Hoare and the missing Mids (captain bartholomew hoare) Page 2

  "Easily, sir. It still wants three hours before we dine. That would give you an hour for each interview, Mr. Hoare. Will that suffice?"

  "It should be ample, sir," Hoare whispered.

  With that and Davison's firmly expressed wishes for his mids' early, safe return, the two officers took their leave. As Hoare departed, he clearly heard Davison sigh and return to his paper slavery.

  "You are welcome to dine with Hebe's officers, Mr. Hoare," Edwardes said.

  "Thank you, sir," Hoare replied, "but another time perhaps. After your mids are home again, do you think? For now, there is not a moment to lose."

  Mr. Galloway was at liberty just then, so he was the first to appear before Hoare. Hoare was enthroned at the end of the long wardroom table in the mess president's armchair. Galloway was a standard marine officer, his red face clashing with the scarlet of his coatee and the crimson of his officer's sash. As usual among marines, he had a rather stupid look.

  "Seen you before, sir, I think," Galloway said.

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. In Barsack's fencing shop."

  By this the lobster meant the salon d'escrime of Hoare's good friend and instructor the Vicomte Marc-Antoine de Chatillon de Barsac, emigre aristocrat. For his own part, Hoare could not have distinguished Mr. Galloway from any of the other lobsters who thronged the salon, but he smiled politely just the same.

  "Of course," he whispered. "I remember you well. The saber's your weapon, as I recall." A safe bet; like cavalrymen, marines were notorious slashers.

  Mr. Galloway preened, and his face turned a deeper red with pleasure. "Tell me how I can serve you, sir," he said.

  Hoare now asked him to recount the search he and his men had made for their missing shipmates.

  The narrative lacked both surprise and interest.

  "The lads have disappeared from the face of the earth," Mr. Galloway concluded. "If they were still to be found, you may be sure my good men would have found 'em."

  "I'm sure your confidence is justified," Hoare whispered smoothly, and released the marine to go about his normal affairs.

  Millar, the coxswain, was-as far as Hoare could tell at present-the last to have seen the missing midshipmen. He had nothing to add to the simple tale he had told before. The lads had tumbled ashore from the liberty boat, larking and pushing each other about as usual, and shoved off directly into the town. "Merry as grigs, like I told the capting, sir." When queried about the bringer of the message, all Millar could tell Hoare was that it was a boy, a mudlark judging from his filthy state. He had darted up to the coxswain, thrust the note into his hand without a word, and disappeared. Millar thought it had been in the same direction the mids had taken, but he could not be sure.

  Was it important? he asked anxiously. Since Hoare was sure it was not, he so informed Millar and let him go. To follow that trail would be futile, he suspected, but he must try.

  Hoare had greater hopes of getting some enlightenment from the frigate's sole remaining young gentleman. Perhaps, he thought, little Steptoe had overheard his seniors laying their plans for their foul adolescent foray into the fleshpots of Portsmouth. Maybe more than that.

  Having been a boy himself once, long long ago, Hoare could easily imagine that the three, being as thin in the pocket as mids always seemed to be-and most commissioned officers, too, he reminded himselfhad connived in a false kidnaping scheme. They would collect the ransoms themselves and, when they had squandered the gold on drinking and drabbing, would turn up on the Hard, waiting to be received by their anxious families and their outraged captain. Their misbegotten capers would have left them looking most distressed, a condition they would naturally attribute to their captors' mistreatment.

  Hoare had no hard evidence of this sort of mischief, he admitted to himself. However, two points supported the notion. The first was the unusual pattern of misspelling that the message had displayed. While no expert, he felt confident that no scribe so illiterate as to write "uncel" and "posesin" would be able to master the far more complex words "receipt' and "instructions." He had trouble with "receipt" himself.

  Second, he was even more confident that a professional kidnapper would have demanded far more than two thousand two hundred fifty pounds for three well-connected young aristocrats-two thousand for the job lot. The ransom note smelled false. It could, in fact, have been concocted by a clever midshipman. In any case, as soon as he was through in Hebe for the time being, he must follow up this lead.

  He summoned little Steptoe and sat him down beside him at the wardroom table.

  Normally, Hoare thought, Steptoe would be a confident lad, as up to any challenge as the next and not over-impressed by authority. Today, however, he looked uneasy. Under Hoare's grave scrutiny, he twisted about in his seat, his eyes looking for anywhere to rest except the face of his interlocutor. In short, Steptoe looked guilty.

  But of what? The conscience of every midshipman Hoare had ever known, including a certain Midshipman Bartholomew Hoare, had to be very accommodating if it were to handle its owner's manifold sins and wickednesses without distending until it burst, perished, and rotted in the young gentleman's soul, or wherever else mids stowed their consciences.

  So Hoare played Mr. Steptoe as if he were a timid trout and Bartholomew Hoare a hungry poacher, first by inquiring about his present berth in Hebe and then about his family.

  Hebe was the boy's first ship, so he was immensely proud of her. From his account, her hands were hearts of oak to a man, her captain one of Nature's noblemen, her officers gallant yet kind, his fellow-midshipmen good fellows all, up to all kinds of larks. As to his brief previous life, it had been unexceptional. He was the next-to-last of the large brood of Steptoes, his father an impecunious baronet and his mother a lady-in-waiting at Windsor. He missed his baby sister and his goat. But as a younger son many times over, "I've my way to make in the world," as he put it with a wisdom beyond his years.

  Hoare returned the conversation to the matter of "larks." He was disappointed, though not surprised, to find that these were the ordinary sort of merry prank common on shipboard-greasing the soles of Harcourt's ("Lovey's") shoes so that on donning them the first thing he did was slip and fall on his arse; the time, when Steptoe had newly reported aboard, when he was sent hither and yon in search of the key to the keelson; other tricks old as Neptune but forever new. Not so much as a hint of a cabal to raise illicit money from the mids' elders. In desperation Hoare asked the question direct, only to see his victim first look shocked, then burst into a fit of the giggles.

  "That would have been a lark!" Steptoe said when he had regained control of himself.

  "Keep the idea to yourself, lad," Hoare said upon dismissing him to his duties. Himself, he had nothing more to do aboard Hebe just now, so he paid his respects to the quarterdeck and boarded Devastation for the short, hard beat in the teeth of the breeze into the Inner Camber where he kept her.

  Immediately upon landing and securing his yacht, he returned to Admiralty House. Here he ran hard aground, into pandemonium.

  Not only Delancey but Patterson as well, the admiral's private clerk, awaited him. Patterson was literally wringing his hands; Hoare was certain that, had not Delancey's pride precluded it, his hands too would have been wringing.

  "There you are, Hoare!" Delancey's cry of accusation carried more than a hint of relief. "Where the hell have you been?"

  "Right where you told me the admiral wanted me to go," Hoare whispered. "Aboard Hebe. Now, pray excuse me."

  He left the others to wring their hands into rags if they so chose and dodged past them and up the stairs to the admiral's sanctum. It was here that he found the real pandemonium.

  Sir George's marine sentry stood impassive, his bayoneted musket at the charge, his face flat and eyes to the front, under siege by several important-looking civilians. All were clad in the latest Bond Street fashion, all were shouting at the imperturbable lobster. Two of the noisy gentlemen were flourishing pieces of paper in the se
ntry's unblinking face. These personages, Hoare guessed immediately, were the missing mids' anxious friends and relations, come to demand their scions' immediate rescue.

  Hoare eeled his way through the crowd, which after all numbered only three or four, and slipped into his admiral's private quarters.

  "There you are, Hoare!"

  Sir George's outcry was identical with the one his subordinate had uttered below. "Where the hell have you been?"

  "Aboard Hebe, sir," Hoare whispered, glad for once that he could give only the soft answer that turneth away wrath. "I brought the ransom note back with me."

  "Like hell you did, sir. The ransom notes are right here-and there are at least three of them, sir, I'll have you know, not just one. They're outside this very office being waved in the face of my poor marine. I'll tell you this, sir: if this hullabaloo isn't brought to a stop forthwith, I'll summon the guard detachment and have the whole bunch of 'em thrown into irons, Members of Parliament, peers of the realm, and all."

  Under his thick shock of white, Brutus-cut hair, Sir George's face was as red as his lobster's coat. Rear Admiral Sir George Hardcastle had the reputation of being a hard and a merciless man, and he gloried in it. But now was not the time for rough behavior toward his visitors if they were as exalted as they seemed to be and if the admiral wished to avoid being thrown aback himself.

  Hoare must calm the waters, he saw.

  "Not yet, sir, I beg," he whispered. "First let me see what I can do."

  He returned to the doorway, set the sentry gently to one side, and surveyed the noisy little mob. Seeing that Patterson and Delancey had returned and were hovering on the outskirts, he signaled them and instructed Delancey in his usual whisper to take himself to The Three Suns inn, where he was to have accommodation set aside that would be suitable to members of the ton. Patterson was to follow, escorting the friends and relations. When Delancey began to protest his ignominious assignment, Hoare faced him down.

  "Now, sir! Go!"

  Delancey went.

  Thereupon Hoare put fingers to his mouth and produced a piercingly shrill whistle. It was the first really loud noise he had learned to emit, soon after being made mute, and invariably everyone within earshot of it froze in astonishment. So it was now. The hubbub ceased.

  Hoare knew that the silence would be brief. Important persons like these would not be cowed by a mere noise-even a really loud one — for more than a few startled seconds. He used the time to pass his explanatory cards to the assemblage.

  These were two middle-aged bucks dressed to the nines, whom he took to be the relatives of Harcourt and Buchanan and who appeared as interested in each other's attire as they were in the business that had brought them here; a purple man, portly as a pudding, who could only be the nabob Lord Many-mead; some family Mend; and a firm-looking man with the air of a former naval person, who was surely Dacres, brother of Captain Dacres, RN, of Guerriere.

  Hoare cleared his throat-almost the only natural sound that the marksman in Eole had left to him.

  "Ha-h'm. If I may have your attention, gentlemen: I understand that you are all come to Portsmouth in connection with the disappearance of Hebe's three midshipmen. I am the officer charged with obtaining their return, as safe and unharmed as circumstances permit."

  The hubbub renewed itself. Hoare grasped only snatches of the visitors' remarks. They were all in the sharp-voiced tones of persons who were used to instant compliance with their slightest whims.

  "… Outrageous… unconscionable negligence… Parliament

  …"

  "Mr. Patterson here will escort you all to The Three Sims, where most of you have undoubtedly put up. There are rooms there that are more suitable for our meeting than this one, and they offer a very fine port. Or brandy if you prefer spirits. I shall join you in a few minutes' time.

  "Meanwhile, I take it that each of you received the same message. If you, sir, would be so kind as to leave your copy in my hands, I would be greatly obliged."

  He looked pointedly at the man he presumed to be Dacres, since as a likely former naval person he would at least have obeyed orders from time to time in the past. Prom their looks, the others had probably never even heard an order since they were three, let alone obeyed one.

  Dacres, if it were he, complied.

  "It is like the others?" Hoare inquired.

  "Identical, sir," was the answer.

  "If you will permit me to lead the way, gentlemen," Patterson said, and started down the stairs, looking over his shoulder at them as he went. The move was almost fatal, for he saved himself from falling down the flight only by catching the upper newel post. He recovered his balance and his equanimity instantly, however, and the troop followed him like a brood of gorgeously feathered ducklings.

  Left to himself, Hoare hastened to peruse the new ransom note.

  He remembered quite vividly the note Captain Davison had received. This one was totally different. In the first place, it was written in a literate, even clerkly hand, almost a copperplate. Second, it employed a style that Dean Swift of Gulliver fame would have found difficult to equal.

  The letter bore neither date nor — as was only natural under the circumstances-place of origin.

  Sir (Hoare read):

  The organization I have the honor to represent has taken your son, and two other young gentlemen of like lineage, into protective custody.

  We are as aware as you must be yourself of the legislation which is about to be brought up in Parliament, namely a Home Rule Bill under the terms of which the oppressed people of Ireland will be granted home rule. To wit: self-government under the Crown; full independence, that is, with respect to all matters of faith and law, excepting only issues of foreign relations.

  Knowing and respecting your prominence as a leader of your nation (although not of ours), and your reputation as a man of honor, we demand that you bring your influence to bear, indirectly as well as directly, to accomplish not only the passage of the Home Rule Bill but the Royal Assent to its being declared law, and the autonomous Commonwealth of Ireland brought into its long-awaited being.

  Upon proclamation of this new state of affairs on the steps of Dublin Castle (or another venue of equal or greater prominence), your son will be returned, unharmed, to the arms of his loving family. Failing such proclamation within the next forty-five days, you will never again see your son alive.

  We anticipate an early and mutually satisfactory resolution of this affair, and wish you well.

  For the Committee for Home Rule in Erin,

  Brian Boru

  Erin go Bragh!!

  Unlike the other demand, this document rang true. How had it reached its recipients so quickly? The nearest relative must have been in Bath, the others in London or on their estates. The Committee for Home Rule in Erin must have had a member waiting near every one of them ready to deliver the messages, all of them at once.

  Hoare was now ready to stake his career-such as it was-that the earlier demand was spurious. It might be the product of a conspirator in search of a few pounds on the side; Hoare would not put such a step past the kind of two-faced Paddy who would be a companion of "Brian Boru" on the Committee for Home Rule in Erin.

  He was tempted to appeal to Admiral Hardcastle for a full-dress search party. He resisted the temptation. Where would he have them look? "Somewhere within a two-day journey by guarded coach or wagon" left an area of suspicion that was far too large to manage.

  Moreover, as likely as not, someone on the admiral's staff would be working secretly for the Irishmen and blow the gaff. Finally, and selfishly, another man would lead the rescue expedition, were it to be formed under Admiral Hardcastle's auspices. The admiral might have some respect for Hoare but not enough respect to put him, a voiceless man, in command of what would have to be a regiment. The credit would not accrue to Bartholomew Hoare.

  No, he must find a way of narrowing the area of search before he unleashed the resources at the admiral's disposal-or de
vised another, less cumbersome means of rescuing the missing mids. Which reminded him; the earlier ransom note still existed, and there was a chance-however faint-that its writer could be found. If so, he might be a lead to the Committee.

  He must settle that matter once and for all. As soon as he had appeased the band of notables who would be awaiting him, teeth gnashing, at The Three Suns, he must call on Jom York.

  Jom York generally occupied an upper room of The Bunch of Grapes, the favorite haunt in Portsmouth of the more successful folk who lived on the other side of the law. In its peaceful, more or less tidy pub-he bar, one might find a middleaged highwayman, an upstairs man of standing, and an experienced bawd gathered round the same table doing business, or simply exchanging priceless gossip. Mr. Greenleaf, the proprietor, welcomed very few members of the "bowmon cheat"-the honest citizens of this world; Hoare was one of them.

  York was king of the mudlarks, those myriad children of both sexes who gained a precarious though slimy living by screening likely parts of Portsmouth harbor's tidal mud. Their findings ranged from beef bones (which were sold for soup) to dead dogs and rats (which, rumor claimed, went to the same destination) to bits of ironmongery, an occasional coin or other valuable, and, once in a while, human corpses in various states of disrepair.

  York was also an old friend of Hoare's and an occasional ally, the same as the more upright members of the smuggling community on England's southern coast. As long as such gentry did not imperil the safety of the realm, Hoare reasoned, they had a right to earn a more or less respectable living without his interference.

  Hoare's purpose tonight was to find out which of Jom York's minions had delivered the note to Millar, the coxswain. York would know, he was sure, but what he, Hoare, could expect from the knowledge remained uncertain.

  York promised to grill his minions-in-chief and assured Hoare that he would have the mudlark in question brought before Hoare within twenty-four hours.

  "Now, Mr. 'Oare," he said ingratiatingly, "I 'ave summat I fink will be of int'rest to ye. Wait a bit, if ye will, an' 'ave a spot of Blue Ruin while ye waits."