She was a happy thought as I sat cosily ensconced in the dark, still warm from the dead fireplace. Odd female, handsome enough in her horsy way, with the body of a Dahomey Amazon and appetite to match, but would she have boiled my kettle in the ordinary way of things? Perhaps ’twas the strange circumstances in which we’d met, or the contrast between her icy, damn-you style and the passion with which she performed, that had me drying my chin at my randy recollections: that fur robe slipping to the floor, like the unveiling of a lovely marble statue, the long limbs entwining with mine, the silky hair across my face … aye, Vienna beckoned, right enough, and on those blissful imaginings I settled comfortably to my vigil in the hours ahead …
… to awake with a start, shivering against the cold that had stolen over the darkened room while I slept – for how long? The soft single chime of a clock might mean one o’clock or a quarter, but I had no feeling of cramp, so I couldn’t have been far under … but what had wakened me? The clock, or the cold, or some other disturbance – and suddenly my hair bristled on my neck as I became aware of a faint scraping sound from the hall below, followed by a rustle and a soft thump … Jesus! there was someone moving there, and the scrape had been the raising of the window by which Willem had departed – could he be returning? No, why the hell should he? But who, then … and I froze in terror, the sweat breaking out on me like ice, for it could mean only one thing, that the stupid swine’s calculations had been all wrong, and the Holnup had never heard of his confounded secret stair, but were slipping into the house burglar-style, intent on their murderous errand, and even now cloaked and sinister figures were at the foot of the stairs, listening, then gliding stealthily forward … a stair creaked sharply, and I started half out of my chair, fumbling for the LeVaux, straining eyes and ears against the dark … another creak, and a hissing whisper, someone stumbled and cursed, and then to my amazement a voice began croaking softly in drunken song about lieber klein Matilde, only to be hushed by a snarled oath and “Wo ist die Kerze? Streichholz, Dummkopf!” followed by a giggling hiccup; a match rasped in the gloom, a faint glow appeared below, and I almost collapsed with relief as slowly up the stairs lurched Tweedledum, holding a candle unsteadily aloft, with Tweedledee clinging to him for support.
They were in dress uniform, and by the look of them had crawled through every pub in Ischl; I’ve seldom seen tighter subalterns, but Tweedledum at least was plainly alive to the danger of waking the Emperor, for he staggered with elaborate caution, whispering to his mate to be quiet, and must have seen me in my corner if Tweedledee hadn’t blown the candle out with an enormous belch. This set him giggling again, Tweedledum dropped the matches, they blundered whimpering in the dark, and would most certainly have come to grief if Tweedledum hadn’t insisted that they proceed on hands and knees. They crawled through the furniture more or less quietly, and presently I heard their door close softly, and peace returned to the royal lodge.
But not to me. Perhaps it was the cold, or the unholy scare they’d given me, but as I sat shivering in the dark, envying those drunken pups their beds, I was conscious of a growing unease which was quite at odds with the lustful moonings about Kralta on which I’d dropped off. I couldn’t figure it; nothing about my situation had changed, and yet where I’d been fairly tranquil before I was now thoroughly rattled. Very well, I’m a windy beggar whose hopes and fears go up and down like a jack-in-the-box, but this wasn’t so much fear as a presentiment that something was wrong, damned wrong, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. ’Twasn’t a logical foreboding, but pure animal instinct – and thank God for it, ’cos it made me stir restlessly, and my fidgeting changed the course of history.
At the recent alarm I had clutched at the LeVaux in my pocket, and at some point must have drawn it, for now I found I was nervously fiddling its patent safety catch, on and off, and turning the cylinder. That reminded me, with a nasty start, that Willem hadn’t given me the promised extra rounds. He’d said it was loaded in five chambers, and in sudden anxiety I probed with my pinky in the dark, trying to feel the tips of the slugs in the cylinders, but couldn’t, so I broke the piece open, not knowing that it was one of the new-fangled models with an extractor plate that whips all the shells out together, and squealed with dismay as bullets flew broadcast, clattering on the floor and rolling God alone knew where – and there I was, with an unloaded firearm, my ammunition hopelessly lost in the dark, and nothing for it but to grovel blindly in search of the bloody things, cursing fate and the imbecility of French gunsmiths and their ridiculous patent gadgets, as if anyone needed them.
Frantic scrabbling round the chair brought one bullet to hand, leaving four to find, and since I’d no intention of having only a single shot between me and damnation, I must have light, whatever the consequences. I had no matches – but, stay! Tweedledum had dropped his somewhere, I’d heard them spilling all over the shop, so now I went panting on all fours in quest of them, lost my bearings altogether, fell into the fireplace, struggled out coated in dead ash, fetched my head a shattering crash on a chair-leg, and only found the scattered matches when I knelt on them. In a trice I had one lighted and was kindling the lamp, and a moment later I had scooped up three of the fallen rounds near the chair and was casting about for the fourth.
It was lying close to the fender – at least the case was, but I drew in an astonished breath when I saw that the bullet itself had become detached and lay a few inches away. In fifty years of handling firearms I’d never known the like: what, a slug clamped tight in the brass case (which contained the explosive charge) coming asunder? With a trembling hand I turned the little case to the light: it was empty, and there wasn’t a trace of powder where it had fallen.
An icy hand gripped my stomach as I held each of the other whole rounds in turn close to the lamp. Every one bore marks on the edge of the case, as though it had been pried back to remove the slug; indeed, I was able to pull one bullet free and saw to my horror that the case itself was empty.
Willem had removed the charges from all five cartridges, replacing the slugs in them so that they looked like live rounds, and if one hadn’t come loose in falling to the floor, I’d never have known that I had, in effect, an empty revolver.
* * *
a organisation (Hind.)
b See Flashman’s Lady
Chapter 8
The discovery that you’ve been sold a pup is always disconcerting, but your reaction depends on age and experience. In infancy you burst into tears and smash something; in adolescence you may be bewildered (as I was when Lady Geraldine lured me into the long grass on false pretence and then set about me with carnal intent, hurrah!); in riper manhood common sense usually tells you to bolt, which was my instinct on the Pearl River when I learned that my lorcha was carrying not opium, as I’d supposed, but guns for the Taiping rebels. But at sixty-one your brain works faster than your legs, so you reflect, and as often as not reach the right answer by intuition as well as reason.
Kneeling in that cold shadowy chamber, goggling at those five useless rounds gleaming in the dim lamplight, I knew in a split second that Willem himself was the assassin, not the guardian, and now that I’d served my turn by helping him to within striking distance of the Emperor, he’d rendered me powerless to intervene in his murderous scheme. But it was a staggering thought – dammit, why should he, a German Junker, a trusted agent of Bismarck, want to kill Franz-Josef, doing the dirty work of Hungarian fanatics like Kossuth and the Holnup? … Kossuth, by God! That was the bell that rang to confirm my conclusion, as I remembered him telling me on the train that his own mother’s name was Kossuth, and that he was part-Hungarian by blood. Aye, and pure Hungarian, devil a doubt, in heart and soul and allegiance, flown with the wild dream of independence for his mother country, and itching to fire the shot or wield the steel that would set her free – and plunge Europe into civil war.
All this surmised in an instant, and whether ’twas all another great devilment of Bismarck’s, or whether Bismarck
was guiltless and Willem had duped him as he’d duped me, didn’t matter. One thing was sure: I was implicated up to the neck, and as I knelt there sweating my imagination was picturing Willem out yonder, full of spite and sin, disposing of the hapless sentry, humouring the lock of the secret door, stealing up the secret stair knife in hand to the room where his royal victim was asleep … or dead already? I glanced in terror towards the passage entry – quick or dead, Franz-Josef was within forty feet of me … oh, Christ, how long had Willem been gone? I didn’t know. Was it too late to stop him? Perhaps not … but that was no work for me, bigod, not if I’d had ten loaded pistols and the Royal Marines at my back; not for Franz-Josef and a dozen like him would I have gone up against Willem von Starnberg, and as for Europe … but even as I took the first instinctive stride of panic-stricken flight, I came to a shuddering halt as the awful truth struck me.
I couldn’t run! It would be certain death, for if Willem had killed, or was about to kill, the Emperor, I’d be seen as his partner in crime, and while he would have his own escape nicely planned, I’d not have the ghost of a chance of avoiding capture, with the whole country on the look-out. And I’d never persuade them I was an innocent tool, or acting under orders from Downing Street – why, it was odds on I’d be shot on sight or cut down on the spot before I could utter a word in my defence.
I didn’t faint at the thought, but only the knowledge that I must act at once enabled me to fight down my mounting panic. Should I raise the alarm? God, no, I daren’t, for if Franz-Josef was already a goner, I’d be cooked. The only hope was that Willem hadn’t done for him yet, and that I could still … and that was when my legs almost gave way, and I found myself fairly sobbing with fear, for I knew I must go out into the ghastly dark, and find the murderous bastard and kill or disable him … why, even if Franz-Josef was already tuning up with the choir invisible I might wriggle clear if I could show that I’d flown to the rescue … too late, alas … oh Jesus, they’d never believe me!
“I’m innocent, gentlemen, I swear it!” I was bleating it softly in the darkness, and time was racing by, and I’d nothing but an empty pistol … but suppose Willem was still picking the lock, or waiting for moon-set, or for his Holnup confederates to arrive, or pausing to relieve himself or have a smoke, or for any other reason you like, and I could just steel myself to sally forth and find him, whispering raucously to identify myself … well, he might wonder what the blazes I was about, but he’d not shoot before asking questions … and I still had the seaman’s knife I’d slipped into my boot on the Orient Express, and he’d be off guard (just as his father had been when I’d parted his hair with the cherry brandy bottle) – he might even turn his back on me … well, it was that or the hangman’s rope, unless they still went in for beheading in Austria.
On that happy thought I put up my empty piece, transferred the knife from my boot to my pocket, and crept as fast as might be down the stairs with my heart against my back teeth. There was the window, pale in the gloom; I slipped over the sill to the ground … and realised I’d no notion where the sundial corner was. I forced myself to envisage the house from above … there was the Emperor’s room, here was I, on t’other side, and there the guardroom by the front porch, so I must make my way cautiously by the back.
There was still faint moonlight, casting shadows from the trees and bushes, and the loom of the house just visible to guide me as I crept along, my fingers brushing the ivy. In my imagination the undergrowth was full of mad Hungarians waiting to leap out and knife me, and once I rose like a startled grouse as an owl hooted only a few yards away. Round one corner, peering cautiously, along the wall towards another – and there was something glittering in the dark off to one side, and I saw that it was the moonlight on a little puddle of rainwater that had collected on what might well be the surface of a sundial. And in that moment, from just beyond the corner I was approaching, came a sound that sent shivers down my spine – a faint clicking noise of metal, and the rustle of someone moving. I tried to whisper, and failed, gulped, and tried again.
“Willem! Are you there? It’s me, Harry!”
Dead silence save for the pounding of my heart, and then the faintest of sounds, a foot scraping the ground, and after what seemed an age, Willem’s whisper:
“Was ist das? Harry, is that you?”
He was still outside! Relief flooded through me – to be followed by a drench of fear at the thought of what I must do. I drew the knife from my pocket, holding it against my thigh, and edged my way round the corner. The ivy was thick on the wall just there, but there was light enough to see a dark opening a couple of yards ahead – the recess of the secret doorway, and just within it the pale outline of a face. I took another step, and the face hissed at me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” In his agitation he lapsed into German. “Stimmi etwas nicht? What’s up, man?”
Where the inspiration came from, God knows. “The Emperor ain’t in bed!” I whispered hoarsely. “He … he got up! His aides made a din, and woke him!”
“Arschloch!” Whether he meant me or Franz-Josef I can’t say, but it was enough to assure me I was right: he was bent on murder, for if he’d been the innocent guardian, why the deuce should he care whether the Emperor was abed or not? The clicking I’d heard must have been his working on the lock … Gad, if he decided to give up for the night, I might not have to risk attacking him … I could pour out my tale to the Emperor in the morning, denouncing Willem, clearing myself … a whirlwind of wild hopes, you see, as I crouched peering at the dim face a yard away, near soiling myself in agitation, and then those hopes were dashed as he spoke again, soft and steady.
“Back inside with you! He’s bound to go back to bed presently – and they may still come! Go on, man, be off, quickly!”
And leave you to unpick the lock and do your business, thinks I. There was only one thing for it. I gripped the hilt hard, stepping closer, and as he opened his mouth to speak again I struck upwards, going for his throat, he ducked like lightning, the blade drove past, missing by an inch, his hand clamped on my wrist, and as he twisted and I strove to wrench free, clawing fingers came out of the darkness on my right, fumbling for my throat, a fist smashed against my left temple, and I was hurled backwards and flung to the turf, pinned helpless by a massive body while another seized my legs, and a great stinking paw closed on my mouth – they must have been there, unseen in the gloom, his Holnup accomplices springing into action with the speed and silence of expert bravos. I struggled like be-damned, expecting to feel the agonising bite of steel, but it didn’t come; the hands on my mouth and throat tightened, and I felt rather than saw a bearded face snarling into mine in what may have been Hungarian; above us in the dark voices were whispering urgently – Willem seemed to be giving orders, and for an instant the hand lifted from my mouth, but before I could find the breath to bellow a cloth was thrust between my teeth and I was heaved over on to my face and my wrists pinioned behind me.
Meanwhile the debate overhead was deteriorating into agitated bickering, and since some of it was in German and my mind was most wonderfully concentrated, I gathered that Willem didn’t know why I’d attacked him, and didn’t care, but if the Emperor was up and about they’d best ignore the secret stair and invade the house in force; no, no, says another, the Englander’s lying, they always do, and storming the house was too haphazard and the aroused guardroom would be too many for them, to which a third voice said the hell with such timidity, their lives would be well lost if they could only settle Franz-Josef – there’s always one like that, you know, full of patriotic lunacy, and good luck to him.
The heavyweight atop of me weighed in with the sensible suggestion that since subduing me had caused enough row to wake the dead, they should give over and come back tomorrow, but before this could be put to the vote he was proved right by a challenge from the darkness, a bawled order, the pounding of boots, and a stentorian command to stand in the name of the Emperor. Willem exclaimed: �
��Mist!”, his Webley cracked, there was a yell of pain, and then bedlam ensued, with shots and oaths and screams, the dark was split by flashes of fire, I heard a clash of steel, my incubus arose bawling in several languages and blazing away, and I hastened to improve my position by scrambling up, inadvertently butting him in the crotch. He fell away, howling, and I managed to gain my feet and would have been going like a stag for the safety of the shrubbery if he hadn’t staggered into me, bewailing his damaged courting tackle, and I fell full length, only to rise again on stepping-stones of my terrified self, but not alas to higher things, for something caught me an excruciating clout on the back of the skull, and the din of shots and shouting faded as I fell again, this time into merciful unconsciousness.
I suppose I’ve been laid out, and come to with a head throbbing like an engine-room, more often than most fellows, and can testify that while one descent into oblivion is much like another, there are two kinds of awakening. After a dizzy moment in which you recall your last conscious memory and wonder where the devil you are, realisation dawns – and it may be blissful, as at Jallalabad or in the cave in the Bighorn Mountains, when I knew that the hell and horror were behind me, and it was bed-time and all well – or you may come round hanging by the heels from a cottonwood with the Apache Ladies Sewing Circle preparing to tickle your fancy, or strapped over a cannon muzzle with the gunners blowing on their fuses.
Flashman Papers Omnibus Page 421
