Chapter V
The portrait is finished, Mr.-er-Saul. Would you care to examine it before I hide it away until my new government is in place?'
'Indeed, Ahab, indeed.'
'Here, then, sir. Come with me. Pray take two candles, while I bear the candelabra.'
Saul's host led the way from the library to another room, larger but disused. He pointed toward the farther wall, and raised the candelabra above his head, the better to illumine the wide unframed canvas that leaned against a long black table, looking much like a devotional work above a Roman altar.
'My God,' the visitor breathed.
A group pose in the style of a Dutch master of a century and a half past-Van Dyck, perhaps-the portrait presented eight men: the host, six others, and the visitor himself.
'What do you think of it?' its owner asked.
'I am appalled,' said the visitor. 'You must destroy it, now, before the authorities get wind of it.'
'Destroy it, sir? Nonsense. It will be a treasure. Priceless.
Before very long, you will be able to admire it in surroundings more suited to its subjects.'
'Destroy it, man. Destroy it, I say.'
The host shook his head. 'Never. You gave me your word, and you kept it. Now, you must still keep it. And remember, I have the power to compel your compliance.'
'Madness,' the guest responded. 'Then until you can put it where you want, keep it safe, and out of sight. Give me your word, sir.'
'You have it. We shall do so this very moment. Come take one end, while I take the other.'
Together, the two men lugged the awkward canvas through a low service door and down a steep flight of stairs. The host bore the candelabra in one hand. By the time they reached another, locked door, both porters were puffing.
Setting down the candelabra and his end of the canvas, the host reached into a pocket and removed a bunch of keys. He selected one. When he had opened the door, he picked up his burden again and led his companion and the canvas inside. The walls of the chamber were flanked with bottles.
'Port, sir. Old port, Very old port. Some of it dates back to the second King Charles and the Portuguese treaty. Here, help me set it on end at the end of the cellar, and then I'll show you.'
Titus Thoday appeared at Hoare's lonely candlelit table in the Golden Cross, at the point where his commander was carrying on a whispered conversation about soles with the hotelier. Monsieur Berrier had a pair of soles, but did not believe they should be separated. Left and right, Hoare supposed, like the new way of shoemaking in which the fabricator made pairs in mirror images. While he appreciated mine host's tender feelings, he did not see why he should be expected to cater to them, and he was saying as much. Thoday's arrival broke the impasse. Hoare ordered both soles grilled. He determined that the starboard-side sole would go to himself as the commissioned officer, while Thoday would have to be satisfied with the lesser, larboard-side one.
It was not every officer who would have stooped to dine with an enlisted man, nor was Hoare such a democrat as to dine with just any of his people. However, Titus Thoday was-Hoare chuckled to himself-a different kettle of fish. He was rated gunner's mate in Royal Duke, though gunnery was one of the few subjects in which Hoare had found him less than proficient. Just as Hoare had delegated the moment-to-moment seamanship in Royal Duke to Mr. Clay, he had rated Admiral Hardcastle's man Stone as mate's mate and instructed Thoday to treat Stone's advice as though it came from Hoare himself.
Thoday's nose was hawklike, his eyes an icy pale gray, his thin lips habitually compressed. He was respectably dressed from the yacht's unusual slop chest. He was, Hoare knew, the son of one of Sir John Fielding's best men. Sir John, the late 'blind beak' of Bow Street, had been the virtual founder of London's only organization devoted to the actual control of crime. The son had taken after his father. An experienced investigator, cold, resourceful and sharp, he held himself in high esteem, and showed it. More than once his behavior toward Hoare had verged on condescension, but during the course of their collaboration in the Nine Stones affair, they had shaken down and learned to jog along well enough. Thoday had learned to keep his arrogance under hatches most of the time, while-most of the time-Hoare was able to treat him as a colleague rather than a minion.
Tonight, Thoday accepted as his due Hoare's invitation to be seated, and listened in attentive silence while Hoare whispered his story of Octavius Ambler, the missing confidential clerk, and the papers that had evidently gone missing with him. He concluded just as the two soles arrived. As he had planned, he decided that the larger sole was the starboard one, and had the waiter serve it to him with his share of the salad of cow-cumbers and lettuce that he had ordered to accompany them.
When the waiter had served Thoday as well and departed with a murmured 'bon appetit,' the gunner's mate made his first observations.
'From the general tone of your words, sir,' he said when Hoare came to a stop at last, 'I conclude that the Admiralty is less concerned about the man himself than they are about the manuscripts in his charge.' He paused, inquiringly.
'A safe conclusion,' Hoare replied.
'Then our first duty must be to recover them. If we should find the man himself, it is all the better, but he takes second place.'
'True. But-oh dear.' Hoare reached into the inner pocket of his coat for Ambler's likeness. 'I forgot. Here.'
'Thank you, sir.' Thoday's words were discreet, but as Hoare had feared he would, he spoke them in a tone of heavy reproach. Hoare felt himself blush, and hated himself for it. He reached for his goblet of hock, and decided to forestall the advice he knew he was about to receive.
'We should search his quarters, Thoday.' Thoday closed his mouth. Hoare was quite certain the other felt misused at missing his chance.
'Tonight,' he went on. 'Pity, I had hoped to get an uninterrupted night's sleep.'
'Now I suppose we must hunt up some local to direct us,' Hoare muttered. The pair had just reached the southern end of the Westminster Bridge. Since the light rain had eased, there was some hope, he thought, of finding a guide to Chantry Street where Ambler had lodged.
'No need at all, sir,' Thoday said. 'Chantry Street will not have moved since I was last in the area.'
Hoare had forgotten that his companion, having grown up in the streets of London, would certainly have explored the alien territory south of the Thames as well, from his boyhood on. With Hoare at his side, the gunner strode confidently ahead, taking a left here and a right there, until Hoare had utterly lost his bearings. Moreover, it was dark.
At one point, Hoare was sure he heard the scraping of something more substantial than a local rat. While hardly worried-between them, they should have no difficulty disposing of any team numbering less than four venturesome footpads- he made sure his sword was loose in its scabbard.
'I'm surprised, Thoday,' he whispered, more than a little out of breath, 'that you have not brought a weapon with you.'
'But I have, sir.' Thoday raised the elegant walking stick he carried. 'A sword would have been out of keeping with my present civil dress, don't you think? So…'
With a discreet flourish, the gunner's mate gripped the head of his sturdy stick with one hand and drew from it a slim, gleaming blade, only a little shorter than one of the epees with which Hoare was in the habit of using for his own exercises in escrime. It was much sharper than an epee; Hoare envied its owner.
'Toledo, sir,' Thoday said. 'Given my father in ninety-six, by the mayor of that city, for services rendered.' He gave no further explanation, but sheathed the deadly thing and strode on. Hoare forbore to inquire further, or to ask him to slow down. Not for the first time, he regretted that even his occasional morning bouts with Mr. Clay did not ensure his endurance over a mile of walking, at the rate Thoday chose to travel.
'Ah. Here we are, sir.' Thoday stopped at the door of a tidy dwelling. A shadowy figure was leaning against it.
