There was no time to say a word to Beatrix, if I ever hoped to have time for any future word with her--time and the breath to say it with. The smallish man in gray, gazing in abstracted indecision at Sir Henry’s upper windows, was twiddling my life and Sergeant Champe’s at his fingers’ ends. Let him take but a single step within the door he was facing, and we two would be as water spilt on the ground, which can not be gathered up again. I scarcely know how I left her; how, for one brief instant, I made way deferentially for Arnold and his wife, and in the next had come within gripping distance of the man in Quaker gray. But the thing was done in some fashion, and after this frenzied taking of the first step, the next came easily. “Your name is Askew--James Askew?” I whispered in the spy’s ear; and if I had put the point of a knife between his ribs he could not have winced more palpably. “No, no, Lieutenant--er--Captain, I should say; you are quite mistaken, sir. Duvall is my name; Harrison Duvall, of--of Pennsylvania.” “One of your names, perhaps,” I qualified, smiling down on him meaningly, and now I noted the shifting ferrety eyes whose color Champe could not recall--the eyes, the black stock and the scratch-wig. “We need not quarrel over a little matter of names, Mr. Askew,” I went on rapidly. “Let it be sufficient that I know you and know your business here. You are in great danger--as great as, or greater than, that which you were confronting in Mr. Washington’s camp at Tappan no longer ago than yesterday morning.” If there had been any doubt as to the man’s double-dealing past, his carrying of water on both shoulders, his appearance now would have removed it. His colorless face became tallowy, and fine little beads of sweat were starting from his forehead. I followed up my advantage like a swordman who dares not give his antagonist time to gather and parry. “We know a thing or two about you here,” I continued, speaking softly and edging between him and the group of officers at Clinton’s door. “Sir Henry would be most happy to lay eyes on you--happier than you would be, a few hours later. I say your danger is greater here than it was at Tappan: our prisoners do not break jail so easily as Mr. Washington’s do.” His face was like parchment now, and he had to wet his lips before he could speak. “I--I can make my standing good with Sir Henry,” he faltered. “There was a mistake about that affair of Major André’s. It was not I who told Paulding and Williams where they were to lie in wait for the major--I did not!” Now I thought I had him! Paulding and Williams were two of the three men who had arrested Major André, and it was common talk in the patriot camps that some one had first told them where to look for André, though these two, as well as Isaac Van Wart, the third man, stoutly denied it.