“No,” he objected; “it was nearer at hand. Make a circuit of that shrubbery, Captain Page, while I cover this side.” And I heard the click of a pistol-lock as he pulled the weapon from his pocket.
I ran around the larger clump of evergreens, sword in hand, and found nothing—the more readily since I was not expecting to find anything. When I came up with him again, he appeared to be satisfied, and we went on walking and talking as before, though now I observed that he kept his right hand in the pocket of the greatcoat, and I could feel rather than see that his eyes were roving watchfully from side to side as we paced up and down.
It must have been nearly midnight when the long forced march back and forth in the garden walk ended, and with its ending all hope of carrying off the traitor by main strength and awkwardness bade me farewell, for that night at least. I took it hard, not knowing if there would ever be another night more promising; and when Arnold had put me through the house and out at the front door, telling me to go to my inn quarters and to be prepared for an early reveille, I hung about in the street and made friends with the sentry at Sir Henry Clinton’s door as if I were still on duty, killing time for another full hour until I saw the lights go out in the traitor’s upper room; all this on the barest chance that he might come down again and so re-open the book of fate.
When all was over I went to my tavern, railing at Sir Judas, at John Champe, and most of all at myself for the futile fizzling out of a thing that looked so simple on the face of it. Also, I had a hard word or two for Mr. Hamilton for waiting until the clock had fairly struck before he turned the failing failure over to me.
This is how it looked to me, sober and chilled. But after I had got warm before the blazing fire of logs in the tavern bar, and was the better for a hearty swig of fresh-mulled wine, things took on a cheerfuller hue; and when I lighted my tallow dip and went above-stairs to the great barn-like room which had been assigned me, I was turning over in my mind a wild plan of how I might smuggle in a dozen of my fellows from Baylor’s Horse, snatch the traitor out of his bed, and mount and ride and cut the way out to freedom. By which it would appear that the hot wine, poured into an empty stomach, had straightway climbed to the upper story—a thing quite possible, even when one is twenty-two past, a Virginian, and a well-seasoned soldier, to boot.
I had no more than struggled out of my watchcoat, and was making ready to tumble into bed, when there came a trampling of heavy feet up the stair and along the corridor. Somewhere about opposite my door the footsteps paused, and I paused, too, with my waistcoat half off and the wine fumes clearing from my brain as swiftly as if a cold north wind were blowing them aside.
And, in good truth, I needed to be sobered suddenly, for the next instant the door sprang open as from a lusty kick, and Sergeant-Major John Champe, his saturnine face a devil-mask of furious and frenzied rage, charged in upon me.
VII
AND AN UNBLEST DAWN
THERE was murder in Champe’s bloodshot eyes, and for the moment I was helpless, having the waistcoat bridged across my arms like a hangman’s shackles. Luckily for me, he had no weapon, else it is to be feared I should have quit this troubled scene there and then.
As it was, he flung himself upon me like a wild beast, all claws to grip and teeth to tear, and I went down as if I had been a ten-pin, and he a bowl twirled by the hand of the Giant Grim. Also his clutching fingers were at my throat before I could rip and rend that cursed manacling waistcoat into rags; so, by the time my arms were free, the cold dead air of the big room was no longer mine to breathe, and this fickle world, or what little I could see of it, was turning red and green and black and back to red again before my eyes which seemed to be sticking out of my head on a pair of horns like a snail’s.