The Smuggler's Gambit (Adam Fletcher Adventure Series Book 1)

by Sara Whitford

  It wouldn’t have mattered. Adam had already wended his way through the maze of barrel racks. The place was disorienting from where he stood. He had moved too quickly to think about where he was going, and every rack of barrels looked the same. The farther he moved through the building, the darker the place was. No longer able to move toward the glow of the lantern that had been his beacon when he first entered the building, he was now just moving from dark to darker.

  He was able to see the faintest glow just a few feet from where he stood. It was a bowl of embers. They were still hot from use by workers lighting their pipes to smoke earlier in the day.

  Adam had an idea. He crouched behind the alcove formed by the racks and dug into his pocket. The bag with the fireworks was still there. But the tongs for picking up an ember to light things were not in the bowl. He felt around the table near the bowl trying to find them, with no luck. Just then he started to take a step back, but something was under his shoe. He reached down. It was the tongs.

  He grabbed them and pinched them together to grab an ember from the bowl. He fumbled around in the bag to pull out a firecracker with a fuse long enough to easily light. Just as he was able to get the ember to light the fuse, the fuse fell right out of the firecracker. That must be why it was so long, Adam thought.

  He chose another firecracker. Oh, God, please let this work! The fuse wasn’t lighting. Are these all duds or what? He pulled out another firecracker. Finally! The ember lit the fuse. It started to burn. He quickly tossed it over racks of barrels to the opposite end of the warehouse.

  Even though he didn’t know whether it would create a bang or just smoke, he hoped it would be enough of a distraction for him to buy some time to make his way out of the building. For now Rasquelle and the older gentleman were just as lost and confused as he was, trying to make their way through the maze of barrels.

  The tiny firecracker sailed through the air and landed about forty feet away, close to where Adam had been squatting earlier near the men’s conversation. Let’s just hope there’s no rum in those barrels, he thought. Adam waited to see if it would explode or just create a column of smoke. Either way, he knew it would send the men scrambling over in its direction and allow him a chance to escape.

  There was neither sound nor smoke. The men were now dangerously close to where Adam hid.

  Then there sounded a dull pop, like a cork gun. The men stopped where they were to listen.

  Adam prayed there would be more sounds, but there were not. Instead, a terrible cloud of smoke began coming up over the racks of barrels from that part of the warehouse.

  Good enough, Adam thought. Now the men were rushing back over there, figuring they’d find their culprit. Meanwhile, Adam worked his way through the labyrinth to a door—but it was the wrong one. He was at the western end of the building now, not the southern end on the waterfront. This door was locked.

  He heard Rasquelle and the other man yelling as they neared the smoke. He was too worried to pay them much attention. At least he had the glow of the opposite end of the building working in his favor again now. He was more easily able to see the silhouettes of the barrel racks.

  He made his way back to the south side of the building, where he quickly sneaked out the door, climbed down the dock, and waited underneath. It didn’t take long for Rasquelle and the other man to make their way onto the dock. They stood just above where Adam was hidden.

  “We have to find whoever it was!” said the stranger. “He will have heard us talking!”

  “What are you waiting for, then?” said Rasquelle. “You go that way, and I’ll go this way. Move! We’ll go back through the building and leave through the street-side door. He can’t have gotten far.”

  Both men quickly ran back into the building and made their way almost straight through, until they burst through the north-side door. Adam couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he could hear them now yelling in the street. He knew it wouldn’t be safe to return to the warehouse on the street. Too much of a chance that one of the men would spot him. He opted to enter the creek and try to swim underwater as far as possible.

  It was more than a mile back to the dock at Emmanuel Rogers’s warehouse—but after he’d only made it about half that distance, he knew he wouldn’t have the endurance to swim any farther. He was near another dock, so he waited there for a couple of minutes to see if he could hear or spot anyone. Fortunately, the moon was nearly full, so it illuminated the water’s edge enough that Adam could see the coast was clear.

  He thought it would be safe for him to come back on dry land now. He pulled himself up onto the dock—although he wasn’t sure to whom it belonged—and started running as fast as he could along the water’s edge until he finally made it back to Rogers’s warehouse.

  Adam didn’t even bother going out to the boat to grab his dry clothes but instead ran inside and right up the stairs, yelling “Boaz! Boaz!” the whole way.

  Boaz met Adam in the living quarters as soon as he came in. “Damnit, boy! What do you want now?”

  He stared at the boy.

  “Why are you soaking wet?”

  Adam was out of breath. “Would you listen to me? Just listen! I’ve just been to Richard Rasquelle’s—”

  “You’ve what?” said Boaz. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Listen!” said Adam. He hunched over in an effort to ease the terrible stitch he had in his side. “I thought Laney Martin might’ve been the one who betrayed Emmanuel, but I was wrong—and she’s in trouble!”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I’m telling you I know what happened! At least I think I do.”

  “What are you talking about, boy?”

  “There was a man there . . .” he panted. “And Rasquelle was there.”

  “At this hour?” said Boaz.

  Adam just nodded. “Mm-hm.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I snuck in! Aren’t you listening?”

  Boaz grabbed a blanket that was draped over one of the settees and tossed it to Adam.

  “You what?”

  He was still panting. He gladly took the blanket and wrapped it around himself and tried to dry off.

  “The other man—”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “No. I’ve never seen him before—at least I don’t remember seeing him. I don’t know him, anyway.”

  “Well what does any of this have to do with Laney Martin?”

  “This man, he said he has this whole plan, and then he said that one way or another ‘she will be mine.’”

  “What the hell?” Boaz scratched his head. “What did he look like?”

  Adam shivered as he talked. “Ah, forty, forty-five—somewhere in there. Tall, powdered wig, distinguished looking.”

  “And Rasquelle never called him by name?”

  Adam shook his head no.

  “So what does any of this have to do with Emmanuel?”

  “I couldn’t tell exactly, but this older man was upset because I reckon he had given some information to Rasquelle about Emmanuel. He knew about the Spanish ship, but he was angry because Rasquelle had only reported the English one. He said they had some kind of deal but that Rasquelle wasn’t living up to his end of it.”

  “And you say he was in his forties?”

  Adam nodded. “Yeah, something like that. I mean, Rasquelle is in his early thirties and this fellow looked about ten or fifteen years older.”

  He watched as Boaz mulled over what he had told him, anxious to know what he would say.

  Finally, Boaz said, “Based on how you’re describing him and that he knew about the Spanish ship, for much I’d think it might be . . . Nah, can’t be. He’s out of town.”

  “Who?”

  “What did his voice sound like?”

  “How do you mean?” asked Adam.

  “I mean was it deep? Soft? Did he speak any particular way?”

  “Hmm . . . not really. Well, I gu
ess his voice was somewhat deep, and very proper. And he moved his hands around a lot.”

  “Well, it sounded like you were describing Absalom Reading, but that doesn’t make sense.”

  Adam shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never met the man, but whoever he was, he said her name—her full name. He called her Rocksolanah, not Laney. Oh, and Rasquelle told him he could go to the inspector himself, but he said no, because he said it would implicate him as well. So maybe you’re right! I mean, who else could that be?”

  “That devil!” Boaz shouted. “He was supposed to be traveling!”

  Adam was still panting, but he let out a little laugh. “Well, apparently he’s not.”

  “Why in the world would he be involved in something like this?” Boaz paced back and forth.

  “I have no idea. Never even met the man,” said Adam.

  “If it was Reading, then he must be the one who tipped Rasquelle off about the second dock. But why now? He’s known about it for years and it’s never been a problem.”

  Boaz sat down and furrowed his brow in contemplation.

  “Well, if it was Reading,” Adam said, “then it’s his plan to see her brought up on charges, along with Mr. Rogers—at least that’s what it sounded like. He said something about letting her get into trouble and then rushing to her rescue—something about being a hero.”

  “He what?”

  Adam paused for a few seconds, then said, “Well, her brother, Will, is going to have to deal with Absalom Reading when Martin gets him back to town. For now we need to worry about the customs inspector learning about where the second dock is. Sounds like someone is determined for that to come out, and if the inspector presses Emmanuel hard enough, it just might.”

  “So you’re saying right now the inspector still might not know about it?”

  “Maybe not,” said Boaz. “Depends how far they got with questioning him today.”

  “They wouldn’t torture him to make him talk, would they?”

  Boaz shook his head. “I don’t think so, but I imagine they still have ways of extracting information.”

  “And what about Miss Laney? If it was her guardian that I saw, he’s a danger to her. We have to protect her!”

  “If it was him, from what you’re telling me it sounds like he’s trying to trap her into some sort of relationship by forcing her into trouble with the law and then rushing in to save her. I can tell you that right now that girl doesn’t care for Absalom Reading one bit, so like I said, I think we can leave it to her brother to take care of that.”

  “But—”

  Boaz continued: “I mean, what are we going to do? We don’t even know if he’s gone back to the estate. He might not be staying there. But if he is, we can’t rush in and accuse him of all of this. What will that accomplish? He’ll wonder how you found out, and he’ll probably just go to the authorities himself at that point. He’d have nothing to lose.”

  A shivering Adam nodded. “I guess you’re right.” He tightened the blanket around himself.

  “Don’t you have any dry clothes?” Boaz asked.

  “Yeah. Out on the boat.”

  “What in the world are they doing out on the boat?”

  “Because you told me to get out! Where else was I going to sleep? The street?”

  “Ah, just go on and get your clothes and bring ’em back up here. I reckon you can stay.”

  “Then you believe me,” said Adam.

  “Go get your clothes,” Boaz demanded. “I’m tired and ready to go back to bed, and I don’t want to have to be woken back up by you jostling your way past my room to get to yours.”

  “Alright, alright. I’m going!”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE NEXT MORNING, BOAZ AND Adam called Elliot and Joe up to the living quarters to discuss the previous night’s discoveries. They didn’t want to risk talking about everything in the warehouse in case someone showed up and stumbled in on their conversation.

  After Adam got Elliot and Joe up to speed on what he had overheard from Rasquelle and the other man the previous night, the four of them tried to decide on what, if anything, they could do next.

  “I wonder what Mr. Smythe has had to say about all this. He’s the official agent for this port, anyway,” said Elliot.

  The mention of Ellison Smythe unsettled Adam. Not only was he worried about how to best help Mr. Rogers, he also had to worry about what Mr. Smythe would think about everything that had happened, not to mention what impact, if any, the present circumstances would have on his apprenticeship and, consequently, his punishment for assaulting Smythe’s son.

  “Hey, Fletcher,” said Elliot, “I’ve never been in Rasquelle’s place before. What’s it like inside?”

  “Eh, it’s just a warehouse. But I can tell you it was a lot different last night than it was the day I was there for that meeting. The place is completely packed with cargo. It’s like a maze inside there right now.”

  “Hmph,” Boaz grumbled. “Did it look like stuff he’d brought in? Or was it cargo ready to ship out?”

  “How should I know?” said Adam. “It all looked the same to me. Just racks and racks of casks stacked all over the place. All different sizes, all stacked three or four rows high.”

  “You’d know if they were from here, Fletcher. Think!” Boaz smacked his forehead. “They’d have a mark saying who the contents were from, along with a stamp from the port of origin—Beaufort.”

  “Well, I guess not then,” said Adam.

  He thought for a moment. “I don’t think any of the ones I saw last night had marks from Beaufort. I mean, I can’t promise you none of them had Beaufort marks, but I couldn’t see most of them—it was too dark. All I know is the ones in the little alcove where I was hiding. They were marked with an MB.”

  Elliot thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope, I don’t know anybody with an MB. Do you, Bo?”

  “Nope,” said Boaz. He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Wait a minute. I bet that’s the mark for Milton Blount. He bought that pine woods northeast of town last year. I didn’t think he was producing anything there yet—at least we ain’t seen nothing from him. Maybe he’s got some naval stores lined up for shipment with Rasquelle.”

  Adam was getting exasperated. “Who cares about what kind of cargo is in Richard Rasquelle’s warehouse? Mr. Rogers has been arrested! Laney Martin might be next! There prob’ly ain’t a whole lot we can do for Mr. Rogers right now, but we’ve got to warn Laney.”

  “Calm down, Fletcher,” said Boaz.

  “I am calm! But we also need to figure out some way to hide the cargo that’s out at her place. If Mr. Rogers doesn’t come right out and tell them all about the second dock, we may be able to get rid of everything, in case Inspector Sheffield starts poking around over there.”

  “Whoa there!” said Boaz. “Back up for a minute. Don’t be so quick to say that what Richard Rasquelle has in his warehouse ain’t important. If it turns out that no ships have come into the port lately and those casks you saw aren’t from Milton Blount, then Rasquelle just might be holding some smuggled goods of his own. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  “Okay, fine, so what if he is? How would we even figure that out?” asked Adam.

  “I can go visit Milton Blount,” offered Elliot. “Find out if that MB mark is his.”

  “And if it’s not?” Adam said.

  “Then we may have something. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” said Boaz.

  “Fine. In the meantime, I need to go talk to Laney. Warn her. Can we move the cargo somewhere else?”

  “Hang on,” said Boaz. “If Absalom Reading is the man you saw last night talking to Rasquelle, then that means he’s back in town. He’ll probably be at the Martin estate. How is that gonna work if you go over there? I mean, if he’s conspiring with Rasquelle, I don’t think he’s gonna be real happy to see you go over there to warn Laney and start hiding cargo. Anyway, even if we were able to hide the cargo, he�
��d know about it. He could just tell Rasquelle our new hiding place. Then what?”

  “From what I could tell—assuming it was Reading—he wants her to take the fall for helping Emmanuel, but he doesn’t want her to know he’s had a hand in any of it. We can use that. If I do see him there, I can act glad about it—tell him he has to help us for Laney’s sake.”

  Adam looked at the other three and waited for a response.

  “That just might work,” said Elliot.

  Joe nodded enthusiastically. “Mm-hm. Yep.”

  “Alright, you do that,” said Boaz. “Get on over there if you want to. But do not tell her about what you saw last night!”

  “Obviously,” said Adam. “Well, at least not if Reading is there. If he’s not there, though, then I’m going to warn her.”

  “No!” said Boaz. “Are you crazy? If she knows, you’ll just make her nervous. She might end up saying something or start acting differently around him. Then he might suspect she knows, and there’s no telling what he might do. Martin will be here with her brother in another day or two, and then we can tell him and let him handle it.”

  “Good point,” said Elliot.

  Adam nodded to acknowledge what they had said, but he disagreed. He wasn’t going to argue with them about it, though. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Laney in the house with a man capable of concocting a scheme like that.

  “You know, you can take my horse if you want to,” Elliot offered.

  Adam was about to leave the apartment to go see Laney, but when he went to open the door, it seemed to open on its own. It was Emmanuel.

  “Mr. Rogers!” said Adam. “What are you—?”

  “Good morning, lads,” said a weary Emmanuel. “I am alive, and I’m glad to be home.”

  Once they got past their initial shock of him being there, the men all greeted him with handshakes and pats on the back, welcoming him home.

  “Adam, I noticed you were about to leave. Where were you headed, lad?” asked Emmanuel.

  “I was just on my way to the Martin estate. I need to warn Laney Martin,” said Adam.