The Devil in Velvet

by John Dickson Carr

  They did so. Big Tom’s eyes, out of matted hair and helmet, had acquired a reddish shine. Slowly Job moved the two large cudgels. Whip smiled.

  “When I am halfway towards the opening between the lime trees, you three woodmen slip from the house; all quiet; no sound. None will see you if you crouch down; they have but a watchman’s lanthorn and a linkboy’s light. You will move on my left side; my left. When you have come to the first tree at the street, crouch down unseen and wait my sign. Understood?”

  “Ay, sir!” three voices together snarled back the answer.

  “Now. Giles and Harry! You, with myself, are our three swordsmen. The same applies to you two as to the other three, except that you will be on my right. My right. Understood?”

  Two replies shot back at him. From upstairs there was a loud, long run of clatterings as a shower of stones struck front windows, accompanied by an overset of furniture and yells from outside.

  “Be easy!” said Fenton, and every man stood motionless. “They’ve not yet the stomach for a dash at it, else they’d not throw stones. Here’s our design near complete!

  “Here am I, in the middle facing out. On my left,” his arm moved, “three concealed woodmen. On my right,” again his arm moved, “two concealed swordsmen. When you see me raise my sword high in the air—thus!—both groups, crouched down, will turn (woodmen left, swordsmen right) round the tree, and creep out between the mob and the trees. Be sure there is room for you. If possible, you may even try to seem part of the mob.

  “When you move out, not an eye will see you. I’ll contrive it; I swear this! All eyes will be on my upraised sword. That is all, save I hope you have not forgot your final order? Woodmen?”

  He swung round to Whip, Job, and Big Tom.

  “Nay, sir,” snapped Whip, smiling as he fingered his log bat. “When you cry, ‘Let go!’ then we three turn their right flank,”—out went his left hand, facing him—“and turn it back, so we force all round to meet us in the narrower width of the lane.”

  “Good! Swordsmen?”

  “When you shall cry, ‘Swords!’ then all of us leap at the line together,” said a now-tense Giles, “and God for King Charles!”

  “Good. Now but a final word to the woodmen. Never do you strike, you logmen who will catch three, or four, or five person at once, never do you strike at their middles or their chests. They may seize the log and pull it down. Let fly always, with all strength, at their faces; split me their skulls and open their faces like a pulped orange. Cudgeller with two clubs, kill by head-smashing with every stroke. When you are drawn into the mob, as we may all be, let go your log; meet them with steel coach axles and extra cudgels. Have all here sharpened spur rowels, as I did order?”

  There was a low, fierce hissing of assent.

  “Should any catch at your feet, you’ll know what to do by grinding the spur backwards. Swordsmen!”

  “Ay, sir?”

  “I do command you: fight as long as you may on the fringe of the mob. Else your swords will be useless. Give me no adroit play of the fencing school; give me but a dead man every time your sword or dagger plungeth out. If you be drawn inside, as you will be, let go your swords; use the iron bar for heads, but never let go the long dagger. Keep it below; never seen; always striking. Strike for the lower belly; strike everywhere and always! —Now I have done.”

  Fenton saw, in their eyes and mouths, that they were now wrought to the pitch. Already he had drawn his long, double-edged sword. He pulled the main-gauche dagger from his belt, settling his left hand round the grip and his thumb in its thumb groove.

  “Now I go out; stand ready,” he said.

  At the doorway, as he opened the door, he swung round once more.

  “Never falter. Never cease to strike. This mob is a tyrant, is he? God’s body, let’s adventure it! Three swordsmen and three woodmen shall bring the tyrant down!”

  And he closed the door behind him, in a pitch-dark hall. As he strode towards the front door, he had little hatred for mob in the abstract. What he saw before him were the Country party: rich, fat, landed gentlemen, who would upset the throne to gain more power and money—just as Pym and Hampden and Cromwell had done, more than a generation before—and whom Whig historians with flat lying sometimes called “the people of England.”

  People of England!

  Fenton threw open the front door. The blast of shouting, as lanthorn and link torch picked out his figure, rolled over him like a wind. Two heavy stones, to which he paid no attention, whizzed past shoulder and head.

  As he strolled forward to meet them, he let out his voice at full power.

  “A good damnation to ye, scum! What d’ye want?”

  Again, as though rattling together like an avalanche, an enormous peal of thunder split above them. Down the lift of the lightning, far behind the backs of the mob, ran a white crooked bolt; all heard or saw the crack, sizzle, and white flare as it struck a tree.

  Fenton stood motionless, halfway between road and house, swinging sword and dagger with true pleasure, until that was over. Then he walked straight to the open space between the limes, looking out over them contemptuously.

  “Where’s your leader?” he demanded. Then, bellowing it out: “Stand back!”

  The impact of personality, the bolt drive of one who knows his mind, will send even an overwrought mob slightly backwards. The straggling line, still six feet from the lime trees, moved instinctively back two paces, while a woman’s voice screamed at them not to move.

  Fenton, who sensed that his three woodmen were now on his left, the two swordsmen on his right, rejoiced that there was more room for them.

  “Where’s your leader, I say?” he shouted. Then up went his sword, high up, glittering in the light of a bobbing lanthorn and an unsteady link light.

  Every eye was fixed on it for a moment, as eyes had been fixed on his bared teeth and his inflamed eyes below the line of the helmet. He could barely see the crouched line of shadows which ran out, left and right, in front of the trees.

  “I am the leader, sir,” snapped a harsh voice from the eight swordsmen huddled together too close on the right.

  Out stepped a man who was fat-bodied but very lean and dignified of face, an ideal Country party member, with fine clothes and with a green ribbon in his hat. The crowd half-stilled as he spoke out.

  “I am Samuel Warrender, Esquire,” he announced. “Are you a Papist, or no?”

  “No! But your behaviour tonight is like to make me one!”

  “Have you knowledge to foretell the future?”

  “Yes!” bellowed Fenton, at the top of his voice.

  He felt, he knew himself, the chill of superstitious dread which made cold the hearts of them all. Now, now, was the time to strike.

  “Then you’ll have war?” shouted Fenton, lifting his sword again. “Let go!”

  Almost unseen, appearing gigantic in those shifting dim lights, three figures well spaced apart arose in front of the mob’s right flank—to be exact, the left side as you faced the line. Two log bats, six feet long, smashed round from the shoulder, as two cudgel clubs in the hands of one man began to dance like the legs of murder.

  The first line hardly even saw what came at them. All were concentrated on Fenton. But, as the second line glimpsed their attackers, one inhuman screech of terror went up from them. Instantly the log bats swung again; the cudgel clubs never ceased as Job danced along the line.

  “Back!” yelled one long-legged man in a fustian cap, who had tried and failed to climb a steep bank on the far side of the street.

  “Move back! Move back!”

  “Back towards Charing Cross!”

  Now the dead or badly wounded, before the woodmen attackers, either sprawled backwards or fell face forwards through the broad spaces between the three woodmen, amid a rising cloud of reddish-brown dust. Though dust set
tled on the blood, it was well if an onlooker did not see their faces. One man, in periwig and gold buttons, dived forward, for some unknown reason clutching the gold chain to his gold watch. He ran a few low steps, watch and chain flying out, until he dropped head down, face snake-veined with blood in the dust cloud.

  Meanwhile, those on the left wing—or right side as Fenton faced them—hardly knew what was happening until a series of shouts in the din told them.

  Fenton, as cool and detached as he had ever been, stood as though he held a watch.

  “Right!” he thought, as the second hand ticked into place.

  And out he ran, past the front of the crooked line, with Giles following and then young Harry.

  Bang went a heavy club, thudding harmlessly off a woodman’s helmet. The mob’s wing had now been turned back so that it stood facing them across the road; and, as they pivoted back, automatically the swordsmen’s wing turned with them.

  Now the position was altered. Now Fenton’s men faced a much narrower line, cramped up together, in the width of a none-too-wide lane. In the mob’s original position, their line had been too thick and stretched across the lane in front of the house. They could have surrounded and crushed any force which ventured out.

  But now it was different. Now the mob line, though still too wide to be covered by six men unless they hammered death across it, was huddled and packed with their backs to the east. …

  “Swords!” shouted Fenton.

  And six helmeted attackers, as one man, struck the line at once.

  So vicious was the spring, so damn-you determined were the attackers, that they sent the mob line reeling back twenty paces in half as many seconds. The lantern swung wildly on its pole, the yellow-blue link light streamed out. Though no thunder could be heard amid those cries, the lightning cut out harsh, hard lines of eyes and mouths.

  Eight swordsmen leaped out at guard against three, and all eight were down, dead or writhing, in shortly over a minute. It is only fair to say that all were none too expert, save one who gave Fenton six passes and nearly thirty seconds—until Fenton broke his feint with a time thrust and ran him through the throat.

  Unfortunately, the first dash at Fenton was made by Samuel Warrender, Esquire. Mr. Warrender went out at full lunge, not well, at the belly; Fenton heard the hiss as he parried; then he shortened his sword and stabbed the Green Ribboner through the heart. Mr. Warrender went forward on the ground, twisting like a trodden worm.

  Now the swordsmen, leaping over the fallen and kicking back with spurs at hands which would upset them, struck at the mob itself, which either stepped back or ran out to fight murderously with heavy cudgels. Giles, cool and methodical, never smote out with sword or dagger without finding a mark. Harry, pale but with tight-set teeth, plunged in a-slashing with his double-edged blade; they saw it glitter overhead, and glitter again.

  But now the attack was almost halted; the mob began to turn.

  Having lost their heads at the outset, they planned the counter­attack. Even their voices were stilled. Fenton, drawing back, saw that swords and daggers and cudgels were being passed hand over hand to the front.

  They had discovered that the heaviest cudgel blow on a helmet will do little more than make its wearer’s ears ring with dizziness. But, if you swung for the ear flap, it may break the jaw. Again, one or two might spurt through with daggers, to stab the woodmen from the back. …

  He saw, with horror, that Big Tom was down. Far to his right there was a crack as Harry’s sword snapped in two. He, Fenton, must guard the whole line.

  Even as he thought that, a tatterdemalion with a shock of black hair wormed through the line with a dagger for Job. Job, white-faced and panting, did not see it. Fenton leaped sideways to the left. His short overarm cut nearly lopped the hand from Shock-hair’s wrist; the latter stared at it unbelievingly. Another tatterdemalion, this one with a broad-leafed hat and spectacles, fought through with a sword.

  Fenton’s rapier went through him from side to side, so that the ring hilt thudded on his left ribs and the point jumped out on the other side. As Fenton yanked it out and back, the man raced forward, hat and spectacles flying off, and seemed to burrow his head into the ground.

  Back Fenton raced through the dust fog. And he saw, now, that Harry was down too.

  “You can’t do it, sir!” Giles’s voice said clearly from somewhere. “If we fight now, we must fight forward!”

  Yes, Giles was right. Fenton, maddened, plunged straight at the mob.

  For some moments, now, you might think he had been gripped by Sir Nick. His dagger with the curved hand guard, meant for straight left-hand thrusts, stabbed everywhere for the lower abdomen. Despite what he had told his own followers, the mob could not even bind his sword arm.

  The razorish blade edge chopped, chopped, and chopped to the right; then out the point shot twice into faces, and back again to chop. They could not hold his arm; it was too elusive; and when many hands seized for the wrist, they found sharp steel which sent paralyzing pain in fire up their arms.

  So vicious was his forward assault that the whole section of the line staggered back, driving their elbows into those behind to make room. A heavy cudgel, swung against his right ear flap, for some reason did not even stun him. A dagger, lunging at the left side, drew blood but only ripped through the loose velvet coat and tore part of it away.

  Suddenly he found himself in an open half-circle, with not a soul at his back.

  He could hardly draw breath; he could barely see them; but Fenton’s brain was there.

  All about them it was almost quiet, except for thuds and grunts and hisses. Pervading all in the dust was the harsh, raw stink of sweat which, more than any blood, thickens the nostrils in close fighting.

  Distantly, from the Royal Mews, Fenton heard drums beating to arms. He did not want the aid of the military. Having outlined this battle plan, he would not let it fail.

  “If I had a minute to think,” he prayed in his mind. “Thirty seconds! Even fifteen …!”

  To grasp an instant’s thought, he tried what in his age of 1925 he would have called bluff. He raised his head, turning it partly over his right shoulder.

  “Set loose the mastiffs!” he bellowed. “Thunder! Lion! Greedy! Bare-behind!”

  The group in front of him quivered, but held their ground. He could pick out only a heavy man, in the stained blue smock of a butcher, who carried a club; and a little Alsatian, all dirt and hair, with the dagger that had missed.

  “Kill the devil in velvet!” snarled the butcher. “Kill …”

  Then he, like all others, stopped as if struck dumb.

  All heard the din of barking down the road, and the smashing of glass. All saw the three great mastiffs, seeming even huger by that weird light, leap out from between the poplars. Greedy was dead, and could not hear. But Thunder, Lion, Bare-behind—poisoned, half-blind, and sick—the fighting watchdogs answered their call.

  They smelt the spilled blood. They knew this was no half-playful savaging in a garden. Brindled, tawny, and fawn-coloured, they leaped with bared teeth for their enemies between their friends, and they sprang high for the throat.

  One last command Fenton gave.

  “Forward!” And then: “God for King Charles!”

  Up over the mob, like a man out of water, rose the helmet and whiskers and immense shoulders of Big Tom, lashing out like a Titan with cudgel and coach axle. Whip and Job, spent and tottering, felt the hot energy which is a man’s second strength. Fenton plunged straight at the mob, sword and dagger a-glitter. Casting off all coolness or caution, Giles ran beside him.

  And the mob broke.

  For a few seconds Fenton did not notice it. One small figure detached itself at the back, and ran hard towards the thoroughfare of hay and grain, generally called Haymarket. One figure was followed by two or three, then half a dozen and a dozen
.

  The lanthorn toppled and fell. The torch sizzled out of sight. Men, seen as hardly larger than ants, were running hard towards Charing Cross or down King Street. When the second or third line melted behind them, the first line could only curse. With a last shower of clubs, cudgels, stones, daggers, and swords flung at the attackers, they turned and ran hardest of all.

  “Hold!” cried Fenton, lifting his sword.

  Just thirty seconds after they had struck the mob line with a second thunderbolt, not one enemy was left. The lane lay deserted, even eerie, save for the many dead and wounded behind them. Some of the wounded moaned, or tried to crawl. The torch, which would not burn out even under a light rain, sizzled yellow and blue on its side.

  But what came to them, just as Fenton was giving instructions, was not a light rain. With a last explosive crack of thunder, the skies opened and the storm tore down.

  CHAPTER XV

  THEY SUP MERRY,

  WITH RELATION OF A TEMPLE OF VENUS

  ON THE EVE OF THE DREADED 10TH OF JUNE, thought Fenton, it was ironic that they should have a gay little impromptu supper party.

  At noon, when he wrote in the date of June 9th for today, he went to one of the open windows of the study, which faced out on green shrubbery, and smoked his long pipe until the bowl burnt his fingers. As he looked back on that fight on the night of the 7th, and what happened when the file of dragoons splashed up in the rain, he could smile again.

  “Eh, well!” he could say, even though his body bruises made him stiff and ached when he moved, like an often-aching head. “A night, a night!”

  It was now certain that Thunder, Lion, and Bare-behind would become well. Though Mr. Milligrew had cursed him in language unbecoming from him to a nobleman, still the vet admitted that the mastiffs’ exercise might have helped to clear more poison from them.

  Then Fenton had hurried to the kitchen, to see to the hurts of his small army.