The Blind Beak

by Ernest Dudley

  ‘And I cannot offer you a more intriguing memory than that of a stretched neck to take back to Paris, Mademoiselle la Comtesse, I will hang at Tyburn myself.’ She swung round to stare up into Nick Rathburn’s black mask, his eyes gleaming sardonically, his saturnine smile bent upon her.

  16.

  She continued to stare at him without being able to speak. Some fop behind her called out: ‘I would know those lean chops despite any mask. Nick Rathburn, upon my life.’

  ‘Monsieur Rathburn,’ she struggled to say, ‘I little expected to meet you — ’

  She was interrupted by an exclamation from Lord Tregarth. ‘By God,’ he said to Somersham, ‘and I did not know Captain Lash was in the Bow Street Runners’ hands I would have mistaken him for the villain.’ Chagrin noted but the tiniest flicker in the expression behind the mask. She had recovered herself sufficiently to turn to Lady Somersham. ‘I met Monsieur Rathburn the last time I was in London.’ She saw Sir Guy’s eyebrows shoot up as she continued. ‘Quite by chance we met again this morning.’

  ‘A most fortunate coincidence,’ Nick drawled.

  Lord Tregarth’s features seemed to have become suddenly withdrawn, and Chagrin observed a significant look exchanged between the Somershams, and interpreting it she could not but smile to herself. It was obvious Sir Guy and his wife now imagined themselves in possession of the reason for Chagrin choosing to stay, instead of with them during this visit to London, at an hotel. But how, she puzzled, had he contrived to be at one and the same time a notorious highwayman languishing in gaol and here debonair and nonchalant as ever at her side? Lady Somersham and her husband manoeuvred themselves besides Chagrin, the former not being able to wait to know all about him. ‘Guy declares he is none other than the notorious Mr. Rathburn,’ she whispered behind her fan. ‘He is decidedly attractive. But his reputation...’ rolling her pretty eyes expressively upwards. ‘La, darling, Guy says all the talk is he has the murkiest past, he is nothing but an adventurer.’ ‘Not at all the most suitable person, if I may say so’ — her husband shook his head — ‘with whom one should become too friendly.’

  Chagrin laughed lightly. ‘Truly I am grateful to you for your warning, but be assured I shall not behave rashly. Anyway,’ turning to Lady Somersham, ‘it seems I am not the only one who finds his company amusing.’

  They followed her look to where Lord Tregarth and several of his cronies, their women companions hanging on their arms, were encircling Nick Rathburn, listening to him as, in his quiet, sardonic voice, he recounted some gaming-house anecdote. ‘It is his air of mystery,’ Lady Somersham murmured, ‘that makes him so fascinating. I am consumed with impatience to see his face when the masks are off.’

  ‘He is quite agreeable-looking,’ Chagrin smiled, ‘in a somewhat bizarre way.’ The other shook her head at her in affected despair. ‘Whatever may be said of his past, it is certain, darling, he has, in your estimation, quite a future.’

  Her husband gave a shrug. ‘You women are all alike; a man can be a thorough-paced rogue, but that his person meets your favour is all you care for.’

  The orchestra had begun a minuet and Nick was approaching Chagrin with a bow. In a few moments they had joined the other dancers and she complimented him upon his buoyancy of step. ‘To be light-footed,’ he replied, ‘is as useful an accomplishment in my profession as it is to be light-fingered with the dice, or adept at holding up a coach. But could one dance with you otherwise than upon wings?’

  She tried to read what thoughts lay behind those eyes aglint in his mask and his sardonic mouth. By what miracle, she asked herself again, had he eluded the police and all the town believing he was under arrest? She gave a look in the direction of the loggia from where Lord Tregarth was watching them, beside him the Somershams, and she observed the former turn and say something to Sir Guy, who nodded and then gazed speculatively towards her and Nick.

  Idly he followed her gaze. ‘I advised you not to fear he would discover me.’

  They were close together now in the minuet and she found herself unable to dam up the torrent of impatience surging within her any longer. ‘I must know what happened,’ she whispered. ‘Take me somewhere so you can tell me without any danger of eavesdroppers.’

  ‘But your friends? You would not wish them to think you too closely acquainted with such a suspicious individual as myself.’

  She glimpsed the humorous quirk at the corners of his mouth and she realized he was not entirely unaware of how much and often he must be vilified and stigmatized behind his back; and that he could smile his mocking, secret smile, all carelessly unconcerned, though such knowledge must sometimes taste not a little bitter and as of ashes in the mouth. ‘I will speak to Lady Somersham,’ she told him quickly, ‘and make some excuse to explain my absence for an hour.’

  ‘And an hour will be time enough for me to tell you all you want to hear?’

  She caught her breath at his tone and it was as if the music soared to a celestial plane, all the colourful movement of the ballroom seemed suddenly to possess an extraordinarily magical quality. Transported, she took his hand, leading him through the dancers. ‘Do you wait here, I will return as quickly as I can.’

  She hurried to Lord Tregarth’s loggia, where Lady Somersham came to her at once, her fan all aflutter. ‘Where is he? Do not tell me you have deserted him? I could not bear to hear such news. And you have given him up so soon,’ with a mischievous look towards her husband who, with Lord Tregarth, had joined the other guests attacking the oysters and champagne, ‘I will find him for myself.’

  ‘Do I look as if I have deserted him?’ As the other eyed her sharply, Chagrin went on: ‘He has to leave for an hour or so’ — she astonished herself with the glibness of tongue with which she found herself improvising — ‘some unexpected and urgent matter of business to transact — ’

  Lady Somersham burst out laughing. ‘Can you not picture Guy’s and Lord Tregarth’s faces when they learn you have deserted them for your Mr. Rathburn, upon a matter of business?’ she mimicked Chagrin. ‘La, you are grown vastly different from when you were last in London.’ Her manner grew more serious. ‘Do you watch out, darling. Remember his is not the most enviable reputation in the town. I am not sure you are wise in embarking upon this escapade.’

  ‘You have seen him tonight — do you imagine I can come to any possible danger with him?’

  The other’s eyebrows arched above her mask. ‘It all depends upon what you mean by danger.’

  ‘If it be that which I fancy you have in mind, then he is in as great a danger himself.’

  Lady Somersham’s pretty mouth opened. ‘La,’ she breathed, ‘you have grown up!’

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ Chagrin grasped her hand tightly. ‘He has overnight become my world.’

  The pressure of her fingers was warmly returned. ‘And you are happy is all that signifies. Do you not worry, I will make your excuses with Guy and the others.’ Then, as Chagrin turned away with a grateful murmur, she added: ‘Though you are grown up, darling, do not in your enthusiasm let yourself become too big a girl,’ laughing delightedly at the shocked blush that appeared beneath Chagrin’s mask.

  She pushed her way through the laughing, chattering throng to where the tall, dark figure stood and, slipping her arm in his, Chagrin was led through the crowd in the direction of the vestibule. The feel of his arm, firm and strong, against the curve of her breast buoyed her up so they seemed to make their way with effortless ease. They had reached the vestibule when she experienced yet once again that dread grip about her heart. Behind her of a sudden sounded the meancing tones she had heard earlier. ‘Watch your pockets, watch your pockets, I tell you.’

  She swung round, gripping Nick’s arm fearfully, as the rotund, pompous figure displaying his red waistcoat advanced towards them. But instead of tensing to effect a hasty departure he remained relaxed and nonchalant, giving the Bow Street Runner a casual glance. Mr. Townsend drew nearer, she
braced herself for disaster, her heart racing.

  ‘Good evening to you, Mr. Rathburn,’ and Nick inclining his head in acknowledgment of the other’s greeting, ‘do I see you about to take an early departure?’

  ‘You do, Mr. Townsend, though we shall be returning later, when perhaps you would do us the honour to join us in a glass?’

  ‘Delighted, Mr. Rathburn. I will keep as sharp a look-out for you as if you were any pickpocket,’ and with a loud guffaw and an extravagant bow to Chagrin the tub-like man proceeded on his way towards the ballroom again, uttering his warning cry, Chagrin staring up at Nick utterly baffled.

  ‘Mais je ne comprends pas,’ she murmured helplessly. ‘I was sure he must be dangerous to you.’

  ‘Mr. Townsend is engaged only in nabbing pickpockets,’ he told her mockingly, ‘not the brazen rakehell you have so recklessly selected for your companion tonight.’

  In the hackney which Nick had directed to convey them to the Rose Tavern in Russell Court by Covent Garden, she explained why she had become so fearful at the sight of Mr. Townsend: even had he outwitted his enemies, so they were, as seemed apparent, holding the wrong Captain Lash, Morande’s body had been found and his death attributed to Nick. He reassured her that the Frenchman’s reputation being so ugly, there were numerous individuals in the underworld whose deadly enmity he had incurred, of whom any one could have seized an opportunity to revenge themselves upon him. As for the police they would not trouble overmuch to seek his murderer out, being not entirely ungrateful to whoever had rid the world of so evil a villain.

  Nick preferred to keep to himself the exact truth, which was that, acting forthwith upon the information he had laid before the Blind Beak, police officers had removed the corpse from the area behind Half Moon Alley, subjected the house to an intensive search for further evidence which would prove useful towards establishing the link between the French spy and his employer in Paris; and moreover that he himself had been instructed by Mr. Fielding to use his best talents to secure that precious paper the Comtesse de l’lsle had thought necessary to return and retrieve.

  Chagrin was inquiring abstractedly whence they were going, and he replied non-committally to a well-known tavern of the town where they would be welcomed discreetly and where they could talk. They had discarded their masks, Nick slipping them both into his pocket, and by the street-lights’ illumination and glow from shops and houses they passed they drank in each others’ faces as if trying to imprint upon their memories for ever every feature, every plane and contour.

  ‘You may observe me at the Rose in the environment to which I belong, appropriate enough for one of my status, though of doubtful suitability for the Comtesse de l’Isle,’ he told her. ‘Its atmosphere you will find a trifle different from your fine Paris salons or London’s Society drawing-rooms.’

  ‘And I am with you,’ she replied, ‘it matters little where we are.’ She could feel herself blushing again beneath his scrutiny as she remembered Lady Somer-sham’s last warning remark, and to cover her confusion she whispered: ‘Alors, do you recall this morning, you said how that we rode together for a brief moment in a carriage and then bade each other adieu.’ ‘Alors,’ his teeth flashed at her, ‘I always knew we should meet again.’

  The carriage jolted through a deep puddle and as she clung to him his mind went back to that night five years since, and now as his arm round her waist held her close he found her even more yielding. Hungrily their mouths sought one another’s.

  ‘You are really you?’ she asked him breathlessly. ‘It is not your twin whose kisses burn me?’

  ‘Why,’ he queried, ‘will not one Nick Rathburn suffice?’

  ‘You must tell me,’ she exclaimed, her smooth brow marked by a frown of bewilderment. ‘I am all impatience to know how, while the broadsheet-sellers cry your arrest and imprisonment, you are yet free — ’

  ‘Not free,’ he corrected her. ‘I am your prisoner. It is become not uncommon,’ he explained, ‘for miscreants like myself occasionally to operate masquerading as someone else in the same manner of business. A reprehensible practice, you may say, one rogue to perpetrate a crime in the name of another so the other risks being apprehended for it. But indeed is not Humanity for ever suffering for the evil others commit? This Captain Lash had several times presented his pistols at victims, declaring himself the notorious Nick Rathburn. But for the fortunate chance I was always able to prove an alibi I must have suffered innocently for the Captain’s guilt.’ Her fingers entwined themselves in his and her eyes were warm in the shadows of the carriage. ‘Not unnaturally I grew a trifle impatient of his fondness for wearing my name and determined to pay him back when the occasion occurred, in his own coin. The occasion arose last night.’

  ‘I never knew,’ she murmured. ‘I thought it was you.’ He took her in his arms again. ‘I did not think to tell you.’ He shook his head at her gently. ‘It is a price you must suffer for my acquaintance. Mine is an uneasy life, subject to sudden shocks and alarms, which is why no man counts me his friend.’

  ‘And woman?’

  He stared down at her for several moments without speaking, the rattle of the swaying carriage, the clopping of the horse’s hooves, the crack of the coachman’s whip and watchman calling the time of the night, the shouts of link-boys and sedan-chairmen and the noise of passing traffic seeming to isolate them in the silence of their own carriage and emphasize its intimacy. The hackney pulled up. ‘It is the Rose,’ Nick said. He handed back her mask. ‘Best wear it again, or I shall spend my time repulsing blade after swaggering blade who will instantly leap to carry off so tempting a prize.’

  She heard the sounds of singing and raucous hilarity within. Quickly she obeyed and clung to him tightly. The link-boy’s torch flaring and hissing above them, Nick with gentle reassuring tenderness bent his mouth to hers — soft, warm — and she refusing to give up his kiss. All smirks and winks, the link-boy flung wide the tavern door and urged them into the yawning blaze of light and clamour, tobacco-smoky and heavy with the fumes of wine and gin, of beer and brandy. The clink of glasses and bang of drinking-mugs as some drunken songsters beat time to a ballad-singer, and locked still in their oblivious embrace, they were welcomed with a delighted roar of laughter, shouts of ribald encouragement and thunderous applause.

  17.

  They were seated in a shadowed corner, the excited interest in their arrival at last dying down, though they continued long to be the object of admiring glances and knowing winks. The landlord himself, all rubicund affability and, with much bowing to Chagrin, came forward to attend to their wants, advising Nick in a conspiratorial whisper behind his hand of the excellent vintage of a recent supply of champagne to which might be added a dash of brandy of most celebrated bouquet. He then grew rhapsodical over a consignment of oysters freshly arrived that afternoon from the sea with brown bread-and-butter sliced thin as poppy-leaves; to be followed by some more substantial dish such as boiled chicken, duck roasted, boiled leg of mutton and capers, bullock’s heart roasted, venison, beef steaks, chops and oxtails, roasted neck of pork, hashed fowl and beans, duck and eggs and potatoes, roast woodcock, hot rabbit or hare and cold ham and tongue, brawn, potted mackerel and prawns, trout potted and sturgeon.

  They had oysters and champagne laced with brandy, followed by young chicken and celery and roast potatoes and fruits. The wine arriving at once, they drank to each other and then mine host. His arm tightly round her waist, Nick and Chagrin raised their glasses to the convivial company of the Rose, which brought forth such a roar of answering toasts the tavern rafters fairly rang and was the signal for a wall-eyed fiddler to strike up a tune, followed by the ballad-singer, a buxom doxy complexioned like a rustic wench and a shy, demure manner with her bawdy verses. Those of her audience with a fancy for it were quickly accompanying her.

  So to the music and songs, the ribald roars and buffoonery about them, Nick and Chagrin, she suddenly finding herself most marvellously f
amished, savoured the oysters and champagne and brandy and other dishes that followed. Chagrin could not resist joining in the general laughter, for it was infectious, though her knowledge of English vernacular saved her from realizing most of the ballad-girl’s innuendo and suggestiveness. Nick, explaining some of the meanings behind the so innocently sung words, sent a blush glowing beneath the mask she still wore.

  The moment arrived at last when Nick must stake all on his next throw and, with characteristic nonchalance, he beckoned over a waiter and instructed him to serve a final goblet of brandy for them upstairs. ‘You are very bold,’ she whispered, ‘so sure of yourself.’ For a second he thought he had lost, that she had remembered she was the Comtesse de l’Isle and he but a no-account sharper and thief, and inwardly he reviled the fortune of birth and blood, a barrier between them which might not be surmounted even in the overwhelming transports of passion and yearning of the flesh. But, taking her hand, he found it trembling in his like an imprisoned bird and he knew then the game was his.

  ‘How else should a gambler play,’ he asked, his voice low and husky, ‘for such high stakes?’ And confident now what her answer would be, he added: ‘The dice, are they loaded too heavy against me?’

  The upstairs room Nick had secured, all warm and bright with a blazing fire, needed no candlelight to add further illumination. It was low-ceilinged, with comfortable dark furniture and the four-poster bed wide and the sheets drawn back white and gleaming. The brandy decanter and glasses awaited them, catching the glint of the fire and the flames throwing shadows leaping on the walls. She made as if to take off her mask, but some quirk of humour bade him stop her.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Do you appear mysterious and intriguing, the far-off unattainable of my dreams.’ The sweet scrape of the fiddle reached them, as the wall-eyed fiddler came stumbling up the stairs. He remained there in the darkness near their door long after Nick had thrown him several coins, his music in their ears as he tore off her mask.