“Was that the year the French occupied the castle at Carrickfergus?”
“Aye, the very same. ’Tis not an event generally known, but Leonidas, a fourth rate of fifty guns, was dispatched under secret orders to defend Carrickfergus whilst frigates harassed the French commodore, whose name was Thurot, at sea. The officer in command of Leonidas’s marines was none other than Captain Ragnall Muldaur.
“The ship anchored off the north shore of the Lough to meet the French and do some damage before they could land. But a party of Frenchmen were led overland, and reaching the shore, they launched a boat in the early morning darkness so they might detach the ship from her cable, whereupon she ran hard aground on the morning flood-tide. In the confusion there was a fire belowdecks, and the powder magazine blew, killing near every soul on board. Of three hundred sailors and marines only Muldaur lived to tell the tale, minus his leg and his hearing lost to the blast.”
“You said the French soldiers were led but not by whom.”
“Scuttlebutt said ’twere some paddy Judas paid his thirty pieces out of Commodore Thurot’s own pocket.”
Treviscoe’s pipe had gone out, but he didn’t notice. His concentration was interrupted by the sound of a man clearing his throat.
“In the absence of someone to introduce us formally I must needs introduce myself, Mr. Treviscoe,” the man said in a harsh Ulster accent. He was dressed well but not richly, his sole concession to vanity being silk stockings that showed off his well-rounded calves to good advantage.
“Michael Flynn, solicitor, at your service. I had the honor to represent the late Captain Ragnall Muldaur and have come to inform you as to the provision in his will by which, under the normal turn of events, you would have benefited had circumstances not dictated otherwise.”
“You astonish me, Mr. Flynn,” replied Treviscoe. “What can you mean? I hardly knew the captain.”
“Two days ago Captain Muldaur altered his will to favor you, Mr. Treviscoe, by making you his sole heir. I have the document here. As I understand it, he was moved to this gesture out of gratitude to your father, who had succored him in his recovery after serious injury and sponsored him in a business venture in the Barbados. Alas, the sole remnant of what by his description must have been a once respectable fortune is now manifested solely in the person of his slave Hero, whom the newspapers have pleased to fashion the Black Spartacus. I presume you have heard of the affair, and of how the captain made a gladiator of the poor black and how Hero avenged himself.”
Treviscoe was thunderstruck. “I have no want of a slave.”
“Then ’tis just as well, for your inheritance now amounts to nothing, there being no power on earth that can stand between Hero and the gallows,” said Flynn. “Your slave sits now in Newgate Prison awaiting trial for the murder of his master.”
Treviscoe stood up in agitation.
“My slave! My slave! What ill-sounding words. Am I some Carolina indigo plantationer? But you are wrong in assuming that there is nothing to be done, as Hero has become my personal responsibility. It cannot now suffice merely to be unconvinced of his guilt; instead I must do everything in my power to steer him clear of Tyburn hill. There is no power like the truth, and it has become imperative that it now be wholly discovered. Magnus!”
“Yes, Alan?”
“There was a considerable purse for the fight, was there not?”
“Five hundred pounds.”
“What has become of it?”
“What was it Muldaur said at the contest? That he owed someone and that the debt should be paid. Perhaps he discharged it.”
“The Malian’s debt, he said. Mark the words, Magnus. I remember them well, though I did not then fully perceive their import. In light of what you have told me about his career, I would scarce imagine that five hundred pounds would cover such a debt as to the Median. No, the money went elsewhere, stolen most like by the perpetrators of the murder. It will not stand—but you are better acquainted with the sporting world than I, and I would consider it a personal favor if you were to look into the matter of who put the purse forward and at the same time find out if there were any other wagerers whose loss was, to express it with moderation, inconveniently large. I can think of no likelier person with whom to begin, in the absence of more information, than Sir Beaumont. He is not, I believe, our quarry, but he may know who is. The man we seek must be an Irishman, middle-aged, of brutal temperament and mercenary reputation.”
“How can you know that, Alan?”
Treviscoe looked at him in surprise. “Why, from your own lips.”
Gunn opened his mouth and shut it again. Then he asked in a low voice, “Where shall we meet after I have discharged this—this quest?”
“Call upon me at my lodgings this evening. Now, Mr. Flynn, I shall require your professional services, for though I am in no position to grant him liberty forthwith, yet if Hero is to meet his Maker he shall not do it in bondage as a slave. Be so kind as to prepare the document of manumission, and thence to Newgate!”
“AND WAS YOUR interview with the prisoner fruitful?”
“It was, sir.”
“Describe the meeting.”
THE SQUALOR AND filth of Newgate Prison was the worst Treviscoe had seen in England. Hero was confined to a cell that would not have suited a beast. The room was so dark that his clothing seemed disembodied, so that it was like looking at an invisible spirit in a white shirt above which hovered two points of light, his eyes. He said nothing when the turnkey admitted Treviscoe to the cell.
“My name is Alan Treviscoe.”
There was no reply.
“I have brought some things for your comfort. Can you read?”
“Yes, I can read.” The voice was deep and resonant.
“Then I have brought something to bring you hope withal.”
“Hope?” It was a cry of despair and incredulity. “Are you not my new master? I am already in chains. There is no further debasement you can subject me to except to pretend to offer hope.”
“I have brought you a Bible and some twist and a pipe,” said Treviscoe, proffering the gifts, “and I have brought you this—it is a document of manumission with your name affixed. I am not your new master nor shall any man ever be again.”
Hero took them. “I see you mean well,” he said at last, “but the gift comes too late. I shall only truly be free in the bosom of the Lord, after I have been condemned.”
“As to that, I should remind you that despair is a sin,” replied Treviscoe. “Deliverance oft arrives unbidden. Pray but answer one question I shall put to you and I shall trouble you no further. Who is the man who was known to your late master as Ephialtes?”
There was a tense silence. Finally Hero sighed and answered. “I did not think anyone would believe me. But I perceive you know everything.”
“Not yet everything, Hero, and until this very moment I had only suspicions. But we have very little time, for the murderer may even now have taken flight. Who is this Ephialtes?”
“I do not know his name, only that he was the traitor, sir, the traitor of Belfast Lough.”
“Then it is as I thought, even to the name that Captain Muldaur assigned to him, for I had heretofore heard of Ephialtes only as the Malian. But this is good news, Hero, and it means there is yet a glimmer of hope. I have pledged myself to deliver you from the threat of Tyburn. You have not, I assume, an alibi.”
“Would that I had, sir. But it is of little moment, for ’twas my own anger that killed Captain Muldaur as surely as he who committed the actual deed.”
“What do you mean?”
“We had a proper shout at each other that evening, Mr. Treviscoe. It cannot have escaped your observation that the captain had little power to cause me to remain in bondage to him if I had chosen to remove myself.”
“That is a common enough eventuality in England, as you must know. Sir John Fielding has written on the subject, expressing his view that to bring a slave to Britain is unwise�
��it encourages the slave to seek his freedom by whatever means available, lawful or no, and can only lead to unrest.”
“Then you should know that Captain Muldaur had promised me my freedom in exchange for my skill in the ring and my participation in his plan, whatever it was, to mete vengeance upon Ephialtes. I knew him for a man of his word, and as long as I knew him, he never failed to live up to what his honor demanded until that night. He told me I was not to be free after all.”
Treviscoe frowned. “I fear the cause of his renegation was the discovery of my own existence.”
Hero looked at him in surprise. “And so it was. The money Captain Muldaur had used to make my purchase in Barbados had been lent him by Captain Treviscoe, who was, as I understood him, your father. He therefore believed you had the prior claim upon his honor, and upon me as the property purchased with your father’s money. So he told me that he could not grant me my liberty as he had promised but had arranged that I should become your own slave.”
“My father?” said Treviscoe. “I had no knowledge that my father had any interest in the slave traffic.”
“I do not believe the money was given Captain Muldaur for that purpose, sir, as he claimed he was sent ahead to Barbados to act as Captain Treviscoe’s agent in the sugar trade. But trading in sugar or molasses or indigo and tobacco, sir—it is all the same, for the goods are the fruit of the labor of slaves, and the money to pay for these goods will be invested in yet more slaves. But when the report came of the loss of your father’s ship, the captain chose instead to buy me from my master in furtherance of his revenge.”
“I cannot begin to imagine the horror of being a slave.”
“You cannot, nor can any man who has not lived through it. But I was grateful to the captain for his intervention, sir, because by purchasing me whole, he saved me from certain dismemberment and death. Goaded beyond endurance by the cruelty of my previous master, I had at last thrashed him to within an inch of his life. I was in shackles, due to be executed even as I am now, when Captain Muldaur appealed to the greed of my former master and was given the bill of sale on condition that I was not to remain on the island.”
“So you were a willing confederate in Captain Muldaur’s intention to avenge himself on Ephialtes. But what was his plan?”
“As to that I cannot say except that it must have had something to do with the boxing ring.”
“But you must have apprehended that Captain Muldaur was placing his own life in danger and mayhap your own by crossing Ephialtes.”
Hero nodded. “Aye, I knew it as well as he knew it, sir. But a danger postponed is less terrible than a certain death. As I said, I was grateful to him, and had I not left him in anger, I would have been there to protect him. Thus does the responsibility for his death fall upon my shoulders.”
“I have but one last question, Hero: were you meant to lose the fight against Bill Blankett?”
“Never in this life, sir, would I deliberately allow a man to beat me, in the ring or out of it,” said Hero with a hint of resentment in his voice, “and Captain Muldaur would never have countenanced such a compromise of his honor.”
“AND WHY DO you believe that Captain Muldaur called this traitor by the peculiar appellation of Ephialtes the Malian?” asked Sir Richard.
“It was in direct reference to the betrayal of HMS Leonidas in Belfast Lough in 1760,” said Treviscoe. “Remember that the French had a native guide to lead them to where the ship lay at anchor, and as a result of the guide’s treachery, three hundred men died. So at the Battle of Thermopylae, Herodotus tells us, did Ephialtes of Malis betray King Leonidas of Sparta and his three hundred warriors by leading a Persian war party through a secret pass behind the Spartan lines.
“Somehow Captain Muldaur learnt the identity of the Irish Ephialtes—by what arts we are forever unlikely to discover—and that he was in London, and so he came hither with Hero to exact his revenge. The sequence of those events will probably remain hidden from us, as I said, but in the meantime I pursued other enquiries …”
MAGNUS GUNN CALLED at White’s Chocolate-house, where Sir Beaumont Clevis was sure to be at a gambling table. Gunn’s taste in games of chance tended to backgammon and dice rather than to cards, but he felt certain that Sir Beaumont would be more fashionably inclined. He was right: Sir Beaumont sat at a faro table, and his luck had not improved since the day of the fight. He was losing so immoderately and acting so belligerent that Gunn intervened.
“Sir Beaumont! I ken we’ve had enough of these amusements. It should be home for us, I reckon.”
“Home! No, my good captain, home will never do unless you’d care to wager at billiards? My damn’d luck will change ere dawn, mark you.”
Gunn’s profession as a seaman had imbued him with a considerable skill in geometry, and billiards was a game for which he had an unusually strong affinity. He readily agreed, and they departed for the baronet’s house on Soho Square.
Sir Beaumont’s table was one of the new English billiard tables, ten feet long with pockets in the corners and on each side. The familiar three balls were there, but any interrogation would have to wait until Gunn learned the new rules: winning and losing hazards, two points off a white ball and three off the red. Caroms were still allowed and earned a single point each.
They took their stances for the fade, Sir Beaumont on the right and Gunn on the left, then drew back their sticks and struck.
The faint clicks as the flat wooden tips of their cues hit the ivory balls were nearly simultaneous. Gunn won the honors, and the game began in earnest. Talk flowed freely, abetted by the equally free-flowing port, absent from Sir Beaumont’s grasp only when it was his shot.
“That damn’d paddy and his buck,” Sir Beaumont snarled, “winning at five to two, damn his eyes. I can hardly credit it. And for what? A mere five hundred more?”
“That exceeds a year’s income for some gentlemen. To a man in Muldaur’s reduced circumstances, it were seemingly a considerable inducement to victory.”
Sir Beaumont gave Gunn a canny look. “Now, there must’ve been more than another five hundred pounds in it,” he said archly, “else why did you bet on the black?”
“That is the second time ye’ve said there was more than one payment of five hundred pounds. For myself, I bet as I did because I expected Hero to win,” said Gunn bluntly, “just as clearly as you expected him to lose.”
“Blast it all to hell!” exclaimed Sir Beaumont, his cue ball sinking into a side pocket after having struck the red ball. “The devil take it and you, too. Aye, you expected him to win, I daresay. I wonder how you knew he meant not to give in.”
“I was unaware of any arrangement to the contrary,” said Gunn, trying to keep the ice out of his voice. “Had ye been led to believe that Hero was to throw the fight?”
Sir Beaumont snorted.
“D’ye think I would have wagered two thousand guineas on a fair fight? You’d see me in Bedlam ere that.”
“Who was it who put you onto it, then?”
Sir Beaumont gave him a look bristling with suspicion.
“I wouldna care ever to place a bet with an unreliable agent,” Gunn hastily explained, “and so ’twould be only prudent to know whether a man can be trusted or no. Bold action is very well in war, but in uncharted waters prudence is the mariner’s watchword.”
“There’s sense in that,” said Sir Beaumont, “although I swear the agent, as you put it, was as taken for a fool as the rest of the syndicate he convinced to put up the sop to Cerberus—and Muldaur was a dog at that. I call it dishonor when you take a five-hundred-pound bribe and fail to deliver. And as to our agent, I cannot see how he shall cover all his bets in the event.”
Gunn shot a perfect winning hazard, the red ball flying into a corner pocket. He regretted it when he saw Sir Beaumont scowl.
“Dr. Stephen Synge is the man’s name, not a better man for being a paddy like Muldaur, for all his education and fine airs,” said Sir Beaumont angrily. �
��Where he’s to come find the money is any man’s guess.”
Gunn sighed inwardly with relief and contrived to lose the game but not by so much as would seriously inhibit his purse.
“YE WERE RIGHT, Alan,” Gunn said, removing his hat. “Sir Beaumont suffered a significant loss on a wager he felt certain of winning.”
“How certain?”
“The fight was not intended to be a fair one. Sir Beaumont said that Captain Muldaur had been paid to see that Hero should lose, and paid handsomely by a consortium of gentlemen led by a certain party whose business it was to arrange such matters, a Dr. Synge by name. By curious coincidence, that party is—”
“An Irishman of middle age, of brutal temperament and mercenary reputation,” finished Treviscoe. “Furthermore, he was awarded the degree of Philosophiae Doctor at the Sorbonne, and he has been suspected of being a spy for Versailles.”
“How did ye learn all that?”
“He is not unknown in the city, where he enjoys a particularly equivocal reputation. I might have known it was he who is Ephialtes.
“You must have deduced, Magnus, that Muldaur never meant for Hero to lose that fight, but to win against tall odds so that the fortune of his enemy should be totally sacrificed. Harken now, Magnus, for I believe I’ve reconstructed all the details of the crime and there merely remains the simple matter of proving Hero not guilty.”
“How d’ye propose to do that?”
“There must have been witnesses. At the very least it defies reason that Mrs. O’Reilly should not have seen the encounter.”
“Mrs. O’Reilly? She’s the besom who testified against Hero.”
“Precisely. If she heard Hero shouting from two stories above, she could hardly have escaped seeing what happened afterward.”
“But you said that he was not murdered at the house.”
“Not inside the house, Magnus. Consider: his hands were raw and chapped, the very indicia of a severe rope burn, which you as a nautical man should recognize. That means that Captain Muldaur must have been holding on to a rope with all his strength whilst it slipped painfully from his grasp. Why? Remember the block outside the window, and the cleat on the floor under the bed, surely installed for the express purpose of leading a rope out the window and down to the street. Such a machine was no doubt intended to lift something up to the second story that could not be accommodated by the stairs, but it could also serve the reverse process of allowing something out of the window and down to the street. In short, it is precisely the device with which a man might inflict rope burns upon his hands were he to attempt to use it as an avenue of escape.”
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense Page 48