Captain Macklin: His Memoirs Part 8

Heinze interposed himself quickly.

"Aiken brought him here!" he said. "I believe he's an agent of the Isthmian people, or," he urged, "why did he come here? He came to spy out your camp, General, and to report on our condition."

"A spy!" said Laguerre, raising his head and regarding me sharply.

"Yes," Heinze declared, with conviction. "A spy, General. A Government spy, and he has found out our hiding-place and counted our men."

Aiken turned on him with a snarl.

"Oh, you a.s.s!" he cried. "He came as a volunteer. He wanted to fight with you,--for the sacred cause of liberty!"

"Yes, he wanted to fight with us," shouted Heinze, indignantly. "As soon as he got into the camp, he wanted to fight with us."

Laguerre made an exclamation of impatience, and rose unsteadily from the gun-carriage.

"Silence!" he commanded. "I tell you I cannot listen to you now. I will give these men a hearing after roll-call. In the meantime if they are spies, they have seen too much. Place them under guard; and if they try to escape, shoot them."

I gave a short laugh and turned to Aiken.

"That's the first intelligent military order I've heard yet," I said.

Aiken scowled at me fearfully, and Reeder and Heinze gasped. General Laguerre had caught the words, and turned his eyes on me. Like the real princess who could feel the crumpled rose-leaf under a dozen mattresses, I can feel it in my bones when I am in the presence of a real soldier.

My spinal column stiffens, and my fingers twitch to be at my visor. In spite of their borrowed t.i.tles, I had smelt out the civilian in Reeder and had detected the non-commissioned man in Heinze, and just as surely I recognized the general officer in Laguerre.

So when he looked at me my heels clicked together, my arm bent to my hat and fell again to my trouser seam, and I stood at attention. It was as instinctive as though I were back at the Academy, and he had confronted me in the uniform and yellow sash of a major-general.

"And what do you know of military orders, sir," he demanded, in a low voice, "that you feel competent to pa.s.s upon mine?"

Still standing at attention, I said: "For the last three years I have been at West Point, sir, and have listened to nothing else."

"You have been at West Point?" he said, slowly, looking at me in surprise and with evident doubt. "When did you leave the Academy?"

"Two weeks ago," I answered. At this, he looked even more incredulous.

"How does it happen," he asked, "if you are preparing for the army at West Point, that you are now travelling in Honduras?"

"I was dismissed from the Academy two weeks ago," I answered. "This was the only place where there was any fighting, so I came here. I read that you had formed a Foreign Legion, and thought that maybe you would let me join it."

General Laguerre now stared at me in genuine amazement. In his interest in the supposed spy, he had forgotten the loss of his guns.

"You came from West Point," he repeated, incredulously, "all the way to Honduras--to join me!" He turned to the two officers. "Did he tell you this?" he demanded.

They answered, "No," promptly, and truthfully as well, for they had not given me time to tell them anything.

"Have you any credentials, pa.s.sports, or papers?" he said.

When he asked this I saw Reeder whisper eagerly to Heinze, and then walk away. He had gone to search my trunk for evidence that I was a spy, and had I suspected this I would have protested violently, but it did not occur to me then that he would do such a thing.

"I have only the pa.s.sport I got from the commandante at Porto Cortez," I said.

At the words Aiken gave a quick shake of the head, as a man does when he sees another move the wrong piece on the chess-board. But when I stared at him inquiringly his expression changed instantly to one of interrogation and complete unconcern.

"Ah!" exclaimed Heinze, triumphantly, "he has a permit from the Government."

"Let me see it," said the General.

I handed it to him, and he drew a camp-chair from the tent, and, seating himself, began to compare me with the pa.s.sport.

"In this," he said at last, "you state that you are a commercial traveller; that you are going to the capital on business, and that you are a friend of the Government."

I was going to tell him that until it had been handed me by Aiken, I had known nothing of the pa.s.sport, but I considered that in some way this might involve Aiken, and so I answered:

"It was necessary to tell them any story, sir, in order to get into the interior. I could not tell them that I was _not_ a friend of the Government, nor that I was trying to join you."

"Your stories are somewhat conflicting," said the General. "You are led to our hiding-place by a man who is himself under suspicion, and the only credentials you can show are from the enemy. Why should I believe you are what you say you are? Why should I believe you are not a spy?"

I could not submit to having my word doubted, so I bowed stiffly and did not speak.

"Answer me," the General commanded, "what proofs have I?"

"You have nothing but my word for it," I said.

General Laguerre seemed pleased with that, and I believe he was really interested in helping me to clear myself. But he had raised my temper by questioning my word.

"Surely you must have something to identify you," he urged.

"If I had I'd refuse to show it," I answered. "I told you why I came here. If you think I am a spy, you can go ahead and shoot me as a spy, and find out whether I told you the truth afterward."

The General smiled indulgently.

"There would be very little satisfaction in that for me, or for you," he said.

"I'm an officer and a gentleman," I protested, "and I have a right to be treated as one. If you serve every gentleman who volunteers to join you in the way I have been served, I'm not surprised that your force is composed of the sort you have around you."

The General raised his head and looked at me with such a savage expression that during the pause which ensued I was most uncomfortable.

"If your proofs you are an officer are no stronger than those you offer that you are a gentleman," he said, "perhaps you are wise not to show them. What right have you to claim you are an officer?"

His words cut and mortified me deeply, chiefly because I felt I deserved them.

"Every cadet ranks a non-commissioned man," I answered.

"But you are no longer a cadet," he replied. "You have been dismissed.

You told me so yourself. Were you dismissed honorably, or dishonorably?"

"Dishonorably," I answered. I saw that this was not the answer he had expected. He looked both mortified and puzzled, and glanced at Heinze and Aiken as though he wished that they were out of hearing.

"What was it for--what was the cause of your dismissal?" he asked. He now spoke in a much lower tone. "Of course, you need not tell me," he added.