“Luck has stood your friend sooner than we could have hoped,” wrote Albemarle. “A military post in the Indies has, as I learn from letters just received, fallen vacant. It is an important command full worthy of your abilities, and there, overseas, you will be safe from all inquisitions. If you will wait upon me here at the Cockpit this afternoon, you shall be further informed.”
He begged his friends to excuse him a moment, took pen, ink, and paper from the sideboard and quickly wrote a few lines in answer.
When Mrs. Quinn had departed to convey that note to the messenger, and the door had closed again, the two uneasy conspirators started up. Questions broke simultaneously from both of them. For answer Holles placed Albemarle’s letter on the table. Tucker snatched it up, and conned it, whilst over his shoulder Rathbone read it, too.
At last Tucker lowered the sheet, and his grave eyes fell again upon Holles.
“And you have answered—what?” he demanded.
“That I will wait upon his grace this afternoon as he requires of me.”
“But to what end?” asked Rathbone. “You can’t mean that you will accept employment from a government that is doomed.”
The Colonel shrugged. “As I have told Tucker from the first, I serve governments; I do not make them.”
“But just now....” Tucker was beginning.
“I wavered. It is true. But something else has been flung into the scales.” And he held up Albemarle’s letter.