'Oh yes,' she cried despairingly, and her tears ran fast again. Yes - they had him in prison - they would kill him if she did not succeed- she dared not tell them she had failed - they had been pressing her to move quickly - oh would not dear Dr Maturin be kind to her? - they would kill him otherwise.

'Nonsense,' said Stephen, standing up. 'They will do nothing of the kind. They have been deceiving you. Listen, have you any coffee in the kitchen?'

Over their pot of coffee and rather stale pieces of bread and olive oil the miserable story came out piece by piece: Charles Fielding's unfortunate position - his letters - her collecting of information (nothing wicked: only to do with marine insurance: but confidential) - the sudden much graver mission, on which her husband's life depended - they told her that Dr Maturin had connexions in France with whom he corresponded in code - it was all concerned with finance and perhaps smuggling - she was to win his confidence and obtain the addresses and the codes. Yes, she knew the name of the man who had brought her Charles's last letter: he was Paolo Moroni, a Venetian, and she had seen him from time to time in Valletta - she thought he was a merchant. But she neither knew the names nor the appearance of the other men who spoke to her. They changed: there were perhaps three or four of them. Sometimes she was sent for, and she could get into touch with them by leaving a paper with the time on it at a wine-merchant's house. She was always required to go to St Simon's, to the third confessional on the left, at a stated hour, there to give her information and to receive her letters if there were any; the man in the confessional did not pull back the little door like a priest but spoke through the lattice, so she never saw his face. There was one she did know, however, because she had seen him talking with Moroni, a man who spoke good but not quite perfect Italian with a strong Neapolitan accent. He was often in the confessional. Yes, she thought he knew that she knew him. Certainly she could describe him, but she never would while Charles was in their hands: it might be unlucky. She would never do anything that might do Charles any harm. She was worried about his letters, however; they had been strange these last weeks, as though he were unwell, or unhappy. What did Dr Maturin think? There was nothing private- they had to be sent unsealed - and she did not mind showing them.

Mr Fielding wrote a clear strong hand, and his style was equally straightforward; although his letters were necessarily discreet they gave a sense of powerful, direct, uncomplicated affection; Stephen had not read two before he felt a liking for him. But as Laura had said, the more recent were shorter, and in spite of the fact that they used many of the same phrases and expressions they seemed laboured. Could he be writing against his will, from dictation? Or is it not himself at all? wondered Stephen. If he has died, or if they have killed him, Laura Fielding's life will not be worth a Brummagem groat, once she knows it for a fact. No chief of intelligence could let her run about Malta, knowing what she knows, without he has a very strong hold over her; and a woman is so easy to kill without a hidden motive being suspected, since it can always be coupled with a rape. Aloud he said, 'Clearly, I do not know him as you know him, but a cold or a slight indisposition or a lowness of spirits could answer for all this and more.'

'I am so happy you think so,' she said. 'I am sure you are right: a cold, or a slight indisposition.'

'But attend to me now,' he said after a long pause. 'This Moroni and his friends have been led into the strangest mistake: I have nothing whatever to do with finance or smuggling or insurance by land or sea. I give you my sacred word of honour, I swear by the four Gospels and my hope of salvation that you might have searched my papers for ever without finding a smell of a code or an address in France.'

'Oh,' she said, and he knew that although his words were literally true, she had pierced through to their essential falsity and that she did not believe him.

'But, however,' he went on, 'I believe I know how this mistake has arisen. I have a friend whose occupation brings him into touch with confidential affairs; we have very often been seen together, and these men, or more probably their informants, have confounded us, taking the one for the other. Yet there is something so amiable about a lady's concern for her husband, and he a prisoner, that I am persuaded my friend will furnish us with what is needed to satisfy Moroni. I do not say that it will really be useful to Moroni, but that it will satisfy him in the matter of his own penetration and of your success. It will satisfy him that I am your lover. I will come here when you are alone; you will come to my rooms, perhaps wearing your maid's faldetta; and you will present the documents as the fruit of your labours.'

There was the light of dawn in the little courtyard as he took his leave, but his mind was so busy that he did not notice it; nor did he notice the change in the wind. 'If Wray is the man I think he is, all this may be unnecessary,' he reflected, walking along the dark corridor with Graham's shoes in his hand. 'But if not, or if this is a different, quite unconnected organization, how far can I go without compromising Laura Fielding?' A thousand delightful forms of very damaging false information to be conveyed through her had occurred to him even before he reached the outer door, and as he opened it the tired watcher on the other side of the street saw him smiling in the early light. 'Lucky, lecherous dog,' said the watcher, pulling his hat over his eyes: at the same moment the air shook with the first of the guns saluting the arrival of the Commander-in-Chief, and a thousand pigeons flew up into the pure pale-blue sky.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jack Aubrey was not of a vindictive nature and he had so nearly forgiven Stephen his good fortune by breakfast-time that when the people of the hotel told him Dr Maturin could not be roused although a messenger had come to summon him to the Commander-in-Chief's meeting he sprang to his feet and ran up the stairs to put him in mind of his duty. No answer to his knock or hail. 'La, the poor gentleman is dead,' cried the chambermaid. 'He has cut his throat, like number seventeen: I can't bear it: I shall run down. Oh, oh!'

'Give me your pass-key first,' said Jack; and walking through the door he called out 'Rouse and bitt, out or down, show a leg there,' and when this brought no response he seized the sleeper and shook him hard. Stephen opened his red-rimmed eyes, struggled up through the fog of sleeping-pills and gave his friend a look of pure hatred: Jack had plucked him from a brilliantly vivid dream in which Mrs Fielding felt a flame of equal warmth with his own. He took the wax balls from his ears and said 'What's o'clock?' in a thick, stupid voice.

'Half past three, and a freezing drizzly night," said Jack, drawing the curtain, throwing back the shutters and letting in a blaze of sun. 'Come now, this will never do.'

'What's afoot, sir?' asked Bonden in the doorway. He and Killick had arrived in the kitchen as the chambermaid came down with her tale of blood flowing under the door, just like number seventeen all over again and the poor gentleman's head almost off of his body so desperate was the stroke, no doubt, and a mort of scrubbing to be done.

'The Doctor must be at the palace in seven minutes, washed, shaved, and in his number one uniform,' said Captain Aubrey.

In an angry whine Stephen said that his presence was not necessary, that the meeting, such as it was, would go along perfectly well without him, and that the note from the flagship should be construed not as an order but as a mere invitation, to be accepted or not according to the . . . Jack walked out during these remarks, however, and as neither mercy nor reason was to be expected from Bonden or Killick Dr Maturin said no more until he was installed in a chair in the crowded council-room, very shortly before the arrival of the great man. His face was unusually pink from friction, his uniform and even his shoes were all they should be, and his wig was set rigidly square on his head; but his eyes were still bleary from want of sleep and he gave his neighbour Graham little more than an animal grunt by way of good day. This did not deter Graham for a moment: the words came fairly pouring from him as he hissed in Stephen's ear 'Do you know what they have done to me? They have ruined my dinner. I must not go on the returning Dromedary on Thursday. No, sir. I must go aboard the Sylph today at half-past twelve precisely. Ruined, ruined, my dinner is quite ruined, and it is all the doing of that long-eared looby Figgins Pocock. There he sits, -the illiterate, ill-deedy gowk, next to the Admiral's secretary. Have you ever seen such a foul fa'd face?'