The Whiskey Rebel

I felt myself tense as disappointment and anger coursed through me. I ought to have made him speak to me last night when he’d been in my grasp. It seemed to me that Duer was a most effective liar. He had, after all, fooled me.

“He owes you, doesn’t he?” the Scotsman said. “I can see the disappointment.”

“Not money, only his time,” I said, affecting calm. “You mentioned he fled his crimes. What crimes do you mean?”

He gestured at the room once more. “This chaos. Before leaving, he let it be known that there are some who have borrowed from the Bank of the United States who won’t be able to pay what they owe. He cast a bomb of chaos and then fled the explosion.”

“Why?”

The man shrugged. “Perhaps he is shorting bank stock. Perhaps he wishes to buy cheap. Perhaps he merely likes to keep the markets unpredictable, since a man of Duer’s sort thrives upon chaotic markets.”

“But he’s not here.”

“Some of these men act secretly as his agents. It is not necessarily a good thing to be, but when the most powerful trader on two exchanges asks a man to be his agent, he ca

I looked around the room once more and saw no one I knew, no one who could help explain these matters more clearly. The man with the beard was now engaged in watching some trades, and I troubled him no more. Indeed, every man was now trading or watching with rapt attention as men sold their shares of bank issues or bought in the desperate hope that the price would recover. All were standing and talking and trading. All but one. It was the frog-faced man in his brown suit and sour countenance. He traded nothing but sat hunched over a small piece of paper, writing something-I could not see what-in a small hand, as pinched as his expression.

I did not like this fellow showing himself, again and again. And it was then that something occurred to me-why the gray-bearded man had seemed to me familiar. I stepped outside, where Leonidas sat with a group of other servants, and called him aside, telling him what I needed of him.

“She won’t like it,” he said.

“It is of no moment. Bring her.”

He nodded and departed at once. I had no watch any longer, but it was yet early. Trading would continue for the next hour and a half, so I returned inside, all the while keeping my eyes upon the man with the gray beard and the man with the frog face-two figures who seemed to be of increasing importance in my life, though in both cases I could not say why.

Half an hour later, Leonidas returned, telling me he had brought whom I had asked. I went to the door, and my landlady, Mrs. Deisher, stepped inside the threshold, but no further. I did not want her to be seen, and I received a bit of good luck here, for the bearded man was absorbed in watching a trade.

“Sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Deisher, but this is important.”

“I am ready to give help, but I never like to have your Negro, to have him drag me from my home, as though abducting me.”

Leonidas shrugged. “Insisting is not abducting.”

“Leonidas apologizes,” I assured her. I gestured to the gray-bearded man. “Have you ever seen him before?”

She opened her mouth, raised her arm in a point, and was no doubt about to scream. In a single movement, I lowered her arm and clamped her mouth shut. “Let us be subtle, my good woman. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” she said. “That is Mr. Reynolds, the one who came to my house and paid me to admit you no more.”

I sent them both away and waited, drinking my porter, watching. The man with the frog face glanced over toward me now and again, but the bearded man did not. At noon, when the trading came to a conclusion, the bearded man took a fresh piece of paper from the leather envelope in which he stored his things and proceeded to write out a lengthy note. He then folded it into a small square and placed it inside something, though I could not see what. He rose and left the building.

In a moment I stood and left as well. Out upon the street, Leonidas remained where he had been before, sitting with the servants, but he pointed right, and so I proceeded to follow, just in time to see my quarry make another right upon Walnut Street. I remained distant, and the streets were sufficiently crowded and chaotic, with their usual press of people and beasts and wayward carriages, that to survive a man must look ahead of him and could not afford to look back. Thus I tracked him easily and observed again that he made another right upon Fifth.

This street was far less crowded than Walnut, and I hesitated as he approached the entrance to the Library Company building. I thought he might go inside-and, if so, I don’t know what I might have done, for there could be no way to follow without revealing myself. But he passed the entrance and then stopped for a moment by a large tree on the far side of the library. He leaned against it for a minute and then hurried on.

I knew enough of human nature and instantly ducked behind a watch house, for no sooner had he taken his first few steps than he turned around and looked behind him. He had, I knew, deposited something. He might have stifled the urge to look around while walking toward his goal, but, once having completed it, he could no longer resist the temptation. Fortunately, I had anticipated this move; I saw his body stiffen, I saw him begin to pivot, and so I hid myself effectively. I waited a moment as he went on, and then I did nothing more than take a seat upon a nearby wall.

I let a full half hour pass and then approached the tree I had observed the gray-bearded man molesting. It had a hole in it, and when I gently reached inside I found something that seemed to be the size and shape of a rock but was infinitely lighter. When I pulled it out, I saw it was a cu

The code had changed, and I could not simply apply the letters I previously recollected, but it was still a Caesar cipher and quite breakable. In the end, it was well worth the effort. Much had been mysterious to me, but now vast amounts were laid open, and at last I had some inkling of what was transpiring. Almost certainly, I knew far more than Lavien.

I read and reread the message. Its contents meant I had to do something I would almost certainly have preferred to avoid, for now I would have to go see Hamilton once more. But before that I would have to deal with the note itself.

I met with Leonidas at the Man Full of Trouble and showed him the message, which I had transcribed for him.

Being unable to communicate with you directly is becoming increasingly difficult, as there is much to report. Fortunately, I am growing adept with the codes. As you must know by the time you read this, P has returned to Philadelphia; he pretends that nothing has transpired, but Duer used him monstrous ill, and it ca