[Written later in a more legible hand]
We have reached the Paris dwelling of the de Lavardacs, the Hôtel d'Arcachon, and I am now at a proper writing-desk, as you can see.
To finish that matter of the Armenian letter: I know that you, Doctor, have an interest in strange systems of writing, and that you are in charge of a great library. If you have anything on the Armenian language, I invite you to correspond with M. Rossignol. For though he is fascinated by this letter, he can do very little with it. He had one of his clerks make an accurate copy of the thing, then re-sealed it, and has been trying to track down any surviving addressees, in hopes that he may deliver it to them. If they are alive, and they choose to write back, M. Rossignol will inspect their letter and try to glean more clews as to the nature of the cypher (if any) they are using.
§ Speaking of letters, I must get this one posted today, and so let me raise one more matter. This concerns Sophie's banker, Lothar von Hacklheber.
I saw Lothar recently in Lyon. I did not wish to see him, but he was difficult to evade. Both of us had been invited to dinner at the home of a prominent member of the Dépôt. For various reasons I could not refuse the invitation; I suspect that Lothar orchestrated the whole affair.
To shorten this account somewhat, I shall tell you now what I only divined later. For as my driver and footmen would be tarrying in the stables for some hours with Lothar's, I had given instructions to mine that they should find out all that they could from his. It had become obvious that Lothar was trying to dig up information concerning me, and I reckoned that turnabout was fair play. Of course his grooms and drivers could know nothing of what Lothar had been thinking or doing, but they would at least know where he had gone and when.
Through this channel, I learned that Lothar had set out from Leipzig in July with a large train, including a prætorian guard of mercenaries, and made his way down to Cadiz, where he had transacted certain business; but then he had withdrawn up the coast to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where he had apparently expected some momentous transaction to come off during the first week of August. But something had gone wrong. He had flown into a rage and made a tremendous commotion, despatching runners and spies in all directions. After a few days he had given orders for the whole train to ride up to Arcachon, which is a long hard journey over land; but they had done it. Lothar meanwhile accomplished the same journey in a hired barque, so that he was waiting for them when they arrived at Arcachon late in August. Immediately he announced that they would turn around and make for Marseille. Which they did, at the cost of several horses and one man; but they reached the place a few days too late—late for what, these informants knew not—and so they withdrew up the Rhône to Lyon, which is a place where Lothar is much more comfortable. Of course I was already in Lyon, having been dropped off there by M. le duc d'Arcachon a week earlier; from which it was easy enough to guess that the person Lothar had hoped, but failed, to intercept in Marseille had been M. le duc. Now perhaps it was his intention to tarry in Lyon, and wait for the return of d'Arcachon. I was going to add "like a spider in his web" or some such expression, but it struck me as absurd, given that Lothar is a mere baron, and a foreigner from a country with which we are at war, while the duc d'Arcachon is a Peer, and one of the most important men in France. I stayed my quill, as it would seem ludicrous to liken this obscure and outlandish Baron to a spider, and the duc d'Arcachon to a fly. And yet in person Lothar is much more formidable than the duc. At the House of Huygens I have seen a spider through a magnifying-glass, and Lothar, with his round abdomen and his ghastly pox-marked face, looked more like it than any other human I have beheld. Spider-like was he in the way that he dominated the dinner-table, for it seemed that every other person in the room was noosed to a silken cord whose end was gripped in his dirty ink-stained mitt, so that when he wanted some answer from someone he need only give them a jerk. He was absurd in his determination to find out from me precisely when M. le duc would be returning from his Mediterranean cruise. Every time I beat back one of his forays he would retreat, scamper around, and attack from a new quarter. Truly it was like wrestling with an eight-legged monster. It demanded all of my wits not to divulge anything, or to tumble into one of his verbal traps. I was tired, having spent the day meeting with one of Lothar's competitors discussing certain very complicated arrangements. I had gone to this dinner naïvely expecting persiflage. Instead I was being grilled by this ruthless and relentless man, who was like some Jesuit of the Inquisition in his acute perception of any evasions or contradictions in my answers. It is a good thing I had come alone, or else whatever gentleman had escorted me should have been honor-bound to challenge Lothar to a duel. As it was, our host almost did, so shocked was he by the way that Lothar was ruining his dinner-party. But I believe that even this was a sort of message that Lothar intended to send to me, and through me to the duc: that so angry was he over what had occurred off Sanlúcar de Barrameda that he considered himself in a state akin to war, in which normal standards of behavior were cast aside.
You are probably terrified, Doctor, that I am about to demand a formal apology of Lothar, and that I have designated you as the luckless messenger. Not so, for as I have told you, it is obvious that Lothar has no intention of apologizing for anything. Whatever M. le duc d'Arcachon took from him is more important than his reputation or even his honor. He was announcing as much by his behavior at dinner, and I doubt not that word of it has already gone out among all of the members of the Dépôt. The bankers I was dealing with there suddenly lost their nerve, and broke off negotiations with me—all except one, a Genoan with a very tough reputation, who is demanding a large rake-off "to cover the extraordinary precautions," and who insisted that a peculiar clause be inserted into the agreement: namely, that he would accept silver, but never gold.
I fear that in the end I failed utterly to keep Lothar at bay. How long will Mademoiselle be staying in Lyon? I have no fixed plans, mein Herr. But is it not true, mademoiselle, that a soirée is planned at the Hôtel d'Arcachon on the fourteenth of October? How did you know of this, mein Herr? How I know of it is none of your concern, mademoiselle—but that is a fixed plan, is it not? And so it is not truthful, is it, to assert, as you have just done, that you have no fixed plans? And so on. Lothar knew more than he should have known, for he must have spies at Versailles or in Paris; and whenever he divulged some morsel of information he had thus acquired, it was as if he had punched me in the stomach. I could not hold my own against him. He must have known, by the end of the dinner, that le duc would be passing through Lyon at some time during the first or second week of October. He is down there now, I am certain, waiting; and I have sent word, every way I know how, to the naval authorities in Marseille, that when le duc returns he must take great care.
Thus forewarned, le duc ought to be perfectly safe; for how much power can one Saxon baron wield, in Lyon? Yet Lothar's bizarre confidence jangled my nerves.
It was not until later, during my third round of negotiations with the said Genoan banker, that I began to get some inkling of what motivated Lothar, and how he knew so much. This banker—after a lengthy discussion of silver vs. gold—rolled his eyes and made some disparaging reference to Alchemists.
Now, during that dreadful dinner, Lothar had, more than once, made some dismissive comment about M. le duc, along the lines of "He does not know what he has blundered into."
On the admittedly fragile basis of these two remarks, I have developed a hypothesis—a vague one—that the ship that was looted off Sanlúcar de Barrameda contained something of great importance to those—and I now number Lothar among them—who put stock in Alchemy. It appears that M. le duc d'Arcachon, in concert with his Turkish friends, has stolen that cargo—but perhaps they do not comprehend what it is. Now, all of the Alchemists are up in arms about it. This would explain how Lothar has come to be so well-informed as to what is happening in Versailles and in Paris, for many members of the Esoteric Brotherhood are to be found in both places, and perhaps Lothar has been getting despatches from them.