“What the devil just happened?” he asked. Rather mildly, all things considered. Denys was breathing like he’d run a mile under arms, and the edge of his neckcloth was dark with sweat. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure that the ship had gone, and then turned back to William, his breath beginning to slow.

“Herr Weber has enemies,” he said.

“So does everyone, these days. Who is Herr Weber?”

Denys made a sound that might have been an attempt at a wry laugh. “Well … he’s not Herr Weber, for starters.”

“Are you planning to tell me who he is?” William said impatiently. “Because I’ve got business elsewhere, if you haven’t.”

“Besides looking for a girl, you mean?”

“I mean supper. You can tell me who our recent friend is on the way.”

“HE HAS A few aliases,” Denys said, halfway through a bowl of chowder, thick with clams. “But his name is Haym Salomon. He’s a Jew,” he added.

“And?” William had eaten his own chowder in nothing flat and was wiping the bowl with a chunk of bread. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t think why it should. Salomon. Haym Salomon … It was the word “Jew” that supplied the missing link of memory.

“Is he Polish, by chance?” he asked, and Denys choked on a clam.

“Oh, he is.” William raised a hand toward the barmaid and pointed at his empty bowl with a gesture indicating that he’d like it refilled. “How did he escape being executed in New York?”

Denys coughed, gagged, and coughed explosively, scattering the tabletop with bread crumbs, soup droplets, and a large chunk of clam. William rolled his eyes, but reached for the beer pitcher and refilled their mugs.

Denys waited until the fresh chowder had been brought and his eyes had stopped watering, then leaned over his bowl, speaking in a voice barely loud enough to be heard over the banging of cannikins and blustering talk in the taproom.

“How in God’s name do you come to know that?” he said.

William shrugged. “Something my uncle said. A Polish Jew, and he’d been condemned to death as a spy in New York. He was rather surprised to hear of him alive, and here. So,” he added, taking a dainty spoonful of chowder, “if that’s who your little friend is—and rather plainly he is—then I’m rather wondering just who—or rather, what—you are, these days. Because Herr Weber is plainly not in the employ of His Majesty.”

Denys drank the rest of his beer deliberately, brows knitted as he considered William.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter that you know; he’s already out of reach,” he said at last. He belched slightly, said, “Excuse me,” and poured more beer, while William waited patiently.

“Mr. Salomon is a banker,” Denys said, and having evidently made up his mind to tell William more or less the truth, went on. Born in Poland, Salomon had come to New York as a young man and made a successful career. He had also begun to meddle—very cautiously—in revolutionary politics, arranging various financial transactions for the benefit of the new Congress and the emergent revolution.