fallen, the others had gone to the door to watch the Continentals carry off their prisoner. Jake was thus free to rile through the messengers possessions without being labeled a thief.
He was already working on the problem of reuniting the messenger with his bag and the bullet when he made an unfortunate discovery — there was nothing in the bag except tobacco.
After feeling through the brown leaves to make sure they did not somehow hide the bullet, Jake flung them into the fireplace, sending a thick, pungent perfume through the room. He searched the empty bag once more for good measure and secret pockets, then flung it, too, into the flames.
It wasn’t difficult to track the soldiers and their prisoner. They moved down the road guided by torches, and marched without particular haste. Jake’s progress was aided by the fact that van Clynne remained back in the inn, protesting that he had been injured greatly by both the fall and Jake’s boot. The Dutchman said he couldn’t possibly think of moving for at least an hour or two, during which time he would follow what surely would have been a physician’s best advice — drain several large helpings of ale, and receive comforting attention from sweet Jane.
The reader will be left to imagine that burgeoning love scene while the narrative turns to Jake’s pursuit of the British spy and his American captors. Neither the main road nor the side road where the soldiers turned was populated by more than a few squirrels and some sleeping rabbits, but there was a small schoolhouse located just before a bend in the road leading to a small bridge over the creek. A church had been across the street, but having been destroyed some years before by fire, its congregation had built a new structure in a more convenient location closer to town. The ruins provided a perfect cover for Jake to watch the soldiers as they locked Herstraw in the school and then posted guard — two men in the front, one in the rear. The remaining men, along with the major, proceeded on down the road, whether toward a camp or to look for more traitors, Jake could not tell.
Herstraw’s capture had been a remarkable piece of work, one that could only be ascribed to the workings of John Jay’s committee against conspiracies. Jake had heard that the committee had sources in every tavern and general store north of New York, but to apprehend the messenger mere minutes after he stopped at Prisco’s — surely the committee must employ the services of a soothsayer. Knowing to look for the identifier or token (obviously the coin) that would show the British that the messenger was authentic was also a clever piece of intelligence. Jake told himself he would have to congratulate Jay the next time he saw him.
Well, not exactly, since the arrest happened to be directly against American interests. And while Jake knew John Jay well enough, he was likely to have a problem convincing the local militia major to arrange a fake escape without some letter from him. He had only six days left of Schuyler’s deadline; it could take at least that long to find Jay, whose official duties took him all through the valley.
On the other hand, three men amounted to an almost pitiful small defense, and Jake decided it would be most expedient to proceed on his own. He soon found himself back at the tavern, asking Prisco where the old outhouse had been located.
“ The old outhouse?”
Some will jump to the wrong conclusions regarding Jake’s next actions, which involved his taking a shovel and a lantern to the site and mucking around in the dirt. But in actual fact, he was working on sound scientific principles. Jake was seeking saltpeter, a critical ingredient of the explosive powder he needed to turn disabling sleep powder into a proper slumber bomb.
The black gunpowder in his saddlebag already contained about seventy-five percent of the nitrate-rich ingredient; he needed a bit more to make sure the sleeping substance would disperse quickly and as evenly as possible. Ideally, Jake would have used a much finer exploding powder and constructed the bomb casing with a half shell of wood instead of newspaper, but one made do on the battlefield.
His laboratory was the inn’s kitchen, where the innkeeper, his wife, niece, and the two old gentlemen stood in the doorway, ready to run if something went wrong. Van Clynne, in his typically close-mouthed way, had informed them of the entire nature of the mission during Jake’s absence. He justified this leak on the grounds that the innkeeper’s wife was Dutch; their loyalties therefore were beyond question.
Considerably more reassuring was Prisco’s revelation that he served on the local committee of correspondence. HE presented some letters and a small wax seal as further evidence: Jake ignored the letters and nodded at the stamp, even though he had no idea what it might really signify. The fact that he was a justice of the peace meant that at least his neighbors trusted him, and Jake would have to do the same.
Do you recognize the soldiers?” Jake asked as he worked. “Are they from the garrison at White Plains?”
“ No sire, though I’d daresay there are so many troops coming and going from the towns around here that I wouldn’t know them all. They’re not the militia, I’ll tell you that.”
“ I could see from their uniforms. They’re brand new.” Jake turned the image of the man who hit him back through his mind’s eye. Not only was the material fresh, but his coat buttons were very fine and shiny; that was rare in patriot camps. Perhaps Washington had finally prevailed upon Congress to appropriate proper sums for the army’s support.
While the others took Jake’s warning about the volatility of his bombs ingredients to heart, van Clynne stood directly in front of him at the table. The fact that the Dutchman had no idea how the contraption worked did not keep him from offering advice.
“ I would put more gunpowder in.”
“ Why would you do that?”
“ For a bigger explosion.”
“ A bigger explosion would throw the ingredients all over the place,” said Jake, sorely tempted to toss a little of the sleeping dust in van Clynne’s direction to make sure it worked properly. “And it might cause more damage than I wish. The trick is to have them mix at the proper moment, but not completely scatter. Trust me, I’ve been making these things since I was ten.”
When finished, the bomb was about the size of a small fruit pie, with a crude fuse soaked with the potassium nitrate. It wasn’t particularly elegant, and was considerably more clumsy than the small exploding balls he’d used as a lad on his mother’s cat, but it would work well enough.
As long as they could find a convenient way to get in front of the guards. It was too awkward to throw from any distance.
“ Dress it up as an apple pie,” van Clynne suggested, “and present it to them on a silver platter.”
“ Actually, if we put it in a picnic basket and left it in front of them, it might work. But we’d need to divert their attention somehow.”
“ Simple,” said van Clynne, reaching to a side table where the innkeeper’s pitcher of beer was sitting, “all we need is a beautiful damsel to bring it to them.”
“ And where are we going to get one?”
“ Well, we have one readymade — Jane is not only beautiful, but brave and of fine Dutch stock, as I predicted.”
Jake’s breath caught in his chest.
The woman was no doubt most kind and sweet and generous. He would grant without argument that she had the courage of a dozen lions. Undoubtedly she had a full bushel of other fine assets. But Jake, not merely an expert on female beauty, but rather a liberal partaker of it, could find no way of conceding that she had even a shred of this quality, which was so critical to their plan.
How to say that, though? He was too much a gentleman to insult a lady. Certainly, there was no way to comment directly on her physical charms or lack thereof without directly violating the most sacred rules of conduct.
“ But…”
“ But what?” van Clynne inquired.
“ Well,” said Jake. “I’m not sure.”
“ True, in the dark, it will be difficult to appreciate the extent of her beauty,” allowed the Dutchman. “But what man would not go weak-kneed as soon as he saw her, even in the shadows? And that would give her the time to leave the basket and then run off, wouldn’t it?”
“ It will be very dark,” Jake conceded. HE glanced over in Jane’s direction, hoping to see that she had fainted with fright at the prospect.
“ If things are as you said, sire, I will gladly help. I would willingly risk my life for the sake of our country’s
