He looked up, and so far forgot his dignity as to make a wry face.
“I have had the pleasure—in deference to your relationship, Captain Page, I call it a pleasure—of meeting Mistress Pettus; also of taking at her hands the blame for your leaving of the other army. I should think you would be glad to have a fair duty excuse for omitting your leave-takings.”
“So I might, under other circumstances,” I began; “but—”
“But Mistress Pettus has a traveling companion, you would say. Strange that I should overlook, even for a fleeting moment, so charming a fact. Ah, Captain, I can guess very well what has made you such a willing letter carrier for me. I know of but one dear lady who is more beautiful than Mistress Beatrix Leigh—which you may take for high praise, since I have been permitted to see only the scornful curve of Mistress Leigh’s lips and an unfriendly light in her eyes.”
I can not tell how it ground me to have him talking thus of Beatrix, in the kindly familiarity of a friend—this man with whom, come what might, I meant to close in a death-grapple a few hours further on. It is said that all the world loves a lover, and surely this applies to that part of the world which is itself in the sweet toils. With all his hideous faults, Arnold was still the devoted husband-lover of Margaret Shippen; let him have the credit for that. And since he was—but I saw that I must get away speedily.
“I have your permission, then, General?” I asked; and he gave it in a courtly bow, and turned back to his writing.
I confess I had a most evil turn when the orderly on duty in the lower hall saluted and let me out into the open air. From force of habit—the habit of the hunted—I glanced up and down the street before venturing beyond the shelter of the doorway. It was well that I did, for just past the tavern, three men were coming on abreast, two of them plainly recognizable as Lieutenant Charles Castner and the spy, James Askew; and the third was strangely familiar in his gait and carriage, though for the down-drooped hat-brim I could not see his face.
My first impulse was to warn Champe; the next to stand still and see what form the catastrophe threatened to take. If the trio was coming on to Arnold’s door, I would step inside, call the sergeant to his duty, and we would die as soldiers should.
But this test of last-ditch courage was not made. At the door of the hostelry the three men turned in and disappeared, and a few minutes later, Castner came out alone and made straight for Sir Henry Clinton’s quarters. That was my cue, and going to the orderly-room, I roused Champe from his nap before the hearth.
“Castner is back,” I said hastily. “He came down the street just now with Askew and another man, left his companions at the tavern, and has gone alone to Sir Henry Clinton’s house.”