again: “I gave you leave for the forenoon, Captain, but I am tempted to
ask you to do me a small personal favor, if you will. Mistress Arnold
does not yet know of the delay in our departure, and if you can make it
convenient to see her and to say to her that I shall be engaged until
after midday--”
I bowed and said I should be only too glad to carry his message, which,
for once in a way, was the truth in fact as well as in intention.
Being free to go, I went hastily, and before Major Simcoe could return
to catch me in this business of pipe-laying. Not to have Arnold’s
errand on my mind, I made it my first care to discharge it quickly. It
was Mistress Margaret herself who met me at the door of the Vandeventer
house, and it hurt me to see how glad she was at the news I brought;
hurt me because if our plans should succeed, the delay would mean
nothing but agony and life-long sorrow for her.
I did not go in, though she asked me very kindly if I would, but when
I hung upon my leave-taking, she divined the cause and said: “Mistress
Beatrix is quite well this morning, thank you, Captain Page, and I know
she will be overjoyed to hear that you asked for her.”
It was surely a needed pin-prick, and I responded to it.
“It is truly wonderful, Mistress Margaret, how you are able to read
a man’s inmost thoughts, and to set them in the words he is trying
to find. Later in the day I trust the general may make me his letter
carrier again, and if he does, may I hope--”
“Your privilege is always to hope, Captain Page, and I think I should
be the last person in the world to rob you of it,” she said; then she
gave me a loving message to her husband, and truly I felt more and more
the despicable villain the deeper I was drawn into this playing of the
go-between for husband and wife.
On my return to the lower end of the town, I made a détour to the
western waterside with a view to familiarizing myself with the
situation which would confront us when we should not have daylight
to show us what we needed to see. The riverside was well guarded to a
point far beyond the town, and the river itself was patrolled by small
craft. I saw no rowing boats at all on that bank. It came to me now,
that our greatest difficulty would lie in this finding of a suitable
boat. Unless I could use my authority as an officer in seizing one, I
fancied that we should look long before obtaining one in any other way.
This would be an extra hazard, to be sure, but we were already so deep
in hazards, that the addition of another could make little difference.
I had turned inland, and was passing the sugar-house prison in the
corner of the churchyard, when I met Major Simcoe again; and this time
it was he who halted me.
“Your fellow-countryman, the sergeant, seems to have got himself into
trouble, Captain Page. Had you heard of it?”
My heart turned to lead at his words, but I was careful to keep the
weight of it out of my face and voice.
“Our sergeant seems to trouble you much more than he does me, Major,” I
said, trying to say it as lightly as I could. “What has he been doing
now?”
The major laughed.
“That remains to be determined. He was found prowling about the
waterside in citizen’s clothes a little while ago, and since he could
give no reasonable account of himself to the officer of the guard, he
was clapped into a cell.”
I was burning to ask if the news of this climaxing disaster had been
carried to Arnold, but I dared not. So I escaped from the major as I
could, and hurried down to Fort George, passing the door of Arnold’s
house on the way, as one might take a morning’s saunter in front of a
cannon loaded, and with the slow-match burning.
At the fort the commandant, a British officer of the bulldog type, was
exceedingly brusk with me, paying his backhanded compliment to the
uniform I wore, and at first would give me no satisfaction whatever.
“The man was first a deserter from the rebels, and now he has shed his
regimentals, and was trying to desert from us,” he said sharply. “Of
course, Mr. Arnold will do what he pleases with him, but if the matter
lay with me, he would stretch a cord very promptly, Captain.”
“Fortunately, the matter does not lie with you,” I retorted, matching
his sharpness. “You have blundered, as some of you gentlemen in the
king’s service seem quite prone to do. Sergeant Champe was on duty when
you arrested him, and that duty required that he should not appear in
his regimentals, as it also required secrecy on his part, even under
the questioning of so great a man as you are, Mr. Commandant. I’ll
trouble you to set the sergeant at liberty, sir.”
“Upon order, certainly, Captain,” said my bulldog stubbornly.
“You have your order, sir,” I retorted, bristling back at him.
“I have not seen it,” he remarked.
“By heaven, sir, you are hearing it!” I cried. “Do you require me to go
back to Sir Henry Clinton and General Arnold, with the information that
you decline to take the word of the general’s aide?”
Now there are bullies who can not be bullied, but happily the
commandant was not one of them. When I was turning upon my heel, as if
in a passion, he called me back.
“I know you are Mr. Arnold’s aide, Captain,” he said, rather less
truculently, “but duty is duty, and--”
“Oh, very well,” I said, “it is but a matter of walking up to Sir
Henry’s house and telling him that your meddlesome interference has
doubtless spoiled the service upon which the sergeant was engaged.”
That shot brought him down, and now he seemed as eager to give me
my sergeant, and to be quit of us both, as, a moment before, he
was reluctant. Champe was fetched from some dungeon underneath the
battlements, and he was shrewd enough not to make much of seeing me
with the commandant, who now followed me to the sally-port, with
protestations of his guiltlessness in Champe’s arrest, and begging me
not to make too much of it with Sir Henry Clinton. I set his mind at
rest on this point, telling him that if he did not report the _faux
pas_, I should not; a statement which was well within the bounds of
truth.
Once free of the fort with my derelict, I hurried him around to the
tavern and up to my room.
“Out of that masquerade and into your uniform quickly!” I commanded;
and I would not let him tell his morning adventures until he had made
the change.
When he was once more, in outward appearance, a soldier of the Loyal
American Legion, he set his back against the wall and said:
“Well, Captain Dick, I’ve found the boat for us, though I don’t know
but what I’ve had to kill a man to quiet our title to it.”
XII
HOW THE HOOK WAS BAITED
CHAMPE’S calm announcement that he had purchased a boat at the price
of a man’s life was startling enough; but before I could ask for the
particulars he had pushed the dreadful deed and all thought of it into
the background with an ominous hint and a still more ominous query.
“The boat business isn’t the worst of it, by the value, much or little,
of another man’s life,” he affirmed soberly. Then the query: “Is your
standing still good over yonder, Captain Dick?” with a jerk of his
thumb toward Sir Henry Clinton’s and Arnold’s headquarters.
“My standing was as sound as ever, up to an hour or two ago; though
it had a pretty narrow margin when Major Simcoe came ashore and went
within an ace of spilling all our fat into the fire. But why? Has
anything happened that promises to make a breach in it?”
Champe took his back from the wall and sat down, locking his hands over
one knee.
“Let me ask you first: did they tell you what I was doing when they put
me under arrest?--but of course they didn’t; they couldn’t have guessed
it.”
“They told me nothing save that you were a soldier out of uniform,
that you were a skulker from the fleet, and that you were making for a
boat with a pair of oars on your shoulder--preparing to run away, they
supposed.”
“They got it all straight, as far as they went,” he responded, nodding
his head sagely. “Only they didn’t go half far enough. I was doing my
prettiest to make a chance to put the quietus on a second man; and I
would have compassed it within the next quarter-hour, if the guard
officer hadn’t clapped his good eye on me.”
“Heavens!” I exclaimed. “You surely missed your calling, Sergeant
Champe. You should be the public hangman in some county where the court
sits once a month.”
Champe’s grin was appreciative rather than reproachful.
“They do say some callings run in the blood, Captain Dick,” he allowed.
“My father was the High Sheriff of Loudoun County before the war took
him off--as his gaffer was before him. But that’s neither here nor
there: wait and you shall say for yourself whether this man I speak of
does not need a little wholesome killing.”
“Go on,” said I. “The present moment is ours, and that is all the
luckiest soul alive can lay claim to. None the less, if any special
danger is threatening--”
“It is either past the threatening point, or else it will not reach it
while I’m telling you,” said the sergeant, with a return of his stolid
indifference. “If that cursed guard officer had given me but the
thinnest shaving of time: five minutes more was all I asked.”
“Oh, get on with your story!” I cut in impatiently.
“I’m coming to it, Captain Dick; rein your nag down and go easy on the
spur: then you’ll get all the speed with all the bottom. But, as I
was saying: after I had found the only boat that was to be had on all
this waste of river front, and had put the owner of it well choked and
gagged and bound into the cellar of his own house, with half the bricks
of his Dutch oven piled on the trap-door to keep him safe--”
“You said nothing of all this,” I interrupted, “but no matter--let’s
have the nib of it.”
“There you go again, Captain, tripping me up just as I’m taking the
gallop. Where was I?--oh, yes; piling the good half of the Dutch oven
on the trap-door to make all safe. Well, that done, I must needs go
back a ways to buy the silence of the carrot-headed Irish grog-ladler
who had put me in the way of finding the hidden boat. After I had let
him rob me to the tune of three guineas where he had offered for two, I
thought it might be well to take a round along the shore to that Dutch
schnapps house where I had been meeting Mr. Baldwin, Major Lee’s letter
carrier from the camp at Tappan.”
“A good thought,” I broke in. “I had forgotten that we may still have a
line of communication open in that direction.”
“It was a lucky thought,” Champe went on. “When I found the Mynheer,
I was told that Mr. Baldwin had been seeking me since daybreak, and
while I was talking to the Dutchman, in Mr. Baldwin pops again, to give
me a letter fresh from Major Lee.”
“Let me see it,” said I, holding out my hand; but the sergeant only
laughed at me.
“Do you think I should have got through that fort guard-room yonder
with the letter in my pocket, Captain Dick? No, no; I took no such
risks, I promise you. The paper was well chewed and swallowed before
it ever saw outdoor daylight. But I can tell you well enough what it
said. We’re outflanked, foot, horse, and dragoons. There was a spy in
the camp at Tappan the night you got your marching orders from Mr.
Hamilton. You’ll know what that spells out for us?”
“I can guess; let’s have the worst of it.”
“I’m coming to that, too. This spy was caught, _fragranty delictum_, a
few hours after you left the camp. Handily invited, with the turn of
a cord around his two thumbs, he told what he could pick out of Mr.
Hamilton’s talk to you heard from his hiding-place under Mr. Hamilton’s
bed in the next room. He had it all down pat; your name and rank and
mine, and the whole story of my plot and your cutting in to help me.
But he protested to the last gasp that his knowledge was all of the
ear; that he saw nothing--being under the bed--and wouldn’t know either
of us by sight.”
“To the last gasp, you say--then they hanged him?” I said, feeling a
great burden lifted.
“Unluckily, they didn’t. He had his drumhead trial, and was to stretch
a cord at daybreak. Two hours before dawn they changed guard at the
hut where he was in keeping, and the relief found the hut empty. The
man was gone.”
“Oh, good lord!” I exclaimed. “We are not the only ones to tangle our
feet and fall down over them, it seems. He’ll be here on top of us,
next, I take it.”
“He is here,” said Champe impressively. “But to take things as they
come: Major Lee’s first care, of course, was to send a warning to us.
By good fortune, Mr. Baldwin chanced to be in Tappan, so the major
had his letter carrier at hand. So down comes our warning, with a
peremptory order at the tail of it. If the letter finds us still alive
and at large, we are to throw down the tools and quit the job, evacuate
the works, burn the baggage wagons--in other words, we are to save our
necks if we can.”
“Humph!” said I. “If I’m guessing straight at the hinder end of your
tale, Major Lee’s very excellent advice comes a good few hours too
late, doesn’t it?”
“Right you are, Captain Dick,” asserted my news-bringer. “The spy is
here in New York, and he has enough powder in his noddle to blow us
both safely to Heaven if we had as many lives as the cat. Mr. Baldwin,
who knows him, saw the man at his trial, and happily Mr. Baldwin is a
good enough friend of ours to want to save our bacon. So, from the time
when he crossed the river last night, he kept a sharp eye out for this
Mr. James Askew, which is the name our man goes by.”
“Good! And he found him?”
“Found him early this morning, and followed him to his dodging-hole,
which was the tavern of the Three Larks on the east shore road. His
next care was to deliver the major’s letter to me, and, having done
that, he put himself at our disposal in any helpful way that offered.”
I nodded. “Mr. Baldwin is trying fair to earn his fee of two hundred
guineas, five hundred acres of land and three negroes, which, as Mr.
Hamilton told me, was to be his reward for the letter carrying,” I
said. “Did you retain him?”
“On the spot,” said Champe. “First I had him tell me all he knew
about Askew. The man is not a Britisher; he is a free-lance, picking
up information where he can and selling it in the best market. This
gave me my lead. Such a man would be carrying his life in his hands in
either camp, and he could never go boldly to either headquarters with
his wares. With half a chance, I thought I might scare him off for a
day or two, at any rate; and here Mr. Baldwin helped me again. We went
to the Three Larks together, found our man, and Mr. Baldwin introduced
me as a gentleman in the same line of business.”
“Excellent! You are a man in a thousand, Sergeant Champe.”
“We got on well enough after Mr. Baldwin left us. With my knowledge of
things on our side of the Neutral Ground, I soon convinced Askew that
I was an honest spy, like himself, and then, with a pot of ale or so
to moisten the ropes, I began to pull gently on the dragnet. Askew’s a
shy fish, and no gudgeon, but he finally let out that he had a piece
of news he hoped would bring a good price. The sticking point was the
risk he ran in delivering it, he said, by which I knew that he had been
playing two games at the same time.”
“And you helped his fears to grow?” I put in.
“To the queen’s taste,” laughed the sergeant. “And at the
trigger-pulling moment I made him a proposal. ‘How if we should go
together to Sir Henry Clinton, and stand by each other?’ says I; and
when I added that I had a bit of influence in that quarter, he took the
bait at a gulp.”
“It is very clear that I am not the only daredevil in this company,” I
remarked. “But you did not mean to do any such mad thing as that, did
you?”
“Not to-day, Captain Dick; it is not my day for visiting Sir Henry
Clinton; nor did I mean that it should be Mr. James Askew’s, either.
But by this time I saw that I could not frighten him entirely off;
he was too shrewd and too eager for the gold. So the only thing was
to carry out Major Lee’s court-martial sentence on the body of the
prisoner. He was as good as dead, anyway.”
“Surely, Sergeant Champe, if you escape the gallows here it will be
only so that you may live to carry out your hereditary destiny of
hanging other people,” I commented. “But go on: he consented to your
plan?”
“Something cautiously, though he was now in the middle of his third
cup of strong waters. Sifting him carefully again, I found that he was
afraid to pass through the town in daylight, and here he played into my
hands. I told him we might take a boat and pull around the water-front
to the fort landing-place and so dodge all the curious eyes in the
town.”
“But how would that help us?” I queried. I confess I was a little dull
that morning.
Champe’s face lightened with his diabolical grin when he explained his
purpose. When they were safely in the boat--a cockle-shell belonging to
the Three Larks--he meant to upset it and drown the spy.
“It was all but done,” he went on regretfully. “I had bargained for the
hiring of the boat, and we were on our way to the waterside with the
oars when the guard relief came along. The one chance in a thousand
rose up and kicked me. The guard officer was a line corporal I had
quarreled with over a game of cards while the Loyal Americans were in
barracks.”
“And he knew you--recognized you?”
“In two quacks of a duck. I had barely time to tip Askew the wink to
sheer off, before the redcoat was calling me by my right name, and
demanding to know why I was out of the fleet and masquerading ashore
in citizen’s clothes. I had no answer ready for all this, so Askew and
I were like the two women grinding at the mill--one was taken and the
other left. The rest of the tale you know as well or better than I,
Captain Dick.”
“I know that we are both no better than dead men if we can not lay
hands on this spy of yours before he has screwed up courage to name his
price to Sir Henry Clinton or Arnold,” I said gravely. “But doubtless
he has already done so.”
Champe shook his head.
“I’m hoping not. He was well frightened by the fierceness with which
the guard corporal bullied me; and when I had my last glimpse of him he
was making off up the shore and evidently wishing with all his heart he
dared break into a run.”
“Yet he will come to it,” I asserted. “The gold-greed will drive him,
and his news is too big to keep. I’d give the best field of the Page
tobacco lands to know if we are still in time to stop him.”
The sergeant rose and stretched his long arms over his head. Then he
felt of his neck tenderly, saying with a touch of grim humor: “The cord
isn’t knotted around it yet. Pass your orders, Captain Dick. What do we
do?”
“Nay,” said I; “you’ve proved that your head is as good or better than
mine. What do you say?”
“Being footloose, and having my regimentals on, I might go and have
another look for Mr. James Askew. Then, if I could get him and my bully
guard-relief corporal in the same crazy wherry--”
“You’d drown them both, I suppose,” I laughed. “Never mind the
corporal; he’s harmless enough, while this man Askew holds your life in
one hand and mine in the other. What will you do with him if you find
him?--or when you find him?”
“I’ll keep him from spreading his sails to Sir Henry Clinton’s golden
breeze, at all events,” said the sergeant meaningly. Then: “You don’t
happen to have a bit of poison of any kind in your kit, do you?”
“Bah!” said I. “Do it soldierly, at least, Sergeant Champe.”
“So I will, then,” he agreed. After which he asked me if I would stay
where I was and pray for his success.
“I’ll do better than that--being somewhat out of practice on my knees,”
I told him. “It lies in my mind that I’ll go yonder to Sir Henry’s door
and be at hand to stop our man if he should slip through your fingers
and decide to ask an audience of Sir Henry Clinton without your help.
Can you describe him so I would know him?”
“Why, yes,” said the sergeant, scratching his head with a meditative
finger. “You’ll place him in the hollow half of a minute. He’s much
like other men, neither very big nor very little; less tall than the
tallest, and by no means as short as the shortest. You can’t well miss
him.”
Sharp as our peril was, I had to laugh at Champe’s notion of a
description. But time was pressing.
“Try it again, Sergeant,” I encouraged. “This time I’ll help you. Just
answer my questions one at a time and we’ll have him. First, how old
would you take him to be?”
Champe knitted his brows thoughtfully. “By grabs, Captain Dick, I never
thought to ask him!”
“No, no; of course you couldn’t ask him. But fire a guess at it. Is he
a young man?”
“No; I wouldn’t call him young; say thirty, or forty, or maybe fifty,
or so.”
“Great Marlborough!” I raged. “Can’t you come any nearer to it than
that? How about his eyes--what color are they?”
“Hum--his eyes; well, now, there you have me again, Captain. They are
devilish sharp little eyes; I can tell you that. But lord! I couldn’t
name you their color in a month of Sundays.”
“By all the blind pipers that ever twiddled a horn-pipe--I don’t
believe you looked at him at all!” I broke out, annoyed beyond measure
at this unexpected development of the sergeant’s weak point. “Is it any
use to ask you how he was dressed?”
Champe’s face lightened now, and the frown of perplexity smoothed
itself out.
“Surely; I can tell you that to the dotting of an ‘i.’ I remember
noticing particularly that he was dressed quite like other
folk--buckle-shoes, breeches, waistcoat, coat and hat. There you have
him from head to foot.”
“Heavens and earth, man!” I exclaimed. “How in the devil’s name am I to
help in this if you can’t give me the first living idea of the fellow
I’m to look for? Think, Sergeant--think hard. Surely there must have
been some noticeable thing about him that would serve to place him for
me.”
Champe put his head in his hands and appeared to be making the mental
effort of a lifetime. After a long minute he looked up to say: “I’ve
got it, Captain Dick, I’ve got it. Come to think of it, I’m almost sure
he wore a scratch-wig like a farmer’s.”
I shook my head in despair. Half the men in America wore scratch-wigs.
Yet the edge of the necessity was in no wise dulled by Champe’s
inability to visualize the spy for me.
“Try it again, Sergeant,” I entreated; and now he got up and began to
walk the floor, cracking the joints of his big fingers and scowling
ferociously in the throes of recollection. I venture to say he walked a
full quarter-mile up and down the long room before he stopped to make
his final dash at the impregnable barrier.
“I have it now,” he said, pleased as a child over the finding of a
long-sought-for plaything. “His waistcoat was gray, Captain Dick; and
he wore a black stock--aye, it was black, sure enough. But”--smiting
fist into palm with a mighty thwack to make the climax--“the thing I
noticed hardest was his watch-fob; a bunch of seals hanging at the end
of a leather thong, and he twiddles them, so”--suiting the action to
the word--“all the time as he talks or walks. Never tell me, Captain,
that I haven’t got him down to the very parting of the hair for you.”
“Oh, you have,” I said ironically; “indeed you have. I could doubtless
recognize Mr. James Askew in the dark, and with my eyes shut; or that
way as well as any other. But the twiddling of the watch-fob seals
may do. Now to the work. When you’ve succeeded--or failed--come back
here and put a corner of your neckerchief in the window for a signal;
right-hand if you’ve hit the mark, left-hand if you’ve missed.”
“You’ll be within call?” he asked, as I was unbarring the door.
“I shall be patrolling before Sir Henry Clinton’s door, ready to nip
Mr. James Askew if he turns up on my beat--always providing that he
twiddles his watch-seals at the proper instant.”
“One more word,” said the sergeant, when my hand was on the latch.
“Major Lee’s order is to drop the hitch-rope and run for it. You’ve
said nothing as to that, yet, Captain Dick.”
“And I say nothing now, save that Major Lee is not my commanding
officer. He is yours, however--which may make a difference in your
case. Does it?”
“No,” he said shrewdly; and we went out through the tap-room one at a
time, and each to his own separate pool to fish for James Askew.
XIII
HOW A FISH WAS HOOKED AND LOST
THE talk in my tavern room with Champe had used up so much time that
it was midday and beyond when I joined the group of orderlies and
unattached officers lounging before Sir Henry’s door, and had a welcome
in strict accordance with the freezing December weather and the uniform
I was wearing--cool and contemptuous.