Free Ramage's Signal by Dudley Pope Page B

and they were routine: the Lieutenant commanding the station had been overpaid for several months and the Ministry were involved in an attempt, so far unsuccessful, to get the money back. The letters showed that the Lieutenant was a naval officer, anyway, not a soldier. The remaining letters were from a colonel in Toulon who appeared to head the department responsible for provisioning the semaphore stations.
    Ramage collected up the letters and put them in the pouch; he would read them individually when he had some spare time, but it was obvious that if a similar semaphore station could be set up at, say, Newhaven and be responsible to the Admiralty and garrisoned by the Horseguards, its capture by an enemy would produce a similar haul of dreary and routine correspondence.
    The Marine brought in the Lieutenant, a mournful-looking man who, unused to appearing in public in a grubby nightshirt, did not know what to do with his bony hands, which stuck out of the sleeves like the crossbar of a scarecrow. His eyes were still bleary; his thin, long face looked furtive because he had not shaved for two or three days and the shadows thrown by the lantern gave him the appearance of a seedy village grocer caught stealing a
gigot de mouton
while the butcher was at mass.
    When the sentry, holding the man’s arm, jolted him to a stop in front of Ramage’s desk, the Lieutenant finally stood to attention, head bent sideways because of the low headroom, his eyes lowered, his mouth so tightly shut that his lips looked like a small wrinkle.
    Ramage waved away the sentry and said sharply to the Frenchman: “Jean-Paul Louis?”
    The man almost flinched and finally looked at Ramage. “Yes, sir: how did you know my name?”
    Then he saw the signal log and added: “Ah, you’ve been reading the log.”
    â€œI knew your name long before I set foot in Foix,” Ramage said. “Now, sit down in that armchair; your neck will ache if you stand much longer.”
    The man was tall and with the headroom under the beams only five feet four inches, he could stand only with his head cocked. Cautiously, as though fearing the arms of the chair would clutch him in a deadly grip, the man sat down, showing boots beneath his nightshirt: French Army boots and presumably all he had been able to grab before capture. Or, more likely, Rennick let him get them.
    â€œHow long have you commanded at Foix?”
    â€œMore than a year, sir, ever since the station was opened.”
    â€œAnd they keep you busy?”
    The man shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the log. “Foix is a link in a chain …”
    â€œHow long does it take to get a message from Toulon to Barcelona?”
    Again Louis shrugged his shoulders.
    â€œFrom Foix to Toulon, then?”
    â€œI don’t know, Captain. The messages are occasionally dated but never timed.”
    â€œYou must have
some
idea, surely?”
    But obviously, from the worried look on the man’s face as he contemplated the consequences of not knowing the answer to Ramage’s question, he neither knew nor, until this moment, cared.
    â€œProvisions,” Ramage said. “How are they delivered to your garrison, and from where?”
    â€œOh, dry provisions come from Sète once a month. Vegetables we grow ourselves—you did not have time to see our garden, but we have a good well and plenty of water, and the men enjoy gardening. We have some cows, so we have fresh milk, butter and cheese. Anything else we need we get from the village.”
    â€œYou steal it.”
    â€œOh no, sir; we requisition it in the normal way.”
    â€œYou do not pay cash, I mean.”
    â€œWe give them tickets which they can cash at the pay offices in Sète.”
    Ramage then reached the more important question: “Do people from the village visit the garrison frequently?”
    â€œOh no!” The idea seemed to shock Louis. “No, we have the guardhouse.