Free The Anarchist by John Smolens

said nothing. He seemed unable to get enough air into his lungs. He often had trouble breathing but now he was only aware of a painful tightening in his lungs. He kept watching Hyde, the gun in his hand—though he noticed that Motka, who was standing in the corner behind Hyde, had picked up something.
    “The president arrives in Buffalo tomorrow,” Hyde said.
    “Perhaps you do know,” Czolgosz said. He inhaled slowly, filling his lungs, and as he exhaled he gasped, “But do you understand?”
    “Understand? Understand
what?”
    “Necessity.” Czolgosz inhaled again, deeper this time. “Necessity and history.”
    “Then I’m right?” Hyde straightened up, his face became more alert, as he aimed the pistol at Czolgosz’s chest. “Anarchists, they always talk about eliminating all leaders. You don’t really want to help the worker, do you? You only want chaos.”
    “I have my duty,” Czolgosz said.
    Hyde seemed to lose his resolve for a moment, and the gunappeared to weigh down his arm. Then he took careful aim again. “So have I—”
    Motka stepped toward Hyde and swung with both arms, and when the porcelain chamber pot struck the back of his head it rang with the tone of a bell. Hyde fell forward onto the bed, his arms lying across Czolgosz’s legs. He was out cold and blood matted his hair.
    Czolgosz removed the revolver from his hand.

II
    E XPRESS ORDERS HAD been given regarding noise. When the three-car Presidential Special pulled into Buffalo the afternoon of Wednesday, September 4, it was expected that there would be tens of thousands of people gathered to welcome William McKinley. There would be marching bands; there would be a military gun salute. McKinley had just been sworn in for his second term of office in March, and he was clearly the most revered president since Abraham Lincoln. However, McKinley’s personal secretary, George Cortelyou, was concerned about two things: the fact that since the second election there had been, despite the president’s popularity, a marked increase in the number of death threats directed toward him; and the health of the first lady, Ida B. Saxon McKinley. Cortelyou consulted regularly with Dr. Presley M. Rixey, the president’s personal physician, who accompanied the McKinleys everywhere. Rixey insisted, as he had in the past, that care had to be taken concerning noise when the train arrived in Buffalo. Thus Cortelyou had forwarded specific instructions that the welcoming ceremony—and in particular the twenty-one-gun salute—had to be conducted at a safe distance from the train. The president’s health was consistently robust and satisfactory, though Rixey would have liked to see him lose weight. The doctor’s attentionwas largely taken up with Mrs. McKinley’s condition, which was frail at best. She could not, Rixey insisted, be subjected to loud, unexpected noise.
    Rixey was standing by her chair in the president’s coach as the train crept into the city. The plan was to stop briefly at Terrace Station on the outskirts of Buffalo and allow members of the Pan-American Exposition committee to board the train, and then continue on to Amherst Station, which was at the north end of the exposition grounds. It was a warm afternoon and some windows were partially opened. Even as they pulled into Terrace Station a throng was being held back by a security line consisting of police, soldiers, and Pinkerton men. It never ceased to amaze Rixey, the planning and coordination and, increasingly, the security measures that were necessary for any public appearance by the president. He sympathized with Mrs. McKinley, who had said more than once that she would prefer that they all remain in the tranquillity of Canton until it was absolutely necessary to return to the Executive Mansion in Washington. The whole idea of passing the summer in Ohio was in response to her near fatal collapse during the trip they had taken to the West Coast in the spring. McKinley had canceled