one to the other of us. “No one is sailing anywhere until I determine what side everybody is on. We’ll put this purported plan carried by Talleyrand to the test, as you’ve said.”
“Then I must be given leave to buy my own passage. My family is in peril, and time is critical. Let me play the spy in Prague.”
“Buy passage how?”
“With money. I believe that’s the conventional way.”
“But Ethan, you’re a debtor.”
“To the contrary, I’ve invested ambitiously and by now should have doubled my fortune,” I said without any conviction.
“I’m afraid you’d better consult with your financial advisers. Since you were in our employ as a spy, I ordered an audit of your affairs and was alarmed at what we learned. It was the collapse of your fortune that made us think you’d thrown in with Bonaparte.”
“But it can’t have collapsed. Can it?” My voice was strained.
“Your financial advisers can explain it in some detail. You’re a pauper, Gage. Our cell at Walmer here is the only thing that has kept you out of debtor’s prison. The only thing you possess is the hilt of a medieval sword.” He squinted. “You’re a very odd man.”
“I’m a collector of antiquities.”
He looked at me with pity. “I’m going to provide the necessary passes for you to consult with your bankers in London while we study these naval plans, holding the Frenchman here as guarantee of your return. Get a realistic appraisal of your financial situation, and then we’ll see where you stand. If you’re telling the truth, maybe we can salvage a crumb of career.”
A visit to London confirmed the worst. Hiram Tudwell received me in his counting house on Cornwall Street after a two-hour wait, timing it so he could plead office closing if our interview became too difficult. His bald head sprouted like a cabbage from a stiff cravat, his skin was the color of suet, and his suit was dark enough for a mortician.
“I’m afraid your holdings have become inaccessible, Mr. Gage,” the senior partner of Tudwell, Rawlings, and Spence announced. He regarded me like an unwanted relative.
“You mean my money is in a particularly remote and formidable vault?” I seize every opportunity to hear the bright side.
“I mean that your account has not generated the returns expected. It was ambitiously invested as you instructed, but dogged by events. A great deal of it has been captured in the Indian Ocean and auctioned off by the perfidious French.”
“Captured by the French? How could they capture ten thousand pounds from a London bank?” News of my calamity was being given in a high-ceilinged, mahogany-paneled room designed to enforce calm, but it wasn’t working. I’d been offered a cup of lukewarm tea and a stale biscuit, but that didn’t help, either.
“If you’ll recall, you gave our firm permission to invest your holdings in aggressive vehicles to maximize potential profits while you disappeared on the Continent. I believe you said you were comfortable with calibrated risk.”
“Not betting the whole table!”
“In your lengthy absence and complete lack of correspondence we diversified into coal mines, steam engines, a horse-drawn rail-wagon line to Portsmouth, and tea futures. The latter was based on delivery of a cargo on an East Indiaman, following recent victories by General Arthur Wellesley on the Indian subcontinent. We sought investments that were innovative and inclined to quick profit, our aggressiveness being the very model of bold financial stewardship. You had the potential to double your money in months. Astonishing opportunities these days, astonishing.”
“And?”
“The war has caused disruption. The East Indiaman was captured, the steam engines have yet to find a market, the coal works went bankrupt, and the horses all died. It was an excellent strategy, had it worked.” He pushed over a balance sheet to show me where my money went.
I struggled to understand it. “What’s this one thousand, one hundred twenty-seven pounds here, then?”
“Insurance premiums. Policy not payable, alas, for acts of war. A French battleship has been prowling off Africa. Can’t insure against that.”
“And this fifteen hundred pounds?”
“Our management fee.”
“Fifteen percent? That’s usury!”
“Our fee was in the fine print of your contract.”
I couldn’t be bothered to read such tedious documents. “What then is the five hundred thirty-two pounds for?”
“Incidental management expenses. Postage, correspondence, resolving of claims, business meals, refreshments, stationary, and office incidentals.”
“That’s not included in the fifteen hundred pounds?”
“Mr. Gage, our standard fee cannot cover the unanticipated exigencies of a complex and variable portfolio like yours.”
The Tripoli pirates were amateurs compared to this bunch. “And this two