The Whiskey Rebel

by David Liss

  Tindall must have understood the note of triumph in Brackenridge’s voice, for he assented. In a few minutes, the two of them sat in Mr. Brackenridge’s office across from the desk. The lawyer sat facing them, and I stood behind him, too agitated to do otherwise.

  “I don’t much see the meaning of this,” said the sheriff. His cap was off and resting in his lap. Mrs. Brackenridge had offered to take it, but he assured her it was too crawling with lice to be welcome upon her hat rack. “There’s a warrant sworn, witnessed by the colonel himself.”

  “I have a great deal to say,” answered Mr. Brackenridge. “To begin with, there are witnesses who will contradict the details that Colonel Tindall has provided.”

  “Witnesses,” barked Tindall. “No doubt the woman’s co-conspirators. No one will credit anything such men say.”

  Mr. Brackenridge smiled. “They are among the witnesses, but not the only ones. We spoke with a group of Indians who say that you hired them to harass this lady and her husband.” Brackenridge, I must point out, did not lie, but repeated a lie I had told him.

  Tindall snorted. “That’s nonsense, sure enough. Those Indians are dead.”

  The sheriff now turned to observe Tindall. “I am sorry, Colonel, but precisely which Indians do you believe to be dead? You do not deny hiring the dead ones?”

  Tindall now blanched and cast me a gaze of unrestrained hostility. Perhaps it was meant to frighten me, but with what could I be threatened?

  “I know nothing about them. This woman’s lies will come out in court. I shall see her and her fellows prosecuted, and when they are convicted I will confiscate their property.”

  “You may wish to take your chances in court,” said Mr. Brackenridge. “It may strike you as a reasonable gamble, but there is no chance of confiscating anything. I have personally overseen the sale of these properties and the goods upon them.”

  “They cannot be sold,” said Tindall. “They belong to me.”

  “As you well know, title to the ground rents can be sold and, given the improvements made to the land, can be sold at considerable profit. I’m afraid there is nothing left for you to confiscate. You will receive your rents from the purchaser, but the stills and equipment-and, indeed, the secret to making the new whiskey-belong to the new owner.” He now turned to the sheriff. “If you must take the lady into custody, then do so. I insist upon a speedy trial, however, for I believe that information to be revealed will lead not only to my client’s acquittal but to an arrest warrant sworn for Colonel Tindall.”

  The sheriff studied Tindall and then Mr. Brackenridge. My thought apparently hardly mattered in this exchange.

  “Who holds the lease?” asked Tindall.

  Mr. Brackenridge shook his head. “I do beg your pardon, but I cannot tell you that. It is confidential, as my client wishes.”

  Tindall pushed himself to his feet. “You dare cross me, Brackenridge. The day will come when you will wish you never had.”

  “But today having crossed you yields such a delightful feeling,” he answered. “Rather warm inside, like a good glass of exceptional whiskey. I believe I shall savor it. Am I correct in assuming that you are withdrawing your complaint against Mrs. Maycott?”

  “Damn you, yes!” he shouted. He abruptly stormed from the room and then from the house.

  The sheriff sat in silence for a moment, occupied in no more complicated an operation than the removal of lice from his hat, which he nervously cracked between his teeth. Finally, he turned to me. “We still got two dead men, missus.”

  I swallowed hard. “Hendry shot Andrew. Before Andrew died, he shot Hendry.”

  “Mr. Brackenridge suggests Colonel Tindall might’ve had a hand in it.”

  “That is not what I saw,” I answered. This wasn’t the time to pursue Tindall. We could not prove his complicity in a court of law, for it would be our word against his-and his word had the power of wealth behind it. I would have to take him on in another way.

  The sheriff nodded. He replaced his hat and nodded to us both. Then he went outside to disperse the crowd.

  Ethan Saunders

  The new day brought much to think about and reflect on, but the first order of business was to finish my conversation with Duer. He had promised to meet me at the City Tavern, so that was where I traveled in the morning. There I found the trading room in an uproar of chaos that made my previous visit seem a scene from Easter prayer. Men were on their feet shouting at one another, red in the face. Two rather bloated gentlemen stood close enough that, in the heat of their exchange, they made each other’s faces slick with spittle. Clerks scrambled to keep track of trades, but the quick trades and angry progression made their task impossible, and most were filthy with hastily applied ink.

  I watched, not knowing what to think, like a street gaper watching the aftermath of a terrible accident. I stood that way some minutes until I noticed someone now next to me, a bespectacled older fellow with gray hair and a gray beard.

  He looked at me with some amusement. “Not certain what to make of it?” he asked, in accents that betrayed Scottish origins. “If this is your first time at trade, and it might be from the looks of you, you’ve chosen a bad day.”

  “Not my first time, and I’m not at trade. I’m merely curious. What has happened?”

  The Scotsman gestured with the back of his hand toward the room in general and at nothing in particular. “Bank shares are down, for the first time in some months. They were trading at 110 just a few days ago, but today they’ve dropped. They were trading at under 100 for a while, but there are some bargain hunters that have raised the price to 102, last I saw.”

  “Are you a trader in bank issues?” I asked.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I am merely an observer, like you, lad.”

  I looked at the fellow again. There was something familiar about him I could not place, as if he was a man I’d never met but heard spoken of more than once. He, like Lavien, was bearded, and that was unusual enough, but otherwise he seemed unremarkable, a serious, scholarly-looking fellow in a gray suit-none the best, but not terribly bad.

  “Do you know Duer?” I asked him.

  “Oh, I know him.”

  “Where does he sit? I don’t see him.”

  The man laughed. “He’s not here. The rumor is he’s gone back to New York on the early express coach. He has fled, as they say, the scene of his crimes.”

  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 cannot say no. If he refuses, he turns his back upon opportunities. But to Duer, these men are no more than firewood-to be used, burned, and then swept away.”

  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 desperat
e 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 cunning container meant to look like a rock but made of painted wood, with a sliding device upon the bottom. When I opened it, I found a piece of paper, no doubt the one I had seen him write on before leaving. It was another message in the eminently breakable code but far longer than the others I’d seen, and I had no choice but to retire to the nearest tavern, where I called for pen, ink, and paper.

  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 cannot be undone. The BUS will feel it soon enough, and Hamilton has no notion of it. As for L, he is a dangerous physical presence, but he is not nearly as clever as he believes. He thinks the business is isolated, and he will not learn otherwise until too late. You were overly concerned about S, who is a blunderer and a drunkard. He knows nothing about P and shall learn nothing. As for Mrs. P, she knows nothing of the impending ruin, and, once faced with penury, I am certain you may have her to use as you like.

  He stared at my transcript for a long time and then at me. “What does it all mean? There is some plot here, but I cannot even begin to fathom it.”

  “Neither can I,” I said. “As near as I can tell, there is a scheme to hurt Pearson, and consequently the bank. Somehow Duer is involved, but it is hard for me to determine if he is a primary actor or some sort of unwilling victim.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. But that is nothing. The bank and Pearson and the rest be damned, Ethan. This is about you, somehow. Whoever these people are, they mock you, call you names, and plan to make Mrs. Pearson a whore.”

  “Are you saying you think I ought to go to Lavien with this?”

  “By no means,” said Leonidas. “This is yours, Ethan. This is your burden to bear, and you must see it through as you see fit. If there is a conflict between your needs and the Treasury’s needs, you may be sure Lavien will not give a fig for yours-or about Mrs. Pearson’s, for that matter. I say that with respect for him, for I do think him honorable, but his honor, his sense of duty, must put his service to Hamilton above service to you-or to Mrs. Pearson. You know it. Whatever is to be done, you must do it alone.”

  “Entirely alone?”

  “It is not as though I have a choice, but you know you may depend upon me.”

  “And if you did have a choice?” I asked. “If I were to free you right now, would you continue to stand by me in this until the end?”

  “You won’t,” he said.

  “But if I did.” I don’t know why I chose to press the point at that moment, but his concern for me placed me upon the precipice of informing him that he was free already.

  “I don’t know,” he answered earnestly. He met my eye and did not waver.

  I appreciated his candor. How could I not? Yet he put me in a difficult position, for he was the only man I could trust entirely, and I could not do without him. So long as this crisis continued, I would have to keep the truth from him. He could not yet know he was a free man.

  Leonidas sensed I was lost in thought and leaned forward to distract me. “What shall you do
about the note? Do you plan to watch the tree?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not practical. Someone would have to watch it at all times, and there are only two of us.”

  “Then you’ll put it back before they discover you’ve taken it?”

  “No,” I said. “I want them to know I’ve found it.” I took a fresh piece of paper and wrote out a short note to replace the one I took. My note said only, I am coming to find you. “Let them ponder that,” I said.

  “What if they come to find you first?”

  “Then they shall save me a great deal of trouble.”

  I did not know if Hamilton would see me again. Once was charity, twice a nuisance; a third time might prove an outrage. I had no illusions about my reception, but then he could have no illusions about me. If I wanted to see him, I would see him. Perhaps I would wait for him on the street or visit him in his home. He knew me. He knew if I wished to speak with him, I would make it happen. For that reason, he admitted me right away.

  He sat at his desk, which was covered with four or five high piles of neatly stacked papers. He had a quill in one hand and a near-empty inkpot by his side.

  “I am very busy, Captain Saunders,” he said.

  “So am I. It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

  He set down the pen. “What can this be about? Mr. Pearson has returned, so I know you don’t visit me upon that score.”

  “You know I do, and that Mr. Pearson’s return is not an answer but another question.”

  “I seem to recall asking you not to involve yourself in this matter.”

  “I recall that too, but you and I both know you did not mean it. You would much rather I ran an inquiry parallel to that of Lavien. You will yield far better results if you have two men competing for the same ends. I will not say you engineered this competition, but you cannot regret it. Now let us end this dissimulation. You wish me to proceed, don’t you?”