The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War by Daniel Stashower Read Free Book Online Page A

is never seen by any living person with whom I have business,” Craig insisted. “Look under that stone over yonder. I think you will find what you bought.” Pinkerton saw at once that he had been badly outmaneuvered. Craig had arranged matters so that he could not be apprehended in possession of incriminating evidence. Reaching down, Pinkerton took the parcel from under the stone and found fifty ten-dollar bills inside. Glancing at Craig, Pinkerton saw a steely, self-satisfied expression on the older man’s face. “Old John Craig is never caught napping, young man,” he said pointedly.
    Pinkerton hesitated for a moment, badly unsettled, as Craig continued to study him carefully. Recovering himself, Pinkerton saw that he had no choice but to continue playing his role, in the hope that the situation might yet be turned to his advantage. Thumbing through the packet of bills, he asked Craig how much more of his “product” happened to be available. The counterfeiter hedged, but he allowed as how he might be able to get his hands on an additional four thousand dollars. Pinkerton leapt at the opening. “Look here, Craig,” he said, “if you wouldn’t be in too big a hurry about getting back home, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I believe I could make arrangements to buy you out altogether.” Clutching the forged notes, Pinkerton hastily improvised a plan. If Craig would allow him a few days to gather up the necessary “eastern bills” from friends in the area, Pinkerton would meet him in Chicago, at a hotel called the Sauganash, to make the exchange. After a moment’s consideration, Craig agreed. In the meantime, he said, he would lay low at the home of a friend. “Good-bye, then,” said Craig shaking Pinkerton’s hand. “But, mind you, be discreet!”
    Being discreet was now the least of Pinkerton’s problems. He had, in effect, made an all-or-nothing bet on the integrity of a counterfeiter. If Craig were to have second thoughts, or receive a better offer, Pinkerton would have nothing to show for Hunt and Bosworth’s money but a pile of worthless paper. Even so, as the two men parted ways, some previously untapped instinct told Pinkerton that Craig could be trusted to keep their bargain: “Criminal though he was, he was a man who, when he had passed his word, would be certain to keep it.”
    Returning to Dundee, Pinkerton found that Hunt and Bosworth did not share this opinion. Craig had ridden off with a great deal of their money in his saddlebags and they feared that he “would leave us all in the lurch.” Shaken by their doubts, Pinkerton went to bed that night filled with dread, “and fully satisfied in my own mind that I was not born to become a detective.”
    By the following morning, however, he had formed a plan of action. For three days, he devoted “very little attention to my casks and barrels” and gave himself over entirely to “a good deal of nervous plotting and planning.” Having learned a bitter lesson at the church in Elgin, Pinkerton anticipated that Craig would arrange matters in Chicago so that no incriminating bills would be found in his hands. “Circumstances and my own youth and inexperience were against me,” Pinkerton admitted, but he was determined to atone for his earlier failure. At last, on the appointed day, Pinkerton saddled a horse and rode into Chicago.
    The Sauganash, Chicago’s first hotel, was a whitewashed log structure at Wolf Point, where the main stem of the Chicago River divides into its north and south branches. Described by one early visitor as a “vile two-storied barrack,” the Sauganash featured a tavern on the ground floor, where traders and other visitors were known to gather. Arriving well ahead of time, Pinkerton made a few final arrangements with a pair of Chicago constables. He positioned one of the officers inside the tavern, where the meeting was to take place, while the second would keep watch outside the building for any unexpected arrivals