The first man on his list was Jack Barthold, known to his friends as Bully Jack, a journeyman printer with a wandering eye and a restless foot. Jack had deserted his wife and three children in Cheyenne in 1902, with no intention of returning. For Barthold’s purposes, this made him as good as single. Bully Jack had served a hitch with General Pershing, then returned to his trade. He drifted from print shop to print shop, never staying long. Now, at the age of thirty-eight, he was working somewhere in New York.
Barthold started at the Battery and began hunting his way through New York’s print shops. At the eleventh one, on Water Street, he located his man.
“You want Jack Barthold?” an old master printer asked him. “Sure, he’s in the back. Hey, Jack! Fellow to see you!”
Barthold’s pulse quickened. A man was coming toward him, out of the dark recesses of the shop. The man approached, scowling.
“I’m Jack Barthold,” he said. “Whatcha want?”
Barthold looked at his relative and sadly shook his head. This Barthold obviously would not do.
“Nothing,” he said, “nothing at all.” He turned quickly and left the shop.
Bully Jack, five foot eight inches tall and weighing two hundred and ninety pounds, scratched his head.
“Now what in hell was all that about?” he asked.
The old master printer shrugged his shoulders.
Everett Barthold returned to his Flipper and reset the controls. A pity, he told himself, but a fat man would never fit into his plans.
His next stop was Memphis, 1869. Dressed in an appropriate costume, Barthold went to the Dixie Belle Hotel and inquired at the desk for Ben Bartholder.
“Well, suh,” said the courtly white-haired old man behind the desk, “his key’s in, so I reckon he’s out. You might find him in the corner saloon with the other trashy carpetbaggers.”
Barthold let the insult pass and went to the saloon.
It was early evening, but the gaslights were already blazing. Someone was strumming a banjo, and the long mahogany bar was crowded.
“Where could I find Ben Bartholder?” Barthold asked a bartender.
“Ovah theah,” the bartender said, “with the other Yankee drummers.”
Barthold walked over to a long table at one end of the saloon. It was crowded with flashily dressed men and painted women. The men were obviously Northern salesmen, loud, self-confident, and demanding. The women were Southerners. But that was their business, Barthold decided.
As soon as he reached the table, he spotted his man. There was no mistaking Ben Bartholder.
He looked exactly like Everett Barthold.
And that was the vital characteristic Barthold was looking for.
“Mr. Bartholder,” he said, “might I have a word with you in private?”
“Why not?” said Ben Bartholder.
Barthold led the way to a vacant table. His relative sat opposite him, staring intently.
“Sir,” said Ben, “there is an uncanny resemblance between us.”
“Indeed there is,” replied Barthold. “It’s part of the reason I’m here.”
“And the other part?”
“I’ll come to that presently. Would you care for a drink?”
Barthold ordered, noticing that Ben kept his right hand in his lap, out of sight. He wondered if that hand held a derringer. Northerners had to be wary in these Reconstructionist days.
After the drinks were served, Barthold said, “I’ll come directly to the point. Would you be interested in acquiring a rather large fortune?”
“What man wouldn’t?”
“Even if it involved a long and arduous journey?”
“I’ve come all the way from Chicago,” Ben said. “I’ll go farther.”
“And if it comes to breaking a few laws?”
“You’ll find Ben Bartholder ready for anything, sir, if there’s some profit to it. But who are you and what is your proposition?”
“Not here,” Barthold said. “Is there some place where we can be assured of privacy?”
“My hotel room.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Both men stood up. Barthold glanced at Ben’s right hand and gasped.
Benjamin Bartholder had no right hand.
“Lost it at Vicksburg,” explained Ben, seeing Barthold’s shocked stare. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take on any man in the world with one hand and a stump—and lick him!”
“I’m sure of it,” Barthold said a little wildly. “I admire your spirit, sir. Wait here a moment. I—I’ll be right back.”
Barthold hurried out of the saloon’s swinging doors and went directly to his Flipper. A pity, he thought, setting the controls. Benjamin Bartholder would have been perfect.
But a maimed man wouldn’t fit into his plan.
The next jump was to Prussia, 1676. With a hypnoed knowledge of German and clothes of suitable shape and hue, he walked the deserted streets of Konigsberg, looking for Hans Baerthaler.
It was midday, but the streets were strangely, eerily deserted. Barthold walked and finally encountered a monk.
“Baerthaler?” mused the monk. “Oh, you mean old Otto the tailor! He lives now in Ravensburg, good sir.”
“That must be the father,” Barthold said. “I seek Hans Baerthaler, the son.”
“Hans ... of course!” The monk nodded vigorously, then gave Barthold a quizzical look. “But are you sure that’s the man you want?”
“Quite sure,” Barthold said. “Could you direct me to him?”
“You can find him at the cathedral,” said the monk. “Come, I’m going there myself.”
Barthold followed the monk, wondering if his information could be wrong. The Baerthaler he sought wasn’t a priest. He was a mercenary soldier who had fought all over Europe. His type would never be found at a cathedral—unless, Barthold thought with a shudder, Baerthaler had unreportedly acquired religion.
Fervently he prayed that this wasn’t so. It would ruin everything.
“Here we are, sir,” the monk said, stopping in front of a noble, soaring structure. “And there is Hans Baerthaler.”
Barthold looked. He saw a man sitting on the cathedral steps, a man dressed all in rags. In front of him was a shapeless old hat and within the hat were two copper coins and a crust of bread.
“A beggar,” Barthold grunted disgustedly. Still, perhaps ...
He looked closer and noticed the blank, vacuous expression in the beggar’s eyes, the slack jaw, the twisted, leering lips.
“A great pity,” the monk said. “Hans Baerthaler received a head wound fighting against the Swedes at Fehrbellin and never recovered his senses. A terrible pity.”
Barthold nodded, looking around at the empty cathedral square, the deserted streets.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“Why, sir, surely you must know! Everyone has fled Konigsberg except me and him. It is the Black Plague!”
With a shudder, Barthold turned and raced back through the empty streets, to his Flipper, his antibiotics, and to any other year but this one.
With a heavy heart and a sense of impending failure, Barthold journeyed again down the years, to London, 1595. At Little Boar Taverne near Great Hertford Cross, he made inquiry of one Thomas Barthal.
“And what would ye be wanting Barthal for?” asked the publican, in English so barbarous that Barthold could barely make it out.
“I have business with him,” said Barthold in his hypnoed Old English.
“Have you indeed?” The publican glanced up and down at Barthold’s ruffed finery. “Have you really now?”
The tavern was a low, noisome place, lighted only by two guttering tallow candles. Its customers, who now gathered around Barthold and pressed close to him, looked like the lowest riffraff. They surrounded him, still gripping their pewter mugs, and Barthold detected, among their rags, the flash of keener metal.
“A nark, eh?”
“What in hell’s a nark doing in here?”
“Daft, perhaps.”
“Past a doubt, to come alone.”
“And asking us to give um poor Tom Barthal!”