Two days after the excitement in Frederick consequent upon the escape of
the supposed spy Colonel Putnam was chatting with the provost-marshal
and the landlord of the tavern where Doctor Warren had paid his brief
visit. They were discussing a piece of news that had come in during the
morning. From the very first the proprietor of the old tavern had
scoffed at the theory of there being anything of a Southern spy about
the mysterious stranger. He was a Southern man himself, and, though
hardly an enemy to the Union, he had that personal sympathy for a host
of neighbors and friends which gave him something of a leaning that way.
He did not believe, he openly said, that anything on earth could whip
the South so long as they kept on their own soil; but things looked
black for their cause when they crossed the Potomac. Maryland had not
risen in tumultuous welcome as Lee hopefully expected. The worn, ragged,
half-* starved soldiers that had marched up the valley in mid-September
had little of the heroic in their appearance, despite the fame of their
exploits; and in their hunger and thirst they had made way,
soldier-fashion, with provender for which they could not pay. The host
himself had suffered not a little from their forays, and while his
sentiments were broadly Southern his business instincts were
emphatically on the side of the greenbacks of the North. He had found
the Union officers men of means, if not of such picturesquely martial
attributes as their Southern opponents; and while he would not deny his
friendship for many a gallant fellow in the rebel gray, neither would he
rebuff the blue-coat whose palm was tinged with green. He liked the
provost-marshal because that functionary had twice rescued his bar from
demolition at the hands of a gang of stragglers. He admired Colonel
Putnam as a soldier and a gentleman, but he was enjoying a triumph over
both of them; he had news to tell which seemed to sustain his theory and
defeat theirs as to the identity of the man who left his beard behind
him.
"I am told you knew this Doctor Warren, colonel," he was saying, "and up
to this time I had not spoken of him for reasons which--well, because
he had reasons for asking me to make no mention of his being here. Now,
if he was a Doctor Warren, from the North, and a loyal man, what would
he be doing with a spy?"
"I did not know he saw him at all," said Colonel Putnam, quickly.
"Nor do I; but I do believe that he was here purposely to meet him; that
he, the man you tried to arrest, was here at this house to meet your
friend who followed you out to camp. If Doctor Warren is a loyal man, as
you doubtless believe him, he would have no call to be here to get
papers from a man who could only meet him in disguise. I'm told the
doctor made himself all clear to you as to who he was."
Colonel Putnam's face is a study. He is unquestionably turning pale, and
his eyes are filled with a strange, introspective, puzzled look. He is
startled, too.
"Do you mean to tell me he _did_ have communication with the doctor?" he
asks.
"My wife is ready to swear to it," replies mine host. "Her story is
simply this: She had come down-stairs just as the doctor returned. She
had been sitting with the young lady, who was very nervous and ill at
ease while he was away, and had gone into the kitchen at the back of the
house to get her a cup of tea. She was startled by a rap at the door,
and in walks a man wrapped up in a big military cape. He wore spectacles
and a full black beard, and he took off his hat, and spoke like a
gentleman. He said he desired to see either Doctor Warren or the young
lady at once on business of the utmost importance, and asked her if she
would conduct him up by a rear stairway. My wife told him to go around
to the office, but he replied that he expected that, and hastened to
tell her that it was because there were Union officers in the hallway
that he could not go there. There were personal reasons why he must not
be seen; and she said to him that a man who looked like an officer and
spoke like a gentleman ought not to be afraid to go among his fellows;
and he said he was not an officer, and then asked her, suddenly, if she
was a friend to the North or the South; and before she could answer they
both saw lights dancing about out there in the yard, and he was
startled, and said 'twas for him they were searching, and begged her, as
she was a woman, not to betray him; he was the young lady's lover, he
said in explanation, and had risked much to meet her. And my wife's
heart was touched at that, and she showed him a place to hide; and when
she went up she heard the young lady sobbing and the old man trying hard
to comfort her; and she knocked, but they begged to be left undisturbed
until they called, and she went down and told the man; and he was
fearfully nervous and worried, she said, especially when told about the
crying going on; and he wrote a few lines on a scrap of paper, gave it
to her with a little packet, and she took them up to the doctor; and
they were just coming out of their room at the moment, and the doctor
put the papers in his pocket, and said to her and to me that he begged
us to make no mention of his daughter's being there to any one--there
were reasons. And her face was hidden in her veil, and he seemed all
broken down with anxiety or illness, and said they must have a carriage
or something to take them at once to the railway. They probably went
back to Baltimore that night, but the doctor took the packet in his
pocket; and the man whom you saw come up from under the back piazza,
colonel, was the man who sent it him."
The provost-marshal is deeply interested. Colonel Putnam sits, in a
maze of perplexity, silent and astounded.
"The doctor was well known to you, was he not, Putnam?" asked the
marshal.
The colonel starts, embarrassed and troubled.
"No. I never saw him before."
"He brought letters to you, didn't he?"
"No letters. In fact, it wasn't me whom he came to see at all."
"Whom did he want, then?"
"Mr. Abbot," answers the colonel, briefly, and with growing
embarrassment.
"Oh! Abbot knew him, did he?"
"No; he didn't. That is the singular part of it. The more I recall the
interview the more I'm upset."
"Why so?"
"Because he said he had come to see an old friend of his son's whom he
mourned as killed at Seven Pines. He named Abbot, and said he had been
in correspondence with him for a year. As luck would have it, Abbot was
sitting right there beside me, and I said at once, 'Here's your man,' or
something like it; and then Abbot didn't know him at all; declared he
had never written a line to him; never heard of him. The old gentleman
was completely floored. He vowed that for a whole year he had been
receiving letters from Lieutenant Paul Revere Abbot, and now had come to
see him because he was reported severely wounded."
"Did he show you any of the letters?"
"Why, no! He said there were none with him. He--I declare I do not know
what excuse he _did_ give," says the colonel, in dire distress of mind.
The provost-marshal's eyes are glittering, and his face is set and
eager. He thinks intently one moment, and then turns on the silent
colonel and their perplexed landlord.
"Keep this thing perfectly quiet, gentlemen; I may have to look further
into it; but at this moment, colonel, circumstances point significantly
at your friend, the doctor. Do you see nothing suspicious in his
conduct? His confident claim of a year's correspondence with an officer
of your regiment was possibly to gain your friendship and protection. As
ill-luck for him and good-luck for us would have it, he named the wrong
man. Abbot was there, and could deny it on the spot. The old man was
floored, of course; but his only way of carrying the thing through was
to play the martyr, and tell the story that for a year somebody had been
writing to him daily or weekly over the name of Abbot. What a very
improbable yarn, Putnam! Just think for yourself. What man would be apt
to do that sort of thing? What object could he have? Why, the doctor
himself well realized what a transparent fiction it must appear, and
away he slips by the night train the moment he gets back. And now our
friend, the landlord, throws further light upon the matter. He was here
to meet that night visitor, perhaps convey valuable information to him,
but was frightened by the blunder he had made, and got away as speedily
as possible, and without seeing the owner of the beard, although a
packet of papers was duly handed to him from that mysterious party.
Doctor Warren may turn out a candidate for the fortress of that name in
your own harbor, colonel."
And, thinking it all over, Putnam cannot make up his mind what to say.
There is something in his impression of the doctor that utterly sets at
naught any belief that he was acting a part. He was so simple, so
direct, so genuine in his manner and in his distress. On the other
hand, analyzing the situation, the colonel is compelled to realize that
to any one but himself the doctor's story would appear unworthy of
credence. He is in this uncomfortable frame of mind when a staff-officer
comes to see him with some papers from the quartermaster-general that
call for an immediate investigation of the affairs of the missing
Lieutenant Hollins, and for two or three days Colonel Putnam is away at
the supply depot on the railway. It is there that he learns the pleasant
news that his gallant young comrade has been promoted to a most
desirable staff position, and ordered to report for duty in Washington
as soon as able to travel. He writes a line of congratulation to Abbot,
and begs him to be sure and send word when he will come through, so that
they may meet, and then returns to his patient overhauling of the
garbled accounts of the quondam quartermaster.
No answer comes from Abbot, and the colonel is so busy that he thinks
little of it. The investigation is giving him a world of insight into
the crookedness of the late administration, and has put him in
possession of facts and given rise to theories that are of unusual
interest, and so, when he hears that Abbot was able to leave the
hospital and ride slowly in to the railway and so on to Baltimore, he
merely regrets not having seen him, and thinks little of it.
But the provost-marshal has been busily at work; has interviewed Abbot
and cross-examined the landlady. He has found an officer who says that
the night of the escapade at Frederick his horse was taken from in front
of the house of some friends he was visiting in the southern edge of the
town, and was found next morning by the pickets clear down at the bridge
where the canal crosses the Monocacy; and the pickets said he looked as
though he had been ridden hard and fast, and that no trace of rider
could be found. Inquiry among patrols and guards develops the fact that
a man riding such a horse, wearing such a hat and cape as was described,
but with a smooth face and spectacles, had passed south during the
night, and claimed to be on his way to Point of Rocks with despatches
for the commanding officer from General Franklin. He exhibited an order
made out for Captain Hollister, and signed by Seth Williams,
adjutant-general of the army in the field. No such officer had reached
Point of Rocks, and the provost-marshal becomes satisfied that on or
about the 4th or 5th of October this very party who was prowling about
the town of Frederick has gotten back into Virginia, possibly with
valuable information.
When, on the evening of the 10th, there comes the startling news that
"Jeb" Stuart, with all his daring gray raiders at his back, has leaped
the Potomac at Williamsport, and is galloping up the Cumberland Valley
around McClellan's right, the provost-marshal is convinced that the bold
dash is all due to information picked up under his very nose in the
valley of the Monocacy. If he ever had the faintest doubt of the justice
of his suspicions as to "Doctor Warren's" complicity, the doubt has been
removed. Already, at his instance, a secret-service agent has visited
Hastings, and wires back the important news that the doctor left there
about the 25th of September, and has not returned. On the 11th he is
rejoiced by a telegram from Washington which tells him that, acting on
his advices, Doctor Warren had been found, and is now under close
surveillance at Willard's.
Then it is time for him to look out for his own movements. Having leaped
into the Union lines with all his native grace and audacity, the
cavalier Stuart reposes a few days at Chambersburg, placidly surveying
the neighborhood and inviting attack. Then he rides eastward over the
South Mountain, and the next heard of him he is coming down the
Monocacy. McClellan's army is encamped about Sharpsburg and Harper's
Ferry. He has but few cavalry, and, at this stage of the war, none that
can compete successfully with Stuart. Not knowing just what to do
against so active and calmly audacious an opponent, the Union general is
possibly too glad to get rid of him to attempt any check. To the vast
indignation and disappointment of many young and ardent soldiers in our
lines, he is apparently riding homeward unmolested, picking up such
supplies as he desires, paroling such prisoners as he does not want to
burden himself with, and exchanging laughing greetings with old friends
he meets everywhere along the Monocacy. At Point of Rocks, whither our
provost-marshal and Colonel Putnam are driven for shelter, together with
numerous squads of convalescents and some dozen stragglers, there is
arming for defence, and every intention of giving Jeb a sharp fight
should he attempt to pick up supplies or stragglers from its sturdy
garrison. Every hour there is exciting news of his coming, and, with
their glasses, the officers can see clouds of dust rising high in air
far up the valley. Putnam has urgent reason for wanting to rejoin his
regiment at once. What with the information he has received from the two
or three officers whom he has questioned, and the papers themselves, he
has immediate need of seeing the ex-quartermaster sergeant, Rix. But he
cannot go when there is a chance for a fight right here. Stuart may dash
in westward, and have just one lively tussle with them to cover the
crossing of his valuable plunder and prisoners below. Of course they
have not men enough to think of confronting him. Just in the midst of
all the excitement there comes an orderly with despatches and letters
from up the river, and one of them is for Putnam, from the major
commanding the regiment. It is brief enough, but exasperating. "I
greatly regret to have to report to you, in answer to your directions
with regard to Rix, that they came too late. In some utterly
unaccountable way, though we fear through collusion on part of a member
or members of the guard, Rix made his escape two nights ago, and is now
at large."