Free Manhunt by James L. Swanson

rooms. Powell faced a third challenge: he did not know how many occupants—family members, State Department messengers, nurses, doctors, servants, maids, and guards—were on the premises. Certainly several, but perhaps up to a dozen. A more cautious man might have told Booth he was mad. But Powell, a slavishly loyal one who called his hero “captain,” agreed. Anything for his master. David Herold also complied, as long as he did not have to bloody his hands by killing somebody and could wait for Powell outside, holding their horses.
    From the shadows, Powell and Herold had watched Dr. Verdi leave around 9:30 P.M. After him had come Dr. Norris, who visited briefly and departed around 10:00 P.M.—just in time, according to Booth’s preset timetable. The house was quiet now. They watched the gaslights go dim in several rooms, a signal that the occupants were settling in for the night. A short while later Powell handed his horse to Herold and strode across the street to the secretary of state’s front door. He rang the bell. Herold’s dull, hooded eyes warily scanned up and down the block as he stood watch, safeguarding their mounts.
    Upstairs, on the third floor, Fanny Seward was watching over her sleeping father, and did not hear the bell. She did not know that outside a man waited to, like Macbeth, murder sleep.
    Down on the first floor, William Bell, a nineteen-year-old black servant, hurried to answer the door. Late-night callers were not unusual at the Seward home. At moments of crisis State Department messengers bearing telegraph dispatches might arrive at any hour of the day or night. And ever since the carriage accident, members of the cabinet, military officers, and three different doctors called frequently. There was no reason at all why William Bell should not open that door.
    Before him stood a tall, attractive, solidly built man, well dressed in fine leather boots, black pants, a straw-colored duster, and a felt-brimmed hat; he was holding a small package in his hands. The masquerade worked. Nothing about Powell’s conventional appearance raised Bell’s suspicions. Bell greeted Powell and asked politely, as Seward had trained him, how he could help the visitor. Powell explained his mission: he was a messenger with medicine from Dr. Verdi. That sounded satisfactory to Bell. Dr. Verdi had left his patient within the hour and lived only two blocks from the Sewards. Obviously, Bell reasoned, the doctor must have prescribed some medicine but did not have it with him in his well-worn doctor’s bag. When Verdi got home he probably summoned a messenger to deliver the healing product. Up to this moment Powell did nothing to call undue attention to himself. He even pronounced Dr. Verdi’s name correctly, with the proper Italian accent. Powell stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. Bell reached out to accept the delivery. No, Powell said, he could not give it to a servant. The doctor said he had to deliver it personally to the secretary of state and instruct him how to take the medicine. Bell countered that he was qualified to receive deliveries on Seward’s behalf. Powell was adamant. “I must go up.” He must see the secretary personally—those were his instructions. For five minutes, the assassin and the servant bickered about whether Powell would leave the medicine with Bell. “I must go up,” he repeated like a mantra. “I must go up.”
    Powell, growing impatient, inched relentlessly toward the staircase, backing Bell up to the landing. Bell was in grave danger now. Powell’s patience was almost out, and he knew how to deal with a recalcitrant,disobedient Negro like this, just as he had in Baltimore a few months back, when, as a houseguest of the mysterious and attractive rebel Branson sisters, he struck and nearly stomped to death a black female servant who sassed him. He didn’t have a knife or pistol then. Now Powell