“He knew Houghton by name?” Fields asked.

“Listen good, man,” said Lowell. “We need to know exactly where you took those proofs.”

“I told you,” the shivering devil answered. “I don’t remember no number!”

“You don’t look that stupid to me!” Lowell said.

“Guess not! I’d remember easy enough if I went by the streets on my trotter, I would!”

Lowell smiled. “Excellent, because you’re taking us there.”

“Nah, I ain’t turning stag! Not unless I keep my job!”

Houghton marched down the embankment. “Never, Mr. Colby! Choose to reap another’s harvest and you’ll soon sow on your own!”

“And you’ll be hard-pressed for another job locked up in the blockhouse,” added Lowell, who didn’t exactly understand Houghton’s axiom. “You’re going to take us to the place you delivered those proofs you stole, Mr. Colby, or the police will take you there for us.”

“Meet me back in a few hours, when night falls,” the devil replied in proud defeat after considering his options. Lowell released Colby, who bolted off to thaw at Riverside Press’s stove.

In the meantime, Nicholas Rey and Dr. Holmes had returned to the soldiers’-aid home where Greene had preached early that afternoon, but they found nobody who fit Greene’s description of the Dante enthusiast. The chapel was not being prepared for its usual supper spread. An Irishman, bundled in a heavy blue coat, lethargically nailed boards over the windows.

“The home’s been spending nigh all its money heating the stoves. The city hain’t approved more funds for soldiers’ aid, that’s how I hear it. They say they gotta close up, at least for the winter months now. Doubt we’ll see it reopen, ‘tween us, sirs. These homes and their mangled men are too strong a reminder of the wrongs we’ve all done.”

Rey and Holmes called on the manager of the home. The former church deacon seconded what the caretaker had told them: It was a function of the weather, he explained—they simply couldn’t afford to heat the premises anymore. He told them there were no lists or registers maintained of the soldiers who made use of the facilities. It was a public charity, open to all in need, from all regiments and towns. And it wasn’t just for the poorer lot of veterans, though that was one of the charity’s stated purposes. Some of the men just needed to be around people who could understand them. The deacon knew some soldiers by name and a small number of those by regimental number.

“You might know the one we seek. It’s a matter of absolute importance.” Rey relayed the description George Washington Greene had given them.

The manager shook his head. “I’d be happy to write down the names of the gentlemen I do know for you. The soldiers act as though they’re their own country sometimes. They know one another much better than we can know them.”

Holmes wriggled back and forth in his chair while the deacon nibbled at the feather end of his pen with painstaking slowness.

Lowell was driving Fields’s coach to the Riverside Press’s gates. The red-haired printer’s devil was sitting atop his old spotted mare. After cursing that they were putting his horse at risk for the distemper, which the board of health had warned was imminent after a review of stable conditions, Colby sped through small avenues and down unlit frozen pastures. The path was so circuitous and unsure that even Lowell, master of Cambridge since infancy, was disoriented and could only stay on course by listening for the pounding hooves ahead.

The devil pulled in rein at the backyard of a modest Colonial house, first going past and then turning his horse around.

“This house here—that’s where I brought the proofs. Dropped them right under the back door, just as I was told to.”

Lowell stopped the coach. “Whose house is this?”

“The rest is up to you birds!” Colby snarled, sandwiching his heels into his mare, who galloped away over the frozen ground.

Carrying a lantern, Fields led Lowell and Longfellow to the piazza at the rear of the house.

“No lamps lit inside,” Lowell said, scraping frost from a window.

“Let’s go around the front, take down the address, then return with Rey,” Fields whispered. “That rogue Colby might be playing games with us. He’s a thief, Lowell! He could have friends in there waiting to rob us.”

Lowell slammed the brass knocker repeatedly. “The way this world goes for us lately, if we leave now, the house will have vanished by the morning.”

“Fields is right. We must step lightly, my dear Lowell,” Longfellow urged in a whisper.

“Hullo!” Lowell shouted, now pounding his fists on the door. “There’s nobody here.” Lowell kicked the door and was surprised that it swung open with ease. “You see? The stars are on our side tonight.”

“Jamey, we can’t just break in! What if this house belongs to our Lucifer? It is we who’ll end up in the blockhouse!” Fields said.

“Then we’ll make our introduction,” Lowell said, taking the lantern from Fields.

Longfellow stayed outside to watch that the carriage was not spotted. Fields followed Lowell inside. The publisher shuddered at every creak and thud along their way through the dark, cold halls. The wind from the open back door sent the draperies fluttering in ghostly pirouettes. Some of the rooms were sparsely furnished; others were entirely bare. The house had the thick, tangible darkness that accumulates with disuse.

Lowell entered a well-appointed oval room with a chapel-like curved ceiling, then he heard Fields suddenly spit and scratch at his face and beard. Lowell drew the lantern’s light in a wide arc. “Spiderwebs. Half formed.” He placed the lantern on the center table of the library. “Nobody’s lived here for sometime.”

“Or the person living here doesn’t mind the company of insects.”

Lowell paused to consider this. “Look around for anything that might tell us why that rogue would be paid to bring Longfellow’s proofs here.”

Fields began to say something in response, but a garbled shout and heavy footfalls careened through the house. Lowell and Fields exchanged looks of horror, then scrambled for their lives.

“Burglary!” The side door into the library was flung open and a squat man in a wool dressing gown came charging in. “Burglary! Account for yourselves or I cry ‘Burglary!’ “

The man thrust his strong lantern forward, then paused in shock. He glared as much at the cut of their suits as their faces.

“Mr. Lowell? That you? And Mr. Fields?”

“Randridge?” cried Fields. “Randridge, the tailor?”

“Why, yes,” Randridge answered shyly, shuffling his slippered feet.

Longfellow, having run inside, traced the commotion to the room.

“Mr. Longfellow?” Randridge fumbled off his sleeping cap.

“You live here, Randridge? What were you doing with those proofs?” Lowell demanded.

Randridge was bewildered. “Live here? Two houses down, Mr. Lowell. But I heard some noise, and thought to check on the house. I feared there was looting afoot. They haven’t boxed up and removed everything. Haven’t quite gotten to the library, you can see.”

Lowell asked, “Who hasn’t removed everything?”

“Why, his relatives, of course. Who else?”

Fields stepped back and waved his light over the bookshelves, his eyes doubling at the inordinate number of Bibles. There were at least thirty or forty. He dragged out the largest one.

Randridge said, “They’ve come from Maryland to clear out his belongings. His poor nephews were terribly unprepared for such a circumstance, I can tell you. And who wouldn’t be? At all events, as I was saying, when I heard noises, I thought some fellers might be trying to make away with some souvenir—you know, for the sensation of it. Since the Irish began moving into the neighborhood… well, things have been missed.”