It was noon of the next day before Colonel Grant came to the house at
Monsanto from whose balcony floated the British flag, and before whose
portals stood a sentry in the tall bearskin of the grenadiers.
He found the adjutant alone in his room, and apologised for the delay in
responding to his invitation, pleading the urgency of other matters that
he had in hand.
“A wise enactment this of Lord Wellington’s,” was his next comment. “I
mean this prohibition of duelling. It may be resented by some of our
young bloods as an unwarrantable interference with their privileges, but
it will do a deal of good, and no one can deny that there is ample cause
for the measure.”
“It is on the subject of the cause that I’m wanting to consult you,”
said Sir Terence, offering his visitor a chair. “Have you been informed
of the details? No? Let me give you them.” And he related how the
dispatch bore signs of having been tampered with, and how the only
document of any real importance came to be missing from it.
Colonel Grant, sitting with his sabre across his knees, listened gravely
and thoughtfully. In the end he shrugged his shoulders, the keen hawk
face unmoved.
“The harm is done, and cannot very well be repaired. The information
obtained, no doubt on behalf of Massena, will by now be on its way to
him. Let us be thankful that the matter is not more grave, and thankful,
too, that you were able to supply a copy of Lord Liverpool’s figures.
What do you want me to do?”
“Take steps to discover the spy whose existence is disclosed by this
event.”
Colquhoun Grant smiled. “That is precisely the matter which has brought
me to Lisbon.”
“How?” Sir Terence was amazed. “You knew?”
“Oh, not that this had happened. But that the spy--or rather a network
of espionage--existed. We move here in a web of intrigue wrought by
ill-will, self-interest, vindictiveness and every form of malice. Whilst
the great bulk of the Portuguese people and their leaders are loyally
co-operating with us, there is a strong party opposing us which would
prefer even to see the French prevail. Of course you are aware of this.
The heart and brain of all this is--as I gather the Principal Souza.
Wellington has compelled his retirement from the Government. But if by
doing so he has restricted the man’s power for evil, he has certainly
increased his will for evil and his activities.
“You tell me that Garfield was cared for by the parish priest at
Penalva. There you are. Half the priesthood of the country are on
Souza’s side, since the Patriarch of Lisbon himself is little more than
a tool of Souza’s. What happens? This priest discovers that the British
officer whom he has so charitably put to bed in his house is the bearer
of dispatches. A loyal man would instantly have communicated with
Marshal Beresford at Thomar. This fellow, instead, advises the
intriguers in Lisbon. The captain’s dispatches are examined and the only
document of real value is abstracted. Of course it would be difficult
to establish a case against the priest, and it is always vexatious and
troublesome to have dealings with that class, as it generally means
trouble with the peasantry. But the case is as clear as crystal.”
“But the intriguers here? Can you not deal with them?”
“I have them under observation,” replied the colonel. “I already knew
the leaders, Souza’s lieutenants in Lisbon, and I can put my hand upon
them at any moment. If I have not already done so it is because I find
it more profitable to leave them at large; it is possible, indeed, that
I may never proceed to extremes against them. Conceive that they have
enabled me to seize La Fleche, the most dangerous, insidious and skilful
of all Napoleon’s agents. I found him at Redondo’s ball last week in the
uniform of a Portuguese major, and through him I was able to track down
Souza’s chief instrument--I discovered them closeted with him in one of
the card-rooms.”
“And you didn’t arrest them?”
“Arrest them! I apologised for my intrusion, and withdrew. La Fleche
took his leave of them. He was to have left Lisbon at dawn equipped with
a passport countersigned by yourself, my dear adjutant.”
“What’s that?”
“A passport for Major Vieira of the Portuguese Cacadores. Do you
remember it?”
“Major Vieira!” Sir Terence frowned thoughtfully. Suddenly he
recollected. “But that was countersigned by me at the request of Count
Samoval, who represented himself a personal friend of the major’s.”
“So indeed he is. But the major in question was La Fleche nevertheless.”
“And Samoval knew this?”
Sir Terence was incredulous.
Colonel Grant did not immediately answer the question. He preferred to
continue his narrative. “That night I had the false major arrested very
quietly. I have caused him to disappear for the present. His Lisbon
friends believe him to be on his way to Massena with the information
they no doubt supplied him. Massena awaits his return at Salamanca, and
will continue to wait. Thus when he fails to be seen or heard of there
will be a good deal of mystification on all sides, which is the proper
state of mind in which to place your opponents. Lord Liverpool’s
figures, let me add, were not among the interesting notes found upon
him--possibly because at that date they had not yet been obtained.”
“And you say that Samoval was aware of the man’s real identity?”
insisted Sir Terence, still incredulous. “Aware of it?” Colonel Grant
laughed shortly. “Samoval is Souza’s principal agent--the most dangerous
man in Lisbon and the most subtle. His sympathies are French through and
through.”
Sir Terence stared at him in frank amazement, in utter unbelief. “Oh,
impossible!” he ejaculated at last.
“I saw Samoval for the first time,” said Colonel Grant by way of answer,
“in Oporto at the time of Soult’s occupation. He did not call himself
Samoval just then, any more than I called myself Colquhoun Grant. He was
very active there in the French interest; I should indeed be more precise
and say in Bonaparte’s interest, for he was the man instrumental in
disclosing to Soult the Bourbon conspiracy which was undermining the
marshal’s army. You do not know, perhaps, that French sympathy runs in
Samoval’s family. You may not be aware that the Portuguese Marquis of
Alorna, who holds a command in the Emperor’s army, and is at present
with Massena at Salamanca, is Samoval’s cousin.”
“But,” faltered Sir Terence, “Count Samoval has been a regular visitor
here for the past three months.”
“So I understand,” said Grant coolly. “If I had known of it before I
should have warned you. But, as you are aware, I have been in Spain on
other business. You realise the danger of having such a man about the
place. Scraps of information--”
“Oh, as to that,” Sir Terence interrupted, “I can assure you that none
have fallen from my official table.”
“Never be too sure, Sir Terence. Matters here must ever be under
discussion. There are your secretaries and the ladies--and Samoval has a
great way with the women. What they know you may wager that he knows.”
“They know nothing.”
“That is a great deal to say. Little odds and ends now; a hint at one
time; a word dropped at another; these things picked up naturally by
feminine curiosity and retailed thoughtlessly under Samoval’s charming
suasion and display of Britannic sympathies. And Samoval has the devil’s
own talent for bringing together the pieces of a puzzle. Take the lines
now: you may have parted with no details. But mention of them will
surely have been made in this household. However,” he broke off
abruptly, “that is all past and done with. I am as sure as you are that
any real indiscretions in this household are unimaginable, and so we may
be confident that no harm has yet been done. But you will gather from
what I have now told you that Samoval’s visits here are not a mere
social waste of time. That he comes, acquires familiarity and makes
himself the friend of the family with a very definite aim in view.”
“He does not come again,” said Sir Terence, rising.
“That is more than I should have ventured to suggest. But it is a very
wise resolve. It will need tact to carry it out, for Samoval is a man to
be handled carefully.”
“I’ll handle him carefully, devil a fear,” said Sir Terence. “You can
depend upon my tact.”
Colonel Grant rose. “In this matter of Penalva, I will consider further.
But I do not think there is anything to be done now. The main thing is
to stop up the outlets through which information reaches the French, and
that is my chief concern. How is the stripping of the country proceeding
now?”
“It was more active immediately after Souza left the Government. But the
last reports announce a slackening again.”
“They are at work in that, too, you see. Souza will not slumber while
there’s vengeance and self-interest to keep him awake.” And he held out
his hand to take his leave.
“You’ll stay to luncheon?” said Sir Terence. “It is about to be served.”
“You are very kind, Sir Terence.”
They descended, to find luncheon served already in the open under the
trellis vine, and the party consisted of Lady O’Moy, Miss Armytage,
Captain Tremayne, Major Carruthers, and Count Samoval, of whose presence
this was the adjutant’s first intimation.
As a matter of fact the Count had been at Monsanto for the past hour,
the first half of which he had spent most agreeably on the terrace
with the ladies. He had spoken so eulogistically of the genius of Lord
Wellington and the valour of the British soldier, and, particularly-of
the Irish soldier, that even Sylvia’s instinctive distrust and dislike
of him had been lulled a little for the moment.
“And they must prevail,” he had exclaimed in a glow of enthusiasm, his
dark eyes flashing. “It is inconceivable that they should ever yield
to the French, although the odds of numbers may lie so heavily against
them.”
“Are the odds of numbers so heavy?” said Lady O’Moy in surprise, opening
wide those almost childish eyes of hers.
“Alas! anything from three to five to one. Ah, but why should we despond
on that account?” And his voice vibrated with renewed confidence. “The
country is a difficult one, easy to defend, and Lord Wellington’s
genius will have made the best of it. There are, for example, the
fortifications at Torres Vedras.”
“Ah yes! I have heard of them. Tell me about them, Count.”
“Tell you about them, dear lady? Shall I carry perfumes to the rose?
What can I tell you that you do not know so much better than myself?”
“Indeed, I know nothing. Sir Terence is ridiculously secretive,” she
assured him, with a little frown of petulance. She realised that her
husband did not treat her as an intelligent being to be consulted upon
these matters. She was his wife, and he had no right to keep secrets
from her. In fact she said so.
“Indeed no,” Samoval agreed. “And I find it hard to credit that it
should be so.”
“Then you forget,” said Sylvia, “that these secrets are not Sir
Terence’s own. They are the secrets of his office.”
“Perhaps so,” said the unabashed Samoval. “But if I were Sir Terence
I should desire above all to allay my wife’s natural anxiety. For I am
sure you must be anxious, dear Lady O’Moy.”’
“Naturally,” she agreed, whose anxieties never transcended the fit of
her gowns or the suitability of a coiffure. “But Terence is like that.”
“Incredible!” the Count protested, and raised his dark eyes to heaven as
if invoking its punishment upon so unnatural a husband. “Do you tell me
that you have never so much as seen the plans of these fortifications?”
“The plans, Count!” She almost laughed.
“Ah!” he said. “I dare swear then that you do not even know of their
existence.” He was jocular now.
“I am sure that she does not,” said Sylvia, who instinctively felt that
the conversation was following an undesirable course.
“Then you are wrong,” she was assured. “I saw them once, a week ago, in
Sir Terence’s room.”
“Why, how would you know them if you saw them?” quoth Sylvia, seeking to
cover what might be an indiscretion.
“Because they bore the name: ‘Lines of Torres Vedras.’ I remember.”
“And this unsympathetic Sir Terence did not explain them to you?”
laughed Samoval.
“Indeed, he did not.”
“In fact, I could swear that he locked them away from you at once?” the
Count continued on a jocular note.
“Not at once. But he certainly locked them away soon after, and whilst I
was still there.”
“In your place, then,” said Samoval, ever on the same note of banter, “I
should have been tempted to steal the key.”
“Not so easily done,” she assured him. “It never leaves his person. He
wears it on a gold chain round his neck.”
“What, always?”
“Always, I assure you.”
“Too bad,” protested Samoval. “Too bad, indeed. What, then, should you
have done, Miss Armytage?”
It was difficult to imagine that he was drawing information from them,
so bantering and frivolous was his manner; more difficult still to
conceive that he had obtained any. Yet you will observe that he had been
placed in possession of two facts: that the plans of the lines of Torres
Vedras were kept locked up in Sir Terence’s own room--in the strong-box,
no doubt--and that Sir Terence always carried the key on a gold chain
worn round his neck.
Miss Armytage laughed. “Whatever I might do, I should not be guilty of
prying into matters that my husband kept hidden.”
“Then you admit a husband’s right to keep matters hidden from his wife?”
“Why not?”
“Madam,” Samoval bowed to her, “your future husband is to be envied on
yet another count.”
And thus the conversation drifted, Samoval conceiving that he had
obtained all the information of which Lady O’Moy was possessed, and
satisfied that he had obtained all that for the moment he required.
How to proceed now was a more difficult matter, to be very seriously
considered--how to obtain from Sir Terence the key in question, and
reach the plans so essential to Marshal Massena.
He was at table with them, as you know, when Sir Terence and Colonel
Grant arrived. He and the colonel were presented to each other, and
bowed with a gravity quite cordial on the part of Samoval, who was by
far the more subtle dissembler of the two. Each knew the other perfectly
for what he was; yet each was in complete ignorance of the extent of the
other’s knowledge of himself; and certainly neither betrayed anything by
his manner.
At table the conversation was led naturally enough by Tremayne to
Wellington’s general order against duelling. This was inevitable when
you consider that it was a topic of conversation that morning at every
table to which British officers sat down. Tremayne spoke of the measure
in terms of warm commendation, thereby provoking a sharp disagreement
from Samoval. The deep and almost instinctive hostility between these
two men, which had often been revealed in momentary flashes, was such
that it must invariably lead them to take opposing sides in any matter
admitting of contention.
“In my opinion it is a most arbitrary and degrading enactment,” said
Samoval. “I say so without hesitation, notwithstanding my profound
admiration and respect for Lord Wellington and all his measures.”
“Degrading?” echoed Grant, looking across at him. “In what can it be
degrading, Count?”
“In that it reduces a gentleman to the level of the clod,” was the
prompt answer. “A gentleman must have his quarrels, however sweet his
disposition, and a means must be afforded him of settling them.”
“Ye can always thrash an impudent fellow,” opined the adjutant.
“Thrash?” echoed Samoval. His sensitive lip curled in disdain. “To use
your hands upon a man!” He shuddered in sheer disgust. “To one of
my temperament it would be impossible, and men of my temperament are
plentiful, I think.”
“But if you were thrashed yourself?” Tremayne asked him, and the light
in his grey eyes almost hinted at a dark desire to be himself the
executioner.
Samoval’s dark, handsome eyes considered the captain steadily. “To be
thrashed myself?” he questioned. “My dear Captain, the idea of having
hands laid upon me, soiling me, brutalising me, is so nauseating, so
repugnant, that I assure you I should not hesitate to shoot the man who
did it just as I should shoot any other wild beast that attacked me.
Indeed the two instances are exactly parallel, and my country’s courts
would uphold in such a case the justice of my conduct.”
“Then you may thank God,” said O’Moy, “that you are not under British
jurisdiction.”
“I do,” snapped Samoval, to make an instant recovery: “at least so far
as the matter is concerned.” And he elaborated: “I assure you, sirs, it
will be an evil day for the nobility of any country when its Government
enacts against the satisfaction that one gentleman has the right to
demand from another who offends him.”
“Isn’t the conversation rather too bloodthirsty for a luncheon-table?”
wondered Lady O’Moy. And tactlessly she added, thinking with flattery
to mollify Samoval and cool his obvious heat: “You are yourself such a
famous swordsman, Count.”
And then Tremayne’s dislike of the man betrayed him into his deplorable
phrase.
“At the present time Portugal is in urgent need of her famous swordsmen
to go against the French and not to increase the disorders at home.”
A silence complete and ominous followed the rash words, and Samoval,
white to the lips, pondered the imperturbable captain with a baleful
eye.
“I think,” he said at last, speaking slowly and softly, and picking
his words with care, “I think that is innuendo. I should be relieved,
Captain Tremayne, to hear you say that it is not.”
Tremayne was prompt to give him the assurance. “No innuendo at all. A
plain statement of fact.”
“The innuendo I suggested lay in the application of the phrase. Do you
make it personal to myself?”
“Of course not,” said Sir Terence, cutting in and speaking sharply.
“What an assumption!”
“I am asking Captain Tremayne,” the Count insisted, with grim firmness,
notwithstanding his deferential smile to Sir Terence.
“I spoke quite generally, sir,” Tremayne assured him, partly under the
suasion of Sir Terence’s interposition, partly out of consideration for
the ladies, who were looking scared. “Of course, if you choose to take
it to yourself, sir, that is a matter for your own discretion. I think,”
he added, also with a smile, “that the ladies find the topic tiresome.”
“Perhaps we may have the pleasure of continuing it when they are no
longer present.”
“Oh, as you please,” was the indifferent answer. “Carruthers, may I
trouble you to pass the salt? Lady O’Callaghan was complaining the other
night of the abuse of salt in Portuguese cookery. It is an abuse I have
never yet detected.”
“I can’t conceive Lady O’Callaghan complaining of too much salt in
anything, begad,” quoth O’Moy, with a laugh. “If you had heard the story
she told me about--”
“Terence, my dear!” his wife checked him, her fine brows raised, her
stare frigid.
“Faith, we go from bad to worse,” said Carruthers. “Will you try to
improve the tone of the conversation, Miss Armytage? It stands in urgent
need of it.”
With a general laugh, breaking the ice of the restraint that was in
danger of settling about the table, a semblance of ease was restored,
and this was maintained until the end of the repast. At last the ladies
rose, and, leaving the men at table, they sauntered off towards the
terrace. But under the archway Sylvia checked her cousin.
“Una,” she said gravely, “you had better call Captain Tremayne and take
him away for the present.”
Una’s eyes opened wide. “Why?” she inquired.
Miss Armytage was almost impatient with her. “Didn’t you see? Resentment
is only slumbering between those men. It will break out again now that
we have left them unless you can get Captain Tremayne away.”
Una continued to look at her cousin, and then, her mind fastening ever
upon the trivial to the exclusion of the important, her glance became
arch. “For whom is your concern? For Count Samoval or Ned?” she
inquired, and added with a laugh: “You needn’t answer me. It is Ned you
are afraid for.”
“I am certainly not afraid for him,” was the reply on a faint note of
indignation. She had reddened slightly. “But I should not like to see
Captain Tremayne or any other British officer embroiled in a duel.
You forget Lord Wellington’s order which they were discussing, and the
consequences of infringing it.”
Lady O’Moy became scared.
“You don’t imagine--”
Sylvia spoke quickly: “I am certain that unless you take Captain
Tremayne away, and at once, there will! be serious trouble.”
And now behold Lady O’Moy thrown into a state of alarm that bordered
upon terror. She had more reason than Sylvia could dream, more reason
she conceived than Sylvia herself, to wish to keep Captain Tremayne out
of trouble just at present. Instantly, agitatedly, she turned and called
to him.
“Ned!” floated her silvery voice across the enclosed garden. And again:
“Ned! I want you at once, please.”
Captain Tremayne rose. Grant was talking briskly at the time, his
intention being to cover Tremayne’s retreat, which he himself desired.
Count Samoval’s smouldering eyes were upon the captain, and full of
menace. But he could not be guilty of the rudeness of interrupting Grant
or of detaining Captain Tremayne when a lady called him.