by Anthology
“He stole from the gaming boards, he did!”
The huge roar of rage coming from every voice in the room shook the very walls of the place. And in that horrible moment while Time seemed to hang breathlessly suspended Reggie felt—beneath the murderous stares of all in the room—very much like a man hurled from the naked comfort of his bathtub out into the whirling traffic of 42nd and Broadway.
Time stopped hanging breathlessly and exploded into an enraged ball, as every last soldier in the room poured in on Reggie. It was with the instincts of the frightened fox that Reggie suddenly bolted toward the door by which he’d entered. Everywhere around him was clamoring confusion. Hands reaching out for him made Reggie glad that he’d played on the scrub team at college. A little snake-hipping threw most of them off. His clothing was torn and ragged by the time he reached the door, and he was certain that the hot breaths of his pursuers were literally scorching the hair from the nape of his neck.
A neatly applied stiff arm dispatched a burly soldier who had just entered the room and tried to stop him at the doorway. Then, with boots clattering furiously in back of him, Reggie was flying down the hallway.
There was a twisting turn at the end of the hall leading off to three separate passages. Reggie hurled himself down the third of these—a darkened hallway that smelled of musty grain bins—and was relieved to hear the footsteps of his pursuers pounding onward through another passageway.
He was breathing heavily, gaspingly, as he leaned against the wall in the darkened passage and began to strap the time machine to his wrist. Then at last it was on, and Reggie peered down at the dial, recalling Lowndes’ instructions concerning the gadget, in order to decide where it should be set.
Visibility was bad. There was a chink on the other side of the passage from which Reggie detected the faintest pinpoint of light emerging. Reggie moved around in a position that would enable him to fix the dial by the light coming from the chink.
Off in the distance, Reggie could still hear the occasional clatter of footsteps as his pursuers continued their search for him. Squinting, he peered again at the dial on his time machine.
And then Reggie heard a voice. It came from behind the chinked partition through which the light was pouring. It was the solemn, grave, ponderous dignity of the voice that made Reggie pause, turn, and put his eye to the chink.
He looked into a comfortable room. A room in which an English colonel sat behind a desk facing a uniformed gentleman whom Reggie judged to be a general. The general was pacing back and forth before the desk, smoking a long pipe.
Reggie suddenly gasped. He recognized the general from pictures he had seen in history books—Wellington. And then, his heart almost stopped beating as the colonel at the desk turned so that his face was visible for the first time. It was the face of a Vanderveer, the same damned face that hung in a gold frame above the ornate desk in the library at the Vanderveer manor!
Wellington spoke.
“It is all right, Jacques. There will be no trouble. You will not have to return to France.”
Reggie frowned. “Jacques?” He didn’t get it. The Vanderveer’s name should be Horatio. And France—what would a Vanderveer want to return to France for?
“You will be known henceforth as Colonel Horatio Vanderveer,” Wellington said. “England will decorate you for your service to her. There will never be any reference, or any indication, hereafter, that you were once a Frenchman. It is well that you studied in our schools, you speak as we do.” And then Colonel Vanderveer rose, smiling.
“It is good. If it were ever suspected that less than a year ago I was a soldier of France, my reputation might be somewhat tarnished. People have a nasty way of treating those they consider traitorous.”
“Perhaps you were a traitor to your own France,” Wellington admitted. “But you now have a new country to claim you. And you have done that country a noble service in betraying your former comrades-in-arms. War is a strange game, Colonel.”
Reggie Vliet gasped, gulped, gasped, and fought a fainting spasm. Here, through sheer chance, was a Vanderveer exposed before his very eyes. Here was information that was a hundred million times more precious than what Reggie had originally sought.
It was crystal clear to Reggie now. Horatio Vanderveer was not really a brilliant English hero; rather he was a traitorous Frenchman who had betrayed his own country by going over to the enemy. Then, since he was unwanted by the country he’d betrayed, his name had been anglicized from Jacques to Horatio, his identity given a phony aroma of honor by some decorations from the king!
This, then, was the first of the two staunch pillars of aristocracy claimed by the family Vanderveer. A fake, a fraud! Reggie felt like shouting for joy, dancing wildly up and down. He had this Vanderveer right where he wanted him. Why, when he got back to old 1941 Colonel Vanderveer, all he’d have to do would be to get a few French history books, and connect the traitor Jacques Vanderveer with the English hero Horatio Vanderveer.
But now Reggie was jubilant. There was still more to do. He felt much like a great general who, after conquering one country, immediately becomes dissatisfied and looks for more territory. Reggie could no more rest on his laurels now than he could fly.
“On to the next Vanderveer,” Reggie muttered eagerly. “I’ll eat ’em alive.” Then, carefully, he remembered Lowndes’ instructions as to the time machine and fixing it for departure from one era to another. He set the mechanism at precisely the same places Lowndes’ had told him to, and then, before pressing the button, triumphantly squirmed out of his oversized English uniform.
“Won’t need that,” he observed. He was still left in his French general’s tunic, but about this fact he was cheerfully unconcerned.
“Civil War,” Reggie murmured happily, “Make way for the Conquering Vliet! I’m coming a-running.”
Triumphantly, Reggie pressed the button.
CHAPTER IV
To Ride with Sheridan
Reggie Vliet struggled out of the torrent of blackness that had swept him upward and onward through time. Thunder rang in his aching head and his first horrified thought was that he had gone blind. He scrambled dizzily to his feet and it was with hysterical relief that he realized that it was merely night time.
He was standing on the edge of a brook, he knew, for he could hear its burbling rippling and he could see a faint glimmer of the moon reflected from its surface. As he gradually began to find his mental bearings again, he was conscious of a vast feeling of satisfaction that was as exhilarating as strong wine. For he realized that he’d knocked one of the strongest legs from beneath old Colonel Vanderveer’s claims to ancestral glory. He, Reggie Vliet, knew the full and complete story of the perfidy of one of the hallowed Vanderveer clan. He almost chuckled thinking about it. The great and almighty Vanderveer Hero actually a traitor to the cause! Wait until Vanderveer heard that. He’d have little to say after that about the lack of background in the Vliet menagerie.
These pleasant musings were dissolved by the muffled roar of cannon and the sharp biting crackle of musketry off to his right. Reggie dropped to the ground and listened breathlessly. The sounds subsided after a few minutes and a thick silence settled again on the floor of the forest.
Reggie listened awhile to his thumping heart and then he crawled cautiously to his feet. A glance at his time machine told him that he was smack-dab in the middle of the United States Civil War, and the same time he realized that the battle noises he had just heard were undoubtedly the results of a North-South encounter.
Reggie felt an almost uncontrollable exultation as he realized that he was within inches, so to speak, of his goal. For it was during this era that the illustrious Major Vanderveer had flourished and made ancestral hay for the Vanderveers who followed him. Reggie’s jaw tightened grimly. He had already shown up one traitorous Vanderveer, who had been venerated through the ages as a glorious hero, and he felt just like tackling another. If Major Vanderveer, attached to Sheridan’s command
wasn’t a phony, he’d darn soon make one out of him.
With these optimistic hopes Reggie’s brain slipped into high gear. First he would have to contact Sheridan and through him, Major Vanderveer. After he had done that he would figure out something to make a joke or a spectacle out of the pride and joy of the Vanderveer clan. Reggie allowed himself one more fleeting gloat as he thought of the old Colonel Vanderveer’s chagrin and consternation at the exposure of his ancestors, and then he banished the thoughts from his mind. Business first—then pleasure . . .
“Major Vanderveer,” he said aloud to empty silent woods, “If you haven’t got feet of clay you soon will have.”
Then, like a thin and frayed ghost, Reggie set out through the black forest. He realized as he trudged along that he was getting hungrier by the minute for it had been, he figured roughly, two hundred years since he’d had a bite. Suddenly his nose twitched. For borne on the cool fresh air was the unmistakable odor of frying bacon!
Wars are not won on empty stomachs so Reggie followed his nose moving along the creek-side in the direction of the tantalizing odors.
He had gone a hundred yards when a sentry suddenly stepped from behind a tree and prodded him sharply in the belly with a bayonet.
“Halt!”
Reggie shot both hands into the air, without argument.
“Who goes theah?” The sentry was little, heavily bearded, with tired red-rimmed eyes. His voice was an unmistakable southern drawl but there was the rasp of steel beneath his soft tones.
“A-a friend,” Reggie said diplomatically. “I’d be awfully obliged if you’d take me to your commander.”
“We hain’t any commander,” the sentry said dubiously, “not near heah we hain’t. This heah is an outpost picket camp. Come along and a’ll take you to our sergeant.”
Reggie nodded appreciatively and moved along in front of the sentry. Now to the odor of frying bacon was added the delightful fragrance of boiling coffee. Then he saw a camp fire through the trees and a few minutes later he was standing in the center of a Confederate picket camp. The men looked curiously at his dusty, frayed French uniform, and then turned non-committally back to their pans of bacon and coarse bread.
The sergeant to whom Reggie explained fast and furiously a few minutes later looked like a dime store edition of General Lee. Big and bearded, but seedy as hell.
“So you see, suh,” Reggie concluded breathlessly, “Ah’m really a Confederation boy. Howevah, suh, if you don’t believe me, if y’all think ah’m on the damn Yankee side of the fence, take me to your commander.” Reggie was counting on what the sentry had said about there being no commissioned officers nearby.
The sergeant was still dubious. Reggie could see that. But the sergeant was also quite tired, and a little bit don’t-give-a-damnish.
“Well,” he drawled, scratching his flea-infested beard, “well, suh, ah’ll just have to take your word. Sit down with us, suh, and dig in.”
Hurling himself ravenously into the bacon and coffee, Reggie thanked history for its famous southern tradition of hospitality. When he had made sufficient pig of himself, he wiped the bacon grease from his chin and got down to the matter on hand.
“What damn Yankee troops are on the other side of this creek?” he asked the sergeant.
“Sheridan’s,” the dime store Lee replied. “Damn Yankees!”
Reggie felt a swift surge of excitement. “Then this is Ceder, I mean, Cedah Creek we’re encamped beside?”
The sergeant nodded.
Reggie was now violently excited.
“Take me to your commander, and quick!” he demanded. He was remembering that here, at Cedar Creek, the Confederate general, Early, had staged a to-the-death battle with Sheridan’s men. He was remembering, too, that Early’s forces had been defeated, and that this battle marked probably the strongest turning point in the Civil War.
These things flashed through Reggie’s brain like nimble rabbits chasing each other. If—if he could arrange things so that Sheridan would lose this all-important battle, that would mean that Major Vanderveer, attached to Sheridan’s command, would be defeated too, and it would ultimately mean that his triumphant position in history would be greatly altered. For losing generals, no matter how gallant, are rarely remembered.
Reggie was trembling with excitement. Here was his chance, his beautiful one-in-a-million chance to blot the fair Vanderveer escutcheon for all time. All he had to do was to, somehow, precipitate a Confederate victory. In the split-second that it took to realize this, Reggie’s plan of action was already shaping in his mind.
He would see to it that Sheridan’s men were defeated—or bust!
“Sergeant,” he cried, “I’ve got to see your commander. The fate of the Confederacy, of Jeff Davis, of,” and here he removed his hat, “General Lee, and the glorious General Early, depends on it.”
It was the mention of General Lee that brought a tear to the rheumy eye of the sergeant. He rose to his feet, scratching the last flea from his beard.
“Come along with me, suh,” he said huskily.
Reggie rose eagerly and strode after the sergeant. His plan was taking shape . . .
General Early was dressed in dusty gray, and sitting in a mud-splashed tent with several of his staff officers when Reggie, led by the sergeant, was led up to him.
The sergeant saluted and Reggie performed a clumsy imitation.
Early looked quizzically at Reggie’s French uniform, but said nothing. The sergeant spoke first.
“This man, General, claims to have some information valuable to the Confederacy. I’ll leave you to decide that, suh!” The sergeant saluted, clicked his heels and was gone.
Reggie cleared his throat. Once he had sold window-cleaning fluid to housewives—when he was just out of Princeton—but he knew that this was going to be the biggest and toughest selling job in all his life.
General Early sat there looking at him, quite nonplussed. But Reggie cleared his throat and started in. Perhaps it was the intense earnestness of his expression, or perhaps it was the very astuteness of his plan; at any rate, General Early’s face began to register a genuine interest. Moments later Early was nodding with every third phrase Reggie poured forth. Then he pounded a large fist on the table before him.
“The plan is good,” Early admitted. “We’ve already mapped out an attack, so we can’t lose anything by this additional strategy. It all hinges, of course, on your ability to carry out your end of it.”
Reggie cleared his throat, threw back his shoulders.
“Just give me a Union uniform, fix up some phony credentials, and give me a horse. I’ll see to it that my end of the plan doesn’t misfire!”
Early nodded, then, and turned to issue orders to a member of his staff. And Reggie, heart thumping hard against his ribs, thought that for the first time he was nearing the realization of his task. When this was over, he could return to the Present, and Sandra—without the complications of family heritage—would be waiting for him.
Early looked up at Reggie as one of the underofficers returned.
“It’s all ready, suh. And good luck to you. Lee and the Confederacy will owe you an everlasting debt, suh, if you are successful.” Early held out his hand. Reggie gulped twice and forced a smile of confidence . . .
Reggie had forded Cedar Creek astride a great gray horse, and was now heading for the camp of the Union forces. He was wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the cavalry of the Grand Army of the Republic. In his saddle pouch, he carried several excellently forged papers.
A sentry picket of blue uniformed soldiers stopped him at a road several hundred yards from Cedar Creek.
Reggie forced a calmness he didn’t feel.
“Take me to General Sheridan,” he told the picket. “I have a dispatch from headquarters.” The Union soldiers looked doubtful, and Reggie had an unpleasant vision of himself dangling from a noose end, or standing before a firing squad. He produced his papers, and while they were inspecte
d, resisted a wild desire to gallop the hell away from there.
“Can’t leave our picket,” one of the boys in blue said at last, handing the papers back to Reggie. “But you’ll find Sheridan stopping over in Winchester, about thirty miles down the road. He’s jest come back from Washington. If you could wait at our general encampment about a mile from the road fork, he’d be a-coming in about ten hours.”
Reggie stuffed the papers carefully back into his saddle pouch. Then he dug his spurs into the flanks of his great gray mount, and the animal lurched into stride.
“Can’t wait,” Reggie shouted back over his shoulder. “This is urgent!” And then to himself, he added: “And how!”
Reggie bent low over the neck of his horse, letting the animal have its head. He was riding hell for leather—toward Winchester . . .
In something around three hours later, Reginald Randhope, clinging to the reins for dear life, galloped into Winchester. And in less than five minutes he had reined up in front of the encampment to which he had been directed. General Sheridan was there, mustached and dashing, the picture of devil-may-care gallantry. And he looked quizzically at Reggie as he stumbled up to him and saluted.
It took Reggie several seconds to get his breath. Then he said:
“I come from Headquarters, General. I’m to accompany you, according to orders, to the end of the town. You’re needed badly back at Washington, sir.”
Sheridan’s frown was dark, and he grabbed the papers from Reggie’s shaking hand. After scrutinizing them for several minutes, he turned to an aide standing behind him.
“There’s been a change of plan,” he snapped. “They want me back at Washington. Muster out the troops, have ’em ready in five minutes. We’re riding back.”
General Sheridan turned then and peered closely at Reggie. His eyes traveled in keen scrutiny over the French uniform that Reggie was wearing.
“Are you,” he asked, “by any chance a relation to our Major Vanderveer?” Reggie swallowed nervously. This was ticklish going, he thought.