Free The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie MAnsfield: A Tragedy of the Gilded Age by H. W. Brands Page B

Andrews, who has been monitoring the proceedings of a grand jury Fisk has managed to have convened to consider criminal charges against Stokes for blackmail. Andrews advises Stokes that he has nothing to fear on this front; Fisk’s evidence is flimsy, and the grand jury has declined an indictment several times already. Stokes has been contemplating a trip to Providence to defend himself in yet another court action, but he wants to hear from the grand jury before making a final decision about leaving town. Andrews tells him to go to Providence; there will be no indictment. Stokes still worries and so consults Judge Bixby, who likewise dismisses the prospect of an indictment.
    Stokes hails a cab and rides downtown to the Hoffman House. He walks up to his room to collect some papers he will need in Providence. He descends to the lobby and discovers a message waiting for him. He reads the message and learns that the grand jury has in fact returned an indictment against him.
    This news shatters the good feeling he has carried from the Yorkville court. The tentacles of Fisk, it seems, are everywhere; there is no escaping his malign influence. Perhaps Stokes wonders whether Josie is worth the troubles she has caused him, troubles that will multiply crushingly if the new indictment leads to conviction and prison. Perhaps he wonders if Josie will love him if he is behind bars. Quite possibly he thinks nothing so coherent; in his agitation his thoughts fly this way and that.
    He hails a cab and rides to Josie’s house. But when he gets there he doesn’t go in. He directs the driver around the corner to the Opera House but doesn’t go in there either. He has the driver take him down Broadway and gets out near the Grand Central Hotel, between Amity and Bleecker streets.
    The Grand Central bills itself as the finest hotel in America, and it is without question the largest, with more than six hundred rooms. In the eighteen months since opening it has become the favored accommodation of well-heeled visitors to New York, and scores of rich residents of the city make it their permanent abode.
    Stokes, inwardly still agitated but outwardly calm, enters the hotel and ascends a staircase to the second-floor hallway, which runs north and south, parallel to Broadway. The hotel is moderately busy on this Saturday afternoon, and no one pays this nattily dressed, respectable-looking visitor particular mind. He seems to be waiting for one of the hotel’s guests or residents, as several others in the public areas of the hotel are doing. At five minutes past four o’clock Stokes stands at the head of what the hotel calls the ladies’ staircase, to distinguish it from the main stairway at the opposite end of the hall.
    He is looking down the staircase when Jim Fisk enters it at the bottom. Their eyes meet. Fisk seems surprised, even shocked, to see Stokes. Stokes appears neither surprised nor shocked.
    Fisk is more shocked when Stokes produces a pistol. But Fisk doesn’t move, perhaps not sure that he is seeing what he is seeing. Stokes fires. The bullet hits Fisk in the abdomen. Stokes fires again. This bullet hits Fisk in the upper arm.
    Fisk belatedly turns to escape. He takes a step but stumbles, then falls to the floor.
    Stokes leaves him bleeding in the stairwell. He retreats into the second-floor hallway and walks quickly toward the main staircase. Near the head of the stair is the door to the ladies’ parlor; he enters and tosses his pistol, a four-shot derringer, on one of the sofas. He returns to the hallway and descends the main stairway, walking even more quickly now, for he hears shouts that a man has been shot in the hotel and the assailant is on the loose. As the shouts grow louder he breaks into a run, causing the proprietor of the hotel, who sees Stokes from behind the main desk, to call to him to stop. The owner yells to the porters to catch him.
    Several porters give chase. Stokes dashes down the hallway toward the back doorway