October 20, 1874
Chicago, Illinois
The Home of Henry Honoré
The glorious, crispness of autumn was in the air. The brilliant, breezy day had begun with a generous sunrise over the lake, giving the great mistress of the mid-west a comely blush. Only three years returned to its former glory the city of Chicago waited for the day to begin, bustling and groaning at a subdued crawl until the newsboys began to shout the latest, the fish hawkers screeched like seagulls about the first catch and the maids and housewives of the city began to brew their first pot of coffee.
The Honoré house stood out amongst the others of its kind like a beacon of new hope, progress and the future of the city. Henry Honoré, a businessman from Louisville, Kentucky had been in the process of making his fortune in real estate, when the Chicago fire provided more worthless land on which to build his empire, than ever before. While he toiled in the ashes left by the great fire of 1871 his fifth child, Miss Ida Marie Honoré delighted in the girlish fantasies and fears of every other young woman on such an occasion as that October day. Sequestered in her childhood room with her 25-year-old sister, both still bearing the glow of youth, Ida and Bertha whispered together, laughing and tittering.
They would spend the morning together, Bertha, the elder, a recent mother and wife of four years giving advice to her younger sister of 20 years. They hugged and cried often, remembering the joys of their childhoods, and the wonderful freedoms that their father's wealth, and their mother's insistence on their education had brought them. Together they would plan for the future, children and outings, knowing that the wealth of Bertha's husband, and the auspicious standing of Ida's future husband, would make such reunions difficult. How terrible would it be, they both wondered, if one or the other should move to the far end of the country, or be removed from it all together.
In some ways, they would joke, it would have been better to be simple children of simple men. But only in some ways, very few ways, Ida laughed.
Together they would ready Ida throughout the day, knowing that below the servants and maids were bustling about the house decorating with white linens and gay flowers in every corner. A great feast was being made for the guests and staff, cakes and exotic fruits, meats and breads and cheeses, wines and burgundy and brandies. Every amenity would be provided and, in preparation for the 2 photographers who had been hired, even the street itself had been newly paved with cobblestone. All for the upcoming wedding, the social event for the season.
In several hotels throughout the city, all of them owned in some way or other by Mr. Honoré, all of his guests had been housed. One in particular held the brash 24-year-old groom attended by his younger brother and his father. Their morning had begun differently.
Instead of quiet giggles and titters there had been a sportsman's romp inside the hotel suite, the three men participating in a mimicked display of a popular native American game played by the tribes in the Black Hills region. The father of the groom, a dignified 52-year-old man, normally given to wearing solemn black, double-breasted suits, dark spats and a top hat, that morning rough-housed with his boys in nothing more than an undershirt and simple brown trousers.
Instead of tears and embraces the past was remembered with loud guffaws from the boys, and a quiet, delighted twinkle in the eye of the older gentleman, who watched his sons Fred and Jesse with proprietary pride.
They talked of those that were not attending, the younger sister Nellie who had recently married and left the country, and the second oldest boy Buck, who had just entered school in New York and was focused on his studies. Their mother was nowhere to be found that morning, but knowing her station as a popular hostess, none of the men escorting her could doubt that she was somewhere in the household of the Honoré's seeing to the preparations for her son's wedding day.
The first photographer to have been hired to record the blessed day had been rehearsing his art off and on for three years, as a hobby. It was only recently that he had begun to fully focus on taking photographs of consequence and worth. Unfortunately, no matter his focus, it came to pass that commercial photography simply was not one of his gifts.
This problem had been discussed at length with the father of the groom, and a compromise was reached. There would be two photographers. One hired by the Honorés, who would actually take the photos, and the other already in the employ of the groom's family, who would parade around with a camera, setting off flash powder, but serving an entirely different purpose.
At 2pm that afternoon, with the pure fall breeze sweeping through the Honoré house and casting the smell of the late season roses, lilacs and lilies into every corner, the preparations were finalized and the staff was in place. Each waiter or usher standing at attention in a short black coat, vest and black slacks and each maid in white blouse, black apron, and skirt was smiling in anticipation. All preparations for the banquet to follow the blessed event were completed and both photographers had already been about. One, Charles Delevan Mosher, photographed the cake, and the smiling pastry chef; the grand hall down which the bride would parade with her attendants and the great room in which the bride and groom would be wed.
The other seemed more interested in the exterior of the house, checking every nook and cranny of the grounds and speaking frequently with the police constables assigned to look after the event.
At 2:30pm the bride was readying in her chambers. Her groom, with his father and young brother Jesse, were preparing in their own room in the Honoré house under the attendance and watchful eye of a handsome, rather athletic manservant.
The guests had begun arriving. Those of great import were invited to sit for a photograph in the small studio made out of a vestibule wherein Charles Mosher reigned as king. A renowned master of portraits, he was able to take each photograph at the alarming rate of five minutes, start to finish. Each exposure lasting only five seconds.
The photos, he promised, would be ready in a matter of days, delighting the guests into chattering excitedly about the marvels of their host and his thoughtfulness.
As the appointed hour approached the manservant attending to the groom excused himself briefly, leaving the small room in which the mildly nervous man prepared and taking care to set a police constable outside the door while he was gone. Traveling adroitly through the house the dashing young man bowed respectfully to each guest, doing his best to avoid showing his exasperation when he was more than once given a stray hat or coat. These he made a point of handing off to the more experienced attendants before he managed to find the second photographer, a Mr. Harlan Ahrens, who stood at that moment in the garden of the Honoré home pouring flash powder into the tray above his camera.
"Mr. Arrons, could I have a word?" The manservant called, earning a distracted and irritated look from the photographer who appeared to be in the process of taking the photograph of a police constable and his wife.
"It is pronounced Ahrens..." The Germanic man insisted rolling the 'r' and extending the 's' sound against the soft palate. He threw his fingers at the irksome attendant and returned to his work.
"Mr. Ahrens.." The manservant attempted, not taking to the brush-off so easily. "Forgive the interruption but if I could have a moment of your time..."
"Why shouldn't you have a moment of my time, you are of course a senator in disguise? A royal perhaps? One of the elite of Chicago, asking to have your picture taken?" Pausing mid-diatribe the man bent under the dark cloth attached to the camera box, the trigger in one hand, the lens focus in the other. "Hold it, please...bleiben bewegungslos."
With a sound like a sneeze the photographer snapped the trigger, igniting the flash powder and exposing the plate at the same time, before he released the trigger seconds later, once more blocking any light from reaching the now imprinted negative. Popping out from under the cloth cover the man bowed slightly to his subjects. "Danke, danke, Sie sind nette Leute!"
The constable seemed far less delighted than his wife as they stepped away from the brass bench on which they had posed. As the other guests continued to mill the photographer collected his camera, pulling the exposed plate from the box and putting in a new one.
"And now...you...waiter. What is it you want?" Ahrens asked, looking down his bulbous nose and handlebar mustache at the blue-eyed man who bore an almost ever-present smirk.
"I have been sent to inform you that the groom and his groomsmen are ready for their photo to be taken." The waiter mentioned, his hands going behind his back in a pose that seemed comfortable. He looked over the photographer's shoulder, and around where the two of them stood, then dropped his tone and said, "Hey, Arte. I have a question I've been meaning to ask you all day."
Keeping his posture slightly erudite and disapproving, Arte said, "Yes, James, what is it?"
"How many times are you going to take photos with just those two plates?"
Patting a hand over the spare plate that he had just tucked into his breast pocket, and looking to the plate that now sat in the camera, Arte considered the question, his lower lip upsetting the line of his mustache for a moment before he looked back to his partner, his eyes glittering. "How very perceptive of you, James. You shall be the first of today's attendees to notice. However I'll have you know that I may be on the very brink-"
A guest walked by and Arte rested his hand on the top of the camera, his words seamlessly continuing with the Germanic accent. "The very brink of discovering a new, revolutionary form of photo-graphy called composite photos. Where-in many photos can be taken in a short period of time-"
As the guest continued on their way Arte dropped the accent casually watching them over his shoulder. "More importantly James, that constable that I was taking a photograph of..?"
"Yeah?"
"Was none other than Josiah Brande Lillith."
"Lillith?" Jim glanced after the couple noticing the way that Mrs. Lillith clung closely to her husband, especially when another young woman walked by. He looked askance at his partner after the name rang empty in his memory.
"The itchy, constable brother of a certain young lady of our recent acquaintance?"
Jim's head snapped to take in the couple disappearing into the house, before he looked back to his partner with sudden realization. "Joanna Lillith!?"
Arte gave a slow deliberate nod, with a pleased smile, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. "The very one." He chuckled as Jim shuddered visibly. "Don't worry, partner, I'll keep an eye on him." Arte grinned, still pleased as punch.
"Anything, or anyone else strike as you phony or out-of-place?" Jim asked, sweeping his hand in the direction of the house where most of the guests were meandering.
Arte slipped back into character in every manner but his voice, hefting his camera with the grace born of doing it every day. He scanned the garden as he did so. "Other than one of the maids who keeps disappearing to the washroom, nothing out of the ordinary. I spoke with the cook. She has some suspicions about the young lady, but none pertaining to the guest of the hour. There are men stationed outside the property in every place through which a man could possibly enter."
"Even a small man?" Jim asked, pausing and bowing slightly to let an older matron pass into the house before he and his partner did.
"Especially a small man. I even instructed them to look closely at hefty children wearing top hats."
Jim smirked at his partner and waited until Arte said, "Yes I got a few strange looks, but I've come to expect that. Say..."
Both men paused at the door, watching the garden empty of stragglers, and listening to the bustle in the great hall as the ushers seated each guest.
"Do we really think Loveless is behind these threats?"
"About as much as we think anyone and everyone else is behind these threats. Arte, we have nothing to go on."
"I know but...it just seems so much more personal. If it were a threat on your life I would understand, but on one of Grant's sons?"
"Speaking of, I have to get back there. Fred is holding his own, but if the President gives him anymore fatherly advice, he might explode."
Arte grinned, clapping his partner on the back. He fell back into character completely, entering the great hall where a string quartet had begun to play. Across the hall, directly opposite where he stood he could see the other photographer, the actual photographer, setting up a wide shot of the room and he bowed slightly, leaving the shot and moving down the side of the wall.
One hundred chairs had been set up in the room in 10 rows of 10, providing a wide aisle for the bridal party and ample seating for the invited guests. While many more attendees had been invited to the reception, the wedding ceremony was intentionally small and private. This had begun as a suggestion of the bride's family, then had been insisted upon by the President's staff, even before President Grant had received the written threats.
The quiet bubble of conversation in the room was buoyed by the busy etchings of the string quartet, their choice of pre-wedding music speaking to the anticipatory brightness of the occasion and the still comfortable cool breeze drifting about the house. Arte had memorized the names of most of the guests invited to the ceremony and nodded respectfully to each of them as he passed, looking for odd bulges in clothing or packages in hand.
All gifts were collected at the door and taken quickly from the house to a small building on the waterfront where-in two agents of the Secret Service opened and carefully checked through them, then returned them to their original state and placed them aboard the train scheduled to take the couple on their honeymoon.
With the distant assassination of President Lincoln still fresh in the mind's of the men of the Secret Service, no chances were being taken.
At precisely 3 o'clock the mood changed, and with it the music, a song playing that any who had attended a wedding since May of that year would recognize as the march played at the wedding of Nellie Grant in the White House. This, along with the announcement of the arrival of the parents prompted the many guests to look back to the double doors leading into the hall.
Henry Honoré and his wife were the first to enter, walking proudly down to the front row, where they remained standing. The arrival of the president was as subdued as possible, with every man in the hall rising delighted to his feet. Guiding his lovely, but famously cross-eyed bride Julia, Ulysses S. Grant strode down the hall, the mother of the groom gleaming with pride and smiling brightly. Their youngest son Jesse followed, a handsomely impish, broad chested 16-year-old boy looking much like his mother.
The maid of honor, Bertha Honoré Palmer was also greeted with murmurs of approval. Already a woman of some fame in Chicago social circles the young woman had deliberately worn subdued colors out of respect for her sister, but still managed to be resplendent. Arte found he could hardly take his eyes off her, forgetting his character and his duty as he watched the vivacious woman walk the hall. He had never met her before that day and found her stirring, to say the least.
As the march began to play again the guests stood, prompting Arte, at one end of the hall, and James, at the other, to take to the sets of stairs by which each had been standing, moving to an elevated position from where they could better see the group. Arte quietly set his camera up, as though preparing to take a shot of the bride, instead making ready the small pistol he had kept hidden in the box. He could see West making similar preparations across the way.
Ida Honoré stood in breathtaking off-white satin with the sun at her back, a delicate embroidered and pearl studded veil cascading over her face and down her back, glistening in the light. Fresh dew upon the flower of her youth, a reporter would later call it. Beneath the veil her dress was of the latest and highest fashion, a Worth of Paris, sent over in pieces and fitted to her precisely, the day before the wedding. Her engagement ring, also bearing pearls and diamonds, as well as the earrings that she wore, defined her face beneath the veil, glittering like unbidden promises.
She was the most beautiful bride Chicago had ever seen, it was declared, the statement dimmed only by the fact that it had applied to her older sister as well, only four years prior.
As she started her march down the aisle her future husband, Frederick Dent Grant, the eldest son of Ulysses S. Grant, stepped into place before the minister, standing straight and tall in his cavalry uniform, looking nothing at all like his father. His recent service in the west had been made known to the newspapers in Chicago for the purpose of their wedding announcements and Freddy appeared in that moment the very epitome of the man described. Brave, unyielding, strong, just the sort of man any woman should be honored to marry.
Some would later report seeing the tremble in Frederick Grant's hand as he took his bride's gloved palm, others would declare they had seen a tear glitter beneath Ida Honoré's veil as they said their vows. All agreed it was a beautiful and divinely executed ceremony.
The reception that followed the new custom of throwing the bouquet, and seeing the bride and groom to their carriage, was no less appealing.
After James West saw the newly christened Mr. and Mrs. Grant to the presidential train at the Van Buren Street station, where-in the personal attendants took over their protection, he returned to the gala at the Honoré residence where he and his partner enjoyed a tense, but uneventful evening.
As the very last of the guests were escorted to their homes, Mr. and Mrs. Grant and their young son Jesse were driven to where The Wanderer sat, quietly chuffing in readiness.
A third car had been added to the train for their comfort and while Gordon saw to the Presidential party, West spoke with the guards that had been on duty throughout the day, taking their report of little activity and giving them the rest of the evening off. The train would be departing within the hour, heading back for Washington with himself and his partner as personal escort.
Standing on the platform between the Presidential car and the varnish car Gordon, West and President Grant enjoyed a celebratory cigar together and discussed the wedding.
It had been an excellent day, the President offered and both men agreed, yes it had been excellent.
Came off without a hitch, the President concluded, and both men beamed tiredly with pride. Without a hitch, yes.
"So what were those wretched threats then?" The President asked finally, knowing and accepting the answer he was given.
"We don't know Mr. President, not yet."
Ahead the engineer, Orrin, could be seen moving through the rising moonlight doing his final check of the engine before he stopped below the crowded platform.
"We've only to receive the mail before we shove off, Sirs." The man informed them.
"Mail? Orrin, we shouldn't be taking on any mail." Arte said, feeling a chill of alarm start down his spine.
The engineer, a man grown accustomed to the peculiarities of his position caught the tone in Mr. Gordon's voice and quickly informed, "I was told it was top priority."
"If it was top priority it should have come over the wire." Jim said and gestured for the President to step back into his car.
"Orrin, get on back to the engine and get us ready to depart." Arte said then disappeared into the car as well, following Grant and arming himself, watching his partner who stepped down from the train and away from it, facing the station.
"Artemus?" The president asked, his eyes sharp and alert, his body tense as he stood ready nearby. "You're certain that the men checked every package before they placed it aboard Frederick's train?"
Arte nodded, his eyes focused on West. "Absolutely, Mr. President. I gave them a rather lengthy list of what to look for. They were thorough."
Outside a man stepped down from the station, a canvas bag over his shoulder that appeared to be empty. He started toward the train, looking weary, as if he had spent the day on his feet and was anxious to return home.
Arte watched as Jim twitched his wrist, the sleeve gun popping into his hand which he kept down by his side. His other hand still casually held the cigar, the occasional puff of smoke rising over his head.
"Julia and Jesse have already gone to bed, Mr. Gordon. Should I wake them?" Grant's voice was calm, patient and quiet, belying the panic that Arte was certain the man was feeling.
Arte only shook his head, focused entirely on every move that the courier with the bag made as he stalled twenty feet in front of West. He seemed to make up his mind about something then continued to approach, a single envelope in his hand.
Arte stepped out onto the platform to check either side of the Presidential car, making sure no one was approaching on either side before he focused on the man now addressing his partner.
"I've been trying to deliver this letter all day, sir. It's addressed to President Grant, care of the Secret Service...and something called The Wanderer."
Jim felt a familiar twist in his gut. The feeling that he had been getting from the day the threatening letters began to arrive, uncannily always in the path of the President, betraying knowledge of the inner workings of the President's daily schedule. The very presence of the missives was alone a threat.
"And who gave you the letter?" Jim asked, his stance not changing.
The postal carrier shrugged, looking between the lone Secret Service Agent and the train. His hand extending the letter that no one had been willing to take from him all day long. "It was sent through the United States Postal Service, no postmark or return address. I'm sorry, sir, but I'm only trying to do my job."
"Surely you know what to do with unclaimed letters." Arte called from the train car, causing the man to snap his gaze that way. Jim watched him carefully, relaxing when the man's surprised reaction was limited to what he would expect out of a civilian.
"Sir, of course. But this letter is certified. It must be delivered, and signed for."
"Clever..." Arte remarked, directing the comment to his partner.
Jim closed the gap between himself and the mailman and took the letter, watching the man closely as he dug into his mail bag pulling out a receipt pad and pencil.
"Is the President really in there?" The civil servant asked, watching Jim sign, before tucking the pad back into his bag.
West smiled around his cigar and said, "Thank you for service." Then waited for the postal worker to leave, watching as he backed reluctantly away from the train, craning his neck for a glimpse of the leader of the nation.
Once Jim had stepped up onto the car platform he signaled to the engineer with a shrill whistle, and the sound was echoed loudly by the engine before the wheels screeched, turned, and caught against the rails. The cars jerked in succession and Jim stepped into the Presidential car, showing the envelope to his partner and President Grant.
"Another threat?" Grant asked.
"Likely." Jim said, talking around his cigar while he carefully broke open the envelope.
A folded paper, two sizes too small for its container fell out into his hand and he gave it to Arte.
"Mr. Grant-" Arte read the familiar greeting, the easily recognizable handwriting florid but shaky. "I have given you suitable warning, and I have promised to return your unkindnesses.
I have sworn an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. As you have taken from me, I shall take from you.
I now hold your son in my possession. You have ended the life of my most precious child, and so too shall I end that of yours. But unlike you, I shall offer you the chance to see him once more before he meets his end. You will be given the chance I never was.
Further instructions will follow, you would be wise to accept them without hesitation. Your obedient servant, MO."