The Hellfire Club(67)

He picked up the afternoon Star from the empty seat beside him. The U.S. government had rounded up ninety-one Puerto Ricans in New York City and brought them to the Foley Square Courthouse, part of the investigation into the Capitol Hill shooting the previous week. The RNC had decided that Vice President Nixon would be better suited to respond to Adlai Stevenson than Senator McCarthy would. Once again, he could find nothing about the car crash.

As the train crossed the border into Maryland, Charlie caught himself feeling as if he’d managed to escape from behind enemy lines. Though he knew, of course, he had freed himself from precisely nothing.





Chapter Eighteen





Monday, March 8, 1954—Afternoon


On the Train from Washington, DC, to New York City



“You look lost in thought” came a maternal voice as Charlie sat down in the club car of the train. Charlie turned around to see Senator Margaret Chase Smith standing at the tiny bar, holding a glass of ginger ale.

He smiled.

“Hello, Senator. Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“Oh, I love the train. I take it all the way up to Boston, then drive to Portland.” She raised her glass and took a sip.

Charlie was too distracted to come up with any suitable small talk. Smith, the practiced politician, filled the silence easily as he made room for her to join him in the seat next to his.

“You know, I have been meaning to tell you, after we had lunch, I read your book. It was marvelous. I found the section on Benjamin Franklin at the Hellfire Club especially fascinating. I wanted to know more!”

Charlie caught the bartender’s eye and ordered a beer. “I did too, but that’s all I could find,” Charlie said. “And even that was pretty controversial. I received letters from a number of DAR and historical societies in Pennsylvania who were not happy to hear about ol’ Ben’s secret life.”

“Why, if they knew anything at all about him, they must have known he was a libertine.”

“One would think,” Charlie said.

“You know what I wondered about Franklin’s time at the Hellfire Club?”

Charlie raised an encouraging eyebrow.

“Well, he seemed to think it quite useful—all these powerful men in one wanton association where they could do business and engage in revelry and whatnot.”

“Especially the whatnot.” Charlie smiled. “But yes, they did a lot of business there, as you know.”

“Indeed.” She grinned. “So—did he attempt to re-create anything like it upon returning to the colonies?”

Charlie rubbed his chin. “There was nothing about that in the diaries and nothing in the Franklin papers at Yale.”

The train gave a bit of a jump, causing both Smith and Charlie to lurch forward. Smith spilled some of her ginger ale on the floor.

“Oh dear,” she said.

“You okay?”

“Fine, dear boy. Fine.” She looked around the car, seeming to make sure nobody was listening to their conversation. “Do you know about the members-only collection at the Library of Congress?”

“I heard about it from, um, the late Congressman MacLachlan,” he said. “Should I pay it a visit?”

“Oh, I think you’d find it of great interest.” She gave Charlie a look that he found hard to read. “A collection of papers and books only accessible to members of the House and Senate. It’s in a special room in the Adams Building of the library. You should check it out, see if there’s more on Franklin there. I myself would love a sequel to your book, as I suspect would many of your fans.” She patted his arm—encouragingly or condescendingly? Charlie again couldn’t quite tell.

“The Hellfire Club,” she remarked, almost to herself. “Seems like a secret society like that one, replicated in modern times, could be very influential. Theoretically.”

Charlie looked at her, but trying to read her face was like trying to read Esperanto.

“I’m sure you’re more than aware that there are any number of secret societies throughout Washington,” she added. “Skull and Bones, Sons of Liberty, the Patriotic Order, the Elks, the Klan. One hears whispers about them, but of course nothing concrete. Washington makes much more sense once you realize that there are factions that people like you and me know nothing about.”

“People like you and me?”

“Moral people,” she said. “Good people. And people who are outsiders, to a degree.”

“Well, I don’t know that I belong in your esteemed company,” Charlie said. “That was a brave thing you did, coming out against McCarthy back in—when was it, 1950? And it’s been pretty dispiriting to see so many of our fellow Republicans sit back and let this…indecency…continue.”

She blushed. “Why, thank you, Charlie.”

“No, I mean it,” he said. “I don’t think I understood until recently how tough it is to stand up for what’s right in politics. It all looks so easy from the outside. But inside, the imperatives, the forces, the motivations almost always push one toward complicity or silence. If not worse. The system seems designed to grind away our better natures.”

Smith took a second, apparently to contemplate what Charlie was saying and decide how to properly respond. “It has been incredibly disappointing, yes, to see otherwise good and decent men think they can straddle the worlds of decent and indecent,” she finally said. “Senator Taft thought he could do that. He could not. One cannot. One must make a choice. Taft thought he could avoid having to condemn that which he knew was wrong. And then he died. And his cowardice is now regrettably part of his legacy. McCarthy isn’t just a demagogue and a serial prevaricator—he’s a phony. He won his first election, against La Follette, by winking toward the Communists of Wisconsin, saying nice things about Stalin. None of it means anything to him; it’s all just about power and ego. I mean, it often is, that’s not unique to Senator McCarthy. But he’s a fraud. I feel bad for those whom he is so sadistically fooling.”