Previously in book: Private Adam Christy escorts President and Mrs. Lincoln to the billiards room in the White House basement where they will stay until Secretary of War Stanton can win the war.

Opening the door, Adam deferentially stepped aside to allow President Lincoln, his wife, and Secretary of War Stanton to enter the room. Lincoln stopped by the billiards table and placed his hands on the edge, his head hanging. Mrs. Lincoln ran a finger across the table and looked at it with disdain. “What a filthy mess,” she announced. “If I’d known matters had come to this, heads would’ve rolled.”
“Dust is the least of our problems, Mother.” Lincoln turned to Stanton. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Secretary?”
“Shut the door.” Stanton nodded to Adam.
He obeyed and stood guard in front of the door, his arms crossed over his chest, his thoughts going to the revolver in his tunic: whether he might use it, and what circumstances would warrant using it against the president of the United States.
“Mr. Stanton, will you finally explain this ultimate insult to my husband?” Mrs. Lincoln’s eyes glistened with anger.
“Certainly.” Stanton removed his small pebble glasses, placed them in an inside pocket of his gray suit, and looked directly at the president. “Simply put, your lack of understanding of military strategy has imperiled the lives of thousands of soldiers and has threatened to lengthen, unnecessarily, this war.”
“Imperiled lives?” Mrs. Lincoln’s plump jaw dropped and her eyes widened. “Why, sir, that’s the most—”
“Mother, please.” Lincoln raised a large hand and returned his attention to Stanton. “I assume, Mr. Secretary, you’re referring to my reinstatement of General McClellan to command the Army of the Potomac.”
“I thought after your visit with the general in July outside Richmond after the Seven-Day Battle you’d come to grips with this problem with McClellan. He will not fight.”
“You’re not telling me anything I haven’t told you,” Lincoln replied. “As I recall, you were one of the original supporters of Little Mac. In fact, I had quite a task convincing you of the general’s shortcomings.”
Stanton stiffened. “That was last year. This is 1862. A year of slaughter, lost opportunities, endless drills, gourmet dining on the field, waste of—”
“That’s enough!” Mrs. Lincoln’s voice was shrill.
Adam shuffled his feet, uncomfortable with the display of emotions erupting before him. After all, in his small Ohio community, such outbursts were unpardonable, as evidenced by the reproach given a boy’s comment of the favorite breakfast of his deceased mother.
“Not to mention the fate of the slaves,” Stanton continued. “You’ve created the Emancipation Proclamation, but you can’t release it until a military victory, which is impossible with General McClellan in command.”
“And I agree,” Lincoln said. “I’m a slow walker, but I never walk backwards. That’s why I ordered McClellan’s troops to reinforce the troops of General John Pope.”
“An admirable choice,” Stanton asserted.
“General Pope is a liar and a braggart,” Mrs. Lincoln interjected. “I knew the family in Illinois. The father was a judge known to take bribes, and his mother put on such airs as to make her insufferable.”
“A mother’s lack of social skills shouldn’t disqualify the son from being a proper general,” Stanton replied.
“Losing two major battles in less than two months would disqualify him, however,” Lincoln said, putting his arm around his wife.
“Cedar Mountain and a second debacle at Manassas,” she said, trying to maintain her dignity.
Adam felt sorry for them. Lincoln may be incompetent, but he was still president, and as such deserved respect.
“Anyone deserves more time than was accorded General Pope,” Stanton said.
“Perhaps some would,” Lincoln replied, “but General Pope didn’t. You may not want to believe it, Mr. Stanton, but I too want to end the carnage. It’s just that at this moment, I’m afraid that General McClellan is our best hope.” He smiled. “General Pope is a fool. Even I, with just the friendly Black Hawk War as my only experience, knew Stonewall Jackson wouldn’t retreat. Jackson advances, always advances, but Pope recklessly followed Jackson’s retreat, only to be attacked by reinforcements by Lee and Longstreet. I couldn’t allow Pope to commit another costly mistake.”
“Well, there are other generals than McClellan,” Stanton blustered.
“And I’m sure each one will have his chance before this mess ends,” Lincoln said.
“We don’t have time,” Stanton replied. “That’s why I must insist you and Mrs. Lincoln stay in the basement until I’m able to end the war.”
“Stay in the basement! You must be insane!” Mrs. Lincoln turned to her husband. “This man is insane! They’re expecting us at Anderson Cottage tonight!”
“A message is being delivered now saying you’re spending the night in town.”
She stormed toward Adam, furiously wagging a finger. “And you, young man, how dare you betray your country!”
“I’m trying to save my country, not betray it.” Adam’s eyes fluttered as he looked to Stanton for assurance.
“Any man who can’t control his wife can’t control a war,” Stanton said in a pious tone, his eyebrows raised.
“Please, Molly, don’t do this to yourself,” Lincoln whispered, reaching out and holding her.
“I’m not doing this,” she said, spittle flying. She twisted to escape his grip and, when she realized she was completely restrained, her face went bright red and her eyes filled with tears. “He’s the one doing this to us—not just to us, but to the entire nation!” Looking from face to face, she finally dissolved into sobs, her head buried in Lincoln’s shoulder.

Previously in the book: Private Adam Christy, under orders from Secretary of War Stanton, led the Lincolns to the basement of the White House where they would spend the duration of the war. Placing rat traps in a corner of the basement room was the janitor Gabby Zook, ill-equipped for the emotional turmoil about to be thrust upon him.

“That old man gives me the willies,” Neal said to Phebe in a soft voice, but Gabby, across the hall in the furnace room, heard him. He prided himself on his keen sense of hearing almost as much as he prided himself on his intuitive discernment of the human condition.
“He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Phebe said as she continued to chop vegetables.
Gabby smiled as he bent over to place a rat trap near the furnace. He always knew Phebe was a kind soul. Mama, before she died, had told Gabby it was a sin to assume a black person was bad or mean or stupid. No, Gabby had decided soon after he arrived at the Executive Mansion that Phebe was not bad, mean, or stupid. Now as for Neal, on the other hand, Gabby had not made up his mind.
“Think he’s always been like this?” he heard Neal ask Phebe.
“Most likely so,” Phebe replied with a sigh, her chopping more intense.
Gabby hung his head as he retreated further into the furnace room, placing his rat traps along the way. Phebe’s acceptance of Gabby’s current condition as being congenital weighted his soul, because even now he knew things other people did not. For example, he knew the official name of this building was the Executive Mansion; White House was kind of a nickname. Because Phebe did not realize he knew things did not lessen her kindness or intelligence. It only made her, Gabby decided as he coughed back tears, like all the others who thought so lowly of him—and they were all wrong, oh, so very wrong.
As he walked out of the furnace room and entered the next door down the hall, Gabby recalled how his life had been different in Brooklyn, New York, where he had lived with his father, his mother, and his older sister Cordie in a modest brownstone. His early years were filled with happy days of hiding in the corner of his father’s law office on the first floor of their home. The clients were always common workers and immigrants who ill could afford a lawyer when circumstances found them up against local authorities. The Zooks were not wealthy, but they were held in high esteem by their lowly neighbors whose husbands and fathers Zook had saved from prison or financial disaster. It was then Gabby had developed his ability to be still, to fade into the woodwork and take in all that was being said, digesting it so that the information was his own. Gabby also liked to reach up to his father’s bookshelves and randomly select thick texts on subjects ranging from the law to Romantic poetry to integral calculus. The calculus ran a little deep for the boy, but he always enjoyed the challenge. And it was a good thing Gabby did indeed like challenges, because it turned out his life was going to be one challenge after another.
His first came just before his thirteenth birthday, when his father died of influenza. He had contracted it from a family of Irish textile workers whose landlord had sued them to remove their loom from the parlor in which they eked out a living, creating elegant lace much sought after by the wealthy ladies whose estates lined the banks of the Hudson River north of the city. Before he died, however, father Zook won the Irish family’s right to their livelihood. In gratitude, they created a lovely lace pillowcase on which Gabby’s father’s head was laid. Gabby’s keenest memory of that day was the embrace of his father’s brother Samuel, the true success of the Zook family, a top member of his graduating class from the United States Military Academy at West Point. Samuel Zook was already a major, and the family expected him to become a general. He was tall, straight, and very impressive in his pressed blue uniform, Gabby thought, as he looked up at his uncle and felt proud. His eyes scanned the room to see many poorly dressed men and women, including the Irish people, crying softly. Gabby was at once sad to see the tears and pleased his father had had so many friends. He was further saddened to see his mother collapsed on the divan, life seemingly drained from her haggard body. His sister Cordie, seventeen, sturdily built and plain to the eye, enveloped their mother in her strong arms. Gabby remembered smiling when his best friend Joe VanderPyle slowly entered the room, wary of seeing his first corpse in a coffin displayed in a family’s parlor, but determined to comfort his chum.
Walking to Joe, Gabby tentatively stuck out his hand to shake with his friend, since that was what Uncle Sammy had been doing all afternoon, and with his left hand patted Joe’s shoulder, replicating Uncle Sammy’s other gesture.
“Hi,” Gabby said, his eyes staring at the floor.
“Hi,” Joe replied.
“Yeah.”
After a moment of silence, Gabby said, “He’s over there.”
“Who? Your uncle?”
“No—I mean, yeah, he’s here. In his uniform. He looks like a huckleberry above a persimmon. See?” Gabby stepped aside and pointed to Samuel.
“Yeah. I wish my uncle was a major.”
“Yeah.” Gabby looked down and then chose his words carefully. “No; what I meant was, my pa is over there.” He nodded toward the plain coffin.
“Oh.” Joe stiffened. “Have you looked at him?”
“Yeah. He doesn’t look different than before. He just looks like he’s asleep.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to see him?”
“All right.”
Gabby led his friend through the crowd. Just before reaching the casket, Joe stopped and gripped his sleeve.
“Gabby?”
“Yeah?”
“Were you scared? To look at him, I mean?”
“No. It’s just pa.”
“You’re braver than me.” Joe shook his head. “I ain’t seen a dead body.”
“You don’t have to look if you don’t want to.”
“I’m your friend.” Joe straightened his shoulders. “I should look because that’s what friends do.”
“Then you’re braver than me.”
“What?”
“To do something you’re not afraid of isn’t brave. Doing something that scares you, that’s brave.”
“Oh.” Joe smiled. “Thanks.” He glanced at the coffin again. “I want to look now.”
Standing in the billiards room, gray-haired Gabby shook his head and laughed. He knew he had lied that day to his friend about being afraid. When the casket first arrived at the house that morning, Gabby’s mother gently pushed him toward it to make him look at his father’s corpse. It was only after an hour of gazing at the cold countenance that Gabby had become comfortable, but he did not want to tell Joe that. He wanted his friend to feel braver than him, and that helped him feel brave.
Looking around him, Gabby sighed. He bemoaned the fact that he had no need to be brave now, and no need to be brave when catching rats. Counting the traps thrown across his arm, Gabby saw he had three left, and placed one under the worn but elaborate billiards table and another in the fireplace before deciding to place the last behind a stack of barrels and crates in the far corner.
Bending over behind the barrels and crates, Gabby thought how his new life, living in a boardinghouse in the nation’s capital with sister Cordie, was pleasant enough.
He heard, or thought he heard, a hushed voice out in the hall say, “Quickly.”
Life was not as good as in New York, but not as bad as he had feared when Cordie said their father’s money was gone, and they had had to sell the brownstone and move. Uncle Samuel, now a general, arranged a job for Gabby in the Executive Mansion. Cordie mended clothes at their boardinghouse and volunteered at the hospital. His teen-aged years had been good in Brooklyn, where he and Joe VanderPyle had laughed and played through their school years. Both enjoyed everything from mathematics and science to literature and music, but exulted in running, jumping, climbing, and swimming. Each was hoping to receive an appointment to West Point, each secretly confident both would make it.
On his knees, looking down at the trap and at his spreading belly, Gabby touched his cheeks, now sagging, his eyes now surrounded by wrinkles, and his mouth now jerking in constant, silent conversations, and wondered what had happened to his dreams. No, he knew what had happened to his dreams, but he did not want to think about those tragedies, for they had destroyed him and cast him into a frightening world of brief, precious moments of clarity and long, disturbing periods of confusion, anxiety, and fantasy.
Gabby was on the verge of tears, which he often was when he allowed himself to dwell upon what was and what could have been, when the billiards room door opened, causing him to jump and hover behind the barrels and crates, shivering over the iron trap, as though he were a rat himself.

(Previously in the novel: Private Adam Christy guides President and Mrs. Lincoln down the backstairs to the basement where they will spend the rest of the war. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton claims he can end the war faster that way.)

Large, rusty iron traps clanged against each other in Gabby Zook’s big rough hands as he lumbered down the hall of the Executive Mansion basement, muttering to himself.
“Got to find the rats; can’t have rats in the White House. Not around the president and his lady. No, that wouldn’t be proper. No, it wouldn’t be right to have rats in the White House, not when there’s a war going on; not when no war’s going on, either. Rats in the White House aren’t proper any time.”
Sticking his gray-haired head in the door of the main kitchen, Gabby asked, “Seen any rats in here, Miss Phebe?”
“No, sir, Mr. Gabby.” A tall, dark brown young woman looked up from the massive cast-iron stove set into the left wall.” She flashed a toothy, friendly grin. “We keep those critters chased out of here.”
“Yeah, we chop them up and feed them to the white folks upstairs,” said a short, slender, caramel-colored man in his thirties as he walked up with a basket of carrots, tomatoes, and onions.
“The president eats rats?” Gabby’s eyes widened.
“Oh, Neal, don’t tease Mr. Gabby.” Phebe lightly slapped the shoulder of her companion in the kitchen and laughed.
“What does rat taste like?” Gabby said, his eyes squinted in curiosity.
“Chicken.” Neal smiled broadly.
“Mr. Gabby, Neal is pulling your leg.” Phebe shook her head in amusement. “Now, you pay him no mind. No white folks eat rat in the White House, or any other house.” She glanced at Neal. “Tell him straight that folks don’t eat rat.”
“That’s right, Mr. Gabby,” Neal said. “Nobody eats rats, unless they’re real hungry and don’t have nothing else to eat.”
“And there’s plenty of good stuff to eat in the White House.” Gabby nodded.
“Plenty of good stuff here, Mr. Gabby,” Neal said, putting the basket filled with vegetables on a rough chopping block table next to the stove. He looked at Phebe. “Are they eating here before they return to the Soldiers’ Home tonight?”
“Nope,” she replied, pulling the bunch of carrots from the basket. “So we’re just cooking for the staff. Mr. McManus has a taste for pork chops.”
Neal is in love, Gabby told himself as he watched the black man look at Phebe. Yep, he had seen people fall in love many times in the close to fifty years he had been on this earth, and it was easy to tell when a man was smitten. Gabby prided himself on observing people’s eyes, which told him much, and he recognized the extra attention Neal paid to Phebe’s form, her hair, the way her slender hands moved quickly and efficiently to peel and dice the carrots. He knew the young man was trying to hide his infatuation, but the eyes never lie, especially when there was a smart brain behind them. Yes, young Neal was smart. Gabby could always tell a smart person because he himself was smart. Not too many people knew that, but deep in his heart, Gabby knew he was smart.
“Aw, don’t I have time for a nice cup of hot, black coffee before I go get the white folks’ chops?” Neal sat on the edge of the chopping block table.
“You keep talking like that, and Mrs. Lincoln’s likely to chop your head off.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want the queen to order a beheading.” Neal stood.
“Mrs. Lincoln is a queen?” Gabby’s face scrunched up in befuddlement.
“She thinks she is,” Neal said with a snigger.
“How can she be a queen if Mr. Lincoln is president?” Gabby tried to sort this out. “For Mrs. Lincoln to be a queen, Mr. Lincoln would have to be a king, and he’s not a king because he was elected, and kings aren’t elected, they’re just born that way.”
“That’s right, Mr. Gabby,” Neal agreed, “just like you’re just born the way you are.”
“Neal,” Phebe said, shaking her head in mild rebuke.
“But you called her a queen…”
“Neal was joking.” Phebe stopped chopping and turned to Gabby. “Mrs. Lincoln is not a queen. Nobody thinks she’s a queen. And Mrs. Lincoln would be hopping mad if anybody was fool enough to call her a queen to her face.”
“Oh,” Gabby said, subdued because he felt he may have made her mad at him. He liked Phebe very much and would not do anything to keep her from being his friend.
“Neal likes to joke. He’s a big joker. If he says something that doesn’t sound right, like folks eating rats or Mrs. Lincoln being a queen, you have to tell yourself, why, that joker Neal is telling another one of his tales, and you just laugh at it.”
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Phebe,” Gabby said. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything to be sorry for,” Neal offered.
“And, land of Goshen, don’t call me ma’am,” Phebe said, a bit irritated. “I’m just a n****r who works in the kitchen.”
“You’re not on a plantation anymore.” Neal wrinkled his brow. “You don’t have to call yourself that name anymore.”
“That’s what I am.” Phebe resumed her chopping, concentrating her gaze on the rough wood table.
“Mr. Gabby,” Neal said with a smile. “You and me got to teach this young lady a lesson about herself, don’t you think?”
“This isn’t a joke, is it?” Gabby eyed him carefully. “You really want me to help?”
“No joke. I want your help.”
“Well, I’ve done a lot of thinking about this all my life.” Gabby cleared his throat and stepped forward hesitantly. “I think it’s all kind of silly.”
“What’s kind of silly, Mr. Gabby?” Phebe looked up and forced a smile.
“That name. N****r.” Gabby spoke the dreaded epithet with so much innocence that the two young African-Americans standing before him relaxed, their eyes widening slightly, willing to take in what the man with the rat traps was about to say.
“It’s a lazy way of saying Negro, which means black. I don’t know why people have to be lazy in the way they say words, but they are, and there’s nothing we can do about it, but it still doesn’t make it right.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Neal interjected.
“Even if they did say it right, it still wouldn’t be right. No, it still wouldn’t be right; do you want to know why it wouldn’t be right? Well, I’ll tell you why it still wouldn’t be right. It still wouldn’t be right because you’re not black.”
“Not black,” Neal blankly repeated.
“Black is absence of all color, of all light. And you have color in your skin, so you can’t be black.” Gabby extended his hand to touch Neal’s face. “Now you, Neal, you’re more of—of coffee with a whole caboodle of milk in it.” He squinted as he lightly poked the freckles on the young man’s cheeks. “With little speckles of nutmeg floating on top. Although I don’t know why there’d be speckles of nutmeg in coffee. You put nutmeg on eggnog, and you’re definitely not eggnog.”
“Yeah, I’d rather be coffee than eggnog any day of the week.”
Gabby turned his attention to Phebe, who took a small step back, but that did not stop him from laying his full palm against her tender, smooth cheek.
“And you’re deep, rich coffee without a drop of anything else in it. No milk, no nutmeg, nothing but pure, dark coffee.” He slowly pulled his hand away, his eyes filled with child-like curiosity. “Your family doesn’t have any white people in it, does it?”
“What?” Phebe shook her head.
“Oh, Mama told me and Cordie all about slavery. Cordie’s my sister. Mama told us how bad slavery is.”
“So you think you know all about it?” Cynicism licked the edges of Neal’s question.
“Oh no.” Gabby vigorously wagged his head. “I don’t know everything about anything. Nobody knows everything about anything. The smart man is the man who knows he doesn’t know everything. Socrates said that. Or was it Plato?”
“So what do you know about slavery?” Neal crossed his arms over his chest.
“Mama said plantation white people would make babies with slaves anytime they wanted, because they were the white people, and they thought they could make the black slaves do anything they want.” Gabby looked at Phebe again. “It looks like no white people came into your family’s cabin.” He then studied Neal. “You got a whole bunch of white people in you.”
“Now, there’s no need to be nasty.” Neal laughed.
“You’re joking now, aren’t you?” Gabby asked.
“Yeah, I’m joking.”
“Mr. Gabby,” Phebe said as she cleared her throat. “I think I saw some rats this morning across the hall in the furnace room.”
“And there’s rat shit in the billiards room,” Neal added.
“That’s very funny.” Gabby laughed.
“What’s funny about rat shit?” Neal asked.
“What a joker you are.” Gabby laughed again.
“Mr. Gabby, Neal isn’t joking this time. There really are rat droppings in the billiards room. That means there are rats in there.”
“Oh.” Gabby stopped laughing, turned abruptly, and left the kitchen, going directly to the furnace room.

Lifting his Remington revolver, its deep blue finish catching the late afternoon sun over the Potomac River, the young man smiled confidently as he looked down the wide sight groove at the coarse, unruly black hair of Abraham Lincoln, convinced his actions would save his country.
“Mr. Lincoln,” said Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, causing the president to glance up from a file of Justice Department papers.
A quick smile flickered across Lincoln’s broad lips when he first focused on the short, thickset man with the pharaoh-like beard, but it faded when his shadowed, hollowed eyes noticed the slender, rusty-haired army private holding his .44 caliber cap-and-ball pistol.
“Mr. Stanton, I see you brought company with you today,” Lincoln said.
“Please come with us, Mr. President,” Stanton said.
“It’s for the best, sir. You’ll thank us eventually. Trust me.” The young man grinned broadly.
“Please come with us, Mr. President.” Stanton turned sharply. “Private Christy, shut up.”
“Yes, sir.” He quickly looked down at the worn carpet and shuffled his shiny new boots, which were partially covered by baggy dark trousers.
Putting a long, bony finger to his forehead, Lincoln surveyed the secretary of war. “For what will I thank you, eventually?”
“The boy spoke out of turn, sir.”
“Well, then, Mr. Stanton, may I inquire as to where you are taking me?”
Stanton removed his glasses, squinted, and took a deep breath, but before he could speak, Mary Todd Lincoln, wearing a flowing black brocaded silk dress over a rustling crinoline, swept into the room, waving a swatch of blue flowered-print cotton. The private concealed his revolver in his tunic.
“Father, Mrs. Keckley says I should move to a blue print from black but—” She stopped abruptly when she saw Stanton. Her eyebrows arched, and her lips pursed. “Oh. Excuse me. I didn’t know you were here.”
Stanton bowed.
“I suppose we can make Mrs. Keckley wait.” Mrs. Lincoln focused strictly on her husband, who was putting his personal effects aside, ready to rise.
“Please inform your dressmaker, Mrs. Lincoln, that she must return tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? I go to Anderson Cottage tomorrow,” Mrs. Lincoln said, slapping the billowing folds of her dress with the blue cotton swatch. “This is totally unacceptable!”
“Now, Molly,” Lincoln said, finally making it to his feet and going to his wife’s side, his long, gangling arms around her soft shoulders. “I think it’d be best if you kindly suggest to Mrs. Keckley that it’d be more convenient for us if she visited you at the Soldiers’ Home tomorrow.”
“But, Mr. Lincoln—”
“Blame it on me, if you wish, Molly.”
“I certainly will!”
“Tell her it’s a matter of state, dear.”
“It’s a matter of foolishness.” Mrs. Lincoln sniffed and nodded curtly.
After his wife swirled from the room and down the private hallway to the oval family room, Lincoln returned his gaze to Stanton. “As you were saying?”
“Oh yes.” The secretary of war put his small pebble glasses back on his pocked nose. “The basement.”
“Not to review the kitchen staff, I presume.”
Stanton smiled and shook his head. “The billiards room.”
“These are desperate measures to round up competition for a game of billiards,” Lincoln said laconically.
Their eyes were drawn to the door as the sound of stomping female feet echoed through the hallway. Eventually Mrs. Lincoln emerged and placed her hands on her ample hips.
“Now Mr. Stanton,” Mrs. Lincoln said, “will you explain yourself?”
Private Adam Christy noticed Lincoln stepping back, glancing up at two cords over his desk, and slowly moving his hand up to the cord on the left.
Lincoln asked Stanton, “What are those cords?”
Stanton turned. “Don’t involve Mr. Nicolay and Mr. Hay.”
“Well,” Lincoln replied with a shrug, “I thought they’d enjoy a nice game of billiards.”
“Billiards!” Mrs. Lincoln shook her head and moaned in exasperation. “What depths of insanity is this?”
This is not insanity, Adam thought. Ending the war is not insanity. The good of the nation called for Lincoln’s temporary removal, Stanton had told him, so the correct decisions could be made to win the war.
“It’s time to go,” Stanton announced.
“Go where?” Mrs. Lincoln asked, edging toward hysteria. “Will someone please explain what’s happening?”
“To the basement, Molly.” Lincoln put his arm around her shoulder again and whispered, “Mr. Stanton wants to talk to us in the billiards room.”
“Why?” Mrs. Lincoln looked at the secretary with bemusement.
“Lack of interruptions, I assume,” her husband said. “The office is hectic.”
No talk, Adam thought, just sit down there until Stanton wins the war. He would have informed the president of that, but he did not want another withering rebuke.
“Mr. President, we must go,” the war secretary said.
Lincoln nodded as he eyed Stanton, then guided his wife through the door into the office waiting room. When they entered the president’s office vestibule, Stanton raised his hand.
“Wait.” He motioned to Adam. “Check the hallway and grand staircase landing.”
Adam hurried down the hall, noting every door was shut on each side of the board corridor. He stopped in his tracks as a tall, dignified black woman, modestly well-dressed, came from a door on the left, carrying a large carpetbag. Making eye contact with the woman, Adam dropped his jaw before composing himself and nodding to her. She examined the young man and crossed the hall to the door leading to the service stairs. Continuing to the end of the hall, Adam looked down on the landing covered with Brussels carpeting. He saw no one and hurried back through the ground-glass doors to the office vestibule.
“The way is clear,” he said, huffing with excitement.