No lights showed in the house, which was an austere-looking gray stone manor of two levels, many shaded windows and multiple chimneys. The road became a gravel drive curving up to the estate on its spacious lawn. But getting to the house was a current problem that needed no solver to deduce: the estate was guarded by a black wrought-iron fence at least seven feet tall and topped with a multitude of wicked spikes. Blocking entry was an iron gate secured with a lock the size of Magnus Muldoon’s fist and that Matthew thought might’ve come directly from the none-so-gentle confines of Newgate Prison. He reasoned that climbing was out of the question; one slip and a spike in the stomach would not be a welcome accompaniment to the dried beef he and Devane had eaten from the saddlebag during the journey across Bristol Bay.

With the saddlebag slung over his right shoulder, Devane surveyed the locked gate. “Shall we announce our presence?” he asked. “Step back,” he said, as he drew the deadly pistol and took aim not at flesh but at metal.

Matthew stepped way back.

Devane held the pistol at arm’s length and put two of the barrels nearly against the lock. He lifted a hand to shield his face. Matthew knew better than to let his eyes be dazzled by the flame of the double shot; he looked away an instant before Devane fired.

In the stillness and silence of the night it sounded to Matthew as if people in London over a hundred miles away might be jarred from their sleep by such a conflagration. His ears felt almost torn from his head, or liable to leap free and go flopping down the road all bloodied and abuzz. He saw in the drifting smoke that the lock had been nearly torn asunder from the gate and turned into a mangled shape that hung by a blackened coil. Devane finished the task with a solid boot to the gate, which swung open with the screech of a protesting spirit awakened from the grave.

Matthew followed Devane through the opening and up the drive. In the distance several dogs were barking their heads off, but here no dogs thrived. The house remained dark … no, Matthew saw in another moment … a light had appeared in an upper-floor window, over on the left. It bloomed brighter as the wicks of the second and third candles were touched by flames.

Devane put the gun away as he walked, and he strode forward as if he owned the place. At his side the sword in its sheath made a rustling sound against his cloak. Matthew watched lights move across the windows; definitely there would soon be a welcome, of some kind.

On the trip across Bristol Bay Devane had been mostly silent when Matthew had asked questions about Rear Admiral Garrett Devane; the only answer Matthew had gotten was that the elder Devane was a rear admiral in name only, having attained that rank many years ago but leaving the force to serve both as Bristol’s harbormaster and to take up partnership in the Royal Atlantic Company to sell cargo to the New World. Still, the elder Devane kept in contact with companions in the navy and might know something about a missing mortar vessel, likely taken within the last few weeks from one of several naval dockyards. Other than that little bit, Devane had remained mute on the subject of his father.