I held out a hand and lied, 'Anson Northrup, pleased to make your acquaintance, Reverend.'
His grip was strong, the hand calloused: his eyes showed white all around bright, cerulean irises. I didn't doubt that he considered himself as muscular a Christian as ever attempted “the advancement of righteous causes”. It was yet another reason to despise him. He ushered Miss Shepherd and myself toward the banked tiers of seating behind the pulpit. It seemed strange to have such an arrangement for a choir, when the whole congregation had proved itself entirely capable of great volume - if not harmony. We sat, Reverend Erastus Newberry stood, as if unwilling to meet such mortals as we on level terms.
He addressed Miss Shepherd, the over-wide eyes unblinking.
'Does he have it?'
'I don't know Reverend, I brought him here directly.' I heard a tremor in her voice.
The Reverends lips tightened, I doubted that a hair could have passed between them. Then he exhaled and exclaimed at one and them same time,
'PAH!'
The peculiar fellow then held out his hand to me.
I fumbled with the leather buckle on the carpet bag and brought out the oilskin packet. The man of God snatched it in a most un-Christian manner.
'You have opened it, man!'
The Reverend clearly found it difficult to moderate the volume of his voice to lower than sufficient to address a deaf dowager at the rear of a concert hall.
He took out the ledger and removed the crudely drawn map. The warrant in the name of Mudsill and the strange bond were yet in a pocket of my frock-coat. The near-empty church was filled with the sound of riffling pages and what seemed most inappropriate language from a man of God.
'What's wrong, Reverend?' Miss Shepherd's voice had begun to sound more tremulous still.
'It's not here!'
'W-what isn't?' the young woman seemed quite beside herself.
'The necessary!'The Reverend bellowed once more.
Then he began to kick the plain wooden pews and the pulpit. He seemed on the point of running over to kick the three negroes, when he fell to the ground writhing and began to speak in what I believed to be known as tongues. I stifled a guffaw as the negroes and Miss Shepherd offered choruses of 'Praise the Lord' and 'Tell it, Brother' at intervals in what I considered to be little more than an unusual tantrum.
When all five of them had recovered sufficiently for conversation, the Reverend despatched the negroes to the front of the church to keep cave, although I suspected he required them to be unable to hear what passed. It proved a vain hope regarding his contributions to the conversation that followed, but I supposed that they were unable to glean much from them. Miss Shepherd, who had studied the book rather more carefully meanwhile, spoke low and with more composure,
'The route is safe, with guides – shepherds, I mean: there is sufficient financial support. It is, however incomplete. From Minneapolis to Canada, there are no arrangements. But the river is safe, or at least the towns along it are.'
'So!' Needless to say this was a somewhat loud interjection from Erastus Newberry.
'You intend to use the boats to smuggle, then?' I asked.
'Of course we do!' Miss Shepherd nodded over at the ragged fellows by the door, 'our poor brothers deserve their ride on the Freedom Railroad.'
At that point, I would have left, except for two things: the first being that the lunatic Preacher managed to say something in what was almost a whisper, and the second - what he said:
'And the silver, don't forget the silver.'
