Adrian ran a finger down the side of the heavy clapper, feeling the cold of the bronze. From she who made the box. Hailey had shown him the note as well. In a lab, with the proper tools, he might have been able to authenticate both items—the note and the clapper—and perhaps date them to within a few years of their origins. For the clapper, he might discover physical metallurgic signatures that would point to the hands that had crafted it so long ago. But here, in his office, the best he could do was conjecture; and to Adrian, conjecture was only a bare step above fancy.

Still, it was intriguing. Revere’s Book of Bells had led them to the USS Constitution; a clue written in Paul Revere’s handwriting had guided Hailey not to another bell—Revere’s final bell—but to this clapper. From she who made the box. It was not unusual for a craftsman to refer to a bell in the feminine vernacular. Adrian could forgive the clever young woman and her shifty friend for making a leap and calling it logic. But to Adrian, despite the circumstances, it still seemed a leap. Though if one were to have to choose a landing place fit for another flight of fantasy, one could do worse than the Liberty Bell.

“Such an emblem of freedom, the ultimate symbol of American Independence—when in fact, the Liberty Bell had absolutely nothing to do with the Revolution. A mundane, though sizable, chime installed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House twenty years before the War of Independence, by government administrators who were perfectly happy under the yoke of British rule; even the inscription had less to do with vague notions of Liberty, and more to do with timing, as the bell was being commissioned to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of William Penn’s signing of the Pennsylvania Charter.”

Hailey was close to him now, as he continued to study the clapper. He had no idea what she’d endured on the Constitution in her efforts to secure the clapper—but he could tell from the way she was breathing, and the slight tremor in her arms, that the Tea Party Museum had only been a first act. Nick looked like he’d been through a war. His shoulder was wrapped, and there was dried blood on his scalp. But somehow, he was still standing.

“The Liberty Bell,” Adrian continued, “wasn’t even originally crafted in the Americas. It was first ordered in 1751 by the Pennsylvania Assembly from Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London. The bell was raised into the steeple of the State House two years later, in March of 1753—but on the very first ring, the bronze cracked right down the middle, rendering the bell useless.”