When I entered my office on Monday morning, the genteel receptionist
informed me with some austerity that Mr. Roscommon was waiting for me.
"Okay, send him in," I directed, bracing myself for what would probably
be a stormy interview. If Roscommon was as well-informed as he claimed
to be, he must know that I had already reported him to the F.B.I.
"Smart work, Tompkins!" he beamed, giving my hand a vise-like squeeze.
"Working as I do with the highest echelons, I'm afraid I sometimes
forget the value of naiveté. You couldn't have invented anything better
calculated to slow down the Bureau than to report me as a Nazi agent.
Even the Director was impressed, though he'll see through your ruse
after a couple of days."
"Is that what you wanted to tell me?" I inquired, "because your visit
will certainly arouse new suspicions. I assume I'm still under F.B.I.
observation."
Axel Roscommon smiled. "Nothing to worry about, old boy, I assure
you. Naturally you'll have to go to Washington sooner or later and
explain things there. I suggest that you go next week, when the whole
Administration will be in a state of maximum confusion."
I asked him whether that would be any change.
"Absolutely, old boy. The war's been managed quite impressively well up
to now. After this week, with Roosevelt out of the way, things will
begin to fall apart and there will be plenty of pickings but the war is
already won, so that won't hurt."
Roosevelt, I observed, was down in Georgia, according to the papers,
but that didn't mean he couldn't keep in touch with things in
Washington.
Roscommon stood close against my desk and leaned forward on his hands,
facing me. "Listen carefully, old boy," he said, "and keep this to
yourself. Roosevelt will be dead before the week's out--on Friday the
thirteenth if there's any symmetry to be expected in this crazy world.
It's the same stuff they gave Woodrow Wilson over at Paris in the
spring of 1919. You may remember that chap Yardley wrote a book, 'The
American Black Chamber,' and told how the American Intelligence got
word of a plot to poison Wilson by one of America's allies. Not long
after, Wilson had a slight illness and a few months later had a stroke,
as they called it. You see your American Constitution--marvelous
document, that!--makes absolutely no bloody provision for the illness
of a President, and Wilson's paralysis paralyzed your government
for nearly two years, while America's allies cleaned up on the
peace-arrangements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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