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The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth | George Alfred Townsend | |
Letter V: A Solution Of The Conspiracy |
Page 8 of 11 |
"Nine o'clock and fifty-five minutes!" said the same relentless voice, after the next interval, each of which narrowed to a lesser span the life of the good President. Ten o'clock here sounded, and conspiring echo said in reverberation: "Ten o'clock!" So like a creeping thing, from lip to lip, went: "Ten o'clock and five minutes." (An interval.) "Ten o'clock and ten minutes!" At this instant Wilkes Booth appeared in the door of the theater, and the men who had repeated the time so faithfully and so ominously scattered at his coming, as at some warning phantom. Fifteen minutes afterwards the telegraph wires were cut. All this is so dramatic that I fear to excite a laugh when I write it. But it is true and proven, and I do not say it but report it. All evil deeds go wrong. While the click of the pistol, taking the President's life, went like a pang through the theater, Payne was spilling blood in Mr. Seward's house from threshold to sick chamber. But Booth's broken leg delayed him or made him lose his general calmness and he and Harold left Payne no to his fate. |
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The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth George Alfred Townsend |
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