Neither was Woolvey sober, or perhaps it was belligerence, but he with more suspicion seconded this demand, and added, “And I tell you, Laurence, I expect some better answers. No, you shan’t go, unless you do want me to set up a shout. You cannot accost a man in the street in times like these and then claim it is all secret missions and go bounding away, you with this Chinaman in tow.”

“I beg your pardon,” Tharkay said, in his most frigidly aristocratic accents, and drew their stares. “I do not believe we have been introduced, gentlemen.”

“What the devil are you doing made up like a Chinaman, then,” Sutton-Leeds said, peering at Tharkay’s face, as if he expected to find some artifice responsible for his features.

In the brief distraction, Laurence caught Woolvey’s arm and said low and sharply, “Do not be a damned fool. If they take us in your house, they will take you up as a spy, do you understand, and if they care to be suspicious your wife also. Forget we were ever here and pay your servants to do the same: every moment we stay here, we put you all in danger, to no purpose.”

Woolvey wrenched himself free and returned, as coldly, “That you take me for a fool, I very well know, but I am not so simple as to take the word of a convicted traitor—yes, I have heard—that you are skulking loose in the streets, the day after Bonaparte marches in, and all for the benefit of the King.”

“Then I am lying and a turncoat for the French,” Laurence said impatiently, “and if you interfere with me likely I could have you all arrested: either way you had better let me go.”

“I am not a coward,” Woolvey said, “and if you are on some black business for that Corsican, I will stop you if I have to blow a hole in you to do it, yes, and go to prison for it too, damn you.”

“Gentlemen,” Edith said, breaking in to this charged atmosphere, “I beg you go into the sitting room before you wake all the house,” and there was nothing to be done for it.

SUTTON-LEEDS WAS DISPOSED of by means of a substantial glass of brandy, which dose left him snoring in an armchair. The credit was Edith’s: they had scarcely gone into the room before she had come down again, hastily dressed, and taken the decanter around at once. But though Woolvey accepted his own glass automatically, he then looked at it and set it down, and said, “I will have coffee, my dear, if you please,” with determined mien, and waited for the cup with his arms folded across his chest.

Laurence looked at the clock: nearly eleven. While Bonaparte and so many of his entourage were engaged at the party, surely gave them their own best chance of success, and every minute was now doubly precious.

Tharkay caught his eye, and said low, “He has horses,” with a jerk of his head at Woolvey: a suggestion which Laurence did not in the least like. He saw no better alternative, but every feeling rebelled against putting his life, all their lives, in Woolvey’s hands, and he did not trust Woolvey’s servants not to listen.

They remained standing all in silence, except for the continuing low snuffles of Sutton-Leeds’s snoring. A maid brought the coffee service, and took a long while arranging it on the table, covertly glancing up at them all. They made an absurd gathering: Woolvey in his evening-dress; Edith in a soft high-waisted morning gown of clear lawn, without stays: she must have snatched it from the closet and put it on alone. Tharkay and himself, in their rough workman’s clothes, smudged with dirt and stinking, no doubt, of cattle and of the docks.

“Thank you, Martha,” Edith said at last, “I will pour,” and bent over the table when the maid had gone. She gave them cups, or Woolvey and Laurence; she hesitated a moment, and then finally poured another for Tharkay.

Tharkay smiled with a faint twist at her doubtful gesture towards him. “Thank you,” he said, and drank the coffee quickly; then setting down the cup he went to the door and opened it again. The maid and footman lingering outside made shift to vanish quickly. Tharkay glanced back at Laurence and, meaningfully, at the clock, then he slipped into the hall, closing the door behind him: no-one now would be able to come near and eavesdrop.

Laurence put down his own cup of excellently strong coffee, and looked at the dark square of the casement window: framed with thick curtains of velvet in pale blue, with elegant gold tasseled cords. He had the unreasonable desire to simply smother Woolvey with one of them, and leave him trussed on the floor while they fled; but of course he would begin to shout at once, and Laurence could not put Edith in such a position.

“Well?” Woolvey said. “I am not going to be put off, Laurence, and if you keep me waiting any longer I have a dashed notion to have my footmen put you in the cellar, and there let you sit until morning.”

Laurence compressed his lips on the first several answers he wished to make. He was aware he was unjust. Woolvey had no more reason to love him than the reverse, and no reason to believe him. “We do not have until morning,” he said, at last, shortly. “Earlier today a British officer was captured, a dragon captain—”

“What of it? I hear ten thousand men were captured yesterday.” Woolvey spoke bitterly and with real feeling: one sentiment at least which Laurence could share.

“It means his beast is taken prisoner, too,” Laurence said. “He is hostage for her good behavior: and his beast is our fire-breather—our only fire-breather.”

“Oh,” Edith said, suddenly. “—I saw her, this morning. She came down in Hyde Park.”

Laurence nodded. “And there is some little chance he is yet held at the palace itself,” he said. “Do you understand now our urgency? While Bonaparte—”

“I am not a simpleton,” Woolvey said, interrupting, “but why only you and this havey-cavey fellow with you—”

“One good man is better than a dozen of lesser ability, in such an expedition,” Laurence said. “We were the only ones nearby enough, to make the attempt. No: enough questions,” he added sharply. “I am not going to waste time answering whatever sequence of objections you can dredge up. If you mean to continue this blundering interference, where you have no understanding of the situation, you may be damned: we will take our chances in the street with Bonaparte’s guardsmen.”

Woolvey looked still undecided. “Will,” Edith said, quietly, and they both looked at her, “will you swear on the Bible that you are telling the truth?”

This gesture did not entirely satisfy Woolvey, but Edith took him by the arm and said, “Dearest, I have known Will since we were little children: I can believe he would have managed to get himself convicted of treason, but not that he would lie under oath.”

Sullenly he said, “Still; it is all a dashed rum affair if you ask me.” He drew away from her and poured himself a second cup of coffee, in an irritable tension that splashed it across the china and the polished wood, and did not bother to put in the cream but drank it straight from the cup, a few swallows only, and set it down again with a clatter. “So what is it, do you mean to rescue him?” he said abruptly, with a new note of something even more dangerous than suspicion: enthusiasm.

“If we can,” Laurence said, and forced himself to ask, “If you can spare us your carriage-horses—”

“No,” Woolvey said after a moment. “No, I will take you, in the carriage. Lord Holland’s servants know me, and his grounds march with the palace gardens: it is not a mile from his house. If you really mean to get yourselves into the palace, and it is not all a phantasy, I will see you there. And if it is all a pack of nonsense, and you have some other thing in mind, I dare say with the coachman and a couple of footmen we can just as well put paid to your notion.”

Edith flinched. “Woolvey, do not be absurd,” Laurence said. “You have not been brought up for this sort of work.”