The Outrage at the Diogenes Club by Daniel D Victor

Author:Daniel D Victor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sherlock Holmes, mystery, crime, british crime, sherlock holmes fiction, sherlock holmes novels
ISBN: 9781780926797
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2016
Published: 2016-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Once an order goes forth it can never be recalled. That is one of the most necessary of our rules.

- Jack London, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

Upon Tuesday, 15 October 1912, the New York Times trumpeted the previous day’s horror: “Maniac in Milwaukee Shoots Col. Roosevelt!” Here is a compilation of some other newspaper headings from across the United States: “Roosevelt Shot by Political Crank.” “Col. Roosevelt Shot by Assassin.” “Would-Be Assassin Shoots Col. Roosevelt.” “Socialist in Milwaukee Shoots Roosevelt.” “Roosevelt Shot.”

On the surface, the unsuccessful assassin, described as a moon-faced German immigrant called John Schrank, appeared to be yet another lunatic acting on his own. As reported, his motives certainly sounded insane. Roosevelt must die, he had said, because by seeking a third Presidential term, the former President had broken a long-held tradition established by George Washington.

Even more disturbing was Schrank’s hallucinatory tale of being paid a visit by the ghost of the assassinated President William McKinley. McKinley’s murder in 1900 had elevated Vice-President Roosevelt to the Presidency; and according to Schrank, the apparition - not unlike the ghost of Hamlet’s father - had come to Schrank in the middle of the night many years before demanding vengeance. It was Roosevelt, the spectre said, not Czolgosz, who had assassinated McKinley; and for the past eleven years Schrank had been feeding on the spirit’s desire for revenge.

The madman had dogged Roosevelt through much of the country and finally caught up to him in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the evening of 14 October, Roosevelt had dined at the Hotel Gilpatrick. Prior to the short drive to the Milwaukee Auditorium where he was to deliver a campaign speech, Roosevelt had stood up in the back of his open car to wave at a crowd of supporters. Having stationed himself some twelve feet from the machine, Schrank raised a .38 Colt revolver and fired once at the Colonel’s chest. Immediately - before the would-be assassin could pull the trigger again - a man in Roosevelt’s entourage leapt at the shooter and wrestled him to the ground.

As it turned out, the single bullet had indeed struck the former President, but the missile had first passed through the folded sheets of the Colonel’s fifty-page speech, which had been wrapped round the former-President’s glasses-case, all of which had been nesting in a breast pocket of his coat. By deflecting the bullet, the impediments saved Theodore Roosevelt’s life. Weakened and bloodied by the assault, he none the less went on to speak for eighty-minutes to a spellbound audience of ten thousand.

I read the newspapers closely. Of particular interest to me was the initial reaction of alienists to the shooter. It took little time to establish that Schrank was someone who kept very much to himself. Apparently, he used to drink beer alone in the back-room bar of his New York hotel (ironically called “The White House”). I could well imagine him sitting by himself in an out-of-the-way corner and, spurred on by his faith in ghosts, muttering threats against the former President.

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