Excerpt from Scandalmonger by William Safire, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Do you have any personal knowledge," the unidentified interrogator asked, "of a direct connection between Reynolds and Comptroller Wolcott's superior?"

"Hamilton, you mean?" When the lawyer kept looking silently at him, Clingman blurted out more than he had wanted to say. "In January, not quite a year ago, I went to Reynolds's house, and just as I came in, Colonel Hamilton was leaving. I knew it was him. It's a face everybody knows who does business with the Treasury."

"The colonel cuts a memorable figure, true. Do you recall any other time you saw them together?"

"Not exactly together." Now he was wading into deeper water. Clingman looked to Speaker Muhlenberg for reassurance, and received a friendly nod. "A few days after that, I was at the Reynolds house with Maria, Mrs. Reynolds, Mr. Reynolds being out." Hoping he would not be asked to explain that, he hurried on. "It was late at night and somebody knocked at the door. I got up and opened it and saw it was Colonel Hamilton. He looked surprised. Maria came up behind me. Colonel Hamilton handed her a paper and said something curious."

When he hesitated, trying to call up the exact words, Muhlenberg barked a quick, guttural, "Vot?"

"What Colonel Hamilton said was, 'I was ordered to give this to Mr. Reynolds,' and he turned and left."

"Why did you find that curious?"

"Because who could 'order' the Secretary of the Treasury to give anybody anything?" Clingman quickly retreated to his respectful demeanor. "That's the very question I asked Mrs. Reynolds, sir, and she said she supposed Colonel Hamilton did not want to be recognized. This was late at night."

"Did you see what was written on the paper?" the lawyer asked.

"No, it was in a blank envelope."

"Then why did you say it was a paper?"

Clingman felt his heart clutch into a tight fist. "I don't know. It was an envelope with a paper in it, I guess. It wasn't thick." At least they weren't asking him what he was doing late at night in the Reynolds house, alone with Maria.

"Surely you asked Mrs. Reynolds about Hamilton's visits?" Congressman Muhlenberg observed.

"She said he had been assisting her husband for some months. Only a few days before, her husband had received eleven hundred dollars from Colonel Hamilton." He had no cause to hold back: "She said her husband told her that the Treasury Secretary had made thirty thousand dollars by speculation, thanks to him."

"That is a very serious charge to repeat, young man," said the lawyer.

Clingman was eager to substantiate it. "When I must have looked as if I didn't believe her, Maria said her husband had applied to Colonel Hamilton for money to subscribe to the turnpike road at Lancaster, and received a note from him saying no."

"You asked to see that note, of course?" said the lawyer.

He looked uncertainly at Muhlenberg, who nodded encouragement. Clingman reached inside his shirt, took out a small packet of notes, and slid it across the table to the Congressman, who read the top one aloud: " 'It is utterly out of my power, I assure you upon my word of honor, to comply with your request. Your note is returned.' No signature. Well, if Hamilton wrote this, he did the right thing."

"But if that handwriting is Hamilton's," the lawyer said, "it does prove a certain connection. That's hardly the way he would turn down a request from a stranger." Three other cryptic notes, unsigned, were in the packet, with Reynolds's endorsement "From Sec. Hamilton, Esq." on them. "We'll hold on to these, if it's all right with you, Mr. Clingman." He asked for Reynolds's home address and Clingman told him. As the two men prepared to leave, the lawyer said, "What else can you tell us about Mrs. Reynolds? Is she young?"

"She's twenty-two, same as me. She comes from a good family, connected to the Livingstons, in New York." The connection was remote, but the Livingston clan was as powerful as the Clinton family in that state. He hoped they would understand that Maria was not at fault in all this. "She left her parents' home hurriedly, under trying circumstances, and in her marriage has been much abused." The clerk said nothing of her fine figger or elegant carriage or the way Maria's dark blue eyes could quickly fill with tears; all that they could find out for themselves. "Has a daughter named Susan, about five or six years old, a sweet child terrified of her father. The Reynolds family, sirs, is not a happy one."

Copyright William Safire February 2000. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher, Simon & Schuster