Patrick O`Brian: THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL

'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. 'However, although Smith has great abilities and Wray enough to get himself a name, they are both poor, expensive, and given to very high play; and although they are both nominally and I believe genuinely volunteers they arc both constantly asking for money. After the reorganization in the rue Villars, supplies were very much reduced. They sent appeal after appeal, each more pressing, but they were told that their recent information had been insufficient in quantity and quality, which was true. They replied that in another few weeks Sir Joseph Blaine would be finally disposed of, that they would then have full access to the Committee and that their information would be of the greatest possible value.' Duhamel looked at his watch once more and held it to his ear. 'In the meantime they mounted the Stock Exchange fraud.'

Although he felt Duhamel's piercing eye upon him, Stephen could not entirely conceal his emotion; his heart was beating so that he felt its pulsation strong in his throat, and then again he was most deeply shocked at his dull stupidity - the whole thing was so evident. He said, 'You seem preoccupied by the time.'

'Yes,' said Duhamel, shifting his chair nearer to the window. 'Of course, I am sorry that your friend was put to such distress, but apart from that, the objective observer must confess that the affair was neatly handled. You may say that given the exact knowledge of Captain Aubrey's movements and of his father's connexions, together with the possession of an agent as capable as Palmer, the thing was simple; but that would be shallow reasoning.

Maturin, you will not be offended if perhaps I run out in a few minutes and return somewhat later?'

'Never in life,' said Stephen.

'At one time I thought they had succeeded entirely, and although of course they could not make much money without betraying themselves, they did clear enough for their most pressing debts.'

'That was when Wray paid what he owed me,' reflected Stephen, his shame renewed.

'But that did not suffice,' said Duhamel, 'and they made two other proposals: the first, that some surprisingly large bills should be negotiated on the northern market, and the second, that you should be handed over at Lorient. The proposal about the bills was either declined or withdrawn. I am not sure which; and you were not delivered. Lucan was extremely angry - he had gone down to Brittany himself - and he cut off even the monthly grant. They are now in a very bad way and they have prepared what they assert is an unusually valuable report.' Once again Duhamel looked at his watch. He went on, 'Palmer told me about the Stock Exchange business in great detail when we were fishing in a stream not far from Hartwell. He was a man you would have liked, Maturin: he could make a kingfisher perch on his hand. He had all sorts of qualities. But that was the last time I ever saw him. A very large reward was offered - the chase became too hot and so they killed him, in case he should be discovered or betrayed. They did not ship him away; they killed him or had him killed. That I could not possibly forgive. It was merely criminal.'