"Ah, if," said the consul-general, "he could tell who has your despatch!"
"Not Mr. Randolph," said Le Blanc.
"No," returned Fauchet; "or if he has, it will never be seen by any one else."
"Why?" asked Le Blanc.
The minister, smiling, shook his head. "If ever it turns up in other hands, you will know why, and Mr. Randolph, too."
The minister later in the day assured Carteaux that he would make such use of the deposition as would force the administration to rid itself of a guilty clerk. He was in no haste to fulfil his pledge. Two or three months earlier, when the general opposition to the English treaty promised to delay or prevent it, this damaging paper would have had some value. Apart, however, from any small practical utility the confession might still possess, it promised Fauchet another form of satisfaction. Being a man of great vanity, he felt injured and insulted by the coolness of his diplomatic reception and by the complete absence of pleasant social recognition in the homes of the great Federalist merchants. He would give Carteaux's statement to the Secretary of State and demand that De Courval be dismissed and punished. He felt that he could thus annoy and embarrass the administration; but still, distrusting Carteaux, he waited. His delay was ended by the gossip which began to be rumored about in regard to the attack on Carteaux, and concerning the mysterious loss of Despatch No. 10.
Chovet had been abruptly dismissed, unpaid, and the German having gone away in some haste with no thought of his promise to pay, none knew when he would return. The little doctor was furious. His habit of imprudent gossip had been controlled by Schmidt's threats and still more surely by his pledge of payment. By and by, in his exasperation, he let drop hints, and soon the matter grew. He had been cheated by Carteaux, and if people only knew the truth of that story, and so on, while he won self-importance from holding what he half believed to be a state secret.
At last, increasingly uneasy about his fee, it occurred to him to ask Miss Wynne if it were certain that Schmidt would not return. If not—ah, there was the young man who must pay, or the whole story should be told.
That Miss Gainor kept him waiting for half an hour he felt as a slight and regarded it as an addition to the many wrongs he had suffered at the hands of a woman who had learned from time and experience no lessons in prudence.