“You.” Lowell accused him suddenly. “You cut that threat into Longfellow’s window to put a scare into us so Longfellow might stop the translation!”

Bachi flinched, pretending not to understand. He removed a black bottle from his coat and heaved it to his lips, as though his throat were just a funnel to somewhere far away. He trembled when he finished. “Do not think me a sot, Professore. I never drink more than is good for me, at least not in good company. The mischief is, what is a man to do all by himself in the dull hours of a New England winter?” His brow darkened. “Now. Are we through here? Or do you wish to fag me further over my disappointments?”

“Signore,” said Longfellow. “We must know what you taught Mr. Galvin. He speaks and reads Italian now?”

Bachi threw his head back and laughed. “As little as you please! The man couldn’t read English if Noah Webster were standing by his side! He always dressed in your American soldier’s blue duds and gold buttons. He wanted Dante, Dante, Dante. It did not occur to him he must learn the language first. Che stranezza!”

“Did you lend him your translation?” Longfellow asked.

Bachi shook his head. “It was my hope to keep that enterprise entirely secret. I am sure we all know how your Mr. Fields reacts to any who try to rival his authors. In all events, I tried gratifying Signor Calvin’s strange wishes. I suggested we conduct the introductory Italian lessons by reading the Commedia together, line by line. But it was like reading alongside a dumb beast. Then he wished me to give a sermon on Dante’s Hell, but I refused on principle—if he wanted to engage me as a tutor, he must learn Italian.”

“You told him you would not continue the lessons?” asked Lowell.

“That would have given me the greatest pleasure, Professore. But one day he stopped calling on me. I have not been able to find him since—and have still not been compensated.”

“Signore,” said Longfellow. “This is very important. Did Mr. Galvin ever speak of individuals in our own time, our own city, whom he envisioned in his understanding of Dante? You must consider whether he ever mentioned anyone at all. Perhaps persons connected in some way with the College who are interested in discrediting Dante.”

Bachi shook his head. “He hardly spoke at all, Signor Longfellow, like a dumb ox. Is this something to do with the College’s present campaign against your work?”

Lowell’s attention perked up. “What do you know of it?”

“I warned you of it when you came to see me, signore,” Bachi said. “I told you to take care of your Dante class, didn’t I? Do you recall when you saw me on the College Yard some weeks before that? I had received a message to meet a gentleman for a confidential interview—oh, how convinced I was that the Harvard fellows wanted me to return to my post! Imagine my stupidity! In truth, that blasted rogue was on some assignment to prove Dante’s ill effects on students, and wished me to assist.”

“Simon Camp,” Lowell said through clenched teeth.

“I almost punched his face in, I can tell you,” Bachi reported.

“I wish to God you had, Signor Bachi,” Lowell said, sharing a smile with him. “He yet may prove the ruin of Dante through all this. What did you reply to him?”

“How was I to respond? ‘Go to the Devil’ was all I could think to say. Here I am, barely able to buy my bread after so many years with the College, and who in the administration hires that jackass?”

Lowell snickered. “Who else? It was Dr. Mann—” He stopped suddenly and whirled around with a significant glance at Longfellow. “Dr. Manning.”

Caroline Manning swept up broken glass. “Jane—mop!” She called out to the maid for the second time, sulking at the pool of sherry drying on the rug of her husband’s library.

As Mrs. Manning made her way out of the room, a ring sounded at the door. She pulled back the curtain just an inch to see Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Now, where was he coming from at this hour? She could hardly look at the poor man these last years the few times she saw him around Cambridge. She did not know how one could live through so much. How undefeatable he seemed. And here she was with a dustpan, looking positively like a housekeeper.

Mrs. Manning apologized: Dr. Manning was not at home. She explained that he had earlier been expecting a guest and had wished privacy. He and his guest must have gone for a walk, though she found this a bit queer in such ghastly weather. And they had left some broken glass in the library. “But you know how men drink sometimes,” she added.

“Could they have taken the carriage out?” Longfellow asked.

Mrs. Manning said that the horse distemper would have precluded that: Dr. Manning had strictly forbidden even the brief removal of their horses. But she agreed to walk Longfellow to the barn.

“For Heaven’s sake,” she said when they found no trace of Dr. Manning’s coach and horses. “Something is the matter, isn’t it, Mr. Longfellow? For Heaven’s sake,” she repeated.

Longfellow did not answer.

“Has something happened to him? You must tell me at once!”

Longfellow’s words came slowly. “You must remain at your house to wait. He’ll return safely, Mrs. Manning. I promise.” The Cambridge winds had grown blustery and painful to the skin.

“Dr. Manning,” Fields said with his eyes downcast on Longfellow’s rug twenty minutes later. After leaving the Galvin house, they had found Nicholas Rey, who had secured a police carriage and a healthy horse, which he used to drive them to Craigie House. “He has been our worst adversary from the beginning. Why didn’t Teal take him long before this?”

Holmes stood leaning on Longfellow’s desk. “Because he is the worst, my dear Fields. As Hell deepens, narrows, the sinners become more flagrant, more culpable—less repentant for what they have done. Until reaching Lucifer, who initiated all evil in the world. Healey, as the first to be punished, would have been hardly cognizant of his refusal at all—that is the nature of his ‘sin,’ which rests upon a lukewarm act.”

Patrolman Rey stood tall in the center of the study. “Gentlemen, you must review the sermons given by Mr. Greene in the last week so we can discern where Teal would take Manning.”

“Greene started this series of sermons with the Hypocrites,” explained Lowell. “Then he went on to the Falsifiers, including Counterfeiters. Finally, in the sermon witnessed by me and Fields, he went to the Traitors.”

Holmes said, “Manning was no Hypocrite—he was after Dante inside and out. And Traitors against Family have no bearing on this.”

“Then we are left with the Falsifiers and the Traitors against One’s Nation,” said Longfellow.

“Manning did not engage in any real trickery,” Lowell said. “He concealed from us his activities, true, but this was not his primary mode of aggression. Many of the shades in Dante’s Hell have been guilty of cartloads of sins, but it is the sin that defines their actions which determines their fate in Hell. The Falsifiers must change one form to another to incur their contrapasso–like Sinon the Greek, who tricked the Trojans into welcoming the wooden horse.”

“The Traitors against Nation undermine the good of one’s people,” Longfellow said. “We find them in the ninth circle—the lowest.”

“Fighting our Dante projects, in this case,” said Fields.

Holmes considered this. “That’s it, isn’t it? We’ve learned that Teal dresses in his uniform when involved in his Dantesque mode, whether he is studying Dante or preparing his murders. This shines light into the landscape of his mind: In his sickness, he swaps guarding the Union with guarding Dante.”

Longfellow said, “And Teal would have witnessed Manning’s schemes from his caretaker post in University Hall. For Teal, Manning is among the worst betrayers of the cause he now sets himself at war to protect. Teal has saved Manning for the end.”