The Man

Listening, also, was the elder statesman of the quartet, the renowned Walter T. Tuttle, a onetime Attorney General during The Judge’s administration, whom The Judge had rousted out of recent retirement to join the defense team. A courtly old-school gentleman in his late seventies, Tuttle had a countenance as American as any that had been sculptured on Mount Rushmore. The opaque eyes screened a slow but direct mentality. The tone of his utterances was dry, yet often tart. Tuttle’s affectation was not that he was a country squire, which he was, but that he was a farmer in citified clothes, which he was not. He had been widely quoted for a remark made during his service in The Judge’s Cabinet, that he “always avoided any di

Speaking now was the fourth of Dilman’s managers, a slight, pensive attorney still in his thirties named Joel Booker Priest. Conservative and immaculate, Priest had attended every meeting with his slick, shiny hair smoothly in place, his person exuding a pine-scented cologne, and his body always garmented in one of his costly single-breasted suits. Joel Booker Priest was a Negro, of dark tan complexion, who now and then had handled special cases for Spinger and the Crispus Society. His law firm was in Washington, and quietly, but with the eager persistence of a bird dog, he had retraced Dilman’s life in the capital city and had attempted to ferret out what Miller, Wickland, and the other opposition managers were pla

Observing Joel Priest this minute, as he tried to surmise the House’s case in support of Article IV, and as the others hung on his every word, Douglass Dilman was incredulous at how much he himself had changed in short days. Not long ago, the very thought of a Negro defending him in any action would have been frightening. It was Spinger who had suggested Priest’s services to Abrahams, and Abrahams who had then studied the Negro lawyer’s career and met him. And when Abrahams had recommended him, surprisingly, Dilman had asked only one question, “Why do you want him, Nat, because you think it might look good to have someone of my own color on the team?” Nat had snorted, “I want him because he’s good.” And Dilman had replied, without reservation or hesitancy, “He’s hired.”

Suddenly Dilman was aware that the others were pushing back their chairs and standing.

“Well, that’s it, gentlemen,” Nat Abrahams said. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be. Remember, we’ve been assigned the Vice-President’s formal office next to the Senate Reception Room for our private headquarters. They’re turning over two of the late Vice-President Porter’s other offices for our stenographers and researchers, but the formal office will be the brain center. You can unpack there. I’ll catch up with you about eleven, and we can have a quiet lunch together, and then be ready for the fireworks at one o’clock. Oh, there’s another thing, Mr. Tuttle-” Abrahams turned to Dilman. “Mr. President, I’d better walk with them to the elevator. Then I’d like to come back and have a few more words with you alone. Can you spare ten minutes?”

Dilman nodded. “Certainly, Nat. I think I’d better get dressed first. I’ll only be a short time. I’ll meet you in here.”

He preceded his managers into the second-floor hall, then thanking them warmly and wishing them luck, he parted company with the four. As Abrahams went left down the hall, deeply engrossed in conversation with his associates on the way to the private elevator, Dilman turned right and entered the Lincoln Bedroom.

After throwing aside the terry-cloth bathrobe, he dressed slowly. As he was getting into his shirt, pulling on his trousers, his thoughts dwelt on the impeachment, and then, as if by a force of will, wishing a respite from the suspense of it, he temporarily shoved it to the back of his mind. He reviewed the week of days that had brought him from the Iowa farmhouse, and his resolve to fight for his life rather than quit, to this forbidding morning in the Andrew Johnson Cabinet room of the White House, and the last meeting before his actual trial would begin.

Most of that week gone by had been given over to building his actual defense against impeachment, to the seemingly endless meetings with Nat Abrahams and the other managers, and yet there had been other persons who had populated his world in the last seven days.

In many respects, since the impending Senate trial cast a shadow over his every activity, it had been a mean and arduous week. The language of law used this last hour permeated his thinking, and when he recalled the week he had lived through, he considered it in concise legal terms.

Specification one: the said Douglass Dilman and Wanda Gibson. He had telephoned her at the Spingers’ the midnight after his return from the Midwest. He had told her of his decision to fight, and she had broken into tears, and contained them, and been only slightly heartened after he had added the news that Nat Abrahams had thought enough of his chances to undertake the defense. She had dreaded his impending Calvary, the vilification to which he would be subjected, the disgrace that would probably be his, but in the end she had accepted his decision fatalistically. He had telephoned her twice more, once learning that the House had served her with a subpoena to appear as a witness (this had made him miserable and apologetic, and he had blamed himself for her suffering so much over a relationship from which she had derived so little fulfillment), the second time learning that she had decided, after working it all out in her mind, that she was proud that he was going to stand up to his traducers. Wanda’s devotion to him had been unreserved, yet now he could not be positive that it was the product of love rather than pity.

Specification two: the said Douglass Dilman and Julian Dilman, relative. The second evening, he had brought his son down to Washington for a last talk before the trial. Julian had sworn to Joel Priest that he had no co