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The Letter. For a few seconds it was so quiet that the ding-ding of distant streetcars was clearly heard. Then hundreds of people were running toward Blair-Lee House. A panting skirmish line of photographers charged in. A hefty Secret Service man named Floyd Boring looked up, saw the President, who had been aroused from a nap, peering out an upstairs window in his underwear. Boring bawled: "Get back! Get back!" until the President stepped out of sight.
Down below, guards rolled the living gunman over, jerked roughly at his coat, fumbled through his pockets, pulled out his shirt and carefully snapped the elastic band of his underwear to be certain it was not hooked to a hidden bomb mechanism. They demanded his name. He whispered: "Oscar Collazo." His companion was Griselio Torresola. They were Puerto Ricans. Guards frisking the dead gunman's pockets found a letter written in Spanish. Translated, it read:
"My Dear Griselio—If for any reason it should be necessary for you to assume the leadership of the movement in the United States, you will do so without hesitation of any kind. We are leaving to your high sense of patriotism and sane judgment everything regarding this matter. Cordially yours."
It was signed by the leader of Puerto Rico's fanatic Nationalists, Pedro Albizu Campos (see THE HEMISPHERE).
For the moment, there was no time to learn more. Ambulances nosed, moaning, through the crowd, loaded the wounded aboard. Presidential Secretary Charles Ross, who had been in the White House offices across Pennsylvania Avenue, rushed inside Blair House to find out: Would the President still make his trip to dedicate a statue in Arlington? Harry Truman—who had shrugged hurriedly into a dark blue suit and had run downstairs to look cautiously out the front door—did not hesitate. Said he: "Why, of course."
Secret Service men hustled him out a rear entrance and into his gold-trimmed Lincoln limousine. Convoyed by automobile loads of hard-faced agents, the big car rolled out of the drive, and off across the Potomac.
In New York, in Washington, in San Juan, Government agents began a high-pressure investigation of the weird assassination plot. Government agents roused by teletype combed Manhattan's Spanish Harlem; they picked up a covey of Puerto Rican Nationalists, arrested the wives of the two gunmen. Both women were dry-eyed and defiant. Cried Rosa Collazo to her three daughters: "Hold up your heads. Don't be ashamed."
In Washington's Gallinger Hospital, the wounded Collazo willingly told the tale of his crazy pilgrimage. He and his fellow plotter had known each other only two weeks. But they had agreed that the President should die, and that it was their sacred duty to kill him. Why? With flowery Latin eloquence, Oscar Collazo cried that his countrymen had been "enslaved" and that Puerto Rico's politicians were "tools" of the United States.