Only one of his three wishes was granted.
“Are you Mr. Hannibal Sefton of New Orleans?”
Hannibal stopped in surprise at the question, asked by a youngish, squint-eyed man in a rough woolen coat who stepped from the hotel doors as he and January mounted the steps.
“I am.” The information was readily checkable on the boat, though January later realized that at this point either Hannibal should have lied or the two of them should have immediately turned tail and dashed in opposite directions to divide pursuit. . . .
“And is this your man Ben?”
“Yes.”
“Then I place you under arrest,” said the newcomer, opening his lapel to reveal the badge of a deputy sheriff of Adams County. “For slave-stealing.”
“This is absurd.” Hannibal tugged his arm protestingly from Deputy Rees's grip as the deputy escorted him down Commerce Street toward the jail. “I demand to be confronted by my accuser!”
“You will be.” The deputy's grip on his arm didn't slack, though the man didn't spare more than a glance back at January to see that he was following. A reasonable assumption of docility, January reflected bitterly, given a fugitive black man's chances if an alarm was raised, in the upper town at least. “That feller Granville said he'd be back here at two, to meet with Sheriff Gridley and give evidence.”
Weems, January reflected dourly, seemed to have made as free about lifting Hubert Granville's cards as Hannibal had about helping himself to one of Weems's. The deputy thrust Hannibal through the gate of a dusty yard behind a brick building. In the middle of the yard a hard-jawed young man was chaining a slave to the six-foot timber in the center of the yard that served as a whipping-post. “Tom, lock up Sambo here,” Rees ordered with a jerk of his head, and Tom fastened the final manacle to the chained slave's wrist and came to grab January's arm.
“This way, Chimney-Chops.” Tom thrust January toward the slave jail at the back of the yard, a brick building whose only windows were a frieze of gaps in the brickwork up under the eaves.
“And I demand to see the warrant issued for my arrest,” added Hannibal as Rees pushed him toward the rear door of the police station. He didn't trade so much as a nod with January, but January knew his friend had the wits to realize that the deputy was not the person to be shown Granville's letter demanding cooperation—not until they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt what was in those trunks.
Even in that event, January would have been unwilling to risk it: no judge could have been found to issue a warrant in the fifteen minutes between Weems's arrival at the Imperial Hotel and Hannibal's arrest. Therefore, Deputy Rees had almost certainly been bribed.
Undoubtedly with Jubal Cain's four hundred blackmailed dollars—with enough left over for lunch.
“You'll see it when the sheriff gets here,” said Rees as they vanished inside, confirming January's guess. January himself, he was well aware, was only an adjunct to the whole process—merely stolen property to be secured until those who were legally human determined guilt or innocence.
So he had to force himself silent as he was walked across the yard, past the man chained at the whipping-post, to the door of the slave-jail. Tom keyed open the padlock. Trapped heat, a cloud of flies, and the stench of a latrine-bucket rolled out like the breath of Hell.
The padlock clunked against the wood of the door as the bolt was secured again behind him.
A man got to his feet in the corner, held out his hand. “I'm Bobby,” he said in the just-broken voice of a youth.
“Ben,” January introduced himself.
Outside came the heavy crack of a whip, and a man's stifled sob of pain. Bobby flinched, too. In the fragments of daylight that seeped through the brick-holes up under the eaves, his face was downy with the first beard of adolescence. “They charges fifty cents a stroke,” provided Bobby, trying to sound casual about it. “They whipped a woman this mornin' an' all the men over in the jail back of the courthouse crowded up to the window to watch. You a house-nigger?” He was looking with respectful shyness at January's clean linen and well-cut jacket.
“Manservant,” replied January.
“You run away?”
January shook his head, and pressed his eye to the Judas in the door. “That damn deputy Rees arrested both me and my master, on a lie.”
“Somebody paid him.” Bobby flinched again at the next whip-crack, the next gasping scream. “That Rees'd arrest his own mama, somebody pay him. Least that's what Cuth said.” The young man's eyes moved to indicate the man outside at the whipping-post. “He from town here, belong to Marse Simms the blacksmith. Marse Simms say he was stealin', but it's really Young Marse that's takin' iron an' nails an' that an' sellin' 'em, Cuth says. I coulda told him ain't no good to say so.”
He shivered a little at the sound of a more desperate cry. “I runned away,” he added softly.
Silence outside, then a man's truculent voice: “All right, then, Cuth. You gonna be a good darky now?”
Whatever Cuth said, it was too muffled to hear, but a moment later there was the clank of chain against wood, the crunch of boots on gravel. The soft thunk of the closing station-house door.
Flies, wasps, and bees roared in circles in the blue-brown shadows of the slave-jail's rafters. Far off in the silence January heard a cannon fire, announcing another steamboat coming into the landing.
A few hours, Rose had guessed. Long enough for Mr. Roberson and his family to have luncheon with some friend in Natchez-Over, for Colonel Davis to pay a social call, for half the crew to get robbed and stripped in Natchez-Under. . . .
Had Weems's promise to return at two been based on information La Pecheresse had gleaned from Ladies' Parlor gossip? Was two when the
