"Strictly entre nous, major—something damnably wrong. He was all mixed up on meeting you, we are told. He claimed to have known and been in correspondence with you, did he not?"
"Yes; he did. But—"
"That is only one of several trips he made. There are extraordinary rumors coming in about spies around Frederick, and there seems to be an organized gang. It is this very matter the general is overhauling now, and he gave orders that he should be uninterrupted until he had finished the correspondence. Will you wait?"
"Thank you, no. I believed it my duty to show him this despatch, but he knows as much as, or more than, I do. May I ask if you have any inkling of Hollins's whereabouts."
"Not even a suspicion. He simply dropped out of sight, and no man in the army appears to have set eyes on him since the night before Antietam. Colonel Putnam is investigating his accounts at Point of Hocks, and is most eager to get him."
Major Abbot turns away with a heavy weight at heart. All of a sudden there has burst upon him a complication of injustice and mystery, of annoyance and perplexity that is hard to bear. In some way he feels that the disappearance of the quartermaster is a connecting link in the chain of circumstance. He associates him, vaguely, with each and every one of the incidents which have puzzled him within the month past—with Rix, with Doctor Warren's coming, with that cold and bitter letter from Miss Winthrop, and finally with the shock and faintness that overcame this fair young girl at sight of him.
To his father he has shown Miss Winthrop's letter, and briefly sketched the visit of Doctor Warren, and the sudden meeting with his daughter the evening previous. Mr. Abbot is in a whirl of indignation over the letter, which he considers an insult, but is all aflame with curiosity about the doctor and the young lady. He has been preparing to return to Boston this very week, but is now determined to wait until he can see these mysterious people, who are so oddly mixed up in his son's affairs. It is with some difficulty that the major prevails upon him not to write to Miss Winthrop, and overwhelm her with reproaches. That letter must be answered only by the man to whom it was written, says Abbot, and it is evident that he does not mean to be precipitate. He has much to think of, and so drives back to Willard's and betakes himself to his room, where his father awaits him, and where they are speedily joined by an official of the secret service, who has a host of singular questions to ask about Hollins. Some of them have a tendency to make the young major wonder if he really has been the possessor of eyes and ears, or powers of discernment, during the past winter. Then come some inquiries about Rix. Abbot is forced to confess that he knows nothing of his antecedents, and that he was made quartermaster-sergeant at Hollins's request, at a time when nobody had a very adequate idea of what his duties might be.
"Who had charge of the distribution of the regimental mail all winter and spring?" asks the secret-service man, after looking over some memoranda.
"The quartermaster, ordinarily. The mail-bag was carried to and from the railway about thrice a week, while we were at Edward's Ferry in the fall. Rix looked after it then, and when we came down in front of Washington the matter still remained in his hands. There was never any complaint, that I can remember."
"Did any of your officers besides Mr. Hollins have civilian dress or disguise of any kind?"