'Hmph,' said Sir George, and passed the document to Angouleme.
'Of course,' said the duc; his English reached that far. 'Let us go ashore, then,' he added in his own language, 'and inform the Vicomte de Barsac, in his lonely cell, of his good fortune.'
Left on the deck of Vendee, Hoare and Hornblower looked at each other and shrugged.
'Will you light me ashore in your new command, sir?' Hornblower asked. His expression was that of the classic Spartan boy being gnawed by a fox.
'With pleasure, Mr. Hornblower,' said Bartholomew Hoare.
'I do not understand this, Mr. 'Oare.' The widowed Comtesse de Montrichard had summoned Hoare to the Three Suns. Tasteful in mourning, she extended a document to Hoare. 'I had thought that my husband had deposited this commission with your nice admiral.'
'He did, madame. I saw it there myself.'
'Why, then, do I find it in the possessions of Guillaume, which your mayor's honest minions returned to me so kindly with those of my late husband?'
Hoare inspected the document more closely. To the best of his more-than-adequate recollection, it had been prepared on the same printed form. Yes, here were the same typographical errors, made by a Portsmouth printer unfamiliar with the language he was setting. The handwritten entries named Vendee as the ship in question, De Montrichard as her master. The date was identical, as was the impression of the seal the mayor's men had found yesterday upon recovering the drowned nobleman's body. And the signature on this specimen was free, quite illegible, not the careful inscription Hoare remembered on the document Montrichard had deposited with Sir George's hands that the clerk Patterson had shown him.
Raising his head from the paper, Hoare looked into the huge, warm, violet eyes.
'This proves, madame, that as I believed, the duc had already given Vendee to his equerry when he was killed.'
'Then my husband's crime was without purpose,' she said.
'Precisely, madame,' whispered Bartholomew Hoare.
