‘Come and eat your mutton with me, both of you,’ said Dundas, coming over to them.
‘Alas, I cannot,’ said Hervey. ‘I am engaged.’ He peered at the clock in his poring way and sprang up, crying ‘I am late, I am late already.’
‘For my part, I should be happy,’ said Stephen, which was true: he liked Dundas, he had missed his breakfast with that infernal sea-chest, and in spite of his anxious mind he was extremely hungry.
‘You sail for the North American station quite soon, I believe?’ he said, when they had reached their apple pie.
‘On Monday, wind and weather permitting,’ said Dundas. ‘Tomorrow I must make my adieux.’
‘Will you indulge me by walking into the smoking room?’ asked Stephen. But when they came to it he saw that there were too many people by far and he said ‘The truth of the matter is that I wish to speak to you privately. May we go upstairs, do you think?’
Dundas led the way, gave him a chair and said ‘I thought you had something on your mind.’
‘I believe we may do Aubrey an essential service,’ said Stephen. ‘I have been talking to a man in whom I have great confidence. He wishes to go to Canada. In return for being taken there he will give me information of great value concerning Jack.’ Replying to the doubt and dissatisfaction in Dundas’s face he went on, ‘In these blank bald words it sounds intolerably naive, even simple-minded, but I am bound by the confidential nature of so many aspects – I am unable to relate a whole host of details that would compel conviction. Yet at least I can show you this.’ He brought out the Blue Peter from his pocket, unwrapped it and held it out in a beam of sunlight.
‘What an astonishing great stone,’ cried Dundas. ‘Can it be a sapphire?’
‘It is Diana’s blue diamond,’ said Stephen. ‘She was in Paris, you remember, when Jack and I were imprisoned there, and her leaving it behind was connected with our escape. Its eventual return was promised however and the man I am speaking of brought it to me this morning, on his way to Hartwell. I tell you this so that you will understand at least one of the reasons that I rely on his word and that I take what he says very seriously. There was nothing to prevent him from keeping the stone, yet he handed it over straight away, without any conditions whatsoever.’
‘It is an extraordinary great diamond,’ said Dundas. ‘I do not believe I have seen a finer outside the Tower. It must be worth a fortune.’
‘That is what is so impressive: a man that means to go to the New World and start a new life and that hands over an eminently portable fortune is not one to speak lightly.’
‘Do you know the reason for his wanting to go to Canada?’
‘I would not ask you to take him if he were a
common criminal escaping from the law. No, he is sick of his colleagues’ bad faith, their dissensions and their dissimulation, and wishes to make a clean and sudden break.’
‘He is a Frenchman, I collect, since he is going to Hartwell.’
‘I am not sure. He may come from the Rhine provinces. But at all events he is not a Buonapartist, that I can absolutely guarantee.’
‘Do you think a promise to take him on condition that his information proves useful to Jack would answer?’
‘I do not.’
‘No. I suppose not. Though proper flats we should look if . . .’ Dundas walked up and down, considering for a while, and then said ‘Well, I suppose we shall have to take him. I will write Butcher a note to receive him as my guest. Fortunately we have room and to spare – no master until we reach Halifax. Does he speak English?’
‘Oh, very well. That is to say, very fluently. But he learnt it from a Scotch nursemaid and then a Scotch tutor, and it is the North British dialect that he speaks; it is neither very offensive nor incomprehensible – indeed, it has a certain wild archaic charm – and to any but the nicest ear it disguises the foreign accent entirely. He is a quiet, inoffensive gentleman, and is likely to keep his bed throughout the passage, being a most indifferent sailor.’
‘So much the better. It is quite against the regulations, you know, he being a foreigner.’
‘It is quite against the regulations to take young ladies to sea, foreign or home-bred, yet I believe I have known it done.’
‘Well,’ said Dundas, ‘let us go downstairs and find pen and ink.’
Dr Maturin had all the next day to reflect upon what he had done and what he was doing.
By all professional standards it was extraordinarily imprudent; and it was exceedingly unwise from a personal point of view, since he was compromising himself as deeply as possible and opening himself to very ugly accusations – his actions could be interpreted as criminal and they might in fact constitute crimes, capital crimes. He was
relying solely on his instinct, and his instinct was by no means infallible. Sometimes it was affected by his wishes and before now it had deceived him very painfully. He reassured himself from time to time by looking at the splendid diamond in his pocket, like a talisman, and he spent the afternoon in
the Covent Garden hummums, his sparse frame sweating in the hottest room until it could sweat no more.
‘Is Duhamel a punctual man?’ he asked himself, sitting in the vestibule at Black’s, where he could
command the entrance and the porter’s desk. ‘Does he pay strict attention to time?’
Answer came there none until six had stopped striking, when Duhamel appeared on the steps, carrying a packet. Stephen stepped forward before Duhamel could ask for him and led him upstairs to the long room overlooking St James’s Street. Duhamel looked greyer still, but his face was as impassive as usual and he appeared to be perfectly composed.
‘I have arranged your passage to Halifax in the
Eurydice,’ said Stephen. ‘You will have to be aboard before Monday, and you will travel as the captain’s guest.
He is a close friend of Captain Aubrey’s. I have let it be understood that you are or have been to some degree attached to Hartwell, but I do most earnestly advise you to stay in your cabin on the plea of sea-sickness and to
speak very little. Here is a note that will introduce you to the ship. You will see that I have retained the name of Duhamel.’
‘Upon the whole I prefer it: one complication the less,’ said Duhamel, taking the note. ‘I am very grateful to you, Maturin; I believe you will not regret it.’ He looked round the room. At the far end an aged member was poring over the Parliamentary Debates with a reading-glass.
‘You may speak quite freely,’ said Stephen. ‘The gentleman is a bishop, an Anglican bishop; and he is deaf.’
‘Ah, an Anglican bishop,’ said Duhamel. ‘Quite so. I am glad we are in this particular room’
he added, looking out into the street. He collected himself and said ‘How shall I begin my account? Names, names
–
that is one of the difficulties. I am not sure of the names of the three men I mean to tell you about. My correspondent here in London used the name of Palmer, but it was not his own and although he was a remarkably gifted agent in many ways he betrayed himself in this; he did not always respond at once or naturally to his nom de guerre. The name of the second man will be familiar to you: it is Wray, Andrew. For a considerable time I knew him as Mr Grey, but he is not a good agent and after a while, getting drunk, he gave himself away. He is not a good agent at all, and really, Maturin, I wonder you did not detect him in Malta.’
Stephen bowed his head as the light came flooding in, blinding humiliatingly obvious. ‘I could hardly expect you to employ such a flashy, unreliable fellow,’ he muttered.
‘He is not without real abilities,’ said Duhamel, ‘but it is true, he is emotional and timid; he has no bottom and he would not only crack at the first severe interrogation but he is liable to betray himself without any interrogation at all. We should never have gone any distance with him if it had not been for his friend, the third man, whom I know only as Mr Smith, a very highly-placed man indeed
–
his reports were fairly worshipped in the rue Villars.’
‘More highly-placed than Wray?’
‘Oh yes. And of much greater force of mind: when you see them together it is like master and pupil. A hard man, too.’ Duhamel looked at his watch. ‘I must be brief,’ he said.