“What a pity you have lost your witness,” I remarked, indicating the dead spy.
“The less valuable of my witnesses,” he corrected curtly. “Unhappily for you, there is another and more credible one.”
This remark of his set me to wondering. Then I remembered the third man who had walked with Castner and the spy in the afternoon—the man whose face I could not see, but whose gait and figure had been singularly familiar. Was this the “more credible” witness? I should soon know.
We stayed no time at all in the tavern after the hand-tying. With a word to the inn people about the disposition of the body of James Askew, Castner disciplined his corporal’s guard and we took the open air for it, pointing not for Sir Henry Clinton’s house, as I supposed we should, but on past it toward Fort George.
Within the walls of the fort, we marched silently to the house of the commander, a long low structure of Dutch brick, facing the parade ground. Two rooms of it were well lighted, and when the door was opened and I was thrust in, I saw that the court-martial was sitting and waiting for me, and that I was confronting my judges.
XXI
THE DRUMHEAD COURT
SOME of the British officers gathered in the fort commandant’s room to hold the court-martial were known to me by name, but that which gave me the greatest shock was the sight of Major Simcoe, sitting stern and thoughtful behind the up-ended drum. For his presence argued the return of the Queen’s Rangers from their wild-goose chase up the Tarrytown road, and their return promised the collapse of my care-taking plot to insure the escape of Beatrix and my cousin on the Nancy Jane.
But they gave me little time for the anxious lover-thought, these stern gentlemen who were holding an inquest rather than a trial. With a haughty nod, to indicate my place in the prisoner’s dock, I suppose, General Phillips, who sat as judge-advocate, signed to Simcoe, and the major cleared his throat. I saw the burly Knyphausen tilting in his chair; the two Hessian captains sitting on either side of him; the commandant of the fort; a major; and a lieutenant-colonel of Sir Henry’s staff: saw, also, that neither Clinton nor Arnold was present. And then Major Simcoe began to recite the charges against me, Castner bending over to untie my hands as the reading went on.
It was evident, before the charges were half read, that I had been tried and condemned beforehand; that whatever I should say or do would in no wise modify the sentence which had already been determined on. That conviction broke the final thread of prudence in me; and when the major came to that part of his manuscript where it was set forth that I had entered the British lines as a spy and an emissary of General Washington’s, with the premeditated purpose of kidnapping General Benedict Arnold, I laughed hardily, and said I should like to be confronted with the proofs, if there were any.
“You shall be accommodated, Mr. Page,” returned Simcoe gravely. And then to Castner: “Bring in the man, James Askew, if you please, Lieutenant.”