Fire, Burn!

by John Dickson Carr

  The smoke of black powder had thickened to such a haze that even Joe Manton the younger, who was used to it, could hardly see the face of his customer—critical, without any other expression—as Cheviot threw out his arm for the final shot.

  Whack! Lead smote on iron. The flattened bullet rattled down to a stone floor.

  So great a stillness crept out in the gallery that you could hear, through an open door to the gunsmith’s shop, a big white-faced clock ticking on the wall there. It was ten minutes to nine. Superintendent Cheviot had been practising, alone, since twenty minutes past eight.

  Joe Manton the younger moved along behind the grilled iron railing, a little less than waist-high, which separated the visitors from the thirty-six paces to the target-wall. There was a creaking of rope as he tugged at the pulleys of the big skylight, tilting it to let out smoke.

  The brick walls were whitewashed; they needed a fresh whitewashing every fortnight or so. In the right-hand wall was a many-paned window, already pushed partway up. Through it the smoke slipped, curling with furtive eddies as it billowed out up the skylight.

  Black-powder stings the eyes; it makes the nostrils and lungs ache. But, as the haze lifted, Cheviot’s face emerged. Both their faces were powder-smudged.

  “You can do it, sir,” said Joe, coughing. “You can do it.” Inside himself, a protest squirmed and struggled. “But, begging your pardon, Mr. Cheviot, you do it all wrong.”

  “I know.”

  “But, sir—”

  On the shelf above the iron-grill partition lay one medium-bore duelling-pistol.

  Cheviot had tried as many as a dozen pistols: from the murderous twelve-bore, all but useless because its jump threw the bullet too high, to a small pocket-weapon not unlike the one belonging to Flora’s late husband.

  Each time, after he had fired, Joe the younger would deftly slip the pistol aside, flick off the burst percussion-cap, rapidly clean the barrel with rod and greased rag, and hang it back again in the long racks of pistols along the left-hand wall.

  Cheviot still remained motionless, studying the effect of his last shot. There seemed nothing to study. The iron wall was powder-dark, in some places scarred or uneven, spotted over with what looked like bits of white paper.

  Joe the younger fidgeted down to his toes. He was a thickset, sandy-haired young man, with high cheekbones and earnest eyes. His face was as powder-black as a goblin’s. He wore a dark coat, a brown waistcoat, and mulberry-coloured breeches with dark gaiters. He had not yet attained the polite manners yet the shatteringly frank speech of his famous father, gunsmith since 1793.

  “Here!” Joe was thinking. “Here, now!”

  He wished this new gentleman, with the broad shoulders and the light-grey eyes, would smile or laugh or crack a joke as the others did.

  This Mr. Cheviot, except for spotless white linen, was dressed all in black: even a black waistcoat.

  “Why?” thought Joe. “There isn’t going to be a duel, is there? He says it’s only a match. Besides, they’d fight a duel early in the morning.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir—!” he began aloud.

  “I know,” Cheviot repeated. He turned his head and smiled. “But I can’t do it, Joe. Not, that is, if I want to score a hit.”

  “Sir?”

  “This is how you would desire me to stand, isn’t it? Sideways to the rail: thus? Right foot pointed forward, left foot sideways?”

  At each movement Joe nodded eagerly.

  “Whereupon,” said Cheviot, illustrating, “I bring my right arm down and over, like this, stiffly stretched out towards the target? Isn’t that the manner of it?”

  “Sir, that’s the only manner of it! I bet you,” exclaimed Joe, inspired, “I bet you even my pa wouldn’t think of another way!”

  “Oh, but there is. You’ve seen it. You’re thinking of form and not effect, aren’t you?”

  “Sir?”

  “Some of the best pistol-shooting (I don’t say all, but some) is done as you saw it. You don’t consciously aim. It’s like—like throwing out your hand and pointing with the forefinger. It can be done very quickly: like this! It’s (what shall I call it?) a gift, a knack, a trick. You possess it, or you don’t.” Cheviot paused. “Is there anywhere I can wash?”

  Joe the younger seized with pleasure at what he could understand.

  “Just there, sir! Water laid on.”

  In the left-hand wall, outside the rail and beside the door to the shop, there was a brownish stone sink, with a tap above it and a short metal pump-handle beside it. The small mirror above had been polished, the thin towel on the nail was clean.

  Cheviot washed his hands and face with yellow soap, pumping up the water in gushes at a time.

  The beaverskin hat fitted well on his head, since the bump had begun to go down. But his body-bruises, tightening now, hurt badly when he bent over the sink.

  And the worst part, he was thinking bitterly, was that this duel—somewhere, anywhere; at some time; he didn’t know!—need never have been undertaken at all.

  He had accepted Hogben’s challenge only to draw Hogben on, to make it part of a shooting-match and a wager. If he shot better than Hogben, then Hogben and Wentworth would tell him all they knew about Margaret Renfrew. But he need learn nothing more about the dead woman; his case was finished. What mattered was the duel.

  If he lost Flora, after last night …

  After last night, this morning, a few hours …

  If he lost Flora, because of a foolish challenge and a bullet through his brain …

  Could that, perhaps, be the meaning of a brief but terrifying dream?

  The big white-faced clock in the shop went on ticking. It was four minutes to nine.

  Hanging the towel back on its nail, refusing to face the possibility of Flora being carried irresistibly away from him as though in dark water, he went back to the iron rail with its long shelf.

  “Joe! If you please, Joe.”

  Joe the younger, who had cleaned, polished, and hung up the last weapon used, scurried back. From the floor Cheviot took up the green-leather case, like a writing-case with a handle, he had brought with him from the Albany.

  It was in fact a writing-case, though he had cleared out its contents for all the exhibits he meant to display that day, if he lived to show them. Putting the case on the shelf, he opened it and took out the small pistol with the lozenge-shaped gold plate let into its handle.

  “Joe, have you ever seen this before?”

  “Well, it’s a Manton.” Joe was pleased again as he examined it. “That’s our mark: you see? Before my time, but then I’m very new. ‘A.D.’ Specially made, I bet.”

  “Yes. For a man now dead. If you have a bullet to fit this, will you load it for me?”

  “Got to clean it first, though. Look at the inside of this barrel!”

  “Very well, clean it. Then load it. But make haste!”

  Cheviot tapped his fingers on the shelf as he looked behind him. Not Captain Hogben, not Lieutenant Wentworth, not even Freddie Debbitt had appeared. Freddie might at least have let him know the time and place of the actual duel: and, more important, the distance.

  The front of the shooting-gallery, with a large bow window on either side of the door, resembled an ordinary shop. Through the panes, each oblong set in frames of white-painted wood, he could see out into Davies Street. He could see its long lines of stone hitching-posts, as everywhere else, and its iron tethering-rails. Nothing else.

  The flighty October weather, alternately dazzling with sun or dark with cloud, floated its flash and shadow over the skylight. A smell of decaying earth clung to the gallery and to the street.

  Joe, by the left-hand wall, was loading the small pistol. He poured in powder, to an exact measure, from one of the sealed metal flasks. He greased and dropped in the tiny pellet, from one of the various-sized bullet-boxes on the wall. Using a small wad torn from a newspaper, Joe carefully folded it, pressed and tamped down with a ramrod.
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  “Where shall I put up the wafer, sir?”

  “This time, Joe, I need no wafer. I am only firing anywhere at the wall.”

  The hammer clicked back. There was a light, stinging crack. Instead of studying the iron back-wall, Cheviot leaned over the barrier and seized Joe’s arm.

  “This is not large,” he indicated the pistol. “But you smelled smoke? There’s still a sharp and distinct smell of it?”

  “’Course there is!” cried Joe. His voice went up. “There allus is!”

  “Good. Now fetch me the bullet, please.”

  “Sir?”

  “The bullet I just fired. Bring it to me.”

  Joe clumped back to the target-wall. His feet rattled among fallen and misshapen bullets. He studied them, picked up one, and returned.

  “Take care, sir. It’s still hot.”

  Cheviot did not care if it burnt his fingers. The explosion of powder had burnt black that twisted pellet, driving its grains into soft lead and covering it. He nodded, putting away the bullet in the writing-case, and taking out a leather-covered book.

  “Joe, I am neither mad nor drunk. I have cause for what I do. Be good enough to read a dozen lines: here. And another six lines: here.”

  There was a pause, under the swift-moving, lightening-and-darkening sky.

  “Well, sir,” said Joe, “what’s o’clock? It’s plain enough.”

  “But the weapon? In my stupidity, at first, I never thought it had yet been invented.”

  “Not invented?” exclaimed Joe. “Why, Mr. Cheviot, we’ve had it for years and years and years! Didn’t you see the King’s coronation procession eight—no, nine—years ago?”

  “No. I—I was from home.”

  “Well, I was only a nipper. But it put my father in poor spirits for days. I was no better, though I couldn’t tell why. Crowds in the streets, everywhere, but not a cheer for the King. All quiet.”

  “Yes?”

  “The state-coach was beautiful. Like a dream. I never saw the King before or since, ’cos he won’t come to London. But he was so big and bloated you couldn’t believe him. He kept his eyes half-shut up, as though he didn’t care. He did care, though. He would shift round and round, angry as fire, ’cos people didn’t huzza. Anyways! Don’t you remember the bullet-hole in the glass of the state-coach window? And, first off, nobody could tell how it had come there?”

  “Yes! I seem to have read … no matter. Go on.”

  “Not invented?” exclaimed Joe, annoyed and ashamed of himself for having been so much impressed. “Why, sir, I’ve got one of ’em here!”

  “You’ve got one? May I see it?”

  Suddenly assuming his father’s air, Joe opened a little gate in the barrier and marched out.

  “Be pleased,” he said, “to step into the shop.”

  The white-faced clock ticked more loudly there. The atmosphere, of oil and wood, was pleasant to breathe amid the gun-racks. Though there were some few rifles, most of them were single-barrelled sporting-guns, their barrels polished and their wooden stocks a new, glossy brown. Joe reached up among them …

  Bang!

  Cheviot had been too preoccupied to hear horses in the street. What he heard then was the heavy slam of the street-door to the shooting-gallery, as three men strode in.

  “Put it back!” Cheviot said quickly to Joe Manton. “Put it back in the rack!”

  In the open doorway to the shop stood Captain Hugo Hogben.

  Like Lieutenant Wentworth, a little way behind him, Hogben did not wear his uniform. He wore black with white linen, a hat stuck on rakishly, and a cloak over his arm. The other two wore ordinary clothes, though Freddie Debbitt’s waistcoat would have shamed the rainbow. Hogben’s little eyes turned away.

  “The fellow’s here,” he said to Wentworth, over his shoulder. “Been practising, I see.”

  Not once did he look directly at Cheviot, or speak to him, even when they stood full-face. Hogben’s expression, between the feathery black side-whiskers, was impassive except for a very slight sneer.

  “Hullo, Joe,” he said. “It’s a match for a thousand guineas. Now where’s the fellow’s money?”

  He swung round and strode back into the gallery.

  Freddie, moving past him and past Wentworth, came hurrying into the shop. He nodded towards Manton the younger, indicating that Joe should go on into the gallery, and Joe did so. Freddie, in something of a dither, addressed Cheviot in a low voice.

  “Dash it all, Jack! Where have you been? Looked everywhere for you. After all! Got to tell you the terms of the—meetin’, haven’t I?”

  “Where is it?”

  “Just beyond old Vauxhall Gardens. T’other side the river, by Vauxhall Bridge. North-east there’s an imitation Greek temple, and a flat space with trees all round it. Know the place?”

  “Yes,” replied Cheviot, who didn’t. “At what distance do we fire?”

  “Twenty paces.” Freddie gulped a little, eyeing his companion, because this was much shorter than the usual distance. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed. The time?”

  “Five o’clock this evening.”

  “In the evening?” That took him aback; for some reason Cheviot drew out his watch and opened it. He looked out of the shop-window. “I never heard of a meeting in the evening. Besides! Let’s see: today is the thirty-first of October. …”

  “All Hallows’ Eve,” said Freddie, trying to make a small joke. “Eh? When ghosts walk, and evil spirits ride the wind.”

  “At five o’clock, Freddie, it will be nearly dark. How are we to see each other?”

  “I know, I know!” Freddie sounded querulous. “But those are Hogben’s terms: conveyed through Wentworth, of course. Never been done before; but nothing in the code against it. We looked to see. Deuce take it, Jack, why are you worried?”

  “Did I say I was worried?”

  “No, but—” Incautiously, Freddie’s voice soared up. “Damme, man, you’re the better shot!”

  From the gallery adjoining, addressed to empty air, Hogben’s voice called out.

  “Let the fellow come in here,” it sneered, “and try to prove that.”

  “Steady, Jack!” cried Freddie.

  And Freddie was right. He must never again lose his temper with this Guards officer: not a fraction of an inch. Cheviot loosened his tense shoulders, nodded, and followed Freddie into the gallery.

  There, looking out of one of the big bow windows towards the street, he saw Flora sitting in a carriage drawn up at the kerb.

  The bay horses were harnessed to an open carriage: low-built, of gilded dark lacquer and white upholstery. Flora, in a short fur jacket, her hands in a muff, an uptilted bonnet white-framing her hair, caught sight of him.

  Flora pressed her fingers to her mouth, then threw them out towards him. Her eyes and lips said the rest.

  Cheviot lifted his hat and bowed, hoping to return the message with his gaze. He dared not look at her for more than a second or two, or it would have unsteadied his aim. He had not expected her; it was a shock from which he turned away.

  The preparations, under Hogben’s loud-voiced orders, were nearly ready.

  Joe Manton had loaded six duelling-pistols, setting each down on the shelf just two feet apart. It was impossible to compare them in any way to modern revolvers; the round bullet weighed about two ounces. Then Joe took up the box of “wafers.”

  These wafers, of the heavy material which afterwards they would call cartridge-paper, were white in colour, round, and something over two inches in diameter. On the back of each was a light coating of glue.

  Carrying a wet rag in one hand and the wafer-box in the other, Joe went to the black target-wall. He wiped the wall clean of paper-bits. Turning back and forth to measure distance, he moistened the backs of six wafers. He banged them with his fist to a wall as thick as Vulcan’s iron door. Like the pistols, they were each two feet apart, shoulder-high.

  As Joe returned, those wafers became white and sta
ring spots on the black. But, at thirty-six paces, they looked very tiny.

  “Now, then!” said Hogben, stamping his feet as though about to begin a race. He addressed Lieutenant Wentworth. “A thousand guineas. Where’s the fellow’s money?”

  Wentworth, whose appearance out of uniform seemed even odder than Hogben’s, stood straight in astonishment. Finally he saw his companion was serious.

  “Hogben,” he said, “permit me to tell you that I’ll not suffer such behaviour much longer. There’s no need for this. In any wager, no gentleman is expected to—”

  “Where’s the fellow’s money?”

  Without a word Cheviot went to the left-hand edge of the shelf, behind which Joe Manton was standing almost against the wall. Mainly in banknotes, but with a number of gold sovereigns and some silver, he counted out the money beside Joe’s elbow.

  Still without speaking, he returned to stand beside Freddie with his back to the window.

  Hogben cast off his cloak and threw it aside. For the first time he looked at Cheviot.

  “Now, fellow!” And he jerked his head towards the shelf. “Shoot first.”

  Suddenly Cheviot took a step forward. Freddie, seeing the look on his face, leaped in front of him.

  “Toss a coin! That’s fair. Toss a coin!”

  “As you please, Mr. Debbitt,” agreed Wentworth, fishing a florin out of his waistcoat pocket. “Hogben, you were challenged to this match. It’s your call: cry it.”

  “Heads,” said Hogben, as the coin spun high in the air.

  “Tails,” Wentworth announced, bending over it as it rattled down. “What’s your will, Mr. Cheviot?”

  “Let him shoot first.”

  Hogben, unruffled, settled his hat on his head. He took up the first pistol on the left-hand end. There was a muffled melodious click as he drew back the hammer to full-cock. He turned sideways, setting his feet into position.

  The clock in the shop ticked loudly. No one must move, no one must utter a word of congratulation for a good shot or a word of condolence for a bad.

  Hogben did not swagger. With his mind on the money, he was quiet and prudent. He took his time, which he could never have done in a duel. His right arm lifted, lowered, and straightened. He waited until the skylight grew bright on that tiny wafer.