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caught with these weapons.
    The crowd carried him well beyond the place where he had discarded the knife. He wanted to cut and run. He wanted to cry. But he was already too drunk to run, though tears came easily enough. He watched the clock on the wall. The hands stood at ten to ten. He had no friends in this country. He knew no one. Where could he hide?
    He went on drinking.
    Booth was also watching the hands of a clock. Somehow this evening, his habitual gestures did not satisfy him as they usually did. The bar was Taltavul’s. Of the two bars which flanked the theatre, this was the one he preferred, for the other got mostly actors, who did not pay him as much deference as workmen did.
    Brandy was not quite what he needed now. He ordered a set up of whisky and water instead. Taltavul thought that unusual and would remember it.
    Booth had the eerie feeling that he was doing everything for the last time. He could not shake it. No doubt it was because an assassination, unlike a performance, is a unique act. It cannot be repeated.
    There were too many drunks in the bar tonight. One of them lurched against him, lifted a glass, and said, “You’ll never be the actor your father was.”
    That jolted him. It was ages since he had thought of his father, that benevolent madman with the sagging calves and flopping belly. Junius Brutus the Elder may have played country squire like Farmer George, but it was he the Booths had to thank for their illegitimacy, hushed up though that matter was. One could only be a gentleman by forgetting all about him.
    The thought of that firmed Booth’s purpose. “When I leave the stage, I will be the most famous man in America,” he said.
    â€œHell, for all you act on it, I thought you left it months ago,” said the drunk. “Croak something for us.”
    Taltavul knew how to handle a drunk. He handled this one fast. But it was funny, come to think of it, but it was true, Booth had not acted for months. And what was all that blarney about leaving the stage, anyhow?
    To his relief, Booth said nothing more, drained his glass, and left the bar.
    In the theatre it was hot. The house was almost full, and the audience had been sweating there for over two hours. Booth watched for a moment, and then slipped into the corridor leading to the boxes, closing and bracing the door after him with a length of wood he had stowed there earlier in the day.
    In the State Box, Mr. Lincoln took his wife’s hand. He was feeling romantic and contrite for having been irritated with her earlier in the day. She might now be merely a pretty pudding, but in the half light she looked as young as she liked to pretend she was; they had been together a long time; and she was his wife, after all.
    Booth was watching through the eyehole he had drilled in the door that afternoon, but did not see the gesture. He had not been able to get the stage carpenter, Spangler, to hold his horse, but since Spangler was a drunk, that was perhaps just as well. A boy was holding it.
    It had impressed him, walking down the stage box corridor, that the walk to the scaffold is much the same as the criminal’s march to the crime. It has the same inevitable pace. Yet the corridor was empty and he was no criminal. He was the hero, girding himself for an heroic act. He could only deplore that the setting was so shoddy. Still, he could see the damnable villain’s back.
    Opening the door, he slipped inside, took out his deringer, cocked it, and shot the President. The time was 10:15.

VI
    Payne dismounted in Madison Place and handed the reins to Herold. There was a fog, which increased the darkness of the night. Two gas lamps were no more than a misleading glow. He might have been anywhere or nowhere.
    The pretence was that he was delivering a prescription from Dr. Verdi. Secretary of State Seward was a sick man. The idea had come from Herold, who had once been a chemist’s clerk. The sick were always receiving