“Nowhere,—at once,” I asserted, meaning to stay in the boat of truth as long as any two planks of it would hold together. “Your thought that you heard some one in the garden set me to thinking; so I hung off and on here before the house until I saw your lights go out.”
“You saw nothing?—heard nothing?”
“No. The town was as quiet as I dare say it used to be when the Mynheers snored their nights away in it.”
“And afterward?”
“Afterward I went to my quarters in the tavern where Lieutenant Castner took me,” I continued, making sure that his next question would knock my boat of truth into splinters, leaving me floundering in a sea of lies. And, truly, I did not feel equal to such a swimming match with him, now, with every drop of blood in me nudging its neighbor to keep awake.
“You found all quiet at the tavern?” he demanded, fixing me with his gaze as I have seen a cruel boy pin a fly to the wall.
“As quiet as a graveyard. The barman was only half awake, and the waking half of him went to sleep after he had mulled me a cup of wine.”
“Strange!” he said; and then he fell to walking the floor, and I had time to catch my breath and to get a fresh grip on myself before he began again.
“After your cup of wine, Captain Page? What happened then?”
“I went up-stairs to the room they had given me. But my sleep was bad.”