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

or departures. Satisfied, Pinkerton took a seat in the hotel’s front room and waited.
    At the appointed hour, John Craig entered the room and “sauntered about for a time,” apparently in no rush to acknowledge Pinkerton. Finally, he snatched up a newspaper and dropped into an adjacent seat, pretending to be absorbed in reading. Without taking his eyes off the paper, he asked in a lowered voice if Pinkerton had managed to bring the money. Pinkerton, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead, acknowledged that he had. Craig instructed him to pass it over, promising that a package of bills would be in his hands “in the course of an hour.” Pinkerton was ready for this. Drawing a deep breath, he said that the friend who had loaned him the money, a man named Boyd, was having second thoughts. Boyd insisted on seeing the merchandise in advance, Pinkerton explained, and had accompanied him to Chicago in order to supervise the transaction. In fact, Pinkerton said, he expected Boyd to appear at any moment. The man was a lawyer, and a “stickler for form.”
    Craig appeared deeply unsettled by this development. He insisted “with some warmth” that he did not want an outsider complicating matters. Pinkerton answered in a tone that suggested the matter was out of his hands. “You know I would trust you with ten times this sum,” he said, “but I’ve placed myself in this damned lawyer’s power, and he insists like an idiot on having the thing done only in one way.”
    As Craig’s objections mounted, Pinkerton admitted to himself that his chances of success were now “beginning to look a little misty.” The two men adjourned to the hotel’s tavern, where Craig knocked back a fortifying drink as Pinkerton continued to plead his case. After a few moments, Craig took himself off to consider the matter in private. Pinkerton later learned, from the constable posted outside, that the older man passed the next half hour walking aimlessly in various directions, making sudden stops and turns, and looking frequently over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. After a time, he drew up short, as though he had come to an abrupt decision, and made his way back to the hotel.
    Seeing Craig reappear in the hotel’s front room, Pinkerton at once stepped forward. “Well, Craig, are you going to let me have the money?” he asked. The older man looked back at him with an air of polite surprise, as if Pinkerton were a total stranger.
    “What money?” Craig asked.
    Pinkerton hadn’t expected this. At a stroke, all his careful planning appeared to be undone. “The money you promised me,” he stammered.
    Craig remained unflappable. “I haven’t the honor of your acquaintance, sir,” he said coolly, “and therefore cannot imagine to what you allude.”
    Pinkerton was utterly dumbfounded. “If the Sauganash Hotel had fallen upon me,” he would later say, “I could not have been more surprised.”
    Staggered as he was, Pinkerton knew that he had to take action. His entire scheme depended on apprehending Craig in the act of selling the forged bills. Now, with the older man feigning ignorance of Pinkerton and his designs, the would-be detective had no evidence that would stand up in court. Craig, he knew, was far too slippery to allow himself to be apprehended with counterfeit money in his pockets. If the case came before a judge, it would come down to one man’s word against another’s. The situation appeared hopeless, but Pinkerton felt obligated to follow through with his plans. Otherwise, Craig would simply slip away and return to his home in Vermont, out of the jurisdiction of the local authorities, carrying Hunt and Bosworth’s money off with him.
    “There was only one thing to do,” Pinkerton concluded, “and that was to make Mr. Craig my prisoner.” Pinkerton signaled the constable across the room, who hurried over to make the arrest. Craig, still pretending ignorance of both Pinkerton and his accusations, loudly