I did as I was bid. After a little, LaForge was persuaded to eat; he appeared to recover somewhat of his strength with every sodden bite; but still he lay with his eyes closed, the symmetry of his features marred by a sharp crease between his eyebrows, as though he suffered considerable pain. He looked thinner and more drawn from his ordeal with poison and neglect than I could have imagined. Inwardly cursing Sir Francis Farnham, I bent myself to my task.

My brother had found a stool, and propped himself upon it. I slipped the last of the soggy bread into LaForge's mouth; he lay back on his pallet. Presently the surgeon and the Bosun's Mate joined us with steaming tea, which we accepted gratefully.

“I should like to know, Captain Austen,” said Mr. Hill over the rim of his cup, “exactly what has occurred. Whom do you suspect of murder, and how does our friend LaForge come into it?”

We told him, then, the worst of our fears of Sir Francis Farnham, and the collusion of Phoebe Carruthers, not excepting the gentleman's motive for defaming Tom Seagrave, the possible use of the Admiralty's telegraph to transmit spurious orders, and the accidental insertion of Nell Rivers in the affair.

Jeb Hawkins, in comprehending how tangled was the plot in which his girl found herself, muttered beneath his breath and flexed his broad hands, as though he should like to seize the Baronet himself.

“You have no proof of anything, of course,” said Mr. Hill pensively. “I should not like to attempt to arraign Sir Francis on so wild a charge. The equipage with the bloody gauntlet might be traced on Wednesday night — the coachman paid to disclose what he knows—”

“I have considered that,” I interrupted. “What if the coachman was Sir Francis himself, suitably disguised? He had only to lure poor Chessyre into the carriage, let Mrs. Carruthers down at a suitable spot, drive to a darkened alley, and employ his garrote.”

“No one should be the wiser,” Mr. Hill admitted. “The same is true of our suspected poison. It is impossible to show that Sir Francis introduced something noxious to a particular Wool House pasty; your men of the Navy should declare that the food was rotten, and be done.”

“Something might be learned of those sealed orders,” suggested Frank. “We might enquire at the Admiralty — as friends among friends, you understand — what purpose they thought to serve by sending Seagrave on a wild-goose chase. And if no one admits to taking our meaning—”

“Wild-goose chase?” interrupted Mr. Hill.

“Seagrave was ordered to stand off the coast of Corunna,” I explained, “to take off an agent of the Crown and bear him back to England. But no one answered his signal, and after three days he turned for home.”

“No one answered the good Seagrave's signal,” supplied Etienne LaForge weakly from his position on the floor, “because the agent of your Crown had already been seized by Captain Porthiault, and locked in a cabin of the Manon.”

We turned as one to stare at him. His shrewd brown eyes — replete once more with the humour I had always discerned in them — roved across our faces. “Did you not wonder why I demanded to remain on British shores? It is death to me to return to France!”

“You are that agent?” I gasped, finally comprehending. “But why did you not inform us earlier?”

“Because such an admission, from a prisoner of war, should sound fantastic; and because I did not know whom I could trust.” With effort, he propped himself weakly on one elbow. “May I beg you, mademoiselle, for a little of that tea? I have had nothing hot to drink in days.”

“Of course.” I hastened to procure another cup. LaForge drank it down entire while his rescuers kept silence in the sharpest suspense. At last he set aside the tea and sat fully upright. His voice, when next he spoke, gained in timbre and strength.

“You must understand, above all, that nothing in my plan went as I had hoped when I fled Paris. I did not reveal myself to you when first I came to Wool House, because I have already escaped death too many times to invite it willingly. The wisest course was to wait, and watch, and turn to advantage what I could. When I heard of the good Seagrave's court-martial, I thought to bargain my way to safety by telling what I had seen during the batde for the Manon. I did not comprehend, hein, that by accusing the man Chessyre, I should tomber de Charybde en Scylla.”[27]

“Are you, in fact, a surgeon?” I enquired curiously. “Is any part of your testimony the truth?”

LaForge shrugged, “I told you, de vrai, what I had seen. As for my profession — a man may be anything his circumstance demands, mademoiselle. Certainly I have studied physiognomy in my day; I have worked among some of the finest men of science that Paris may offer; I am no stranger to the scalpel and saw. I have also killed a chicken and eaten him for my dinner from time to time — but if you would ask whether it is as a butcher that I earn my bread …” He smiled, and said nothing further.

“I think,” Frank said sharply, “that you owe us a complete explanation, Monsieur LaForge.”

“If you will give me another cup of that excellent tea,” the Frenchman returned, “I shall be happy to oblige.”

The tea was fetched, and placed in his hands; his back propped against a pile of empty sacks that served as a Wool House pillow; and the four of us ranged around him expectantly, Frank with his face to the door and an expression of wariness on his features.

“I was not always as you see me now,” LaForge began. “I shall not wear at your patience with tales of my youth in the Haute Savoie — of my father, Gaspar, Comte de la Forge; or of my mother Eugenie; I shall say nothing of how they spent their winters paying court at Versailles, and were counted among the blessed of France. You know enough of the fate of such people in our Revolution — you have heard, even in England, of the guillotine. I will begin only with myself as I was in 1792, an orphan of thirteen years, sent to live with my maternal uncle — Eugenie's younger brother, a captain of Grenadiers. He had a fine revolutionary fervour, Hippolyte; he had a fine revolutionary bride, and a fine revolutionary daughter — a girl named Genevieve, my cousin.”

“Aha!” I murmured.

His brown eyes found my face. “Genevieve was a sort of perfection, to a boy of my turbulent history. She was younger than myself by seven years, a child of sweetness and laughter who grew, with time, into a beautiful young woman. My uncle, in turn, grew into one of the Emperor's most respected officers. He died last year at Jena — but by that time, Genevieve's hand had been sought in marriage by every notable in France. My cousin had refused them for years — I like to think because it was me she loved. But then the Emperor himself came to call.”

“Buonaparte already possesses an empress,” I observed. “And thus we must assume his attentions were dishonourable.”

“The Empress Josephine cannot bear children,” LaForge replied. “Napoleon is mad for an heir, you understand; he talks of nothing but divorce. There are some who claim he has debauched his own stepdaughter, the Princess Hortense, in order to get a child of Josephine's blood — but I will spare you the sordidness of court intrigue.[28] It is enough to know that he paid his court at my Genevieve's feet, and that Napoleon was the death of her.”

“Your cousin was not flattered by the Emperor's esteem?”

“She took him in such dislike, that her father considered a complete break with his sovereign in order to protect his child. But he was embroiled in Austria, you understand. He wrote to urge my protection for Genevieve — and when I learned of his fears, I threw up my studies at the Sorbonne and fixed myself at my cousin's side.”