"But where shall we stow it until we return to Greenwich?" he asked, in part to see whether the gunner would come out with something equally bizarre.
"Under your mattress, sir, of course."
So Hoare, the least bit disappointed at his aide's failure to weigh in with a further fancy, put it where he was told.
The next morning, the admiral heard Hoare's report impassively. As usual, his enormous form was so wreathed in tobacco smoke that he resembled a bull walrus on a foggy floe. The atmosphere was so thick that Hoare could barely restrain his coughs. The admiral did not trouble to do so. From time to time, the ferret Lestrade slid sinuously through the door, deposited a document, and waited for his master's instructions before winding away again. Since Portsmouth's criminal class knew Hoare himself as the Whispering Ferret, Hoare felt some kinship for the man, but little liking.
"So you have determined that Ambler is dead, eh?" Sir Hugh growled, and wheezed.
"My man Thoday did, sir," Hoare replied, and explained how.
"Never mind the details," the other said. "At the inquest- which, at the rate unexplained deaths are occurring in this city, will take place some time after 1815-the jury will bring in the usuaclass="underline" 'Murder, by person or persons unknown.' The man's gone, and that's all there is to it. There are dozens ready to replace him."
So much for the late Mr. Ambler, Hoare thought. He presented Mr. Goldthwait's opinion of Ambler's established habits, and remarked on the dead man's apparent prosperity.
"And Mr. Goldthwait, Hoare?" came Sir Hugh's rumble. "What did ye make of Mr. Goldthwait, once ye found him?"
Hoare's reply was ready. "He knows too much about me. If he knows so much about me… does it not follow that he knows as much about others, not necessarily to their good?"
"Of course, he does," Sir Hugh said. "It's his job, or part of it. If you suspect Goldthwait on that account, you may as well suspect me."
"About yourself, sir, for example?" Hoare ventured to add.
"Me life is an open book, sir," Sir Hugh replied, not rising to the bait. "But, being of no interest to any save myself and my family, it is a book generally closed to outsiders." Rebuffed, Hoare returned to his appraisal of John Goldthwait.
"He seems remarkably prosperous, too, sir. Has he independent means?"
"No. He does not. He comes of ordinary folk-his father was a farrier, as I recall, and he has never married. No, Hoare, his prosperity is of his own making. In fact, that, I confess, begins to render me anxious about him."
Sir Hugh knew when to pause for effect, and he used the pause to break the stem of his cheap clay churchwarden, toss it away, and fill its successor with coarse shag tobacco. Having lit it, he blew a thick blue puff into Hoare's face-not, it seemed to the victim, out of malice, but simply out of carelessness for his guest's comfort. Before continuing his discourse, he gave a loose, satisfied cough and spat copiously into a container on the floor at his side.
"I have good reason to believe, Hoare, that he gambles. Gambles with cards, playing with men of all classes, whether high or low. And is quite a consistent winner. Has been for some years. Took poor Fox, for example, for more pounds than any Whig cares to think about.
"Yet nary a whisper has come to my ears that he is a sharper or a flake. His opponents, even though they are generally losers, seldom accuse him of cheating, and those that have done so have never made their charges stick, or attempted to follow them up."
"Is Mr. Goldthwait wont, by any chance," Hoare whispered, "to respond in the usual way to accusations of… ungentlemanly behavior? I mean, sir, that he may be so formidable a man to meet on the field of honor that… even the bravest prefer not to meet him."
"Like yourself, Captain Hoare, eh?" Puff, puff. "No, sir. If that were the case, do you not think that the headstrong young bucks about town would be forever calling him out, not so much to prove the man a sharp as to prove their own panache before their friends, and their mirrors? I expect that you, sir, are not unfamiliar with that sort of thing."
Hoare nodded. Sir Hugh was in the right. Sober men chose to avoid open conflict with him; younger men, drunken ones, and fools not uncommonly sought either to issue a challenge or to provoke one. The pretext generally had to do with his name, but lately Hoare had learned to let stupid remarks of that kind slide off in ways that did not impugn either party's honor.
"There is more, sir," the admiral said. "I am a simple sailor and no man of accounts, more than is needed to have dealt well enough with navy recordkeeping when I commanded a ship of my own."
Hoare found it impossible to conceive of this man mountain pacing the weather side of his own quarterdeck, but indeed it must at one time have been so.
"But," the mountain continued, "I cannot believe that the prosperity which you so shrewdly noted derives wholly from cards. There must be another source, and I dread what it may be.
"Look at this," he said. "The coded text came to our pigeon loft several days ago, directed to Mr. Goldthwait. Somehow, thank God, one of the idiots in my service misdirected it; otherwise, it would not have reached my eyes, or now yours. Only now has one of those idiots managed to decipher it. No thanks to them, by the way, but to your own wizard. Or 'witch,' perhaps I should say-that remarkable Taylor woman in Royal Duke. For, as you know, it was she that broke the code."
Hoare took the paper that Sir Hugh placed on the desk within his reach.
"Acts: nine, one and two," he read, silently.
"You know the reference, I'm sure," Sir Hugh rumbled.
"I fear it escapes me, sir."
" 'And Saul,' " Sir Hugh recited, " 'yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.' "
"Thank you, sir." Hoare made his whisper sound as humble as he could.
"The cipher, and the content of the message it bears, have a most uncomfortable familiarity, don't ye think?" Sir Hugh asked.
"Indeed it does, sir," Hoare said. "It's an inflammatory text. It has much the same character as the messages Taylor unraveled from the documents of the late Captain Spurrier."
"Precisely so. And, as you will remember, too, the ultimate source of those messages to Spurrier has never been determined. There is, Captain Hoare, every reason to believe that it is French-or at least French-connected. One of Bonaparte's men, Hoare. Who else could it be?"
The question of the ciphers had troubled Hoare ever since he had encountered his first one, early in last year's inquiry into the blowing-up of Vantage and several sister ships. The texts were generally Biblical in tenor, if they were not actual quotations, and they used Biblical names for writer, recipient, and any third parties. The names were suggestive, like a nudge in the ribs, but-like nudges in the ribs-skirted specificity. The whole topic had been tantalizing; the ciphers could be read, but no one had succeeded in tracing them to their sources or identifying the owners of those nagging Biblical names. Each new accession-there had been three or four-plucked more sharply at Hoare's intellect.
Hoare had thought before of one possible source, one who, at least as far as he knew, had no connection with the French but had an odd, mad agenda of his own. He debated with himself, then decided to speak up.
"It could be Sir Thomas Frobisher, sir."
"Who?"
"Sir Thomas Frobisher, baronet and knight, of Dorset. He is by way of being virtual master of the entire county, or at least so he believes, and many Dorset folk believe with him. Including Spurrier, the Satanist, who chopped off the heads of those captains not so long ago… and then had the effrontery to drown in his own vomit while my prisoner."