Opening paragraphs........Part the Second

On the morning after McKinley's interment, Friday, 20 September 1901, a stocky figure in a frock coat sprang up the front steps of the White House.  A policeman, recognizing the new President of the United States, jerked to attention, but Roosevelt, trailed by Commander Cowles, was already on his way into the vestibule.  Nodding at a pair of attaches, he hurried into the elevator and rose to the second floor.  His rapid footsteps sought out the executive office over the East Room.  Within seconds of arrival he was leaning back in McKinley's chair, dictating letters to William Loeb.  He looked as if he had sat there for years.  It was, a veteran observer marveled, "quite the strangest introduction of a Chief Magistrate...in our national history."
-Edmund Morris,  Theodore Rex