They handed him a sealed packet
of instructions from the Secretary of War. The deportation of Chauvenet
and Durand was to be effected at once under Claiborne's direction, and he
sent Oscar to the stables for the buckboard and sat down on the veranda
to discuss the trip to Baltimore with the two secret agents. They were to
gather up the personal effects of the conspirators at the tavern on the
drive to Lamar. The rooms occupied by Chauvenet at Washington had already
been ransacked and correspondence and memoranda of a startling character
seized. Chauvenet was known to be a professional blackmailer and plotter
of political mischief, and the embassy of Austria-Hungary had identified
Durand as an ex-convict who had only lately been implicated in the
launching of a dangerous issue of forged bonds in Paris. Claiborne had
been carefully coached by his father, and he answered the questions of
the officers readily:
"If these men give you any trouble, put them under arrest in the nearest
jail. We can bring them back here for attempted murder, if nothing worse;
and these mountain juries will see that they're put away for a long time.
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