“There is no prisoner,” said Partry, “and never has been. I’ve been lying to you the entire time. Any information you are given to-night, concerning the whereabouts of Jack Shaftoe, shall come, not from some suppositious prisoner, but from me.”

“Why have you lied to us?” Isaac asked.

“Lying to you enabled me to set up a meeting on neutral ground,” answered Partry, and stomped his foot on the pavement. “Here, I feel safe in divulging my information.”

“And what is that information, at long last?” Isaac demanded.

“That I am Jack Shaftoe,” answered Jack Shaftoe, “alias Jack the Coiner, alias Quicksilver, and many other nick-names and titles besides; and that I am willing to wind up my career to-night, provided the right terms can be struck.”

IF THE POINT OF A dinner-party was to bring interesting people together and lay excellent food and wine in front of them, then the Viscount Bolingbroke’s soiree was the event of the year. Some would complain that the guest-list was weighted too heavily to Whigs; but then, as of yesterday, Bolingbroke was Torydom, and as such needed no coterie. On the other hand, if the point of a dinner-party was to start fascinating conversations, then this was the grossest failure, to date, of the Age of Enlightenment; why, Robert Walpole was actually humming to fill in the silences. A dozen men were at the table; only two of them-Bolingbroke and Ravenscar-had authority to parley; and yet these two seemed perfectly content with plate and bottle, and with the dreadful silence of the room. From time to time one of the younger Whigs would try to launch a Topic of Conversation, and like a spark struck into moss it would sputter and smoke along for a few moments, until Bolingbroke or Ravenscar would dump a bucket of water on it by saying, “Pass the salt.” The meal sprinted from one course to the next, as the guests had nothing to pass the time save chewing and swallowing. It was not until pudding that Bolingbroke could be troubled to make a Gambit. “My lord,” he said to Roger, “it has been ages since I could free myself to attend a meeting of the good old R.S. Oh, are there any other Fellows present?” He looked round the table. His eyes were too close together, his nose was high-bridged and long: features more suited to a carnivorous beast than a human. So he was far from good-looking; yet his ugliness was of that sort that suggests caution, rather than mockery, to the onlooker. His mouth was tiny and pursed. But then, the muzzle of a gun was not so very large either. Bolingbroke’s one adventure in the realm of fashion had been to wear a radically small and simple periwig one day, when he went to pay a call on the Queen. She had rewarded him by asking if, next time around, he intended to show up wearing a night-cap. Tonight he had donned the full wig: white curls tumbling down beyond his shoulders, over his lapels, to somewhere between the latitude of his nipples and of his waist. His cravat was white, and wrapped many times round his neck, like a bandage. It and the wig framed his face like an ostrich-egg swaddled in a shipping-crate. This was the face that scanned down the left, then up the right side of the table, until it fell upon the Marquis of Ravenscar, who was seated at his right hand.

“No, my lord,” said Ravenscar, “there are only we two.”

“The study of Natural Philosophy has not captivated the Whigs of the new generation,” Bolingbroke concluded.

“The Royal Society has not captivated them,” Ravenscar corrected him. “What they study besides politics and wenches, I know not.”

At this, cautious laughter, less of amusement than of relief that a conversation seemed to be getting underway.

“My lord Ravenscar tries to stir up the old rumor that I know as much of wenches as Sir Isaac knows of gravity.”

“Indeed, like gravity, the fair sex doth exert a continual pull on us all.”

“But you change the subject-granted, to a more fascinating topic,” Bolingbroke said. “Is not the Royal Society the world’s foremost salon for the discussion of Natural Philosophy? How can a man claim to be an amateur of learning, and yet not aspire to become a Fellow? Or has it gone into decline? I’ve no way of knowing. Haven’t been to a meeting in ages. A shame really.”

“We have reached that part of dinner when we shove our chairs back, throw our napkins down, and pat our bellies,” Ravenscar observed. “Does that signify that your party has gone into decline?”

“I understand,” said Bolingbroke, after allowing those close-set blue eyes to wander round the ceiling for a few moments, as if deep in thought. “You mean to say that the Royal Society gorged itself on learning in the early decades, and now takes a respite, to digest all that it took in.”

“Something like that.”

“Too, is it not necessary, when one has acquired much, to defend it?”

“That sounds as if it might have a double meaning, my lord.”

“Oh, don’t be tedious. It has a single meaning, to do with Sir Isaac, and the fraudulent claims of the infamous Hanoverian plagiarist, Baron von what’s-his-name-”

“All the Hanoverians I have met are sterling characters,” said Ravenscar stolidly.

“Obviously you’ve not made the acquaintance of George Louis’s wife!”

“No one can make her acquaintance as long as he keeps her locked up in that Schlo?, my lord.”

“Ah yes. Tell me, is it the same Schlo? in which Princess Caroline is said to have taken refuge, when she took it into her mind that hashishin were stalking her through the gardens?”

“I haven’t heard that story, my lord-or if I have, I have not listened to it.”

“I have heard and listened-but I do not believe. I suspect that the Princess is somewhere else.”

“I have no idea where she is, my lord. But to get back to the Royal Society-”

“Yes. Let us do get back to it. Who can blame Sir Isaac, really?”

“Blame him for what, my lord?”

“For setting aside the pursuit of Natural Philosophy to defend his legacy from the aggression of the German.”

“You place me in an impossible situation, my lord-I almost feel as if we are in the House of Lords again, disputing an Act. But I shall answer a question you have not asked, and say that if fewer young men are coming to the Royal Society of late, it is perhaps because listening to Sir Isaac rant about Leibniz; perusing the latest incriminating documents about Leibniz; and sitting on committees, tribunals, and Star Chambers intended to prosecute Leibniz in absentia, simply does not happen to be their notion of a Good Time.”

“Von Leibniz. Thank you for reminding me of the man’s name. How shall we keep all of these dreadful German names straight if not for the Whigs, who know them so intimately?”

“It is difficult to acquire the German tongue, when French ones are perpetually thrust into one’s ears,” Ravenscar answered; a jest that was greeted with awed and terrified silence round the table.

Bolingbroke reddened, then had a good chuckle. “My lord,” he sputtered, “look at our fellow-revelers. Have you ever observed a more wooden bunch?”

“Only on a chessboard, my lord.”

“It all comes of the fact that we have drifted off into prating of Natural Philosophy-the surest way to kill a conversation.”

“On the contrary, my lord, you and I are having an excellent conversation.”

“Indeed-but they are not. Which is why we have Withdrawing Rooms, you know, and the like-so that enthusiasts may cabal in the corners and not bore the company to death!”

“If this is all some sort of a ploy to get us to drink port wine, it is needlessly elaborate,” observed Ravenscar.

“But where shall we drink it?” Bolingbroke asked.

“I dare not say, my lord, for ’tis your house.”

“So it is. And I say that these chaps, who plainly do not give a fig for Natural Philosophy, may drink it in the comfort of my Withdrawing Room; but you and I, inveterate enthusiasts that we are, shall repair to the observatory, three storeys above-far enough away that the other guests shall not suffer our philosophical prattle.”