When Roland had first come downstairs after being roused by the maid, he had found his father in the company of William Inglis, an old friend and fellow member of the New York Athletic Club who worked as a reporter for Pulitzer’s World.
In their unflagging efforts to outscoop their rivals, Hearst and Pulitzer’s men kept constant tabs on each other’s stories, and Inglis had managed to procure a copy of Monday’s Journal while the ink was still damp on the page. Recognizing the storm that was about to engulf Roland, Inglis wanted to alert his friend but wasn’t sure of his whereabouts. And so—despite the untimeliness of the hour—he had secured a cab and driven out to Brooklyn, where, shortly before 5:00 A.M., he awoke the General and showed him the headline naming Roland as the main suspect in the city’s most notorious murder.1
At sixty-five years of age, Edward Leslie Molineux had lost none of the firm resolve or fighting spirit that had served him so well on the battle-fields of Cedar Creek and Winchester. He still believed in the motto of his boyhood hero, Louis Kossuth: “It is the surmounting of difficulties that makes heroes.” Less than a half hour after Inglis’s arrival, the two men were in a carriage headed for Manhattan. Reaching 757 West End Avenue around six, they awoke the housemaid and had her fetch Roland from his bed.
When Roland saw the headline, the color drained from his face. “What a horrible accusation!” he cried. “What shall I do?”2
His father—coolly decisive as ever—immediately took charge. Though dawn was just breaking, they would proceed at once to the residence of Captain McCluskey and demand a retraction of the outrageous charge.
As it happened, McCluskey resided only a few blocks away, at 77 West Sixty-eighth Street. The sky was just showing the first inklings of daylight as Roland and the General, accompanied by Inglis, strode through the frigid streets, arriving at McCluskey’s home just before seven.
Early as it was, McCluskey was already awake and on the job, conferring with a pair of detectives from the central bureau. After a curt introduction, the General thrust the newspaper at the captain, whose face assumed a look of marked displeasure as he read.
“This is newspaper work, not mine,” he said when he was done, then turned to Roland and added: “I don’t want you and never have.” He advised Roland to go on about his business as usual. “Don’t bother about this thing,” he said. “Believe me, if we had wanted you, my men could have found you long ago.”
Barely mollified, the General removed a card from his pocket and wrote out Roland’s addresses both at home and at work, along with his own. “If you need us, you can find us at one of these places,” he told McCluskey, handing him the card. “We are as anxious to get to the bottom of this matter as you, and wish to assist in every way in our power.”3
With that, the General, Roland, and Inglis took their leave.
Their next stop was the residence of Roland’s friend, Bartow S. Weeks, the prominent attorney and former president of the NYAC who had been the unwitting catalyst of Roland’s resignation from the Knickerbocker. Weeks was immediately retained as Roland’s counsel. Roland then returned home to Blanche, while the General traveled back to Brooklyn, where he paid an early-morning visit to his own lawyer, Hugo Hirsh, who was also put on the case.
By the time the General reached home, the Journal had hit the stands. The story set off the predictable furor, particularly in Brooklyn, where Edward Molineux was a revered and influential figure and Roland himself a renowned athlete. Within hours, a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle had arrived at the Molineuxs’ stately Fort Greene home, where he was granted an interview by the General.
With the loyalty and devotion that would never waver in the harrowing years to come, Edward scoffed at the notion that a bitter rivalry existed between his son and Harry Cornish. True, there had been a “difference of opinion” between them “in regard to the management” of the club. When the Board of Governors sided with Cornish, Roland had felt that “there was nothing to do but resign and make his residence the New York Athletic Club.” It was, said the General, “the gentlemanly thing to do, and I supported him in the action.” The whole matter was of an utterly “trivial character,” and to suggest that it would lead Roland to plot Cornish’s murder was more than preposterous—it was libelous.
“He is a bold and fearless young man,” said the General with undisguised pride. “From his childhood up there has never been anything in his life to indicate that he was the slightest bit ugly in disposition or quarrelsome, and certainly never held malice towards anyone. Everyone is interested in trying to find out who the villain is who would be guilty of so foul an act. But anyone who would accuse a man—a young and married man, especially—before the law has acted or the authorities have investigated the matter is guilty of malicious, vile conduct and deserves to be heavily punished.
“They shall be punished,” the General continued, sounding every bit the iron-willed commander who, in his army days, had made many a shirker quail. “They shall find out I am a fighting man when the occasion demands. I consider it my duty as a citizen and as a father to leave no stone unturned to clear him or any other unfortunate who is unjustly accused of such a fearful crime.”4
The General’s threats were echoed by the two lawyers he had immediately retained to deal with the crisis. Hugo Hirsh declared that he had every intention of instituting a libel case against Hearst, though he felt that “horse-whipping would be the proper course.”5Bartow Weeks likewise announced that he would “proceed against the newspaper that printed this story.” Almost sputtering with indignation, Weeks proclaimed his absolute faith in Roland’s innocence. The idea that a man so “above reproach”—so “intelligent and refined”—might commit such a “dastardly” crime was too outrageous to contemplate. Why, it would make as much sense to accuse Weeks himself! “I also had trouble with Cornish over matters relating to the club. I might just as well be brought into the case as Mr. Molineux.”6
Later that day, after meeting with McCluskey, Weeks arrived at Alice Bellinger’s home to confer with Roland and Blanche. Though McCluskey had repeated the assurances he had given the General, it was clear to Weeks that the Molineux name was not going to disappear from the papers anytime soon. Not only Roland but his wife as well would be hounded mercilessly by “the reputation-destroying yellow wolves of the press.”7 The only sensible course was to flee Manhattan and seek refuge in the relative privacy of the General’s home in Brooklyn.
Blanche reluctantly agreed. Within days, her apartment—where she had lived as a bride for less than a week—was “stripped and denuded…. My possessions were stored; my trunks packed. The doors of my honeymoon abode closed behind me.”
Though she could not possibly have known it at the time, she would never go back there again. Her retreat to the Molineuxs’ stately dwelling would turn into a seemingly endless imprisonment.
“The long siege,” as she described it many years later, “had begun.”8