temper rose in a mighty fit; van Clynne could hear the sound of crashing tables and glass as he turned the corner and began running with all his might.
Van Clynne arrived at the infirmary just as Alison was trying to persuade Culper that she could serve the Cause as one of his agents in town instead of 'visiting' a relative of his in Westchester, as he suggested. The girl had taken a flintlock pistol from the armory in the medicine closet. Seated at the large pine table that held the middle of the second floor wardroom, she was demonstrating her knowledge of its working parts by stripping it with the aid of a very large and pointed knife.
'Blindfold me, if you wish,' she told the spymaster, waving the knife as if it were a harmless twig. 'I will do it again. I can do it behind my back.'
'It's a very useful skill,' allowed the patriot leader. 'I'm sure we will find great use for it. But first, we will have to make some arrangements for you.'
'I don't want to be sent behind the lines.'
'Quickly, there is no time to waste,' blustered van Clynne, bursting up the unguarded stairwell so fast he nearly broke three spokes on the oaken baluster. 'Where is Jake?'
'He's gone to the engineer's office,' said Culper. 'What business is it of yours?'
'A great enemy of ours is loose in the city,' said van Clynne. 'Quickly, he must be warned.'
'Who is this enemy? What are you talking about?'
'Keen, Doctor Quack Keen, a man given to the most obnoxious poisons and a disgrace to his profession. He is heading for this Alain fellow, this engineering lordship. If Keen finds Jake there he will cover his body with leeches and set him on fire, and then prepare a proper torture.'
'Jake told my men Keen was dead.'
'Believe me, sir, he is very much alive. And I distinctly heard him mention Lord Alain.'
'I've already sent the last men I can spare on other jobs.'
'I'll go!' shouted Alison, starting for the stairs.
Culper grabbed her by the shoulder. 'You're not going anywhere.'
'You said I could serve the Cause. Here is my chance.'
'I intend on warning Jake myself,' said van Clynne. 'I will enter the house under other pretense and sneak into the office to warn him away. I require only swift transportation, and a map of the place, if possible.'
'There are two floors,' said Culper hastily, necessity forcing him to put aside his doubts about the Dutchman. 'Jake was to sneak upstairs into the offices while Alain was downstairs eating.'
'I will warn him.'
'How?' asked Alison. 'You won't be able to climb up the side of the building.'
'I will go in the front door, child, on some simple pretext,' said van Clynne. There were no hatchets handy, and so he had to settle for the pistol Alison had just assembled. 'There is no need for me to burglarize the place.'
'Then you need an assistant to sneak upstairs,' she said, volunteering. 'I can easily slip away on some pretext.'
The Dutchman threw her a doubtful look.
'Please,' she said, taking up his hand. 'Let me prove myself. I am very brave.'
'I cannot dawdle.'
'Let's go then,' she said, running to the door.
'I will find Daltoons and have him organize reinforcements,' said Culper, as van Clynne followed her down the stairs with a series of oaths.
'A girl and a Dutchman,' the spymaster added as they disappeared through the door. 'What will Washington send me next?'
Chapter Twenty-three
.
About roughly the same time that Claus van Clynne spied the crooked red bricks at the front of the tailor shop, a carpenter was walking in his oversized smock and apron down the city's east ward. He cut a tangled path toward the wharf used by the ferry from Brooklyn, smiling from beneath his broad-brimmed, if somewhat tattered, felt hat. Whistling a jaunty air — it might be 'British Grenadiers,' it might be 'Yankee Doodle' — he headed back up the hill and, just as supper hour approached, found a large, dilapidated former creamery and set up shop on its rear porch.
It might be said that his chisel was strong but his saw not half as sharp as typical of the breed, for though he worked steadily for half an hour, he made so little progress that many a journeyman would have hailed him as an accomplished master.
The significance of this porch for our story is that it lay directly behind the painted brick building used by the British engineers to house some of their more important drawings and least important staff. The carpenter, who soon gave up his work to slip a long narrow bar and a pistol beneath his smock and apron, was none other than the well-disguised hero of our tale, Jake Gibbs.
Besides the costume and hat, Jake had added a wide bandage to his chin, wrapping it once around the bottom quarter of his face to obscure the rounded, often smiling jaw that was among his best features. Rubbing it, he made his way up the alley, crouching behind a barrel as the lone guard assigned to watch the building made his founds in front.
A young maple tree, tall but too slender to provide more than token support, stood nearby. A window with a solid-looking brick ledge and frame would give Jake a good boost to the second story, where his metal shim ought to make short work of the hall opening.
The guard's pace wasn't exactly up to parade-field specifications. It was more a mopey snuffle, difficult to time exactly but ripe with the sort of lackadaisical effort that promised the alley would be unsupervised for long stretches. In addition, the guard had recently acquired a new set of boots, and so his approach was easy to avoid — the leather soles made a sharp sound as they scraped the pavement stones. As they became louder, Jake dropped to his knees and made sure his body was well behind the barrel.
Once the scrapes began heading in the other direction, Jake rose and peered in the window. As Culper's diagram had predicted, it looked in on the dining room. The table had been set, which meant that the secretary would soon be down for supper.
Jake was about midway up when the guard's soles began scraping again in his direction. He hurried upward, reaching the window that according to Culper opened into a small storage room.
Unfortunately, Culper's information was wrong. It opened into an upstairs hallway, in full view of the office where his lordship worked.
Or rather, the office where he was just now emerging.
Jake ducked away so quickly his grip loosened and his fingers slipped from the ledge. The distance to the ground was not enormous, but he still met the earth with a resounding smack, his legs groaning from the unexpected shock.
Jake groaned as well. He fell to his back, holding his breath as the scraping from the front of the house stopped, then resumed with much greater vigor.
The Segallas, cleaned and reloaded after the plunge in the river, was secreted at the top of his right sock. As he reached for it, the guard appeared over him and ordered him to stand upright.
'I am trying,' said Jake. 'But I have had a wicked bee sting here, and cannot even stand up.' He rolled over, scratching at his leg as if injured — and hoping for a chance to remove the pistol.
'Never mind that,' said the sentry. 'Explain who you are.'
'I am a poor carpenter,' said Jake. 'As you can see from my tools on the porch.'
