He held up a slim hand warningly.
“Softly, Captain Page, softly: the commander-in-chief is not to be at all named in this. You will take your orders from me—if you take them from any one; though as to that, there will be no orders. And you have hit on the proper word when you call the venture ‘desperate.’”
“You are whetting my curiosity to a razor-edge,” I averred, laughing again. “By the time you reach the details I shall be ripe for anything.”
He sat staring at the blazing logs for a long minute before he began again; not hesitating, as I made sure, but merely arranging the matter in orderly sequence in his mind.
“First, let me ask you this, Captain Page,” he began at the end of the forecasting minute. “You come of a long line of gentlemen, and no one knows better what is due to a keen sense of honor. How far would that sense of honor let you go on a road which would lead to Sir Henry Clinton’s discomfiture and possible overthrow?”
“There need be little question of honor involved in dealing with Sir Henry Clinton,” I replied promptly. “When he bought Benedict Arnold for a price, and sent his own adjutant-general into our lines as a spy, he set the pace for us. I’d keep faith with any honest enemy, to the last ditch, Colonel Hamilton; but on the other hand, I’d fight the devil with fire, most heartily, if need were, and take no hurt to my conscience.”
“Then I may go on and tell you where we stand. You know very well, Captain Page, the ill effects of Arnold’s treason and desertion; how the infection is spreading in the rank and file.”
I said that I did know.
“This infection is like the plague; it must be stamped out at any cost,” he declared, and the deep-welled eyes flashed angrily. “It is a double evil, sapping the honor of our army on the one hand, and bringing us into contempt with the enemy on the other. The remedy must be a sharp lesson, no less to Sir Henry Clinton than to the traitors. Do you see any way in which it can be administered, Captain Page?”
“If you could once lay hands on Benedict Arnold,” I suggested.