Who goes there?

by B. K. Benson

Let me look at the second. I am sure that I was a spy and that I was in McClellan's army. I am equally sure that the Doctor knew that I was a spy. He had even argued in favour of my work as a spy. How, then, could I deceive him? There is but one answer: he thought me a Union spy, and that I was to go into the Confederate lines to get information, when the opposite was true.

Now the first proposition seems clearly contradictory. The Doctor was not a Confederate, and I feel sure that he did not know that I was a Confederate spy. I give up the first proposition.

Since one of the two is true, and the first is not, then the second must be the truth. I must have played the spy so well that even Dr. Khayme had been deceived.

Yet I can remember no deceit in my mind. I was a spy, and my business was deceit; yet in regard to the Doctor I feel sure that I was open and frank. The second proposition, while possible, I reject, at least for a time.

Can I decide that neither of two opposite things can be true? How absurd! Yet I recall an utterance of the Doctor, "There is nothing false absolutely;" and I recall another, "To examine a question thoroughly, be not content with looking at two sides of it; look at three."

Let me try again, then, and see if by any possibility there be a third alternative. The first, namely, that the Doctor is a Confederate, is untrue; the second, namely, that I deceived him, is untrue: what is a possible third?

I fail to see what else is possible ... wait ... let me put myself in the Doctor's place. Let me consider his antislavery notions and his invulnerability to deceit. He sends me, as he thinks, into the Confederate lines as a Union spy. Why?

Because he believes I am a Union spy. Well, what does that show but that he is deceived? The reasoning turns on itself. It will not do. Where is the trouble? There is a way out, if I could but find it.

What is that third alternative? Can it be that the Doctor knew I was a Confederate and wished to help me return to my people? He was opposed to war, and would take no part in it; was he indifferent in regard to the success of the Federals? No; he wished for the extinction of slavery. Yet Captain Haskell was a Confederate, but he argued for a modification of slavery, and for gradual emancipation.

Could Dr. Khayme have had such, affection for me that he would do violence to his own sentiments for my sake? Was he willing for me to go back to the Confederate army? Perhaps one man more or fewer does not count. Possibly he helped me for the purpose of doing me good, knowing that he was doing the Union cause no harm.