Chapter I: FOUND Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton waiting for me in that room (4)

From this table talk I learned that the work of putting the troops and stores aboard the ships had been going on all day, and was likely to dig deep into the night, though when the actual sailing order was to be given, did not appear. I was concerned about this on only one point, namely, the hope that there might be time for a visit, hurried or otherwise, to the house where I had seen Margaret Shippen’s face at the door and Beatrix Leigh’s at the upper window.

What excuse I should have for intruding into a house whose owner’s name, even, was still unknown to me, I could not imagine. But that the thing must be compassed admitted of no question. After what I had done in Mr. Justice Smith’s glass-roofed rose-house, I should be either a knave or a coward to run away in silence. Moreover, I had not learned why Mistress Beatrix was in New York, or how long she meant to stay, or any of the hundred things her presence at the Smith mansion had put question-marks after.

From what I heard at the supper-table, I judged my time was short. It was Major Simcoe who said that when the troops were all embarked, the officers would have shore leave only until the ebb tide would serve to let the ships drop down the bay. It was here that I ventured to ask about the wind, and if it were favorable; and the major said it was not, but that the fleet would come to anchor in the lower bay to wait for it.

It was while we were still at table that an orderly came with a summons for me. I was to report to Arnold at my earliest convenience,--I marked the word and took courage from it,--and I might delay so long as would be necessary to make all my preparations for going aboard beforehand, to the end that I should not be obliged to return to the tavern later on if time pressed.

I showed Arnold’s note to Castner, and the lieutenant very kindly offered to expedite my affair by looking after my impedimenta; which was light enough, since I had only the clothes I stood in, the civilian’s suit I had bought of the Dutch Jew, and my patriot homespun. I was the more willing to turn Castner loose in my room for the packing up, because there were no papers, plans of fortifications or any other spy’s death-sentences for him to stumble on, and it lent a fine air of sincerity to my new pledge to give him my keys and to tell him to take or leave what he chose.

This left me free to accompany the orderly who had brought Arnold’s note, and the young man, a fine young gentleman who was a son of that Colonel Hetheridge who was killed at the battle of Monmouth, walked with me to the door of Arnold’s quarters.

I found the traitor busily writing, as he seemed always to be at my entrances. And, as on a former occasion, he waved me to a chair and went on pushing the quill like a regimental clerk who had got behind in his records. When he had folded, sealed and superscribed his letter, he turned to me, and I saw that Sergeant-Major Champe had not failed either himself or me in the cross-questioning of the early morning.

“You are quite refreshed, Captain Page?” he began most kindly; and again I caught myself wishing that he would not so persistently show me the likeable side of him. “You are fortunate in having no family ties to break when we turn our backs upon New York. Will you take it as an older man’s weakness if I say that I shall leave my heart behind me when we sail, Captain Page?”

I said that his sentiment did him honor; adding that I had once had the pleasure of meeting Mistress Arnold while she was yet Mistress Margaret Shippen in Philadelphia.

“A dear lady, with a heart of pure gold,” he said half musingly. And then more pointedly to me: “She remembers you, Captain--which is the chief reason why I am going to let you be the bearer of this farewell note of mine. You can find the house again?”

“Surely,” I replied; and for the instant I forgot my sworn purpose in sudden gratitude to him for putting me so easily and naturally on the way to a fulfilment of my own desires.

“She will see you--as she might not wish to see another,” he continued. “Tell her only cheerful things, Captain Page. Though she does not know our destination or our purposes, she is weighed down with a presentiment of evil to come. That is why I am writing and sending you. There are limits to the sternest fortitude, and I--”

He broke off abruptly, and I could have sworn there were honest tears in his eyes. But by this time I was clinging blindly to the kidnapping purpose that was my only reason for the present hazards, telling myself if that should fail I should see another side of him soon enough, when he should be leading his ravages against my home land. At twenty-two I had yet to learn that no man, however despicable he may be, is all villain; that there will be some meliorating drop of blood in the worst criminal that was ever righteously hanged for his sins.

Notwithstanding, some inkling of this was beginning to dawn on me, and like a voice out of the air Colonel Hamilton’s words came back to me “--But to go as you must go, and use guile and subterfuge ... truly, Captain Page, you must sort this out for yourself; to determine how far in such a cause an officer and a man of honor may go. I lay no commands upon you.” I was thinking hard, trying to do as Mr. Hamilton had given me leave to do: to determine how far a decent sense of honor would let me go, when Arnold’s voice broke into my reverie.

“You will go with the letter, and take your own time--so much time as she shall require of you,” he directed, giving me the sealed packet. “If you should not find me on your return, Lieutenant Castner will meet you at the shipping wharf and assign you to your vessel.”

This was my dismissal, and I took it gladly for more than one reason. I hoped I should never see this man again until I could more honestly hate him as he deserved--another wish for which I was to pray God’s forgiveness in the time to come.

The streets were quiet as I took my solitary way through them, and over the fort the sky was reddened as if a bonfire were burning on the parade ground. Passing the green I saw the pedestal upon which the lead-gilt equestrian statue of King George had stood, the statue that the men of ’76 had pulled down in their jubilation over the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence, and which had afterward been melted into bullets to be fired at this same Third George’s soldiery.

My way also led past the gloomy sugar-house prison where, in the frightful summer of ’77, so many patriots were confined that not a third of them could get breathing space at the deep port-hole windows; where our brave fellows stayed and rotted and died a dozen in the day rather than purchase their freedom by enrolling themselves in the king’s army, as they were given leave to do.

The sight of the grim, fortress-like stone building, and the thought of the torments for which it stood as a reminder, put me in a sterner frame of mind toward our enemies and went far toward excusing the double-faced part I found myself compelled to play. Yet I tried to hold myself sufficiently aloof so that I should not visit the sins of the husband, and of those men who had suborned him, upon the sorrowful woman I was going to see.

Having been twice over the route in daytime, and twice at night, I had no difficulty in finding the house which sheltered Arnold’s wife and child. A negro house-servant opened to my knock, and upon my asking for Mistress Arnold, admitted me, though not too willingly I fancied. Once indoors, I was shown to a richly furnished room opening off the hall, and was told to warm myself at the fire while the lady was making ready to see me.

I meant to have my duty over with first, and then to see Beatrix afterward, if anything short of force would secure me a sight of her. But as to that, it seemed only fair to borrow a little of the probabilities. If I could make my standing good with Mistress Margaret Shippen, I might be able to persuade her to act as my intercessor.

The lady, whose name was on the letter I carried, did not keep me waiting long: and coming, she entered the room so quietly that she surprised me sprawling like a mannerless trooper before the fire; for which I quickly begged her pardon when I found my feet and made my best bow. Whereupon she was good enough to give me her hand like an old acquaintance, and to say that we poor soldiers had little enough comfort to be denied the ease a cheerful fire afforded.

At this I handed her the letter and she sat down to read it. I gave her all the privacy there was, staring so hard into the heart of the blazing logs, and thinking so pointedly of my own love-affair that I did not know when she finished.

“This is your night for sailing, Captain Page?” she asked gently, and her low voice called me back suddenly from the love-dream backgrounded by the mellowing fire.

I said it was; and after that she sat for a long time gazing with me into the glowing embers. When she began to speak again, I knew why she had hesitated.

“Your place is to be near General Arnold, isn’t it, Mr. Page?” she asked, saying it as one who feels the way carefully.

“I hope so,” I replied, hating myself for saying the double-meaning words for her ears. Then I added: “I am still detached; I have no command; and Mr.---the general--is having me serve as his aide while we are here in New York.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “He promised me you should be near him.” And then I knew who was the “unimpeachable authority” and that she had vouched for me, and was straightway humbled and made horribly ashamed and remorseful.

“You spoke for me? You should not have done that, dear lady,” I said quickly. So much, at least, I owed to common manhood, I thought.

“And why not, pray? If you could know, Mr. Page, how it comforts me to have the assurance that General Arnold has at least one honorable gentleman near him--”

“Good heavens, madam!” I ejaculated, forgetting all prudence in the smarting of her unconscious stab; “you take a frightful risk in recommending any one in these uncertain times, and especially one who is himself a forsworn--” I stopped in mid-career, remembering that I was treading upon doubly dangerous ground in thus pointing out my own unfitness to the woman who was the wife of the chief forswearer of his age.

“Ah, you are modest, Mr. Page,” she said, being so good and gentle herself as to be unable to see guile in others. And then she added: “You must not try to draw me into the King-and-Congress of it. I used to think I could know and take sides; but now I leave those things to others, and try to rise above them. When this bitter war is over and become a thing of the past, we shall see more clearly than we do now.”

“I would to God it were over at this moment,” I rejoined gloomily.

“I can credit you in that wish: though you are young and eager and a soldier, Mr. Page. War is a very terrible thing, full of peril and danger to those we love; full of weary heart-strainings for us poor women who can only stand and wait. You will serve the general well, will you not, Captain Page?”--this most wistfully.

This time I could have cried out with the pain it gave me to deceive this dear lady. Here was a thing I had never bargained for, even in my wildest imaginings of the crookings and turnings of the way into which I had set my feet. And now, again, Mr. Hamilton’s qualifying words came back to me. How much farther could I go and have any semblance of honor left? But Mistress Margaret was waiting for her answer, and I am glad she can never know what it cost me to give it.

“I shall not serve the general any the less faithfully for any word you have spoken, be assured, dear madam,” I said, descending once more, and still more reluctantly, to the despicable double meanings.

“I shall sleep the easier for that assurance,” she said warmly, flaying me afresh; and then continuing with the sweet archness of the Margaret Shippen I had met in her father’s home: “I know you, Captain, better than you know me--having Beatrix Leigh for a fellow guest under this same roof.”

“Mistress Beatrix would never say a word for me,” I blurted out.

“Oh, no; certainly not for you in person,” was the half-quizzical retort. “But for your family. One would think, to hear her talk, that the Pages,--always excepting yourself, of course, Mr. Richard,--were the lords of the manor and the first gentlemen of Virginia. I promise you, she has given you a name to live up to.”

Now was my time, and I did not let the opportunity slip.

“I wish she might be prevailed upon to give me a little sight of herself--for my leave-taking--Mistress Arnold. Could you--would you--”

She was shaking her head in despair--mock or real, I could not tell which.

“You are a most blundering lover, Captain,” she protested. “After I had plotted and planned to persuade her to show herself at Mr. Justice Smith’s last night--she didn’t want to, I assure you; she is such a spiteful little patriot--after all that, and my telling the general he must bring you; then you go and say or do something that sends her to me in a perfect passion, telling me one moment that she hates you, and the next that she will die of shame and misery. What did you do, Mr. Page? I am curious to know.”

“What did I do? Why, Mistress Margaret, I--that is, I--I asked her how she did, and--” I was as tongue-tied as a schoolboy trying to say his first piece.

“I think you must have,” she said, demurely. “Beatrix is just the person to fly into a rage because you asked her how she did.”

I went dumb at this, but my desire was just as clamorous none the less. So, after we had looked the fire out of countenance for another minute or two, I essayed again. “Think of it, Mistress Margaret; it is desperate hard for me to be this near to her--and on the verge of going to I know not what fate--and not to have a chance to--to--”

“Oh, you young lovers!” she smiled. “Here you are writhing and prickling to have me go, Mr. Richard Page--to be quit of me--and yet you are in a terrible fright lest I should go without promising to send Beatrix to you. Well, I’ll go; but I shan’t promise you she will come--even for a farewell sight of your handsome face and soldierly figure. Stay where you are for ten minutes by the clock. If she does not come by that time, you will have to think on your sins, whatever they may be, and go without your leave-taking.”

I said I would wait, and thanked her, and felt, when she gave me her hand again for her own leave-taking, as if I were twice the hypocritical villain her husband had ever dared to be.

When she was gone, and I had walked the floor of that pretty room a full half-hour, as it seemed to me, I fell to wondering how her mere mention of the time could make the tall clock in the corner go on wagging its pendulum in sly malice while its hands made hours of the minutes. We speak of killing time: I could have wrecked that lying time-piece more than once, and was, I think, standing before it and shaking my fist in its brazen face, when I first heard the hesitant opening of the door.

No, it was not Mistress Margaret, coming back to tell me she had failed. It was Beatrix, and she had waited thus long so that she might curve her lip and train her eyes to flash and look me down, as I had seen her go and hide herself to do many a time when we were children together and had quarreled, as children will.

“Well?” she said, much as she had said it the night before, when she had come into the glass rose-house to make me think she despised me.

“I have come to bid you good-by,” I told her, picking out the most inane word that came to hand. And she would not let even that poor word stand.

“No,” she contradicted; “you came to bring a letter for Margaret. You came to fetch and carry for that dreadful man--as his lackey!”--and here the beautiful eyes burnt me, they were so indignant hot.

“I should have come anyhow,” I asserted. “But I was glad to bring Mistress Margaret her letter: that was a service to her rather than to Mr. Arnold.”

“Call him ‘General,’ Mr. Page; he is your general, isn’t he?” she scoffed.

“So he says, and so he thinks, and so I call him, when I have to. But you must not think, because I am wearing this coat, that I am over-proud of it, or of my service in what we have lately been calling the ‘Traitors’ Legion,’ on the other side of the Neutral Ground.”

“Then, why are you in it?” she demanded. “Why, why, _why_?”

“It is a long story,” I stammered, “and there is less time for telling it now than there was last night. But tell me; how is it that you are here in New York, when I thought you were safe in Virginia?”

“It is a long story,” she mimicked, “and there is less time for telling it now than there was last night, Mr. Richard Page.”

“But I shall stay until I have heard it,” I retorted hardily.

“Oh, if I must ask Mistress Vandeventer to give you the guest-room otherwise, you may know; there is no such mighty mystery about _my_ goings and comings,” she said, with a toss of the pretty head. “There was a ship-load of the Leigh tobacco snapped up by one of the British ships and brought here as a prize. But word came to us at Sevenoaks through good Mr.--no, on second thought, I won’t tell you our friend’s name--through a gentleman of Philadelphia, that it could be ransomed if any Leigh were bold enough to venture for it. There was no one else to venture, so I came. And I have got my prize redeemed, and I am going home again in a few days, or as soon as Cousin Julianna Pettus comes from Philadelphia to sail with me. There now--make the most of it, Mr. Turncoat British-officer Page! Or will you turn traitor to me, too, and have my father’s tobacco seized again?”

It was all very hard; doubly hard now, because my mission, which only a day earlier had held out hopes of a speedy despatching, now stretched out into an indefinite future, and was by so much the more unspeakable to her or to any living soul. But I set her mind at rest about the retrieved tobacco; if, indeed, she thought so small of me as to suspect for a moment that, even as a turncoat, I would turn informer.

“I am no exciseman, whatever else you have written against me in your black books,” I said, and if half the gloom I felt was in the words, she should have pitied me.

Perhaps she did, for from standing, she took the chair lately occupied by Margaret Shippen, and nodded me airily to my own.

“I must not forget my manners, even if Mr. Page does sometimes forget his,” was her wording of the permission to sit beside her.

Now that ravished kiss of the night before sat lightly on my heart, but not so easily on my conscience. God knows, my love for her was big enough to excuse the loving violence ten times over; but it stuck in my throat that, but for my imminent peril, I might not have had the courage to do it. Confession was the thing; but how could I confess enough without confessing too much?

“I came here to-night to beg your forgiveness, Beatrix,” I began, plunging into the middle of the thing because there was no guide-post to show me any beaten highway leading up to it.

She did not pretend to misunderstand.

“Oh; so you are properly ashamed, are you? I think you should be, Richard Page!”

“No, not ashamed: but I shall be sore-hearted if I have to go away and leave you angry at me. But are you angry, Beatrix?”

“Desperately.”

“Would anything I could say--”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Not if I tell you that--” I paused on the brink of the horridest chasm that ever opened before a halting lover in this world of lovers’ pitfalls. If I confessed that the kiss saved my life--as well it may have--how could I make her understand--but I could never make her understand. She would hold me as the paltriest coward that ever breathed if I should so much as hint at the thing which had given me the kissing courage at that perilous moment.

“What could you tell me, if you were so disposed, Mr. Page?” she asked, and now I thought the sarcasm was only half-hearted.

“I could tell you what I have told you a hundred times before, Beatrix; that I love you: that I am never near you without having to fight most desperately for even decent self-control.”

“But I do not love you, Dick Page.”

I jerked my chair around to face her.

“Is it because you do love Seytoun?” I demanded, full of jealous wrath in an instant.

“Foolish boy! Do you say that because I won’t let you quarrel with Captain Seytoun? There may be better reasons why I wish you to keep the peace in that quarter, sir.”

“Yet you say you do not love me?”

“I don’t, Mr. Richard Page--not in the coat you are wearing.”

My arms went out to her, and she moved her chair well out of my reach before she went on.

“No; don’t assume that the coat is a little thing, lightly to be ignored. It is not, for a Leigh. I shall gladly die a spinster before I’ll ever wed it, I do assure you, Dick.”

All this time she was looking steadily into the fire, and I was wondering where her heart-broken sorrow of the night before had gone. But it came, even while I was seeking for words in which to hint that my present Judas-coat might not always stand between us; the trembling of the sweet lips, the welling up of the tears.

“Oh, what madness possessed you, Dick?” she wailed; “you, who were the bravest, the most devoted, the most cheerful when all was darkest!”

I rose and settled my sword-belt. There was more love-violence ahead if I should stay; that, and the certain breaking of my promise to Mr. Hamilton.

“I have greatly overstayed my time; I must go, Beatrix, dear,” I said, and I scarcely knew the sound of my own voice. And when she rose, I caught her in my arms before she could escape. “Kiss me, sweetheart, and bid me God-speed,” I begged.

“For a boon, I will, Captain Page,” she said quickly, holding herself at arm’s length; and now, though her eyes were still wet, she was not weeping. “Tell me where this expedition of yours will land!”

Now that was something I could and would tell her gladly. But when my mouth was open to let the words out, she came close and put her hand over my lips, and hid her face against that cursed coat of double-dealing, saying with a half sob: “Oh, no, no! I would have made you turn traitor again! Kiss me, Dick, and go--go quickly. I--”

She was faint and dizzy--my strong one!--when I led her gently to a cushioned settee and made her lie down with a pillow at her head. Then I sent the negro hallman up for Margaret Shippen; and when Mistress Arnold came hurriedly, I went away, softly, and with a heart that was strangely light and tender. For now I knew that I need not kill Captain Seytoun for any chance he stood to take my darling from me.

X

IN WHICH A WALL HAS EARS

THE red bonfire glow tinting the sky over the parade ground of Fort George had faded into the night when I won back to the lower town. Passing the sentries on the outer scarp of the fort I made my way down to the water-front to look for Castner, and to get my embarking directions.

At the landing-stage, which was lighted by a pair of cresset torches flaring gustily on stakes thrust into the ground, I found the lieutenant. He was forwarding the last few boat-loads of stragglers, and while he busied himself with orders to the ensigns in command of the ships’ boats, I had speech with the quartermaster of the fort garrison, who told me that the greater part of the expeditionary fleet was already standing down the bay.

But Castner had other news for me when he was free to impart it; news which set me aflame with fresh invention fires.

“Good evening to you again, Captain Page,” he said, when he lounged up from the despatching of the last of the boats. “Did you come by the headquarters on your way?”

“No,” said I. “I went on a mission for General Arnold in the town and was told to come directly here.”

“We are delayed,” he announced, not very regretfully I thought. “At the last moment orders came from Sir Henry Clinton detaching our convoy frigate and two of the sloops of war for temporary service elsewhere. The troop fleet is to wait in the lower bay for the return of the three men-of-war, and all officers not on service duty have shore leave during the interval. How does that set with you?”

It was the part of prudence to let the news appear to be a matter of indifference to me, and I answered accordingly.

“A soldier should be prepared for anything; and I’ll dare say the tavern is a fairly good inn--far better than the cabin of an ill-smelling fishing schooner. I thank heaven I have no active command to send me down the bay with the musket men.”

Castner grinned. “I’ve been picking some comfort out of that in my own case,” he admitted. “Do you go back to Mr. Ar--to the general’s quarters?”

I told him I should not, if he would be good enough to report me: that I should go across to the tavern to retake my room, where I might be found if there were any further orders for me. And so we parted at the northwestern angle of the fort, and I was glad to be alone. For now the book of the kidnapping possibilities was suddenly reopened, and my brain was busy with a thousand desperate plots all weaving themselves upon this most opportune delaying of the expedition.

Wanting nothing so much as a chance to let my mind shuttle connectedly among the plot threads, I shunned the tavern and kept on around the northern and eastern escarpment of the fort until I found myself once more approaching the waterside and the landing-place with its two smoky torches still flaring in the wind. The spot was deserted, though it was so close under the guns of the fort that I could hear the tread of the sentinel as he paced back and forth behind the screen of the outer ravelin.

Hearing my footsteps, the sentry stopped and would have challenged me, I suppose, if his attention had not been drawn at the same minute to a ship’s small boat which was approaching the landing. His challenge went for that, instead, and when I heard the answer I stood quickly aside and waited for what should follow. For, by all the good luck that ever fell upon a perplexed and half-desperate plotter, the man who stepped from the stern-sheets of the small boat and made answer to the challenging sentry was none other than my fellow conspirator, Sergeant Champe.

“A courier from the fleet, with letters for General Arnold,” was his reply to the fort’s watch-dog; and when he had taken the few strides necessary to carry him out of earshot from the ravelin and from the two sailors in his boat, I waylaid him, telling him in twenty words how fortune--and Sir Henry Clinton--had given us one more chance to retrieve ourselves.

“Plot for it, then,” was his gloomy response. “I see nothing beyond my going back to the ships presently with the answer to the letter I’m carrying.”

“That you shall not do,” I replied hastily. “We must think up some excuse to keep you ashore. Leave that to me and go on your errand. I’ll wait for you here and have my plan ready against your return.”

The plan, decided on in a half-hour’s chilly marching back and forth across the green while I waited for Champe to come back, was not very complicated. When the sergeant made his appearance I took the despatches and sent him over to the tavern to reengage my room for me, telling him to pose as my soldier-servant therein. Meanwhile, I told him, I would take his place as Arnold’s courier, and it would go hard with me if I should not account for his detention on shore when I could have speech with those on shipboard who had sent him.

Passing on to the landing-place in my new character of despatch carrier, I found the sailors willing enough to exchange the sergeant they had brought ashore for a captain; and at my order to give way, they pulled off to one of the rear-guard vessels of the fleet, where, to my dismay, I found I had to deal with Major Simcoe, whose letters to Arnold had been the despatches carried ashore by Champe.

Quite naturally, the major’s first question was for his messenger, and I was glad that the light of the ship’s lantern was so poor that he could not see my involuntary recoil when I saw who it was with whom I had to fence.

“I am General Arnold’s aide,” I replied guardedly. “Were you expecting some one else, Major Simcoe?”

“I sent a man from the Loyal American detail on board, a sergeant named Champe,” he explained. “Did he return with you, Captain?”

“No. Possibly the general made other use of him,” I suggested.

“Possibly,” said the major, eying me shrewdly from beneath his bushy brows. “But in that case he must have changed his mind after this letter was sent. You will see that it is superscribed to me ‘By the hands of Sergeant Champe,’” and he held the letter so that I might read the writing on the back.

There was no help save in a stout lie quickly told; and even this might have disastrous after-consequences if the major should come ashore later on and follow it up.

“General Arnold is my superior officer, and I do not presume to question his reasons for writing another man’s name on the letter which he gives me to deliver, Major Simcoe,” I said boldly, adding, with even greater impudence: “If you do not wish to receive the general’s despatches at my hands, let me have them again and I’ll so report to General Arnold.”

“Oh, there is no need for any heat about it, Captain Page,” was his even-toned retort. “Only, when you go ashore, I shall be glad if you will look up my sergeant and send him off to me. You shall have the boat’s crew as long as may be necessary.”

Now this was not satisfactory, either, since it made me responsible for the boat’s crew, and, indirectly, for Champe’s return. So I took the high-and-mighty stand again.

“Egad, Major Simcoe,” I protested, “I’m afraid you will have to hold me excused. General Arnold would not be greatly pleased to have one of his aides detailed by you to bring in your stragglers.”

At this the doughty major came close and looked me in the eyes as the poor light would let him.

“Hark you, Captain Page,” he said, speaking so those who stood about should not hear; “you seem bent on quarreling with me when there is no need for it. That is your privilege, sir, and if you were a king’s officer I should be the last man in the army to deny you. As it is--well, a polite word or two may go far with a gentleman in your situation, and I wonder you are so slow in perceiving it. Now, sir, will you report to the general in command that I am short a sergeant, and that I shall be greatly pleased to have the proper steps taken to find and send him off to me?”

If there is one good quality above another in the Page make-up it is the instant knowledge of the precise moment when the trumpet should sound the retreat. I saw now that I had taken the wrong tack with the tart major, and that I must butter him well if I wished to come off without loss.

“Saying nothing of your allusions, Major Simcoe,--which we may well take up at some other time and place,--I beg your pardon on the sergeant’s account,” I said, with no more than the proper touch of offended dignity. “You put me upon my mettle, seeming to question my right to bring you a letter--which you may take as the reason why I did not tell you plainly in the beginning that Champe was sent upon another errand after your letter had been written and superscribed. I am sure you do not question the commanding general’s right to use a warrant officer of his own legion as he sees fit.”

“I beg your pardon, Captain Page,” said the major crisply. “I am a soldier, sir, and I was thinking only of the man’s possible disobedience. Of course, if Mr. Ar--if the general required him, I have nothing more to say,” and he drew aside and read his letter.

Now I had another twinge or two to suffer while I waited, for fear Arnold might possibly have made some mention of Champe in the letter. But in a minute or two the major turned and gave me my dismissal quite courteously, telling me that there was no answer other than to convey his duty to the commanding officer, and to say, if it came in my way, that he, Major Simcoe, would report at the headquarters sometime during the following day--a thing I prayed my good angel to prevent, if it could be done without setting the entire cosmic plan of the universe ajee.

Having thus been given leave to vanish, I made good use of it before any other untoward thing should happen; and with a coin apiece for my two sailor oarsmen at the landing, I answered the sentry challenge from the fort and made my way swiftly to the tavern.

Here I learned that my portmanteau had not been taken away, and that a soldier, calling himself my servant, was waiting for me in the room above. Meaning to give the Royalist barman no chance to think that I cared a rap about any common soldier who might be sitting up for me, I ordered a cup of wine and a pipe of tobacco, and sat quietly before the fire in the supper-room, sipping the one and smoking the other for a full half-hour before paying my score and going above-stairs.

In the barn-like room Champe was improving the interval soldier-wise; which is to say that he had taken the covers from my bed, rolled himself in them, and was sound asleep on the floor. He roused at my incoming, however, and was broad awake by the time I had thrown a log on the smoldering fire he had made.

“Well, and how did you carry it off with the major?” he asked when he had rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Not so handsomely as I should have, had you told me it was Major Simcoe I should have to hoodwink,” I retorted. “But you are safe for the time being--which means until Major Simcoe and Arnold meet each other and fall to comparing notes.”

“And then?” queried my sergeant.

“Then Simcoe will learn that I have lied to him, and Arnold may not be able to remember that he sent you on an errand that prevented your return to the ship with his letter to the major,” I rejoined shortly.

“Which means that we have purchased--how many hours, Captain Dick?”

“God knows; and I do not. But we must make the most of what time we have. No one seems to know where our convoy ships of war have gone, or when they are to return. But with the fleet waiting in the lower bay, the interval can not be long. What we do, we must do quickly.”

“Aye,” said Champe; “and what will that be?”

I had been culling the plots out patiently ever since Castner’s announcement of the delay had set them weaving, and now there was but one that offered any promise of success--and that a desperate one. With the uncertain time-factor we had to count on, it was useless to think of trying to get word to Major Lee in the camp at Tappan. What we did must be done without help from the outside; and upon this hard-and-fast pivot the temerarious enterprise must be made to turn.

“What we thought we might accomplish with a corporal’s guard of Major Lee’s men to help us, we must still do, and do it with our hands, John Champe,” I said.

“Take him forcibly in his house, you mean?”

I nodded.

“I’m with you, Captain Dick,” was the stout sergeant’s rejoinder. “But afterward?”

“That is what it may take us all the time we have, and maybe more, to provide for. The river is our only way out, and we must have a boat, the lightest and swiftest we can find. Do you pull an oar, Sergeant?”

“No so comfortably as I do a bridle rein. But I shall make out when it comes to that. What is your plan?--or have you drawn any picture of it in your mind?”

“It is as simple as knocking a beef yearling in the head with a stone,” I admitted, nettled that I could contrive nothing subtler. “We find our boat, beg, buy or steal it, and place it as near at hand as may be convenient. That done, we lay hands on Sir Judas, sleeping or waking, and then for the river and a long pull with the tide or against it, as fortune chances to smile or frown upon us in fixing the hour.”

“Aye,” said Champe, quite without enthusiasm, “it’s surely simple enough, Captain Dick.”

“Think of a better, then,” I snapped curtly.

The sergeant let me have another sight of his ferocious grin.

“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?”