Grant was amazed at McConnell’s ability to hold his liquor. The Irishman—his face nearly as red now as his hair—moved easily through the crowded streets of the Irish Channel, without so much as a wobble. If I’d taken that much on board, Grant thought, I’d have foundered an hour ago.
He didn’t have to check to be sure that Sherman was with him; Cump was a good man to have at your back. He did find himself, though, keeping a wary eye for either Macartey or the watch. It would be just like the man to have had me followed.
Grant had expected McConnell to be heading further riverward, but the man confounded him by suddenly shifting in the opposite direction, so that he was headed downtown and away from the river. This was curious. From what D’Arcy McGee had told him, the Irish secret societies didn’t spend much time amongst the Creoles. There were Irish gangs in the French Quarter, but they were what you’d expect in a port city: ruffians who preyed on the sailors and anyone else fool enough to venture into a two-block Hades called Ponsonby Street.
McConnell wasn’t headed toward Ponsonby Street, Grant noted with relief. Instead, he continued to move away from the river, in the direction of another disreputable neighborhood, one called The Swamp. “Obviously he’s not drunk enough,” Sherman muttered as their quarry disappeared into yet another grog-shop. Grant continued past the building, an aged structure on its last timbers. He had already spotted an alleyway from which he and Sherman could watch until McConnell reappeared. I am not going to go into every whiskey-mill this man visits, he thought.
“I take it back,” Sherman said a few seconds later when McConnell reappeared. “He’s just stopped to pick up some friends.” Two men were with McConnell now, two of the more ugly specimens Grant had ever seen. One of them carried a paper-wrapped package, and the other was clearly carrying a pistol stuffed into the waist of his trousers, in a way that his waistcoat completely failed to hide. The three men set out at a brisk pace, but Grant quickly became perplexed by their behavior.
“Have we wasted our time following a sot who wants to end his evening horizontally?” he asked Sherman. McConnell and his friends had gone into yet another ramshackle building, and emerged with a young woman—well, on first glance she appeared young—who smiled as she showed off a lilac-colored dress. The package, Grant noted, was no longer being carried by anyone.
“This is queer, all right,” Sherman said. “I’ve no doubt she’s a whore. But why bring her back down into the street?”
“And where the hell are they going now?” Grant asked, as the bizarre party set out again, once more headed downtown.
It was quite late when McConnell and his companions finally stopped, in a seemingly respectable neighborhood in the French Quarter. At least one house on the street wasn’t at all reputable, judging by the sounds that emerged through its open windows. But that just made McConnell’s actions more perplexing. “Why bring a whore to a brothel?” he asked Sherman. “You might as well import Negroes to Africa.”
Sherman tugged at his sleeve, pointing up the street to where a carriage sat. “Recognize the driver?” he asked.
“What the hell are they doing here?” Grant wondered.
A few minutes later, to his horror, he found out.
* * * *
“It could be completely innocuous, you know.” Mr. Benjamin gave Stewart an avuncular smile.
“Plenty of Southern businessmen have reason to visit the Canadian authorities, I’ve no doubt.”
“It’s possible,” Stewart said. “I admit it. Though I seem to recall that trade with Canada and Britain is illegal.”
“Trade with the Yankees was illegal, too,” Benjamin said. “Yet we continued to do so for a good six months after the founding of the Confederacy. Businessmen will be businessmen, Captain Stewart.”
“Which is why I’m glad we have so few of them. But Barber was supposedly a planter. Don’t you think that we ought to investigate what a Mississippi planter was doing, meeting every other day for two weeks with Lord Byron?”
“Yes,” Benjamin said. “Even if it turns out to be of no consequence, it is damned curious. I haven’t met with Lord Byron that frequently, and I’m the official representative of our government here.” He poured a companion to the glass beside his chair and offered it to Stewart. “How did you come across this information?”
“Mr. Barber is the Confederate citizen who was killed in the explosion of the riverboat Comet the other day,” Stewart said. “Because the explosion seems to have been deliberately set, I wondered if there was some connection between the bomb and Barber’s presence—illegally—on the boat. So I’ve been asking after him, trying to find if there was anything about him that might make someone want to kill him—and to do so without regard to dozens of other lives.”
“I ought to bring this to the attention of General Magruder,” Benjamin said. “And General Lewis at Fort Brock.”
“I’m not sure that it would be wise to involve the Canadians, sir,” Stewart said. “If Barber was meeting with Lord Byron and we were kept ignorant of that fact, it might not be sound to let the Canadians know what we’ve discovered.”
Benjamin smiled, more honestly this time. “You would make a good politician, son,” he said. “Or a general, come to that. You have a suitably devious turn of mind.”
Stewart smiled his thanks but said nothing. He wasn’t sure he’d really been complimented.
“I will say that this news goes some way to explaining the perplexing attitudes of the Canadians and—especially—the British,” Benjamin said. “If I didn’t know better, I would swear they were delaying the negotiations as much as possible. Perhaps my earlier supposition was correct, and the British truly are afraid of becoming embroiled in our war. Canada has a huge border with the Northern states, and the population is so small and scattered that defending that border would be nearly impossible.”
“Only if they tried to defend everywhere,” Stewart said. “The way we tried to set our defenses last year. Concentration of our forces, the way we’re doing it now, is far wiser.” He thought about the British and Canadian soldiers he’d seen in the last couple of weeks. Then he thought again, and saw Menard’s daily demonstrations in a whole new light. It’s a new unit every time, he realized.
“I think I know what they’re doing, sir,” he said. “They’re stalling for time, all right. They don’t want to risk recognizing us until they have enough troops in the Canadas to discourage the Federals from declaring war on them. And they’re bringing reinforcements now.”
Now Benjamin was examining him very closely. “I want you to think very carefully about this, Captain Stewart,” he said. “You’re a young man, and young men are capable of exaggeration. But this is a very serious matter. Is it your honest assessment that the British are reinforcing their armies here?”
“I have only just started thinking along those lines, sir,” Stewart said, “so I’d be reluctant to risk my reputation on that claim right now.” As Benjamin’s brows lifted he quickly added, “What I’m saying, I guess, is that I need to gather more evidence, and re-interpret what I’ve already seen, in the light of this”—what was the word again? He tried to think back to the Institute, to those interminable philosophy-of-science lectures. “This hypothesis,” he said. “I think that Captain Patton and I could give you a better answer if we had a couple of days to put our heads together about this.”
“And General Magruder will have to be told,” Benjamin said. “Though I doubt he’ll be able to offer much in the way of assistance.” Stewart silently agreed. “The British are keeping him so busy that he hardly has a chance to see anything that isn’t a social occasion,” Benjamin added, in a way that made Stewart wonder if the commissioner didn’t agree with his own assessment of General Magruder’s military capabilities.
“Will you speak to the general, sir? I need his permission to begin this investigation. And the Canadians will have to be given some story that will reconcile them to the fact that I won’t be under their eyes every waking minute.”
Benjamin smiled, very broadly this time. “Such freedom would let you continue your investigation into the mysterious Mr. Barber as well,” he said.
“I had thought of that. Sir.”
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