David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

I dressed quickly and allowed the girl to lead me down the darkened staircase to the parlor, where candles had been lit hastily and where the fire from the evening before burned low. For all the girl’s rushed attention, the room was still thick with shadow, not at all the sort of place a widow ought to sit alone with a late-night caller. She seemed to know it, and once she showed me in, she lurked behind me, unwilling to leave me unless asked to do so. I, too, was not certain I wished to be left with my caller, but I had no choice and sent the girl away.

Pacing before the low fire, looking drunk and unkempt, was Mr. Pearson. His cravat was loose, his shirt torn and stained with wine, and the right sleeve of his jacket was tattered as though it had been caught in some brutal machine that had mysteriously spared his hand.

I could not pretend to be surprised to see him so. This was the day of the Million Bank launch, and all had gone far better than I could have imagined. I’d known of Ethan Saunders’s plans to sabotage Duer’s efforts to gain control of the bank and had done all I could to make certain he would succeed. Pearson, in his jealousy and cruelty, had almost destroyed those plans, but fate and good fortune had turned Reynolds, that brute, into my ally.

I now approached Pearson and thought to hold out my hands, but I could not summon the energy to pretend to care for him. In his state, I doubted he would notice. “Sir, this visit is most unexpected. I hope nothing terrible has happened.”

“The Million Bank was a disaster,” Pearson said.

“I could not have known,” I told him. “I proposed it because I thought it would subscribe. No one could know how much it would oversubscribe.”

“I did not invest,” he said.

I could not help myself. I clapped my hands together. “Oh, thank the Lord!”

His eyes glistened with moisture, for he mistook my concern for his wife as something meant for him. “We’ve all been foolish. We’ve all arrogantly believed that our cleverness elevated us above the madness of the markets, which no intellect can ever truly predict.”

“I have tried to advise you the best I can, but I am relieved you had the foresight to avoid the Million Bank, even if the rest of us did not.”

“It wasn’t foresight,” he said, rather bitterly. “It was Ethan Saunders. He warned me off, even while I-I was unkind to him. He gave me good advice for my wife’s sake.”

“I hope you will recall my advice regarding the four percents,” I said.

He smiled somewhat bashfully, as though embarrassed to speak on this point. “Already the price has begun to rise. In this matter you were surely correct. But as for Duer, I think we all misjudged him. You see it too, I think. He is about to topple. No one has ever been so overextended as he, because he’d been counting on taking the Million Bank. Now I don’t see how he can survive.”

“I cannot say.” I wanted to choose my words carefully. I did not wish to make myself sound more prescient than I ought to be, nor did I wish to expose my lack of loyalty to Duer. “He has a great many resources, and he is clever. But the failure of his Million Bank plan is a serious blow, and I believe things may have now entered the realm of uncertainty.”

“The only reason I am not now hounded by creditors is because Duer vouches for me. Once Duer falls, I will not be far behind. Given his failure today, it may already be too late for me. I must retreat.”

“To where?”

“I have a house off the King’s Highway between here and Philadelphia. In Brighton.”

“I’d heard you sold it.”

He smiled. “It is what I meant people to hear.”

“How long do you intend to stay there?”

“Until Duer falls,” he said, “or until he recovers unequivocally and can vouch for me or, better yet, pay me what he owes.”

I smiled at him-brightly, I hope-for I was thinking of how events might fall, and a safe haven on the Philadelphia road seemed to me just the thing I needed. “Would you object if I were to visit you there?”

He bowed. “I shall never object to your company.”

I chose not to tell him I was inclined to bring friends, nor that my friends were rough men from the frontier. Best to leave that out for now. When he stood facing Mr. Dalton, I had no doubt Pearson would keep any objections he might have to himself.

We rode the express coach, but it took us nearly four days to return to Philadelphia. Three hours after crossing the ferry to New Jersey, we were struck by a malicious snowstorm that slowed our movement to a crawl. We were forced to stop for the night at the dismal town of Woodbridge, having progressed no more than thirty miles. I should like to say we fared no better the next day, but that would be presenting things in too pleasant a light. Our equipage struck a gap in the road and overturned near New Brunswick, a town even more miserable than Woodbridge. Two of our fellow travelers, both speculators, were hurt quite badly, one breaking his leg and being in serious danger of dying. The carriage was fixed by late morning of the third day and the roads were somewhat clearer, but muddy, and our progress was slow. We stopped for the night in Colestown-tantalizingly close to our destination-and arrived in Philadelphia early the next morning.

Lavien rode off at once to report his findings to Hamilton. I had other business and walked from the City Tavern, where we wearily departed from our coach, to the Pearson house. I had no intention of knocking upon the door, but I wanted to see it, I wanted to get a sense from the outside that all was well within. Perhaps, I told myself, I would catch a glimpse of her at an upstairs window. Perhaps she would see me as well. Our eyes would meet and a thousand unsaid things would pass between us.

As I approached the house, I felt the cold air pierce my greatcoat; it had the eerie chill of foreboding. There was a large cart parked outside, and a dozen or more laborers were in the process of removing furnishings. I watched as three men carried a heavy oaken writing desk.

I rushed to them. “Hold. What happens here? Where is Mrs. Pearson?”

One of the men turned to me. He was a burly fellow, the sort usually found down at the docks. He was no doubt glad of the work, hard to come by in the heart of winter. “Don’t rightly know, but ain’t no one living in there, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“What do you mean?”

“The house has been sold. We’re working for a Mr. John Becker, what’s bought it. He’s marked the furnishings he don’t want, and we’re taking them to store for the auction.”

I took a step closer, chilled at once by a thousand possibilities, but one above all else. I should have followed Lavien’s first advice. I should have let him cut Pearson’s throat when we were in New York.

It took a moment, but I found my voice. “When did this happen?”

He shook his head. “Can’t tell you. We started work here this morning, but I can’t say when the house was sold.”

I got from the man the location of his employer, and went to see this Becker, but he was of little help. He bought the house, he told me, through a broker, and while he had been in negotiations for some time, the deal had only been finished two days earlier. As for Mr. Pearson, he had no knowledge of where to find that man-or his wife.

With no better notion of what to do, I took myself back to the City Tavern and began to question men at random if they had heard anything of Pearson. I forced myself to remain calm and easy, and merely presented my questions as though I had business with the gentleman. “I am searching for Jacob Pearson,” I said, “in order to conclude a transaction begun sometime earlier. Can anyone here direct me to him?”