“By all the blind pipers that ever twiddled a horn-pipe—I don’t believe you looked at him at all!” I broke out, annoyed beyond measure at this unexpected development of the sergeant’s weak point. “Is it any use to ask you how he was dressed?”
Champe’s face lightened now, and the frown of perplexity smoothed itself out.
“Surely; I can tell you that to the dotting of an ‘i.’ I remember noticing particularly that he was dressed quite like other folk—buckle-shoes, breeches, waistcoat, coat and hat. There you have him from head to foot.”
“Heavens and earth, man!” I exclaimed. “How in the devil’s name am I to help in this if you can’t give me the first living idea of the fellow I’m to look for? Think, Sergeant—think hard. Surely there must have been some noticeable thing about him that would serve to place him for me.”
Champe put his head in his hands and appeared to be making the mental effort of a lifetime. After a long minute he looked up to say: “I’ve got it, Captain Dick, I’ve got it. Come to think of it, I’m almost sure he wore a scratch-wig like a farmer’s.”
I shook my head in despair. Half the men in America wore scratch-wigs. Yet the edge of the necessity was in no wise dulled by Champe’s inability to visualize the spy for me.
“Try it again, Sergeant,” I entreated; and now he got up and began to walk the floor, cracking the joints of his big fingers and scowling ferociously in the throes of recollection. I venture to say he walked a full quarter-mile up and down the long room before he stopped to make his final dash at the impregnable barrier.
“I have it now,” he said, pleased as a child over the finding of a long-sought-for plaything. “His waistcoat was gray, Captain Dick; and he wore a black stock—aye, it was black, sure enough. But”—smiting fist into palm with a mighty thwack to make the climax—“the thing I noticed hardest was his watch-fob; a bunch of seals hanging at the end of a leather thong, and he twiddles them, so”—suiting the action to the word—“all the time as he talks or walks. Never tell me, Captain, that I haven’t got him down to the very parting of the hair for you.”
“Oh, you have,” I said ironically; “indeed you have. I could doubtless recognize Mr. James Askew in the dark, and with my eyes shut; or that way as well as any other. But the twiddling of the watch-fob seals may do. Now to the work. When you’ve succeeded—or failed—come back here and put a corner of your neckerchief in the window for a signal; right-hand if you’ve hit the mark, left-hand if you’ve missed.”
“You’ll be within call?” he asked, as I was unbarring the door.