The Shut Mouth Society Page 5

  Douglass spun the huge tumbler, shielding the combination with his body. “That’s why they make safes. More people should use them.” After he snapped the stainless steel handle down, Douglass effortlessly swung the precision-balanced door open. Evarts expected the inside to display modernistic stainless steel, but instead the interior looked like an extension of the library, with the same dark wood shelves and jumbled up stacks of books and portfolios.

  “I expected gold, currency, or jewelry. What’s this?” Evarts asked.

  “His priceless Lincoln collection,” Professor Baldwin answered.

  “Not priceless, my dear. Just pricey.”

  “Abe, I’ve seen exhibits of your collection, but nothing you’ve made public compares with this.”

  “And you may peruse it all at your leisure after next week, Patricia.”

  “A bribe?”

  “Of course. It’s about time you got a proper handle on your specialty.”

  “You do know how to ruin a moment.”

  Douglass chuckled as he reached for a folio and handed it to Baldwin. “Let’s step back into the library so you can examine this properly.”

  “Can you have Peter bring my laptop? He took it away when I came in.”

  “Of course.” Douglass made a shooing motion with his hands so he could exit the narrow vault. When they had reentered the library, Douglass locked the safe and closed the hiding partition before summoning his servant, using the same remote control unit. He pointed to a small writing table in the corner. “Why don’t you set up over there?” When Peter arrived, he asked for Baldwin’s case and new drinks.

  Baldwin walked over to the table and lay the portfolio on the surface with a delicacy that reminded Evarts of his father when he worked with his stamp collection. She carefully lifted the cover of the folio. Evarts was surprised to see odd-sized blue paper.

  “Foolscap,” Douglass explained. “Thirteen by sixteen inches. Not used today.”

  “But the copies were standard legal paper?” Evarts said.

  “I digitally photographed them and printed reduced-sized pages. Easier for us to handle nowadays.”

  Peter came into the library with a black Tumi case slung over his shoulder and a tray that carried two scotches and another glass of port. After distributing the drinks and the case, he retreated without a word.

  Baldwin immediately pulled out her laptop and set it beside the manuscript. She ignored the port until the machine was booting up. “I’m going to compare the text to the Tribune.”

  “Of course. We’ll leave you to it. Dinner will be served in an hour.” With that, Douglass motioned Evarts over to two of the easy chairs on the other side of the room. They settled in with their scotch, and Douglass explained, “After Lincoln gave his address, he went to dinner with the sponsors of the event. They dropped him off at the Astor House to get a good night’s sleep, but Lincoln left his hotel and walked across the street to the Tribune office. He stayed until the wee hours, editing the text of his speech for the morning edition. Witnesses say he compared the typeset speech against a handwritten foolscap copy. Many newspapers printed the speech, but only Greeley’s Tribune had the privilege of being edited by the author. Many variations appeared in broadsides and books during the campaign, and they all had slight variations. Patricia wants to compare my manuscript with the most authoritative source, which she undoubtedly has preloaded onto her laptop.”

  “Greeley? Professor Baldwin mentioned him.”

  “Professor Baldwin? I would’ve thought you two would be on a first-name basis by now.”

  “I’m trying to get her to use my first name but only because I don’t like the way she says ‘Commander.’ The professor thinks I work for the Gestapo.”

  “She was raised by a couple of heavy establishment types, rich but progressive nonetheless. Something rubbed off, I suppose.”

  “That explains her dress.”

  “Her dress? She couldn’t dress more conservatively.”

  “I didn’t mean the progressive part—I meant the rich part. Her clothing and accessories would make your female neighbors envious.”

  Douglass laughed. “Yes, indeed. Patricia is a good person, but she has her frailties. Vanity among them. Unfortunately, it affects her research. Too damn smart for her own good, but she’s right that Greeley was a player in this drama. He helped found the Republican Party. By all opinions, William Henry Seward should have grabbed the Republican nomination for president in 1860. Greeley hated him for past transgressions and believed an ardent abolitionist could never win, so he supported a series of New York speeches by other Republicans, Lincoln included.”

  “Were Greeley and Lincoln allies?”

  “Depended on the month and the year … and possibly the phase of the moon with Greeley. The man rode political issues like a teeter-totter. Lincoln and Greeley were probably too similar to get along for an extended period. Both had desperately poor upbringings with little formal education, each passionately approached politics with unbridled ambition and a craftiness that would make Machiavelli proud, and they both used the English language with the finesse of a master. Greeley helped set up and publicize the series of lectures, but he thought Lincoln was a lightweight, and Lincoln held a grudge against Greeley for supporting Douglas for the Illinois Senate seat.”

  “Douglas? I thought he was a Democrat.”

  “Right you are, Greg.” Douglass chuckled. “Greeley had this grand idea that Stephen Douglas had so pissed off Southern Democrats that the party would split into warring factions if Douglas won the nomination for president. To secure the 1860 Democratic presidential nomination, Douglas had to win the 1858 Senate race, so Greeley went against his party and supported Douglas against Lincoln.”

  Douglass chuckled again. “Greeley’s strategy worked. The collapse of the Democratic Party made Lincoln president, but Lincoln kept a wary eye on Greeley for the rest of his life, despite Greeley’s ardent support for him after the Cooper Union address.”

  “Baldwin said the Cooper Union speech made Lincoln president.”

  “Well, it gave him the chance to become president. Prior to that, he was just another interesting regional politician. He developed a national reputation in the race against Senator Douglas, but during the debates he became renowned as a rube that entertained ignorant farmers with humorous stories. He also didn’t appeal to the radical abolitionist wing of the party, because he repeatedly promised not to interfere with slavery where it already existed.”

  “The professor says he was a racist.”

  “A seismic fault in her reasoning.” Douglass went into one of his brief reveries before continuing. “She’s a captive to her discipline. Historians are all about sources. When they find a new or rarely used source, they treat it like scripture.” Douglass laughed. “They don’t believe half the things a sitting president says, but they ascribe truth to any contemporaneous quote from a historical figure.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning politicians lie, or at least mislead. It’s their nature. Today, yesterday, and in the future.”

  “You’re saying Lincoln lied?”

  “Of course. Everything the man said or did prior to 1858 opposed slavery. But in an overtly racist time, equating a black man to whites would not only doom a political career—it would also get a man ostracized from the community. Steven Douglas understood Lincoln’s predilections and the temperament of Illinois voters, so he kept goading Lincoln to say that he supported voting rights for blacks or that they were equal to whites. The two great bugaboos of the age were that the black man would take the workingman’s job and seduce white women. The opponents of emancipation artfully propagated the notion that if slaves were freed in the South, they would stream north to grab the poor man’s money and his wife. Even the radical abolitionists approached the issue somewhat like today’s animal rights activist. They wanted only to stop the cruelty, not to elevate blacks to an equal plane.”

  After another
one of his long pauses, Douglass added, “Lincoln just said the things necessary to avoid being painted as an extremist.”

  “Is that the problem you had with her book?”

  “Yes … but she’s the one in the mainstream. My ideas are ridiculed.”

  “Does Lincoln’s election have anything to do with this mystery?”

  “I don’t know … perhaps. Once you break that code, we may get a peek behind the curtain.”

  Evarts withdrew a trifolded piece of paper from his windbreaker. He looked at the sheet for a long moment before speaking. “A simple code that’s hard to break uses a book known only to the sender and receiver. Numbers relate to pages, paragraphs, and words. These numbers almost fit that pattern.”

  “Others have come to that conclusion, but no book has been found that works.”

  Evarts studied Douglass. “How much more do you know?”

  “Next week, my friend, next week. Let’s see how our researcher is doing. Dinner must be ready.”

  Before Evarts could ask another question, Douglass had bounded out of his chair and briskly walked across the room. He had no alternative but to follow.

  Baldwin immediately looked up. “Almost perfect match.”

  “What does that mean?” Evarts asked.

  “Only that I can’t dismiss it. If it’s a forgery, the artists were clever enough to use the right source.”

  “What next?”

  “Tomorrow morning, Abe and I take the document to UCSB. I have a friend in the Special Collections Department. He’ll do some rudimentary tests.”

  “How long for conclusive tests?”

  “Never, here. It’s beyond the University’s capabilities. Tomorrow, we can only prove the negative. If the tests prove positive, it’ll have to go to a specialized lab. Probably the National Archives.”

  “Tomorrow you may test only one page of the speech,” Douglass said.

  “No. All the pages should be tested,” Baldwin countered.

  “I promised to keep the circle small. A single page won’t disclose the significance of the document, but it’s enough to test the ink and paper. When we go to a lab, we’ll discuss it again, but tomorrow we take only one page.” Douglass used a tone that brooked no further argument.

  Baldwin turned to Evarts. “Are you going with us?”

  “I have a job that demands my attention. Call me when you’re through, and I’ll drive you back to L.A. You can fill me in on the ride.”

  “You’re still reluctant to get involved,” Douglass said.

  “I have responsibilities, Abe. And very little time to devote to an intellectual exercise.”

  “But we can skip our backgammon evenings next week. Think of this as another game between us.”

  “It is a game, and I don’t like your rules. I solve mysteries at work. I prefer games of chance for recreation.”

  “Greg, this is more than a game. I know you disapprove of my way of handling it, but I’m asking you to trust me.”

  “Secret societies, newly discovered historical documents, encryptions, and we need to keep our investigation quiet.” Evarts shook his head. When he said it out loud, it sounded ridiculous. “Abe, what’s going on?”

  “I need your trust. Just for a week.”

  “You want more than that. You want me to get enthralled with the chase. You’re seducing us. I’m not going to take the next step until I know that this has a serious purpose.”

  Douglass drifted off for a few moments. When he came back, he put his hands on Evarts’s and Baldwin’s shoulders. “I know you’ll find this hard to believe, and I can’t say anymore right now, but there’s a calamitous conspiracy about to overtake our nation, and you two represent our best line of defense.”

  Chapter 7

  Evarts got the call at two thirty. Professor Baldwin wanted her ride back to Los Angeles. The prior evening’s dinner had been subdued. The food, as usual, was excellent, and the wine the best California had to offer, but no matter from which direction Evarts and Baldwin had approached the subject, Douglass had refused to offer any additional information on the Shut Mouth Society or the supposed conspiracy.

  Evarts found his department workload light and made time to do a few web searches. No hits on the Shut Mouth Society, and the search on secret societies produced a host of disturbing paranoiac sites. He had scratched out some notes on the possible key to the code. He was certain the numerical code was based on a book. Before computers, amateurs often used this elementary technique. Breaking the code simply required finding the right book, then matching up the numbers with page numbers, paragraphs, and word count. This code had too many numbers on each line to correspond to page, paragraph, and word count, but the extra numbers were probably meant to confuse and were meaningless.

  He dismissed the Bible, the most common choice of neophytes. Douglass said others had tried, and they certainly would have examined Bible alternatives thoroughly. One of his detectives had been an English major, and he asked him about nineteenth-century American writers. Off the top of his head, he listed Nathanial Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The detective promised to make a comprehensive list and include English authors popular in America.

  As Evarts drove to UCSB, he had an idea. Lincoln was a lawyer, and a law book might be the key. He always told his detectives not to run with hunches, but this one seemed tantalizing. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. He bet law books were expensive in that age and had limited editions. Someone in New York might not know Lincoln’s reading habits but could guess which law books he owned or that he could access easily. Evarts knew little of law beyond the criminal code, but he wondered if the extra column of figures could relate to statute numbers. Hunch or not, he decided to pursue this line of investigation first.

  He parked in a loading zone in front of the Guest House, but before he opened his door, Baldwin marched out from the lobby of the temporary residence hall. She carried only her overnight bag and her computer satchel slung over her shoulder, so Evarts didn’t rush to help her but went around the van to slide open the side door.

  “Good afternoon, Commander.”

  “Oh, back to that, are we? What have I done to piss you off?”

  “Well, for starters, you left me sitting in that lobby for nearly an hour. I thought you had a four o’clock appointment at the Federal Building? I expected you to be waiting. Nervous about my tardiness.”

  Evarts had forgotten that fib. “Sorry, rescheduled for another day. I should’ve called you in case you needed more time.” He threw her bag and case in back.

  “Hey! Be careful. My computer’s in there.”

  “Sorry.” It would be a long drive.

  After they had taken their seats and buckled up, Evarts asked, “Any conclusions?”

  “Only that we can’t prove they’re fake.” She seemed to pout for a moment. “Abe wouldn’t even leave me the single page. Just took off with it as soon as we finished the tests.” She knocked her knuckles against the side window and then suddenly turned toward Evarts. “What’s that bastard got us into?”

  “Abe is a friend and of sterling parentage. Please just call him an asshole.”

  No laugh. After a moment, she said, “I suspect the manuscript is genuine. If it is, then how much else is true? A conspiracy that threatens the nation? How bizarre … and paranoid. I have my own research. I don’t have time to oblige an old man’s fantasies.”

  “Scared?”

  “You betcha. The best-case scenario is that I get enmeshed in an elongated wild goose chase. The worst case could be dangerous.”

  “I doubt there’s a physical threat.” He smiled and made his tone light. “Besides, I carry a gun.”

  Still no laugh. “I was talking about my career.”

  “Sorry.” Three “sorries” in less than five minutes. It definitely was going to be a long ride. He decided to mollify
her with agreement. “Listen, I’m not happy about this either. I have a demanding job, a class I need to prepare for, and I like to spend my free time at the beach. I don’t—”

  “What class are you taking?”

  “I’m a college instructor, not a student. Night school at California State University at Channel Islands.” Evarts tried a light tone again. “You can quit calling me Commander. I’m a colleague, of sorts.”

  “Police science?”

  “Yes.”

  “A part-time lecturer in a nonacademic subject at a third-rate college.” She folded her arms across her chest. “My colleagues come with better credentials.”

  “That was nasty.”

  She unfolded her arms. “I’m sorry.” She sounded genuinely contrite.

  Three to one on the “sorries.” At least he wasn’t losing ground. “I just meant I have a full life, and I don’t need this any more than you.” He paused. “Listen, I keep my private life compartmentalized from work. I do what I want, when I want. Maybe I’m selfish, but I feel like this is an invasion of my privacy … and I don’t like being manipulated.”

  “Me either. So what are we going to do about it?”

  Evarts thought about her question. Douglass was his only real friend, so the situation presented a problem. He kept a professional distance at work and didn’t socialize with the other cops on the force. He had many acquaintances in his private life, but none he would classify as a friend. People called him a loner—at least those who liked him. Others called him worse. He knew people thought it odd that his only friend was double his age, but Douglass never bored him. He liked his life just the way it was, and he felt content. He needed to set his own agenda, but he didn’t want to lose his sole friend.

  “I guess we run this out,” he said. “At least for the week.”

  She didn’t answer at first but then said, “Yeah. I’m willing to invest a week. Especially if I can get close to more Lincoln papers. That bastard sure knows how to seduce me.”

  “I have an idea. Can I bounce it off you?”