I don’t care to be told that I resemble royalty; it wakes too many unpleasant memories, and in the case of Franz-Josef it was downright foolish, for while he cut a fairish figure, tall, dark and well-moustached and whiskered, he had no more style than a clothes-horse – and I ain’t got a Hapsburg lip or the stare of a backward haddock. He didn’t have my shoulders or easy carriage, either, and as he’d raised his hat I’d noted that his hair was receding – and dyed, by the look of it. That aside, he hadn’t changed much in the fifteen years since I’d seen him. He’d be in his early fifties now, eight years my junior.
“It’s a solemn thought,” says Willem, as we resumed our walk down the Landstrasse, “that as he drives serenely by, the Holnup lads will be watching.” He nodded at the fashionable shoppers thronging the pavements. “Aye, they’ll be here, biding their time for tomorrow night, or the next. Too smart to try a shot or a bomb in open day, though – risky, and not near so impressive as cutting his throat in his own bedroom.” He slipped his arm through mine. “Little do they know, eh?”
I hardly heard him. Somehow the sight of Franz-Josef had driven it home to me that in a few hours I’d be embarked on the lunatic business of faking a game leg in his coverts, being taken in as his guest, and prowling his blasted house in the middle of the night in the company of this bloodthirsty young ruffian, waiting for assassins to break in. It was like some beastly dream, there in this bustling, sunny resort, with respectable, decent folk strolling by, the women exclaiming at the shop windows, their men pausing indulgently, young people chattering gaily at the café tables – dammit, a pair of polizei twirling their moustaches at the next corner … and Willem must have had some sixth sense, for his arm tightened on mine and he shot me a quick glance as we walked past them. The urge to wrench free and run screaming for help lasted only an instant; I daren’t, and I knew I daren’t … but, oh Lord, somehow, in the next few hours, I must summon up the courage to try … what? The sweat was breaking out on me as we reached the Golden Ship, and Willem called cheerfully for coffee and cake.
And it was all wasted fear, for the die was cast already by hands other than Bismarck’s, and rolling in my direction.
We dined early that evening, and for all his artless banter I sensed that Willem was wound tight, as was Kralta. She it was who proposed that we should visit the casino, less from an urge for play, I guessed, than for some distraction from the strain of waiting. Willem said it was a capital notion, and I forced a cheery agreement, so then we waited while Kralta donned her evening finery, and presently we strolled through the lantern-lit gardens to the New Casino, with Beefy acting as rearguard and taking post at the entrance as we passed into the salon.
That feeling of unreality that had gripped me in the streets came back with a vengeance under the glittering chandeliers. It was a scene from operetta, like the Prince’s reception we’d seen at the theatre the previous night, a swirl of elegant figures clustered round the tables or waltzing in the ballroom beyond, all laughter and gaiety and heady music, gallants in immaculate evening rig or dress uniform, the ladies splendid in coloured silks, bright eyes and white shoulders and jewels a-gleam in the candleshine, glasses raised to red lips and white-gloved fingertips resting on stalwart arms, the rattle of the wheel and the voices of the croupiers mingling with the cries of delight or disappointment, the soft strains of “La Belle Hélène” and “Blue Danube” from the orchestra, Ruritania come to life on a warm Austrian evening that would go on flirting and laughing and dancing forever … and a bare mile away, the lonely lodge among the dark silent trees with its precious royal tenant all unguarded against the creeping menace that would come by night, and only one desperate adventurer and one shivering poltroon to save the peace of Europe, unless at the eleventh hour that poltroon could streak to safety in the tall timber.
D’you wonder that while I retain a vivid image of the scene in that casino, I haven’t the faintest recollection of the play? Not that I’m much in the punting line; running a hell in Santa Fe convinced me that it’s money burned unless you hold the bank, but if I’d been as big a gambling fool as George Bentinck I’d not have noticed whether it was faro or roulette or vingt-et-un we wagered on; I was too much occupied keeping down my fears, mechanically holding Kralta’s stakes and muttering inane advice, working up my courage with brandy while Willem smoked and watched me across the table.
I know Kralta won, smiling coolly as her chips were pushed across, and suggesting we escape from the noise and crowd into the garden. Willem nodded, and she went off to find her stole and to tittivate while I collected her winnings from the caissier and sauntered out of the salon to the entrance, my heart going like a trip-hammer, for I knew it was now or never.
Beefy was on the q.v. at the head of the steps, so I told him offhand that her highness would come presently, and I would wait for her at the little fountain yonder. He scowled doubtfully, and as I went leisurely down the steps to the gravel walk I saw him from the tail of my eye, hesitating whether to wait or come after me. Sure enough, he stuck to his orders, and followed me; I heard his beetle-crunchers on the gravel as I paused to light a cheroot and loafed on idly towards the fountain, glittering prettily under the lanterns a few yards ahead. There were clusters of light everywhere in the gardens, but deep stretches of dark among the trees – let me side-step swiftly into one of these and be off to a flying start, and if I couldn’t give that lumbering oaf ten yards in the hundred, even at my time of life, I’d deserve to be caught. And then I’d be in full flight with the length and breadth of Europe before me, Kralta’s winnings and my own cash to speed my passage, by train or coach or on foot or on hands and knees if need be – if I’ve learned one thing in life it’s to bolt at the first chance and let the future take care of itself … so now I strolled unhurriedly to the fountain, and past it towards the shadows, heard Beefy’s exclamation of “Warten Sie, mein Herr!” – and as his call ended abruptly in a choking gasp, a tall figure loomed up before me, my arms were gripped either side, and I was fairly heaved off the path and half-carried, half-dragged into the bushes.
I’ve been collared more often than Bill the Burglar, and these were serious, practised chaps, whoever they were; I had no time to cry out, even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t, for by the sound of it they’d dealt honestly with Beefy, and I wanted no such treatment. They bore me swiftly round a couple of hedges to a little box arbour dim-lit by a lantern overhead, depositing me on a stone bench, and the ghastly thought that they might be the Holnup had barely crossed my mind when the tall figure was before me again, stooping to thrust his face close to mine and astound me with a brisk greeting – in English!
“Evening, colonel. Remember me?”
A hawk face with a long jaw and sharp grey eyes, white hair and trim moustache; I couldn’t even begin to place him.
“Hutton, Foreign Office. At Balmoral, thirty years ago. We played tig with Count Ignatieff on the mountain, you recall?”
It came back in an instant – that Russian brute blasting away at me in the bracken, my headlong flight downhill into the path of his murderous moujik, the bearded face glaring as he levelled his shotgun, and Hutton appearing from nowhere to put a bullet in him in the nick of time.a He’d been a damned brisk saviour then, and looked no less capable now for all he must have been my age at least. He spoke low, rapping out his words.
“Don’t ask, but listen, we’ve little time. We know all about von Starnberg and the Princess Kralta and how they’ve brought you to Ischl. And why … yes, we know about the Holnup and their plot to murder the Emperor … Bismarck ain’t the only one with long ears. We know, and our French colleagues –” he jerked his head at a stocky chap who moved out of the shadows to stand beside him; a bulldog face and moustache with the same keen eyes as Hutton’s “– but no one else. Not even Bismarck knows that we know, and so it must remain. Secret … ‘most secret from on high’, savvy?” That meant the Prime Minister, in politicals’ lingo … Gladstone. “And higher s
till,” adds Hutton sharply. My God, that could only mean the Queen …
“Now, understand this, sir. We know Bismarck’s plan, down to the last detail, for safeguarding the Emperor. Starnberg must have put it to you? Very good, tell me what he said, precisely, and quick as you like.”
When you’ve been trained as a political by Sekundar Burnes you talk to the point and ask no questions. In one short minute I’d been given staggering information demanding a thousand “whys”, but that didn’t matter. What did, was the joyous discovery that I was among friends and safe from Bismarck’s ghastly intrigues. So I gave ’em what they wanted, as terse as I knew how, from my boarding the Orient Express, omitting only those tender passages with Kralta which might have offended their sensibilities, and any mention of the Pechmann blackmail: my story was that Willem had backed up his proposal with a pistol. They listened in silence broken only once by a groan from the bushes, at which Hutton snarled over his shoulder: “Hit him again, can’t you? And go through the bugger’s pockets – every last penny, mind!”
When I’d finished he asked: “Did you believe it?”
“How the blazes could I tell? It sounded wild, but –”
“Oh, it’s wild!” he agreed. “It’s also gospel true, though I don’t blame you for doubting it … why the dooce couldn’t Bismarck approach you open and above-board instead of humbugging you aboard that train? Best way to make you disbelieve ’em, I’d say.” He shot me a leery look. “Told Starnberg to go to the devil, did you?”
“By God I did, and let me tell you –”
“But you’re still with ’em, so either you’ve changed your mind or are pretending you’ve changed it.” He was no fool, this one. “Well, sir, it makes no odds, for from this moment you’re with ’em in earnest. And that’s an order from Downing Street.”
Only paralysed disbelief at these frightful words prevented me from depositing my dinner at his feet. He couldn’t mean them, surely? But he did; as I gaped in stricken horror he went on urgently:
“It’s this way. Bismarck’s right. If these Hungarian villains succeed, God help the peace. And he’s right, too, that the Emperor can’t be warned –”
“It would be fatal!” The Frog spoke for the first time. “There can be no confidence in his judgment. He might well provoke a storm. Bismarck’s plan is the only hope.”
“It not only preserves the Emperor but deals those Magyar fanatics a fatal blow,” says Hutton. “Suppose something arose to make this attempt impossible, they’d just wait for another day – but wipe out their best assassins now, swift and sudden, and they’ll not come again!” I could see his eyes fairly gleaming in the shadows. “So it rests with you and von Starnberg – but now you know you have the blessing of our own chief … and the French authorities, too, of course,” he added quickly, no doubt to keep Jean Crapaud happy.
“M. Grevy approves the plan, and your participation,” says Froggy, and smiled grimly. “And your old copain of the Legion bids you ‘Bonne chance, camarade!’”
He could only mean Macmahon (who’d never been near me in the bloody Legion, but that’s gossip for you), and as I sat rooted and mute at all this appalling news, which had whisked me in a twinkling from the heights of hope to the depths of despair, it struck me that there had been some marvellous secret confabulating in high places lately, hadn’t there just? But then, ’tisn’t every day that British and French intelligence learn of an idiotic plan by Bismarck to save the Austrian Emperor and prevent bloody war, is it? Gad’s me life and blue sacred, they must have thought, Gladstone and Grevy (the Frog-in-chief) must hear about this, and elder wiseacres like Macmahon, and probably D’Israeli … and the Queen, God help us, since it’s a royal crisis … and because they’ve no notion what to do they convince themselves that Otto’s plan is the only course – all the more so because the renowned Flashy, secret diplomatic ruffian extraordinary, former agent of Palmerston and Elgin, veteran of desperate exploits in Central Asia and China and the back o’ beyond generally, who’s killed more men than the pox and is just the lad for the present crisis, has been recruited to the good cause – never mind how, he’s on hand, loaded and ready to fire, your majesty, so don’t trouble your royal head about it, all will be well … “Indeed, it is most alarming, and too shocking that subjects should Raise their Hands against their Emperor, whose Royal Person should be sacred to them, and the Empress is the prettiest and most charming creature, and while I could wish that your hand, dear Lord Beaconsfield, was at the Helm of the Ship of State in this crisis, I dare say that Mr Gladstone is right, and the matter may be safely entrusted to Colonel Flashman, such an agreeable man, although my dear Albert thought him a trifle brusque …” “Indeed, marm, a somewhat rough diamond, but capable, they say …” That would be the gist of it. I could have wept.
For as I sat on the cold bench in the shadows, with waltz music drifting from the casino and my mind numb from the pounding Hutton and this Frod had given it, one thing at least was plain: I was dished. The irony was that in the very moment when I’d eluded Willem and his bullies, running had become impossible. How could I tell Hutton to go to hell with his foul instructions – and have him bearing back to Whitehall (and Windsor and Horse Guards and Pall Mall) the shameful news that the Hector of Afghanistan, hero of Balaclava and Cawnpore, had said thank’ee but he’d rather not save Franz-Josef and the peace of Europe, if you don’t mind. My credit, my fame would be blown away; I’d be disgraced, ruined, outcast; the Queen would be quite shocked. No, the doom had come upon me, yet again, and I could only cudgel my brains for some respectable alternative to the horror ahead, trying to look stern as I met their eyes, and talking brisk and manly like the gallant old professional they thought I was.
“See here, Hutton,” says I, “you know me. I don’t croak. But this thing ain’t only wild, it’s plain foolish. You’ve got men – well, then, bushwhack these rascals in the grounds, before they get near the lodge –”
“We’re seven all told! We couldn’t hope to cover the grounds – and if we had more it’s odds the Holnup would spot us and cry off to another time.”
“But, dammit, man, two men in the house is too few! Suppose they come in force – God knows I’m game, but I ain’t young, and Starnberg’s only a boy –”
“Never fret about Starnberg! From what I hear he’s Al,” says Hutton, and laid a hand on my shoulder, damn his impudence. “And I’d back you against odds, however old you are! Now, time’s short –”
“But you must picket the grounds somehow! If something goes wrong, seven of you could at least –”
“We’ll be on hand, colonel, but only at a distance or they’ll spot us sure as sin! From this moment we’ll have one cover dogging you, every foot o’ the way, but more than that we can’t do! Now, you’d best rejoin Starnberg and Kralta before they miss you.”
“And how the hell do I do that, when you’ve sandbagged my bloody watchdog? What do I tell ’em, hey? You’ve blown on me, you gormless ass!”
“Don’t you believe it, sir!” He was grinning as he spoke over his shoulder. “How is he?”
“Sleeping sound,” chuckles a voice from the dark, and Hutton turned back to me. “Four more unlucky citizens will be assaulted and robbed this fine night, so your cove won’t seem out o’ place. Damnable, these garotters! Bad as London … So your best plan, colonel, is to discover our unconscious friend and raise the alarm, see? How’s that for establishing your bona fides?” He called it “bonnyfydes” – and why the devil I should remember that, of all things, you may well wonder.
“Time to go!” snaps Hutton, straightening up. “Find another victim, eh, Delzons? Off with you, then!” His hand clapped my shoulder again. “All clear, colonel? Not a word about this to Starnberg, mind! You’ll see me again … afterwards. Good hunting, sir!”
And so help me, he and his lousy Frog accomplice were gone like phantoms into the dark, without another word, leaving me in a rather disturbed state. I’d have cried out after th
em if I’d been capable of speech; as it was, I had wit enough to see the wisdom of his advice anent Beefy, and after a few seconds’ frantic search in the bushes I found the brute, dead to the world, and was waking the echoes with shouts of: “Helfen! Polizei! Ein Mann ist tot! Helfen, schnell, helfen!” Thereafter it seemed politic to run towards the casino, repeating my alarm and guiding interested parties to the scene of the crime.
It worked perfectly, of course. Willem was among the first on hand, fairly blazing with unspoken suspicion, which I allayed by explaining that I’d been waiting by the fountain for Kralta when sounds of battery in the bushes had attracted my attention, and on investigating I’d found Beefy supine with two sturdy footpads taking inventory of his pockets. They had fled, I had pursued but lost them in the dark, and returned to minister to Beefy and raise the alarm. And where the blazes were the police, then?
It didn’t convince him above half, I’m sure, not at first; I could guess he was wondering why I hadn’t taken the chance to vanish … and coming slowly to the conclusion that I hadn’t wanted to. What sealed the thing was the discovery, a few minutes later, of another unfortunate wandering dazed on the gravel walks and gasping out a tale of armed footpads who’d knocked him down and pinched his watch and purse; half an hour afterwards a third was found unconscious by one of the casino gates, similarly beaten and robbed.
By that time the peelers had arrived in force, shepherding the frightened mob back into the casino, where Beefy and the other victims were being attended to. Plainly a gang of footpads had marked down the casino patrons as well-lined targets, and were making a lightning sweep of the grounds. I made a statement to a most efficient young police inspector, watched closely by a still puzzled Willem with Kralta at his elbow; they were talking sotto voce, and if I’d felt like laughing I dare say I’d have been amused at the slow change of expression on Willem’s face, for it was clear that she was insisting that here was proof of my sincerity, since not only had I not made for the high hills, I’d absolutely come to Beefy’s aid and been first to holler for the law. At last he nodded, but I guessed he was still leery of me – Rudi would have been.
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