XIIHOW 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. “Ifthat 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 hadbeen 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. Twohours 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 himto 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 hopedwould 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 pullaround 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 onmy 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.