NINE
Stewart awoke to thumping. Pulling himself
out of bed, he wiped his eyes with one hand while wrestling aside the mosquito-net
with the other. Stop hammering, he
thought. I'm coming as fast as I can. He could have
said the words aloud, he realized, but that would require more energy than he
had just now.
Thomas was on the other side of the door, his
eyes wide. "There's trouble, Mr. Charles sir," he said. "Mr.
Patton's gone and no-one knows where. He didn't come home last night, and now
the general's yelling for you. He's going to be sending someone to fetch you; I
came to warn you as soon as I could."
"Wait a minute." This was too much,
too fast. "Did you say Patton's gone?"
"Didn't come back to the hotel last
night, sir. Some of the fellows, they heard that the captain was going
sporting, and they stayed awake hoping they'd hear something good from him
about it." Thomas shook his head. "Some niggers got nothing better to
with their time than to wallow. As if the Devil isn't going to be coming for
them soon enough."
Stewart tried to get his eyes to focus. He
and Patton had been run ragged yesterday, and after his brief investigation of
Mr. Barber and his interview with Judah Benjamin he had been so tired that it
was easy for him to decide that good politics would see him staying in last
night. He'd written a short note to Pauline apologizing for his absence,
explaining the problem she'd caused him—and telling her with what now seemed
embarrassing enthusiasm that he considered her worth it. The
Devil's coming, he thought. Was this a punishment for the pleasure
he'd enjoyed two nights ago? "I take it you weren't with the others in waiting
up, then?"
"Sir! Of course not, sir." Thomas's
outrage would have been comic had the circumstances not been so grim.
"I've got a wife, and children," the slave said, "and I live my
life like a good Christian. But they know that you're a friend of Mr. Patton's,
and when he hadn't come in by early-early, they woke me all upset. You and he
got into such a scrape the other day, sir, and everyone was worried for him. I
thought about coming to get you, but I didn't want to wake you, sir. So I kept
watch myself. When it went sun-up and no Mr. Patton, I figured I'd get here and
warn you before the general come for you again."
"Thomas, you did a good thing."
Stewart was wide awake now. "Help me get dressed. I think something very
bad has happened." Patton wouldn't have run off, that was for certain. Not
with Texas just days away, and still a chance—however faint—that they would be
going off with Walker. At least I'm pretty sure Patton would
never do something like that, he thought.
"You go back to your quarters and get
some sleep," he told Thomas when the slave had him dressed, belted and
sashed. "I may well need you later this morning, Thomas, and I'll want you
to be as alert as possible." Stewart was out of the room and striding
toward the stairs, and General Magruder's suite, before Thomas had had a chance
to stutter his thanks.
"Captain Stewart," the general's
orderly said when he saw Stewart. "We were about to send for you."
Stewart was pleased at the man's surprise.
"I suspect, then, that you know why I'm here.
Is the general dressed?" He made the statement as neutral as possible,
while still letting the orderly know how he felt about a general officer who
received his subordinates in a dressing-gown.
"You can go right in, Captain," the
man said—neatly skirting the question, Stewart noted.
General Magruder wasn't in uniform this
morning, either. Further, he looked as though he'd been up rather late, the
skin under his eyes dark and puffy. Stewart made a perfunctory salute.
"General, I beg leave to report that Captain Patton is missing. I believe
he may have been the victim of foul play."
That seemed to stop the general in his
tracks. Whatever Magruder had been going to say died on the edge of his lips,
emerging instead as a spluttered "What? What?"
"I don't believe that Captain Patton has
simply stayed out too late indulging himself, sir." There was always the
possibility that Patton had done just that, of course; he was just impulsive
enough to have been so stupid. Admitting that now wouldn't help either of them,
though. "We took your admonition of yesterday morning quite seriously,
sir. As Captains Menard, Nolan and Reynolds will confirm, we spent the entire
day"—learning a bit more than they intended, he
thought, a bit smugly—"in attendance on them. Captain Patton went out for
dinner last night after we'd been released from duty. He did not return."
Stewart paused, realizing with some chagrin that he hadn't advanced much
support for his theory.
The problem, he suddenly realized, was that
he and Patton had been leading a double life in New Orleans, and that fact
might have become obvious to a competent shadow. It could have made Patton an
attractive target—but Stewart certainly couldn't advance that argument to the
general without compromising the security of Walker's Texas expedition.
Perhaps he could skirt close enough to the
point to convince the general, though. "We've been followed from the
moment we arrived in New Orleans, sir," Stewart said. "I assumed at
the time that this was happening to everyone on the treaty commission or
working for it. I also assumed that it was Federal agents who were doing this.
Now I find myself wondering if that was in fact the case. Perhaps it was some
criminal element that was dogging us."
"I'm aware that United States agents have
been sniffing around us," Magruder said. "I can't imagine, though,
how they would think that they could do anything to damage the negotiations by
abducting the most junior member of this party. Criminals New Orleans has in
plenty—but again, I can't think of what would make Captain Patton so attractive
to them. He's not a wealthy young man, Captain."
"It does seem perplexing, I know." Especially,
Stewart thought, when you don't have all of the
relevant information. "But I'm convinced that Patton's in trouble.
I'd like your permission to look for him, sir, before we get the Canadians
involved in this."
"What?"
Stewart took a breath; obviously General
Magruder wasn't at his best in the morning. "I know Captain Patton better
than anyone else on the commission, sir. I've learned a bit about the city in
the short time that we've been here, and I have some contacts I can approach
for information. I just think that if we can find Captain Patton ourselves, we
can avoid an uncomfortable situation between ourselves and our hosts." He
turned his hands palm-up in appeal. "We ought to be able to look out for
our own, sir."
Magruder sat down. He closed his eyes;
Stewart imagined that the general would like nothing better than to go back to
bed and deal with the headache he had no doubt developed, and serve him right.
"I would prefer it if our hosts not know of this situation, Captain. I
will inform the relevant parties that you are performing a special assignment
for me today. Report to me at this time tomorrow on the results of your
investigation. You are dismissed."
Stewart saluted, more crisply this time.
"Thank you, sir," he said. To himself he asked, Where
the hell do I find Colonel Walker? Then he clenched his saluting
hand into a fist, as he realized where Patton had undoubtedly gone last night.
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