The coroner’s office hadn’t yet determined if it was a heart attack or a stroke that had left Charles dead on the floor of his office earlier that morning. Judging from the man’s appearance—and his breath—when he’d accosted Adrian at the Warren Tavern the night before, it was obvious the poor fool had overdone it. Now he was gone, his paper unpublished, and Adrian was left with a quandary. He’d never agreed with Charles in life, but in death, as much as he tried, he found he couldn’t simply dismiss what the man had uncovered.

He stared down at the image in his hands. Like the picture Charles had included in his paper, from Hancock’s trunk, this second image was of an engraving, presumably one of Revere’s. Adrian was certain this engraving had never been seen before, and he also was fairly certain he knew where it was from.

Revere’s time capsule. Of course, the time capsule itself was well known, even outside of academic circles. Buried by Paul Revere and Samuel Adams in the cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House in 1795, the capsule had first been opened in 1855, cleaned and documented, and then reburied. But in 2015, a much more public “opening” had taken place, in the Art of the Americas Wing of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In front of the governor and multiple television cameras, the museum’s curator had revealed the contents of the capsule and sent them for study, gathering together a group of experts to go over each item. Most of the contents of the capsule had been much what one would have expected: newspapers of the era, in fairly good condition. Twenty-three coins of varying denominations. One of George Washington’s medals, a Seal of the Commonwealth, a title page from the Colony records. And then a final item—a silver plate, hand engraved by Paul Revere.

Although the plate seemed, of itself, unexceptional—the words engraved on it simply indicated that the cornerstone had been laid by Samuel Adams, then governor of the commonwealth—the museum had sent out a call to local Revere experts, and Charles Walker’s Harvard pedigree had placed him at the front of the line.