The Whiskey Rebels (41 page)

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

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

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

“Entirely alone?”

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

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

“You won’t,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What if they come to find you first?”

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

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

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

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

“So am I. It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

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

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

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

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

He looked at me directly. “No.”

“Of course you do. There is too much in the balance. Perhaps it is time for you to tell me why you wished Lavien to find Pearson in the first place. Why is he of interest to you?”

“It is a private matter.”

So he said, but I began to think it must be a public matter. There was no personal connection I could divine, so there was but one obvious reason Hamilton might take an interest in Pearson. Given what the bearded Scotsman had told me this morning about defaulted bank loans, I could but conclude one thing. “He has borrowed money from the bank, hasn’t he?”

Hamilton blinked and looked away. “I suppose he may have.”

“How much?”

“The bank was, in its conception, my idea, and I take an interest in its operation, but I do not run the bank, and I do not take an interest in its day-to-day operations. I doubt that even Mr. Willing, the bank president, could tell you about individual loans without resorting to files. You cannot expect that I, who am far more removed, can summon such information instantaneously on any possible borrower.”

“No, I don’t expect you to know any possible borrower. I do, however, expect you know about this one. How much?”

He sighed. “He has borrowed fifty thousand dollars.”

“Good God, you give that much to a single individual?”

“It was for investment and development. You have seen how the city thrives under bank money. Pearson is a respected dealer in real estate, and he presented us with a specific plan for developing land to the west of the city.”

“But he hasn’t done it, has he? You received word that not only was Pearson not buying and developing land, he was losing the properties he already had. You don’t keep an eye on the day-to-day minutiae of investment, nor does the bank president, I’ll wager. No one was going out to Helltown to see if Pearson was developing it. He was a respected man of business, and it was safe to assume he was doing what he said. But then you receive word that his properties are being foreclosed, and you learn that no one knows where he is. Suddenly fifty thousand in bank funds may have vanished. Can the bank withstand such a loss?”

“Of course it can. It is a serious loss but there are systems built into the bank’s charter to enable it to weather defaulted loans.”

“Easily?”

“It is never easy.”

“It is never easy,” I said, “because what you fear most is Jefferson and his faction getting word of this. That is the issue, isn’t it? Your bank has just launched and endured a rocky first half year with wildly fluctuating share prices. Now, it will be said, it is granting loans to the personal friends of the bank president, loans that will not—cannot—be repaid. You know what they will say: that the bank is an engine of the northern money men to feed their own greed.”

Hamilton nodded. “That is, indeed, what they will say. That is part of it.”

“There is more?”

“You will keep this quiet?”

“Of course.”

“There is also the method of the bank’s funding, the whiskey excise. Jefferson’s faction will waste no time in saying that we tax the poor men of the frontier to pay for the irresponsible spending of the rich. That is what they will say.”

“And the truth?”

“The truth is that the Bank of the United States is a large bank that makes large loans, so of course it is of direct benefit to the rich. There are smaller land banks that benefit small landholders, and that is what they should do, but projects that benefit the rich also benefit others. Had Pearson done with the money what he was supposed to do, he would have built properties, which would have employed men and caused goods to change hands. Those buildings would have provided housing, space for shops and services, for the growth of the economy. That benefits all, rich and poor.”

“Clearly that is not what happened with Pearson. Now he has returned, what has Lavien learned about the fate of the money?”

“Very little. Pearson won’t answer any questions.”

“And, I suppose, you haven’t given Lavien permission to break his elbows or cut off his feet. Not with someone so prominent.”

“Pearson is clever,” said Hamilton. “He has openly refused to appear at the bank to explain the status of his loan, and he knows we dare not press the matter, lest it become public knowledge that a loan of this magnitude is in danger. I’m sure Pearson knows that that scoundrel Philip Freneau, who writes Jefferson’s newspaper, has been sniffing about, asking questions. If Freneau learns the truth, he will use it to ruin us all. Jefferson and his men would gladly sacrifice the national economy if only to prove I am wrong and they are right.”

“Which is why the bank has not seized Pearson’s assets. To keep this from becoming a scandal?”

“Yes. While there is the chance of a quiet repayment of all or even some of the loan, we prefer to avoid a public fiasco that will only feed Jefferson’s public animosity toward the bank. Until we know more, we will have to find other means of discovering what Pearson is up to.”

It seemed to me that, whether it was what he intended or not, I was those other means. There was no reason not to press it. “What of Duer?”

“What of him?”

“What is the link between Duer and Pearson?”

“None that I am aware of,” he said.

I thought about the note I had found in the tree stump.
Duer has used him monstrous ill, and it cannot be undone.
That was, in itself, of no consequence. Let these men ruin one another to their heart’s content; it was nothing to me. And yet there was obviously more to it.
The BUS will feel it soon enough, and Hamilton has no notion of it.
All this was a scheme to harm the bank. Pearson was but a tool, Cynthia but a casualty.

“Who would like to destroy the bank?” I asked.

Hamilton sighed. “Destroy it? Jefferson, I suppose.”

“No, not malign it, or see it fail, or rejoice in its adequacies. Jefferson wishes to find political advantage. Who wishes to destroy it by his own hands?”

“No one,” he said. “No one who could.”

“And if anyone could, who would it be?”

“The rabble,” he said. “The rabble prompted by Jefferson would see it destroyed. The western rustics, filled with democratical ideas by Jefferson, would rather go to war than hand over a penny in excise taxes. Things are not so complex as you imagine, and you cannot see that only because you have been out of the game too long.”

It seemed to me they were far more complex than I could imagine. That was the difficulty.

I
f I was going to attempt to chip away at this complexity, the first thing I had to discover was the nature of the secret and financial relationship between Hamilton and Duer’s man, Reynolds. I might well have told Hamilton more if I could have better trusted him, but so long as he was secreting purses of gold to men of this sort, I would have to hold fast to my secrets. More to the point, I needed to know why the men who acted against me, and acted against Cynthia, wished to point me toward this man. Reynolds worked for Duer—that much was certain—but it now seemed to me that the bearded Scotsman, who was so clearly involved with the threat against the bank—wanted to make certain I noticed Reynolds and perhaps was set against him.

It was time to approach directly. Thus, that night I walked to Reynolds’s house and knocked on the door. It was later than good manners generally allow for a stranger to call, but this was an unsavory neighborhood, and lights were on. I would take my chances.

When no one answered, I knocked again, and then a third time. At last I heard footsteps upon stairs, and a woman’s voice cried out from inside, asking who called.

“Captain Ethan Saunders, on behalf of the United States Department of the Treasury,” I responded, with only slight exaggeration. This was no time to be shy. “I must gain entrance.”

The door opened. Standing there, in a state of very appealing dishevel, was possibly the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Yes, I know this narrative is crowded with beautiful women—Mrs. Pearson, Mrs. Maycott, Mrs. Lavien, Mrs. Bingham. We might form a cricket team of beautiful women. I cannot help it if they are the ones who excite my notice and so trouble myself to describe. Yet how beautiful are they? Mrs. Pearson is undeniably lovely, but it is my feeling for her that elevates her to so exalted a level. Mrs. Maycott is a bit weak in the chin, to tell the truth, but she is mysterious and poised. Mrs. Lavien has that Hebrew look about her which some may find unappealing.

This lady was beautiful, and not because her demeanor or exotic race or a longing heart provided an added advantage to elevate her. No, here was a creature of perfection, like Milton’s Eve, the ideal of female loveliness. Her fair hair was wavy and in a state of wild disorder. Her eyes were large and so blue it was almost shocking. Her cheeks were red and round and molded to perfection. Her teeth as white as new snow, her lips the color of roses. Shall I go on? It is tedious, I know, but it is important that I make it clear that in part and in sum this was a woman, I believe, utterly without equal in the United States, possibly in the world. Those who would, in years to come, judge the frailty of a man enchanted with her, knew nothing of her astonishing charms. The man did not live who, given the opportunity to love her, would have turned aside.

“Madam, will you marry me?” I asked.

She laughed. She wore a loose gown, quite recently thrown on. It was rather generous in its presentation of décolletage, and her bosoms, large and full, moved very agreeably.

“I am afraid I am already married, sir.”

“Then I shall take my own life,” I said. “Before I do so, I would speak to a Mr. Reynolds. Does he live here?”

Her face darkened just a little. “That is the name of my husband, sir. He is not at home.”

That slovenly brute with his scarred face and lupine demeanor was the husband of this creature? How did she endure it? How could the world endure it? Under normal circumstances, I would almost certainly have inserted myself in this lady’s life to better her state, but I had other things that demanded my attention, foremost being Cynthia. I would focus on the beast and not the beauty. “I must find him.”

“He is not in town at all,” she said. “May I ask what this involves? Did you mention the Treasury Department, sir?”

“I work for Colonel Hamilton at Treasury.” Reform does not extend to lies of this sort.

“And what will you with my husband?” There was now something rather unkind in her tone, and I did not like it. I wanted her to be charmed again.

“I merely wish to talk with him about Mr. Duer,” I said, grinning amicably. “It is about that gentleman, and not your husband.”