“Mrs. Waddell, please leave us,” MacRae said. She didn’t move. “Very well, then. I don’t mean to be indelicate. But since Cousin Sam here has no ear for subtlety, let me ask him straight out.” He stood on the balls of his feet, fists at his side. “Sam, did you know your wife was sleeping with a nigger?”

Sam swung his fist at MacRae’s face, but MacRae adroitly dodged it, then boxed Sam neatly on the ear. Sam dropped to the floor and banged his head. Gabrielle looked away. Bessie King, hearing the ruckus, stuck her head in the door to see what was wrong and just as quickly ducked out again.

Sam sat up. MacRae drew an envelope from his coat and flicked it into Sam’s lap—tickets. “The Yankee Clipper leaves at quarter past seven.”

Shakily, Sam got to his feet, but MacRae was already gone. He had trouble with his equilibrium and grabbed a chair for balance. He couldn’t believe it—he was being run out of town. What was their word? Banished. A word right out of the Bible.

Waddell said in a kindly voice, “I had such great hopes for you, Samuel. You had such a promising future.” Now, he’d have to write his own story—you just couldn’t count on a man anymore, not like in the old days.

Sam rubbed his ear and tried to focus his eyes on Gabrielle. It mattered a great deal to him at that moment what she thought of him. Why wouldn’t she speak?

“The worst thing, of course,” Waddell went on, as if he were reporting a postmortem, “is the Manly business.”

“What Manly business?”

Waddell smiled. “You’re out, Samuel. No need to dissemble. We know perfectly well that your wife”—he said it like it was a dirty word—“helped Alex Manly to escape.”

The absurd logic was coming clear to Sam: Ivanhoe Grant naked to the waist in his kitchen. The buggy Cousin Hugh had loaned them.

Waddell held up the rag—Ivanhoe Grant’s bloody shirt. “The buggy was recovered at Castle Hayne, near the depot,” Waddell said. “There was an eyewitness, a neighbor.”

Sam cocked his head. “Man or woman?”

“Neither—a little boy. Two little boys, in fact.”

Sam nodded. The two little gangsters next door. It was almost funny. He waited a moment until he got his equilibrium back, then slowly walked to the door. As he opened it, he turned and said, “I wrote it all down, you know. The whole story. Gave it to Tom Clawson.”

Waddell chuckled. “You don’t actually think he’ll print it?”

“Then I’ll write it again, someplace else. I will.”

“You do that. You scribble away to your heart’s content. I can’t use that kind of scribbler.”

“My God,” Sam said. “To think I admired you.”