His lordship sat down again to read the letter. “It is a full confirmation of what you have told me,” he said calmly.
“Then this,” said Colonel Grant, and he placed upon the table a note in French of the approximate number and disposition of the British troops in Portugal at the time. “The handwriting is Samoval’s own, as those who know it will have no difficulty in discerning. And now this, sir.” He unfolded a small sketch map, bearing the title also in French: Probable position and extent of the fortifications north of Lisbon.
“The notes at the foot,” he added, “are in cipher, and it is the ordinary cipher employed by the French, which in itself proves how deeply Samoval was involved. Here is a translation of it.” And he placed before his chief a sheet of paper on which Lord Wellington read:
“This is based upon my own personal knowledge of the country, odd scraps of information received from time to time, and my personal verification of the roads closed to traffic in that region. It is intended merely as a guide to the actual locale of the fortifications, an exact plan of which I hope shortly to obtain.”
His lordship considered it very attentively, but without betraying the least discomposure.
“For a man working upon such slight data as he himself confesses,” was the quiet comment, “he is damnably accurate. It is as well, I think, that this did not reach Marshal Massena.”
“My own assumption is that he put off sending it, intending to replace it by the actual plan—which he here confesses to the expectation of obtaining shortly.”
“I think he died at the right moment. Anything else?”
“Indeed,” said Colonel Grant, “I have kept the best for the last.” And unfolding yet another document, he placed it in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief. It was Lord Liverpool’s note of the troops to be embarked for Lisbon in June and July—the note abstracted from the dispatch carried by Captain Garfield.
His lordship’s lips tightened as he considered it. “His death was timely indeed, damned timely; and the man who killed him deserves to be mentioned in dispatches. Nothing else, I suppose?”