the navy, which he knows best. He has already suggested sending a Great White Fleet around the world to show the flag. Germany has been working to build a fleet stronger than the British navy. Maybe if the kaiser becomes aware that he would need to defeat two strong navies, he will hesitate to attack anyone for a time.”
“So you see Roosevelt as buying time?”
“Yes. I believe that if he does the job right, he can delay a general war by ten years. If he’s better than that, he can delay it by fifteen years. America is on the rise. Each day that our leaders can keep the peace makes the country richer, stronger, and less vulnerable. Keeping the peace will also give him the time to begin conserving the country’s wild places for posterity, and to begin curtailing and breaking up the trusts that have sprung up in industry to strangle competition and impoverish farmers and workers. I don’t know what else he’ll do. He is the man of the future, and I’m only a man of the past. I just know the time has come to get out of his way.”
“And what would become of you?”
“That, sir, will be up to you. I would like to have you arrange my assassination within the next few days. Then I want you to help me with my afterlife. My wife, Ida, and I want to go off somewhere to live the years allotted to us in anonymity and privacy. I love my country and I’ve done my best for it all my life. But now I would be content to watch it from a distance.” As he looked at Holmes, the president’s brows knitted in that stern way he had.
Holmes sat in silence for a moment. “Sir, I accept your charge. Tonight, I believe, is the third of September. We must move quickly and keep the number of conspirators very small. I believe we’ll be ready to move on the sixth.” He stood.
McKinley smiled and stood with him, so I had little choice but to do the same, although I felt a bit confused by their haste. I too took my leave, and Holmes and I went outside to find Captain Allen waiting by our cabriolet. We got in, and Allen said to the driver, “The Genesee Hotel,” and then stepped aside and let the cab go by.
On the way up Delaware, Holmes told the driver to stop at the telegraph office. There was one on Main Street, which was not far from our quarters. He went inside and wrote out a message he covered with his hand so I couldn’t accidentally glance at it, handed it to the telegraph operator, and paid him a sum of three dollars.
When we were back in the cabriolet, he said, “Take us to the Exposition grounds, please.”
“The buildings will be closed, sir,” said the driver. “It’s nearly midnight.”
“Exactly,” said Holmes.
The cab took us north along the deserted Delaware Avenue. The clopping of the horse’s hooves on the cobblestone pavement was the only sound. All of the great houses were closed and darkened.
After no more than ten minutes, we reached a section of the avenue that curved, and as we came around, the Pan-American Exposition rose before us. From this distance it was a strange and ghostly sight. It was 350 acres of buildings constructed on the site of the city’s principal park. Because the Exposition was, above all, a celebration of progress exemplified by electrical power, all of the principal buildings were decorated and outlined with lightbulbs, and all of them were lit, so the place looked like the capital of fairyland.
The countless bulbs glowed with a warm pink hue which never glared or fatigued the eyes, so a spectator’s attention was drawn to every detail, every color. I was dumbstruck at the sights. The Exposition grounds were bisected by a grand promenade running from the Triumphal Bridge at the south end to the Electric Tower at the north end. There were canals, lakes, and fountains surrounding all the buildings, so these large, complicated, and beautiful constructions with heavily ornamented walls were not only illuminated and outlined by the magical lighting, but the glow was repeated in lakes and canals that served as reflecting pools. As we approached, the impression was of a city, with domes and towers and spires everywhere.
The architecture was indescribable—a fanciful mixture of neoclassical, Spanish Renaissance baroque, and pure whimsy all placed side by side along the midway in every direction. There were some constructions that reminded me of the more ornate Hindu temples I’d seen, with their red and yellow paint and green panels.
Whenever I thought I had perceived the organizing principle of the Exposition, I saw my guess was inadequate and partial. The colors of the buildings at the south end were bright and vivid. The Temple of Music was a garish red, with green panels in its dome and a liberal use of gold and blue-green. Nearer the north end, by the Electric Tower, the colors had grown to be subtler, gentler, and more subdued, as though they represented a change from barbaric splendor to modern sophistication. I also saw monumental sculptures, like frozen plays, that purported to represent the Rise of Man, the Subjugation of Nature, the Achievements of Man. Another series was labeled the Age of Savagery, the Age of Despotism, the Age of Enlightenment. Perhaps if there was an organizing principle, it was that these were people who worshipped progress and pointed it out wherever they could detect it.
From time to time Holmes would jump down from our carriage and look closely at some building or press his face against the windows to see inside. Or he would stand on the raised edge of a fountain and stare along a prospect as though aiming a rifle at a distant target. He craned his neck to look along the tops of parapets, as though he were looking for imaginary snipers.
At length I got out and walked with him. “What are we doing?” I asked.
“The Exposition has been open all summer, and it’s now enjoying advertising by word of mouth. Current estimates are that it will have been visited by eight million people by its closing next month. If we came to do our examination tomorrow morning, not only would we draw attention to ourselves, but we would be trampled by the crowds.”
“But what are we examining it for?”
“Vulnerabilities and opportunities, my friend. Not only must we find the best means, time, and place to conduct our feigned murder of the president, we must also make sure that we retain a monopoly on presidential murders for the day.”
“What?”
“You recall that President McKinley managed to give Spain a crushing defeat in 1898. That must make him seem to many European powers a dangerous upstart. He also has let the unscrupulous owners and operators of large U.S. companies and their political minions know that he intends to rescind many of their privileges and powers. I can hardly imagine a person with worse enemies than he has.”
“Is what you’re saying that we must keep Mr. McKinley alive in order to assassinate him?”
“Precisely. Our little charade can only flourish in the absence of genuine tragedy.” He walked along a bit farther. “That is why I told him we would move on the sixth. Giving ourselves until the tenth or twelfth might expose him to unacceptable risk.”
I remained silent, for I had finally realized what he was looking for. He showed special interest in the Acetylene Building, examining it from all sides and shaking his head. “The danger of explosion is too obvious,” he said. “We can avoid the hazard by keeping him away.”
We got out again at the Stadium in the northeast corner of the Exposition. It was a formidable place, considering it was built only for this summer, and like the other buildings, would be torn down at the end of it. The place could hold twelve thousand spectators. “This spot is tempting,” he said. “The marvel of large open spaces like this is that we could have him stand at a podium in the center, and assemble twelve thousand witnesses in the seats. They would all later swear that they saw the president killed, but none of them would have been close enough to really see anything but a man fall over.”
“It’s something to keep in mind,” I said. “We could contrive a rifle shot from up high—maybe on the Electric Tower—and pretend he’d been hit.”
“Let’s see what else is available.” We returned to our cab and Holmes directed the driver farther down the main thoroughfare.
We moved south to the ornate Temple of Music. It was about 150 feet on a side, with truncated corners so its square shape looked rounded. It had a domed roof, and every exposed surface was plastered with ornate decorations and painted garish colors, primarily red, and surrounded by statuary representing some sort of allegory that no living man could decipher—kinds of music, I supposed.
Holmes showed particular interest in this building. He walked around it from every side, looked in the windows, and, finally, picked the lock on the door and went inside. It was a large auditorium with a stage at the far end and removable seats in the center. “I believe we may have found what we were looking for,” he said. When we went out, he took a moment to relock the door.
We took our cab back to the Genesee Hotel and paid our tired driver handsomely for the long evening he’d had.
