Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,99
found that, in this case, he could actually confirm the results simply by pressing his fingers on the “sonorous spot,” and feeling the bullet beneath McGill’s skin.
At about nine o’clock that night, after sending Mabel a ringingly confident telegram, declaring that there was “no need of further secrecy,” Bell allowed a reporter from the Boston Herald to join him in his laboratory. Welcomed with a hail “Come up and see us” from Bell himself, the reporter made his way to the door of the brick building, which was nearly hidden behind overgrown trees and shrubs. After stopping for a moment to admire the light streaming from the windows, marveling that “every room was in use,” he was led into the laboratory, where Bell, his father, and Tainter stood, surrounded by the detritus of their work.
Every surface, from tables to chairs to cabinets, even the floor they stood on, was covered with “coils of wire, batteries, instruments and electrical apparatus of every sort,” the reporter marveled. “The light from the jets, burning brilliantly in the centre of the room, was reflected from a hundred metallic forms. It was reflected too from the smiling faces of the great electrician and his assistant, who saw success almost within their grasp.”
Bliss was waiting for Bell when he and Tainter arrived at the White House the next morning, carrying between them the induction balance, awkwardly shaped and roughly hewn but working perfectly, and with nearly twice the range it had had just four days earlier. For the first time since he had begun work on this invention, Bell felt calm and confident. “My new form of Induction Balance,” he had written to Bliss the day before, “gives brilliant promise of success.”
Bliss, however, had a very specific definition of success. He expected Bell not only to find the bullet, but to find it where Bliss believed it to be. He would not allow the inventor and his assistant to waste his time or the president’s energy on fruitless efforts. It was understood that they were to search the right side of Garfield’s body, and only the right. Bliss agreed to let Bell and Tainter conduct the test themselves this time, but he would be standing next to the president’s bed, closely watching the examination.
As Bell slowly ran the induction balance over what he referred to as the “suspected spot,” he suddenly heard a faint pulsating sound. He tried again several times over the same area, and each time got the same result. Tainter, “the only other person present whose ear had been sufficiently trained to be reliable in such an emergency,” repeated the test a number of times as well, assuring Bell that he heard the same sound. Still, Bell wanted another opinion. Finally, he asked the first lady to press her ear to the telephone receiver and tell him what she heard. Lucretia agreed that there seemed to be something there.
This spot, Bell knew, was exactly where Bliss wanted him to find the bullet. Despite that fact—or more likely because of it—he hesitated. There was, he would later write, “a general expectation that the bullet would be found in that part of the body.” His fear was that that expectation might lead him to “imagine a difference that did not exist.”
As far as Bliss was concerned, they had their answer. Like the rest of the city, he had certainly seen the Washington Post article that morning, announcing that, “if success crowns the effort, and the ball is where it is now very strongly suspected to be, the original diagnosis of the wound will be upheld.” It was no secret that that diagnosis had come from the president’s chief physician.
Without wasting any time, Bliss issued a bulletin to announce the successful test of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention. It was “now unanimously agreed,” he wrote, “that the location of the ball has been ascertained with reasonable certainty, and that it lies, as heretofore stated, in the front wall of the abdomen, immediately over the groin, about five inches below and to the right of the navel.”
As Bliss declared victory, Bell struggled with a nagging sense of unease. Whatever it was that he had heard as he tested the president, he had never heard it before. It certainly was not the faint but distinct buzzing sound that, after weeks of testing, he would have recognized immediately. Unfortunately, it had been clear to everyone in the room that Bell had heard something, and he had been unable to explain