"I am calling on you, sir," Hoare whispered, "to inquire into the circumstances of Dr. Graves' death."
Olney was manifestly disappointed to learn that Hoare was not a patient, but he obliged. He summarized the inquest on Dr. Graves; there were no surprises here. The surgeon was unaware of any particular efforts on the authorities' part to track down his colleague's killer. Certainly Sir Thomas had issued no orders to anyone concerning the murder.
Was Sir Thomas too self-important to have been bothered? The baronet had seemed to be a good friend of Dr. Graves and his wife. Why had he done nothing to track down the physician's murderer? Why, in fact, had he taken such an intense instant dislike to Hoare? Hoare feared that his impatient jape about bats, when they were first introduced, lay at the root of the matter.
"But forgive me, sir," Olney was saying. "I altogether failed to offer you a drop. I usually take a bit of port at about this time of day. Will you join me in a drop?"
At Hoare's nod, Olney reached up and opened a cabinet from which he drew a decanter and two glasses. Apparently observing that one of them was dusty, he wiped it out with a large polka-dot kerchief, and began to pour.
"Was there an autopsy, sir?" Hoare asked.
"Why, shame on me," Olney said, and spilled some of the muddy wine on his desk.
"Bless my soul, I clean forgot, I did. Of course I did. I made an autopsy on my poor colleague. I knew he would have wanted me to. Shall I tell you about it?"
"Please," Hoare whispered.
"And by the bye, sir, I have an excellent emollient linctus for the throat, should it interest you. My own concoction."
Hoare explained his whisper as briefly as he could, then paused expectantly to hear about Dr. Graves's autopsy.
"As you probably know," the surgeon said, "the cause of death was not the contusion on Dr. Graves' forehead. That occurred when the impact of the bullet in his back threw him forward against his table. No, the immediate cause was that ball itself. It penetrated the wooden back of his chair, broke through his rib cage from behind, and buried itself in his heart. It carried into the wound a few splinters from the chair and some threads from the doctor's shirt. He was not wearing his coat-because of the warm weather, I suppose. The ball killed him instantly, of course. Here it is."
He rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a distorted leaden object, still encrusted with blackish red.
Hoare took it eagerly, got the folding knife from his pocket, and scraped away carefully at the reddish deposit.
"This is no musket ball, sir," he said at last, displaying it to the surgeon. "If you look closely, you will see it bears raised lands. It was fired from a rifle. This is the second time within three weeks that I have seen one."
"Why, so it is. I should have noted that. It has been many a year, sir, since I have seen a ball which was fired from a rifled musket. They were not common in the Navy in my day. But you would know that, of course."
"May I have it, sir? I think it could be very important."
"Certainly, Mr. Hoare. You would not mind giving me a receipt, would you? Sir Thomas is a great stickler for the paperwork."
"Not at all, Mr. Olney. And perhaps, in turn, you would write down a description for me? 'Rifled bullet,' perhaps, 'removed from the body of Simon Graves,' and so forth."
"Delighted, sir." The surgeon handed Hoare a pen.
The two set to their scratching in a companionable way and then exchanged documents. Thereupon Hoare tossed off the surgeon's awful port, pocketed the rifle ball, and said goodbye to Mr. Olney. Hoare left a half-guinea on the cluttered desk, beside the empty glass.
One more task remained to him. He wanted to learn more about the discovery at Portland Bill of the anker that had first brought him to Weymouth. Was this a unique discovery? Had anything else of interest been discovered at the same place and time?
The Weymouth station of the Coast Guard was no more than a short walk away. He had passed it upon leaving Unimaginable at her berth in the harbor. The cutter Walpole lay alongside the station. Hoare invited himself aboard, handed the anchor watch one of his self-explanatory leaflets, and while awaiting an officer inspected the cutter with a keen naval eye.
"Cutter" she might be named in the Coast Guard, but Walpole was a brisk-looking brigantine of about one hundred tons, armed with several popgun four-pounders. Her be-wigged figurehead showed she was properly named, not for His Majesty's present prime minister, but for William Walpole the elder. Her commander, who was fortunately aboard, came on deck himself to invite Hoare below. The red-haired Mr. Popham would have been Hoare's own age, small, spare, and brisk like his command. Hoare envied him.
"We Coastguardsmen have to make do with ourselves as clerks," Mr. Popham explained as he cleared a clutter of papers from the table and the extra chair.
"Give me your opinion of this burgundy, sir, will ye? Took it off Rose just last week."
It would be one of the Coast Guard's quiet perquisites, Hoare knew, and it was worth every penny the smugglers would have gotten.
As soon as courtesy permitted, Hoare brought up the matter of the sandy "anker." In doing so, of course, he dutifully distinguished between anker, a vessel for holding liquids, and "anchor," for holding a vessel, and joined Mr. Popham in the obligatory laugh.
Mr. Popham remembered the anker well. He also knew well Dickon Dee, the sand-loving fisherman, and was amused at Hoare's description of their encounter.
"It did, indeed, come ashore just where he told you it did," he said. "I would have told you that had you asked me… but then, I think you really wanted to meet Dickon Dee and test his powers."
Hoare smiled acknowledgment.
"It was an interesting little object," Popham said. "Did you notice what I noticed?"
Hoare looked inquiring and waited.
"We're accustomed to seeing French cooperage, of course-ankers, demi-kegs, kegs, barrels, even a tun now and then. They come ashore as well as being brought ashore, if you take my meaning. But you could tell from the scarfing and rabbering that this was a good, stout English anker, not French. The French coopers contrive it differently, Mr. Hoare."
"I had not known, sir," Hoare said.
"Now, sir," Popham went on, "what puzzles me is why an English anker would be cast adrift in such a fashion, with the contents that puzzled you.
"What did you make of the message?"
"What message?" Hoare asked.
"The message in the anker, with the clockwork, of course."
"There was no message in the anker… at least, not when it passed through my hands. What was it like?"
"A cipher, or I'm a lizard. On gray waterproof paper…"
Mr. Popham might be describing either the message Mrs. Graves had described or the ones Hoare had seen with his own eyes. Here was another piece in the puzzle, but where did it fit?
"I'll be damned, Popham," Hoare said. "This is most interesting information. I'm greatly obliged to you for it-as well as the burgundy.
"But now, I must be under way, or I'll miss my tide."
Popham rose to usher his guest from the cutter. "You'll have ten minutes to get out into the Channel and catch it. It's been a pleasure, sir. Come visit Walpole again, next time you're this way."
"And let me offer you a glass of Madeira, Mr. Popham, when you call in Portsmouth. The Swallowed Anchor will find me."
Unimaginable idled along under the slowly circling summer stars on a broad reach, her high mainsail and full clubbed jib drawing her gently toward Portsmouth at no more than a knot. The flowing tide, Hoare reckoned, would give her perhaps four knots over the ground. At this rate, she would reach home by noon tomorrow. He sighed, leaned back against her taffrail, and mused about Dr. Graves's clockwork. Had the doctor possessed enough leisure and enough talent to keep not just one but two inquiries in the air at a time-the clockwork project and his undertaking with Morrow? More distressing: Dr. Graves could have built his clockwork devices for an English agent, as he had told his wife. But Hoare could not understand why an Englishman would have been so havey-cavey about the arrangement. Unwittingly-or wittingly-Dr. Graves could have undertaken the work for a man in French pay. If so, had he done so unwittingly? Had he known? Had he himself, perhaps, been the agent?