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When Harding was faced with this evidence, Means reports that a terrific family explosion ensued, with the President shaking a reproachful finger at Means, a clenched fist at Mrs. Harding. It was for spying on the President, Means says, that he was discharged from the Department of Justice.
Means declares that Mrs. Harding, feeling that her ambition and energy had made her husband President, said: "My love for Warren Harding has turned to hate. I hate him with a hatred greater than my former love. ... He deserves to die. He is not fit to live."
The Hardings went to Alaska in June 1923, returned to San Francisco where on Aug. 3 President Harding died suddenly after a five-day illness from ptomaine poisoning. Confused to this day is the account of who was actually present at his death. According to Means, Dr. Sawyer had left the sick room while the nurses had also been sent away. When Mrs. Harding returned to Washington with her husband's body Means says she summoned him and said: "I was alone with the President . . . only about ten minutes. It was time for his medicine. ... I gave it to him. He drank it. He lay back on the pillows. Suddenly he opened his eyes wide and looked straight into my face. . . . Yes, I think he knew. He sighed and turned his head away. . . . After a few minutes I called for help. . . . Can I prevent an autopsy? . . Warren Harding died—in honor. Had he lived 24 hours longer, he might have been impeached.† ... I have no regrets. . . . I have fulfilled my destiny."
No autopsy was performed on the Harding body.
*The Strange Death of President Harding— Gaston B. Means, as told to May Dixon Thacker— Guild Publishing Corp. ($3.50).
†Daugherty, now living in seclusion at Columbus, Ohio, periodically announces he will write a book to clear his reputation.
**The coroner's verdict was suicide from a pistol shot through the head. Senators have charged that he was murdered by the Gang.
*Mal Daugherty, brother of Harry Daugherty, had a bank there. When the Senate sought its deposit records, investigators found they had been burned.
†Dr. Sawyer died in 1924.
*In 1927 was published The President's Daughter by Nan Britton, in which she claimed to have borne Harding a daughter. She asked his kin to aid her. In 1928 one Joseph de Barthe published a book, The Answer, attempting to prove that Harding was sterile, hence incapable of paternity, hence not the father of Nan Britton's daughter. The Hardings had no children. Mrs. Harding, by her first marriage, was a mother.
†An error or slip. Congress was not in session during the summer of 1923. The scandals of the Harding Administration did not break in the Senate until the spring of 1924.