Secret Service / Being the Happenings of a Night in Richmond in the Spring of 1865

by Cyrus Townsend Brady; William Gillette

What Edith Varney knew or suspected concerning him, he could not tell. That she knew something, that she suspected something, had been evident, but whatever her knowledge and suspicion, they were not sufficiently powerful or telling to prevent her from returning love for love, kiss for kiss. But did she love him in spite of her knowledge and suspicion? The problem was too great for his solution then.

These things passed through his mind as he stood there by the window, with his hand on his revolver, waiting. It was all he could do. Sometimes even to the most fiery and the most alert of soldiers comes the conviction that there is nothing to do but wait. And if he thinks of it, he will sympathise with the women who are left behind in times of war, who have little to do but wait.

The room had suddenly become his world, the walls his horizon, the ceiling his sky. At any exit he would find the way barred. Why had they left him in the room, free, armed, his revolver in his hand?

None but the bravest would have entered upon such a career as he had chosen. His nerves were like steel in the presence of danger. He had trembled before the woman in the garden a moment since; the stone walls of the house were no more rigidly composed than he in the drawing-room now. It came to him that there was nothing left but one great battle in that room unless they shot him from behind door or window or portière, giving him no chance. If they did confront him openly he would show them that if he had chosen the Secret Service and the life of a spy he could fight and die like a man and a soldier. He held some lives within the chamber of his revolver, and they should pay did they give him but a chance.

Indeed, they were already giving him a chance, he thought to himself as he waited and listened. He was utterly unable to divine why he was at liberty in the room, and why he was left alone, or what was toward.

In the very midst of these crowding and tumultuous thoughts which ran through his mind in far, far less time than it has taken to record them, he heard a noise at the window at the farther side of the room, as if some one fumbled at the catch. Instantly Thorne shrank back behind the portières of the window he was guarding, not completely concealing himself but sufficiently hid as to be unobserved except by careful scrutiny in the dim light. Once more he clutched the butt of his revolver swinging at his waist. He bent his body slightly, and even the thought of Edith Varney passed from his mind. He stood ready, powerful, concentrated, determined, confronting an almost certain enemy with the fierce heart and envenomed glance of the fighter at bay.

He had scarcely assumed this position when the window was opened, and a man was thrust violently through into the room. At the first glance, Thorne as yet unseen, recognised the newcomer as his elder brother, Henry Dumont. Unlike the two famous brothers of the parable, these two loved each other.

Thorne’s muscles relaxed, his hand still clutched the butt of his revolver, he was still alert, but here was not an enemy. He began at once to fathom something at least of the plan and the purpose of the people who had trapped him. In a flash he perceived that his enemies were not yet in possession of all the facts which would warrant them in laying hands upon him. He was suspected, but the final evidence upon which to turn suspicion into certainty was evidently lacking. He could feel, although he could not see them, that every door and window had eyes, solely for him, and that he was closely watched for some false move which would betray him. The plan for which he had ventured so much was still possible; he had not yet failed. His heart leaped in his breast. The clouds around his horizon lifted a little. There was yet a possibility that he could succeed, that he could carry out his part of the cunningly devised and desperate undertaking, the series of events of which this night and the telegraph office were to be the culmination.

A less cautious and a less resourceful man might have evinced some emotion, might have gone forward or spoken to the newcomer, would have at least done something to have attracted his attention, but save for that relaxation of the tension, which no one could by any possibility observe, Thorne stood motionless, silent, waiting; just as he might have stood and waited had he been what he seemed and had the newcomer been utterly unknown and indifferent to him.

His brother was dressed in the blue uniform of the United States; like the others it had seen good service, but as Thorne glanced from his own clothes to those of his brother, the blood came to his face, it was like seeing his own flag again. For a fleeting moment he wished that he had on his own rightful uniform himself and that he had never put it off for anything; but duty is not made up of wishes, gratified or ungratified, and the thought passed as he watched the other man.