“No. The sergeant and I put to sea the moment we could find a boat and launch it—which seemed to be before the mob in the house had discovered the escape. But when we manned the oars and began to look about us, ours was the only boat in sight. We pulled down the shore, keeping the sharpest lookout, but we saw nothing save the fog, which presently made us lose ourselves, and a guard schooner whose commanding ensign wished to arrest and detain us—chiefly, as I gathered, because we were wearing the uniforms of the Loyal Americans.”
For a long time Arnold walked back and forth in deepest meditation, and I feared he was not going to give me the chance to put the capstone on my carefully built pyramid of dissimulation. But he did.
“And after your encounter with the young cub who did not like your uniforms, Captain Page—what then?”
“We could do nothing in the fog, and we landed, a little way from the fort, and came here to mount guard. Now for the confirmation of all this fairy tale, General: the groggery-keeper can testify to the boat-seeker’s disguise; the smugglers, or their ally, the boat-builder, can be interrogated; and doubtless the discontented navy ensign will remember our visit, our explanations, and our request for the loan of a compass—which he most churlishly refused.”
He sat down at his writing-table and put his head in his hands. After another interval of silence, he looked up to say: “You have sufficiently accounted for yourself and Sergeant Champe, Captain; now I shall try to account for the two men who escaped in the stolen boat. Come with me.”
I followed to the other end of the long room, mystified in my turn. But my heart was pounding like a blacksmith’s hammer when he snatched the bed-curtains aside and pointed to the unmistakable mud stains on the coverlet—traces left by Champe: traces which, in the darkness, we had not seen, and which we could not have removed if we had seen.
“Those men whom you found and lost, Captain Page: they came here, either before or after you mounted guard in the street. Their purpose is plain. They entered the house through a window in the rear, leaving these mud stains all the way along. They came here to abduct me, sir, and but for the fortunate circumstance of my absence, they might have succeeded.”
My expression of horrified surprise did not need to be feigned.
“What a frightfully narrow escape!” I exclaimed, but I was thinking of ours rather than his.
“It was,” he said impressively. “But the plot was even subtler than you think. Have you guessed why its execution was delayed until last night? The time was chosen when the Loyal Americans—my own legion—was well out of the way; only two of my own men were known to be ashore, and these two—yourself and Sergeant Champe—were to be frightened by this carefully spread rumor and threat of arrest so that you would both run away, disappear, and so lend color to the later story that you two had surprised me in my bed and carried me off.”