Mister Slaughter

One

Listen! Said the October wind, as it swirled and swooped through the streets of New York. I have a story to tell!

About change in the weather, and the whethers of men! Whether this one staggering past, the spindly gent, shall right himself against my onslaught before I take him to the wall, or whether that one there, with his prodigious belly, shall be fast enough to catch his tricorn as I throw it from his head! With a shove and a shriek I pass through the town, and what fast horse might ride me down?

None, thought Matthew Corbett in reply.

To be sure! Respect my comings and goings, and knowthat something unseen may prove a force no man may master.

Of that Matthew was undeniably certain, for he was having one devil of a time holding onto his own tricorn and balancing himself against the blasts.

It was near eight-thirty on a Thursday night, this second week of October. The young man was on a mission. He had been told to be at the corner of Stone and Broad streets at half past eight, and if he valued his hide he would report as ordered. Hudson Greathouse, his associate and senior member of the Herrald Agency, was in no mood these days to brook Matthew any easement concerning who was the boss and who was well; it was true enough, the slave.

But, as Matthew continued his brisk battle south along Queen Street with other citizens seemingly pushing against invisible walls in one direction or flying like bundles of empty clothes past him in the other, he thought that Greathouse's harsh attitude of late had more to do with celebrity than slavery.

After all, Matthew was famous.

Your hat's getting a bit high, don't you think? Greathouse had often asked since the successful conclusion of the mystery concerning the Queen of Bedlam.

Yes, Matthew had answered, as calmly as possible when faced with a human bull ready to charge any utterance that had the agitation of a red flag. But I do wear it well. Which was not enough to make the bull charge, but enough to make it snort with ominous anticipation of future violence.

The truth being, Matthew really was a celebrity. His exploits to determine the identity of the Masker and his near demise at the Chapel estate in the summer had given the town's printmaster, Marmaduke Grigsby, enough material for a barrage of Earwigs that made the broadsheet even more popular than the Saturday night dogfights up at Peck's Wharf. The initial story, written right after the end of the episode in July, had been restrained and factual enough, due to High Constable Gardner Lillehorne's threats to set fire to the printing press, but after Marmaduke's granddaughter Berry had detailed her own part in the picture the old newshound had nearly begun baying at the moon outside Matthew's residence, which was a refurbished dairyhouse just behind Grigsby's own home and printshop.

Out of decorum and common sense, Matthew had resisted telling the particulars of the tale, but in time his defenses had been weakened and finally crushed. By the third week of September the "Untold Story of our Own Matthew Corbett's Adventure with Venomous Villains and Threat of A Hideous Death, Part the First" was set in type, and the flames of industry-and the Grigsby imagination-had really started burning.

Whereas one day Matthew was simply a young man of twenty-three who had risen by fate and circumstance from New York orphan to magistrate's clerk to an associate "problem solver" at the London-based Herrald Agency, he was by the following afternoon being trailed by an ever-swelling mob of people who thrust upon him quills, inkpots and Earwigs so as to sign his name across the premier chapter of this adventure, which he hardly recognized anymore as being his own experience. It was apparent that whatever Marmaduke did not know for sure, he was certain to invent.

By the third and final chapter, published last week, Matthew had been transformed from a simple citizen among the nearly five-thousand other New Yorkers of 1702 into a knight of justice who had not only prevented the collapse of the colony's economic underpinnings but also saved every maiden of the town from being ravished by Chapel's minions. Running with Berry for their lives across a dead vineyard with fifty killers and ten trained vultures at their backs? Fighting a trio of blood-crazed Prussian swordsmen? Well, there was a seed of truth at the center of this fiction, but the fruit around it was a fantasy.

Nevertheless, the series had been a boon for Grigsby and the Earwig, and was much discussed not only in the taverns but around the wells and horse troughs. It was said that even Governor Lord Cornbury had been seen strolling the Broad Way one afternoon, wearing a yellow wig, white gloves and his feminine finery in tribute to his cousin, Queen Anne, as he read the most recent broadsheet with rapt, purple-painted eyes.

A gritty gust at the intersection of Queen and Wall streets whirled around Matthew the commingled aromas of fish, tarbuckets, wharf pilings, stockyard animals and their fodder, the contents of chamberpots thrown from house windows onto the cobblestones, and the bittersweet winey smell of the East River at night. If Matthew was not in the heart of New York, he was surely in its nose.

The wind had whipped into many of the lanterns that hung from street-corner posts and put the quit to their flames. Every seventh house was required by law to hang out a lamp, but tonight no man-not the wandering constables nor even their chief Lillehorne, for all his own puffery-might command the wind to spare a wick. This unceasing tumult, which had begun around five o'clock and showed no signs of abatement, had brought Matthew to his philosophical mental discussion with the bellowing bully. He had to hurry now, for even without consulting the silver watch in his waistcoat pocket he knew he was a few minutes late.

Soon enough, with the wind now pushing at his back, Matthew crossed the cobbles of Broad Street and by the tortured candle of a remaining lamp spied his taskmaster waiting for him ahead. Their office was only a little further along Stone Street at Number Seven, up a flight of narrow stairs into a loft said to be haunted by the previous tenants who'd murdered each other over coffee beans. Matthew had heard a few creaks and thumps in the last few weeks, but he was sure those were just the complaints of Dutch building stones settling into English earth.

Before Matthew could fully reach Hudson Greathouse, who wore a woolen monmouth cap and a long dark cloak that flailed about him like raven's wings, the other man strode forward to meet him and, in passing, said loudly against the blast, "Follow me!"

Matthew did, almost losing his tricorn once more when he turned to retrace his path. Greathouse walked into the wind as if he owned it.

"Where are we going?" Matthew shouted, but either his voice was swept away or Greathouse chose not to answer.

Though bound together in service to the Herrald Agency, the two "problem-solvers" could never be taken for brothers. Matthew was tall and slim, yet with the toughness of a river reed about him. He had a lean long-jawed face and a thatch of fine black hair under his ebony tricorn. His pale candlelit countenance attested to his interest in books and nighttime games of chess at his favorite tavern, the Trot Then Gallop. Due to his recent celebrity, and the fact that he thought himself deserving of such status since he really had almost been killed in defense of justice, he'd taken an interest in dressing as a New York gentleman should. In his new black suit and waistcoat with fine gray stripes, one of two outfits tailored for him by Benjamin Owles, he was every bit the Jack O'Dandy. His new black boots, just delivered on Monday, were polished to a glossy shine. He had an order in for a blackthorn walking-stick, which he'd noted many young gentlemen of importance in the town carrying about, but as this item had to be shipped from London he wouldn't enjoy its company until springtime. He kept himself clean as a soapdish and shaved to the pink. His cool gray eyes with their hints of twilight blue were clear and on this night untroubled. They cast a direct and steady gaze that some might say-and as Grigsby had said, in the second chapter-"could cause the ruffian to lay down his burden of evil lest it prove as heavy as prison chains."

That old inkthrower sure knew how to turn a phrase, Matthew thought.

Hudson Greathouse, who had turned to the left and was now striding several lengths ahead north along Broad Street, was in contrast to Matthew a hammer versus a lockpick. At age forty-seven, he was a broad-shouldered strapper who stood three inches over six feet, a height and dimension that upon meeting him caused most other men to look down at the ground to find their courage. When the craggy-faced Greathouse cast his deep-set black eyes around a room, the men in that room quite simply seemed to freeze for fear of catching his attention. The opposite effect was induced upon the women, for Matthew had seen the churchiest of ladies become a twittering flirt within scent of Greathouse's lime shaving soap. Also in contrast to Matthew, the great one had no use for the whims of current fashion. An expensively-tailored suit was out of the question; the most he'd go was a pale blue ruffled shirt, clean but well-worn, to accompany plain gray knee breeches, simple white stockings, and sturdy, unpolished boots. Under his cap his thick hair was iron-gray, pulled back into a queue and tied with a black ribbon.

f the two had anythi ng i n common other than the Herrald Agency, it was the scars they each wore. Matthew's badge of honor was a crescent that began just above the right eyebrow and curved into the hairline, a lifelong reminder of a battle in the wilderness with a bear three years ago, and lucky he was to still be walking the earth. Greathouse bore a jagged scar that sliced through the left eyebrow, and was-as he had explained in a petulant voice-presented to him by a broken teacup thrown by his third wife. Ex-wife, of course, and Matthew had never asked what had become of her. But, to be fair, Greathouse's real collection of scars-from an assassin's dagger, a musket ball, and a rapier swing-was worn beneath his shirt.

They were approaching the three-story edifice of City Hall, built of yellow stone, that stood where Broad Street met Wall. Lantern lights showed in some of the windows, as the business of the town demanded late hours. Scaffolding stood alongside the building; a cupola was being erected on the roof's highest point, the better to display a Union flag nearer Heaven. Matthew wondered how the town's coroner, the efficient but eccentric Ashton McCaggers, liked hearing the workmen hammering and sawing up there over his head, since he lived in his strange museum of skeletons and grisly artifacts in City Hall's attic. Matthew mused also, as Greathouse turned to the right and began walking along Wall Street toward the harbor, that McCaggers' slave Zed would soon be up in the cupola looking out over the thriving town and seaport, for Matthew knew the giant African enjoyed sitting silently on the roof while the world bargained, sweated, swore, and generally thrashed at itself below.

Not much further, past the Cat's Paw tavern on the left, and Matthew realized where Greathouse was taking him.

Since the Masker's reign of terror had ended at midsummer, there'd been no more murders in town. If Matthew were to volunteer to a visitor the most likely place to witness a killing, it would be behind the scabby red door that Greathouse now approached. Above that door was a weatherbeaten red sign proclaiming The Cock'a'tail. The tavern's front window had been shattered so many times by fighting patrons that it was simply sealed over with rough planks, through which dirty light leaked onto Wall Street. Of the dozen-odd taverns in New York, this was the one Matthew most studiously avoided. The mix of rogues and high-pockets who thought themselves financial wizards were fueled here in their arguments over the value of such commodities as head souse and beaver pelts by the cheapest, nastiest and most potent apple brandy ever to inflame a brain.

Distressingly for Matthew, Greathouse opened the door and turned to motion him in. The yellow lamplight vomited out a fog of pipesmoke that was at once carried off by the wind. Matthew clenched his teeth, and as he approached the evil-looking doorway he saw a streak of lightning dance across the dark and heard the kettledrum of thunder up where God watched over damned fools. "Shut that door!" immediately bawled a voice that both blasted and croaked, like a cannon firing a load of bullfrogs. "You're lettin' out the stink!"

"Well," Greathouse said with a gracious smile, as Matthew stepped into the rancid room. "We can't have that, can we?" He shut the door, and the skinny gray-bearded gent who was sitting in a chair at the back, having been interrupted in his massacre of a good fiddle, instantly returned to his display of screeching aural violence.

The cannon-voiced bullfrog behind the bar, whose name was Lionel Skelly and whose fiery red beard almost reached the bottom of his stained leather waistcoat, resumed his task of pouring a fresh-to use a word imperfectly-mug of apple destruction for a patron who turned a fishy eye upon the new arrivals.

"What, ho!" said Samuel Baiter, a man known to have bitten off a nose or two. To add to his charms, he was a heavy gambler, a vicious wife-beater, and spent much of his time with the ladies at Polly Blossom's rose-colored house on Petticoat Lane. He had the flat, cruel face and stubby nose of a brawler, and Matthew realized the man was either too drunk or too stupid to be cowed by Hudson Greathouse. "The young hero and his keeper! Come, have a drink with us!" Baiter grinned and lifted his mug, which slopped oily brown liquid onto the floorboards.

The second man in that declaration of "us" was a new figure in town, having arrived in the middle of September from England. He was almost as big as Greathouse, with huge square shoulders that strained his dark brown suit. He'd removed his tricorn, which was the same shade of Broad Way mud, to display why he was called "Bonehead" Boskins. His scalp was completely bald. His broad forehead protruded over a pair of heavy black eyebrows like, indeed, a wall of bone. Matthew didn't know much about Boskins, other than he was in his early thirties and unemployed, but had ambitions of getting into the fur trade. The man smoked a clay pipe and looked from Matthew to Greathouse and back again with small, pale blue eyes that, if showing any emotion at all, displayed utter indifference.

"We're expecting someone," Greathouse answered, his voice light and easy. "But another time, I'm sure." Without waiting for a response, he grasped Matthew's elbow and guided the younger man to a table. "Sit," Greathouse said under his breath, and Matthew scraped a chair back and eased himself down.

"As you please." Baiter quaffed from his drink and then lifted it high. He summoned a half-lipped smile. "To the young hero, then. I hear Polly's quite taken with you these days."

Greathouse sat down with his back toward the corner, his expression relaxed. Matthew took the measure of the room. Ten or twelve dirty lanterns hung overhead, from the end of chains on hooks in the smoke-greased rafters. Under a floating cloud of pipesmoke there were seven other men and one blowsy lady in attendance, two of the men passed out with their heads in a gray puddle of what might have been clam chowder on their table. No, there was an eighth man too, also passed out and face-down at the table to Matthew's left, and as Matthew recognized the green-glassed lantern of a town constable Dippen Nack lifted his swollen-eyed face and struggled to focus. Beside an overturned mug was the brutish little constable's black billyclub.

"You," Nack rasped, and then his forehead thumped down upon the wood.

"Quite taken," Baiter went on, obviously more stupid than drunk. "With your adventures, I mean. I've heard she's offered you a what did she call it? a 'season pass'?"

The invitation, on elegant stationery, had indeed arrived at Matthew's office soon after the first chapter was published. He had no intention of redeeming it, but he appreciated the gesture.

"You've read about Matthew Corbett, haven't you, Bonehead? If it wasn't for him, we couldn't walk the streets safe at night, could we? Couldn't even go out for a drink and a poke. Well, Polly talks about him all the time," said Baiter, with an edge of harshness creeping in. "About what a gentleman he is. How smart, and how noble. As if the rest of us men were just little creatures to be tolerated. Little useless creatures, but oh how that whore can go on about him!"

"I think the whole damned thing was made up, is what I think!" said the blowsy lady, whose sausage-skin was a gown thirty pounds ago. "Ain't nobody could live, fightin' fifty men! Ain't that what I think, George?" When there was no reply, she kicked the chair of one of the unconscious patrons and he answered with a muffled groan.

"Fifty men!" Dippen Nack lifted his head again. The sweat of effort sparkled on his ruddy, cherub-cheeked face. The constable was, in Matthew's opinion, though, closer to a devil than a cherub. Anybody who stole the gaol keys and went in at night to pee on the prisoners did not rate high in his book of life. "A damned lie! And me, boppin' that Evans bastard on the bopper and savin' Corbett's life, and not even gettin' my name in that rag! Takin' a knife in the arm for my trouble, too! It ain't fair!" Nack made a strangled sound, as if he were about to start crying.

"Sure he's a liar, Sam," said Bonehead, with a small sip from his own mug, "but that's a fine suit he's wearin'. Fittin', for such a smart cock to strut around in. How much that suit cost you?" This was spoken as Bonehead stared into the depths of his drink.

Now Matthew began to suspect why Greathouse had brought him here. Of all places, to the tavern where he knew two men had died in brutal fights right on this floor, which looked to him to be more blood-stained than brandy-splashed. Having clerked for Magistrate Nathaniel Powers, Matthew also knew that Lionel Skelly himself was no stranger to violence; the tavern keeper had cut off a man's hand with an axe he kept behind the bar. It didn't pay to try to swipe coins from the cashbox in here.

Greathouse spoke up, to parry the question: "Way too much, in my opinion."

There was a silence.

Bonehead Boskins slowly put his mug on the bar and aimed his eyes at Greathouse. Now he looked every inch a man who was neither too drunk nor too stupid but perhaps just enough of both to light his wick. In fact, he looked supremely confident in his ability to maim. Indeed, eager. "I was speakin' to the young hero," he said. "Not to you, old man."

Yep, Matthew thought as his heartbeat quickened and his guts went squirmy. Sure as rain. The crazed maniac had brought them here to get into a fight. It wasn't enough that Matthew had been doing very well in his arduous lessons on swordplay, map-making, preparing and firing a flintlock pistol, horsemanship and other such necessities of the trade. No, he wasn't progressing fast enough in that "fist combat" nonsense that Greathouse imposed upon him. Remember, Greathouse had said many times, you fight with your mind before you use your muscles.

It seemed that Matthew was about to get a demonstration of the great one's mind. And Heaven help us, he thought.

Greathouse stood up. He was still smiling, though the smile had thinned.

Matthew again counted the heads. The fiddler had stopped his fiddling. Was he a fighter, or a fixture? George and his unconscious companion were still face-down, but they might come to life at the first smack. Who could say what Dippen Nack would do? The blowsy lady was grinning; her front teeth had already been knocked out. Baiter would probably wait for Bonehead to bash a skull before he started nose-chewing. Skelly's axe was always near at hand. Of the five others, two looked like rough-edged wharfmen who craved a good bustarole. The remaining three, at a back table, were dressed in nice suits that they might not want to disfigure and were puffing on churchwarden pipes, though certainly they were no reverends. A throw of the dice, Matthew thought, but he really hoped Greathouse was not such a careless gamesman.

Instead of advancing on Bonehead, Greathouse casually removed his cap and cloak and hung them on wallpegs. "We just came in to spend a little time. As I said, we're expecting someone. Neither Mr. Corbett nor I want any trouble."

Expecting someone? Matthew had no idea what the man was talking about.

"Who're you expectin'?" Bonehead leaned against the bar and crossed his thick arms. A seam at the shoulder was threatening to burst. "Your lady friend, Lord Cornhole?" Beside him, Baiter sniggered.

"No," Greathouse replied, "we're expecting a man I might hire to join our agency. I thought this would be an interesting place to meet." At that moment, the door opened, Matthew saw a shadow on the threshold, heard the clump of boots, and Greathouse said, "Here he is now!"

Zed the slave walked in, wearing a black suit, white stockings and a white silk cravat.

As the place went quiet except for an inrush of breath and Matthew's eyes bulged in their sockets, Matthew looked at Greathouse with an effort that almost broke his neck and managed to say, "Have you gone mad?"

Two

Mad or not, Greathouse had a gleam in his eye and a measure of pride in his voice when he next addressed the slave: "Well! Don't you look upright!"

How much of this praise Zed understood was unknown. The slave stood with his back against the door, his wide shoulders slightly bowed as if he feared disturbing the tavern's precarious peace. His black, fathomless eyes moved from Greathouse to take in the other patrons and then back again, in what was almost to Matthew's viewpoint a gaze of supplication. Zed didn't want to be here, no more than he was wanted.

"That's the coroner's crow!" came a shrill cry from the lady. "I seen him carryin' a dead man easy as a sack a'feathers!"

This was no exaggeration. Zed's tasks in service to Ashton McCaggers included the cartage of bodies from the streets. Matthew had also witnessed the slave's formidable feats of strength, down in the cold room in City Hall's cellar.

Zed was bald and massive, nearly the same height as Hudson Greathouse but broader across the back, shoulders and chest. To look upon him was to view in its full and mysterious force all the power of the dark continent, and so black was he that his flesh seemed to radiate a blue glow under the yellow lamps. Upon his face-cheeks, forehead and chin-were tribal scars that lay upraised on the skin, and in these were the stylized Z, E, and D by which McCaggers had named him. McCaggers had evidently taught him some rudimentary English to perform his job but, alas, could not teach him to speak, for Zed's tongue had been severed from its root long before the slaveship made fast to the Great Dock.

Speaking of tongues, Skelly found his. It threw forth a croaking blast from Hell: "Get that crowout of here!"

"It's against the law!" shouted Baiter, just as soon as Skelly's voice finished shaking sawdust from the rafters. His face, mottled with crimson, wore the rage of insult. "Get him out or we'll throw him out! Won't we, Bonehead?

"Law? 'Gainst what law? I'm a constable, by God!" Nack had begun to stir himself once more, but in his condition stirring was a far stretch from standing.

Bonehead had not responded to the threat his companion had just unsheathed; it appeared to Matthew that Bonehead was taking in the size of the new arrival, and Bonehead was not so thick-skulled as to wish to batter himself against that particular ram. Still, being as men are men and men who drink potent liquor become more mettlesome as the mug is drained, Bonehead took a slug of valor and said, though nearly speaking into his drink, "Damn right."

"Oh, gentlemen, let's not go down that path!" Greathouse offered his palms to the bar, affording Matthew a view of the small scars and knots on the man's well-used knuckles. "And surely, sir," he said, addressing Baiter, "you don't really respect any decree Lord Cornbury might have pulled from under his gown, do you?"

"I said," came the tavern-keeper's voice, now not so much a croak as the metallic rasp of a pistol being cocked, "get that beast out of my sight!"

"And out of our noses, too," said one of the gentlemen at the rear, which told Matthew that they had no friends in this particular house.

"Very well, then." Greathouse shrugged, as if it was all done and sealed. "Just one drink for him, and we'll be gone."

"He'll drink my piss 'fore he gets a drop of my liquor!" hollered Skelly, and above Matthew the lanterns swayed on their chains. Skelly's eyes were wide and wild. His red beard, matted with the thousand-and-one grimes of New York, quivered like a viper's tail. Matthew heard the wind howl outside. Heard it shriek and whistle through chinks between the boards, as if trying to gnaw the place to splinters. The two wharfmen were on their feet, and one was cracking his knuckles. Why did men do that? Matthew wondered. To make their fists bigger?

Greathouse never lost his smile. "Tell you what. I'll buy a drink for myself. Then we'll leave everyone in peace. That suit you?" To Matthew's horror, the great man-the great fool!-was already walking to the bar, right up to where Bonehead and Baiter obviously longed to bash him down. Skelly stood where he was without moving, his mouth curled in a sneer, and when Matthew glanced at Zed he saw again that the slave had no interest in taking another step nearer destruction, much less getting a dirty mugful of it.

"He's gonna give it to the crow, is what he's thinkin'!" the lady protested, but it was already a thought in Matthew's mind.

We're expecting a man I might hire to join our agency, Greathouse had said.

Matthew had heard nothing of this. Hiring Zed? A slave who understood limited English and could speak not a word of it? Greathouse obviously needed no drink here, for he had ample supply of brain-killing liquor in his quarters at Mary Belovaire's boarding house.

As Greathouse approached the bar, Bonehead and Baiter moved away from him like cautious wolves. Matthew stood up, fearing a sudden burst of violence. "Don't you think we ought to-"

"Sit down," Greathouse answered firmly, with a quick glance back that had some warning in it. "Mind your manners, now, we're among good company."

Good company my assbone, Matthew thought. And, hesitantly, he sat down upon it.

The two wharfmen were edging nearer. Greathouse took no notice of them. Nack was rubbing his eyes, blinking at the huge black figure against the door. "One drink," Greathouse said to Skelly. "Your best, if you please." Skelly didn't move.

"I'm paying," said Greathouse, in a cool, calm voice, "for one drink." He reached into a pocket, brought out a coin and dropped it into the cashbox that sat atop the bar.

"Go ahead," Baiter spoke up, scowling. "Let him drink and get that black beast out of here, and to Hell with all

of 'em."

Greathouse's eyes never left those of the sullen tavern-keeper. "As the gentleman proposes," he said.

Suddenly Skelly smiled, but it was not a pretty sight. It revealed the broken black teeth in the front of his mouth, and showed that some faces wore a smile like the devil trying on a halo. It was just wrong. Because of that hideous smile, Matthew felt the danger in the room rachet up, like a bowstring tightening to loose an evil arrow.

"For sure, sir, for sure!" said Skelly, who then turned away to fetch a mug from a shelf and uncork a bottle of the usual nasty brandy. With a flourish, he poured into the mug a coin's worth. He thumped the mug down in front of Greathouse. "There you are, sir. Drink up!"

Greathouse paused, measuring the distance of Bonehead, Baiter and the two slowly approaching wharfmen. Now the three well-dressed gentlemen were on their feet, puffing their pipes and watching intently. Matthew stood up again, no matter what Greathouse had told him; he glanced at Zed and saw that even the slave was crouched in a position of readiness, but for what Matthew did not know.

Greathouse reached out and put his hand on the mug.

"One minute, sir," said Skelly. "You did say you wanted the best, didn't you? Well, lemme sweeten it for you." And, so saying, he leaned his head forward and drooled vile brown spittle into the drink. "There you are, sir," he said, again with that devil's smile, when he'd finished. "Now either you drink it, or let's see you give it to the crow."

Greathouse stared at the mug. "Hm," he said. His left eyebrow, the one with the teacup scar across it, began twitching. He said nothing more for a space of time. Bonehead began chuckling, and the lady just plain cackled. Dippen Nack gripped his constable's lantern and his black billyclub and began to try to stand up, but without a third arm he was having no luck at the task.

"Hm," Greathouse said again, inspecting the froth that bubbled atop the liquid.

"Drink up, then," Skelly offered. "Goes down smooth as shit, don't it, boys?"

To the credit of their good sense, no one answered.

Greathouse took his hand from the mug. He stared into Skelly's eyes. "I fear, sir, that I've lost my thirst. I beg your pardon for this intrusion, and I ask only that I might retrieve my coin, since my lips have not tasted of your

best."

"No, sir!" The smile disappeared as if slapped away. "You bought the drink! The coin stays!"

"But I have no doubt you can pour the liquor back into the bottle. As I'm sure you often do, when patrons are unable to finish their portions. Now I'll just take my coin and we'll be on our way." He began reaching toward the coinbox, and Matthew saw Skelly's right shoulder give a jerk. The bastard's hand had found that axe behind the bar.

"Hudson!" Matthew shouted, the blood pounding at his temples.

But the great man's hand would not be stopped. Greathouse and Skelly still stared at each other, locked in a silent test of wills, as one hand extended and another prepared to chop it off at the wrist.

In no particular hurry, Greathouse reached into the coinbox and let his fingers touch copper.

It was hard to tell exactly what happened next, for it happened with such ferocity and speed that Matthew thought everything was blurred and dreamlike, as if the mere scent of the brandy was enough to give a man the staggers.

He saw the axe come up, clenched hard in Skelly's hand. Saw the glint of lamplight on its business edge, and had the sure thought that Greathouse was going to miss tomorrow's rapier lesson. The axe rose up to its zenith and hung there for a second, as Skelly gritted his teeth and tensed to bring it crashing down through flesh, sinew and bone.

But here was the blurred part, for the axeblow was never delivered.

There came from the direction of the door a sound of Satan's minions thrashing in their chains, and Matthew turned his head fast enough to see Zed whipping out with the chain he'd just leaped up and wrenched off its hook from an overhead rafter. The chain still had a firelit lamp attached on the end Zed had thrown, and when it snapped across the room the chain not only wound itself around Skelly's upraised forearm, but the lamp hit Skelly midsection in the beard hard enough to shatter its glass sides. It was apparent in an instant that a blue flicker on a lump of wax might enjoy a feast of New York dirt and a week's drippings of apple brandy, for in a burst of eye-popping fire it consumed Skelly's beard like a wild dog would eat a muttonchop. As a thousand sparks flew around Skelly's face, Zed planted his boots and with one solid wrench of the chain pulled the old rapscallion over the bar as easily as hauling a catfish over the side of a skiff, the only difference being that a catfish still had whiskers.

Skelly hit the floor on his teeth, which perhaps was an improvement to the beauty of his dentals. Even with a mouthful of blood, he held firm to the axe. Zed began to haul him across the floor hand-over-hand, and with a tremendous ripping noise the back of the slave's suit coat split wide open as his back swelled. When Skelly was at his feet, Zed bent down, tore the axe loose and with an ease that looked like a child throwing jackstones he imbedded the axeblade in the nearest wall.

Some people, it seemed to Matthew, are born stupid. Which could be the only reason that, despite this display of fighting force, the two wharfmen jumped Greathouse from behind.

There was a flurry of fists and a barrage of cursing from the wharfmen, but then Greathouse had thrown them off with a shrug of disdain. Instead of smacking them both flat, as Matthew expected, he backed away from them. They made the supreme miscalculation of rushing after him, their teeth bared and their eyes drink-shiny.

They got perhaps two steps when a flying table hit them in their faces. The sound of noses breaking was not unmusical. As they went down writhing upon the planks, Matthew shuddered because he'd felt the wind of motion from Zed on the back of his neck, and he would not wish to be on the receiving end of that storm.

Skelly was spitting blood and croaking oaths on the floor, Baiter was backed up against a wall and looking for a way to squeeze through a crack, Bonehead drank down another swig of his brandy and watched things unfold with slitted eyes, and the blowsy lady was on her feet hollering names at Zed that made the very air blue with shame. At the same time, Greathouse and Matthew saw one of the gentlemen at the rear of the place-the one who'd remarked on the supposed offense done to his nose-slide a short sword from his cloak that hung on a wallpeg.

"If no one else will get that black bastard out," he announced with a thrust of his chin, "then allow me to run him through!"

Greathouse retreated. Now Matthew thought that surely it was time to head for the relative safety of the street. Yet Greathouse offered no suggestion for any of them to run for it, and instead that maddening half-smile was still stuck to his mouth.

As the swordsman came on, Zed looked at Greathouse with what Matthew thought might be a question, but whatever it might have asked it was disregarded. Dippen Nack had gotten himself standing, his billyclub lifted to apply his own brand of constable's justice. When he took a wobbly step toward Zed he was caught at the scruff of the neck by Greathouse, who looked at him, said a firm "Wo," and pushed him down into his chair as one would manage a child. Nack didn't try to stand again, which was just as well.

Giving out a horrendous screech, the lady of the house threw a mug at Zed with the intent of braining him. Before it reached its target, Zed caught the thing one-handed. With only a second's hesitation to take aim, Zed in turn threw the mug to smack against the swordsman's forehead, which laid the man out as if ready to be rolled into a coffin.

"Murr! Murr!" hollered Skelly, obviously wanting to cry Murder but finding his mouth not equal to the job. Still, he skittered past Zed like a dirty crab and burst through the door onto Wall Street, shouting " Murr! Murr!" and going straight for the Cat's Paw across the way.

Bonehead Boskins took the opportunity to act. He stepped forward, moving faster than any man his size might be expected to, and dashed the rest of his brandy directly into Zed's eyes.

The slave made a gutteral sound of pain and staggered back, both hands up to clear his vision, and so he did not see-as Matthew and Greathouse did-the brass implement of violence that Bonehead took from a pocket and deftly slipped upon the knuckles of his right fist.

Matthew had had enough of this. "Stop it!" he shouted, and moved to stand alongside Zed, but a hand grasped his coat and yanked him back out of harm's way.

"You just stand where you are," Greathouse said, in that tone he had that meant argument was a dead-end street.

Seeing Zed blinded by liquor, Baiter found his courage. He lunged forward and swung at Zed's skull, hitting him on the left cheekbone, and then gave him a kick on the right shin that made such a noise Matthew was sure the bone had cracked. Quite suddenly two black hands shot out, there was a ripping sound and Baiter had lost most of his shirt. An elbow was thrown, almost a casual movement. The stubby nose above Baiter's gaping mouth exploded so hard blood flew up among the lanterns. Baiter gave a cry like a baby for its mother and fell down upon the floor where he crawled up grasping against Bonehead's legs. The other man shouted, "Get away, damn it!" and kicked viciously to free himself even as Zed used Baiter's shirt to blot the last of the burning brandy out of his eyes.

Then, as Matthew knew it must, finally came the moment when the two bald-headed bulls must collide.

Bonehead waited for no other opportunity; with Baiter kicked aside and sobbing, Bonehead advanced a step and swung his brass widowmaker at Zed's face. The fist passed through empty air, for Zed had dodged the blow; was there one second, the next was not. A second blow had the same result. Bonehead crowded his opponent, the left arm up to deflect a strike and the right punching out with deadly purpose.

"Hit him! Hit him!" squalled the lady.

Bonehead had no lack of trying, and certainly no lack of brutal strength. What he lacked was success, for wherever the brass-knuckled fist struck, there Zed the slave was not. Faster and faster still went the blows, yet faster was Zed in dodging them. Sweat sparkled on Bonehead's brow and the breath heaved in his chest.

Hollering with drunken glee, a throng of men obviously from the Cat's Paw began to boil through the door, which hung half off its hinges due to Skelly's rough exit. Zed paid them no mind, his focus entirely on avoiding a brass kiss.

"Stand still and fight, you black coward!" Bonehead shouted, the spittle spraying from his mouth and his punches becoming wilder and weaker.

Desperate, Bonehead reached out with his left hand to grasp Zed's cravat, the better to hold him still, and no sooner had his fingers locked in silk did Zed's right arm cock back, the fist drove out squarely into Bonehead's jaw, and there came a solid and fearsome thunk of flesh on flesh that caused all the gleeful hollering to hush as if a religious vision had just been witnessed. Bonehead's eyes rolled back, his knees sagged, but he yet gripped hold of Zed and his own right fist was coming up in a blow that was more impulse than aimed, for it was obvious his brain had left the party.

Zed easily dodged it, with a small movement of his head. And then, in what men would later talk about from the Great Dock to the Post Road, Zed picked Bonehead Boskins up like a sack of cornmeal, swung him around and threw him, bonehead first, through the boarded-over window where so many other, yet so much smaller, victims of altercations had passed. When Bonehead crashed through on his way to a bruising encounter with Wall Street, the entire front wall shook so hard the men gathered there feared it would collapse on them and so retreated in a shrieking mass for their lives. The rafters groaned, sawdust fell, the chains creaked as their lanterns swung back and forth, and High Constable Gardner Lillehorne stood in the shattered doorway to shout, " What in the name of seven devils is going on in here?"

"Sir! Sir!" Nack was up again, staggering on his way to the door. Matthew noted that either the constable had spilled a drink in his lap, or was past need of a chamberpot. "Tried to stop it, sir! Swear I did!" He passed close to Zed and recoiled as if fearing to share Bonehead's method of departure.

"Oh, you shut up," Lillehorne answered. A rather eye-startling picture of fashion in a pumpkin-colored suit and tricorn and yellow stockings above polished brown boots, he came into the room and wrinkled his nose with disgust as he took stock of the scene. "Is anyone dead here?"

"That crow was gonna kill us all!" the lady shouted. She'd taken the liberty of seizing the unfinished mugs of brandy from the table where the wharfmen had been sitting, and had one in each hand. "Look what he did to these poor souls!"

Lillehorne tapped the palm of his gloved left hand with the silver lion's-head that adorned his black-lacquered cane. His long, pallid face with its carefully-trimmed black goatee and mustache surveyed the room, the narrow black eyes the same color as his hair, which some said was dyed liberally with India ink, and which was pulled back into a queue with a ribbon that matched his stockings.

Baiter was still mewling, clasping the ruin of his nose with both hands. The wharfmen were starting to stir, and one of them heaved forth a torrent of foul liquid that made Lillehorne gasp and press a yellow handkerchief to his pinched nostrils. George and his companion had gained consciousness but were still sitting at the table and blinking as if wondering what all the fuss was about. Two of the gentlemen were trying to revive the swordsman, whose legs began to jerk in an effort to outrun the mug that had knocked him into dreamland. At the far back of the room, the fiddler stood in a corner protecting his instrument. Out in the street, the gawkers shouted merrily as they peered through the door and the gaping aperture where Bonehead had passed through.

"Appalling," said Lillehorne. His cold gaze dismissed Matthew, fell upon the giant slave, who stood motionlessly and with his head lowered, and then came to rest on Hudson Greathouse. "I might have known you'd be here, when I heard Skelly hollering two streets away. You're the only one in town who could put such a fright in the old wretch that his beard flew off. Or is the slave responsible for all this mess?"

"I appreciate the compliment," said Greathouse, still wearing his self-satisfied and thoroughly infuriating smile. "But as I'm sure you'll find when you speak to the witnesses-the sober witnesses, that is-Mr. McCaggers' slave was simply preventing any physical harm to come to me or himself. I think he did a very able job."

Lillehorne again turned his attention to Zed, who stared fixedly at the floor. Outside, some of the shouts were turning nasty. Matthew heard "grave-digger's crow", "black beast", and worse, coupled with "murder" and "tar-and-feather".

"It's 'gainst the law!" Nack had suddenly remembered his station. "Sir! It's 'gainst the law for a slave to be in a public tavern!"

"Put him in the gaol!" the lady hollered between drinks. "Hell, put 'em all under the gaol!"

"The gaol?" Greathouse's brows lifted. "Oh, Gardner! Do you think that's really such a good idea? I mean three or four days in there-even one day-and I might be too weak to carry out my duties. And as I and I alone certainly admit arranging Mr. McCaggers' slave to meet me here, I would thus by law be the person to suffer."

"I think it ought to be the pillory, sir! For all of 'em!" Nack's evil little eyes gleamed. He pressed the tip of his billyclub against Matthew's chest. "Or the brandin' iron!"

Lillehorne said nothing for a moment. The shouts outside were becoming uglier still. He cocked his head, looking up first at Greathouse, then at Zed and back again. The high constable was a small-boned and slender man, standing several inches shorter than Matthew, and thus was dwarfed by the larger men. Even so, his ambition in the town of New York was the size of Goliath. To be mayor, nay, even the colony's governor someday was the bellow that fanned his flames. "Which will it be, sir?" Nack urged. "Pillory or iron?"

"The pillory may well be in use," Lillehorne replied without looking at Nack, "by a spineless constable who has gotten himself stinking drunk while on duty and allowed this infraction of the law on his watch. And mind you cease talking about irons before you find one branding your buttocks."

"But sir I mean " Nack sputtered, his face flaming red.

"Silence." Lillehorne waved him aside with the lion's-head. Then he stepped toward Greathouse and almost peered up the man's nostrils. "You hear me, sir. I'm not to be pushed, do you understand that? No matter what. Now, I don't know what game you've been playing at tonight and possibly I don't wish to know, but I don't want it to happen again. Is that clear, sir?"

"Absolutely," said Greathouse without hesitation.

"I demand satisfaction!" shouted the fallen swordsman, who was sitting up with a huge lump and blue bruise on his forehead.

"I'm satisfied that you're a fool, Mr. Giddins." Lillehorne's voice was calm and clear and utterly frigid. "There's a penalty of ten lashes for drawing a sword in a public place with intent to do bodily harm. Do you wish to proceed?"

Giddins said nothing, but reached out and retrieved his weapon.

The shouting in the street, which was drawing more men-certainly more drunkards and ruffians-from the other taverns, was increasing in volume and desire for justice in the form of violence. Zed kept his head down, and sweat was gathering on the back of Matthew's neck. Even Greathouse began to glance a little uneasily at the only way out.

"What I must do galls me sometimes," Lillehorne said. Then he looked into Matthew's face and sneered, "Aren't you tired of playing the young hero yet?" Without waiting for a reply, he said, "Come on, then. I'll walk you out of here. Nack, you'll stand guard 'til I send someone better." He started for the door, his cane up against his shoulder.

Greathouse got his cap and cloak and followed, then behind came Zed and Matthew. At their backs spewed dirty curses from the patrons who could still speak, and Nack's gaze shot daggers at the younger associate of the Herrald Agency.

Outside, the crowd of thirty or more men and a half-dozen drink-dazed women surged forward. "Get back! Everyone get back!" Lillehorne commanded, but even the voice of a high constable was not enough to douse the fires of this growing conflagration. Matthew knew full well that there were three things sure to draw a crowd in New York, day or night: a street hawker, a speechmaker, and the promise of a rowdy knockabout.

He saw through the crowd that Bonehead had survived his journey with but a gash on his brow and some blood trickling down his face, but he was still obviously less than fighting fit for he was careening around like a top, both fists swinging at the air. Somebody grabbed his arms to pin them, somebody else caught him around the waist, and then with a roar five other men leapt in and there was a free-for-all right there with Bonehead getting bashed and not even able to punch. A skinny old beggar held up a tambourine and began to rattle it around as he pranced back and forth, but someone with musical taste knocked it from his hand and then he began fighting and cursing like a wildman.

Still the citizens pressed in around their true quarry, which was Zed. They plucked at him and danced away. Someone came in to pull at his torn suitcoat, but Zed kept his head lowered and paid no mind. Ugly laughter-the laughter of brutes and cowards-whirled up. As he followed the slow and dangerous procession along Wall Street, Matthew suddenly noted that the wind had ceased blowing. The air was absolutely still, and smelled of the sea.

"Listen." Greathouse had drifted back to walk alongside Matthew. His voice was tight, a rare occurrence. "In the morning. Seven-thirty at Sally Almond's. I'll explain everything." He paused as he heard a bottle shatter against a wall. "If we get out of this," he added.

"Back! All of you!" Lillehorne was shouting. "I mean it, Spraggs! Let us pass, or I swear I'll brain you!" He lifted his cane, more for effect than anything else. The crowd was thickening, and now hands were balling into fists. "Nelson Routledge! Don't you have anything better to do than-"

He didn't finish what he was saying, for in the next instant no words were needed.

Zed lifted his head toward the ebony sky, and he made a noise from deep in his throat that began as the roar of a wounded bull and rose up and up, up to fearsome heights above the rooftops and chimneys, the docks and barns, the pens and stockyards and slaughterhouses. It began as the roar of a wounded bull, yes, but somewhere on its ascent it changed into the cry of a single child, alone and terrified in the dark.

The sound silenced all other noise. Afterwards, the cry could be heard rolling off across the town in one direction, across the water in the other.

All hands stilled. All fists came open, and all faces, even smirking, drink-swollen and mean-eyed, took on the tightness of shame about the mouth, for everyone in this throng knew a name for misery but had never heard it spoken with such horrible eloquence.

Zed once more lowered his head. Matthew stared at the ground. It was time for everyone to go home, to wives, husbands, lovers and children. To their own beds. Home, where they belonged.

The lightning flashed, the thunder spoke, and before the crowd began to move apart the rain fell upon them with ferocious force, as if the world had tilted on its axis and the cold sea was flooding down upon the land. Some ran for cover, others trudged slowly away with hunched shoulders and grim faces, and in a few minutes Wall Street lay empty in the deluge.

Three

"Very well, then." Matthew folded his hands before him on the table. He'd just hung his tricorn on a hook and sat down a moment before, but Greathouse was too taken with consuming his breakfast of eight eggs, four oily and glistening sausages, and six corncakes on a huge dark red platter to have paid him much attention. "What's the story?"

Greathouse paused in his feasting to sip from his cup of tea, which was as hot and as black as could be coaxed from the kitchen of Sally Almond's tavern on Nassau Street.

There could be no starker contrast between this esteemed establishment and the vile hole they'd visited last night. Whereas City Hall used to be the center of town, one might say that Sally's place-a tidy white stone building with a gray slate roof overhung by a huge oak tree-now claimed that position, as the streets and dwellings continued to grow northward. The tavern was warm and friendly and always smelled of mulling spices, smoked meats and freshly-baked pies. The floorboards were kept meticulously swept, vases of fresh flowers stood about, and the large fieldstone fireplace was put to good use at the first autumn chill. For breakfast, the midday meal and supper, Sally Almond's tavern did a brisk business among locals and travelers alike, in so much that Madam Almond herself often strolled about strumming a gittern and singing in a light, airy and extremely pleasing voice.

Rain had fallen all night, but had ceased near dawn. Through a large window that overlooked the pedestrians, the passing wagons, carts and livestock on Nassau Street could be seen beams of silver sunlight piercing the clouds. Directly across the street was the yellow brick boarding house of Mary Belovaire, where Greathouse was presently living until he found, as he put it, "more suitable quarters for a bachelor". His meaning was that Madam Belovaire, though being of a kind spirit, was wont to monitor the comings-and-goings of her lodgers, and go so far as to suggest they regularly attend church services, refrain from cursing and drinking, and generally comport themselves with great decorum as regards the opposite sex. All of which put Greathouse's large white teeth on the grind. The latest was that Madam Belovaire had been trying to matchmake him with a number of ladies she deemed respectable and upstanding, which in Greathouse's opinion made them as interesting as a bowlful of calfs-foot jelly. So it was no wonder that Greathouse had taken to spending some nights working at Number Seven Stone Street, but Matthew knew the man was sleeping on a cot up there in the company of a brandy bottle.

But not to say either of them had been bored in the last few weeks. Far from it. Since the Herrald Agency had been getting such publicity in the Earwig, there'd been no lack of letters and visitors presenting problems to be solved. Matthew had come to the aid of a young man who'd fallen in love with an Indian girl and wished to prove himself worthy before her father, the chief; there'd been the bizarre and disturbing night ride, in which Matthew had determined that not all the creatures on God's earth had been created by the hand of God; and there'd been the incident of the game of jingo and the gambler who'd had his prized horse cheated away from him by a gang of cutthroats. For Greathouse's part, there'd been his ordeal at the House at the Edge of the World that had so nearly cost him his life, and the eerie matter of the last will and testament of Dr. Coffin.

As Mrs. Herrald had told Matthew at dinner one night, back in midsummer when she'd offered him a position as a "problem-solver" with the agency her husband Richard had founded in London, You can be sure, Matthew, that the criminal element of not only England but also greater Europe is looking in this direction, and has already seen the potential. Whatever it might be: kidnapping, forgery, public and private theft, murder for hire. Domination of the mind and spirit, thereby to gain illicit profit. I could give you a list of the names of individual criminals who will most likely be lured here at some time or another, but it's not those petty thugs who concern me. Its the society that thrives underground, that pulls the marionette strings. The very powerful and very deadly group of men-and women-who even now are sitting at dinner just as we are, but they hold carving knives over a map of the new world and their appetites are ravenous.

So true, Matthew thought. He'd already come into contact with the man who held the largest knife, and sometimes in dark moments he imagined its blade pressing against his neck.

Greathouse put his cup down. He said, "Zed is a ga."

Matthew was sure he hadn't heard correctly. "A ga?"

"A ga," Greathouse answered. His gaze ticked to one side. "Here's Evelyn."

Evelyn Shelton, one of the tavern's two waitresses, was approaching their table. She had sparkling green eyes and blonde hair like a combed cloud, and as she was also a dancing instructress she was quite nimble on her feet at negotiating the morning crowd. Ivory and copper bracelets clicked and jingled on her wrists. "Matthew!" she said with a wide smile. "What might I get you?"

A new set of ears, he thought, as he still couldn't comprehend what a "ga" was. "Oh, I don't know. Do you have cracknel today?"

"Fresh baked."

"You might try the hot sausage," Greathouse urged as he chewed into another of the links. "Tell him how they'll make a man out of him, Evelyn."

Her laugh was like the ascending peal of glass bells. "Oh, they're spicy all right! But they go down the gullet so fast we can't keep 'em in stock! Only have 'em a few days a month as is, so if you want 'em you'd best get your order in!"

"I'll leave the fiery spice to Mr. Greathouse," Matthew decided. "I'll have the cracknel, a small bowl of rockahominy, some bacon and cider, thank you." He returned his attention across the table when the waitress had gone. "What exactly is a ga?"

"The Ga tribe. Whew, this is hot!" He had to blot his forehead with his napkin. "Damn tasty, though. Zed is a member of the Ga tribe. From the West African coast. I thought he might be, when you first described to me those scars on his face. They're given to some of the children at a very young age. Those determined to be suitable for training as warriors." He drank more tea, but obviously the sausage was compelling for he started immediately in on it again. "When I saw the scars for myself, the next step was finding out how well Zed could fight. I think he handled the situation very competently, don't you?"

"I think you could have been responsible for his death," Matthew said grimly. "And ours, as well."

"Shows how much you know. Ga warriors are among the finest hand-to-hand fighters in the world. Also, they have a reputation for being fearless. If anything, Zed held himself back last night. He could've broken the neck of every man in there and never raised a sweat."

"If that's so," Matthew said, "then why is he a slave? I'd think such a fearless warrior would have resisted the slaver's rope just a little bit."

"Ah." Greathouse nodded and chewed. "There you have a good point, which is exactly why I arranged with McCaggers to test him. It's very rare to find a Ga as a slave. See, McCaggers doesn't know what he's got. McCaggers wanted the biggest slave he could buy, to move corpses for him. He didn't know he was buying a fighting machine. But I needed to know just what Zed could do, and it seemed to me that the Cock'a'tail was the place to do it in."

"And your reasoning why this fighting machine became a slave, and why he just didn't fight his way out of his predicament?"

Greathouse ate a bite of corncake and tapped his fork quietly agai nst the platter. It was of i nterest to Matthew, as he waited for Greathouse to speak, that Sally Almond had bought all her plates and cups in that popular color called "Indian Blood" from Hiram Stokely, who'd begun to experiment with different glazes after rebuilding his pottery shop. Due to the rampage of Brutus the bull, the Stokely pottery was now doing twice the business it ever had.

"What put him in his predicament, as you call it," Greathouse finally replied, "will probably always be unknown. But I'd say that even one of the finest warriors in the world might be hit from behind by a cudgel, or trapped in a net and smothered down by six or seven men, or even have to make the choice to sacrifice himself that someone else might escape the chains. His people are fishermen, with a long heritage of seafaring. He might have been caught on a boat, with nowhere to go. I'd say he might have lost his tongue because he wouldn't give up the fight, and it was explained to him by some tender slaver that another body part would be the next sliced off. All possibilities, but as I say we'll likely never know."

"I'm surprised, then, that he just hasn't killed McCaggers and run for it."

"Now why would he want to do that?" Greathouse regarded Matthew as if he were looking at an imbecile. "Where would he go? And what would the point be? From my observation, McCaggers has been kind to him and Zed has responded by being as loyal " He paused, hunting his compass. "As loyal as a slave needs to be, given the situation. Also, it shows that Zed is intelligent. If he weren't, I'd have no interest in him. I wouldn't have paid the money for Benjamin Owles to sew him a decent suit, either."

"What?" Now this was getting serious. Greathouse had actually paid money for a suit? To be worn by McCaggers' slave? When he'd righted his senses, Matthew said, "Would you care to explain-as reasonably and rationally as possible-exactly why you have enough interest in Zed to entertain hiring him for the agency? Or was I dreaming that part of it?"

"No, you weren't dreaming. Here's your breakfast."

Evelyn had arrived bearing a tray with Matthew's food. She also showed an empty burlap bag, marked in red paint Mrs. Sutch's Sausages and, below that, the legend Sutch A Pleasure', to the other patrons in the room. "All out, kind friends!" Her announcement brought a chorus of boos and jeers, though in good nature. "We ought to be getting another shipment next month, which we'll post on the board outside."

"A popular item," Matthew remarked as Evelyn put his platter down before him.

"They refuse to believe it's gone until they see with their own eyes. If this lady didn't live so far away in Pennsylvania, I think Sally would go into business with her. But, anyway," she shrugged, "it's all in the spices. Anything else I can get for you?"

"No, this looks fine, thank you." When Evelyn retreated again and the hubbub died down, Matthew stared across the table into Greathouse's eyes as the man continued eating. "You can't actually be serious about hiring Zed."

"I'm absolutely serious. And as I have the authority from Katherine to make decisions in her absence, I intend to put things into motion right away."

"Things into motion? What does that mean?"

Greathouse finished all but a last bite of the sausage, which he obviously intended to savor when he'd gone through his corncakes. "First, the agency has to arrange to buy him from McCaggers."

"To buy him?"

"Yes, that's what I said. I swear, Matthew! Aren't you getting enough sleep? Don't things get into your head the first time these days?" Greathouse gave a wicked little grin. "Oh, ho! You're up late tripping the moonlight with Grigsby's granddaughter, aren't you?"

"Absolutely not!"

"Well, you say one thing and your blush says another."

"Berry and I are friends," Matthew said, in what he realized was a very tight and careful voice. "That's all."

Greathouse grunted. "I'd say two people running for their lives together across a vineyard either never want to see each other again or become more than friends. But I'm glad you brought her up."

"Me? I didn't bring her up!" For emphasis, he crunched his teeth down on a piece of the cracknel.

"She figures in my plan," Greathouse said. "I want to buy Zed from McCaggers, and I want to petition Lord Cornbury for a writ declaring Zed a freed man."

"A free-" Matthew stopped himself, for surely he did feel a bit thick-headed today. "And I suppose McCaggers will gladly sell you the slave he depends upon to do such a vital work?"

"I haven't yet approached McCaggers with this idea. Now bear with me." He chewed down the last bite of sausage, and again he reached for the tea. When that didn't do the trick, he plucked up Matthew's cider and drank half of it. "That jingo business you went out on. Walking into that den of thieves, and casting yourself as a foppish gambler. Well, the foppish part was true enough, but you really put yourself in danger there, Matthew, and don't pretend you didn't. If I'd known you were accepting a task like that, I'd have gone with you."

"You were fully occupied elsewhere," Matthew said, referring to the problem of Dr. Coffin that had taken Greathouse across the river to New Jersey. "And as I interpret the scope of my profession, I am free to accept or reject clients without your approval."

"Exactly so. Which is why you need someone to watch your back. I paid McCaggers a fee to allow Zed to dress up in the suit I bought for him and to come to the Cock'a'tail. I told him Zed would be in no danger, which is true when you consider what he can do."

"But you didn't know it was true. He had yet to prove himself." Matthew returned to the statement that had caused him to cease crunching his cracknell. "Someone to watch my back? You mean Zed would be my bodyguard?"

"Don't fly off the handle, now. Just listen. Do you know what instructions I asked McCaggers to give Zed last night? To protect the both of us, and to protect himself. I was ready to reach in if anything went wrong."

"Yes," Matthew said, with a nod. "That reach of yours almost got your hand chopped off."

"Everybody knows about that axe Skelly keeps behind the bar! I'm not stupid, Matthew!"

"Neither am I," came the calm but heated response. "Nor do I need a bodyguard. Hasn't it occurred to you that being in the company of a slave might cause more trouble than simply walking into a place-a den of thieves, as you say-and relying on your wits to resolve the problem? And I appreciate the fact that Zed is fearless. An admirable quality, I'm sure. But sometimes fearless and careless walk hand-in-hand."

"Yes, and sometimes smart and stubborn walk ass-in-hand, too!" said Greathouse. It was hard to tell whether it was anger or sausages flaming his cheeks, but for a few seconds a red glint lingered deep in the man's eyes; it was the same sort of warning Matthew occasionally saw when they were at rapier practice and Greathouse forgot where he was, placing himself mentally for a dangerous passing moment on the fields of war and the alleyways of intrigue that had both seasoned and scarred him. In those times, Matthew counted himself lucky not to be skewered, for though he was becoming more accomplished at defending his skin he would never be more than an amateur swordsman. Matthew said nothing. He cast his gaze aside and drank some cider, waiting for the older warrior to return from the bloodied corridors.

Greathouse worked his knuckles. His fists are already big enough, Matthew thought.

"Katherine has great hopes for you," Greathouse said, in a quieter tone of conciliation. "I absolutely agree that there should be no boundaries on what clients you accept or reject. And certainly, as she told you, this can be a dangerous-and potentially fatal-profession." He paused, still working his knuckles. It took him a moment to say what he was really getting at. "I can't be with you all the time, and I'd hate for your gravestone to have the year 1702 marked on it."

"I don't need a-" Matthew abruptly stopped speaking. He felt a darkness coming up around him, like a black cloak here amid these oblivious breakfast patrons of Sally Almond's. He knew this darkness very well. It was a fear that came on him without warning, made his heart beat harder and raised pinpricks of sweat at his temples. It had to do with a small white card marked with a bloody fingerprint. The card was in the writing desk in his home, what used to be the dairyhouse behind Marmaduke Grigsby's abode. Of this card, which had been delivered to his door by an unknown prowler after his adventure involving the Queen of Bedlam, Matthew had said nothing to any other person. He didn't wish Berry to know, and certainly not her grandfather with his ready quill and ink-stained fingers. Though Matthew had almost told Greathouse on several occasions he'd decided to close his mouth and shrug the darkness off as best he could. Which at times was a formidable task.

The card was a death-threat. No, not a threat. A promise. It was the same type of card that had been delivered to Richard Herrald, Greathouse's own half-brother, and after seven years the promise came true with his hideous murder. It was the same type of card that had been delivered to Magistrate Nathaniel Powers, whom Matthew had clerked for and who had brought Matthew and Katherine Herrald together. The death promise yet lingered over Powers, who had left New York with his family during the summer and gone to the Carolina colony to help his brother Durham manage Lord Kent's tobacco plantation.

It was a promise of death, this year or next, or the next year or the one after that. When this card was marked with a bloody fingerprint and sent to its victim, there could be no escape from the hand of Professor-

"Are you going to eat your rockahominy?" Greathouse asked. "It's lousy when it's cold."

Matthew shook his head, and Greathouse took the bowl.

After a moment during which the great man nearly cleaned all the rockahominy out of the bowl with four swipes of a spoon, Matthew's darkness subsided as it always did. His heartbeat returned to normal, the little pricklings of sweat evaporated and he sat calmly, with a blank expression on his face. No one was ever the wiser about how close they might be sitting to a young man who felt a horrific death chasing him down step after step, in a pursuit that might go on for years or might end with a blade to the back on the Broad Way, this very evening.

"Where are you?"

Matthew blinked. Greathouse pushed the bowl aside. "You went somewhere," he said. "Any address that I might know?"

"I was thinking about Zed," Matthew told him, and managed to make it sound convincing.

"Think all you like," came the quick reply, "but I've made the decision. It is absurd for a man of Zed's talent to be limited to hauling corpses around. I tell you, I've seen a lot of slaves but I've never seen a Ga in slavery before, and if there's a chance I can buy him from McCaggers, you can be sure I'm going to make the offer."

"And then go about setting him free?"

"Exactly. As was pointed out last night, it's against the law for slaves to enter taverns. What good would Zed be to us, if he couldn't enter where by necessity he might need to go?" Greathouse began to fish in a pocket for his money. "Besides, I don't like the idea of keeping a slave. It's against my religion. So, since there are several freedmen in New York, including the barber Micah Reynaud, there is a precedent to be followed. Put your money up, I'll call Evelyn over." He raised a hand for the waitress and the bill.

"A precedent, yes," Matthew agreed, "but every slave granted manumission was so approved before Lord Cornbury came. I'm wondering if he can be induced to sign a writ."

"First things first. Put your money up. You're done, aren't you?"

Matthew's hesitation spoke volumes, and Greathouse leaned back in his chair with a whuff of exhaled breath. "Don't tell me you have no money. Again."

"I won't, then." Matthew almost shrugged but he decided it would be risking Greathouse's wrath, which was not pretty.

"I shouldn't stand for you," Greathouse said as Evelyn came to the table. "This will be the third time in a week." He smiled tightly at the waitress as he took the bill, looked it over and paid her the money. "Thank you, dear," he told her. "Don't take any wooden duits."

She gave that little bell-like laugh and went about her business.

"You're spending too much on your damned clothes," Greathouse said, standing up from his chair. "What's got your money now? Those new boots?"

Matthew also stood up and retrieved his tricorn from its hook. "I've had expenses." The boots were to be paid off in four installments. He was half paid on his most recent suit, and still owed money on some shirts from Benjamin Owles. But they were such fine shirts, in chalk white and bird's-egg blue with frills on the front and cuffs. Again, the latest fashion as worn by young men of means. Why should I not have them, he thought, if I wish to make a good impression!

"Your business is your business," Greathouse said as they walked through the tavern toward the door. "Until it starts taking money out of my pocket. I'm keeping count of all this, you know."

They were nearly at the door when a middle-aged woman with thickly-curled gray hair under a purple hat and an exuberant, sharp-nosed face rose from the table she shared with two other ladies to catch Matthew's sleeve. "Oh, Mr. Corbett! A word, please!"

"Yes, madam?" He knew Mrs. Iris Garrow, wife of Stephen Garrow the Duke Street horn merchant.

"I wanted to ask if you might sign another copy of the Earwig for me, at your convenience? Sorry to say, Stephen accidentally used the first copy I had to kill a cockroach, and I've boxed his ears for it!"

"I'll be glad to, madam."

"Any new adventures to report?" breathlessly asked one of the other ladies, Anna Whitakker by name and wife to the Dock Ward alderman.

"Wo," Greathouse answered, with enough force to shake the cups of tea on their table. He grasped Matthew's elbow and pushed him out the door. "Good morning to you!"

Outside on Nassau Street, in the cool breeze with the silver sunlight beaming down, Matthew reflected that one might be a celebrity one day and the next have cockroach entrails smeared across one's name. The better to wear nice clothes, hold your head up high and luxuriate in fame, while it lasted.

"There's one more thing," Greathouse told him, stopping before they'd moved very far from Sally Almond's door. "I wish to know the extent of Zed's intelligence. How much he can grasp of English, for instance. How quickly he might be taught. You can help me."

"Help you how?" Matthew instantly knew he was going to regret asking.

"You know a teacher," Greathouse answered. When Matthew didn't immediately respond, he prodded: "Who helps Headmaster Brown at the school."

Berry Grigsby, of course. Matthew stepped aside to get out of the way of a passing wagon that pulled a buff-colored bull to market.

"I want her opinion. Bring yourself and your lady friend to City Hall at four o'clock. Come up to McCaggers' attic."

"Oh, she'll love that!" Matthew could picture Berry up in that attic, where McCaggers kept his skeletons and grisly relics of the coroner's craft. She'd be out of there like a cannonball shot from a twelve-pounder.

"She doesn't have to love it, and neither do you. Just be there." Greathouse narrowed his eyes and looked north along Nassau. "I have an errand to run, and it may take me awhile. I presume you have something to do today that doesn't require the risk of your life?"

"I'll find something." There were always the detailed reports of past cases that Matthew was scribing. Once a clerk, always so.

"Four o'clock, then," said Greathouse, and began to stride north along the street, against the morning traffic.

Matthew watched him go. I have an errand to run. Something was up. Greathouse was on the hunt. Matthew could almost see him sniffing the air. He was in his element, a wolf among sheep. On a case, was he? Who was the client? If so, he was keepi ng it a secret from Matthew. Well, so was Matthew keepi ng a secret. Two secrets, really: the blood card and the amount of debt he was carrying.

A third secret, as well.

Your lady friend, Greathouse had said.

Would that it were more, Matthew thought. But in his situation, in his dangerous profession, with the blood card laid upon him

Lady friend would have to do.

When he'd watched Greathouse out of sight, Matthew turned south along Nassau. He walked toward Number Seven Stone Street, where he would spend the morning scribing in his journal and from time to time pausing to mark what might have been the faint laughter of distant ghosts.

Four

Clouds moved across the blue sky, and the sunlight shone down upon villages and hills daubed with red, gold and copper. As the day progressed, so did the affairs of New York. A ship with its white sails flying came in past Oyster Island to make fast at the Great Dock. Higglers selling from their pushcarts a variety of items including sweetmeats, crackling skins and roasted chestnuts did a lively business, drawing an audience for their wares with young girls who danced to the bang and rattle of tambourines. A mule decided to show its force of will as it hauled a brickwagon along the Broad Way, and its subsequent stubborn immobility caused a traffic jam that frayed tempers and set four men to fighting until buckets of water poured on their heads cooled their enthusiasm. A group of Iroquois who had come to town to sell deerskins watched this entertainment solemnly but laughed behind their hands.

Several women and the occasional man visited the cemetery that stood behind a black iron fence alongside Trinity Church. There in the shade of the yellow trees, a flower or a quiet word was delivered to a loved one who had journeyed on from this earthly vale. Not much time was taken to linger here, however, for all knew that God accepted the worthy pilgrims with open arms, and life indeed was for the living.

Fishing boats in the rivers pulled up nets shimmering with striped bass, shad, flounder and snapper. The ferry between Van Dam's shipyard on King Street and the landing over the Hudson in Weehawken was always active for travelers and traders, who often found that the winds or currents could make even such a simple trip a three-hour adventure.

Across the city the multitudinous fires of commerce-be they from blacksmith's furnaces or tallow chandler's pots-burned brightly all the day, sending their signatures of smoke up through a mason's delight of chimneys. Closer to earth, workmen labored at new buildings that showed the northward progress of civilization. The boom of mallets and scrape of sawblades seemed never ceasing, and caused several of the eldest Dutch residents to recall the quiet of the good old days.

Of particular interest was the fact that the new mayor, Phillip French, was a solid, foursquare individual whose aim was to put his shoulder to the wheel and get more of the city's streets paved with cobblestones; this enterprise, too, was directed northward past Wall Street, but as it cost money from the treasury, the task was being currently stalled in paperwork by Governor Lord Cornbury, who was seldom seen in public these days outside the walls of his mansion in Fort William Henry.

All these events were of the common clay of New York. In one form or fashion, they were repeated as surely as dawn and dusk. But one event happening this afternoon, at four o'clock by Matthew's silver watch, had never before taken place: the ascent of Berry Grigsby up a narrow set of stairs in City Hall, toward Ashton McCaggers' realm in the attic above.

"Careful," Matthew said lest she lose her footing, but with an-other step it was he who stumbled behind Berry and found himself grasping a handful of her skirt to prevent a fall.

"Excuse you," she told him crisply, and pulled her skirt free at the same time as his hand flew away like a bird that had landed on a griddlecake iron. Then she gathered her grace and continued up the rest of the steps, where she came to the door at the top. She glanced back at him, he nodded, and she knocked at the door just as he'd instructed.

These days their relationship was, as a problem-solver might say, complicated. It was known to both of them that her grandfather had invited Berry to come from England in order to find her not necessarily a position, but a proposition. Up at the zenith of the list of eligible marriage candidates, at least in Marmaduke's conniving mind, was a certain citizen of New York named Corbett, and thus had Matthew been invited to make the dairyhouse his own miniature mansion, and to enjoy meals and companionship with the Grigsby clan, they being only a few steps from his own front door. Just showher around the town a little, Marmaduke had urged. Escort her to a dance or two. Would that kill you?

Matthew wasn't sure. Her last escort, his friend and chess companion Effrem Owles, the tailor's son, had stepped into a muskrat hole while walking Berry home beside the East River one evening, and his dancing days were over until the swelling of his ankle subsided. But whenever Matthew saw his friend lately, either sitting at the Trot Then Gallop or limping along the street on a crutch, Effrem's eyes widened behind his round spectacles and he wanted to know what Berry was wearing today, and where was she going, and did she ever say anything about him, and all such buffle-headed chatter as that.

I certainly don't know! Matthew had answered, a bit too stridently. I'm not her keeper! And I don't have time for even talking about her, anyhow.

But Matthew, Matthew! And it really was pitiful, the way Effrem hobbled on that crutch. Don't you think she's the prettiest girl you ever saw?

Matthew wasn't sure about that, either, but he did know that standing this close to her, here in the narrow little stairway awaiting an answer to the knock on McCaggers' door, she smelled very nice. It was perhaps the scent of the cinammon soap with which she washed the curly tresses of her coppery-red hair, or the faintly-sweet aroma of the blue wildflowers that adorned the rim of her straw hat. She was nineteen years old, her birthday being in the last week of June; it had been celebrated, if one was to put it suchly, aboard the ill-fated vessel that had brought her across the Atlantic and deposited her as a moldy mess staggering down the gangplank in midsummer, which was the first sight Matthew had had of her. But that was then and now was now, and so much the better. Berry's cheeks and her finely-chiseled nose were dusted with freckles, her jaw firm and resolute, her eyes dark blue and just as curious about the world as those of her esteemed grandfather. She wore a lavender-hued dress with a lace shawl about her shoulders, for last night's rain had brought a chill to the air. Before their initial meeting, Matthew had expected her to be a gnome to match Marmaduke's misshapen proportions, yet she stood almost at his own height and was anything but gnomely. In fact, Matthew did find her to be pretty. And more than that, actually. He found her to be interesting. Her descriptions of London, its citizens, and her travels-and misadventures-across the English countryside kept him enthralled during their mealtimes together at Marmaduke's table. He hoped to someday see that enormous city, which appealed to him not only for its variety but for its atmosphere of intrigue and danger gleaned from his readings of the London Gazette. Of course, he hoped to live long enough to get there, as he had intrigues and dangers enough in New York.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Berry asked.

"Like what?" He'd let his mind wander and his eyes linger, and so he immediately brought himself back to the business at hand. In answer to Berry's knock, a small square aperture in the door flipped up and an eye-glassed dark brown eye peered out. The first time Matthew had visited up here, he'd been witness to McCaggers' experiments with pistols on Elsie and Rosalind, the two dress-maker's forms that served for target practice. Not to mention the other items behind that door. In another minute or two, Berry was going to be beating a hasty retreat back down the stairs.

The door opened. Ashton McCaggers said, in a light and pleasant voice, "Good afternoon. Please come in."

Matthew motioned for Berry to enter, but she was paying no attention to him anyway and had already started across the threshold. Matthew followed her, McCaggers closed the door, and then Matthew had almost run smack into Berry because she was standing there, quite still, taking stock of the coroner's heaven.

The light through the attic's windows streamed upon what hung suspended from the rafters above their heads. McCaggers' "angels", as he'd once described them to Matthew, were four human skeletons, three adult-sized and one a child. Adorning the walls of this macabre chamber were twenty or more skulls of different sizes, some whole and some missing jawbones or other portions. Wired-together bones of legs, arms, ribcages and hands served as strange decorations that only a coroner could abide. In the room, which was quite large, stood a row of honey-colored file cabinets atop which were arranged more bone displays. There were animal skeletons as well, showing that McCaggers gathered bones for the sake of their shapes and variety. Next to a long table topped with beakers of fluid in which objects of uncertain-but certainly disturbing-origin floated was McCaggers' rack of swords, axes, knives, muskets, pistols and cruder weapons such as clubs studded with frightful-looking nails. It was before this assortment of things that turned human beings into boneyards that Hudson Greathouse stood, holding in one hand an ornately-decorated pistol he was in the process of admiring.

He looked now from the pistol at Berry, and said with a faint smile, "Ah. Miss Grigsby."

Berry didn't answer. She was yet motionless, still studying the grisly surroundings, and Matthew wondered if she could find her tongue.

"Mr. McCaggers' collections," Matthew heard himself say, as if it would do any good.

A silence stretched, and finally McCaggers said, "Can I get anyone some tea? It's cold, but-"

"What a magnificent " Berry paused, seeking the correct word. "Gallery," she decided. Her voice was calm and clear and she stretched out an arm toward the child-sized skeleton that hung nearest her. Matthew winced, thinking she was going to touch its hand, but of course it was too high for her to reach. Though not by much. She turned her gaze toward the coroner, and as Matthew walked quietly around to one side he could see her mind at work, examining the man who lived amid such a museum. "I presume these were unclaimed corpses, and the cemetery is not filling up so quickly in New York that there's no more room?"

"Indeed, not, and you presume correctly." McCaggers allowed himself a hint of a smile. He took off his spectacles and cleaned them on a handkerchief from the pocket of his black breeches. The better to see Berry more clearly, Matthew thought. McCaggers was only three years older than Matthew, was pale and of medium height and had light brown hair receding from a high forehead. He wore a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and was perpetually a day or two away from a decent shave. In spite of that, he kept himself and his attic as neat as Sally Almond's kitchen. He put his spectacles back on, and seemed to view Berry in a new light. "I don't have many visitors here. The ones I do have usually cringe, and can't wait to get out. Most people are you know so afraid of death."

"Well," Berry answered, "I'm not fond of the idea," and she gave Matthew a quick glance that said she still hadn't quite gotten over their brush with mortality in the form of hawk talons and killers' knives at the Chapel estate. "But for the sake of form, your specimens are very interesting. One might say artful."

"Oh, absolutely!" McCaggers almost grinned, obviously pleased to have discovered a kindred spirit. "The bones are beautiful, aren't they? As I once told Matthew, to me they represent everything fascinating about life and death." He gazed up at the skeletons with an expression of pride that made Matthew's flesh crawl. "The young man and woman-those two there-came with me from Bristol. The little girl and older man were found here. My father was a coroner in Bristol, you know. As was my grandfather before-"

There came the loud snap of the pistol's trigger being pulled, which served to stop McCaggers' recitation of his family history.

"Our business at hand," said Greathouse, who nodded toward a table across the attic where Zed sat in a spill of light cleaning and polishing some of the forceps, calipers and little blades that were tools of the coroner's trade. Zed's attire was a gray shirt and brown breeches, far removed from his suit of last night. When he looked up and saw everyone staring at him he returned the attention impassively, and then shifted his chair so his broad back was presented to his audience. He continued his work with admirable dignity.

"So," McCaggers went on, again concentrating on Berry. "You have an appreciation for art?"

Oh for Lord's sake! Matthew thought. If Effrem were present, the tailor's son might feel a twinge of jealousy at this obvious play for Berry's interest.

"I do, sir," Berry answered. "Most certainly."

Matthew could have told McCaggers how Berry's talent for drawing had helped solve the puzzle of the Queen of Bedlam, but he hadn't been asked. He shot a glance at Greathouse, who looked as if he were ready to shoot the coroner.

"Ah!" It was spoken by McCaggers as a sublime statement. Behind his spectacles his eyes took in Berry from shoetoe to hat brim. "And as a teacher, you have a curiosity for shall we say the unusual?"

Now Berry did appear a little flustered. "Pardon me?"

"The unusual," McCaggers repeated. "Not just in forms of art, but forms of creation?"

Berry looked to Matthew for help, but Matthew shrugged; he had no earthly idea what McCaggers was driving at.

"Listen," Greathouse spoke up. "In case you've forgotten, we're here about-"

"I don't forget anything," came the reply, which carried a touch of frost. "Ever. Miss Grigsby?" His voice warmed again with her name. "May I show you my greatest treasure?"

"Well I'm not sure I'm-"

"Of course you're worthy. Being interested in forms of art, and creation, and a teacher as well. Also, I think you might like to see a mystery that has no answer. Would you?"

"All mysteries have answers," Greathouse said. "It's just finding the one that fits."

"So you say." With that remark, McCaggers turned away and walked past a bookcase full of ancient-looking tomes bound in scabby leather. He went to a massive old black chest-of-drawers, which stood next to a cubbyhole arrangement that held rolled-up scrolls of paper. From the bottom drawer of the chest, McCaggers removed a small red velvet box. He came back to Berry bearing the red box as if it held the finest emerald from the mines of Brazil. "This is my greatest treasure," he said quietly. "A mystery that has no answer. It was given to my grandfather, as payment for work done. My father passed it along to me. And now " He paused, about to open the box. Matthew noted that even Zed had put aside his work and was watching intently. "I've never shown this to anyone else, Miss Grigsby. May I call you 'Berry?"

She nodded, staring at the box.

"God creates all," McCaggers said, his spectacles reflecting red. "And all suits God's purpose. What then, is this?"

He raised the velvet lid, and both Berry and Matthew saw what was inside as McCaggers tilted the box toward them.

It was an ugly piece of dark brown wood, curved and scored and about five inches long, that came to a bladelike point.

"Hm," Matthew said, with a lift of his eyebrows that betrayed his amusement at McCaggers' folly. "Very interesting."

"And of course, by that tone of voice, you tell me you have no idea what you're looking at. Berry, would you care to guess what this is?"

Greathouse had put aside the pistol and come nearer. He offered his comment without being asked. "A tent stake, I'd say. Wouldn't care to stake my tent on it in a windstorm, though."

"I'll tell you where this was found," McCaggers said, as he drew a finger along the item's length. "Are you familiar with the bell pits of Somerset?"

"The coalfield? Yes, I know that area."

McCaggers nodded. He picked the item up and held it before them. "This was found sixty feet underground, in the wall of a bell pit near Nettlebridge. It's a tooth."

There was a span of silence, which after a few seconds was broken by Greathouse's rude guffaw. "A tooth! Sixty feet under? In a coalmine?"

"That's correct. I know a tooth when I see one, Mr. Greathouse. This is very old. A thousand years? Five thousand? Who can say? But you're missing the larger picture, so to speak."

"Which is?"

Berry answered, in a quiet voice: "The size of the tooth. f-from one tooth-you speculate the size of the jaw and then the head "

"Correct," the coroner said. "It must have belonged to what I can only say would have been " He hesitated, and fixed his gaze on the vicious point. "A monster," he finished.

"A monster!" Greathouse laughed again, but this time it didn't have the same force or conviction. "Where do you keep your rum barrel up here?"

"From what I understand," McCaggers continued, "the Somerset miners occasionally bring up bones that none of the locals can identify as being from any animal anyone's ever seen. They're considered to be ill omens, and so they're disposed of however one would dispose of such things. This tooth escaped destruction. Would you care to hold it?" He offered it toward Greathouse, who in spite of his courage in all things swords or fistic seemed to blanch a bit and recoiled from the gift.

Matthew found himself stepping forward. He opened his hand and McCaggers placed the tooth in his palm. It was as heavy as a stone of that size might be, yet it was surely no stone. Matthew could see serrations along one edge that might still do damage to flesh.

Berry pressed against his shoulder, peering at the object, and Matthew made no move to widen the distance between them.

"A dragon's tooth," Berry said at last, the sound of both excitement and awe in her voice. "That's what it must be. Yes?" She looked at McCaggers for confirmation.

"Some might say that. Those who believe in dragons, I mean."

"What else could it be, then?"

"A dragon-if such existed outside mythology-might be considered to conquer its enemies with fire. This creature was a killer made to tear away huge pieces of meat. A supreme carnivore. You see the edge on that tooth? A masterpiece of form and function. Do you have any idea what a jaw full of those could do to say a side of beef?"

"Dragons! Carnivores!" Greathouse had recovered his wits and his color. "This is nonsense, McCaggers! I mean no disrespect, but I think your grandfather has passed along something from a scoundrel's workshop!"

McCaggers regarded him somberly and then took the object from Matthew's palm. "That may well be," he said as he returned it to the velvet box, "but then again perhaps it's evidence of what God told Job."

Greathouse frowned. "What are you on about now?"

"God spoke to Job," McCaggers said, "from the whirlwind. He told Job about the behemoth and the leviathan.

Unimaginable creatures of size and power. He told Job to gird up his loins like a man, and face what was to come. He said, I will demand of thee." McCaggers saw that none of this was getting through to Greathouse. "Don't you know your Bible?"

"I know the part that says if men respect me, I'll respect them. Is there anything else?"

McCaggers pointedly ignored him, focusing his attention to Matthew and Berry. "This may be a tooth from behemoth, or from leviathan. As I said before, it's a mystery without an answer."

"Maybe they know the answer by now." Greathouse motioned upward, where the coroner's angels watched with hollow sockets. "Too bad you have to die before you find out."

"Yes, that is unfortunate," McCaggers agreed, and closed the lid of his red velvet box. Then he spoke directly to Berry. "I thought you might enjoy seeing it, from the viewpoint of both a teacher and a person who obviously appreciates the art of function. Just as the bones of a human skeleton are all formed for specific tasks, so was this tooth. Whatever the creature was that possessed it, you can be sure the animal was formed for the function of both destruction and survival. My further question is what was in God's will to create such a monster?" As he knew no reply could be forthcoming, he turned away once more, took the box back to the chest-of-drawers and deposited it where it had been.

"About Zed," Greathouse prompted. Beyond McCaggers, the slave had returned to his task of cleaning the instruments and seemed not to care a fig about anything else.

"I appreciate your experiment with him," McCaggers said as he strolled back to them. "I understand and share your opinion about his talents, that he shouldn't be-as you've stated-wasted in the duty of moving corpses about. I had no idea of his obviously valuable heritage. I also find it quite interesting and very remarkable that you wish to buy him from me and go about the process of gaining a writ of manumission for him from Lord Cornbury."

"First things first. I'd like Miss Grigsby to observe him for a few days and tell me if she thinks he can be trained." Greathouse caught himself, and his mouth twisted as if he'd tasted some bad liver. "I mean to say, taught."

McCaggers gave a thin smile. "Of course he can be taught. He's very intelligent, as a matter of fact. He quickly understands instructions, as you yourself found out last night. I have to say, I don't know to what extent he can be taught, but simple tasks are no problem for him."

"Does he know very much English?" Berry asked, watching Zed work.

"He knows enough to carry out his job. I think he had some knowledge of English before he arrived at the auction block. It's somewhat difficult to know precisely, as of course he can't speak." McCaggers looked at Greathouse and narrowed his eyes behind his spectacles. "Before we go any further, sir, I should tell you that there is a problem. As I do appreciate and respect your offer, I'm afraid it's not possible."

"Not possible? Why? I'd be willing to pay-"

"Not enough," McCaggers interrupted. "Simply because I don't own Zed outright." Greathouse was taken aback, and glanced at Matthew for support. "You mean someone else owns him?" Matthew asked.

"When Zed came up for auction, you can be sure I wasn't the only bidder, and that I quickly came to the bottom of my pocket. One of the predominant bidders was Gerritt van Kowenhoven."

A wealthy shipbuilder, Matthew knew, who owned one of the mansions atop Golden Hill. The man was in his seventies, had been through three wives and had the reputation of being both a skinflint and a backbreaking taskmaster. But, for all that, his ships were majesties of grace and speed. "He wanted Zed for his shipyard," McCaggers went on. "I happened to know that van Kowenhoven has not been able to buy something he devoutly desires. Due to the fact that he's wrangled famously with every mayor we've had, and proclaimed his shipyard to still be part of the States of Holland."

"That would tend to annoy," Matthew observed.

"Exactly. Well, as I knew what van Kowenhoven desired and I have sufficient influence to make it happen, I concluded an agreement with him before the gavel's last fall. Thus I have possession of Zed for four years-and we are currently in the fifth month of the third year-after which he becomes the sole property of van Kowenhoven and I presume will do the work of a half-dozen men for the remainder of his life."

"And just what was it he wanted?" Matthew asked.

"It has taken awhile, but the next street laid down by our good Mayor French will be christened van Kowenhoven. It's already on the new map."

Greathouse said with a sneer, "Son of a-"

"Sir!" Berry told him sharply. "None of that!"

He glowered at her, but his storm ebbed and he scratched the back of his neck so hard Matthew thought he was going to draw blood.

"I presume that tears it," Matthew said, with a quick glance at Zed. The slave was now arranging the instruments into his master's toolbox, which had served many of the best deceased of New York's society as well as the lowest ex-lifes. It was a shame, really, that a man of Zed's abilities should spend his life hauling timbers and tar barrels, but this particular path had come to its end.

"Wait a moment!" said Greathouse, as if reading Matthew's mind. "How much money are we talking about? To buy him from van Kowenhoven?"

"Zed went from the block for thirty-two pounds and six shillings. More than half my salary for one year. Plus, knowing van Kowenhoven, he'd want a profit on his investment, if he could be induced to sell."

Greathouse's mouth was still hanging open. "Thirty-two pounds?" It was a tremendous sum to be paid in one offering.

"As I said, I certainly wasn't the only bidder and neither was van Kowenhoven. When men like Cornelius Rambouts and John Addison entered the fray, it became more of a personal competition than a business purchase."

Matthew was thinking what he could do with thirty-two pounds. Pay off all his debts, buy some new suits, and have a small fireplace built in his dairyhouse, since it appeared that Marmaduke wasn't going to spring for it before the first cold blow. Plus there'd be enough left for a few months of meals and ale at the Trot. How some people could throw so much money away astounded him.

"I could probably raise seven or eight pounds," Greathouse said, his brow furrowed. "Maybe ten, at the most."

"Your spirit and intention are commendable, sir," said McCaggers, with a slight bow. "There would be a further cost. Just last month Daniel Padgett applied for a writ of manumission from Lord Cornbury for his slave Vulcan, that the man might open a blacksmith's shop. It's my understanding that Cornbury demanded and received ten pounds for his signature."

"Son of a-" Greathouse paused. When Berry didn't speak up, he finished it: "Bitch!"

"I'm sorry," McCaggers told him. "But things are as they are."

Greathouse started to speak again, but Matthew saw all the wind and bluster go out of him, for there was simply no more to be said. Matthew assumed that Katherine Herrald had left him some money to run the office, of course, but that sum was certainly out of the question. He knew it, Greathouse knew it, and so did McCaggers.

At last Greathouse said, to no one in particular, "I suppose we'll be going." Then he tried one last time, as was his nature to beat against stone walls: "Do you think if van Kowenhoven knew what kind of talent Zed had, he'd listen to reason?"

"You can try," came the reply, "but it would probably just make him raise the price."

"All right. Thank you." Greathouse watched Zed at work for a moment longer and then abruptly turned toward the door.

Matthew was about to follow when Berry posed a question to the coroner: "Pardon me, but I'd like to know can Zed read or write?"

"Not English, but perhaps his own language. He's never had cause to either read or write in the work he does for me. All he does is follow instructions, given verbally and by handsigns."

"Then, if I may ask, how are you so sure of his intelligence?"

"Two reasons," said McCaggers. "One, he follows instructions precisely. And two, there are his drawings."

"Drawings?" Berry asked, as Greathouse stopped at the door and looked back.

"Yes. Here are some." McCaggers crossed the room and retrieved a few sheets of paper from atop the bookcase. "I don't think he'd mind if I showed them," he said, though Zed had turned around in his chair and was watching with what might be called intense scrutiny, so much that Matthew felt the flesh crawl at the back of his neck for fear the man might decide his drawings were not for the eyes of strangers.

McCaggers brought the papers to Berry, and she took them. Now it was Matthew's turn to look over her shoulder, and Greathouse walked back to them to also take a gander.

"He's done a score of them," McCaggers explained. "Using my black crayons. And broken them like tindersticks too, I might add."

It wasn't difficult to see why. Some of the strokes had actually torn through the paper. But now Matthew knew why Zed spent so much time on the roof of City Hall.

The first drawing was a view of New York and the Great Dock, as seen from Zed's vantage point. Only it wasn't exactly the town and the dock that Matthew saw everyday; those thick waxy black lines of buildings and canoe­like shapes of sailing vessels appeared to be from a more primitive world, with the circle of the sun a line gone round and round until obviously the crayon's point had snapped to leave an ugly smear across the scene. It looked forbidding and alien, with black lines spouting from the squares of chimneys and-down below-stick figures caught in midstride. There was a nightmarish quality to the drawing, all black and white and nothing in between.

The second drawing showed what must have been the Trinity Church cemetery, and in this the gravestones looked much like the buildings in the first scene, and the trees were spindly and leafless skeletons. Was there the figure of a man standing beside one of the graves, or was it only where the crayon had ground itself down to the nub?

The third drawing, however, was quite different. It showed, simply, a stylized fish bristling with what appeared to be thorns, surrounded by the wavy lines of water. The fourth drawing was also of a fish, complete with a sail upon its back and a long beak, and the fifth drawing-the last among them-a fish formed of circles and squares with a gasping mouth and a single gaping eye with a hole at the center where the crayon had ripped through.

"He draws a lot of fish," McCaggers said. "Why, I have no idea."

"Obviously, he was a fisherman." Greathouse leaned over Berry's other shoulder to look. "As I told Matthew, the Ga tribe-"

He didn't finish his sentence, for a large black hand suddenly thrust forward and took hold of the papers in Berry's grasp, causing her to give out a little startled cry and go pale. If truth be known, Matthew quivered down to his kneecaps and suppressed a start of alarm behind his teeth, for Zed was suddenly right there in front of them where seconds before he had not been. Greathouse did not move, though Matthew sensed him coiled and ready to strike if need be.

Zed's scarred face was impassive, his ebony eyes fixed not on Berry but upon the drawings. He gave them the slightest pull, and instantly Berry let them go. Then he turned around and walked back to his workplace with the drawings in hand, and it amazed Matthew that he made hardly any noise on the floorboards.

"Another of his talents," McCaggers said. "He can move around like a shadow when he chooses." He cleared his throat. "It seems I have betrayed a trust. I apologize for any discomfort."

Matthew wasn't worried about his own discomfort, but about Zed's and what might come of it. The slave had finished his task of returning the instruments to the box, and with his artwork protectively clutched in one hand he closed the box and latched it.

"He's done many drawings?" asked Berry as the color began to return to her cheeks.

"One or two every week, without fail. He has a boxful of them under his cot."

"I also draw. I wonder if he might care to see my work?"

"If he wouldn't," McCaggers said, "I certainly would."

"I mean to say it might be a way to communicate with him. To hear what he has to say." She looked at Greathouse. "Using an artist's language."

"A worthwhile endeavor, I'm sure." Some of the enthusiasm had left him; his eyes had lost the keen spark they'd shown before the subject of thirty-two pounds had been raised. "Well, as you please. Thank you for your time, McCaggers." He cast another glance at Zed, whose back announced he was through entertaining visitors, and then he went under the skeletons to the door and out.

"I look forward to seeing you again," McCaggers said to Berry, while Matthew felt like a third wheel on a higgler's cart. "Hopefully on your next visit I can get you that tea."

"Thank you," she answered, and it was with relief that Matthew followed her out of the coroner's domain and down the stairs.

On Wall Street, as they walked together toward the East River, Berry began to chatter about Zed's drawings. A natural quality, she said. An elemental force. Don't you think?

Matthew shrugged. To him they'd looked like something that might have been scrawled by an inmate at the New Jersey colony's Public Hospital for the Mentally Infirm near Westerwicke. He was debating saying so when a black cat squirted out from between two buildings and ran across his path, and so he kept his mouth shut and his eyes wide open for rampaging bulls, muskrat holes, clods of horse manure and whatever else the Devil might throw in his direction.

Five

Early Saturday morning, as the sun rose through the forest and lit the world in hues of fire, Matthew found his mind on the monster's tooth.

He was astride the muscular black horse Dante, which was his mount of choice from Tobias Winekoop's stable. He was riding north along the Post Road, and had been making good progress since seven o'clock. Long past him were the familiar streets and structures of the city; here, on this road that climbed hills and fell into valleys and wound between huge oaks and underbrush that made claim to choke off the path altogether, he was in a truly dangerous country.

In midsummer he'd been stopped by a devious, great ass of a highwayman near his present position. There were wild animals to beware of, and Indians who would never be seen except for the arrow that flew at your throat. It was true that tucked back along the river's cliffs were occasional farms and estates protected by stone walls and settlers' muskets, for what they were worth. Never let it be said that the New Yorker did not possess courage. Either that, or a passion for life on the edge of disaster.

Matthew wished not to provoke disaster today, but he was ready if it bit at him. Under his gray cloak he wore a black sash around his waist, and in that sash was a loaded flintlock with which he'd become quite proficient under Greathouse's demanding tutelage. Matthew knew he'd never be much of a swordsman nor was he particularly swift with his fists, but he could surely cock and fire a pistol fast enough to part a highwayman's hair, if need be.

He had been planning this trip for several weeks. Had gone to bed many times intending to take it, only to find at daylight that he wasn't yet as strong-minded as he'd thought. Today, though, he had awakened ready, and perhaps it was his introduction to the monster's tooth-and McCaggers' mystery with no answer-that had caused him to realize he had his own unanswerable mystery. It was something that must be discovered; something hidden from the light, as surely as a fang sixty feet down in a coal mine. How could he call himself a problem-solver, if he had a problem that could not be solved?

Or, to be more truthful, that he feared to face. This was the real reason he'd brought the pistol, not because of imaginary highwaymen or the improbable attack of a forest beast or an Indian who would surely be more curious than bloodthirsty, since at present there were no quarrels between the Iroquois and the colonists.

On this bright Saturday morning he was riding the fifteen miles north from New York to the Chapel estate, where he and Berry had almost lost their lives, and where a mystery had to be answered before he could let that vile incident go.

He was thinking about the tooth. How such a thing was utterly incredible. If he hadn't seen it for himself, he would have thought McCaggers a tipsy liar. Evidence of either behemoth or leviathan, most probably true, but what purpose would such a monster serve? Why would God in His wisdom ever create such a beast? Simply for the purpose of destruction? He could see in his mind's eye an ancient field under a gray sky shot through with lightning, and a huge dark shape moving across it with a mouthful of those blade-like teeth glinting blue and wet in the storm. The massive head turning left and right, seeking something weaker to tear to pieces.

It was enough to bring on a nightmare in broad daylight, Matthew thought. Even more so when something rustled in the brush before him, he almost jumped out of the saddle, and two small brown rabbits went on their merry way.

Where the road split around a dark little swamp, he took the path that veered left toward the river. The Chapel estate was getting closer now; he would be there in another hour. He had a sick feeling in his stomach that did not come from the strips of dried beef he'd been chewing for his breakfast. It was hard to return to a place where he'd thought death was going to take him, and indeed he found himself scanning the sky through the trees in search of circling hawks.

Dante plodded on, unmindful of his rider's memories. And then, quite before Matthew was fully ready, they came upon a wall of rough stones about eight feet high with vines and creepers dangling over it, and Matthew must have abruptly pressed in with his knees or jerked the reins like a greenhorn, for Dante's head came up with a reproachful snort and let him know that he was not above being tossed.

The road continued on, close-set against the ugly wall. As upon his first visit here, Matthew had the impression of approaching a fortress instead of an estate. In another moment he saw the great slab of the wooden gate ahead, wide open as when it was left by High Constable Lillehorne and the other men who'd come to his rescue. Matthew suddenly felt the sun was not bright enough, and that the cool air carried a wicked edge. He had to go through that gate and onto the grounds, because he had to find out how four people could have escaped Lillehorne's men and so completely disappeared that terrible day last summer.

He turned Dante through the gate, passed the white-washed gatehouse with its broken windowglass, and followed a driveway that curved to the right between thick woods.

Four people. A well-dressed man and woman Matthew had seen at a distance, back at the buildings by the corrupted vineyard. The woman had been watching from beneath a blue parasol. Both of them had disappeared, though Lillehorne and his men had gone over the grounds and through the woods not just that day but, after posting guards on the gate, had come back again to renew the search. Not a trace of them.

The young assassin-in-training, Ripley. Of indeterminate age. Small-boned, pale of skin and weirdly fragile. His silky hair the color of dust, a long thin scar running up through his right eyebrow into his hairline, and his eye on that side a cold milky-white orb. A blue knitting-needle in his hand, about to be pushed through Berry's eye into the brain.

Escaped.

The enigmatic swordsman, Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren, who'd so nearly slashed Matthew a belly-grin with the point of a dagger. Dahlgren had left the Chapel house rather violently, taking with him his broken left wrist and the garden door curtains out into the goldfish pond.

Gone, every last mean Prussian inch of him.

But how had those four gotten away? All the buildings on the estate had been searched through, from cellars to attics. The woods had been torn up like an old rug, and some of the searchers had climbed into trees the better to have a higher vantage point.

Had they flown away over the riverside cliffs, like demonic spirits? Matthew thought it was unlikely, particularly since Dahlgren had a broken wing. But even so, Dahlgren was a dangerous character, and Matthew also didn't like the idea of Ripley out there somewhere, sharpening his needles.

A large two-story manse of mottled red and gray brickwork came into view, its handsome front adorned with many windows and a gray-painted cupola at the top with a copper roof. Chimneys jutted skyward. The driveway made a circle around a lily pond that stood a few yards from the front steps, and it was at these steps that Matthew drew Dante to a halt.

The front door was open. Indeed, there was no front door; it had been removed from its hinges. Upon the steps lay a rain-ruined chair of yellow cloth, probably thrown out from the overloaded wagon that had carted away other valuables. Some of the windows were broken, and right in the doorway were ceramic shards that attested to a large white pot slipped from greasy fingers. Not far away, on the weeded lawn, a desk of dark oak with two broken legs leaned like a horse longing to be shot. The drawers had been pulled out and were missing. Matthew thought it might have been the desk from Chapel's office, which Lillehorne had already gone through in his collection of evidence.

So. As Matthew had surmised, many townsfolk had come here drawn by curiosity-and the lurid tales in the Eawig-and left as thieves with their saddlebags and wagons burdened by Chapel's loot. He couldn't blame them. He recalled the rich furnishings within; the tapestries, the paintings, the candelabras and chandeliers, the ornate desks and chairs and

Oh, yes. The books.

Matthew had never gotten around to visiting the library. Well, there might be some books left behind. After all, who would load books in their wagon when they could carry off Persian rugs and canopied beds?

He dismounted and walked Dante over to the lily pond to drink. At the pond's edge, the horse suddenly shied away, and at the same time Matthew caught a foul odor from the water. Drifting there, being eaten by buzzing green flies, was a large dead snake. Matthew retreated, tied Dante to a lower branch of a tree a little further along the drive, and then he opened one of his saddlebags and fed the horse an apple. He had a leather flask of water, which he drank from and then poured some water into his cupped hand to let Dante drink. As he stood in the shadow of the house, he could smell the snake's rot wafting around him, like the unseen presence of Professor Fell?

It was Chapel's estate, yes, but it was Professor Fell's enterprise. As Greathouse had told Matthew, No one makes Professor Fell angry and lives very long.

Matthew had spoiled the enterprise. Had upturned the game table. But won the game? No. The death card that had arrived at his door, with its single bloody fingerprint, said the game was just beginning, and Matthew must pay for making the professor angry.

He found himself with his hand resting on the pistol in his sash. Nothing moved beyond the open doorway; there was not a sound, but for the feasting flies. He saw in there shadows and chaos, ruin and dissolution, a little piece of Hell on Earth. Yet also knowledge for the hungry, in the books that Professor Fell's money must have bought.

Matthew walked up the steps and entered the house.

There is an underworld you can't imagine, Greathouse had said. They're in the business of counterfeiting, forgery, theft of both state and private papers, blackmail, kidnapping, arson, murder for hire and whatever else offers them a profit.

Matthew's boots crunched on broken pottery. Teacups, they looked to have been. Someone had pulled down the foyer's iron chandelier, and chunks of ceiling masonry had fallen to the floor. Holes had been gouged into the glossy dark wood of the walls. Some of the staircase's risers had been ripped up. Scavengers hunting hidden treasure, Matthew thought. Did they find it? He walked along the main corridor, where the tapestries had been taken from the walls and, once again, there were gaping holes that appeared to have been made by axeblows. Matthew wondered how many houses in New York now held items removed from here; he didn't doubt that Dippen Nack probably squatted over a chamberpot decorated with gold, and that Lillehorne himself hadn't delivered silk sheets to the shrewish wife he called 'Princess'.

Their gang wars, Greathouse had said, have been brutal and bloody and have gotten them nowhere. But in the last fifteen years, all that began to change. Professor Fell emerged-from where we don't know-and has through guile, intelligence and not a small amount of head-chopping-united the gangs into a criminal parliament. Matthew came upon another room, on his right, that used to have a door before someone carted it away. Dusty yellow light streamed through two tall windows, both of them shattered, and illuminated under an arched pale blue ceiling what had once been a wall of books.

Next to a challenging question or a problem that needed solving, Matthew loved books. So it was with both great pleasure and gut-wrenching dismay that he took appraisal of the library's ruin. Pleasure because though most of the books had been swept from their shelves, they still lay in a pile on the floor; and dismay, because someone had thrown dozens of volumes into the fireplace and their black bindings were heaped up like so many bones.

No one knows his first name. No one knows really if 'he' is a man or a woman, or if 'he' ever was a professor at any school or university. No one has ever given an age for him or a description

The room held a gray sofa that had been gutted with a blade and its stuffings pulled out. A writing desk appeared to have been a target for a drunk with a blacksmith's hammer. On the walls were marks where paintings had hung; it looked as if someone had actually tried to peel away the wallpaper to get the marks, as well. Matthew surmised that whoever had burned the books had done so for the necessity of heat and light, as they'd probably made a night of it.

Who could blame people for wanting to get up here and take what was left? Matthew knew he hadn't been the only celebrity created by the Earwig's lurid tales. This estate had also been made a celebrity, and so reaching the end of its celebrity it had been attacked and ransacked by those who wished to have a little handful of fame. Or, failing that, a nice vase for the kitchen window.

Matthew surveyed the damage. The wall held seven shelves. There was a small stepladder on which to reach the topmost books. Eight or nine books remained on either side of each shelf, but the middle portion of volumes had been tossed to the floor, the better for that greedy axe to go to work on the wall. Probably more than one axe, Matthew thought. A ship's crew, by the looks of the destruction. So it was not enough to carry off the furnishings, but the very walls of the house had to be broken into in search of hidden money. Let them have it if they found any, he thought. The books are what I want, as many as I can put in my saddlebags. After that, the plan was to go through the woods once more in search of any clue as to how those four got away so completely, and then onto Dante and out of here before the light began to fade.

He strode forward amid the debris, knelt down and began his examination of the treasures left behind. He considered himself well-read, for a colonist, but certainly not up to the standards of the London intellect. While London had a row of bookshops and one could browse the aisles at leisure for new volumes delivered that morning-at least, according to the Gazette-the only opportunity for Matthew to find books was from the moldy trunks of those who had died on the Atlantic passage and therefore had no further need of enlightenment. Every arriving ship put out the baggage of dead people, sold to the highest bidder. In most instances, any available books were bought up by the occupants of Golden Hill, not as reading matter but as a statement of social standing. Tea-table books, they were called.

It was thus, then, that Matthew found himself amid a bounty of books he had not read and, indeed, had never heard of before. There were leather-bound tomes such as The Blazing World, Sir Courtly Nice, Polexandre, Thou Thirsteth, The Pilgrim's Progress, A NewTheory of the Earth, The Holy State and the Profane State, The Corruption of the Times By Money, King Arthur, Don Quixote de la Mancha and Annus Mirabilis, The Year of Wonders1666.There were books thin as gruel and thick as beefsteaks. There were volumes in Latin, French and Spanish as well as the mother tongue. There were religious sermons, novels, histories, philosophical statements and discourses on the elements, the planets, Eden and Purgatory and everything in between. Matthew looked through a book entitled The Revengeful Mistress and, his cheeks flaming red, decided he couldn't have such a scandalous book found in his house, but he put it aside anyway thinking it was more suited for Greathouse's ribald tastes.

He discovered historical novels so huge he thought a couple of them in each saddlebag would sprain Dante's back. Eight volumes of Letters Written By A Turkish Spy intrigued him, and these he also put aside. He had once enjoyed-if that was the word-a banquet here at the house, but this was the true feast that kept him digging for more and even sprang a little feverish sweat to his brow, for he was going to have to make a terrible choice of what to take and what to leave behind. London's Liberty In Chains Discovered? An Account of Religion By Reason? Oh, hang it all; he'd go with Love's A Lottery, And A Woman the Prize.

Matthew wished he'd brought a wagon. Already he'd chosen far too many books and would have to go through them again to make the final selections. And there were the books still on the shelves! He got up from the floor and approached the remaining valiant soldiers that stood at attention before him.

On the third shelf, left side, he immediately saw a book he wanted, titled The Compleat Gamester. Then almost directly above that was another volume that called to him, stamped across the spine The Life And Death of Mr. Badman. His gaze travelled upward, and there upon the topmost shelf on the far left side was a huge tome entitled The History of Locks As Regards The Craft of Ancient Egypt and Rome. He felt his mouth watering as surely as if he'd been presented a selection of pastries. Chapel might have been an evil bastard, but if he'd read one quarter of these books he had certainly been a well-educated evil bastard.

Matthew pulled the library stepladder over and climbed up, reaching first for the Gamester. He looked through it, made a quick decision and put it aside to join the other candidates. He next latched onto a thin volume entitled A Discourse on Moonbeams, but this one was rejected. Then he reached up for the History of Locks and had to grab it with both hands for the thing was as heavy as a frying-pan. No, Dante would never stand for this, and he was about to push the book back into place when something shifted inside of it.

The movement caught Matthew by such surprise that he nearly tumbled off the ladder. He held the book steady, started to open it, and realized with a jolt that it was not a book at all.

It was a box, fashioned to masquerade as a book. The History of Locks bore its own lock, right where the edges of the pages ought to be. The lid would not budge. Whatever was inside, it was no light reading matter. But where was the key?

God only knew. In this wreckage, it was likely forever lost.

Matthew's eye found another book. The Sublime Art of Logic, read the gold-scrolled title. Think, he thought.

If I had left this here, where would I have hidden the key? Not very far away. Somewhere in this room, most likely. Hidden where it would be close at hand. He wondered. If there was a locked box disguised as a book about locks, might there be somewhere in the library a book about keys that actually hid a key? But he'd seen no such book. He'd looked at every title that lay on the floor. No History of Keys to be found. Of course, such a book may have gone into the fireplace.

Or not.

Matthew searched the titles of the nearby books. Nothi ng about a key. He took the History of Locks down the ladder with him and put it on the battered desk. The desk's single drawer was hanging open, and someone had dumped the inkpot into it to make a congealed black mess of papers and quills. Matthew walked to the far end of the bookshelves where the rest of the survivors stood. He looked up to the topmost shelf, at the volume that was on the fartherest right and therefore was placed exactly opposite of the History of Locks. It was a medium-sized book and looked very old; he couldn't make out the small, faded title on the spine.

But that was his suspect. Within another few seconds he'd dragged the ladder over, had climbed up and taken the book in his hand. It was very light, for a book.

The title, on scarred brown leather, was The Lesser Key of Solomon.

Opening it, he discovered that this indeed had once been a book, but the pages had been hollowed out with a very sharp blade. Within the square lay presumably not Solomon's lesser key, but Chapel's greater one. Matthew felt an inner rush of both joy and excitement that might have been called victory. He removed the key, closed the book and pushed it back into place, and then he descended the ladder.

As he slid the key into the lock, he realized that his heart was beating like an Iroquois' drum. What might be inside? A document from Professor Fell? Something that might point to his whereabouts? If so, it was written on stone.

He turned the key. There was a small polite click as befitted a gentleman's lock, and Matthew lifted the lid.

It may be that Fell is on the cusp of creating what we think he desires, Greathouse had told hi m. A criminal empire that spans the continents. All the smaller sharks-deadly enough in their own oceans-have gathered around the big shark, and so they have swum even here

Matthew was looking at a black leather drawstring bag. It was the solitary occupant of the box. The drawstring's knot was secured with a paper seal, and upon it was something stamped in red.

The big shark, Matthew thought. Perhaps Greathouse's marine metaphor had been close, but was incorrect. Stamped upon the paper seal in red wax was the stylized shape of an octopus, its eight tentacles stretched out wide as if to seize the world.

Matthew thought that Greathouse might be very interested in seeing this. He lifted the heavy bag out to set it on the table, and heard the unmistakable clinking of coins.

He put it down and just stared at it for a moment. To open it, he must of course break the seal. Was he ready to do that? He didn't know. Something about it frightened him, down to the level where nightmares take shape. Better to let Greathouse break the seal, and be done with it.

But he didn't return it to the box, nor did he do anything but run the back of his hand across his mouth for his lips suddenly felt parched.

He knew he had to decide, and the decision was important. He felt the time ticking away. The distance between this house and his own life in New York had never seemed greater.

He feared not only breaking the seal, but opening the bag. He listened, in the silence. Was there no one to tell him what to do? No good advice on what was the right and what was the wrong? Where were the voices of Magistrates Woodward and Powers when he needed them? Not there. Only silence. But then again, it was just paper, wasn't it? Just the shape of an octopus delivered from a wax impression? And look how long this had sat here in its box. No one was coming for it; it had been forgotten.

He didn't need Greathouse, he told himself. After all, he was a full partner in the Herrald Agency, and he had the letter of congratulations from Katherine Herrald and a magnifying glass to prove it.

Without giving himself further time to ponder, he tore the seal. The wax octopus cracked and opened for him. Then he untied the drawstring and peered into the bag, his eyes widening as sunlight from the library's windows touched all that gold and nearly blinded him.

He picked out one of the coins and examined it more closely. On the obverse it bore the double heads of William and Mary, and on the reverse a crowned shield of arms. The date was 1692. Matthew weighed the coin in the palm of his hand. He had seen two of these coins in his entire life, both of them recovered from the robbery of a fur merchant when he'd been clerking for Nathaniel Powers. It was a five-guinea piece, worth a few shillings over five pounds, and was the most valuable coin minted by the realm. The bag held how many? It was hard to count, with all that shine. He upended the bag over the table, spilled out sixteen coins, and realized that he was looking at the sum of more than eighty pounds.

"My God," he heard himself say, in a stunned whisper.

For stunned he was. It was a fortune. An amount of money even expert craftsmen might not see in the span of a year. A young lawyer would not make that much per annum, and certainly not a young problem-solver.

And here it was, lying right before him.

Matthew felt light-headed. He looked around at the library's debris, and then back at the shelf where the lockbox had been hidden in plain sight. Emergency money, he thought. That was what Lawrence Evans, Chapel's henchman, had been returning to the house to get when he was struck down by Dippen Nack's billyclub. Emergency money, in a black leather bag with what might be the seal of an underworld bank or possibly Professor Fell's own personal mark.

Chapel's estate, but Fell's enterprise.

Eighty pounds. Who should it be taken to? Lillehorne? Oh, certainly! The high constable and his wife would make short work of even such a large amount. He was already insufferable enough without being enriched from Matthew's risk, and indeed Matthew felt he'd taken a risk just to come back here. What about Greathouse, then? Oh, yes; Greathouse would take the lion's share for himself and the agency, and throw him a pittance. There was all that nonsense about Zed being bought from van Kowenhoven and made into a bodyguard, which Matthew definitely did not need.

Who, then, should take possession of this money?

He who needed it the most, Matthew thought. He who had found it. The process of discovery had been well-met, this day. And richly deserved, too. It would take him a long time to spend it all, if he was careful. But the question next to deal with was how to spend even one coin without attracting suspicion, for these were not seen beyond the lofty heights of Golden Hill.

His hands were actually trembling as he returned the coins to the bag. He pulled the drawstring tight and knotted it. Then he picked up the torn paper seal with its imprint of an octopus, crumpled it in a fist, and dropped it among the black ashes and broken bindings in the fireplace. For a moment he felt nearly delirious, and had to steady himself with a hand to the wall.

A few books were chosen, almost at random, from his pile of candidates. Enough to give equal weight for Dante, one saddlebag to another.

But once outside and after the books were stowed away, Matthew balked at giving up the money just yet. He still had the question that had brought him here to begin with, and he realized that once he rode through that gate he might not be back, books or no. The time was getting on into afternoon, the sun shining fiercely through the trees. He didn't wish to leave the money with Dante, in case anyone else rode in. Carrying the moneybag with him, he started walking along the driveway in the direction of the vineyard, and specifically toward the place where he'd last seen Chapel stretched out, beaten and battered, in the dust.

He'd been pondering for awhile the assumption that Chapel had been trying to get to the stable. Why would that have necessarily been so? With all that was going on, how did Chapel think he would have time to put a saddle and bridle on a horse? But if Chapel was not going to the stable along this driveway, then where was he heading? The vineyard? The woods?

Matthew had decided to find the place where Chapel had been laid out on the ground, and enter the woods at that location. As he marked the spot where he recalled Chapel to have been and left the driveway there for the red glow of the forest, he realized he had to get his mind fixed on his purpose, for his thoughts were wandering into daydreams like beautiful paintings in golden frames.

He walked amid the trees and thicket. All this area had been gone over before, of course. But he wondered if somewhere in this woods there might be a place the searchers had not found. A shelter, somehow disguised as surely as a book could be a lockbox. An emergency hiding-place, if one was ever needed. Then, when the danger had gone, the occupants could emerge and either slip out by way of the gate or-more improbably due to Dahlgren's broken wrist-climb over the wall.

It was a shot in the dark, but Matthew was determined to at least take aim.

Walking through the woods was peaceful this time, as before it had been a race for life for both himself and Berry. He saw nothing but trees and low brush, the ground gently rising and falling. He started even kicking aside leaves and looking for trapdoors in the earth itself, to no avail.

There was a gully ahead. Matthew recalled he and Berry running along its edge. He stopped now and peered down into it. The thing was about ten feet deep at its bottom and walled with sharp-edged boulders. He thought what might have happened if either he or Berry had fallen in; a broken ankle would've been the least of it.

As Matthew stared into the abyss, he wondered if the searchers had also feared for their bones, and so had not made the descent.

But there was nothing down there except rocks. It was a perfectly ordinary gully, as might be found in any woods.

He continued walking along the edge, but now his daydreams and the moneybag were thrust out of his mind completely. He was focused on the gully, and specifically on how one might get down into it without falling on the rocks.

It was getti ng deeper as it progressed across the forest. Twelve or fifteen feet to the bottom, Matthew thought. In places shadow filled up the gully like a black pond. And, then, not too far ahead, he saw what might have served as steps in the rock. His imagination? Possibly, but he could definitely get down to the bottom here. Grasping the moneybag tightly, he demonstrated in another moment that one could negotiate the steps using only one hand to hold balance against the boulders.

He continued along the bottom, which was also covered with rocks. And perhaps twenty yards further on, as the gully took a turn to the right, he drew a sharp breath as he discovered in the wall beside him an opening about five feet tall and wide enough for a man to squeeze into sideways.

A cave, he realized, as he let the breath go.

He crouched down and looked in. How far back it went, he had no idea. There was nothing but dark in there. Yet he felt the movement of air on his face. What portion of the cave's floor he could see was hard-packed clay, littered with leaves.

He held his free arm through the opening, feeling the air moving across his fingertips. Coming from within the cave.

Not a cave, he thought. A tunnel.

No light. Snakes were about, possibly. Could be a nest of them in there. He asked himself what Greathouse would do in this situation. Retire, and never know the truth? Or blunder ahead, like a great fool?

Well, snakes couldn't bite through his boots. Unless he stepped in a hole and fell down, and then they could get at his face. He would walk as cautiously as if upon the roof of City Hall, blindfolded. He paused just a moment, herding his courage before it came to its senses and galloped away. Then he gritted his teeth, pushed himself through and was immediately able to stand, if at a crouch. He was glad he still gripped the moneybag; it could give something a good clout, if need be. It came to him, with enough force to almost buckle his knees: I am rich. He felt his mouth twist in a grin, though his heart was beating hard and the sweat of fear was upon his neck. He fervently hoped to live through the next few minutes to enjoy his wealth. Using one hand and an elbow to gauge the walls, Matthew started his progress into the unknown.