"They have rooms on Marshall near the White House. I've never been there. Good day, Captain Bellingham."
Rudely dismissed, Bent nevertheless managed to reach the street without displaying his anger. He had brief, dizzy visions of tearing Ashton Huntoon's clothing and subjecting her to punishments that would also yield certain perverse pleasures.
The spiteful mood passed. Turning toward town, he strode along as if there were clouds under his feet. In another alley he stripped off the sling and threw it away. Orry Main was here. Bent was close to one of the objects of his hatred — closer than he had been since Charles Main eluded and disgraced him in Texas. He ought to walk into the War Department, find Main's desk, and shoot him right between —
No. Not only would hasty action imperil his life, it would rob the vengeance of savor. Bent also had the new job to think about. Baker would be expecting him in Washington. He should collect his horse from the stable and leave at once.
Instead, he decided to remain an additional night. He wanted to be thoroughly familiar with the terrain when he returned to Richmond on another mission, as he undoubtedly would. He wanted to know precisely where to look for Orry Main.
Locating the War Department offices next day proved easy. Bent watched the building for half an hour but didn't go in. Finding the flat on Marshall in the fashionable Court End district proved a little harder. He offered three-cent silver pieces to several black children before he found one who knew the colonel and his wife. The youngster pointed out their residence, a large house evidently converted into suites of rental rooms for the duration.
He approached from the opposite side of the street. The brim of his black hat protecting him from the May sunshine, he surveyed the house and got a shock when a lovely woman with a parasol came out and turned left on the walk.
Bent felt as if a thunderbolt had come down to smite him. The woman passing from view was instantly familiar because he often sat gazing at her, or someone very much like her, in the canvas stolen from New Orleans. This woman's mouth, shape of nose, color of eyes and hair were not identical with those in the picture. But the resemblance could not be mistaken.
Sweating, Bent lumbered up the steps of her residence and rang the bell. A wispy old woman answered. He swept his hat off.
"Your pardon, ma'am. I have business with a Mrs. Wadlington, whom I don't know. I was told she lived in this block, and I just passed a lady who fits the sketchy description I was given. The lady came out this door, so I wondered —"
"That's Colonel Main's wife. Never heard of a Mrs. Wadlington, and I know everyone. But I don't know you." Slam.
Flushed, elated, and short of breath, Bent went reeling away. His luck had turned at last. First the Baker connection and now this. Orry Main, a high military official, was married to a nigger whore — and he had the evidence. How he would use it, he was too overwrought to determine just now. But use it he would, of that he was —
"Murder! Mysterious stabbing by the canal!"
The shout of the newsboy on Broad Street interrupted the vengeful reverie. He bought a paper and scanned it as he walked. The cold of panic replaced his steamy delirium. They had found the corpse of Bent's informant, though he was not named. The victim was a white male of the kind commonly called "albino."
In less than an hour, Elkanah Bent packed his valise, vacated his room, saddled his horse, and took the road north.
80
That same evening, standing knee deep in the James River, Cooper sneezed.
He had caught cold. It didn't matter. Nor did the miserable, weary state of his assistant and two helpers. "One more," he said. "Rig the shell."
"Mr. Main, it's nearly dark," said his assistant, an earnest but fundamentally untalented boy named Lucius Chickering. A Charleston aristocrat, nineteen-year-old Chickering had enrolled in Mallory's Confederate Naval Academy, whose campus consisted of the old side-wheeler Patrick Henry, anchored in the river. Chickering had rapidly failed basic astronomy, navigation, and seamanship, and been dismissed, with Lieutenant Parker's regrets. Only his father's influence saved him from absolute disgrace; a job was found for him in the scorned Navy Department. Cooper liked Chickering, but he knew the boy kept quiet about where he worked.
Lucius Chickering had a huge nose with a hump in the middle. His upper teeth jutted over his lower lip, and he had more freckles than anyone deserved. His ugliness somehow contributed to his likability. And he was right about the lateness of the hour. A deep red sunset covered the James with sullen reflections. Birds wheeled against high scarlet clouds, and downstream a barge had already become a blot of shadow dotted yellow by a single lantern.
Replying to his assistant, Cooper said, "We have time. If you're all too lazy, I'll rig it myself."
He hadn't eaten since daybreak. They had been down here in the rushes, a mile from the city limits, struggling with these driftwood torpedoes the entire day. They had not been successful even once, and Cooper knew why. The concept was wrong.
A wood cradle, newly designed within the department, held a metal canister of powder with a small opening in its domed lid. Into the opening went an impact-type percussion fuse. Cradle and canister were painted grayish brown, like the pieces of Atlantic driftwood to which they were lashed. The problem was, the movement of the driftwood in the river current — and therefore on a harbor tide — was uncontrollable. The experimenters found the wrong end of the torpedo bumping against the test target: three barrels anchored in midstream with enough open water on either side for barges and small steam sloops to pass.
To be correct about it, not all of the driftwood torpedoes had even reached the target. By Cooper's count, it was five out of two dozen launched. All had failed to detonate because the fuse and canister were on the side opposite that which struck the barrels.
As Cooper started to work, Chickering exploded. "Mr. Main, I must protest. You've worked us like field bucks all day, and now you want us to continue when we can scarcely see what we're doing."
"Indeed I do," Cooper said, his body a black reed against the red sky. "This is wartime, Mr. Chickering. If you don't care for the hours or the working conditions, submit your resignation and go back to Charleston."
Lucius Chickering glowered at his superior. Cooper Main intimidated and annoyed him. He was a Palmetto State man who acted more like a Yankee. He slopped around in mud and water as if appearances didn't matter. While the others stood by, Cooper carefully screwed the detonator plug into the canister fuse. His trousers and shirt sleeves soaking wet, he launched the driftwood torpedo and watched it turn aimlessly in the water. Five minutes later a flash of flame marked its detonation against the far bank. It had sailed past the target with twenty feet to spare.
Curtly, Cooper said to one of the helpers, "Row out there and tow the barrels in. You" — to the other helper — "load the tools in the wagon." Muttering, the helper picked up a long crosscut saw, which hummed a sad note.
The sun was down, starlight shone, frogs croaked in the sweet Virginia night. The helper grumbled and swore, sneezed again, then said to Chickering, "I'll tell Mallory the design's a failure, like the raft torpedo before it and the keg torpedo before that."
"Sir, with all respect" — having exploded, Chickering was calmer now — "why do we keep on with these fruitless experiments? Our work is so peculiar, we're the butt of jokes in every other department."
"Be thankful, Lucius. Snide remarks will never wound you the way bullets do."
Chickering colored at the suggestion that he might be happy to avoid hazardous duty. But he said nothing because Main's authority was not to be questioned; he and Mallory were close as two peas. Still, more than one person whispered that the new man was unbalanced. Something to do with his son drowning on the voyage from Nassau to Wilmington.