'A very good performance, Thoday,' Hoare said.
'Elementary,' Thoday replied.
'Did you check the dovecote, Thoday?' Rabbett asked.
'What dovecote? Where?'
'In back of the house, of course. I thought you knew about it.'
Thoday vanished downstairs; the other two followed him. Shortly he returned, feathers sticking to his shoulders, holding a pigeon awkwardly away from his face to avoid the bird's bill. The bird looked disconcerted, as well it might. A tiny silvery cartridge was attached to one of its ruby red legs.
'Here, Rabbett. Hold the bird while I take off the message tube,' Thoday said.
'I'll take care of it, Thoday,' Rabbett said. 'When it comes to pigeons, you obviously don't know what you're doing. We Rabbetts have lived among pigeons all our days.'
Holding the pigeon gently, Rabbett slipped off the cartridge and handed it to Hoare.
'Here, sir,' Rabbett said. 'I'll just go and give the creature its reward.'
The message was en clair.
' 'Levi,' ' Hoare read, ' 'Stop. Stop. Stop. Saul.' '
Saul?
'You were very clever, Spurrier,' Hoare whispered to the bound man facing him as they jolted toward Weymouth in the chaise. Thoday sat beside Spurrier, Rabbett beside Hoare.
'You juggled two balls at once, very neatly-killing officers of the Royal Navy on the one hand, and disguising the work with Black Masses to beguile-'
'Not Black Masses, man,' Spurrier said with a grin of contempt. 'What you chanced upon was to be no more than a rite of initiation. If I had been celebrating a genuine mass, as I should have done, it seems, His Royal Highness would not have been so disappointed. And neither you nor your helots would have survived your spying. There I was fatally foolish.'
'That is as may be,' Thoday said in a flat voice. 'What intrigued me is that you built further on the edifice of superstition you first designed. But you made another mistake. I became aware of it just as I saw you about to sacrifice my little friend here. There you and your bullies went, crushing under your feet the fruits and flowers that the neighborhood's innocent nature worshipers had brought to the harvest festival with which you opened that obscene rite of yours.'
'That was a dreadful waste, of course,' Spurrier replied with a cynical smile. 'But what was mistaken about it?'
'It made it obvious that on the first occasion, when you chose the Nine Stones Circle as the place to put the two Captains to death, you had no idea of involving the paganism, or Satanism, or whatever you choose to call the creed that you follow. That notion came to you only when you returned to your quarters after your double murder. It was then that you took garlands of flowers and produce back to the Nine Stones Circle and scattered them about, as if they were left by a cult.'
'I don't follow you, Mr. Thoday,' Rabbett said. 'The whole thing was bad, but what was the mistake?'
'He forgot to tread them down the first time. That was when I all but knew he had revisited the Stones Circle after killing the two late Captains.'
Spurrier's lips thinned. Then he shrugged and looked carelessly out the window of the chaise.
'You wrote a two-act play, Spurrier,' Hoare said. 'One in which you cast the Duke of Cumberland as the protagonist… and, I suppose, those poor deluded folk in your congregation as the chorus. In Act I, you tried to show off to the Duke with your silly pagan ritual. Perhaps… you knew beforehand that it wouldn't be enough to take him in.'
For a fleeting instant, Hoare thought of suggesting that, for some peculiar reason of his own, Spurrier had planned from the beginning to drive him off. That would have made no sense at all.
'In any case,' he went on instead, 'it was only after he marched off that you commenced Act II, which was to be the climax of the play-the murder of my two… Naval investigators.
'What gave you the idea of using that means of covering up your part in the killings?' Hoare went on. 'It cannot have been the Duke of Cumberland. Unpleasant… he may be, but he was obviously a mere observer of your performance and not an informed participant.'
'You'll have to ask someone else that, Hoare,' Spurrier drawled. 'You are insolent, just as Sir Thomas said you were, as well as stupid.'
That he was still naked to the waist and no longer even had the blasphemous cope to keep him warm in the November dawn had evidently not dampened his superb self-confidence.
'Your master, Sir Thomas, has much to answer for,' Hoare replied, 'and answer for it he will. It's a pity for you that you did not receive his last message before you, er, raised the curtain on your two-act melodrama.'
'You are absurd as well as impudent,' Spurrier said. 'The frog-the man you call my master-he's no more than a useful puppet, an o ver-the-hill jackanapes with mad pretensions of being the rightful occupant of the throne. It was bad enough that his tadpoles had to be present. D'ye think that if the frog himself had anything to do with it, I could have got…'
'Got what?'
Spurrier shook his head.
'A different frog, then, Spurrier? A Frog from over the water, perhaps?'
'I have nothing further to tell you,' Spurrier declared. 'In the first place, you are my enemy. More important, you interrupted a holy sacrifice. So did the Prettyman woman. She will live to regret it, as will you, but not for long. Both of you will regret last night's doings, I promise you on behalf of my masters. My word, yes.'
Rabbett's face went white in the dawning, while Thoday's remained impassive.
'So you serve two masters, Spurrier,' Hoare whispered. 'One on earth, I suppose, and one… elsewhere. You will forgive me, I'm sure, if I confess myself a devout skeptic concerning the Deity's existence; that being the case, I must logically doubt the existence of the Enemy as well.
'It is your earthly master that interests me. His purpose I think we know; it is to throw a spoke in the wheel of the Royal Navy whenever he can. The infernal machines your colleague Kingsley caused to be planted in Vantage and her sister ships out of Portsmouth were one such spoke; your attempt to decapitate the Navy by decapitating its senior officers was another.'
Here Thoday intervened. 'I must confess, sir, that the purpose of Mr. Spurrier's essay at gathering in the Duke of Cumberland eludes me. Perhaps he will enlighten me.'
When Spurrier had nothing to say, Hoare decided to put up a possible motive to see if he could bounce the prisoner into telling more.
'I rather suppose, Thoday,' Hoare said, 'that the notion stemmed from Sir Thomas… by example, perhaps, or by direction. The bee in Sir Thomas's bonnet, about his being the rightful occupant of the throne now beneath King George-'
'God bless him!' Rabbett declared.
'— yes, Rabbett-is well known. And it is also well known that the Prince's younger brothers, Cumberland in particular, have ambitions of their own in that direction.
'If Spurrier here could stir up the Duke, turn him into a fellow Satanist-if he needed turning, that is-and promise him support from over the Channel, that would be a spoke in the wheel, not only of the Navy… but of the entire kingdom, would it not?'
Although Thoday made no observation, his look told Hoare that his point had merit. Spurrier's expression told Hoare he had struck home.
But the chaise was approaching Weymouth, and time was running out.
'Pray tell me about your master,' Hoare whispered. 'The earthly one, I mean. His name, his whereabouts.'
Spurrier uttered an imprecation from between thinned lips. 'I have nothing to say to you,' he said. 'You and your crew are dead men.'
That might be the case, Hoare admitted to himself, for it was obvious that Spurrier himself was in deadly fear.
