Treason's Harbour Read Free

for so complex an effect as a state of mind. Is it conceivable that mere absence of tobacco alone could make me testy? No, no: in psychology as in history we must look for multiple causality. I shall smoke a small cigar, or part of a small cigar, out of compliment to you; but you will see that the difference, if it exists at all, is very slight. Indeed, the springs of mood are wonderfully obscure, and sometimes I am astonished at what I find welling up from them - at the thoughts and attitudes that present themselves, fully formed, before the mental eye.'
    It was quite true. The John Dory and the yearning for tobacco were not enough to account for Maturin's ill-temper, which in any case had lasted for some days, surprising him as he woke each morning. As he pondered it suddenly occured to him that at least one of the many reasons was the fact that he was sexually starved and that recently his amorous propensities had been stirred. 'The bull, confined, grows vicious,' he observed to himself, drawing the grateful smoke deep into his lungs: but that was not a full explanation, by any means. He moved out into the sun, to the leeward side of the arbour, so that he should not fumigate Professor Graham; and there, blinking in the strong light, he turned the matter over in his mind.
    His move brought him into sight from the Apothecary's Tower, a tall, severe building with an incongruous clock in its forehead. Its gaunt, unfurnished topmost room had not been occupied since the time of the Knights; the floor was coated with soft grey dust and bat-dung, and in the dim rafters high overhead the bats themselves could be heard moving about, while all the time the clock ticked away the seconds in a deep, resonating tone. It was a cheerless, inimical room, yet it provided watchers with a fine view of the Baracca, of Searle's hotel and of its courtyard, though not, obviously, of its covered bowers. 'There is one of them,' said the first watcher. 'He has just moved into the sun.'
    'The naval surgeon, smoking a cigar?' asked the second. 'He is a naval surgeon, and a very clever one, they say; but he is also an intelligence-agent. His name is Maturin, Stephen Maturin: Irish father, Spanish mother - can pass for either; or for French. He has done a great deal of damage; he has been the direct cause of many of our people's death and he was aboard the Ocean when your cousin was poisoned.' 'I shall deal with him tonight.'
    'You will do nothing of the kind,' said the first man sharply. His Italian had a strong southern accent, but he was in fact a French agent, one of the most important French agents in the Mediterranean, and the Maltese with him bowed submissively. Lesueur was the Frenchman's name and he was not unlike a somewhat older version of the Dr Maturin whose face he was now examining so attentively with a pocket spy-glass; a slight man of under the middle height, sallow, stooping, bookish, with an habitually closed, reserved expression, a man who would rarely draw attention but who having drawn it would give the impression of more than usual self-possession and intelligence: and Lesueur also had the easy authority of one with great sums of money at his command. He was dressed as a fairly prosperous merchant. 'No, no, Giuseppe,' he said more kindly, 'I commend your zeal, and I know you are an excellent hand with a knife; but this is not Naples, nor even Rome. His abrupt, unexplained disappearance would make a great deal of noise - the implications would be obvious, and it is absolutely essential that our existence should not be suspected. In any event there is little to be learnt from a corpse, whereas the living Dr Maturin may supply us with a great deal of information. I have set Mrs Fielding on him, and you and Luigi will watch his other meetings with the greatest care.'
    'Who is Mrs Fielding?'
    'A lady who works for us: she reports directly to me or Carlos.' He might have added that Laura Fielding was a Neapolitan married to a lieutenant