The battering at the engineer’s office left Major Dr. Keen in the foulest mood of his life. It was one thing to discover that Jake Gibbs had fooled him; Gibbs was surely the Americans' finest agent, a man trusted by Washington with only the most delicate missions. He had been schooled in England and came from a wealthy if not noble family. In some ways he reminded Keen of himself as a young man.
But to find van Clynne alive and running through the streets of New York as freely as a rat — the humiliation was nearly too much to bear.
By the time Keen's horses finally stopped their panicked flight they were nearly trampling the rough wood of the docks. His eyes fairly closed by bruises, the doctor saw no alternative but to slink into some lair and lick his wounds. He did not want to rejoin Clayton Bauer and his relatives under any circumstances, as he would then be obliged to offer some sort of explanation for the tumult. Even the most convincing lie would be a degrading embarrassment.
Rarely had the doctor found himself in such mental disarray. He could not repair to his apartments on the city's west side for fear that someone — perhaps an agent of Bacon's — would seek him out there. Nor could he rule out the possibility that Gibbs had been sent to assassinate him, in a reversal of their previous roles. And so Keen spent a miserable night shivering in a shack owned by an acquaintance midway between Rutger's land and Corlear's Hook. The wind and sea ravaged his ears with their unrelenting drone as he pitched in the narrow cradle of his bed, wrapped in a thin and threadbare cotton cloth. Not even his potions could allow him a fitless sleep.
Still, the doctor had passed hard nights before, and the morrow brought him some hope and new priorities. He decided that he would no longer worry about Bacon and the consequences of the premature message announcing the death of his two enemies. There was nothing to be done about it one way or the other; he would have to accept whatever Fate delivered.
That decision gave him a certain amount of peace, and allowed him to reach his next: he would find and eliminate van Clynne before attending to Gibbs.
Van Clynne embodied nearly everything that Keen loathed, and yet he had beaten Keen consistently, escaping every encounter. To kill him, to rip the man's immense liver from his body and hold it above his head, to strip his gallbladder with a serrated knife and feed it to the rutting pigs. . Keen nearly frothed contemplating such joyful enterprises.
He knew that van Clynne had a great propensity for drink and trusted that he would not be difficult to trace. The doctor began the day by making the rounds of the taverns and inns in the vicinity, gradually widening his net. All manner of owners and keepers knew his prey; van Clynne seemed to owe each inhabitant of the island at least five-shillings. But the Dutchman's comings and goings were not regular, and none of Keen's interviews produced definite news.
Until, in mid-afternoon, he stopped at Fraunces Tavern.
"Owes you too, eh?" said the proprietor after Keen had one of the servers fetch him.
"He has owed me a great deal in the past," Keen told the aristocratic-looking man before him. He was aware that the middle-aged Fraunces shaded to the Whig side but was nonetheless confident he could be fooled. "In all honesty, it is I who owe him at present. I have business in Europe, and want to settle up before leaving."
Though the story seemed plausible and even admirable in theory, Keen could not have hit on a tale that would have made Fraunces more suspicious. To his knowledge, van Clynne never, ever loaned money; it was a violation of the Dutchman's most sacred principles. But Fraunces had considerable experience tending bar, and nodded with a face that would have fooled Saint Thomas himself.
"You are unlucky to have missed him," said the proprietor. "He was here before midday, and was speaking of going to Brooklyn. I believe he was paying off a debt among tavern owners there."
Keen did not bother to finish his Madeira before leaving.
"Add a shilling to van Clynne's bill," Fraunces told his bookkeeper when he returned upstairs. "I have just saved his life."
"Overvalued by half," remarked the man.
Clayton Bauer pulled back the pistol lock's hammer and steadied his aim, endeavoring to ignore his sister. "Clayton," she insisted, "it is nearly mid-afternoon. Your dinner has become cold."
The pistol shot rent the air, but the paper Bauer had placed on the tree as a target remained untouched.
"Damn."
"It's a fine ham," said Lady Patricia.
"Please, Patricia. Leave me alone. See to your husband, or take a carriage into town."
The dismissive tone angered her and Lady Patricia felt the bile rise in her mouth. Still, she fought to control herself, and when she spoke, her voice was nearly as conciliatory as before. "Clayton, you can't go through with this silliness. It is beneath your station."
"On the contrary, my dear. To ignore the insult is beneath my station. It would finish me."
He bent down and picked up his ivory powder horn, refilling his pistol. Nearly half of his shots had failed to find the target. He decided to retie the blue ribbon around his white shirt-sleeve; perhaps it would bring him luck, if not improve his aim.
"Clayton, he is a foolish young man. In England he would be a commoner, if not worse."
"In England, I would be a commoner," he shot back. "You do not understand, Patricia. You do not understand the country or our ways. You have no notion what this war is about."
"And I do not care to." She could not control her anger any longer. "It is ridiculous. Let the colonists set their own taxes and rule themselves. What is the difficulty? The result will be the same. We are bred from the same soil."
"The result will be chaos and poverty. The issue is far beyond taxes. You do not understand the leveling of the mob, my dear. I doubt even your husband does. Nor did young Thomas."
"Don't speak of my son in that tone."
A twinge of regret flushed through him — Bauer had liked the young man a great deal — and he finished loading the pistol in silence.
"Are you going to practice all day?"
His answer was a shot that struck the paper square in the middle. Nodding with approval, Bauer began walking toward it to exult in his success. The high grass before the house flayed back with his boots, barely brushing his soft, smooth breeches. A redcoat sentry was posted a few yards to the north, along the stone wall that marked the former border of the property. The war had allowed Bauer to expand his estate for an extremely advantageous price. "Come and eat something. William is worried sick about you."
"Lord William worries about nothing, not even your honor," said Bauer. He turned toward his sister suddenly. "Tell me, Patricia: did you enjoy that kiss?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"I know you did. Bacon chooses his agents because they attract women. That is how they gather most of their information, from weak women."
"You think all women are weak."
"Everyone is weak," said Bauer, starting back to his mark. "It is just a question of how they show it."