# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 121

It will avail nothing to go into detail concerning the many points upon which we touched in our later conversations. I related during the many interviews I had subsequently with Tim Slade much of the story as it stands in this book. Tim had, of course, a slant upon many angles of Mr. Harding's life as President which were amazingly revealing to me, and which grieved me beyond words to hear. I knew pitifully little about politics in general, and next to nothing about the inside workings of the "machine" which is apparently an indispensable part of both of our great political parties. Tim said he had gone to "the boss" and had warned him that even his closest friends were double-crossing him at every turn. He said Mr. Harding had replied, "Why, Tim, you're crazy!" And Tim had answered, "All right, maybe I am," and had found Mr. Harding adamant where his trust in his friends was concerned.
Tim was frank to say that he had no use for anybody coming out of the State of Ohio except President Harding. "But I certainly did feel sorry for the boss," he said. He said many of those connected with the Harding Administration had been no ​less than cut-throats and that "the Chief" had really had mighty few friends.
Tim related to me his own experiences in Marion, Ohio, where he was for several months the President-elect's bodyguard. I was sorry to hear him say frankly that he had never met such a "bunch" in all his life, and I assured him that I was certain the streak of social madness of which he spoke had developed in Marion only since the birth of the excitement surrounding Mr. Harding's nomination for the presidency. I knew all or nearly all of the people of whom he spoke and I had known them from childhood, and the wildness to which they might have inclined as the result of a misdirected patriotic stimulus was condoned by me who knew the genuineness of my home town people. I could not believe as Tim believed, that "The whole bunch out there is rotten." No town which could produce Warren Harding could be fundamentally wrong in any respect. It was only a temporary social dementia from which they would recover with the passing of time.
Tim said Mr. Harding had instructed him that in case of "anything happening" to him, Tim should get from his private secretary, George Christian, the President's little black notebook in which the latter had kept private memoranda. Tim said Mr. Harding had told him he was to tear out immediately the sheets containing my several addresses and my name. I moved around, you will remember, quite frequently, and likely if Mr. Harding kept these addresses they had filled several sheets of such a notebook. However, it did seem to me, as I told Tim, that Mr. Harding would have felt it important enough to see that each time I moved he himself blotted out or destroyed my previous address, and it also seemed entirely unlikely that he would have my real name written in this notebook. Any fictitious name would have sufficed, and he and I had many secret initials which meant something to us and which he might have used for such purpose. Nevertheless, Tim said, those were his orders. It seems to me Tim said that when he had gone to Mr. Christian for the notebook the latter told him it had already been destroyed.
​When I left Tim Slade after our first interview I felt sure he would be able to trace the fund I felt had been left by Mr. Harding for Elizabeth Ann and me, and Tim had spoken of his intention to speak also to Major Brooks, the President's valet, who was with the President, Tim said, shaving him, only a short time before he passed away.
I felt very sure I could depend upon Tim, and was confident that his own expressed opinion of the terrible injustice to Elizabeth Ann would incite him to immediate action in my behalf. When he apologized for his financial position, telling me he had only recently acquired a new country home in Maryland and was shy of money, I hastened to assure him that I didn't expect any help from him. I was merely intensely anxious to hunt down the fund which I felt sure had been left for Warren Harding for our child and me.