The Silver Bullet by Jim DeFelice Page B

countrymen had fled. Though he had not completely given up his allegiances, he was not, strictly speaking, an American spy.
    Nor was he particularly happy to see Jake, whom he had known as a boy growing up in Philadelphia.
    “ Not much of a disguise, then?”
    “ If you’re trying to look like a man of fashion,” said the printer, himself very much the opposite, “you quite succeeded. But your chin gives you away. Everyone in town will know it’s you. You’re notorious.”
    “ My chin’s too square?” Jake playfully took it in his hand and tried to see its reflection in the window. The window not being of glass, he was unsuccessful. “Perhaps another strategically-placed plaster.”
    “ Leave by the back door,” said Mesplet. “I don’t want anyone to know you’re here.”
    “ Now, now, relax, Fleury. Dr. Franklin send his regards.”
    Not even this piece of flatter – invented for the occasion – could clam Mesplet, who took the unusual expedient of removing his sign from the front of the small, wooden building and then barring his door, as if he’d gone home for the day.
    “ You’re worried about nothing,” said Jake. “Neither the barber nor the tailor made the slightest peep, and I stayed with them for two hours. Then I went to the market, showing my face at every booth. I could have lunched with a troop of soldiers without worrying. I was only here for a few weeks – no one even remembers me. It’s Quebec where I have to watch out.”
    “ You won’t be so smug when Carleton meets you.”
    “ Do you think these plasters are too obvious? They itch, and I’d rather do without them, frankly.”
    “ Jake, what do you want? Half the town already suspects me of being a rebel.”
    “ Aren’t you?”
    “ I can’t help you.”
    “ I don’t want help,” said Jake, picking up one of the handbills Mesplet had been working on and reading it. “ ‘Fire-arms made to your specification.’ Not bad. But you don’t need this dash her in firearms; it’s one word.”
    “ What is it you want?”
    “ When is Burgoyne starting his invasion?”
    “ I haven’t the slightest idea.”
    “ Fleury.” There was ever the slightest hint of physical injury in Jake’s voice.
    “ Honestly, I don’t,” protested the printer, practically screaming. “Do you think they would tell me?”
    “ They haven’t had you print amnesty proclamations or anything like that?”
    “ Would they trust that to someone they suspect of being a rebel?”
    “ Why did Carleton let you stay in Montreal?”
    They put me in jail after Arnold fled. I was in Quebec for many months.”
    Jake, unsure whether or not that was true, nodded solemnly anyway, as if in apology.
    “ You should see Du Calvet,” said Mesplet. He uttered the name so low Jake could barely hear it.
    “ So my old friend is still here then?”
    Mesplet nodded. “He knows everything.”
     
    If the printer had been alarmed by Jake’s visit, Du Calvet was infuriated. The risks involved in his coming north were incalculable, Du Calvet said; he endangered not merely himself, but many others in the city. For the tide had turned here, due in no small part to the poor behavior of the American occupation force in the winter of 1775-76; the French were now at best neutral toward the rebels.
    “ Arnold was an ass,” added Du Calvet.
    “ I quite agree,” said Jake, who blamed the commander for his friend Captain Thomas’s death. “But your spies have not done a good enough job informing General Schuyler. Otherwise I would not have had to come north.”
    “ Perhaps the problem is that neither Schuyler nor Gates wants to believe what we tell them,” answered Du Calvet. “And perhaps Congress would do better not to keep changing commanders every time the wind blows.”
    “ Since you don’t want me here, I assume you will help me leave.”
    “ Gladly. I will have a wagon and papers waiting for you tonight.”
    “ Tomorrow morning, on the Post Road south of