“We have seen nothing to tell us,” insisted John, “that Orion Hazlitt is in any way involved in the murder of Mrs. Pentyre, or the disappearance of Mrs. Malvern—or of your precious codebook,” he added. “All we can be fairly sure of, is that he was the author of the two crimes, and the man who has pursued Fluckner’s girl. The rest I presume we can ask him about in due time.”

“Will you take Mrs. Adams home, John?” Sam wrapped a scarf around his throat—another madder-red one, Abigail noted automatically: Really, Boston has entirely too many things in it that too many people have . . . “Or will you come?”

“We’ll go home,” said John. “If you’d send someone to let us know the—outcome—of your visit, I think we should both rather hear it tonight, than wait until I see you tomorrow at the meeting. And to add to that, after the meeting this evening, a man told me there’s a rumor afoot, that a ship is coming across from Lynn within a few days, to take the tea off the Beaver before she even comes into harbor.”

“’Tis what Paul and the doctor came just now to tell me,” responded Sam grimly. “ ’Twill have to be looked into, and at once, tomorrow—”

“It can’t be with the Governor’s approval—”

“I wouldn’t put it past him to hire the Devil himself to get the tea landed. Can you meet with us at nine?”

John nodded. As the other men left, he led Abigail once more out into the night. The wind had scattered the clouds; the night’s cold was worse. In most houses, the thin chinks of lamp- and candlelight had failed. The streets lay stark, under the watery blue of the moon.

“And do you think,” asked Abigail softly, “that Sam, and Dr. Warren, and the others, will wait long enough to ask Mr. Hazlitt whether he in fact knows anything of Mrs. Pentyre’s murder? They won’t dare to turn him over to the authorities, you know.”

“I think you’re right about that.”

“Then is this not in fact putting our own cause above the law?”

“Were we in England,” pointed out John, “and did Orion Hazlitt happen to be a friend of the King’s, or a member of the nobility, I doubt he would even be prosecuted. Come,” he added, and put his arm around her shoulders. “One way or another, we shall hear something before morning, and then we will know what we must do.”

But as the chimes of midnight mingled with the tolling of the alarm bells, Paul Revere—looking uncharacteristi cally haggard and shaken in the feeble shudder of the candlelight—brought the news that Orion Hazlitt had fled from his home.