he said, ‘how passionately I long to put things right again, and I shall hold on, in spite of all affronts, in order to do so.’
‘When you speak of your opponents, do you have them clearly in your eye?’ asked Stephen.
‘No, I do not, and that is what makes me so uneasy. Barrow is back as second secretary, as 1 dare say you know, and we have never liked one another; indeed I might say that since the Wilson affair we have lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence. He is an immensely laborious, immensely diligent man, devoted to form and detail, and respectful of rank to a servile degree; he is widely ignorant and he is quite incapable of taking a broad, intelligent view of any given situation; but having risen from a humble situation by his own efforts he has an extraordinarily high opinion of his abilities, and at first I thought that this reorganization was simply an attempt on his part to gain more power, particularly as he has kept Wray, an ambitious young man, as his chief adviser. But that is not the explanation. He is a little man and his idea of a famous victory is six extra clerks and a Turkey carpet. It is true that Wray, though flighty, paederastical and unsound, is very, very much cleverer, but now that
I have seen how things are handled and the amount of influence, particularly Treasury influence, that has been brought to bear, it seems to me that the whole thing is far beyond their scope. It seems to me that some Macchiavel, possibly in the Treasury, possibly in the Cabinet Office, is manipulating them; but who he is or what his aim may be I cannot tell.
There are times when I feel that the ordinary insatiable appetite for power, patronage, and having one’s own way explains it all; and there are times when I fancy I smell if not a rat, then a pretty sinister mouse. However, I shall say no more about that, even to you, until I have something a little more solid than these impressions. A disappointed, angry man is very apt to exaggerate the wickedness of his opponents. But they must not think that by depriving me of the C and F reports and of contact with the agents in the field, they are cutting me off entirely. A man in my position has many old and tried friends in the other intelligence services, and with their help I do not despair of getting to the bottom of the matter.’
‘I am very much concerned at what you tell me,’ said Stephen. ‘Very much concerned indeed.’ And after a pause, ‘Listen, Blain. Before we left Gibraltar the Admiral’s secretary sent for me: his orders were to tell me the Government had sent a Mr Cunningham to the Spanish South American colonies in the packet Danaë with a large sum of money in gold.
It was now feared that she might be taken by the American frigate we were being sent to deal with. if we met the Danaë in the Atlantic I was to leave Mr Cunningham his gold but I was to remove a very much larger sum that had been concealed in his cabin without his knowledge. The American did in fact take the Danaë, but we recaptured her this side of the Horn. I considered that my instructions required me to look for this larger sum, and I found it: it was contained in a small brass box that is now attached to my person. Jack Aubrey sent the
Danaë home under Captain Pullings, but since it was not improbable that she should be taken yet again I thought proper to keep this box aboard a man-of-war, as being less liable to capture. Yet several aspects of the matter made me uneasy •n mind: the seal on the box broke when it fell from its hiding-place; the eventualities foreseen in my instructions did not include the packet’s recapture and it might be said that I had exceeded my authority; the sum that Jack Aubrey and I – for he had helped me to follow the nautical directions – picked up from the cabin floor was very great indeed, far, far greater than I cared to be answerable for or indeed associated with; and I had had your letter speaking of the troubled, murky atmosphere in Whitehall. However, we put it all back in the brass box, sealed the lid again, using my watch-key, and here it is.’ He tapped his side.
‘Have you seen Barrow or Wray?’ asked Sir Joseph.
‘1 have not. I did call on Wray at his house, but he was not at home and in any event that was about another matter entirely.’ A spasm of pain crossed his usually impassive face and for a moment he hung his head. ‘No. From the first I had no intention of going to the Admiralty until I had seen you unofficially and had asked your advice: now I am doubly glad of it.’
‘Is it indeed a very great sum?’
‘You shall see.’ Stephen stood up, took off his coat and waistcoat, tucked up his shirt and unwound the bandage. Once again the brass box fell unexpectedly; once again it burst open; and once again the amount astonished those who picked it up.
‘No, no,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘This is nothing to do with us. This is nothing to do with naval intelligence. This exceeds the whole department’s budget. This is something on quite another scale. This represents the subversion of a realm.’
‘I had not remembered it as so much,’ said Stephen.
‘I doubt I made the addition at the time: my mind was much taken up by my patients.’ He waved a sheaf of bills and said ‘In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave, If secret gold sap on from knave to knave, at least in this amount.’
‘Heavens,’ said Sir Joseph, still busily creeping about the floor, ‘were I as good at the mathematics as your friend Aubrey – and I remember the paper he read to the Royal Society on a new way of calculating the occultation of stars made my head ache – I could reckon the number of men required to carry this sum in gold. And a small brass box will hold it all! Oh the convenience of paper money and the draft on a discreet banking house, made out to bearer! Do you remember how your couplet goes on?’ he asked, getting up with creaking knees.
‘Pray remind me,’ said Stephen, who was very fond of Blain.
‘Blest paper credit,’ said Sir Joseph, emphasizing the paper and raising one finger,
‘Blest paper credit! last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
A single leaf shall waft an army o’er
Or ship off senates to a distant shore.
Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen
And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.’
‘Pregnant with thousands, yes indeed,’ said Stephen. ‘The question is, what am I to do with my pregnant scraps?’
‘It appears to me that the first thing to do is to make an inventory,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘Let us put them into some kind of order, and then if you will read out the bare names, dates and figures I will write them down.’
The inventory took some time and at the end of each page they paused for a glass of port.
During one of these pauses Sir Joseph remarked ‘To begin with, Barrow was positively obsequious to mc; then he learnt that I too was the son of a labouring man and he despised me straight away. Wray is well-connected, and I believe it is that, quite as much as his cleverness, which makes Barrow value him.’
‘Will I seal it again?’ asked Stephen, when the list was finished and the box was full.
‘You might as well,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘I do not believe there is a piece of string in the house; I tried to put up a parcel not long since, but with no success.’
‘And is it Barrow I will give it to, or Wray? And will I desire them to give me a receipt?’
asked Stephen: a great mental and spiritual fatigue had come over him and all he wanted was to be told what to do.
‘You should say you wish to see me, and when they tell you I am not there you should ask for Wray, since it was with him that you were last in contact. As for a receipt No. I think a certain sancta simplicitas is in order here
– a placid handing-over of this enormous fortune without any question of quittance or formal acknowledgement. In any event a receipt would be pointless, since if there is bad faith they can always say there was more in the box in the first place, before the seal was broke. It would be as pointless as this inventory, which has no legal force or validity whatsoever. But I do not have to tell you, Maturin, that in intelligence we do not always regard the law very closely.’ He passed the wax and held the candle while Stephen sealed the box and went on, ‘This war has caused the most enormous pouring-out of public funds, and peculation has kept pace. A great deal of money passes through various hands in the Admiralty and some of them are tolerably retentive. When Mr Croker took over as First Secretary – I believe you were abroad at the time: oh yes, you were a great way off –