The Blind Beak

by Ernest Dudley

  When she fell asleep at last he lay curiously wakeful, not closing his eyes while slowly the fire died until the room was in darkness. She stirred and gave a moan so that he gazed down at her face, pale and luminous in the darkness, her eyes still closed. He had watched her of a sudden lie quiet in his arms, experiencing a deep compassion and tenderness at exhaustion’s final triumph over the fire ablaze within her which he had set aflame. She stirred again and flung one slim, white arm across him and moaned more loudly.

  ‘Chagrin, darling... what is wrong?’ But her dark-lashed eyelids were still closed: she was speaking in French in her sleep. He bent over her, listening, trying to catch the meaning of what she was saying. He wondered if she was dreaming of him, but the first name she uttered was not his.

  ‘Morande, Morande, ne me touchez pas avec les mains sales,’ she whispered, her face twisted with horror. ‘Je suis voyagee de Paris,’ she went on. ‘Je viens de la part de Madame Du Barry. Void mes lettres de créance’ Her voice rose.

  ‘Non, non, Morande, ne me touchez pas. Lâachez moi done. C’est pour l’honneur de la France qu’il nous faut collaborer, vous et moi. C’est pour ga que je viens vous voir.’ She was speaking in low tones once more. ‘C’est Madame Du Barry qui m’a envoye. C’est a cause d’elle que je suis ici. C’est pour la France que nous aimons: C’est pour venger sa defait.’

  Her voice trailed off and Nick’s features were grim and sharp, eyes narrowed. How the heavy thoughts which had tormented him and kept him from sleep beside her crowded in upon him, rushed the defences his mind had thrown up against them and bent them down. Throughout the previous day, since her return to retrieve from the house in Half Moon Alley the document which betrayed her as a secret agent for the Du Barry, he had at the back of his mind pondered his next move.

  She moved uneasily and at the sight of her locked in the helplessness of sleep, trapped in her dreams, the conflict which had raged within him during the past hours tore at his inner-most soul with renewed ferocity. That heartrending compassion and love she evoked in him struggled once more with the deadly, unyielding demands of his profession upon the trampled battlefield of his emotions. When the little tragi-comedy had played itself out, when he had made his report to Mr. Fielding, he would have washed his hands of her. She moved again and suddenly her eyes opened and his heart constricted as he saw the fear and bewilderment of her dreams disappear from her gaze.

  ‘Mon amour,’ and her arms reached up to him. The irony of the web of circumstance in which he was held, that the one woman he desired above all the world should have fallen in love with him, believing him to be a desperate rogue, simultaneously with his discovery she was herself a cheat, no devil in hell could have devised.

  ‘I fell asleep,’ she was saying. ‘I could not help it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you? You slept also?’

  ‘I slept too,’ he lied.

  ‘But you awoke before me.’

  He nodded. ‘It was you who woke me,’ he lied again.

  ‘Je te demande pardon, chéri,’ and her arms twined round him more tightly. He felt them tense briefly as he said in her ear:

  ‘You were talking in your sleep.’ She lay back amongst the pillows, her eyes wide and shining in the gloom. He saw the change in their expression as he continued deliberately: ‘You spoke in French.’ As he anticipated, the guarded look faded.

  ‘I must have something on my mind,’ she whispered lightly.

  Now was the moment. Tell her now he was aware it was Morande and the Du Barry she had on her mind. Then she would know he knew. Or, he wondered, was it not equally likely that she, unaware of his own secret, might not suspect him of having put two and two together? ‘You spoke of Morande.’ He decided to put this newly-arrived-at possibility to the test. Then after a pause: ‘There was another name also.’

  ‘Whose?’ He could not mistake the faint quiver of apprehension in her query.

  ‘Madame Du Barry.’ She did not answer and, affecting a shrug, he went on casually. ‘Though why mix such an oddly assorted pair in your dreams, only you can say...’ Of a sudden she began trembling violently, crying out as heartrendingly as any utterance of her dreams. ‘What is it, beloved?’ Impulsively he held her to him as if she were a child. She was shivering in his arms like one assailed with the ague. He could hear her teeth chattering while he sought to comfort her with his kisses. After some minutes he stood beside the bed.

  ‘Where are you going? Do not leave me.’ Her voice was so piteous he knelt beside her again. ‘Do not leave me.’

  ‘Some brandy will warm you.’ He moved quickly across the darkened room and half filled a glass from the decanter.

  ‘I — I am all right,’ she murmured, and he took the glass from her and she lay in his arms, her trembling subsiding. He began to feel the warmth stealing through her slender, rounded body.

  ‘It was only a nightmare. It is finished now. It will trouble you never again.’

  ‘Au contraire. The nightmare is only just beginning.’

  ‘Morande is dead.’

  'll est mort,’ she said, ‘but I am alive. I must go on in his place. Oh, Nick. Suddenly I feel so desperately alone.’

  He clasped her more tightly to him. ‘Au contraire,’ deliberately mimicking her to give her assurance. ‘You are not alone. You have me.’ She began talking wildly in French until he quietened her. ‘Tell me what it is you so greatly fear. I will face it with you.’ And a spate of words burst from her so fast in her own tongue and in English he had constantly to interrupt her in order to understand what she was saying. She told him how she had become involved in the scheming of those in France concerned with Britain’s ruin. How, on this last journey to London, she had been entrusted by the Du Barry to take Boehemer’s place. He listened, his brain divided into two, one half all keyed up grasping at the significance of her revelations, the other dragging back at the dread future lying in wait for her. He pretended he had difficulty in understanding the implication of her story, until at last he could not help but realize she was a secret agent for France.

  ‘Do not despise me,’ she implored him. ‘Love me no less because of what I am.’

  He gave not a damn in hell for politics or governments, he answered her; his whole preoccupation was with his private war against society; whatever quarrel France sought with Britain was not his concern. He was no soldier to be slaughtered upon some bloody field battled over for what cause no one, not even the generals and the kings urging their armies forward, could remember. She appeared convinced by the sentiments he expressed. ‘I felt so alone, I had not realized before — before Morande’s death what a dark road I had taken. Listening to Madame Du Barry it seemed a noble, worthwhile cause I was serving.’ As if speaking her thoughts aloud, she said: ‘You are fortunate in owing no one your allegiance.’ His expression grew speculative as she continued. ‘You are an adventurer, a soldier of fortune, wearing your loyalty on your sleeve.’What was she driving at? he conjectured, for there was no doubting the underlying significance of what she was saying. Her eyes were burning into his beseechingly. ‘Fate threw us together again at an hour when of all men you were the one I needed most. Oh, Nick,’ she moaned desperately, ‘you will help me?’

  Her words struck him with the same impact, the same revelational force as that lightning flash by whose illumination he had glimpsed her on Blackheath two nights since. Now, instead of the shock of recognition, he was probing for the first time into the workings of her mind in all their subtle cunning. Now his ice-cold brain was informing him she had plotted to lure him on to taking Morande’s place ever since the latter’s death. Had she not just now declared how he must appear in her estimation? An adventurer without allegiance, a desperate rascal who would sell his birthright without compunction, so the price were tempting enough.

  A bitter fury possessed him, the realization driving deep, with all the piercing thrust of a dagger, into his vitals. How she ha
d used her feminine guile to secure him for her traitorous cause. With cold-blooded calculation she had played her part, had even sold herself to him; bought, so she believed, with her body his complacent agreement to assume the badge of infamy she held forth. How could he have been so vain, so dazzled by her wiles, to credit that he could ever gain her proud aristocratic heart? Her body, yes, he had possessed that, she had debased herself to that low level out of her twisted sense of patriotism.

  They were both impostors, he mused, and then with an inward wry smile: except that he had not required to counterfeit his love for her. Even as these thoughts filled their place in his reckoning, he was automatically responding to the instincts of his profession. ‘The credentials you carried, which introduced you to Morande? In whose possession are they now?’

  She regarded him mutely, her glance searching his face, and then she told him what he already knew: of her return to the house in Half Moon Alley to recover what might prove to be damning evidence of her hidden intent. While he was promising himself he would have no difficulty in transferring the precious paper to his own person and that soon, either surreptiously or upon some pretext, to be passed on for the attention of the Blind Beak, she whispered: ‘France will reward you, I vow it, as England never will.’

  ‘And I am rewarded in cash I will rest content,’ he drawled, with a disinterested shrug. ‘Think you not I would spy for your Du Barry on any other account.’

  She stared up into his face and then with languorous grace her slender white arms reached for him. ‘And I?’ she asked him slowly. ‘I too am part of the bargain.’

  18.

  Nick took breakfast at the Piazza Coffee-house, Covent Garden, after leaving Chagrin, pale-featured and sleepy-eyed, safely at Beaumont’s, arranging to meet her again that night. The gossip at the coffee-house tables, which could not fail occasionally to interrupt his deep and troubled cogitations regarding Chagrin, seemed concerned entirely with the political situation both in America and also nearer home across the Channel.

  Since the staggering news of General Burgoyne’s disastrous capitulation had reached London several days before, rumours had become rife; people everywhere found themselves suddenly confronted with the possibility the war with America might be turning against hitherto all-conquering British arms. It seemed certain Louis XVI, inspired by America’s success at Saratoga, would recognize the latter’s independence as a first step towards forming an alliance with her, preparatory to openly declaring war upon Britain.

  Wrapped up as he was in the toils of an exigency which struck at the very foundations of his own future, Nick could give but little ear to the talk and argument, surmise and speculation. Yet even when later that morning he inquired at Bow Street he was informed by Mr. Bond that for once the Blind Beak was not in court. ‘The news, Mr. Rathburn,’ the clerk, his eyes darting at him over his spectacles, hastened to impart, ‘is that the Earl of Chatham is coming out of his retirement to make his counsel heard once more in Britain’s hour of crisis. Mr. Fielding has gone to the House of Lords to hear the great man.’

  In the early afternoon Nick continued his usual rounds, calling at the clubs and gaming-houses, visiting his tailor to discuss the cut of a new waistcoat, encountering all manner of rumours upsurging wave upon wave, against which theme of suspicion and hatred, bellicose tempers and sword-rattling his preoccupation with Chagrin provided a counter-point. At a time when he should be alert, his blood coursing through his veins the swifter at the blaring challenge of outside events, England’s enemies threatening to arise on every side to crush her, his energies instead were concentrated upon the woman from whom he had extracted her admission she was a spy.

  When later he called once more at Bow Street there was no sign of Mr. Fielding, and Mr. Bond conducted him upstairs to the sitting room there to await the other’s return, leaving Nick to pace up and down the familiar, untidy room. It was growing dark when he crossed to the window as, amidst the rattle of passing carriages and rumble of carts, the shouts and mutters of wayfarers, he distinguished the sound of wheels drawing up outside. Into the light cast by the street-lamp and a lantern held aloft by a police officer the massive figure, swathed in his voluminous cloak, stepped from his carriage. Some moments later footsteps ascended and the sitting room door was flung open by Mr. Bond, who followed the Blind Beak in.

  ‘Would you had been with me, young Nick,’ Mr. Fielding exclaimed as he was helped off with his cloak. He sniffed loudly as, rubbing his pudgy hands together, he made for the fire. ‘By the dust your footsteps have raised pacing the carpet you have been awaiting me with not a little impatience to hear my news.’ He turned to his clerk who stood at the door preparatory to leaving. ‘You also, Mr. Bond, should have been present to witness such an historic occasion.’

  ‘He spoke, the great Pitt,’ said the magistrate, slowly wagging his head from side to side, ‘the last speech he will ever make. He rose from his bed of sickness, bounded by despair at the ruin of our hopes in America and horror at the threat of invasion by those damned French. For, Mr. Bond’ — stabbing a finger in the latter’s direction — ‘if France’s fleet should join against us, where is our navy to protect our coasts, scattered as it is all over the Atlantic?’ Mr. Bond duly drawing a whistling breath through his teeth, the Blind Beak proceeded: ‘Despite his age and enfeebled heath, Pitt could not let go by the Duke of Richmond’s motion to the House our troops be withdrawn from America, without raising his voice in protest.’

  ‘How did he answer the Duke of Richmond’s motion?’

  ‘Do you not be as impatient as Nick here, and I will come to it. That was the question,’ Mr. Fielding went on, ‘everyone was asking. What would Pitt, who had saved North America from the French, who had always criticized our tyrannous notions towards the Americans, what would he say now to Richmond’s demand we quit America for ever? You had to cup your hands to your ears to hear him when, struggling with his crutches, he got to his feet to speak. ‘I am old and infirm,’ he said. ‘I have more than one foot in the grave. I have made an effort almost beyond my strength to come here this day to express indignation at an idea which has gone forth of yielding up America.’ His voice had risen but now it grew weak again as he spoke about France. ‘Shall we,’ he said, ‘who, fifteen years ago, were the terror of the world, now stoop so low as to tell our ancient, inveterate enemy to take all we have, only give us peace? Let us at least make an effort and, if we must fall, let us fall like men.’ He tried to say more, but the words would not come, then he fell back and those around me could see death written on his face.’

  Mr. Fielding sat down as Mr. Bond poured him some wine and, as he motioned the latter to fill his own and Nick’s glasses, he said: ‘Not a doubt of it, these damned Americans’ success at Saratoga will result in our being encircled by bitter enemies. Against which threat we must close the ranks.’

  The Blind Beak put down his glass and shifted his massive bulk in his chair so that his black-bandaged face was bent upon Nick. ‘What brings you here tonight? Has your pretty little Comtesse given you some hint why Boehemer was not on the coach?’

  ‘I have some news on that score,’ Nick replied guardedly and received an anticipatory nod before the other turned to Mr. Bond with instructions regarding court business for the morrow. The clerk closed the door behind him and Nick, under the impression the Blind Beak had sensed he wanted to talk to him confidentially, was ready to plunge into the subject so crowding his mind. It became at once apparent to him, however, it was because Mr. Fielding, himself, wanted to confide in Nick that he had got rid of Mr. Bond. There was an air about him of suppressed excitement which Nick, obsessed with his own preoccupation, had failed to notice until now.

  The Blind Beak leaned forward, his hand reaching for Nick’s arm. ‘I was at the House of Lords upon other business, seeking advice on how to achieve an ambition which has been nagging at my very soul these past several years.’ He pinched his double chin between thumb and fore
finger. ‘As none is more aware of it than you, this activity in my office has procured me esteem, which acceptable advantage has at the same time rendered me, shall we say, obnoxious to sharpers and cheats, thieves and robbers, whose wicked designs have been my vigilance to defeat. Were, therefore, His Majesty to be graciously pleased to confer upon me the honour of a knighthood, it would greatly strengthen my power and add much to my’ — he coughed and corrected himself — ‘to the Bow Street Runners’ influence.’

  Before Nick, somewhat confounded by the import of the other’s disclosure, together with the realization of what the Blind Beak’s ambition would mean to the object of his visit tonight, could make suitable reply, from the street was indistinctly heard: ‘Pitt... the old man has gone... The Earl of Chatham is dead.’

  They sat there in silence, the magistrate shaking his head gently to himself. ‘Now indeed the last dim lamp of England is out,’ he muttered, ‘now indeed darkness folds the straining ship, and the breakers roar.’

  The voices below passed and faded and then: ‘Frankly do I tell you my wish to be still more useful to the community is the true motive behind this honour I seek. In order to achieve that upon which I have set my heart,’ he went on, ‘I needs must have the attention of His Majesty directed to some outstanding achievement. A coup of such spectacular nature the tongues in every club and coffee-house in the town will be set wagging.’ Then the Blind Beak leaned forward to prod Nick in the shoulder. ‘This creature, the Du Barry, for instance? And I could furnish proof positive to the Government of her machinations against us, that would be the sort of feather in our cap I have in mind. If only we had nabbed Boehemer, and as a result unmasked her, so Louis could be confronted with evidence of that woman’s activities.’

  He broke off as Nick got to his feet and began pacing up and down once more. He had but to inform the other he had the very means by which the Du Barry could be brought to ruin and disgrace and he knew without any possibility of doubt what the Blind Beak’s response would be.