much they collected for Roosevelt’s campaign. Then I’m going to show what TR has done for Standard Oil…”

“He hasn’t done a thing. We ran that story. Of course, the real story is hard to write. The fact that he’s actually done nothing at all is the only thing against him.”

“I can work that one out,” said Hearst. “And still stay with the facts. He’s done nothing because they helped finance him. At least in 1904. Oh, I’ve got him. He’s terrified. Next Sunday, I’m dropping some hints in all the papers that we have his letters to Archbold, compromising letters.”

Blaise was beginning to feel that the impossible was about to happen; Hearst was actually going to go too far. Unless the detectives turned up something new, Hearst was about to find himself in the dangerous position of one who has accused of corruption a popular president in office. This was not quite like going after Murphy of Tammany Hall. Blaise said as much. Hearst was offhand.

“All I’ve got to do is smoke him out. I do think he’s corrupt, by the way. I mean, everyone in this business is-to raise money to run-but because he’s a hypocrite, he’s worse than the others. That’s why I want to keep him guessing. My ace is this, he doesn’t know how much or what we know, and he’d give anything to find out.”

Hearst wandered over to the French window that opened onto a terrace, with a view of the Hudson, and the high Palisades. “When I quote from his two cronies Hanna and Quay-and Foraker, too-everyone knows I mean Roosevelt, too. So we may as well throw him to the wolves right now. Otherwise, people will say we only mention dead people who can’t fight back, or dead ducks like Foraker. Then we say, next week we’ll publish the Roosevelt letters. Oh, there’ll be a hot time in the old town that night.”

Hearst had agreed that Blaise might use certain letters that he himself had no immediate use for. The powerful Senator Penrose was given to Blaise; and a half-dozen members of the House. In exchange, Blaise would use the Tribune files to back up the Hearst “investigation,” if that was not too lofty a word for what Hearst was doing. Since most of the country’s politicians were paid for by the rich and since most of the electorate knew this and did not care, Blaise kept urging Hearst to make some useful point instead, simply, of listing names, with prices attached. Hearst disagreed. Yes, he admitted to a desire for revenge. Roosevelt had accused him, yet again, of McKinley’s murder and for that low blow Hearst was whetting his journalistic ax. But as for true reform, Hearst looked, mournfully, at Blaise. “I guess,” he said at last, “if you don’t like it here you can go back to France.” All in all, Hearst took for granted his country; and Blaise did not.

Blaise was at his desk in Washington when Caroline made an unannounced entrance, the first, in fact, since each had seen fit to confide to the other more truth than was necessary for everyday life in the American republic.

“Look,” said Caroline, who seldom said anything so obvious.

Blaise spread out the New York Journal American on his desk, and read the headline. „W. R. Hearst Proves the Rule of Oil Trust in Politics.” He read the story quickly. Someone, probably Brisbane, had put together a highly damning account of Standard Oil’s promiscuous dealing with the politicians of both parties. With some subtlety, the story never got far from Roosevelt and the Republican Party, but, thus far, no line of Roosevelt was quoted. That was, the story concluded, to come.

“I suspect that this will not be a happy morning at the White House.” Caroline sat down; she stared off into space, no doubt at headlines as yet unset in type.

“Well, he’s done one thing I didn’t think he could. He’s proved that Standard Oil gave a lot of money to Roosevelt’s campaign, and Roosevelt, so far, hasn’t really gone after any of the oil trusts. Well, that’s cause and effect, isn’t it?”

“But,” said Caroline, “Archbold also contributed to Judge Parker and the Democrats. So the two cancel out.”

“I wonder.” Blaise turned to Caroline. “Do you-and Mr. Trimble-agree to breaking the Penrose story?”

Caroline nodded. “Mr. Trimble’s running it tomorrow, front page.”

“That puts us one ahead of the Post.” Blaise was pleased. “Hearst wants to do the best of Sibley’s letters. But we can have the rest of him, the part that doesn’t concern the President.”

Joseph C. Sibley was a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, who had never tried to disguise his loyalty to the Rockefeller oil interest. Sibley wrote Archbold: “For the first time in my life I told the President some plain if unpalatable truths as to the situation politically, and that no man should win or deserve to win who depended upon the rabble rather than upon the conservative men of affairs…” This could have been, thought Blaise, the beginning of Roosevelt’s abrupt shift to the rich-and to Standard Oil-in order to raise money for the 1904 campaign.

“Have you ever thought of going home?” Caroline was sudden.

“Home? To Connecticut Avenue?”

“To France.”

Blaise laughed. “That’s where Hearst told me to go-instead of hell, I suppose, when I was making heavy weather about some of his crazier tactics. No. I like it here, more than ever. Besides, do you know anything about French politics? Look what they did to your friend Captain Dreyfus.”

Caroline seemed uncharacteristically disconsolate. “In France, I-you-we wouldn’t be publishers. We wouldn’t have to know such people, or care.”

Blaise shook his head. “Sell me your share, and go back. I’m in my element now.”

Caroline smiled without pleasure. “That famous shoe keeps shifting, first to one, then to the other foot. Oh, I stay. I’m in too deep. I have my-expiations.”

“You and that mother of yours!” Blaise disliked the subject intensely. “You don’t need expiation. What you need is an exorcist.”

“I want to publish my grandfather’s journal, about her.”

“Go ahead. It’s none of my business,” said Blaise; and meant it. Then Mr. Trimble joined them, a note in hand, a gleam in his eye. “From the White House. From the President.”

“Never explain,” sighed Caroline, “never complain.”

“He’s done both.” Trimble gave them the short message, for publication. The President had no specific recollection of the conversation as reported by Mr. Sibley. “The President would like to see you tomorrow at noon.” This was addressed to Blaise. Then Trimble was gone, and Blaise said to Caroline, “We have drawn blood.”

“Whose, I wonder?” asked Caroline.

The President was receiving a delegation from the new state of Oklahoma when Blaise was announced. “Bully!” the President shouted, and Blaise’s entrance was a signal for the Oklahomans to withdraw. Blaise did get a good look at the state’s first governor, who was also treasurer of the Democratic Party. This gentleman, C. N. Haskell, had that day been named by Hearst as yet another employee of Standard Oil, guilty of serving not the people but the Rockefellers. Bryan, once again the party’s peerless leader, was said to have ordered Haskell to resign as treasurer. As the Oklahomans withdrew, each with a firm handshake from the President, there was no sign that anything was awry other than, as the door shut on the officialdom of the latest state, a sudden explosion: “Taft-the procrastinator-really let us down out there. We could have had all seven of Oklahoma’s electoral votes. But then they came up with this constitution which was mad-pure socialism, and Taft said, wait and write a new one, as if