He peered again through the window. For a moment, the full moon appeared from behind flying cloud and he thought of the strong spring tides its influence would produce and the ferocious seas which would be running in the Channel.

'God help sailors on a night like this,' he muttered to himself in a pious incantation. The brilliant moonlight and a clatter below briefly attracted his attention. He caught a glimpse of a horseman turning in off the street and entering through Nash's screen wall, his mount striking sparks off the wet cobbles. Messengers were something of a rarity nowadays, he reflected, so sophisticated had the semaphore telegraph system become. It was capable of transmitting news with great speed from the standard on the Admiralty roof, along half a dozen arteries to the great seaports of Britain, even to such exposed outposts as Yarmouth Road, on the coast of East Anglia. He wondered idly where the rider's dispatches originated, then dismissed the thought and closed the shutters.

Drinkwater succumbed to the temptation to pour another glass and sat again, turning his chair so that it faced the dying fire. He was in no mood to return to a house empty of all except its staff. Bending, he stoked the fire into a final flaring, listening awhile to the boom of the gale across the massed chimney pots on the roof above while the tiny flames licked round the glowing coals, then subsided into a dull, ruby coruscation.

He brooded on his predicament. He was supposed to be a puppet-master, pulling strings at the extremities of which several score of agents danced, ceaselessly gleaning information for the British Admiralty. Templeton, his confidential cipher clerk, decoded their messages and entered their dispatches in the guard books.