Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  I lay quietly then among the ferns. Presently I heard the steps of the runner, and there he was quite close to me, with his huge coat, and the perspiration running down his face. He seemed to be a very solid man — but small — so small that I feared that his clothes might be of little use to me. When I jumped out upon him he stopped running, and looked at me in the greatest astonishment.

  ‘Blow my dickey,’ said he, ‘give it a name, guv’nor! Is it a circus, or what?’

  That was how he talked, though I cannot pretend to tell you what he meant by it.

  ‘You will excuse me, sir,’ said I, ‘but I am under the necessity of asking you to give me your clothes.’

  ‘Give you what?’ he cried.

  ‘Your clothes.’

  ‘Well, if this don’t lick cock-fighting!’ said he. ‘What am I to give you my clothes for?’

  ‘Because I need them.’

  ‘And suppose I won’t?’

  ‘Be jabers,’ said I, ‘I shall have no choice but to take them.’

  He stood with his hands in the pockets of his great-coat, and a most amused smile upon his square-jawed, clean-shaven face.

  ‘You’ll take them, will you?’ said he. ‘You’re a very leery cove, by the look of you, but I can tell you that you’ve got the wrong sow by the ear this time. I know who you are. You’re a runaway Frenchy, from the prison yonder, as anyone could tell with half an eye. But you don’t know who I am, else you wouldn’t try such a plant as that. Why, man, I’m the Bristol Bustler, nine stone champion, and them’s my training quarters down yonder.’

  He stared at me as if this announcement of his would have crushed me to the earth, but I smiled at him in my turn, and looked him up and down, with a twirl of my moustache.

  ‘You may be a very brave man, sir,’ said I, ‘but when I tell you that you are opposed to Colonel Etienne Gerard, of the Hussars of Conflans, you will see the necessity of giving up your clothes without further parley.’

  ‘Look here, mounseer, drop it!’ he cried; ‘this’ll end by your getting pepper.’

  ‘Your clothes, sir, this instant!’ I shouted, advancing fiercely upon him.

  For answer he threw off his heavy great-coat, and stood in a singular attitude, with one arm out, and the other across his chest, looking at me with a curious smile. For myself, I knew nothing of the methods of fighting which these people have, but on horse or on foot, with arms or without them, I am always ready to take my own part. You understand that a soldier cannot always choose his own methods, and that it is time to howl when you are living among wolves. I rushed at him, therefore, with a warlike shout, and kicked him with both my feet. At the same moment my heels flew into the air, I saw as many flashes as at Austerlitz, and the back of my head came down with a crash upon a stone. After that I can remember nothing more.

  When I came to myself I was lying upon a truckle-bed, in a bare, half-furnished room. My head was ringing like a bell, and when I put up my hand, there was a lump like a walnut over one of my eyes. My nose was full of a pungent smell, and I soon found that a strip of paper soaked in vinegar was fastened across my brow. At the other end of the room this terrible little man was sitting with his knee bare, and his elderly companion was rubbing it with some liniment. The latter seemed to be in the worst of tempers, and he kept up a continual scolding, which the other listened to with a gloomy face.

  ‘Never heard tell of such a thing in my life,’ he was saying. ‘In training for a month with all the weight of it on my shoulders, and then when I get you as fit as a trout, and within two days of fighting the likeliest man on the list, you let yourself into a by-battle with a foreigner.’

  ‘There, there! Stow your gab!’ said the other, sulkily. ‘You’re a very good trainer, Jim, but you’d be better with less jaw.’

  ‘I should think it was time to jaw,’ the elderly man answered. ‘If this knee don’t get well before next Wednesday, they’ll have it that you fought a cross, and a pretty job you’ll have next time you look for a backer.’

  ‘Fought a cross!’ growled the other. ‘I’ve won nineteen battles, and no man ever so much as dared to say the word “cross” in my hearin’. How the deuce was I to get out of it when the cove wanted the very clothes off my back?’

  ‘Tut, man; you knew that the beak and the guards were within a mile of you. You could have set them on to him as well then as now. You’d have got your clothes back again all right.’

  ‘Well, strike me!’ said the Bustler. ‘I don’t often break my trainin’, but when it comes to givin’ up my clothes to a Frenchy who couldn’t hit a dint in a pat o’ butter, why, it’s more than I can swaller.’

  ‘Pooh, man, what are the clothes worth? D’you know that Lord Rufton alone has five thousand pounds on you? When you jump the ropes on Wednesday, you’ll carry every penny of fifty thousand into the ring. A pretty thing to turn up with a swollen knee and a story about a Frenchman!’

  ‘I never thought he’d ha’ kicked,’ said the Bustler.

  ‘I suppose you expected he’d fight Broughton’s rules, and strict P.R.? Why, you silly, they don’t know what fighting is in France.’

  ‘My friends,’ said I, sitting up on my bed, ‘I do not understand very much of what you say, but when you speak like that it is foolishness. We know so much about fighting in France, that we have paid our little visit to nearly every capital in Europe, and very soon we are coming to London. But we fight like soldiers, you understand, and not like gamins in the gutter. You strike me on the head. I kick you on the knee. It is child’s play. But if you will give me a sword, and take another one, I will show you how we fight over the water.’

  They both stared at me in their solid, English way.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re not dead, mounseer,’ said the elder one at last. ‘There wasn’t much sign of life in you when the Bustler and me carried you down. That head of yours ain’t thick enough to stop the crook of the hardest hitter in Bristol.’

  ‘He’s a game cove, too, and he came for me like a bantam,’ said the other, still rubbing his knee. ‘I got my old left-right in, and he went over as if he had been pole-axed. It wasn’t my fault, mounseer. I told you you’d get pepper if you went on.’

  ‘Well, it’s something to say all your life, that you’ve been handled by the finest light-weight in England,’ said the older man, looking at me with an expression of congratulation upon his face. ‘You’ve had him at his best, too — in the pink of condition, and trained by Jim Hunter.’

  ‘I am used to hard knocks,’ said I, unbuttoning my tunic, and showing my two musket wounds. Then I bared my ankle also, and showed the place in my eye where the guerilla had stabbed me.

  ‘He can take his gruel,’ said the Bustler.

  ‘What a glutton he’d have made for the middle-weights,’ remarked the trainer; ‘with six months’ coaching he’d astonish the fancy. It’s a pity he’s got to go back to prison.’

  I did not like that last remark at all. I buttoned up my coat and rose from the bed.

  ‘I must ask you to let me continue my journey,’ said I.

  ‘There’s no help for it, mounseer,’ the trainer answered. ‘It’s a hard thing to send such a man as you back to such a place, but business is business, and there’s a twenty pound reward. They were here this morning, looking for you, and I expect they’ll be round again.’

  His words turned my heart to lead.

  ‘Surely, you would not betray me!’ I cried. ‘I will send you twice twenty pounds on the day that I set foot upon France. I swear it upon the honour of a French gentleman.’

  But I only got head-shakes for a reply. I pleaded, I argued, I spoke of the English hospitality and the fellowship of brave men, but I might as well have been addressing the two great wooden clubs which stood balanced upon the floor in front of me. There was no sign of sympathy upon their bull-faces.

  ‘Business is business, mounseer,’ the old trainer repeated. ‘Besides, how am I to put the Bustler into the ring on Wedne
sday if he’s jugged by the beak for aidin’ and abettin’ a prisoner of war? I’ve got to look after the Bustler, and I take no risks.’

  This, then, was the end of all my struggles and strivings. I was to be led back again like a poor silly sheep who has broken through the hurdles. They little knew me who could fancy that I should submit to such a fate. I had heard enough to tell me where the weak point of these two men was, and I showed, as I have often showed before, that Etienne Gerard is never so terrible as when all hope seems to have deserted him. With a single spring I seized one of the clubs and swung it over the head of the Bustler.

  ‘Come what may,’ I cried, ‘you shall be spoiled for Wednesday.’

  The fellow growled out an oath, and would have sprung at me, but the other flung his arms round him and pinned him to the chair.

  ‘Not if I know it, Bustler,’ he screamed. ‘None of your games while I am by. Get away out of this, Frenchy. We only want to see your back. Run away, run away, or he’ll get loose!’

  It was good advice, I thought, and I ran to the door, but as I came out into the open air my head swam round and I had to lean against the porch to save myself from falling. Consider all that I had been through, the anxiety of my escape, the long, useless flight in the storm, the day spent amid wet ferns, with only bread for food, the second journey by night, and now the injuries which I had received in attempting to deprive the little man of his clothes. Was it wonderful that even I should reach the limits of my endurance?

  I stood there in my heavy coat and my poor battered shako, my chin upon my chest, and my eyelids over my eyes. I had done my best, and I could do no more. It was the sound of horses’ hoofs which made me at last raise my head, and there was the grey-moustached Governor of Dartmoor Prison not ten paces in front of me, with six mounted warders behind him!

  ‘So, Colonel,’ said he, with a bitter smile, ‘we have found you once more.’

  When a brave man has done his utmost, and has failed, he shows his breeding by the manner in which he accepts his defeat. For me, I took the letter which I had in my pocket, and stepping forward, I handed it with such grace of manner as I could summon to the Governor.

  ‘It has been my misfortune, sir, to detain one of your letters,’ said I.

  He looked at me in amazement, and beckoned to the warders to arrest me. Then he broke the seal of the letter. I saw a curious expression come over his face as he read it.

  ‘This must be the letter which Sir Charles Meredith lost,’ said he.

  ‘It was in the pocket of his coat.’

  ‘You have carried it for two days?’

  ‘Since the night before last.’

  ‘And never looked at the contents?’

  I showed him by my manner that he had committed an indiscretion in asking a question which one gentleman should not have put to another.

  To my surprise he burst out into a roar of laughter.

  ‘Colonel,’ said he, wiping the tears from his eyes, ‘you have really given both yourself and us a great deal of unnecessary trouble. Allow me to read the letter which you carried with you in your flight.’

  And this was what I heard: —

  ‘On receipt of this you are directed to release Colonel Etienne Gerard, of the 3rd Hussars, who has been exchanged against Colonel Mason, of the Horse Artillery, now in Verdun.’

  And as he read it, he laughed again, and the warders laughed, and the two men from the cottage laughed, and then, as I heard this universal merriment, and thought of all my hopes and fears, and my struggles and dangers, what could a debonair soldier do but lean against the porch once more, and laugh as heartily as any of them? And of them all was it not I who had the best reason to laugh, since in front of me I could see my dear France, and my mother, and the Emperor, and my horsemen; while behind lay the gloomy prison, and the heavy hand of the English King?

  HOW THE BRIGADIER TOOK THE FIELD AGAINST THE MARSHAL MILLEFLEURS

  Massena was a thin, sour little fellow, and after his hunting accident he had only one eye, but when it looked out from under his cocked hat there was not much upon a field of battle which escaped it. He could stand in front of a battalion, and with a single sweep tell you if a buckle or a gaiter button were out of place. Neither the officers nor the men were very fond of him, for he was, as you know, a miser, and soldiers love that their leaders should be free-handed. At the same time, when it came to work they had a very high respect for him, and they would rather fight under him than under anyone except the Emperor himself, and Lannes, when he was alive. After all, if he had a tight grasp upon his money-bags, there was a day also, you must remember, when that same grip was upon Zurich and Genoa. He clutched on to his positions as he did to his strong box, and it took a very clever man to loosen him from either.

  When I received his summons I went gladly to his headquarters, for I was always a great favourite of his, and there was no officer of whom he thought more highly. That was the best of serving with those good old generals, that they knew enough to be able to pick out a fine soldier when they saw one. He was seated alone in his tent, with his chin upon his hand, and his brow as wrinkled as if he had been asked for a subscription. He smiled, however, when he saw me before him.

  ‘Good day, Colonel Gerard.’

  ‘Good day, Marshal.’

  ‘How is the Third of Hussars?’

  ‘Seven hundred incomparable men upon seven hundred excellent horses.’

  ‘And your wounds — are they healed?’

  ‘My wounds never heal, Marshal,’ I answered.

  ‘And why?’

  ‘Because I have always new ones.’

  ‘General Rapp must look to his laurels,’ said he, his face all breaking into wrinkles as he laughed. ‘He has had twenty-one from the enemy’s bullets, and as many from Larrey’s knives and probes. Knowing that you were hurt, Colonel, I have spared you of late.’

  ‘Which hurt me most of all.’

  ‘Tut, tut! Since the English got behind these accursed lines of Torres Vedras, there has been little for us to do. You did not miss much during your imprisonment at Dartmoor. But now we are on the eve of action.’

  ‘We advance?’

  ‘No, retire.’

  My face must have shown my dismay. What, retire before this sacred dog of a Wellington — he who had listened unmoved to my words, and had sent me to his land of fogs? I could have sobbed as I thought of it.

  ‘What would you have?’ cried Massena impatiently. ‘When one is in check, it is necessary to move the king.’

  ‘Forwards,’ I suggested.

  He shook his grizzled head.

  ‘The lines are not to be forced,’ said he. ‘I have already lost General St. Croix and more men than I can replace. On the other hand, we have been here at Santarem for nearly six months. There is not a pound of flour nor a jug of wine on the countryside. We must retire.’

  ‘There are flour and wine in Lisbon,’ I persisted.

  ‘Tut, you speak as if an army could charge in and charge out again like your regiment of hussars. If Soult were here with thirty thousand men — but he will not come. I sent for you, however, Colonel Gerard, to say that I have a very singular and important expedition which I intend to place under your direction.’

  I pricked up my ears, as you can imagine. The Marshal unrolled a great map of the country and spread it upon the table. He flattened it out with his little, hairy hands.

  ‘This is Santarem,’ he said pointing.

  I nodded.

  ‘And here, twenty-five miles to the east, is Almeixal, celebrated for its vintages and for its enormous Abbey.’

  Again I nodded; I could not think what was coming.

  ‘Have you heard of the Marshal Millefleurs?’ asked Massena.

  ‘I have served with all the Marshals,’ said I, ‘but there is none of that name.’

  ‘It is but the nickname which the soldiers have given him,’ said Massena. ‘If you had not been away from us for some months, it would not be n
ecessary for me to tell you about him. He is an Englishman, and a man of good breeding. It is on account of his manners that they have given him his title. I wish you to go to this polite Englishman at Almeixal.’

  ‘Yes, Marshal.’

  ‘And to hang him to the nearest tree.’

  ‘Certainly, Marshal.’

  I turned briskly upon my heels, but Massena recalled me before I could reach the opening of his tent.

  ‘One moment, Colonel,’ said he; ‘you had best learn how matters stand before you start. You must know, then, that this Marshal Millefleurs, whose real name is Alexis Morgan, is a man of very great ingenuity and bravery. He was an officer in the English Guards, but having been broken for cheating at cards, he left the army. In some manner he gathered a number of English deserters round him and took to the mountains. French stragglers and Portuguese brigands joined him, and he found himself at the head of five hundred men. With these he took possession of the Abbey of Almeixal, sent the monks about their business, fortified the place, and gathered in the plunder of all the country round.’

  ‘For which it is high time he was hanged,’ said I, making once more for the door.

  ‘One instant!’ cried the Marshal, smiling at my impatience. ‘The worst remains behind. Only last week the Dowager Countess of La Ronda, the richest woman in Spain, was taken by these ruffians in the passes as she was journeying from King Joseph’s Court to visit her grandson. She is now a prisoner in the Abbey, and is only protected by her — —’

  ‘Grandmotherhood,’ I suggested.

  ‘Her power of paying a ransom,’ said Massena. ‘You have three missions, then: To rescue this unfortunate lady; to punish this villain; and, if possible, to break up this nest of brigands. It will be a proof of the confidence which I have in you when I say that I can only spare you half a squadron with which to accomplish all this.’