David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

“That’s her! The one what Tindall said killed her own husband!” Reynolds shouted.

An expression of understanding crossed Duer’s face. I don’t know how much he had heard of the incident, but if he dealt with Tindall he would have had some notion of his perfidy.

He looked at me with a very contrite face. “I never did hear the full story, but my understanding was that Tindall treated your family unkindly and then attempted to lay the blame upon you.”

I bristled at his use of so limpid a euphemism for murder, but this was not the time to resolve such things. Instead, I said, “I suppose none of us could be surprised that Tindall dealt with himself so harshly, given the crimes upon his conscience.”

As it happened, accusations of murder had never surfaced in the Tindall affair. Perhaps Phineas ultimately lacked the resolve to deliver his confession, and the sheriff decided that a wound to the back of the head was consistent with a hanging. After Brackenridge had humiliated Tindall before the sheriff (a man who did not scruple to talk about his supposedly private conversations), it was widely rumored that Tindall had murdered both Andrew and his own man and, after attempting and failing to blame me, had taken his own life rather than face the humiliation of a trial.

I met his gaze. “Those events are in the past.”

Duer took my hand and held it softly. “For my own part in that wretched affair-”

I shook my head. I did not want to hear a meaningless apology from him. “You did no more than sell us a lease. You cannot be responsible for how Tindall behaved.”

“Of course not,” he said, “and yet some small part of the affair must be set before me.”

“No,” I said. “It is noble that you say so, but it is not true.”

“Wait one moment,” said Reynolds. He stepped close to me, crowding me with his massive form. I believed I could actually feel the heat emanating from him, and his smell, like that of a bull, filled my nostrils. “I don’t like this at all.”

Duer pushed him back. “Mind yourself, Reynolds.”

“I think I’d rather mind you and her. She always was a cagey one, this lady. You forget I rode out to Pittsburgh with her. She’s one of those women who must always have her own way.”

“Is there another kind? Ha-ha! You’ll forgive me, madam.”

I smiled in deference.

“You don’t think it a bit odd,” Reynolds said, “her appearing here, making nice with you after what you done-”

“That will be enough, Reynolds,” Duer barked. “Silence yourself-now!”

Reynolds took a step back as if struck, though his face showed no expression of pain, just puzzlement. He wished to know what I did with Duer, and I could see he did not believe for a moment that our meeting was by chance or that I was so quick to forget the injury the speculator had done me. Even then, I could see behind his dark eyes, so obvious in their brooding, that he searched not for a way to protect Duer but to turn my unlikely presence to his own advantage.

Ibegan to meet with Mr. Duer at the City Tavern whenever he did business in Philadelphia, which amounted to at least one protracted visit every two weeks. Though men wondered at the nature of our friendship, no one wondered aloud in our presence.

As I repeated to Duer his own ideas, handily reported to me by my man in his service, the speculator began to grow increasingly sanguine about my opinions. Thus, after meeting with him for the better part of two months, I decided it was time to begin pushing him in the direction I so desired. Duer made it a point to introduce me to a number of his associates-perhaps he wished them to believe our relationship was of a more intimate nature than it was, or perhaps he wished to impress them with his marvelous pet, the thinking woman-and so I came to know a number of men in Duer’s circle.

The circle itself was a curious thing. His most important project that autumn was a loose confederation of traders he called the Six Percent Club. Its principal object, as all its members knew, was to establish control over those government issues yielding six percent interest. There was value in monopoly for its own sake, of course, but Duer’s scheme was more far-reaching. When the Bank of the United States launched, investors could only buy scrip, the ownership of which allowed them to make the four subsequent payments necessary to own actual bank shares. Not until those four payments were complete would the scrip holder actually be a shareholder. Two of those payments were to be made in specie, but two were to be made in six percent issues.

Hamilton ’s intention in doing this was actually quite clever. Create a demand for government securities in order to increase the trade and, consequently, the value. Duer’s plan was equally clever but far more diabolical. Control the flow of the six percents, make them impossible to obtain, and the original bank investors cannot hope to turn their scrip into actual shares. Their scrip becomes worthless, and they must sell it-to members of the Six Percent Club. It was his intention that by the end of the next year, his cartel would control both bank scrip and the six percent issues required to redeem it.

There was one added dimension, however. The Six Percent Club consisted of both agents whom Duer publicly acknowledged and those he did not. There were men who bought and sold with Duer’s money, and those who bought and sold with their own. Not all in the latter category, but certainly many of them, were nothing more than stooges, men Duer sacrificed to manipulate the market. If he wanted prices to go down, he would send the unwitting agents out to sell. If he wanted prices to go up, he would send them out to buy. That their investments would ruin them mattered nothing to him. He did not see himself as directing a skirmish but rather the final battle of a long war. When it was done, he might have ruined the markets, but he would own them. He might have ruined his reputation, but by then it would not matter.

Much of this I learned from our man in Duer’s employ in New York, and much I learned from my own observation. Duer liked to keep me on hand, as a kind of sign of his power, a charming woman with a considerable knowledge of finance. Never, not once, did he suggest he wished for a greater familiarity with me, though at times he might touch my arm when he spoke or place a hand upon my back. It was intimacy of a sort, certainly, and it took all my will not to recoil, but it was far less than I had feared he might demand.

Too, he discovered that my presence disarmed potential victims. I was a refined lady, and who would attempt chicanery in front of me? Only once did he ask me to participate in one of his ruses. Late in 1791, a man began to appear regularly at the City Tavern, a local landowner of some significance named Jacob Pearson.

Pearson would sit quietly during trading and then strike up conversations with other traders, explaining loudly that they had made terrible mistakes. He said he had observed the markets since their inception in this country and knew an error when he saw one-and a good trade as well. Yet he himself refrained from trading.

“Why do you think he behaves thus?” Duer asked me.

“Because he in fact knows nothing of the difference between a good trade and a bad one. He wishes to benefit from the markets but is too proud to admit knowing nothing.”

“Precisely,” Duer said. “He is quite perfect for our purposes.”

Duer sent the man a note, saying he wished to meet but that the meeting must be private, lest the world know of their business. Thus it was we arranged to meet in the back room of another tavern, where we could discuss these matters in private.

“Will he not be confused by my presence?” I asked Duer.