Flashman And The Tiger fp-11

by George MacDonald Fraser

  He was right there; I stood seething helplessly.

  "Damn you! All right, then," for I knew it had to come to this, "what’s your price?"

  He laughed aloud. "Money? Are you seriously trying to buy me off? You’ve a poorer opinion of Miss Selina’s charms than I’d have thought possible in a rake of your experience."

  "Blast your lousy tongue—how much?"

  He took a cigar from his pocket, lit it coolly while I boiled with anger, and blew out the match.

  "You haven’t got that much money," he drawled. "Not—" he blew smoke across the desk at me "—if you were Moss Abrahams in person. Oh, don’t think it wouldn’t give me great pleasure to beggar you—it would. But I’ll enjoy your plump little grand-daughter even more—oh, so much more! She’d be very much my meat in any circumstances—but the fact that she’s yours—" he poked his cigar at me, grinning "—oh, that makes her a prize indeed!"

  This was beyond all understanding. I gaped at the man, dumfounded.

  "What the devil d’you mean? That she’s my grandchild—what has that to do with it, in God’s name? What have I ever done to you? I don’t even know you, hardly—and you saved my skin in Zululand, didn’t you?"

  "Aye," says he. "If I’d only known, though—who you were! Remember, I told you at Rorke’s Drift? But I didn’t know—by God, if I had, you’d never have come over the Buffalo alive!" And for once the eyes were steady, glaring hate at me. I couldn’t fathom it.

  "What the blazes are you talking about? Good God above, man, what the devil have you got against me? I’ve never injured you—or if you think I have, I swear I don’t know about it! What is it, damn you?" He said not a word. "And whatever it is, what’s my Selina to do with anything? Why should you want to harm her, you bastard? An innocent—dear God, have you no decency? And I? What have I done -? "

  "You don’t know, do you?" says he, softly. "You truly don’t. But then—how should you? How would you remember—out of all the vile things you’ve done—why should you remember … me?"

  This was beyond comprehension; I wondered was the fellow a lunatic. But mad or not, there was that in his baleful stare that terrified me—for Selly as much as for myself.

  "Shall I remind you?" says he, and his voice grated like gravel. "You think we met for the first time in Zululand, do you?" He shook his head. "Oh, no, Flashman. Cast your mind back … forty-five years. A long time, eh? D’you remember an African slave-ship, called the Balliol College, trading into the Dahomey coast? A ship commanded by a human devil called John Charity Spring, M.A.? A ship on which you, Flashman, served as super-cargo? D’you remember?"

  Did I not? I’d never forget it.

  "But … but what has that to do with—you? Why, you can only have been a child in those days—"

  "Aye—a child!" he roared, suddenly, crashing his fist on the desk. "A child of fourteen—that’s what I was!" His face was crimson, working with fury, but he mastered himself and went on, in a rasping whisper:

  "You remember an expedition upriver—to the village of King Gezo, who sold niggers to Spring? You remember that death-house, built of skulls, and the human sacrifices, and those savage Amazon women who were Gezo’s bodyguard? D’you remember? Oh, yes, I see that you do. And d’you remember the bargain that monster Spring struck with that monster Gezo—half a dozen Amazon women to be sold into slavery in exchange for a case of Adams revolvers which you—" his finger stabbed out at me "—demonstrated for that black fiend?"

  As clear as day I could see it—the hideous Gezo leaping up and down on his stool, slobbering in excitement, with those great black fighting-women ranged by his throne; I could feel the Adams kicking in my fist as I blew holes in the skull wall for his edification.

  "Six women in exchange for a case of revolvers and—what else?" Moran’s face was terrible to see. "What turned the scale in that infamous bargain—d’you recall? Again, I see you do." His voice was barely audible. "Gezo demanded that Spring’s cabin-boy be left with him—as a slave. And Spring, and you, and the rest of that hell-ship’s crew—you agreed, and left the child behind." He straightened up from the desk. "I was that boy."

  It was beyond belief. It couldn’t be true, not for a minute … but even as the denial sprang to my lips, my wits were telling me that no one—no one on earth, could have known the details of that shameful transaction of Spring’s, unless he’d been there. And yet…

  "But that’s moonshine!" I cried. "Why, I remember that boy—a snivelling little Cockney guttersnipe with a cross-eye … nothing like you! And, damnation, you were educated at Eton—I looked you up in Who’s Who!"

  "Quite true," says he. "And like many a public school boy before me—and many since—I ran away … don’t tell me you never drove some panic-stricken little fag to do the same at Rugby. Oh, yes, I ran—and thought it would be a fine thing to go for a ship’s boy, and seek my fortune. I was a good enough actor, even then, to fake a Whitechapel whine—the genteel Captain Spring would never have shipped a little gentleman as cabin-boy, now would he?" The sneer writhed at the corner of his mouth. "But he was ready enough to drug him with native beer and sell him as a slave to that unspeakable savage, in exchange for a gaggle of half-naked black sluts ! Oh, aye, you were all willing enough for that!"

  "It’s a lie!" cries I. "It was all Spring’s idea—I knew nothing of it! Why, I even pleaded with him, I remember—but it was too late, don’t you see -? "

  "Pleaded?" he scoffed. "When did you ever plead for anything except your own miserable self? What did you care, if a white child was left to the mercy of that … that gross black brute?" His eyes were darting about the room as he spoke, and his hand was shaking on the desk-top. "Two years I endured there—two years in that rotting jungle hell, praying for death, kicked and scourged and tortured by those animals … aye, you can stare in horror, you that left me to it! Two years—before I had the courage to run again, and by God’s grace was picked up by Portugee slavers, who carried me to the coast. Portugee scum, mark you—they saved me from the fate I’d been doomed to by fellow Englishmen."

  "But I’d no hand in that! I tell you, it was no fault of mine! By God, it must have been frightful, Moran—I don’t wonder you’re … well, upset … perfectly appalling, on my word … but it was all Charity Spring’s doing, don’t you see? I’m clean innocent—you can’t bear me a grudge for what that scoundrel did! Why, he’d kidnapped me, in the first place—"

  "Spring’s long gone to his account," says he, and laughed harshly. "So have several others. Oh, yes, I marked you all down for settlement." For a fleeting second he met my eye. "You remember Sullivan, the Yankee bucko mate? I got him in Galveston in ’69.[14] And the surgeon—what was his name? An Irishman. He went in Bombay. I took ’em as I found ’em, you see—and while I was making my own career, in the Indian Army, I often thought about you. But I never had the chance—till now."

  There was a moment’s silence, while I stood like a snared rabbit, too stunned and scared to speak, and he went on.

  "But you’re too old to be worth killing, Flashman. Oh, it would be easy enough—you’ve seen me, and you possibly know I’m rated the best big-game shot in India, if not the world. If General Flashman were found with his head blown off on his Leicestershire estate—who’d ever suspect the eminent and respectable Colonel John Sebastian Moran?" He sneered and shook his head. "Poor sport. But little Miss Selina—there’s a worthwhile quarry, if you like. I saw how to strike at you, the night I saw her at the theatre. And you, you foul old tyke, can do nothing about it. For if she shrinks from me at the last—well, young Stanger’s name will be blasted, and her hopes with it—and yours. A splendid scandal there’ll be." He leaned against the mantel again, his thumbs in his weskit, and gloated at me.. "Either way, you’ll pay—for what you did to me. Personally, I think the young lady will save her lover’s honour at the expense of her own—I hope so, anyway. But I don’t much mind."

  This was appalling—for the fellow was mad, I was sure, eaten up
with his hatred and lust for vengeance. And he had marked down Selly, to strike at me … and he was right, she’d sacrifice herself to shame to save Stanger—and if she didn’t, his life and hers would both be ruined. I could have wept, at the thought of her frail, tender innocence at the mercy of this crazy, murderous ogre—I absolutely did weep, begging him to accept any price, offering to ransom her as high as twenty thousand, or thirty (I called a halt there, I remember), promising to use my influence to obtain him patronage, or a title, literally pleading at the swine’s feet and drawing his attention to my white hairs and old age—and he simply laughed at me.

  So I raged at him, threatening, vowing I’d be his ruin somehow—I’d kill him, I said, even if I swung for it, and he just jeered in my face.

  "Oh, how I wish you’d try! How I would admire to see that! Go home and get your pistol and your black mask, and collect a gang of bullies—why don’t you? Or cross the Channel with me, and we’ll shoot it out on the sands! I can just see that! You pathetic old corpse!"

  In the end he kicked me out, and I slunk off home in a rage of such fear and frustration and misery as I’ve seldom felt before. I was helpless—he couldn’t be bought, he couldn’t be moved, he couldn’t be bullied or bluffed. He was even invulnerable against the last resort of violence—oh, he might be near sixty, but his hand was still rock-steady and his eye clear, and even if there had been such a thing as a hired gun in the Home Counties, what chance would he have stood against the lightning skill I’d seen proved on Ketshwayo’s Zulus? No—Moran held all the aces. And Selina, my precious little darling, was doomed. I went home and drank myself blind.

  You may think, for a man who puts a fairly low price on maiden virtue, that I was getting into a rare sweat at the thought of her being deflowered by Moran. But your own flesh and blood is something different; she wasn’t like the women of my youth—most of whom had been a pretty loose set, anyway. She was sweet and gentle and from a different stable altogether—the thought of Moran subjecting her brought me out in a sweat of horror. Damn Stanger, for his idiocy, and damn Gezo, for not cutting Moran’s whelp throat when he had the chance. Careless old swine. But there was no use cursing; I had to think, and if necessary (shocking thought) to act. And after an unconscionable amount of drink and heart-searching, I realised that I was going to have to kill Moran.

  Maybe it was senile decay that brought me to this awful conclusion; I don’t know. I’ve been desperately driven in my time, and done some wild things, coward and all that I am; I can only say that it seemed worth the risk for Selina’s sake. Risk? Certainty, where Moran was concerned—and yet, need it be so certain? Granted he was the deadliest hand with a gun I’d ever seen—he was bound to turn his back sometime. And London wasn’t Zululand, or Abilene of the old days; no one expects to be shot in the back on Half Moon Street. A man in disguise, on a dark April night, if he shadowed his victim carefully, and bided his time, might get off the necessary shots and then slide into cover—our bobbies ain’t used to that sort of thing, thank God. It was desperate, but it was possible—I’d had more experience of skulking and shooting from cover than I cared to think of, and—but, dear God, I was an old man, and getting feeble, and half-fuddled with drink, and scared blue into the bargain. I sat there, maudlin, drivelling to myself and looking at Selly’s picture.

  Then I put the bottle away, and went upstairs and rooted through my old clothes, and found myself opening a certain drawer. There they were: the old German revolver with which I’d shot my way out of Fort Raim dungeon; the Navy Colt that I’d blazed away with, eyes shut, at Gettysburg; the Khyber knife I’d got from Ilderim Khan in the Mutiny; the scarred old double-action Bulldog, and the neat little Galand pocket pistol—it had four rounds in it, too, confound it.[15] Well, if I ever summoned up the nerve to draw a bead on Moran, I’d sure as hell not have the chance to use more than four rounds. He’d be blasting back after just one happy thought, though: maybe he didn’t travel heeled. Not many London clubmen do—by Jove, if he was unarmed, that would be famous! And then a quick hobble round the corner, into the dark—why not?

  It was at this point, as I said at the beginning of my story, that I decided murder is a chancy thing for a septuagenarian coward. I teetered on the brink, fearfully, and then I thought, what the devil, even if Palmer gets his Old Age Pension bill through, I still won’t qualify, because it specifically excludes drunkards from benefit.[16] Selly’s worth it, says I, snuffling to myself. And so the die was cast.

  Once I’m committed, I don’t do things by halves. I would have to settle the business at night, in the best disguise I could find, so I sorted out some of the motley garments I’d brought back from my travels and set about turning myself into an elderly down-at-heel of the kind that slinks round the West End streets, picking up cigar butts and sleeping in areas. It wasn’t difficult—in my time I’ve impersonated everything from a bronco Apache to a prince consort, and with my grey hairs I was halfway there.

  So that was easy; the next thing was to decide where I was going to dry-gulch Moran. I had a week at most at my disposal, so for three or four nights I set off stealthily after dark, dressed in an ancient pea jacket and patched unmentionables, with a muffler and billycock hat and cracked boots, Galand in one pocket and flask in t’other, skulking round Conduit Street to see what his movements were. I was in a putrid state of funk, of course, but even so I felt downright ridiculous—hanging about waiting to murder someone, at my time of life.

  For two nights I never saw hide nor hair of him, and then on the Tuesday he broke cover, shortly after six, and I trailed him to a cab on Bond Street and lost him—for I couldn’t take a cab in pursuit; dressed as I was, any self-respecting cabby would have taken his whip to me, and if I’d tried to run after him I’d have been lying on the pavement wheezing my guts up inside ten yards. So that was another wasted night, but on the Wednesday he decided to walk, jauntering out of his rooms in full evening fig and strolling all the way to St James’s, where he spent four hours at the Bagatelle—dealing ’em off the bottom, no doubt. Then he took a cab home, and I was dished again.

  This was desperate, I decided. There hadn’t been a chance, so far, to do him more mischief than curse, and nights spent hanging around street-corners had sapped my resolution abominably, as well as giving me the cold. I was having the deuce of a job getting in and out undetected at home, too, and to make matters worse I had a distraught Selly on my hands on Thursday morning, wanting to know what was to be done. She’d had a note from the swine; it simply said: "Well? M."

  The poor creature was nearly distracted with fear, and it was all I could do to stop her having hysterics, which my wife would certainly have heard. But one thing the sight of her distress did for me: I resolved that if Tiger Jack Moran was still alive on Friday morning, it wouldn’t be for want of effort on my part. If the worst came to the worst I’d stalk him home that Thursday night and kill him on his own front-door step and take my chance. (That’s what being a doting grandparent can do to you.)

  I was late on my beat that night, though, on account of being dragooned into standing up with the Connaughts at the Army’s football challenge match at Aldershot in the afternoons[17]—two sets of hooligans hacking each other in the mud—and it was near eight before I got on post in my rags, huddled in a doorway nipping at my pint flask of spirits with a quaking heart. But just on nine Moran came out, in opera hat and lined cloak, swinging his long cane jauntily. He strolled by within a yard of me; for a moment the gaslight fell on that fierce hawk profile and sprouting moustache, and I felt my innards turn to jelly, and then he was past. One odd thing I noticed; under one arm he carried a flat case. But I was too taken up with considering the loose, fit stride of the man, and the graceful way he carried himself—he looked as dangerous as they come—to worry about trifles.

  I thought he might be for the clubs again, but to my surprise he turned up Oxford Street, sauntering calmly along, and then made north. I couldn’t figure why he hadn’t taken
a cab; as it was, I had to move sharper than I cared to keep him in view, and when we got off Oxford Street, and people were scarcer, I had to hang back for fear of being spotted, hurrying to catch up whenever he rounded a corner. This was new territory to me, but I remember we had crossed Wigmore Street, and then I stopped with my heart racing, as he paused beside the entrance to a darkened arch and looked back; he glanced up and down the street—there was hardly a soul about—and then he turned under the arch and disappeared.

  Meanwhile I was having minor fits. I couldn’t begin to guess what he was up to, but I knew it was now or never. I couldn’t hope for a better chance than this, in a network of streets which were as near to being deserted as central London ever is, with my quarry moving down a dark alley. I hurried forward as fast as I could, reached the archway with my lungs bursting, peered cautiously round the corner, and was in time to see him entering a doorway under a single guttering gas-flare at the other end. I waited a few seconds, and then stole forward, the butt of the Galand greasy with sweat in my hand.

  I reached the doorway on tiptoe and paused. It was open. I strained my ears, and heard his feet creaking on stairs—up, up, up, turn, and up again. I didn’t hesitate—I couldn’t; if I waited, there was no certainty he’d come out again this way, and if I was to follow him I must do it while his own footsteps would drown out the sound of mine. I took one last pull at my flask for luck, and went through the door; the light filtering in showed me the foot of the stairs, and then I was sneaking up, into the stuffy darkness, gun out, keeping close to the rickety banisters.

  It’s a strange thing, but however funky you may be—and I’ll take on all comers in that line—once you’re moving there’s a kind of controlled panic that guides your feet; I went up those stairs like an elderly ghost, holding my breath until I nearly burst, and crouched on the first landing. I heard his feet across the top landing, and then recede as though he’d gone into a room—then silence.