“I’ve had my turn of thinking, and it’s you for it now,” he retorted.
“I might say that you put your foot squarely into my think-trap and
stopped it from going off, but I shan’t. You’ll give the order, Captain
Dick, and I’ll obey it, if it tells me to cut Mr. Benedict Iscariot’s
throat while he is asleep.”
After that we were silent for a time, both of us weighing and measuring
the hazards of the desperate game, I think. Champe still kept his place
on the floor, sitting jack-knifed with his hands locked over his knees
and his wide-opened eyes staring at nothing. Suddenly, as I was opening
my mouth to ask where we were likely to find our boat, he laid a hand
on my knee and shook his head.
“What is it?” I asked, but only with my eyes.
“There is some one stirring in the room beyond,” he said in a
half-whisper. “Who is your neighbor, Captain Dick?”
Matching his tone, I said that I knew none of my fellow lodgers
save Lieutenant Castner, and that I did not know the placing of the
lieutenant’s room.
“We were full careless,” said my companion. And then he got upon
his feet with no more noise than a cat would have made and suddenly
extinguished the candle. The firelight still flung long shadows about
the room, and in the shelter of the broadest of them Champe glided away
to the wall of suspicion and examined it foot by foot with scrutinizing
eyes and gently gliding finger-tips. When he crept back to me he was
holding out a forefinger the end of which was whitened with powdered
lime.
“That tells the tale,” he whispered. “There’s a whiff of this dust on
the floor, and above it, at the height of a man’s head, a peep-hole the
size of a goose-quill. We must know who is in that room, Captain Dick.”
Here was a crude peril at the very outset of things; but what the
sergeant said was very true. We must know who our spy was at all costs.
Taking off our shoes we passed silently into the corridor and found
the neighboring door by feeling cautiously for it in the dark. It was
on the latch, and after listening breathlessly for a full minute we
opened the door by slow inchings and listened again. Still there was no
sound, and now we entered the room, groping blindly, first for impeding
obstacles and then for the bed where our spy might be feigning sleep.
In this noiseless circuiting Champe went to the right and I to the
left, and we met in the far corner where the high, four-posted bed
filled a sort of alcove built to contain it. Then I think we both drew
breath of relief, for the bed was empty.
“Wait for me,” whispered my companion; and when he returned a little
later he had relighted our candle and was carrying it high above his
head.
But the candle told us nothing more than our gropings had. The room was
unoccupied; was bare of any lodger’s belongings; had evidently been
undisturbed since its daytime redding by the chamber-maid. But in the
partition wall between it and my room we found the peep-hole which,
on the principle of locking the stable after the horse had been most
successfully stolen, we carefully plugged.
When we were before my fire again we were little wiser than when we had
left it. Our danger turned upon a question of time. When was the hole
bored through the partition wall? There was no way of determining this:
but Champe was sure he had heard footsteps in the adjoining room at the
moment when he had called my attention.
“Take it whatever way you please,” he said; “there’s somebody in this
house who suspects you. What we have talked here to-night would hang a
whole regiment, and it’s my notion that our spy has heard all he needs
to hear and has gone for help to take us.”
“In that case,” said I, “since we can die but once, I for my part
choose to die fighting rather than at the rope’s end.” So I got up and
barred the door.
“Right you are, my Captain,” Champe agreed most heartily; and then we
took stock of our weapons.
Fortunately we were provided with the tools we both knew best how to
use. My trooper sword, which I had brought off in the boat escape from
Nyack, was with my portmanteau; and this I gave to Champe. For myself
there was the captain’s rapier that went with my rank as Arnold’s aide;
a good serviceable Scottish blade which I had carefully selected from
a dozen or more in the barracks armory for its hang and balance. I
thought we should be able to give a pretty good account of ourselves
when the time came, and so much I said to Champe.
“Aye,” he replied. “They’ll take the muskets to us before they get us,
and then I’ll pray only that they’ll shoot straight. Also, I’ll pray
that they do not keep us waiting over-long; I’m fair dead for sleep.”
At this I remembered that the sergeant had lost the whole of the
preceding night, as I had, and that he had not had my chance of
sleeping out the day in recompense. So, when a full half-hour had
passed with no signs or sounds of the expected arresting party, I told
Champe to roll himself once more in the bed-covers, leaving me to keep
watch. The lack of a boat put any action out of the question for the
night; and, deplore it as we might, another day must elapse before we
could flog our simple garroting plot into shape.
It was a fruitful vigil that I kept, sitting through the quiet hours
before the smoldering fire on the hearth; fruitful because it gave
me time to pass in orderly review the exciting events which had been
crowded into the short space of two days and nights. I could scarcely
realize that the day before the quickly changing scenes of the
yesterday, I had been pulling a small boat idly down the river from
Teller’s Point, intent upon nothing more pressing than the spending of
my few hours’ furlough in Dirck van Ditteraick’s tap-room with Jack
Pettus for a boon companion.
This side of that, I had quarreled with Seytoun, taken a huge slice of
responsibility in the talk with Mr. Hamilton, made my stirring escape
from the patriot camp, changed flags, made my standing good with Sir
Henry Clinton and with Arnold, and had lived a fairly busy lifetime
in a strenuous day and a still more strenuous night. Moreover, I had
discovered Mistress Beatrix Leigh in a place where I had least expected
to find her, had stirred her anger and contempt, and--I hoped--in some
small measure, at least, her love for me; and had involved myself in a
tangle of deceit and double-dealing that might well lead me shortly to
a British prison and the gallows.
And, last of all, three days away from our quiet camp in the Hudson
hills, I was sitting here in an upper room in the tavern, waiting
minute by minute for the summons to a struggle which, if it should
come, would, for Champe’s sake and mine, much better end in the
swiftest snuffing-out for both of us.
I yawned sleepily. Our spy-takers were a long time making up their
minds, I concluded, and I had a hearty wish that they would hurry. No
man fights the better for having to sit for hours on end with his bared
sword across his knees, straining his ears for the first sounds of the
battle signal.
Hence, it was with some dull prickings of disappointment that I roused
Champe an hour before dawn, and flung myself upon the bed for a little
wooing of forgetfulness to precede the forthbringings of another day.
For if there had come a thundering at the door and a shouted command to
open in the king’s name, we should at least have confronted a peril
known and measurable. But now the darkness was full of mysterious
eyes, as the silence told of whispering voices; and no step we should
henceforth take would be lacking its hidden snare or pitfall.
XI
OUT OF THE NETTLE, DANGER
CHAMPE let me sleep until day-dawn was fully come and the inn was
stirring, calling me then, as he explained, only because he was fearful
that some orderly from Arnold’s quarters would be up and asking for me,
and so raise a wonder at my holding him, Champe, in my room over night.
Being confronted by the perils of the new day, we were first concerned
with the problem of keeping the sergeant out of the way, and out of
sight of any curious eyes. It was asking too much of the hazards to
make the tavern a rendezvous for him, and while he might possibly
venture to show himself in the town, trusting to a nimble lie to
account for his absence from his regiment and the fleet, it said itself
that he must keep well out of sight of Arnold, Major Simcoe, or any
shore-keeping officer of the Loyal Americans.
Breakfast was the earliest consideration, however, and I made shift
to answer for that, going down to the common-room when the meal was
called, and later bribing the cook to give me a tray of dainties for a
brother officer, who, as I said, had been forced to share my room with
me for the want of sober sense to find his quarters.
How much this tale imposed upon the cook, a fat Dutchman big enough
to make three common men in any fair division of flesh, I do not know.
But he gave my “brother officer” the credit of a well man’s appetite,
and was discreet enough to discard the tray, making the provisions into
a paper-wrapped bundle which I might take to my room without exciting
remark.
His breakfast despatched, Champe next wished to know how he was to get
out of the tavern unhalted to go upon the boat-seeking quest; and here
the contents of my portmanteau came into play. In a little time we
had him out of his Loyal American regimentals and into the civilian’s
clothes I had purchased to replace my patriot homespun. He made a
better-looking gentleman of elegance than I had hoped he would, and
when he was well-muffled in the cloak that went with the outfitting, I
thought he might pass without curious question.
He was eager to make the attempt, as I was to have him. Any minute
a messenger might come from Arnold requiring my attendance, and the
wonder we had been trying all the morning to avert would be raised with
a vengeance. So, after agreeing upon a low sailors’ groggery beyond the
burned district on the eastern water-front as our meeting point for the
evening, where either of us who chanced to be the first comer would
await the arrival of the other, we parted, Champe going boldly down
the inn stair in his new toggery and carrying himself as little like a
soldier as any young man of fashion in New York.
Now I took it afterward as a piece of sheer good fortune that the
idea came into my head to follow the sergeant down, two steps behind
him; and assuredly the event proved the timeliness of the prompting.
For in the tap-room, at a little table drawn up before the fire, sat
Lieutenant Castner as large as life, breakfasting at his leisure; and
if I had not steered Champe aside with a muttered exclamation, the
sergeant would have brushed Castner’s elbow in passing. As it was, I
had time to thrust myself between; and when the door clanged behind the
outgoing Champe, I was making my greetings to the lieutenant and asking
him if I might share his table for a dish of tea.
He gave me the invitation cordially enough, but there was a look in his
mild eyes that I could not fathom. And I was scarcely facing him across
the table before he had me skating on the thinnest ice.
“Who was your double, Captain Page?” he asked, with a jerk of his head
toward the door which had let Champe out to freedom.
I saw it all instantly. Castner had been with me two days before and
had helped me to select the very clothes Champe was now wearing. It
was a thrust that called for the deftest parrying, and I was not at my
best--I never am in the mornings.
“The man who went out as I came down?” I said, sparring to gain time.
“Do you think he favored me?”
“As to his face I could not say,” was the cool reply. “I think he must
have the toothache, to judge from his mufflings. But I spoke of his
clothes. Hadn’t you noticed that he was wearing a copy of the suit I
helped you buy of the little Dutch Jew day before yesterday, Captain?”
I said I had not noticed it, having other things to think of, but the
nonchalant reply did not banish the queer look from Castner’s eyes. And
when I sought to drag him away from the dangerous subject by asking
if he had learned anything new about the movements of the fleet, he
answered my question briefly and went back in a word to my perilous
skating pond.
“I wonder that you didn’t remark the gentleman’s clothes,” he said
musingly. “I don’t think there is another cloak like that in all New
York. You say you don’t know him?”
“How should I know him?” I demanded with a good show of impatience. “I
merely saw that some one walked ahead of me down the stair and out of
the door.”
“Strange,” he said, in the same half-musing tone. “Do you know, Captain
Page, I could have sworn that you spoke to him less than a second
before you--rather rudely, I fancied--pushed him aside to shake hands
with me?”
I thought it was all up with me now, but I set my teeth on a grim
resolve to die fighting.
“Perhaps you could even tell me what I said to this gentleman who, at
the moment, was nothing more to me than a stumbling-block in my way,” I
said, laughing ironically.
“I can,” he rejoined quite evenly. “You gave him the soldier’s word of
command: ‘File right!’ you said, and I almost looked to see you follow
it up with an oath.”
He had me fairly at a standstill. He had quoted my word of warning
to Champe precisely, and I doubt not the tone in which it was given
suggested the oath which might have capped it. Having nothing more to
say, I held my peace, and when the lieutenant had given his rejoinder
time to sink in, he came at me again, this time very gravely.
“You are not altogether transparent, Captain Page, nor have you been
since the hour you landed in New York. I don’t want to think ill of
you, because ill-thinking of a man in your situation could have but one
meaning. Now I shall ask you a fair question, and you shall answer it
as you choose. Do you--”
I held up my hand.
“First tell me frankly what you know, Mr. Castner, and then I shall be
equally frank with you,” I interposed; adding: “at least, as frank as
I can be without involving a gentleman who, I am sure, wishes to be
charitably unknown in this little controversy of ours.”
His smile was shrewdly triumphant, but it comforted me beyond measure.
Whatever he knew, it was not enough to hang me--yet.
“You had a fellow guest in your room last night, Captain; so much any
one who passed through the corridor and heard you talking might know.
That you kept this guest all night is quite apparent from the fact that
he wore your clothes when he went out just now. It may be a very simple
little mystery and easily explained; but, as I said before, mysteries
are dangerous things, Captain--for you.”
Now I knew who had bored the hole in the wall of the unoccupied room
next to mine and why it had been bored. Castner had wished to see the
face of the man whom I was keeping over night. Remembering how hard it
would be to see anything definite through a quill-sized hole in a thick
partition wall, I took a chance that Castner was still in doubt as to
my roommate’s identity. And so long as I could keep this in the dark,
there was hope.
“There is no great mystery about it, Mr. Castner, and nothing to
conceal save the gentleman’s name and standing. Before I attempt to
explain, may I ask if you know anything of General Arnold’s domestic
affairs?”
He shook his head.
“As little as may be, and I might say that I don’t care to know more.”
“Then my task is the easier,” I said. “I had the honor of knowing the
general’s wife when she was Mistress Margaret Shippen, of Philadelphia.
I may tell you, without breaching her confidence, or the general’s,
that I was entrusted with a message for her last night. She gave me
no answer at the time; but later, learning, possibly, of the change
in the sailing orders, it is not beyond belief that she would wish to
communicate again with her husband, is it?”
“I suppose not,” he agreed. “But are you trying to tell me that
Mistress Arnold’s messenger came naked, and had to borrow your clothes
to return in?”
I laughed heartily at this.
“Were you ever drunk and disorderly, Lieutenant Castner?” I asked. “If
so, you may have had to borrow a suit of clothes yourself before now.
And possibly the loan of a friend’s room to sober up in. And after such
an experience, I dare say you would not care to be recognized by your
friend’s friend in the morning when you were making your escape.”
“Then they were your clothes?” persisted Castner, laughing now with me.
“You asked me if he came naked: he did not, but he might have gone that
way, but for my generosity. Are you quite satisfied, Mr. Castner?”
“I am obliged to be,” he said musingly.
“Oh, no,” I said. “You may go up to my room and see the gentleman’s
castoff clothes, if you wish--though they are not over-pretty to look
at. In fact you may have everything but his name, which I feel in duty
bound not to disclose. If I hint that he is a near relative of--”
“I beg your pardon,” said the lieutenant, almost shamefacedly, I
thought; and then I took my turn at him. It is always well, when you
have your enemy on the run, to press him closely lest he turn on you
like the Parthians of old.
“How close were you behind us last night, when we came in,
Lieutenant?--and how long did you have to listen at my door to have
your suspicions aroused?”
He pushed his chair back, and tried to laugh it off, but I would not
let him go.
“No, you must not laugh,” I said soberly. “I am not over-quarrelsome, I
think, nor do I make too little of your many kindnesses to me. But you
can add greatly to my obligations, Mr. Castner, if you will remember
that there are gentlemen in Virginia as well as in the king’s army.”
By this time he was apologizing in good earnest, and when he had gone
far enough to be quite out of sight and hearing of the danger point,
I forgave him most magnanimously, and drew my first real breath of
assurance.
His breakfast finished, Castner would not stay to smoke a pipe with me
before the fire. His reason for haste added nothing to my comfort. He
told me that Major Simcoe was expected from the fleet, and that he must
go to the landing-place to meet him on Sir Henry Clinton’s behalf.
This set me to thinking of how I might best throw up a hasty shelter
against the storm the major’s coming would doubtless raise in my
quarter of the heavens. By all the military canons I should presently
have to go and present my duty to Arnold, and I thought it would be
well to do this before Major Simcoe could precede me. Though as for
this, I was like a hound in leash, with only so far to run before the
cord should choke me, anyway.
Hitherto, I had always gone willingly enough into the den of the wild
beast we were seeking to entrap, but now I had a curious chilling of
reluctance. What if Major Simcoe had already come ashore? What if he
had sent another boat, after I had left him, with a second message to
the expedition commander? What if--but there was no end to the list of
things that might have happened, and the only way to die was to do it
quickly and have it over with.
So, packing my qualms into the smallest corner of my soul, I crossed
swiftly to the house of threatenings, only to learn that Arnold had
gone to an early conference with Sir Henry Clinton. Following him to
the house next door, I was told by an orderly that he was closeted
with the commander-in-chief, and was asked if I were the bearer of
despatches.
I said I was not, and lingered upon the door-step to wait for my
interview. When it was over-long in coming, I left word with Arnold’s
orderly that I would return later, and went to make a brisk circuit
around the fort by way of walking off the cold chill of apprehension
that seemed to be freezing the very blood in my veins.
This walk brought me, in due time, to the water’s edge, and turning
eastward I was led into that search for a boat which must precede all
else in the plot we had devised. Some little distance up the shore, and
well within range of the fort’s heavier ordnance, I placed the sailors’
groggery where Champe and I were to meet at the day’s end. It was a
mere hovel on the hillside; a den where I thought a man would do well
to go armed after nightfall. It was kept by a shock-headed Irishman,
with foxy eyes and a fist like a rail-splitter’s. He served me with a
can of grog, and when I asked him if he knew of any one who had a boat
to sell, he gave me a cunning leer, and said the “other gentleman” was
ahead of me. This told me that Champe had been before me; and thinking
I might only direct suspicion toward him or myself, I paid for my drink
and went back to see if Arnold had returned.
This time I did not have to wait. Arnold was in his office-room
above-stairs, and when I reported to him, he told me briefly that I was
at liberty for the forenoon. Whereupon I was going away with a lighter
heart, and should have carried the same out at the street door if I had
not just been in time to meet Major Simcoe entering.
There was clearly nothing to be done. The major was going up-stairs,
and I did not see how I could stop him. If by any chance my shifty
exploit of the night before should come in for mention, my race was run.
“One moment, Major,” I said hurriedly, halting him when his foot was on
the first step of the stair; “have you seen Lieutenant Castner?”
He turned and said he had not, by which I inferred that he had not yet
been to Sir Henry Clinton’s quarters.
“He left me a little while ago, saying that he was going to the
landing-place to meet you, or failing that, to send a boat off for
you,” I went on calmly.
I was almost without the hope that it would turn him back, but it
did--from the very threshold of my peril. He took it precisely as
I had hoped he might; as a notice that Sir Henry wished to see him
without delay. No sooner was he gone into the house next door than I
ran up-stairs to present myself again to Arnold. As before, he was
preoccupied with his work, but gave me his attention when I stood
deferentially aside and waited.
“There was a little matter which I meant to mention and forgot,
General,” I began, trying my best to be routine-like. “It has come in
my way once to stand sponsor for a rascally fellow-colonist of mine,
named Champe, and I’m sorry to have to do it again, or rather to report
him. Last night you entrusted him with despatches for Major Simcoe, and
I regret to say that I found him some time afterward in a condition
totally unfit to be responsible for his duty. You will understand when
I say that he had gone so far as to show his despatches and to boast
of his errand. I promptly put him under guard, took your letter and
delivered it myself to the major.”
“That was right,” he said approvingly; and then he asked the question I
had hoped he would ask. “What did Major Simcoe say, when he saw you in
Champe’s place?”
Here was my opportunity, and I seized it immediately.
“Major Simcoe was not over-courteous to me. For some reason or other
he, and many of his fellow officers in the king’s service, seems very
ready to put a slight upon us of the Loyal Americans, General, and when
he began to question me dictatorially about Champe, I--well, for the
honor of the legion I felt constrained to put him off, asking him in
effect, if it were any of his business if you chose to send a sergeant
of your own regiment on another errand.”
I saw before I was through that I was touching the proper chord. It was
the gossip of the town that Arnold was practically ostracized by the
officers of the regular army, and it was equally common talk that this
was our traitor’s sorest point. So I was quite prepared to have him
approve my course, as he did with his eyes glooming, and the furrows
deepening in his brow.
“You did quite right, Captain Page,” he said, “though I doubt not you
were too easy with the drunken sergeant. Have you Champe still under
lock and key?”
“No,” I admitted; “he was so penitent this morning, and so anxious
to get away before the story of his misbehavior should come to your
ears, that I let him go to seek a boat in which he could return to his
company. He can be disciplined later, if you so direct; though, as a
fellow Virginian, I hope you will see how good a soldier he can be on
the battle-field before you do it.”
He was looking past me before I had finished, with that absent gaze I
was coming to associate with his milder moods, and when I had made an
end he waved his hand and said: “You are a merciful man, Captain Page;
which is rather to your credit if you do not carry it too far. If Major
Simcoe complains to me, I shall know what to say to him.”