Book 11 - The Reverse Of The Medal

by Patrick O'Brian

  Stephen had driven in to Portsmouth on Sunday to hear Mass in a Romish chapel there, and he had not reappeared, only sending Padeen back with a message to the effect that he found himself obliged to go to London and begged to be excused.

  'I am sure you did not, my dear,' said Sophie. She was morally certain that Stephen found her deeply affectionate sympathy more painful than any other, and she was wondering how this could be phrased or indeed whether it could be said at all when they saw Killick hurrying towards them from the house.

  Killick was perfectly used to having the Captain pursued for debt and to foiling the bums, and there was a concerned, intelligent, knowing look on his face that instantly brought some of these episodes to mind.

  'Is it the bailiffs?' asked Jack.

  'It is a rum cully, sir,' said Killick, 'more like a gent. And sir,' he said in a low, anxious voice behind his hand, 'it's no good tipping them the go-by. There's a party of heavyweight coves each end of the lane and behind, and they look precious like Bow Street runners.'

  'I will deal with him,' said Jack, smiling, and he walked into the house. There he found a calm, self-possessed man with a folded paper in his hand. 'Good day, sir,' he said. 'I am Captain Aubrey. What may I do for you?'

  'Good day to you, sir,' replied the man. 'Might we step into a private room? I have been sent from London on a matter that affects you most particularly.'

  'Very well,' said Jack, opening a door. 'Please to mind the paint-work. Now, sir, what is this matter you are speaking about?'

  'I am concerned to say that it is a warrant for your arrest.'

  'The Devil it is! At whose suit?'

  'It is not an arrest for debt, sir. It is an arrest by warrant.'

  'On what charge?' asked Jack, amazed.

  'Conspiracy to defraud the Stock Exchange.'

  'Oh, is that all?' said Jack with great relief. 'Good Lord, I can very easily explain my dealings with them.'

  'I am sure you can, sir. But in the meanwhile I must ask you to come with me. I trust you will not make my duty more unpleasant than it has to be—I trust you will not oblige me to place a gentleman of your quality under restraint. If you will give me your word not to attempt an escape, I will delay the execution of this warrant for half an hour so that you may make your arrangements. But then we must set off for London: I have a carriage waiting at the door.'

  Chapter Seven

  'I wish I had better news for your return,' said Sir Joseph, 'but at times one's friends are sadly disappointing.'

  'At others, however, they exert themselves to a degree that even the most sanguine could never expect,' said Stephen.

  'Not at all, not at all,' said Sir Joseph, smiling and waving his hand. 'Yet the fact of the matter is that Holroyd will not appear for Captain Aubrey. I regret it extremely, for Holroyd is one of the few counsel who are well with Lord Quinborough, who is to conduct the trial: Quinborough would not bully him, as he bullies so many counsel, and he might even treat his client decently. Furthermore, Holroyd has an excellent way with a jury—everybody says he is the very man for the case. His refusal vexes me, I must admit, for I had not thought he could refuse my direct request, he being under some obligation to me. Indeed, he looked both shabby and mean when he said that he was not master of his time—that with the trial being hurried on so soon he could not do the defendant justice, being deeply engaged, and a variety of other shuffling excuses.'

  'They did not convince you, I collect.'

  'No, they did not; and until the afternoon I could not understand why he was making them. But then I dined at the Colebrooks', where I heard that one of the judges had died unexpectedly and that the choice of his successor was in the balance, with Holroyd and a couple of others as the most likely candidates. Since the ministry has set this whole unusually rapid and zealous prosecution on foot with the sole intention of damaging the Radical opposition—of destroying General Aubrey and his friends—Holroyd does not wish to indispose the Chancellor by appearing as the champion of the General's son at this decisive moment. Nor does he wish to indispose Lord Quinborough, who is as furiously anti-Radical as the Chancellor and who is also a member of the Cabinet: it is odd that a judge should be a member of the Cabinet.'

  'Jack Aubrey is so far from being a Radical that he hates the name of even a moderate Whig,' said Stephen, who did not give a curse for the composition of the Cabinet. 'When he thinks of politics at all, which may happen twice a year, he is a high Tory.'

  'But he can be shown to be the son of a Radical—a damned noisy Radical too, perpetually on his feet in the House, denouncing the ministry—the son of a Radical and at least in this instance the associate of Radicals: so it makes little odds what he may say once or twice a year.'

  'Is there any news of the General?'

  'He is said to have gone to ground in Scotland, but there is no certainty about it. Some people say he has shaved and hidden himself among the Repentant Magdalenes at Clapham.'

  'Do not his parliamentary privileges cover him?'

  'I know they cover practically everything except treason and felony, and I do not imagine rigging the market amounts to either; but I dare say he means to make assurance double sure, to lie low, risk nothing, and rely on his son and his friends to take all the blame. He is a horrible old man, you know.'

  'I have met General Aubrey.'

  'To go back to Holroyd: he did produce one piece of advice. Since the entire defence lies in identifying the man in the post-chaise who started the lie, he said we should apply to an independent thief-taker and he gave me the name of a man who had been useful to him in several cases, the best of his kind in London, often employed by the insurance companies. Since time presses, I took it upon myself to set him at work directly, although his fees are a guinea a day and coach-hire, and I have him in the kitchen at this moment. You would not object to seeing him?'

  'Faith,' said Stephen, 'I have hob-nobbed with the hangman for the sake of an interesting corpse before this, and I am certainly not going to jib at a thief-taker.'

  The thief-taker, whose name was Pratt, looked like a discreet tradesman of the middle sort, or possibly a lawyer's clerk; he was conscious of the general dislike for his calling, so close to that of the common informer, and he stood diffidently until he was asked to sit down. Sir Joseph told him that this gentleman was Captain Aubrey's particular friend, Dr Maturin, who had been obliged to attend a patient in the country: Pratt might speak quite openly in his presence.

  'Well, sir,' said Pratt, 'I wish I had better news for you; I am morally certain how the case lies, but so far I have nothing that will stand up in a court of law. Of course the whole thing is a put-up job, as we say: that was clear from the moment I saw the Captain. Yet even so I made the necessary checks: I found there was no parliamentary draftsman by the name of Ellis Palmer or anything like it, nor any member of the learned societies except a Mr Elliott Palmer who is close on eighty years of age and confined to his house by gout. So when I had satisfied myself in London I went down to Dover. At the Ship they remembered the Quaker and the flash cove and the row about the post-chaise, but nobody had taken much notice of Mr Palmer; they did not remember having seen him before and they could not give me any clear, reliable description. Howsomever, I had better luck at Sittingbourne, where they recalled how particular he had been about his wine and where the daughter of the house said there was something odd about him, because although he had only been there once he talked and behaved like a man who had known the place for years. Her description matched the Captain's—it is very important to have at least two versions—and I came hack to town with some notion of the kind of man I should look for and the kind of place where I might find him—an educated chap—person, I mean—perhaps connected with the bar or even the Church, perhaps an unfrocked parson—likely to frequent the better gambling places—and I travelled back in a chaise with the same post-boy that had driven the Captain and Mr P, dropping the Captain at his club and Mr P in Butcher Row. That is jus
t after Hollywell Street, sir, towards the City.' This aside was for Stephen, who reflected 'My clothes were made in London, my half-boots also; I have not uttered five words, and I am tolerably good at preserving an impassive countenance; yet this man has detected that I am not a native. Either I have been flattering myself these many years, or he is exceptionally acute.' 'And then, sir,' Pratt went on, now addressing himself more to Sir Joseph, 'the post-boy, having seen his fare walk off northwards up Bell Yard, wheeled his chaise down Temple Lane, called a street boy to water his horses in Fountain Court, and went back to the mutton-pie shop on the corner by Temple Bar, where the hackney-coaches stand: it is open all night. He was standing there with some of the drivers he knew, eating his second pie, when he saw Mr P on the other pavement, walking very tired with his little portmanteau and papercase. Mr P crossed Fleet Street, coming from north to south, you follow me, sir, and hailed the first coach. The post-boy did not hear where he went, but the next day I found the driver, who remembered having taken a gentleman from Temple Bar to Lyon's Inn very early in the morning. Lyon's Inn.' Pratt's eye rested on Stephen for a moment, but Stephen happened to know that obscure, out-of-the-way series of courtyards, once the haunt of Chancery lawyers, and he said 'I believe Mr Pratt began by observing that we have nothing yet in the way of legal proof—that we are not approaching a crisis, but rather reviewing the present position—so perhaps I will retire for a moment.' He smiled apologetically at Sir Joseph, adding 'I travelled all night.'

  'Of course, of course,' cried Blaine. 'You know the way.'

  Stephen knew the way. He also knew that a lamp was kept perpetually burning in Sir Joseph's dim, book-lined privy: he took a cigar from his case, broke it in two, lit one half at the lamp (he was no hand with a tinder-box) and sat there drawing the smoke in deep. Somewhere far below him in the house he heard the grinding of a coffee-mill, no doubt fixed to the kitchen wall from the way the vibration travelled, and he smiled: the present tobacco and the prospective coffee soothed at least the very top of his mind, that part which had been so harassed by an exceptionally disagreeable night's journey in a lurching coach with drunken fellow-travellers. The rest of it could not so easily be relieved: he knew little of the English law, but he was almost certain that Jack Aubrey was undone; he was intensely anxious about his friend Martin, upon whom he had operated, perhaps too late, for a badly strangulated hernia and whom he had left comfortable but still in grave danger; and then he had had a particularly trying time with Sophie when he called in at Ashgrove Cottage. He was very deeply attached to her, and she to him; but in this instance her tears, her unconcealed distress and her need for support were something of a disappointment. Of course, exhaustion from her long journey and the sudden overthrow of her happiness accounted for a great deal, but it seemed to him that Diana, or at least his idealized Diana, would have shown more courage, more fortitude, more manliness. Diana might well have used foul language, but surely he would never have heard the faintest echo of Mrs Williams from her. And surely Diana, having failed to bribe or bamboozle those sent to arrest her husband, would have followed him with a change of stockings and a couple of clean shirts in spite of his direct command, instead of wringing her hands. For a while he twisted the knife in his wound, thinking of Diana as a tigress; then, after a final draught that made his head swim, he threw his hissing stump away and walked downstairs.

  'Mr Pratt,' he said as they sat drinking their coffee, 'you began by saying that as soon as you saw Captain Aubrey you were convinced that all this was a put-up job. May I ask what led you to this conclusion? Did he produce irrefragable arguments that I am unacquainted with?'

  'No, sir, it was not so much what he said as the way he said it. He was so amused at the idea anyone should think him capable of inventing such a rigmarole—he had never heard of a time-bargain or selling forward until Palmer explained—he was sure Palmer would turn up—such a good fellow, and an excellent judge of wine—they would have such a laugh when it was all over. In my calling, sir, I have heard a good many denials and explanations, but never one like that. It would get him nowhere with a jury at the end of a long trial, with him bewildered in a court-room and badgered by the prosecution and maybe the judge—certainly the judge in this case—but man to man in that two-pair front at the Marshalsea—why, as the Romans say, you would give him the blessed sacrament without confession. In my line you get a nose for these things, and I had not listened to him five minutes, no nor two, before I knew he was as innocent as a babe unborn. But dear me, gentlemen, lambs to the slaughter ain't in it: I have rarely seen the like.'

  'I dare say you have had a great deal of experience, Mr Pratt?'

  'Well, yes, sir, I think I may say I have had as much or even more than most. I was born in Newgate, do you see, where my father was a turnkey, so I grew up among thieves. Thieves and their children were my companions and playmates and I came to know them very well. Some few were right bastards, particularly among the informers; but not many. Then my father moved on to the Clink and after that the King's Bench, so I made a good many more friends among the thieves and such south of the river and the low attorneys and gaolers and constables and ward officers, and it all came in very useful after I set up on my own, after a spell with the Bow Street runners.'

  'Aye,' said Stephen. 'I am sure it would.'

  'Now, sir,' said Pratt, putting down his cup, 'perhaps I had better be getting back to Lyon's Inn. I must admit I thought I had run my man to earth, for although a great many people live there now, particularly in the back court, which is a regular warren, there could not be many that would match my description. He had to be about five foot seven, lean, bob-wig or his own hair powdered, fifty or thereabouts, a sharp of course.'

  'What do you mean by a sharp?'

  'I am sorry to talk low, sir: it is a cant word we use to mean a dishonest person. They reckon you are a flat if you don't snap up whatever offers: the world is divided into the sharps and the flats. Mr P was a sharp of course, because nobody but a sharp would have tried to conceal his tracks like that; and a genuine nob, or gentleman by birth. He could never have had dinner with Captain Aubrey and talked to him all night if he had only been one of the swell mob, dressed up for the part, or the Captain would have seen through him, simple though he—that is to say, the Captain would have seen through him for sure. So I thought I had my man: but I was wrong. He did not live there. He was either spoiling the scent again, which I doubt, or he had just called in to rest or leave a message. It was a cruel blow, but I am carrying on, talking to maid-servants and street boys and ticket-porters and scavengers and the like, as well as my other connections—I am carrying on at the inn, trying to find out who he called on and so work back to him. And I am looking elsewhere too, among the genuine nobs known to my friends who might be that way inclined. But, gentlemen,' said Pratt, looking from one to another, 'now that my first bit of luck turned out not to be so lucky after all—now that I did not manage to take it first bounce—I should not like to make any great promises. This here caper is not the low toby, nor the high toby, but the very tip-top or what you might call the celestial toby: these jobs—and I have seen a few insurance frauds and one rigging of the market on something like the same scale, prepared very careful and damn the expense—are always run by gentlemen who have just one confidential agent as you might call him that hires the underlings, always at two or three removes, and sees to all the details. Always at two or three removes: if I was to pick up the Quaker and the flash cove, who certainly belong to the race-course mob, they would be no use to us—they would have no idea of the men who were behind the dummy that recruited them. The confidential agent is the only one who can peach on his principals, and they take good care he does not do so by having a hanging felony to hold over his head: or by some surer way, if things begin to go a little wrong.' Stephen and Sir Joseph exchanged a covert glance; the practice was not unknown in intelligence. 'And this chap looks after himself in much the same fashion all the way down the line
. I shall go on looking for Mr Palmer, of course, and I may find him; but even if I do, I doubt we shall learn anything about the men at the head of the affair.'

  'From our point of view,' said Stephen, 'it is the finding of Palmer that is essential: and with the case coming on so soon, he must be found quickly. Listen, Mr Pratt, have you any reliable colleagues who could work with you, to save time? I will gladly pay them whatever fee you think right, and double yours, if we may have a word with Mr Palmer before the trial.'

  'Why, sir, as to colleagues . . .' Pratt hesitated, rasping his bony jaw. 'Of course, it would save a mort of time, having Bill work south of the river,' he muttered, and aloud he said 'There is only Bill Hemmings and his brother I could work with really cordial. They were both at Bow Street with me. I will have a word with them and let you know.'

  'Do that, if you please, Mr Pratt, and pray waste not a minute: there is not a moment to he lost. And remember, you may commit me to a handsome fee. Do not let a few score guineas stand in the way.'

  'My dear Maturin,' said Blaine, when Pratt had kit them, 'allow me to observe that if you make bargains like that, you will never he a rich man. It is fairly begging Bill Hemmings to fleece you.'

  'It was thoughtless, sure,' said Stephen: then, with a wan smile, 'But as for never being a rich man, why, my dear Blaine, I am one already. My godfather made me his heir, God rest his soul. I never knew there was so much money in the world, so much money, that is to say, in a private person's hands. But this is between ourselves, I would not have it generally known.'

  'When you speak of your godfather, I presume you refer to Don Ramón.'

  'Don Ramón himself, bless him,' said Stephen. 'You will not mention it, however.'

  'Of course not. An appearance of decent mediocrity is better by far—infinitely wiser from every point of view. But in this strict privacy, let me give you joy of your fortune.' They shook hands, and Sir Joseph said, 'If I do not mistake, Don Ramón must have been one of the richest men in Spain: perhaps you will endow a chair of comparative osteology.'