The Titanic Plan (53 page)

CHAPTER 57

A
rchie had to wait until 8 the next morning for the Inquiry Office to open. The small office was where passengers went to settle any
White Star
accounts, including the sending or receiving of telegrams. Archie stepped out of the cold morning and presented the card to a young clerk behind the counter. The clerk nudged the glasses on the bridge of his nose then turned to a bank of neatly organized compartments and retrieved a yellow Marconigram. He handed it to Archie, who read the typed message: “
MORGAN NOT BOARDING TITANIC. WAS DELIVERY MADE? YOUR COBRA
.”

“
That is 12 shillings, sixpence, sir,” the clerk said. “Shall I put that on your bill?”

“
Yes, please. And could you see that any other messages are brought directly to my room,” Archie said, then was struck by something on the Marconigram’s upper right hand corner. “Excuse me, but this message is stamped April 10. Today is the 12th. Why wasn’t it delivered to me before?”

“
Yes, sir, and we do apologize. It was relayed from Southampton where the transmission was initially received. That’s the reason for the delay.”

“
Why wasn’t this given to me there? When I was boarding?”

“
It should have been, sir. It must have gotten misplaced in the tumult of the day. We would gladly offer to send a Marconigram for you with our company’s compliments as a way of making amends for this late delivery.”

“
Thank you, but…” Archie shook his head, then stopped. “Actually, I believe I will take you up on that, young man.”

“
Very good, sir,” the clerk said and pushed a form across the counter. “Fill this out with your message and where you would like it delivered and I will make sure it is sent via our wireless
post haste.
”

The address Archie wrote on the form was simple:
Morgan Library, New York City
.
The addressee:
Belle da Costa Greene
.
Archie tapped the pencil, trying to think of the right response. He finally began writing:
In Mid-Atlantic. Unable to make delivery to Morgan. Arrive in NY on 17th. See you dockside? Your Fakir
.

* * *

J. P. Morgan had left Rome on April 6 to travel to Southampton and board the
Titanic
for her maiden voyage. The three finest suites on the ship were reserved for him. Somewhere in France, Morgan’s private railroad car took a detour. He wired Belle that he had a sudden interest in a set of medieval tapestries that depicted scenes from the Third Crusades. He wrote that he needed to determine if he should purchase them. So he canceled his trip on the
Titanic’s
maiden voyage, a trip he been promising to take for over a year, and traveled to Paris instead.

George Vanderbilt had departed Rome under the cover of darkness on March 31. He took an overnight train through France then sped to England, where he boarded a ship back to America. He arrived safely at New York Harbor on April 10.

At the Morgan Library, Belle da Costa Greene was sitting for a photo portrait when a messenger arrived with the Marconigram from Archie. She stopped the shoot to read Archie’s reply then asked the messenger to wait so that she might compose a message to send back to him. She scribbled it quickly then gave the boy a dollar tip and requested that he personally see that her message was sent as soon as possible.

* * *

Belle’s reply to Archie reached the
Titanic’s
Wireless Room the next morning. The message of dots and dashes was decoded by Harold Bride, a 22 year old Londoner who was the junior wireless operator on the voyage. The communiqué was only one of hundreds he was receiving daily. He quickly scribbled the message on a standard tablet-sized Marconigram form and put it in the “out” stack, to be typed then sent through a pneumatic tube to the Inquiry Office. By mid-morning the Marconigram was slipped under Archie’s stateroom door, waiting on the floor when Archie returned from breakfast. He eagerly tore the envelope open, guessing it was Belle’s reply. It wasn’t the kind of message he was expecting. It was short and to the point with none of the playfulness of their previous exchanges. “
OPEN MORGAN’S BOX NOW!
” the message read, followed by an enigmatic coda: “
GOD BLESS YOU ARCHIE. BELLE
.”

Why would she wish God to bless me? It wasn’t exactly the kind of sentiment that usually came from Belle. Despite his puzzlement, he went directly to his steamer trunk and snapped open the latches. The bronze box was near the top, right where he had left it. He lifted it out. His eye caught Belle’s command again: “
OPEN MORGAN’S BOX NOW!
” Its urgency hit him. He went back to his steamer trunk and sifted through its soft cloth contents until his fingers struck cold metal. Like a fisherman reeling in his catch, Archie brought up the gun he had packed. His first thought was to shoot the lock off, obliterate it and find out what the box contained. But he reasoned that shooting a gun on the ship might not be the wisest thing to do. He brought the box to the end of the table then tilted it forward, so the small gold lock dangled over the table’s edge.
Whack!
He struck the gun handle into the lock’s weakest spot, its golden center.
Snap
. The antique lock split open. Archie flipped the box’s lid and the unknown treasure revealed itself: cigars – a single row of tightly packed Havanas with red personalized bands around the center of each cigar that proclaimed in gold letters: ‘
J.P.M
.’ “That’s it? Morgan’s cigars?!” Archie muttered aloud, picking out a cigar from the stack. It was a thing of beauty, long and tightly rolled in a single black tobacco leaf. Still, the insistence of Belle’s message hardly warranted the discovery of cigars. Then Archie noticed that, with one of the cigars removed, the tight stack had loosened. And there was something underneath. He quickly lifted out the other cigars. At first glance, what was revealed was no more startling than the cigars. It was a stack of bound papers, a report of some sort. Archie took the papers from the box. The top sheet was imprinted with an
International Mercantile Marin
e letterhead and stamped “
Confidential
.” Underneath the stamp was a typed title: “
A Nationwide Commerce Network – Study and Analysis
.
” Archie flipped the top sheet and began skimming the pages. He quickly realized the report was an analysis of The Plan. He assumed it was done for Morgan, probably by a team of his advisors. The writing was thick and obtuse; it reminded him of bills sent to the President by Congress. It was full of drawings and charts, numerical calculations and technical information. The thick report detailed every problem that would be faced and every challenge that needed to be surmounted. It did it in a cold, analytical way that, while hardly inspiring, was impressive in its comprehensiveness.

After reading for several hours, Archie’s eyes started glazing over and he was having a hard time making his way through the jungle of technical analysis. He was ready to put the report down when a seemingly innocuous sentence caught his eye: “The political benefits will be as consequential as the economic advantages.”
What an odd statement.
Archie understood The Plan would greatly enrich the businessmen involved and give them an unparalleled monopoly over commerce. But the more he read, the more he understood that what was being put foreword in the report was far-reaching in its scope and ambition. The writers of the report proposed that with the economic advantage, The Plan would provide the opportunity to have significant control over America’s policies and politics. “Such influence,” the report said, “would be all-encompassing, from the crafting of legislation to the selection of preferred legislators and nationwide office holders.” With such a radical proposal came a caution against overt political interference. “Any influence must be exerted in a measured and outwardly responsible way, lest the populace feel a circumnavigation of America’s laws by the business class.”

Archie was beginning to understand why Belle wanted him to see this report. What was being put forward was far more than a business proposition; it was the strategy for a power grab, designed in an extraordinarily shrewd way. Archie noticed that his hands were trembling. He was holding the blueprint of a coup – a brilliant, stealth takeover of America by its most powerful tycoons.

* * *

Sleep did not come easily for Henry. The electric lights burned day and night in the cargo hold, creating a surreal atmosphere that suspended time and space. Added to that was the continual churn of the
Titanic’s
massive engines that caused the room’s floorboards to buzz with a constant, noisy vibration. And then there was the cold, which was growing increasingly unbearable as the ship moved north through the Atlantic. Henry had picked the locks of several crates in search of a shelter. The first crate he opened contained bottles of champagne; the second was filled with golf clubs and tennis rackets. Finally, he opened a large steamer trunk that was stuffed with oversized shirts and trousers. He grabbed a bundle and carried them to a far corner of the room where he found a tight space tucked between two stacks of crates. He began assembling a makeshift lair. It took two more trips before he had enough shirts and trousers to construct a crude nest he could burrow into.

With some relief from the cold, Henry was able to drift off into a twilight sleep that was filled with half-dreams. The constant roar of the
Titanic’s
engines sent his mind into a railroad car, part of a long train that was heading toward a cliff. The chill had him shivering in a busy New York street in the middle of a snowstorm. And when he heard footsteps in the room, he dreamed of horses clopping over cobblestones. But then, in his semi-conscious state, he realized the footsteps were real and that someone was in the hold with him. His eyes slit open and he peered out from his hideaway. There was a man, a large man lugging a heavy canvas rucksack across the cargo hold then setting it near the metal hull. The man leaned over the bag and opened it. Henry tried to catch a glimpse of what was in the bag. What he saw was the face of the man himself – a hard, angular face that was bracketed by jutting ears. Henry recognized the man immediately; he had spent time with him in a New York City jail cell – interrogated by him, beaten by him and, ultimately, manipulated and betrayed by him. He was the man who had Henry sign the confession that sent him to
Sing Sing
. Henry hated him as much as his young soul could hate.

CHAPTER 58

S
unday, April 14, began with church hymns reverberating through the decks of the
Titanic
. It was a cold, crisp spring morning in the North Atlantic. Captain Edward Smith led the prayers for the first class passengers in the Dining Saloon. The ship’s orchestra played the hymns. Archie sat near the back of the makeshift sanctuary with Frank Millet, who was nursing a hangover, having had too many Saturday night gin and tonics. The
Titanic
was two-thirds through its voyage, passing 300 miles southeast of Newfoundland.

After the service the two friends lunched at the Café Parisienne. They mostly talked about Taft’s chances in the November election. Archie left early to make his daily meeting in the A-Deck Lounge. That afternoon a timeline for The Plan was created. The men projected that the first commerce center could realistically be completed within 18 months. They set a goal of building ten within three years, twenty within four. They broke at 4:30, agreeing to push the evening session back an hour, to 9:30, because George Widener and his wife had invited several in the group, including their son Harry, John Thayer and Archie, to join them for a dinner honoring Captain Smith on his retirement. Because of the late hour, the group decided that the evening meeting would be in the First-Class smoking room and the session would be kept short.