[Concluding chapter four]
"He was going to Natchez,"
Stewart told Patton as they rode up Canal to the hotel. Patton's uniform was, if anything, more a
mess than Stewart's. Stewart felt a
small pride at the way in which his younger friend had pitched in, without
question or waiting for orders.
"Makes sense," Patton said. "Natchez is a Mississippi port, and
probably the closest to Jefferson, wherever that is."
"You're missing the point," Stewart
said. "The Comet
wasn't supposed to stop at Natchez. We
don't trade with the Canadians, remember?
If Mr. Barber"—the late Mr. Barber now, sadly—"wanted passage
to Natchez, he should have found it on a Southern-owned boat."
"After that careful explanation,"
Patton said, "I'm still missing the point.
So a Canadian steamboat captain decides to make a few extra pounds or
dollars or what-have-you by dropping a man in a hurry at a Confederate port
instead of making him cross the river.
How does this constitute a—well, what do you think it does
constitute, Stewart? Why are you so
wrought-up about this?"
"I don't really know," Stewart
admitted. "But after I left Barber
a man told me that the Comet’s master was known
for smuggling between the Confederacy and Canada. That makes me wonder if the Confederacy was
somehow a target of this explosion.
Captain Menard has gone to the authorities with his story of a bomb, and
I don’t think him clever enough to have invented such a story. It certainly defies belief that he could have
convinced a dying man to support such a fiction, and I heard that Irish
stoker's claim with my own ears, Patton.
The Comet was engaged in smuggling, somebody blew
her up, and Confederate citizens suffered as a result."
As they dismounted and passed their horses to
a stable-boy, Stewart said, "The Federals have a legation here. Could they have bombed that boat in an effort
to throw off our negotiations?"
"Good Lord, man," Patton said. "What diplomat would do such a
thing? And even if it was as you
suggest, what could have persuaded any Federal that such an act would inspire
anything but outrage?"
"I don't know," Stewart said. "That any government could even
contemplate such an action is beyond me."
"Still feel like attending the ball
tonight?" Patton asked. He sounded
very tired.
"I want to have a bath and go to
bed," said Stewart. "I've had
more than enough excitement for today."
* * * *
Grant didn't like being out of uniform,
but he didn't figure he had much choice if he hoped to succeed with his plan to
unearth Major Brown's plot, and foil it if necessary. It wasn't the spies themselves he was worried
about; it was the city watch and the occasional patrol of militia dragoons he
wanted to avoid. He'd been surprised,
late last fall, at how dramatically the police and militia presence on the
streets had increased once Lord Byron and the government had returned to winter
quarters from the summer capital at Kingston, in Ontario province. A man in the uniform of a United States Army
captain was bound to attract the notice of the authorities, and while Grant
figured he had their best interests at heart, he didn't think he'd have much
luck persuading the police of that.
He stepped off the St Charles Street omnibus at
Poydras and walked riverward in the direction of King William Square. If Sherman had been correct in his guess
about the man they'd seen breaking into the building yesterday, Grant was going
to need advice about their next step.
He had to look around for a few minutes
before he could locate the building he was looking for; the only other time
he'd been here he'd been rather the worse for whiskey. It didn’t help that all the buildings in this
neighborhood looked pretty much the same.
King William Square was home to the city hall and many businessmen whose
regular dealings were with the civic government. A lot of the buildings had been put up at
about the same time, and apparently designed by the same person. And a lot of them contained lawyers’ offices.
He eventually identified the right building
by spotting the small sign for The Celtic Canadian, the
newspaper edited by the man he was looking for.
“Good Lord,” Tom McGee said when he saw Grant in his doorway. “Captain Grant. This is an unexpected pleasure.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything
important.” McGee’s fingers were
speckled and smudged black, and behind him Grant could see sheets of proofs
hanging to dry on a flimsy wooden rack.
A long, broad desk was covered with piles of loose papers.
“Not at all.
Come in. Can I send down for some
coffee?”
“You’re very kind,” Grant said. “But I’m here to ask your advice on a matter
of some—delicacy, I guess, is the word—and I was hoping we could go out for a
walk, or some such, while we talk."
“I’m not at all sure I know you well enough,
Captain, to be discussing the ladies with you.”
McGee was joking, Grant was certain. He felt a flush spreading upward from his
neck anyway. “It isn’t that sort of
delicacy,” he said. “The subject is
political, after a fashion.”
“Ah, that’s different.” McGee reached somewhere behind the door; when
his hand reappeared it held a bottle-green coat of a superior cut. “In New Orleans, you gain sufficient acquaintance
with a man to discuss politics in the time it takes to order and receive a
pint. I know just the place, too.” He led Grant out of the building and into a
tavern on Magazine Street.
“So,” he said when they’d seated themselves
and he’d put a bottle on the table between them, “what does Captain Grant want
to discuss that’s political in nature—after a fashion?”
Thomas D’Arcy McGee was a few years younger
than Grant, but his eyes suggested someone older. He’d been, Grant had learned, a follower of
O’Connell in Ireland and had been imprisoned for it. On his release he’d gone to New York, but
apparently had found the Irish community in that city not to his liking. He had once told Grant that his friends had
considered him mad for coming to Canada, but McGee himself seemed to think that
New Orleans had more potential for an Irishman than did either London or, God
help it, Dublin.
In New Orleans McGee published his newspaper,
worked as a lawyer, and was, if Grant’s guess was correct, carefully preparing
for a political career. He was
well-connected and seemed to be both happy and successful. Grant couldn’t see much evidence of the
radical that McGee had once been.
Hoping he’d guessed correctly, Grant asked
him, “Would you be prepared to give me your honest and frank opinion of certain
aspects of the Irish in this city?”
McGee, caught in the act of pouring, lifted
the bottle and sat back. “That’s a
loaded question,” he said. “Wouldn’t you
agree? Suppose you give me a bit of an
idea of which aspects of my countrymen you are interested in, and why you’re
suddenly so curious.”
“Fair enough,” said Grant. “I don’t mind a bit of bargaining. But you will give your word that what we’re
about to discuss will stay between the two of us. You can tell no one of this without my
permission.”
“You can generally trust a lawyer to keep a
secret,” McGee said.
“I don’t know about ‘generally’,” Grant
said. “But I’m prepared to trust you.”
He waited until McGee had finished pouring
whiskey into their glasses before he continued.
“I am investigating a pair of officers assigned to our legation
here. Recently I saw them in communion
with a man who I then saw break into a building. Another informant has told me that the man
was likely Irish, a member of a gang that sets fires and takes advantage of the
disruption to burgle nearby buildings.”
“I’m familiar with the practice,” McGee said,
his voice flat. “There are American and
Canadian gangs that do this as well.”
“You are right,” Grant said. “Germans too.
But for reasons I can’t tell you right now, I’ve already eliminated
Americans and Creoles. Now I’m
investigating the Irish.”
“What would a pair of American officers want
with an Irish criminal gang?” McGee
raised his glass to Grant. “Your good
health, sir,” he said, then drained the glass.
“I came to you because I believe that you are
among the most likely to be able to answer that question,” Grant said. “I know full well that there are many Irish
here who hate the British. Some of them,
I’m sure, work for change within the law.
Others are less scrupulous, and I’m in no doubt would be happy to
combine political crime with their more traditional larceny. The United Irish movement may have been
broken up, as the British claim. But
there are undoubtedly others. Can you
help me tell the latter from the merely criminal?”
“Ah,” McGee said. “And where, exactly, is my interest in
possibly betraying my countrymen?”
“Aside from seeing that the law is upheld?”
Grant asked. “Probably in preventing a
disaster that would seriously damage the lives of those Irishmen who just want
to live here in peace. Is that
sufficient justification for taking a small risk?”
“Part of me says ‘No, it isn’t’,” McGee
said. “But another part of me recognizes
that the Irishman has a better chance of building an honest life for himself
and his family in Canada than he does in Ireland, Britain, or the United
States.” He nodded to Grant. “No offence meant, captain. But my brief experience in New York suggested
that an Irishman is as likely to be exploited and abused in a republic as in a
kingdom.”
He poured and drank another glass of whiskey.
“So let me tell you about the Ribbonmen and
the Defenders and the Whiteboys and the Garda, and then you tell
me if you think that they’re the answer you’re looking for.”
* * * *
An hour after he’d dismissed Thomas and
gone to bed, Stewart stepped out of his room.
He’d been unable to sleep, and while he knew that a swallow or two of
laudanum would certainly help him to drop off, he couldn’t bring himself to
open the flask. For one thing, he’d feel
wretched tomorrow morning: laudanum-sleep was restless, murky. He’d could have called for a bottle of
whiskey, but whiskey wasn’t what he wanted.
Besides, he’d dismissed Thomas for the evening and it would be a bother
to try to roust him again. Thomas was a
hard worker as negroes went, but the fact remained they were lazy and prone to
sulk if you pushed them too hard.
What he needed, he decided, was diversion,
something to drive from his mind the visions of blood; scarlet, weeping skin;
and milk-colored eyes. Stepping into the
hall, he wondered if Patton would be interested in joining him. The carnage on the levee had to have affected
him as well.
Patton didn’t answer his door. Stewart waited until he’d counted to one
hundred before admitting that the younger man wasn’t in his room. Typical of Patton to have gone down to supper
without him. You did
tell him you were going to go straight to bed.
Stewart couldn’t make himself feel too sorry
that Patton wasn’t available. Before
he’d reached the stairwell, he was mentally calculating the route he’d take to
Gravier Street and Placide’s Varieties.
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four
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