“Yep. Correct.”
Well, I’d heard of Yankee enterprise, but this beat the band. Mind you, it wasn’t crazy. A respectable scheme, brought to Bismarck’s attention, might well win a kind word from him, and trust the Americans to know how to turn that sort of thing into hard cash. The beautiful thought was Flashy writing: “My dear Otto, I wonder if you remember the jolly times we had in Schonhausen with Rudi and the rats, when you made me impersonate that poxy prince …” Could I blackmail him, perhaps? Perish the thought. But I could smell profit in her scheme, money and … I was watching her inhale deeply. By Jove, yes, money was the least of it. She stroked her cheek with the hand holding the cigarette and watched me speculatively. Was there a glimmer of more than commercial interest in that fine dark eye? We’d see.
“I’d have to know a good deal about your scheme before—”
“Yep. We’d want you to visit the town of Bismarck, as well as examining our plans in detail. A few weeks would—”
“Bismarck!” I exclaimed. “Wait – isn’t that the place – yes, on the Missouri – close by an army post called Fort Abraham Lincoln? Why, it’s right out on the frontier!”
“Corr-ect. Why, d’you know it?”
“No, but a friend of mine – in fact, the man you saw lunching with me at the Brevoort – commands at Fort Lincoln. Well, that’s an extraordinary thing! Why, I was with him only today—”
“Is that so? I was about to say that when you’d been shown the area, and had the plans explained, you would be able to write Prince Bismarck – or visit him if you thought it advisable. The corporation would meet all expenses, naturally, in addition to—”
“Who’d show me the area? Yourself, personally?”
“—in addition to a fee of fifteen thousand dollars. Yep.” She crushed out her cigarette. “Myself. Personally.”
“In that case,” says I gallantly, “I should find it impossible to refuse.” She looked at me woodenly and put another cigarette between her full lips, lighting it herself before I could bound to assist.
“Of course,” says I, “I can’t promise that Bismarck will—”
“We would pay five thousand of the fee on despatch of your personal letter to the Chancellor, drafted in consultation with us,” says she crisply, and blew out her match. “The balance would be dependent on his reply – five thousand if he replies but declines, ten thousand if he approves. According to the warmth of that approval, a bonus might be paid.”
A business-like bitch if ever there was one; cold as a dead Eskimo, rapping out her terms and looking like the Borgias’ governess. I told her it all sounded perfectly satisfactory.
“Oh-kay.” She struck a bell on her desk, and spoke past me as the door opened. “Reserve a first-class sleeping berth for Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., K.C.B., to Bismarck and return.” The door closed. “There’s a hotel there, but I wouldn’t put a dawg in it. Can you arrange to stay with your military friend? If not, we’ll rent the best rooms available. You can? Oh-kay.”
She put down her cigarette, rose, and went to an escritoire against the wall. I watched the tall, shapely figure lustfully, considering the curls that nestled around her ears, and the entrancing profile under the lustrous piled hair. It’s my experience that a woman with a shape like that will invariably use it for the purpose which Nature intended. She might be a proper little Scrooge, with her cold efficiency and twanging voice and impersonal stare, but she didn’t dress in that style, and paint in that artful way, to help balance the books. If I couldn’t charm her supine, it was time to retire. As I got up she turned and came towards me with that smooth stride, holding out an envelope towards me.
“It’s the corporation’s policy,” says she, “to pay a retainer in advance.” At a yard’s distance I realised she was barely three inches shorter than I.
“Quite unnecessary, my dear,” says I pleasantly. “By the way, you still have the advantage of me, Miss … or Mrs …?”
“Candy. Mrs Arthur B. Candy.” She continued to hold out the envelope. “We’d prefer that you took it.”
“And I’d prefer that I didn’t. Arthur,” says I, “has a sweet tooth,” and before she could stir I had my hands on that willowy waist. She quivered – and stood still. I drew her swiftly against me, mouth to mouth, feeling the glorious benefits and working to get her lips apart; suddenly they opened, her tongue flickered against mine, she writhed against me for five delicious seconds, and as I changed my grip to the half-Flashman – one hand on her right tit, t’other clasping her left buttock, and stand back, referee – she slipped smoothly from my embrace.
“Yep,” says she, and without the least appearance of hurry she was behind her desk again, seating herself and making a minute adjustment to her eyepatch ribbon. “Arthur Candy,” she went on calmly, “never existed. But in working hours, the inital B. stands for business.” Her hand rested beside her bell, “Oh-kay?”
“Business is so fatiguing, you know. Don’t you think you ought to lie down? All work and no play—”
“I have a full sked-yool for the next ten days,” she went on briskly, consulting her calendar. “Yep. I intend to be in Bismarck around the third week of May. That gives you ample time to travel out at your convenience. When I arrive I’ll check with Coulson’s, the steamboat people, and we can meet at their office.”
“I’ve a much better notion. Suppose we travel out together?”
“That’s quite impossible, I’m afraid. I have appointments.”
“I’m sure you have,” says I, sitting on the corner of her desk à la Rudi Starnberg, although I don’t recall his knocking a tray of pins to the floor. “But, d’you know, Mrs Candy, there’s a good deal I ought to know about your corporation beforehand, I think. After all—”
“You can check with the New York City Bank as to our standing, if that bothers you. And there’s the retainer.” She gestured with her cigarette. I picked up the envelope – a sheaf of greenbacks, in hundreds – and dropped it back on her desk.
“The only thing that bothers me, as you are well aware,” says I, “is the corporation president. Will she do me the honour of dining with me this evening? Please?”
“Thank you, Sir Harry, but I’m engaged this evening.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Tomorrow I leave for Cincinnati.” She stood up and held out her hand. “May I say on behalf of the corporation that we’re both pleased and honoured that you are joining us in this enterprise?” She said it with calm formality, eye steady, the full mouth firm and expressionless. “Also that I am wearing a boot with a sharp toe and a pointed heel, and I’d like my hand back. Thank you.” She struck the bell, and her bloody watchdog appeared. “I’ll probably arrive at Bismarck by steamboat – the corporation has an interest in the company, so if your friend can put you up till then, perhaps we can arrange accommodation aboard afterwards.” Her smile was admirably polite and impersonal. “They’re extremely comfortable, and it will be so much pleasanter if we travel by water. Easier to see the country, too. Yep. You’re sure you won’t take the retainer? Oh-kay. Good afternoon, Sir Harry.”
And there I was in the corridor, considering various things. Chiefly, that I admired Mrs Candy’s style – the hard, no nonsense aloofness, punctuated by a brief impassioned lechery, was one I’d encountered occasionally, but I’d never known it better done. Why, though? Her proposal was rum, but plausible – even reasonable. There’d been a cool thou. at least in that envelope, and my sensitive nose hadn’t smelled swindle – it would have been all the way to the sofa and break the springs if she was crooked, which was one reason I’d tested her with a grapple. No, my guess was that she was a lusty bundle who kept a tight rein on her appetite during office hours, just as she’d said, but would let rip once the shop was shut. For the rest, her scheme made sense: Otto’s blessing would be worth a fortune to her (not that she’d ever get it through me), and even if I didn’t make more than the first payment out of it, playing with the corporation presi
dent on a steamboat cruise would be ample compensation – for her, too, lucky Mrs Candy. And Elspeth would be fast in Philadelphia for another month anyway.
The one fishbone in my throat was the queer chance that I’d be going to Bismarck, next door to George Custer’s fort. It’s the sort of coincidence I don’t trust an inch, but I was damned if I could see a catch. He’d sworn he was going to defy Grant and leave town tomorrow, so why shouldn’t I go west with him? – I might even pretend that I was taking him up on his invitation to join his ghastly campaign, supposing the silly ass was allowed to have one. It might be an amusing trip to Bismarck with him, too …
By God, but it was all suspiciously pat! The wild notion that Custer had set Mrs Candy on to lure me west so that he could drag me along in pursuit of the Sioux crossed my mind, and I found I was grinning. No, that didn’t answer – not having seen the exotic Mrs Candy. Not puritan George.
* * *
a Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State.
b See Royal Flash.
Chapter 18
The rail trip west was a fine mixture of boredom and high diversion. Custer was in a hysteric turmoil, what between his rage at Grant and his own recklessness in leaving Washington without permission. He was like a small boy smashing his toys in a bawling tantrum while watching with fearful fascination to see what Papa will do. He was all over me again, excusing his ill-temper at the White House as mere frenzy of disappointment; I was the truest of friends, rallying to his side when all others had forsaken him, I was a tower of strength and comfort – what, I would come west with him, even? Oh, this was nobility! Enobarbus couldn’t have done better. Let him wring my hand again.
“As for that rattlesnake Grant,” cries he, as we climbed aboard at the depot, me chivvying the porter and Custer waving his cane with his hat on three hairs, “let him prevent me if he dares! I have a voice, and the public have ears. Conductor, I am General George A. Custer and I have reservations. We’ll see if his spite outruns his sense of self-preservation. First in horsemanship, does he say? A fine crowd of cripples they must have had at the Point that year!”
I had two days of this, all the way to Chicago; he was like a pea on a drum one minute and gnawing his knuckles in silent gloom the next. The Stuffed Gods would get him if they could, he was sure of it, and became almost lachrymose; then he would brighten as he recalled the news that only a few weeks back General Crook, making the first tentative move against the Sioux hostiles from the south, had blundered into the camp of Crazy Horse himself, and after a mismanaged action which accomplished nothing but the destruction of the Indians’ tipis, with scant loss on either side, had retired discomfited to Fort Fetterman.
“Imagine it!” gloats Custer, bright with scorn. “The arch-hostile in their grasp, and they let him slip! They burn a few lodges, kill an old squaw and a couple of children, capture the Indians’ ponies – which they promptly lose again next day – and Crook counts it a victory. Ye gods, it doth amaze me! Crazy Horse must be helpless with laughter. And Grant thinks he can do without me on the frontier?” He laughed bitterly. “Crook – because he’s scrambled after a few Apache renegades they think he’s an Indian fighter. Well, he knows now what real hostiles are! Perhaps our perspicacious President does, too, and will have to swallow his gall and put me back where I belong.”
I asked him mildly how he’d set about it, and he scowled. “Even if Grant sees sense, I’ll still not have full command – no, that’s for your genteel friend General Terry, who has never fought an Indian in his life – an impressive qualification, is it not?” He waved a dismissive hand. “Fortunately, the dispositions are so simple a child could direct them – Terry and I will march to the Yellowstone and strike into the Powder country from the north; old Gibbon’s infantry column will advance from the west; and Crook, supposing he has collected himself before Christmas, will come up from the south – all converging, you see, so that Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and all their hands will be ringed in, at bay.” He smiled complacently, and winked. “And I, bien entendu, have charge of the cavalry, who move rather faster than anyone else.” Then his face fell again. “Unless that rascal in Washington hobbles me at the last. But he can’t, Flashman, I tell you! He can’t!”
But he could. There was an embarrassed staff-walloper on the platform at Chicago to convoy our hero to General Sheridan forthwith, and from little Phil we learned that Sherman had sent word that the Sioux expedition was definitely to proceed without Custer. The resultant explosion of grief and rage shook the furniture, with me tactfully silent and enjoying every minute of it, and Sheridan looking more like an unhappy tramp than ever. Custer went wild; as heaven was his witness, he’d call Grant out, or sue him, or have him impeached, and in the meantime he was going on to Fort Lincoln if he had to swim through blood all the way. Sheridan observed bluntly that he could go to hell if he wanted, but if he hoped to see service on the way, he’d better think of a means of making his peace with Grant.
“How can I,” bawls Custer, “when he will not see me?”
“Neither would I, in your present condition,” says Sheridan. “I tell you straight, you’d better take hold, and stop acting like some damned opera singer. You’re your own worst enemy, George. I’ll telegraph Sherman again, but you’d better put your case to Terry, and if he wants you badly enough, maybe Grant’ll listen.”
Custer rolled an eye at me, as much as to say: “You see how I am used!”, and I shepherded him on to the train to St Paul, all agog for Act II. It was like East Lynn over-played, for Custer had apparently decided that the best way to approach the mild and courtly Terry was as a good man wronged; it would have broken your heart to see him clasping Terry’s hand, tears in his eyes, swearing that if he were not permitted “to hazard myself in honour’s cause, at the head of the regiment which has followed me so faithfully and far”, it would bring down his grey hairs in sorrow to the knacker’s yard, and there’d be nothing for it but to clap a pistol in his mouth and call in the decorators. He described, with outflung arm, how I had abased myself to Grant on his behalf, “beseeching” if you please, and when he actually went down on the carpet and fairly grovelled, Terry didn’t know where to look.
“Do you think he’ll do himself a mischief?” Terry asked me when the suppliant had retired, and I said, on the whole, no, but if he didn’t get his way, Grant would be well advised to stay out of Ford’s Theatre if Custer was in town.
“It is deeply distressing,” says Terry. “I wish he wouldn’t take on so; it isn’t becoming. You’ve seen Grant, though – what d’you think? Will he be swayed if I speak on Custer’s behalf?”
“If you don’t, you’ll be about the only man in the Army who hasn’t,” says I. “But you’ll carry more weight than all the rest – it’s your expedition, and I’d hate to be the Commander-in-Chief who denied you your choice of senior men. Suppose he refused to give you Custer, and the expedition went wrong – say the cavalry were mismanaged by his replacement? The Democrats could make hay of that, I should think. No, if you ask for Custer, Sam daren’t risk a refusal.” And to increase the fun I added: “Custer knows it, too.”
He stiffened at that. “I’ll not be made a cat’s paw!” Then he frowned. “Is it true, d’you think, that Custer has … hopes of high office? I’ve heard rumours …”
“That he’d take a stab at the White House? Shouldn’t wonder – you Americans have a habit of promoting your military heroes, haven’t you? Washington, Jackson, Grant – back home we did it with Wellington, and bloody near had a revolution. Before my time, of course. However, that don’t help you. The point is: d’you want Custer along?”
“It is difficult not to be moved by his plea,” he mused; he was a proper soft head prefect, this one. “And if this unhappy Belknap business had not arisen, there’d have been no question of Custer’s removal. No – I believe it would lie heavy on my conscience if I didn’t exert myself on his behalf.”
Conscience, you see? Note that; it’s a bigger foe
of mankind than gunpowder.
Between us we concocted an appeal to Grant – me suggesting the more abject and crawling phrases which I knew would drive Custer to apoplexy, and Terry striking them out. Then I took it to Custer for his signature; he tore his hair and swore he’d die before he’d “truckle to that miscreant Grant.”
“You put your John Hancock on that, my boy,” says I, “or it’s all up with you. Let me tell you, it would have been a sight more humiliating for you if Terry had had the writing of it; I had the deuce of a job persuading him to appeal to Grant at all. If you refuse this, I’ll not answer for the consequences: Terry’s about ready to wash his hands of you.”
“You can’t mean it?” cries he in panic, and scribbled his signature, insisting that I was his truest friend, etc. It went over the wire, and with Terry and Sherman and Sheridan and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all besieging him, Grant finally gave way, and the word came back: Custer could go with his regiment. Why, God knows; if I’d been in Grant’s shoes I’d have cashiered the bastard, just for spite.
Custer’s behaviour after this was a revelation, even to me. I guess he remembered what an ass he’d made of himself to Terry, for he thanked him pretty curtly, and when we were on the train to Bismarck he confided to me that Terry would have been a fool to act otherwise. “There would have been mutiny in the 7th if I had not been restored,” says he smugly. “Then where would Lawyer Terry have been? If he’s done anyone a kindness, it is himself, not me.” And he’d been weeping on the fellow’s boot-laces, so help me. I was beginning to wonder if Custer wasn’t perhaps some by-blow of the Flashman family.
This suspicion was dispelled when we reached Fort Lincoln, about a week after leaving Washington, for I hadn’t been at the place a day before I realised that Custer lacked one quality which I and my kindred have by the bucket: popularity. I don’t know how much his troopers cared for him, but his officers clearly disliked him. I don’t say it was on professional grounds; I believe most of them respected him as a soldier, but as a man they’d have had a hard job tolerating him. This was a new slant to me; you see, he’d toadied me on account of my fame and success, and ever since the Belknap business he’d been in such a high-flown state that his character couldn’t be judged; now, in his own mess, I saw the fellow’s bounce and arrogance in full flight, and knew that whatever else it might be, the 7th wasn’t a happy ship.
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