Free The Providence Rider by Robert McCammon

Yet Matthew was beginning to get an idea of it. Come to us or we will turn this town to ashes .
    He looked around for the doctor and his wife, but they had slunk away. Probably in triumph, Matthew thought. He was aware of others coming forward to see what was to be seen: Effrem did, and left without a word; Marmaduke Grigsby did, and made a sound that reminded Matthew of an inkstamp hitting paper; Berry did, and she bit her lower lip for a moment and gazed at him with sorrowful eyes before she withdrew; and then others came and went, until it seemed to Matthew that the whole town had peered under the roof of this well, and at last Gilliam Vincent thrust his bewigged head forward to take a gander and then regarded Matthew as one would look smelling a piece of spoiled cheese. Matthew came very near playing out the role of Hudson Greathouse and knocking Vincent wig over tailbone, but he restrained himself.
    “I didn’t do anything!” Matthew said; he was speaking to Lillehorne, yet pleading his innocence to the whole of New York.
    “Of course you didn’t!” said Greathouse. And then to the high constable: “Damned if you believe he did! What do you think, he’s causing these fires and signing his work?”
    “I think,” replied Lillehorne, in a weary tone, “that I will soon be summoned before Lord Cornbury again. Dear me.” He aimed his lantern at Matthew’s face. “All right, then. I know you didn’t do this. Why would you, unless…your recent adventures with a madman scrambled your brains?” He let that hang in the air for a few seconds before he continued. “Tell me: do you know any reason this is being done? Do you know any person who might be doing this? Speak up, Corbett! Obviously these buildings are being destroyed in your name. Do you have anything to say?”
    “He’s not on trial!” Greathouse fired back, with rising heat.
    “Hold,” said Lillehorne, “your temper and your fists. Please.” His small black eyes found Matthew once more. “I asked you three questions. Do you have at least one answer?”
    Matthew thought, Not one answer, but two suspects . He frowned in the candlelight. There was no way to link the Mallorys with this. Not yet, at least. And to reveal what he felt true about the connection between Jason and Rebecca Mallory and Professor Fell…no, he wasn’t ready for that yet either. Therefore he looked the high constable square in the goateed and sharp-nosed face and said calmly, “I do not.”
    “No opinion? Nothing? ”
    “Nothing,” said Matthew, and he made it sound very believeable.
    Lillehorne pulled the lantern’s light away. “Damn me,” he said. “Corbett, you must be ill. Perhaps you really did scramble your brains out there in the wilderness? Well, you can wager that if Cornbury summons me again, I’m summoning you again. I shall not look upon that countenance alone. Do you hear me?”
    “We hear you,” Greathouse answered, in a gravelly voice.
    “That’s all I have with you, then.” Lillehorne gave the name one more appraisal. “Someone find me some whitewash!” he shouted toward the commonfolk. “I’ll paint this out myself, if I must!”
    Matthew and Greathouse took the moment to get away. They slid through the crowd. On the other side they walked east the rest of the way along Crown to the waterfront, where they turned south on Queen Street with the cold salt breeze in their faces.
    “You’re keeping something back,” said Greathouse after they’d gotten clear of all listening ears. “You might throw a frog into Lillehorne’s pocket, but you can’t frog me . Let’s have what you know.”
    Matthew was close to telling. He thought that with the next stride he would tell his friend everything, but…he did not. To pull Hudson into this, when there was no proof? To rouse the man up to action against…what? Shadows? Or against a perceived smirk on the faces of Jason and Rebecca Mallory? No, he couldn’t do it. This was a personal duel,