TWELVE
The sun had set, but there was still a bit of light in the western sky. Enough to see by, at least, and to identify the building into which Thomas’s informants suggested Patton had been taken.
Stewart looked carefully at Cleburne. The man had insisted on coming with him—“to see this through” was how he’d put it—but Stewart wasn’t entirely sure he was comfortable with that. Cleburne had been a great help thus far, true. But he was still Irish. Would Cleburne’s loyalties, when the push came, be to a man he’d known for just a few days? Or would they be to blood and home?
“All’s clear,” Cleburne said, turning to face Stewart. “If we’re going in, now’s the time. Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He wasn’t, not really. But he had no choice. It wasn’t as if you could just walk up to this Macartey fellow and ask for permission to search his warehouse on the off-chance that one of your friends was being held prisoner there by Federal spies. Stewart just hoped that the precautions he’d taken were going to be sufficient. “Let’s go.”
It was his idea, so Stewart took upon himself the task of breaking the lock on the front door. This proved to be easy; perhaps cotton was just too difficult to steal to make solid locks a priority for a cotton warehouse.
Once inside, he and Cleburne paused a few moments to let their eyes adjust to the gloom. They’d brought a storm-lantern, but Stewart was reluctant to use it until he could be sure the light wouldn’t give him away. In the dusty, close silence of the entry hall Stewart found his breathing quieting and slowing. Soon, he could hear a soft buzz that, after a while, resolved into the muffled sound of voices. Someone here was talking to someone else.
The voices were coming from upstairs. Stewart found the staircase and gestured to Cleburne to follow him. Walking slowly and carefully, he advanced on the stairs.
On the second-floor landing they stopped.
“Do you think he overheard us?” The voice—one of those horribly flat Midwestern things—sounded unnaturally loud. So much so, in fact, that Stewart was reminded of the projection performed by the actors in Pauline’s play at the Varieties.
“Hope not,” a second voice said, equally affected. “He mustn’t learn about our plans for Kentucky, or we’ll have to kill him.”
One of those men is Brown, Stewart realized. They’re talking about Patton. He glanced at Cleburne, then gestured at the broad, roughly finished door on the right side of the landing. Cleburne acknowledged the gesture; then Stewart drew his Colt and Cleburne the pepperbox he’d taken from O’Driscoll this morning. Stewart rested his right thumb on the revolver’s hammer, then lifted the latch on the door.
The room was huge, much bigger than Stewart would have guessed by the look of the building from the outside. There wasn’t much cotton in here now, just a few bales, a lot of loose lint and other detritus.
A couple of lanterns at the far end gave a bit of light and cast bizarre shadows; in the brightest circle of light were two men, neither of them especially imposing and neither in uniform. They were looking down, and Stewart guessed that Patton lay somewhere beyond them, perhaps too hurt to stand. “Damn it,” one of the men whispered to the other. “I can’t tell. Do you think he’s awake?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. We’re pretty much done with him, I guess.”
“Not until you’re sure he’s heard us,” the first man said. “That’s what you told me before, sir.”
The “sir” was enough to convince Stewart. He and Cleburne were still a good thirty feet away from the two men, but he doubted he could get much closer undiscovered. Raising his Colt, he said, “Hands up, gentlemen. You are my prisoners.”
The reaction wasn’t quite what he’d expected.
Both men cursed, but while one threw himself to the ground the other pulled something from the front waist-band of his trousers. Seeing the glint of reflected lamplight from the object, Stewart thumbed back the Colt’s hammer, then fired.
The sound assaulted his ears, a ringing hammer-blow that continued forever, echoing madly around the walls of the near-empty room. Stewart felt himself flinch, but only a little. He was getting used to the sound of a gun fired indoors.
His target was down, screaming the most filthy obscenities in a voice that sounded beyond hysterical. “Hands up!” he shouted. “I won’t say it again!” After a moment, the second man stood, hands above his head. Stewart advanced toward him; Cleburne moved to the wounded man.
Where have I seen you before? Stewart wondered, getting a good look at the man’s face. It had to have been recently; he’d met too many people since arriving in New Orleans. Coming so soon after his maddening meeting with Captain Grant—another face that was familiar for no reason—Stewart wondered if his mind might be failing him. What had Cleburne said about laudanum?
“Patton!” he called. “Are you all right?” Patton made no answer, and Stewart looked past his prisoner, down to the huddled form curled up on a bed of rough cloth. His jacket was so begrimed you could no longer tell that it had once been white, and the back of that jacket showed a rust-colored streak down the middle that had to be blood from a head wound. “What’s wrong with him?” Stewart asked.
“Guess maybe we gave him too much chloroform,” the Federal spy said.
“Chloroform? You bastards drugged him?” Stewart turned on the man. “Is this any way to treat a fellow-soldier?”
“Go to hell,” he said. “We aren’t the ones arming guerrillas.”
“What?” Before Stewart could get more from the man, though, Cleburne interrupted him.
“This fellow’s hurt pretty badly, Stewart,” he said from behind some boxes where the wounded man had fallen. “I think we should probably get a doctor for him. Or call the watch.”
“Let’s call the watch,” Stewart said, walking to the door. “I’d love to see these Yankees try to explain themselves to the Canadians.” Grinning, he pulled open the door.
And found himself staring at Captain Grant.
* * * *
“I think I’d better take that, Captain,” Grant said to Stewart, holding out his left hand for the Confederate’s pistol. “You’ve already hurt one person tonight. We don’t want things to get any worse.”
For a moment the young man just stood there, goggling. Then he looked down and seemed for the first time to become aware of the pistol in Grant’s hand. “Did you follow us here?” he asked, passing his pistol to Grant.
“No, though I’ve got good enough at it lately that I’ll bet I could have.” Grant advanced, forcing the Confederate back into the storage room. “Sherman,” he said, “going to need your help. Get that fellow’s pistol, will you?” He pointed to the far end of the room, where a tall, black-haired man—the Irishman who’d been with Stewart at the legation this afternoon—stood with hands loose at his sides. Sherman advanced into the room, moving quickly and making his own revolver very apparent to the Irishman.
“Thank you, Captain Grant,” said Brown, stepping away from the tableau at the far end of the room. “Your arrival was sure timely.”
“No thanks to you,” Grant said. “Stay where you are, Major Brown, until I give you leave to move.”
“What the hell? Grant, these secesh have just shot Captain Connell!”
“And we’ll get help for him as soon as possible,” Grant said. “But not before Captain Stewart here has taken Captain Patton and this other gentleman and left us.”
“What?” This came from both Brown and Stewart, and so close together that they likely couldn’t have rehearsed it any better. Grant felt himself smiling.
“You’ll be court-martialed for this, you drunken idiot,” Brown spat.
“Perhaps. But you would have got the Union into a lot more trouble if I’d left you alone. As you should be able to tell by now, Captain Stewart here has figured you out.” He turned to Stewart. “Though how you got here ahead of me I can’t guess. I’d have sworn you didn’t have a clue about where Patton was when you left me this afternoon.”
“My servant gained the relevant information,” Stewart said stiffly, “by speaking to some negro workmen near the legation.”
“Very good,” Grant said. Then he smiled at Stewart. “Don’t be so upset, Captain. You’ve done good work in coming this close. And I think that you’ll find the outcome of this incident fairly satisfactory.”
“Forgive me if I have trouble believing that you’re just going to let us walk out of here.”
“Well, there will be conditions,” Grant said. “There would have to be.”
“Stop this, Grant!” Brown shouted. “Let the man go, by all means. But not until I’ve finished interrogating him!”
“You’re finished,” Grant said. “Now.”
“What conditions?” Stewart asked.
“I don’t think you’ll find them too trying. All I want is your word—on your honor as a gentleman—that you won’t say anything to anyone about the U.S. legation’s role in all this. I assure you these men were acting without orders. I’ve been trying for several days to stop them. I only wish I’d tried a bit harder.”
“You don’t ask much,” Stewart said.
“Oh, and you’ll have to likewise give your word that you won’t say anything at all about this for at least twelve hours. I’ll need that much time to get these two out of the city and beyond the reach of the Canadian authorities.”
“You can’t be serious,” Stewart said. “You’re asking me to let these men go unpunished.”
“Oh, I think they’ll be punished well enough,” Grant said.
“This one may get his ultimate punishment pretty soon,” the Irishman said, gesturing down to where, presumably, Connell lay. “He’s been gut-shot.”
Damn, thought Grant. Belly wounds were nearly always fatal, and the dying was incredibly hard. This was not going to be easy to explain. As if responding to a cue, Connell wailed something incomprehensible. Grant flinched at the sound. It had been a long time since he’d heard something like that.
“If he’s been gut-shot,” said a familiar voice, “I suppose we can all wait for Captain Connell to die before we do anything else.”
What the hell is Macartey doing here? Grant thought. Then there was a flare of blinding white, and a brief moment of incredible pain.
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