"What?" Stoneweather turned to the lieutenant.

"Cushing," Stoneweather laughed to his companion on the other side of him, "you hear what I endure?" Then turning back to Rey, "Right, I've heard something of him. Some kind of literary fellow. Like that long gray bearded poet." Stoneweather recoiled, as if the question had been meant to trip him up. "Well, what should I know of him?"

"Yes." Rey cleared his throat loudly, suddenly feeling a warm stare from behind.

"Hey, Lilly-White!"

"What in God's name are you doing sitting there?" the brown coated man snapped. "Shouldn't you be sweeping out the rubbish with the rest of 'em?"

Stoneweather spun around and pounced to his feet. Rey rose calmly from his stool, his six foot-plus frame towering over the source of the intrusion. Rey curled his hand against the sergeant's unsteady shoulder.

"No, I'll take care of this, Rey. What's any of it to you, bingo-boy?" Stoneweather stared down at the brown coat.

"I ain't drinking in no place with mokes on the side of me, that's what!" he spat out, then turned back to Rey. "My brother died fighting for you slave bastards, and we shot good Southern boys by the thousands. Now I ain't gonna sit here and watch you bubb it away!"

"Enough!" Stoneweather said, sounding nearly as drunk as the other man. "Clear out of here before I count to three or you'll spend the next week in the block-house!"

The brown-coated fellow thrust his hand in his surtout pocket churlishly as he took a step back. With a gnashing of his teeth as the only forewarning, the man's fist flew out, now sheathed in metallic knuckles, heading right for Stoneweather's jaw. Lieutenant Rey caught the man's wrist in mid-air and with a single thrust flung him bodily into one of the Bell-in-Hand's empty benches. The metallic knuckles clanked to the floor and Stoneweather leaned over and pocketed them.

"I'll run him in for a month," Stoneweather cried.

The surrounding patrons clapped and jeered at the defeated party. The culprit looked ready to erupt but some sympathetic whispers of "they're cops," "he was a hero at Honey Hill," and "he's a police officer!" subdued him. "I didn't know," the attacker mumbled pleadingly.

"That's enough," Rey said to Stoneweather.

Rey turned to Stoneweather. "You ready now?"

"Just as soon as I finish one more," pleaded Stoneweather.

Blake Spurn slipped into the Bell-in-Hand and deposited his soaking wet hat on the iron hook closest to the door. As was usual on a Saturday night, the bar brimmed over with reporters from every major Boston paper. Though in the last few years the newspapers had been scrambling over each other to concoct the most complex telegraphic systems for wiring information, for Blake Spurn the Bell-in-Hand Tavern could beat any clumsy wire system in the race for news.

"Spurn!" bellowed Langley of the Boston Recorder, who was sitting with one of the Recorder's junior reporters and a short-mustachioed, slight fellow Spurn did not recognize. A hearty bear of a New Englander, Langley was endlessly enthralled by the fact that Spurn was an Englishman, even if only by birth. "I almost decided you weren't going to make it in tonight! Thought you might've married that darling nightingale of yours."

"Not that I'm aware of, Langley, not yet anyhow," Spurn said, accepting the wide paw of his sometimes-rival.

"You've heard the word on the mountaintop murder case?" Langley said in a liquored-up whisper.

"Have I?" Spurn leaned in. He had not heard anything further on the naked corpse dragged into the Dead House two weeks earlier.

"Kurtz's story that it was a beggar may go the way of the earth, they say, Spurn. This may be a gentleman about town after all."

Spurn continued leaning, waiting for more.

"That's all I know, my man!" Langley shrugged. "That's the word that's out there. Perhaps we'll have another Webster trial to fill our plates before long. Boston don't get excited over anything like they do a dead Brahmin, I vow! 'Specially when killed by another one!"

Langley laughed heartily and lit a cigar, but Spurn's attentions had been rerouted. Spurn scanned the room up and down for anyone who would have pocketed more on the story than Langley. Langley had a good ear for rumors, but he was too willing to collect vague rumors and disperse them lavishly, waiting for other people to clarify them.

Langley pushed a cigar in front of Spurn's face. Spurn waved it away along with a stray blue wisp of Langley's smoke. Langley turned to the man sitting on the other side of him, as if seeing him for the first time. "Oh, where have my manners run off to tonight? Blake Spurn, may I present J. R. Osgood. He works for Ticknor and Fields, the big-time publishers. Mr. Osgood, this here is Blake Spurn, always the top byline on the Evening Telegraph."

Spurn politely accepted the newcomer's hand. "How do you do?"

"Very well, thank you, Mr. Spurn."

"I trust you've met the regulars here?" Spurn inquired absently while surveying the bar through the thick barricades of smoke.

"I must admit this is my first visit to the Bell-in-Hand, Mr. Spurn, though I have heard much about it. We place ads in your Telegraph for our book lists on a fairly regular basis. Are you friendly with any of your staff critics?"

As a patch of smoke cleared away from across the room, Spurn's scanning paid off. In an area of the bar where some commotion had just taken place, Sergeant Roland Stoneweather sat gabbing to his neighbor. From the wet rings on the counter in front of him it did not appear likely to be the thick-necked Stoneweather's first glass of the evening. As a rule, police officers avoided the Bell-in-Hand, but Chief of Police Kurtz knew that reporters usually found information more quickly than his own men, and so made certain to send a delegate to the tavern at least once a week to listen in for the latest tidbits. Stoneweather was not well known to most of the reporters when out of his indigo, but Spurn had a keen memory for faces and had seen the Sergeant nipping at the heels of Chief Kurtz more than once.

Nicholas Rey, the soldier appointed the first colored policeman by Governor Andrew, negotiated his way toward the door, leaving behind a trail of hostile stares. Spurn positioned himself behind Langley's enormous bulk until Rey had passed. Spurn wanted to make sure the lieutenant left Stoneweather to his own devices.

"Pardon me," Spurn said to Osgood before he weaved his way to the opposite end of the bar.

"Oh, don't pay him any mind, Jemmy!" Langley cast a paw around Osgood's tiny shoulder. "He never stays in one place for very long! It's a habit he picked up from the Mother-Island, you can wager on that." Langley grabbed Osgood's half-finished glass and swirled the sherry around into a vortex. "Can I order you another?"

As Rey slipped out the door, Blake Spurn secured the stool next to Stoneweather and kicked it closer to the officer. Stoneweather was by now in mid-conversation with Cushing, the Herald's court reporter.

"So I politely asked him if his lady friend was one of those nymphs of Ann Street, if you catch my meaning," Stoneweather said, careful to bolster his speech against his rapidly slurring thoughts. He had more than once heard Alderman Gaffield speak about setting an example for the enforcement of the temperance laws, and could not recall at what point in the evening he had decided to accept the bartender's offer of a drink. "And he looks up and says, 'Officer, you're all wrong. The lady is only my wife's parlor girl!' As if that would make the situation all the better! I hate to see his wife's face at the hearing!"

"Well, when will the other case come to docket?" Cushing could not project even feigned amusement at the sergeant's story.

"Before our new homicide case, certainly," Spurn answered as if already a participant in the conversation.

"Homicide?" Cushing raised his needley eyebrows. If there was to be a trial, it was Cushing's job to know. "You mean the mountaintop murder? The man was a John Doe."

"Cushing," Spurn said with a frown, leaning in as if to talk out of the earshot of Stoneweather. "You'll mind yourself a little better?"

"I beg your pardon, Spurn?"

"Only that the victim was a man of position, and a bosom friend of the Sergeant's."

Stoneweather looked around his stool confusedly, checking whether another sergeant had entered the area.

"A friend of mine?" Stoneweather asked.

"Certainly," Spurn said, glancing sternly at the officer. "Well, I've heard it myself just today. I wouldn't blame you if you're all broken up over it."

"Broken up!" Stoneweather exclaimed, waiting for the punchline.

"Foofaraw and bull," Cushing said. "A vagabond from Provincetown. That's what I hear."

"The mayor announced an evening of memorial a few hours ago. How long have you gentlemen been stored away indoors? And for a friend of Sergeant Stoneweather's!" Spurn pushed his stool away in disgust and stood. "Not even broken up over it? To think a friend of the deceased and an officer of the Boston Police Department would be drinking on a day of remembrance."

"I shan't listen to that, sir," said Stoneweather irately, now towering over Spurn but needing the bar counter to remain standing. "I've guarded the man's courtroom before but would not be found at his table! I hardly consider that the place of a chum," Stoneweather punctuated his retort with a faux-English accent.

"Well, my apologies, Sergeant. Please," Spurn said, signaling the bartender to bring Stoneweather another.

Stoneweather nodded a grudging acceptance to Spurn and happily resumed his seat. But with the first bitter sip of his fresh drink Stoneweather realized. Chief Kurtz had admonished them time and again for a week to keep the identity of Justice Healey concealed as long as possible so the department could have a head start on any sensationalism. Now, Spurn had only to dispatch some Telegraph lackeys to the courts to find out which judge had been absent from his chambers for the past week, and they would arrive at Healey in no time. Stoneweather spun around with his mouth open wide to recant as much as he could manage, but Spurn was already gone, and Justice Healey's identity headed for the next day's late edition.