The recollection made him turn to the window again, and stare down into the darkening street. Despite the weather, Whitehall was full of the evening's traffic: a foot patrol of guardsmen, a pair of doxies in a doorway cozening the grenadiers, whose bearskins lost their military air in the rain, a dog pissing against a porter's rest, and a handful of pathetic loiterers huddling out of the rain in the sparse and inadequate clothing of the indigent. Carriages came and went across his field of view, but he saw none of this. It depressed him; after the broad sweep of the distant horizon seen from the pristine standpoint of a frigate's quarterdeck, the horse turds and grime of Whitehall were a mockery.

He turned and, as abruptly as he had risen, closed the shutters against the night. Then he righted his capsized Windsor chair and sat in it. Picking up the paper he twisted round, held it to the flickering firelight and began to read out loud, as if by annunciating the ill-written words he would keep himself awake enough to assimilate their content.

'Sir, further to my communications of December last and May of this year, in which there was little of an unusual nature to report, it is now common knowledge here ...' Drinkwater had forgotten the origin of the paper and looked at the heading. 'Ah, yes,' he murmured, 'from Helgoland ... last month, no, July…'

He read on, 'that a considerable quantity of arms for equipping troops have lately arrived in Hamburg and in expectation of their shipment, have been placed in a ware­house which is guarded by ...'

There was a knock at the door and Drinkwater paused. 'Enter,' he called.

A slim, pinch-faced man with prematurely thinning hair appeared. He wore a black, waisted and high-collared coat. The points of his shirt poked up either side of his face, and a tight cravat in dark, watered silk frothed beneath a sharp, blue chin. The figure was elegant and, though daylight would have betrayed the threadbare nature of his dress, the candelabra he bore only enhanced the ascetic architecture of his skull.