“I hope I do not offend by confessing I’ve not read your books.”

“On the contrary, my lord,” Dappa said, “there is nothing quite so civilized as to be recognized in public places as the author of books no one has read.”

“If my good friend Dr. Waterhouse were polite enough to make introductions, I should not have to rely ’pon guess-work; but he was raised by Phanatiques.”

“It is too late for formalities now,” Daniel answered. “When another begins a conversation with a cryptickal outburst on odalisques, what is there for a polite gentleman to do?”

“Not cryptickal at all! Not in the slightest!” protested the Marquis of Ravenscar. “Why, ’tis known to all London now, at” (checking his watch) “nine o’clock, that at” (checking his watch a second time) “four o’clock, Mr. Dappa was on hand to greet the Duchess of Arcachon and of Qwghlm!”

“I told you!” Daniel said, in an aside to Dappa, and put his two fingers to his eyes, then pointed them across the room toward the phant’sied spies and observers.

“You told him what!?” Roger demanded.

“That people were watching us.”

“They’re not watching you,” Roger said, highly amused. Which told Daniel, infallibly, that they were. “Why should anyone watch you? They’re watching Dappa, making the rounds of the odalisques!”

“There you go again-what on earth-?” Daniel demanded.

Dappa explained, “He alludes to a sort of legend, only whispered by discreet well-bred Londoners, but openly bandied about by drunken merry lords, that the Duchess was once an odalisque.”

“Figuratively-?”

“Literally a harem-slave of the Great Turk in Constantinople.”

“What a bizarre notion-Roger, how could you?”

Roger, slightly nettled by Dappa, raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

Dappa proclaimed, “England being a nation of clam-diggers and sheep-shearers, must forever be a net importer of fantastickal tales. Silk, oranges, perfume, and strange yarns must all be supplied from across the seas.”

“If only you knew,” Daniel returned.

“I agree with Mr. Dappa!” Roger said forcefully. “The story of his tete-a-tete with the Duchess is racing up and down Grub Street like cholera, and will be in newspapers tomorrow at cock-crow!”

And then he was gone, as if by trap-door.

“You see? If you were more discreet-”

“Then Grub Street would be unawares. Nothing would be written, nothing printed, concerning me, or the Duchess. No one would hear of us-no one would buy my next book.”

“Ah.”

“Light dawns ’pon your phizz, Doctor.”

“ ’Tis a novel, strange form of commerce, of which I was unawares until just now.”

“Only in London,” Dappa said agreeably.

“But it is not the strangest form of commerce that goes on in this city,” Daniel pressed on.

Dappa visibly put on an innocent face. “Do you have some strange yarn to set beside my lord Ravenscar’s?”

“Much stranger. And, note, ’tis a domestic yarn, not imported. Dappa, do you recollect when we were being harried in Cape Cod Bay by the flotilla of Mr. Ed Teach, and you put me to work, down in the bilge?”

“You were in the hold. We do not put elderly doctors in the bilge.”

“All right, all right.”

“I remember that you obliged us by smashing up some old crockery to make ammunition for the blunderbusses,” Dappa said.

“Yes, and I remember that the location of that old crockery was pricked down, with admirable clarity, on a sort of bill posted on a beam next the staircase. A diagram, shewing how the hold, and the bilge, were packed with diverse goods.”

“There you go again with your confusion of ‘hold’ and ‘bilge.’ We do not pack goods in the bilge, as it is generally full of what I will euphemistically call water, which rapidly turns goods into bads. If you doubt it, I’ll pack some of your machinery in the bilge on our return voyage this summer, and you may see its condition ’pon arrival. If you had any idea of the foulness-”

Daniel was showing Dappa his palms. “Not necessary, my good man. Yet your lading-diagram does include the bilge, and all that lies in that foulness, does it not?”

“Are you referring to the ballast?”

“I suppose I am.”

“The ballast is carefully diagrammed, because it affects the balance and the trim of the ship,” Dappa said. “From time to time we must shift a few tons this way or that, to compensate for an uneven load, and then it is of course useful to have a diagram of where it is.”

“As I recollect that diagram, the bottom-most hull-planks of the ship are covered with flat rectangular iron pigs, laid down side by side, like floor-tiles.”

“Kentledge, ’tis called. We also have some cracked cannons and old faulty cannonballs down there.”

“Atop that, you have piled many tons of rounded stones.”

“Shingle from a Malabar beach. Some use sand, but we use shingle, because it does not foul the pumps.”

“It is atop the shingle that you pile up casks of shot, salt, water, and other heavy goods.”

“As is the common-nay, universal-practice on non-capsizing ships.”

“But I recall that another layer of ballast was shewn on this diagram. It was below any casks, below the shingle, below the scrap metal, below even the kentledge. It was the thinnest possible layer, a mere membrane, and on the diagram it looked like onion-skin. It was pressed against the tarry inner surface of the hull-planks themselves, and it went by some name such as anti-fouling plates.”

“What of it?”

“Why put anti-fouling plates on the inside?”

“They are spares. You must have noticed that we carry extra stores of everything, Dr. Waterhouse. Minerva’s hull is clad in copper sheets-she’s famous for it-and the last time we had a coppersmith make up an order of such material, we had him make more than we needed, so as to get a better price, and to have some in reserve.”

“Are you certain you are not confusing them with the spares that are stowed in crates near the foremast step? I seem to recall sitting on them.”

“Some are stored there. Others are stored against the inside of the hull-planks, under the kentledge, as you described.”

“What an odd place to store anything. To get at them, one would have to unload the ship entirely, pump out the unspeakable contents of the bilge, shovel out tons of shingle, and winch up the massive pigs of kentledge, one by one.”

Dappa did not respond, but had taken to drumming his fingers on the table irritably.

“It seems more like buried treasure than ballast.”

“If you’d care to test your hypothesis, Doctor, you may do so the next time we are dry-docked, provided you show up with your own shovel.”

“Is that what you say to inquisitive Customs inspectors?”

“We are more polite to them-as they generally are to us.”

“But politeness aside, the underlying meaning is the same. The hold may be emptied, if some official demands it. Minerva shall then bob like a cork, but she shall not capsize, thanks to the ballast. But those anti-fouling plates may not be inspected unless the ballast is removed, which would render the vessel unstable-it could only be done if she were beached, or in dry-dock-as she was just a few weeks ago. No Customs inspector ever demands that, does he?”

“This is a very odd conversation,” Dappa observed.

“On an arbitrary numerical scale of conversational oddness, ranging from one to ten, with ten being the oddest conversation I’ve ever had, and seven being the oddest conversation I have in a typical day, this rates no better than five,” Daniel returned. “But to make it less odd for you, I shall now speak directly. I know what those plates are made of. I know that you take some out from time to time, when you are in London, and I know that they find their way into the coinage. It does not matter to me how this is done, or why. But I say to you that you are putting yourselves in danger every time you spend the treasure from that bilge. You imagine that it may be fused, in a coiner’s crucible, with like metal from other sources, and that, once it has been thus con-fused, it has gone out into the world, and can never be traced back to you. But I say that there is one man, at least, who is not con-fused in the slightest, and who has drawn to within a hair’s breadth of divining your secret. You may find him at the Tower of London most days.”