Part 4 (2/2)

Their desire for each other's company was unflagging. This was noted with amus.e.m.e.nt by the adults. They were inseparable until bedtime but uncomplaining when it was announced. They ran off to their separate rooms with not a glance backward. Their sleep was absolute. They sought each other in the morning. He did not think of her as beautiful. She did not think of him as comely. They were extremely sensitive to each other, silhouetted in a diffuse excitement, like electricity or a nimbus of light, but their touching was casual and matter-of-fact. What bound them to each other was a fulfilled recognition which they lived and thought within so that their apprehension of each other could not be so distinct and separated as to include admiration for the other's fairness. Yet they were beautiful, he in his stately blond thoughtfulness, she a smaller, darker, more lithe being, with flash in her dark eyes and an almost military bearing. When they ran their hair lay back from their broad foreheads. Her feet were small, her brown hands were small. She left imprints in the sand of a street runner, a climber of dark stairs; her track was a flight from the terrors of alleys and the terrible crash of ashcans. She had relieved herself in wooden outhouses behind the tenements. The tails of rodents had curled about her ankles. She knew how to sew with a machine and had observed dogs mating, wh.o.r.es taking on customers in hallways, drunks peeing through the wooden spokes of pushcart wheels. He had never gone without a meal. He had never been cold at night. He ran with his mind. He ran toward something. He was unenc.u.mbered by fear and did not know there were beings in the world less curious about it than he. He saw through things and noted the colors people produced and was never surprised by a coincidence. A blue and green planet rolled through his eyes.

One day, as they played, the sun grew dim and a wind began to blow in from the sea. They felt the coldness on their backs. They stood up and saw flights of heavy black clouds coming over the ocean. They started back to the hotel. The rain began. Raindrops pelted craters in the sand. Rain left streaks on their salted shoulders. It poured into their hair. They took shelter under the boardwalk a half-mile from the hotel. They crouched in the cold sand and listened to the rain spatter the boardwalk and watched it collect in droplets between the planks. Debris was under the boardwalk. Broken gla.s.s and staring putrefied fish heads, torn parts of crabs, rusted nails, broken boards, driftwood, starfish as hard as stone, oiled spots of sand, bits of rags with dried blood. They stared out at the sea from their cave. A storm had risen and the sky glowed with a green light. Lightning broke the sky as if it were a cracking sh.e.l.l. The storm punished the ocean, flattened it, cowed it. There were no waves now but aimless swells that did not break or roll into the beach. The weird light increased in intensity; the sky was yellow. The thunder broke as if the surf were in the sky and the wind now blew the rain along the beach, whipped it into the sand, rolled it down the boardwalk. Coming through the wind and water and golden light were two figures walking with their heads down, their arms s.h.i.+elding their eyes. And they would turn and with their backs to the wind look up and down the beach and cup their hands to their mouths. But they could not be heard. The children watched them without moving. They were Mother and Tateh. On they came. They stumbled through the wet sand. They turned and the wind blew their clothes against their backs. They turned and the wind blew their clothes against their chests and legs. They cut away from the water toward the boardwalk. Tateh's black hair, flattened over his forehead, shone in the bright water. Mother's hair had come undone and lay in wet strands about her face and shoulders. They called. They called. They ran and walked and looked for the children. They were distraught. The children ran into the rain. When Mother saw them she dropped to her knees. In a moment the four were together, hugging and admonis.h.i.+ng and laughing; Mother laughed and cried at the same time with the rain pouring down her face. Where were you, she said, where were you. Didn't you hear us call? Tateh had lifted his daughter to hold her in his arms. Gottzudanken Gottzudanken, said the Baron. Gottzudanken Gottzudanken. They walked back along the beach in this rain and light, happy, huddled all together, soaking wet. Tateh could not help but notice how Mother's white dress and underclothes lay against her so that ellipses of flesh pressed through. She looked so young with her hair down on her shoulders and matted around her head. Her skirts stuck to her limbs and every few moments she would bend to pluck them away from her body and the wind would blow them back against her. When they had discovered that the children were missing they had run down to the beach and she had removed her shoes at the bottom of the boardwalk stairs and held his arm for support. She walked with her arms around the children. He recognized in her wet form the ample woman in the Winslow Homer painting who is being rescued from the sea by towline. Who would not risk his life for such a woman? But she was pointing to the horizon: a lead of blue sky had opened over the ocean. Suddenly Tateh ran ahead of them all and did a somersault. He did a cartwheel. He stood on his hands in the sand and walked upside down. The children laughed.

Father slept through the incident. He was unable to sleep at night lately and had begun to nap in the afternoons. He was restless. He had read in the newspaper of the growing movement in the Congress for a national tax on income. This was his first presentiment of the end of summer. He took to making regular telephone calls to his manager at the plant in New Roch.e.l.le. Things were quiet at home. Nothing more had been heard from the black killer. Business was holding up as he would know from the copies of the orders sent out to him every day. None of this put him at ease. He was becoming bored by the beach and no longer cared to bathe in the ocean. In the evenings before bed he went to the game room and practiced billiards. How could they resume their lives if they remained in Atlantic City? Some mornings he awoke and felt that time and events had gone on and left him more vulnerable than ever. He found their new friend, the Baron, a momentary distraction. Mother thought he was endearing but he felt no special sympathy from him or for him. He wanted to pack up and leave but was constrained by Mother's security in the place. Here she believed it might be possible to wait for the Coalhouse tragedy to conclude itself and hope it could be outlasted. He knew this was an illusion. To the consternation of the hotelier hotelier she had taken to having the brown child at her table in the dining room. Father gazed at the little boy with grim propriety. At breakfast the morning after the rainstorm he opened the newspaper and found on the front page a picture of the father. Coalhouse's gang had broken into one of the city's most celebrated depositories of art, Pierpont Morgan's library on 36th Street. They had barricaded themselves inside and commanded the authorities to negotiate with them or risk having the Morgan treasures destroyed. They had thrown a grenade into the street to demonstrate the capacity of their armaments. Father crushed the paper in his hands. An hour later he was paged to the telephone for a call from the District Attorney's office in Manhattan. That afternoon, borne by Mother's anxious good wishes, he climbed aboard the train for New York. she had taken to having the brown child at her table in the dining room. Father gazed at the little boy with grim propriety. At breakfast the morning after the rainstorm he opened the newspaper and found on the front page a picture of the father. Coalhouse's gang had broken into one of the city's most celebrated depositories of art, Pierpont Morgan's library on 36th Street. They had barricaded themselves inside and commanded the authorities to negotiate with them or risk having the Morgan treasures destroyed. They had thrown a grenade into the street to demonstrate the capacity of their armaments. Father crushed the paper in his hands. An hour later he was paged to the telephone for a call from the District Attorney's office in Manhattan. That afternoon, borne by Mother's anxious good wishes, he climbed aboard the train for New York.

35.

Even to someone who had followed the case from its beginning, Coalhouse's strategy of vengeance must have seemed the final proof of his insanity. By what other standard could the craven and miserable Willie Conklin, a bigot so ordinary as to be like all men, become Pierpont Morgan, the most important individual of his time? With eight people dead by Coalhouse's hand, horses destroyed and buildings demolished, with a suburban town still reverberating in its terror, his arrogance knew no bounds. Or is injustice, once suffered, a mirror universe, with laws of logic and principles of reason the opposite of civilization's?

We know from Brother's journal that the actual plan had been to make Morgan a prisoner in his own home. The band's thinking had been that Conklin hiding in an Irish neighborhood was as undetectable as Coalhouse was in Harlem, and that therefore he had to be flushed out. What was needed was a hostage. Two nights of discussion had turned up the candidacy of Pierpont Morgan. More than any mayor or governor he represented in Coalhouse's mind the power of the white world. For years he had been portrayed in cartoons and caricatures, with his cigar and his top hat, as the incarnation of power. The great fiefdom of New York could be made to pay an army of fire chiefs and a fleet of Model T's for the ransom of its Morgan.

But Coalhouse had entrusted the reconnaissance of the Morgan home to two of the youths who knew little about the city below 100th Street and less about the ways of the wealthy. When they reconnoitered the Morgan establishments, the one a brownstone town house, the other a palace of white marble stone, they chose the white marble for the residence. Younger Brother would have seen the error. But he was the ordnance man; he lay in the back of a covered van loaded with explosives and supplies. He could hear the attack under way. The van was backed up to the Library gates and he was given the signal to unload. When he lifted the canvas flaps and looked out he screamed that it was the wrong building. But at that point there was no turning back. A guard lay dead, police whistles were heard. The sound of gunfire had alerted the entire neighborhood. The conspirators unloaded the van, bolted the great bra.s.s doors and took up their a.s.signed positions. Then Coalhouse made a quick inspection of the premises. Nothing is lost, he a.s.sured them. We wanted the man and so we have him since we have his property.

As it happened Pierpont Morgan was not even in New York. He was two days to sea on the S.S. Carmania Carmania bound for Rome. He was making a slow pilgrimage to Egypt. Coalhouse had not known this either. So the entire action, misdirected and poorly timed, seemed to enjoy some special grace. bound for Rome. He was making a slow pilgrimage to Egypt. Coalhouse had not known this either. So the entire action, misdirected and poorly timed, seemed to enjoy some special grace.

Almost immediately aides of the J. P. Morgan Company were informed of the situation. They cabled the Carmania Carmania to receive the old man's instructions. For some reason, possibly a breakdown of telegraphy equipment aboard the s.h.i.+p, they could not learn if their message had been received. With Morgan not available to tell them what to do the police did nothing but cordon off the block, from 36th to 37th Street, from Madison Avenue to Park Avenue. Traffic was diverted and mounted city policemen galloped back and forth to keep the crowds behind the lines. The sounds of the city, its traffic, its horns, its life, seemed walled out by the silence of the scene. The thousands who gathered were as quiet as people can be who are thoroughly engrossed. When night came, flood lamps run by portable generators were trained on the edifice. The rumbling of the generators was felt under the feet of the onlookers, like the growling of an earthquake. Police were everywhere, in their wagons, on foot, on their mounts, but they seemed to be as much spectators as the crowds they held back. to receive the old man's instructions. For some reason, possibly a breakdown of telegraphy equipment aboard the s.h.i.+p, they could not learn if their message had been received. With Morgan not available to tell them what to do the police did nothing but cordon off the block, from 36th to 37th Street, from Madison Avenue to Park Avenue. Traffic was diverted and mounted city policemen galloped back and forth to keep the crowds behind the lines. The sounds of the city, its traffic, its horns, its life, seemed walled out by the silence of the scene. The thousands who gathered were as quiet as people can be who are thoroughly engrossed. When night came, flood lamps run by portable generators were trained on the edifice. The rumbling of the generators was felt under the feet of the onlookers, like the growling of an earthquake. Police were everywhere, in their wagons, on foot, on their mounts, but they seemed to be as much spectators as the crowds they held back.

The grenade that was thrown, after the shouted warning by Younger Brother, had ripped up the sidewalk and left an enormous crater in the street in front of the Library gates. At the bottom of the crater a broken water main bubbled like a spa. Windows had been blown out all up and down the block. There was a brownstone across the street, a private residence, that had been particularly hard-hit by the blast. Its owners had fled and had given the Police Department permission to establish its headquarters on the ground floor. The police discovered that they could run up and down the brownstone steps with impunity and move freely along that side of 36th Street if they did not attempt to step over the curb. The house filled with Police Department officials and other city authorities, and gradually, as the nature of the confrontation became clear, one authority after another ceded his responsibility to one higher. Until finally, with lieutenants and precinct captains and inspectors and the Police Commissioner, Rhinelander Waldo, all present, the control of the operation fell to the District Attorney of New York, Charles S. Whitman. Whitman had gained considerable fame prosecuting a corrupt police lieutenant named Becker and securing for him the death sentence for ordering four thugs-Gyp the Blood, Dago Frank, Whitey Lewis and Lefty Louie-to murder a well-known gambler named Herman Rosenthal. This monumental case had made Whitman a natural candidate for governor of New York. There was even talk of his eventual nomination for the Presidency. He had been about to leave New York with his wife for a vacation in Newport at the forty-room summer cottage of Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish. He had recently been introduced to society by Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont. He valued these connections but could not resist dropping over to 36th Street when the news reached him. He thought it was his duty as President-to-be. He liked to be photographed at the scene of the action. Upon his arrival everyone immediately deferred to his judgment, including an enemy of his, the choleric Mayor William J. Gaynor. He thought this was a significant acknowledgment of political realities. He looked at his watch and decided he had a few minutes to take care of this matter of the mad c.o.o.n.

Whitman called for the plans of the Library from the architectural firm of Charles McKim and Stanford White. After a study of these he authorized a reconnaissance by a single athletic patrolman who was to gain access to the Library roof and look in the domed skylight over the central hall and the East Room to determine how many n.i.g.g.e.rs were in there. A patrolman was found and dispatched through the garden that separated the Library from the Morgan residence. Whitman and the other officials waited in the improvised headquarters. No sooner had the officer entered the garden than the sky flashed and there was a loud report followed by an agonized scream. Whitman went pale. They've got the G.o.dd.a.m.n place mined, he said. An officer came in. From what anyone could tell, the patrolman in the garden was dead, which was his only bit of luck because n.o.body could have gone in to get him out of there. The police officials were grim. They looked at Whitman. He now knew that the numerical strength of Coalhouse's band was not crucial intelligence. But he called the press around and announced that they numbered a dozen and perhaps as many as twenty men.

36.

In the hours following, District Attorney Whitman conferred with several advisers. The colonel in command of the New York militia in Manhattan urged a full-scale military action. This so alarmed one of Mr. Morgan's curators, a tall nervous man with a pince-nez who held his hands clasped at his chest as if he were a diva at the Metropolitan, that he began to tremble. Do you know the value of Mr. Morgan's acquisitions! We have four Shakespeare folios! We have a Gutenberg Bible on vellum! There are seven hundred incunabula and a five-page letter of George Was.h.i.+ngton's! The colonel waved his finger in the air. If we don't take care of that son of a b.i.t.c.h, if we don't go in there and cut off his b.a.l.l.s, you'll have every n.i.g.g.e.r in the country at your throat! Then where will you be with your Bibles? Whitman paced back and forth. A city engineer told him that if they could repair the broken main they might be able to tunnel in through the Library foundations. How long would that take, Whitman asked. Two days, the engineer said. Someone else thought of poison gas. That might get him, Whitman agreed. Of course every one else on the East Side would die, too. He was beginning to feel fretful. The Library was built of fitted marble blocks. You couldn't get a knife blade between the stones. The place was wired for dynamite and a pair of watchful c.o.o.n eyes looked out of every window.

Whitman now had the good sense to ask for ideas from the police officers in the room. An old sergeant with many years on the street, a veteran of h.e.l.l's Kitchen and the Tenderloin, said The crucial thing, sir, is to get this Coalhouse Walker engaged in conversation. With an armed maniac, talking calms him down. You get him talking and keep him talking and then you have a wedge into the situation. Whitman, who was not without courage, took a megaphone and stepped into the street and shouted to Coalhouse that he wanted to speak with him. He waved his straw hat. If there's a problem, he cried, we can solve it together. He repeated such sentiments for several minutes. Then for a moment the small window adjacent to the front entrance opened. A cylindrical object came flying into the street. Whitman flinched and the men in the house behind him dropped to the floor. To everyone's astonishment there was no explosion. Whitman retreated to the brownstone and only after several minutes did someone using binoculars make the object out as a silver tankard with a lid. An officer ran into the street, picked up the tankard and sprinted back up the brownstone stairs. The object, now dented, was a medieval drinking stein of silver with a hunting scene in relief. The curator asked to see it and advised that it was from the seventeenth century and had belonged to Frederick, the Elector of Saxony. I'm really pleased to hear that, Whitman said. The curator then raised the lid and found inside a piece of paper with a telephone number that he recognized as his own.

The District Attorney himself took the telephone. He sat on the edge of a table and held the speaker in his left hand and the receiver attached by a cord in his right. h.e.l.lo, Mr. Walker, he said heartily, this is District Attorney Whitman. He was stunned by the calm businesslike tone of the black man. My demands are the same, said the voice on the phone. I want my car returned in just the condition it was when my way was blocked. You cannot bring back my Sarah, but I want for her life the life of Fire Chief Conklin. Coalhouse, Whitman said, you know that I as an officer of the court could never give over to you for sentencing outside the law a man who has not had due process. That puts me in an untenable position. What I can promise is to investigate the case and see what statutes apply, if any. But I can't do anything for you until you're out of there. Coalhouse Walker seemed not to have heard. I will give you twenty-four hours, he said, and then I will blow up this place and everything in it. And he rang off. h.e.l.lo, Whitman said. h.e.l.lo? He ordered the operator to get the number again. There was no answer.

Whitman next sent off a telegram to Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish in Newport. He hoped she read the newspapers. His eyes, which tended to bulge when he was exercised, were now quite prominent. His face was florid. He removed his jacket and unb.u.t.toned his vest. He asked one of the patrolmen to find him some whiskey. He knew that Red Emma Goldman, the anarchist, was in New York. He ordered her arrested. He stared out the window of the brownstone. The day was overcast and unnaturally dark. The air was close and a fine rain made the streets glisten. The lights of the city were on. The compact white Grecian palace across the street shone in the rain. It looked very peaceful. At this moment Whitman came to the realization that the deference shown by Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo and everyone else in the Police Department had tricked him into identifying himself with a politically dangerous situation. He had on one hand to guard the interests of Morgan, whose various Simon Pure reform committees of wealthy Republican Protestants had funded his investigations of corruption in the Democratic Catholic Police Department. He had on the other hand to preserve his own reputation as a tough D.A. who dealt handily with the criminal cla.s.ses. For that nothing would do but the speediest unhorsing of the colored man. A gla.s.s of whiskey was brought to him. Just this one, to calm my nerves, he said to himself.

In the meantime police knocked at the door of Emma Goldman on West 13th Street. Goldman was not surprised. She always kept packed and ready to go a small bag with a change of clothes and a book to read. Ever since the a.s.sa.s.sination of President McKinley she had been routinely accused of fomenting by word or deed most of the acts of violence or strikes or riots that occurred in America. There was a national obsession of law enforcement officers to connect her to every case just as a matter of principle whether they believed she was guilty or not. She put on her hat, picked up her bag and strode out the door. She rode in the police wagon with a young patrolman. You won't believe this, she said to him, but I look forward to a spell in jail. It is the one place where I can get some rest.

Goldman did not know of course that one of the Coalhouse band was the young man she had pitied as the bourgeois lover of an infamous wh.o.r.e. In front of the sergeant's desk at police headquarters on Centre Street, she made a statement to reporters as she was booked for conspiracy. I am sorry for the firemen in Westchester. I wish they had not been killed. But the Negro was tormented into action, so I understand, by the cruel death of his fiancee, an innocent young woman. As an anarchist, I applaud his appropriation of the Morgan property. Mr. Morgan has done some appropriating of his own. At this the reporters shouted questions. Is he a follower of yours, Emma? Do you know him? Did you have anything to do with this? Goldman smiled and shook her head. The oppressor is wealth, my friends. Wealth is the oppressor. Coalhouse Walker did not need Red Emma to learn that. He needed only to suffer.

Within an hour extra editions of the newspapers were on the streets featuring the news of the arrest. Goldman was liberally quoted. Whitman wondered if it had been wise to give her a forum. But he did derive one clear benefit from the move. The president of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Inst.i.tute, Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, was in the city to do some fund-raising. He was delivering an address downtown at the great hall of Cooper Union on Astor Place and he departed from his prepared text to deplore Goldman's remarks and condemn the actions of Coalhouse Walker. A reporter called Whitman to tell him of this. Immediately the District Attorney got in touch with the great educator, asking if he would come to the scene and use his moral authority to resolve the crisis. I will, Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton replied. A police escort was sent downtown and Was.h.i.+ngton, apologizing to the hosts of the luncheon in his honor, left to ringing applause.

37.

Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton was at this time the most famous Negro in the country. Since the founding of Tuskegee Inst.i.tute in Alabama he had become the leading exponent of vocational training for colored people. He was against all Negro agitation on questions of political and social equality. He had written a best-selling book about his life, a struggle up from slavery to self-realization, and about his ideas, which called for the Negro's advancement with the help of his white neighbor. He counseled friends.h.i.+p between the races and spoke of the promise of the future. His views had been endorsed by four Presidents and most of the governors of Southern states. Andrew Carnegie had given him money for his school and Harvard had awarded him an honorary degree. He wore a black suit and homburg. He stood in the middle of 36th Street, a st.u.r.dy handsome man with all the pride of his achievement in the way he held himself, and he called out to Coalhouse to let him in the Library. He disdained the use of the megaphone. He was an orator and his voice was strong. There was nothing in his manner to indicate any other possibility than that the desperadoes would grant him his demand. I am coming in now, he called. And he stepped around the crater in the street and walked through the iron gates. He climbed the steps between the stone lionesses and stood in the shadow of the arched portico between the double Ionic columns and waited for the doors to open. There was now a silence and a stillness in the scene that allowed the horn of a cab many blocks away to be heard clearly. After some moments the doors opened. Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton disappeared inside. The doors closed. Across the street District Attorney Whitman wiped his brow and sank into a chair.

What Booker Was.h.i.+ngton found was the awesome gilded library of paintings and tiers of rare books, statuary and marbled floors, damask silk walls and priceless Florentine furniture, all wired for demolition. Fascia of dynamite were strapped to the marble pilasters of the entrance hall. Wires led from the East and West rooms along the floor to the rear of the entrance hall, where there was a small alcove. Here sat a man straddling a marble bench. On the bench was a box with a T-shaped plunger which he held with both hands. His back was to the bra.s.s doors and he was leaning forward so that if a bullet were to kill him instantly the weight of his falling body would depress the plunger. This fellow now turned to look over his shoulder at Was.h.i.+ngton and the great educator drew in his breath sharply as he saw it was not a Negro but a white in blackface, as if this were some minstrel show. Was.h.i.+ngton had entered in a stern and admonitory frame of mind but with the intention to be diplomatic. He disdained persuasion now. He looked in on the West Room and then walked across the hall to the doorway of the East Room. He had expected to find dozens of colored men but saw only three or four youths standing each beside a window with a rifle in his hands. Coalhouse stood waiting upon him in a well-pressed hound's-tooth suit and a tie and collar, although he carried a pistol in his belt. Was.h.i.+ngton looked him over. His handsome brow furrowed and his eyes flashed. Summoning all his declamatory powers he spoke as follows: For my entire life I have worked in patience and hope for a Christian brotherhood. I have had to persuade the white man that he need not fear us or murder us, because we wanted only to improve ourselves and peaceably join him in enjoyment of the fruits of American democracy. Every Negro in prison, every s.h.i.+ftless no-good gambling and fornicating colored man has been my enemy, and every incident of faulted Negro character has cost me a piece of my life. What will your misguided criminal recklessness cost me! What will it cost my students laboring to learn a trade by which they can earn their livelihood and still white criticism! A thousand honest industrious black men cannot undo the harm of one like you. And what is worse you are a trained musician, as I understand it, one who comes to this infamous enterprise from the lyceum of music, where harmony is reverenced and the strains of the harps and the trumpets of heaven are the models for song. Monstrous man! Had you been ignorant of the tragic struggle of our people, I could have pitied you this adventure. But you are a musician! I look about me and smell the sweat of rage, the impecunious rebellion of wild unthinking youth. What have you taught them! What injustice done to you, what loss you've suffered, can justify the doom you have led them into, these reckless youths? And, may you be d.a.m.ned, you add to this unholy company a white who smears himself with color and adds mockery to your a.r.s.enal.

Every word of this speech could be heard by every member of the band. They were not so steeped in revolution that the sentiments of Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, of whom they had heard since they were children, could not awe them. It must have been crucial for them to know Coalhouse's reply. Coalhouse spoke softly. It is a great honor for me to meet you, sir, he said. I have always stood in admiration for you. He looked at the marble floor. It is true I am a musician and a man of years. But I would hope this might suggest to you the solemn calculation of my mind. And that therefore, possibly, we might both be servants of our color who insist on the truth of our manhood and the respect it demands. Was.h.i.+ngton was so stunned by this suggestion that he began to lose consciousness. Coalhouse led him from the hall into the West Room and sat him down in one of the red plush chairs. Regaining his composure Was.h.i.+ngton mopped his brow with a handkerchief. He gazed at the marble mantel of the fireplace as tall as a man. He glanced upward at the polychrome carved ceiling that had originally come from the palace of Cardinal Gigli in Lucca. On the red silk walls were portraits of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder and several adorations of the Magi. The educator closed his eyes and locked his hands in his lap. Oh Lord, he said, lead my people to the Promised Land. Take them from under the Pharaoh's whip. Free the shackles from their minds and loosen the bonds of sin that tie them to h.e.l.l. Over the mantel was a contemporary portrait of Pierpont Morgan himself when he was in his prime. Was.h.i.+ngton appraised the fierce face. In the meantime Coalhouse Walker had sat down in the adjoining chair and together the two well-dressed black men were the picture of probity and serious self-contemplation. Come out with me now, Booker Was.h.i.+ngton said in a soft voice, and I will intercede for the sake of mercy that your trial shall be swift and your execution painless. Dismantle these engines of the devil, he said waving his hands at the dynamite packs strapped in the corners of the carved ceiling and against every wall. Take my hand and come with me. For the sake of your young son and all those children of our race whose way is hard, and whose journey is long.

Coalhouse sat lost in thought. Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton, he finally said, there is nothing I would like more than to conclude this business. He raised his eyes and the educator saw there the tears of his emotion. Let the Fire Chief restore my automobile and bring it to the front of this building. You will see me come out with my hands raised and no further harm will come to this place or any man from Coalhouse Walker.

This statement const.i.tuted Coalhouse's first modification of his demands since the night of the Emerald Isle, but Was.h.i.+ngton did not understand this. He heard only the rejection of his plea. Without another word he rose and walked out. He went back across the street believing his intervention had accomplished nothing. Afterwards Coalhouse paced the rooms. His young men stayed at their posts and followed him with their eyes. One lay on the roof atop the domed skylight of the portico. He lay in the rain on guard and felt, though he could not see, the presence of thousands of quietly wa

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