The Devil in Velvet

by John Dickson Carr

  “Cock of the hectors?” roared Long-legs. “When there’s a hole in your own guts …”

  His left hand must sweep over, flinging the dust and gravel straight into Sir Nick’s eyes, an instant before Long-legs launched his own thrust. Yet he must thrust low and not high, lest his own dust blow back in his eyes. It was, at the time, a quite fair trick.

  “When there’s a hole in your own guts,” he screamed, “you’ll know who’s master, who’s cock, who rules the roost!”

  Dust and gravel spurted from his left hand. Sir Nick, whose left thumb was already well under the periwig while his fingers gripped it from above, yanked the periwig forward and over, his broad-brimmed hat ducking like a face shield. Instantly he flung both periwig and hat into the air—just as Long-legs drove a full-length lunge in seconde at the upper part of the right thigh.

  Sir Nick’s rapier whipped over, knuckles down, pointed vertically at the ground. The two blades whacked as he swept Long-legs’s sword to the right in parry. Then, before the head-down Long-legs could quite jump back to guard, Sir Nick’s point drove out and up at an oblique angle.

  The point caught Long-legs, whose head was a little back, through the upper throat not far under the chin. It ripped up behind the teeth, crashed through the roof of the mouth, and lodged in the brain.

  In the next instant Sir Nick was tugging at it, tugging back and forth with both hands, so that he might loosen and dislodge it. It came away in a gush of blood which spattered heavily on his hands and cuffs but at least it was out.

  For a half-second Long-legs stood upright, hardly swaying. A thin film of blood crept over his eyes and blotted them out. Blood gushed from his nostrils, foamed over his mouth, and ran from the throat-wound. This gaunt corpse tried to take a step to the left, but he was already dead.

  Long-legs fell at full length, face down, across the double line of red-leather fire buckets. Most of them held his weight, though slopping. Two fell over, one creaked and swayed, sending out a splashing of foul water mixed with blood to spread a pool across the dirt.

  Sir Nick looked down at him, using velvet sleeve to mop the sweat from his face. Across the tunnel, somewhat dusty, lay his fallen periwig and hat. He moved towards it.

  “A man is ill advised,” he was thinking, “should he intrust but the hat against matter of the kind. Periwig must go too, after masking the face whilst you may count one. It sweepeth away other dust, which might blind him in …”

  Suddenly his head went up, alert for a noise. Then, head bare except for black stubble, his hands and sword and cuffs bloodied, he raced out of the tunnel and back down the lane. On the way he passed a gabbling apothecary, with water-dripping spectacles, who had cast aside caution and run out from behind the horse trough.

  George was in trouble.

  Anyone could hear George’s panting breath gulp in and out his mouth. His back was towards the turning and the spiked iron gate. His opponent—the second Bully of Alsatia—had his back to Sir Nick, and pressed hard. A thin dust cloud hovered round their waists.

  Sir Nick stopped, measuring the distance with his eye. Then he lunged. The point struck under the man’s left shoulder blade for a distance of just one inch. The man’s body jerked like a hooked fish; then steadied on guard against George.

  “Drop your point!” said Sir Nick. “Drop it, else your heart will be burst before you can say ‘Laard.’ —George! Drop yours too, but not before he shall do it!”

  Slowly Bully the Second’s hand fell to his side, still gripping the sword. When Sir Nick saw that sword, his friendship and admiration for George grew along with his black vindictiveness against Bully.

  It was a very old-fashioned blade, longer and a good deal heavier than George’s, with sharpened double edges as well as a point. To deal with it was child’s play if you had knowledge. But George, who knew only modern swordplay, had fought like an overdressed, high-heeled, stout-bodied fiend and held him off for the enormous long time of three minutes.

  Across Bully’s shoulder he could see George’s white face, a mask of sweat bubbles inside the periwig. George panted too much to speak.

  “I am Nick Fenton,” said Sir Nick, and twisted the sword point in Bully’s back so that the man’s flesh writhed. “Ye know me, I think?”

  The faint nasal twang in Bully’s voice betrayed him, as did other things.

  “I know thee,” he spat out, “for whoremaster and dog and swine, keeper of a Papist doxy …”

  “All these I am, with much more that would shock and affright you. But doth repute say I ever broke my word?”

  A hesitation. “Nay, I do not—”

  “I will go back five long paces, rogue. Then do you turn and fight!”

  “And the Laard grant me victory over the Philistine!”

  Sir Nick’s heels stamped hard in the dust so that all might hear the five paces. To break his word (save to women, in the way of lechery) he thought the only sin. For fair play he cared nothing, only wanting the fight for himself.

  Round whirled the second Alsatian, a thickset man of about Sir Nick’s height. His lank greasy hair, shot with grey, was cut halfway down his ears. A very old backsword cut seamed up the flesh over one eye, holding it slanted up. He had a very ill-fitting set of upper teeth, like bad gravestones.

  “Art a Conventicle man, Scar-face?” Sir Nick asked politely. “Like to all rogues and knaves of Alsatia?”

  Both used the familiar (or in this case contemptuous) “thee” and “thou” form, which is like the French tu.

  “When thou wert yet unbreeched, a score and five years ago, I was of the mighty New Model army. If the Laard hath seen fit to visit me with misfortune, under an ill-got king …”

  “Now who hath heard,” said Sir Nick, and laughed, “of any Roundhead could ever use a sword?”

  And Scar-face, huffed to rage, charged in.

  It was not a fight at all. Sir Nick merely played with him and laughed at him. Scar-face tried to fight in the new style, body sideways, remembering the warning against the overarm cut which his first opponent had found so hard to parry. He forgot that his heavier blade was no tougher of fibre than the new ones.

  When he lunged heavily at Sir Nick’s chest, he found his blade contemptuously slapped aside or feathered away with a slither that maddened him. Again and again he struck at nothing. “Lightly, lightly,” thought Sir Nick, who then darted in and stung his nose so that a single drop of blood oozed from it. It acted on Scar-face exactly as Sir Nick hoped it would.

  Scar-face’s arm whipped back and up for an old-fashioned cut—leaving wide open the whole right side of his body. Out went Sir Nick at full-length lunge. The blade skewered the armpit, driving a little to the left, and struck on some part of the backbone.

  Rocked back on his heels and all but overset, Scar-face struggled up just as the rapier was tugged out. For half a second Scar-face stood motionless. It may be doubted whether he could lift his right arm, yet his fingers clutched the blade.

  “’Ware the dog behind ye!” he shouted, in the oldest trick known to duellists, and pointed with his left hand. As he shouted, his false teeth flew out of his mouth and landed unbroken amid swirling dust.

  Sir Nick, for once off guard, glanced over his right shoulder. Instantly Scar-face, doubtless protected by his Laard, ran hard past Sir Nick’s left, and sped like a winged deity towards the mouth of the lane. Blood drops spattered after him on the ground.

  Instantly Sir Nick gave chase, running mightily and stabbing at his back. But Scar-face, who seemed to pray, went at inhuman speed. He dashed through the arch into the tunnel past his dead companion, not even slipping in water because it had dried into the ground. He attained the crowded Strand; and once more saw a miracle of luck.

  To cross that street, in the ordinary way, would have been difficult to the edge of impossible. But a brewer’s wagon, loaded with heavy c
asks and drawn by two Flanders mares towards the west, had locked wheels with a vegetable cart going in the same direction, while the drivers cursed and belaboured each other with their whips. Approaching westwards, two sedan chairs and a long cart heavy with sacks of barley (the chairmen hugely amused) stopped briefly to watch the belabouring.

  Into that narrow space dashed Scar-face, still holding his sword, and disappeared across the road just as wheels unlocked with a bumping crash. Vehicles flowed together again as Sir Nick leaped to follow, and could not manage it.

  Meanwhile George, who had returned sword to scabbard, sat against the brick wall and panted until his breathing returned. Though sweat-rumpled and grimy, he had forgotten this. When the other two raced up the lane, he bounced to his feet as though made of rubber. Picking up Scar-face’s false teeth, apparently as a memento, George dropped them into his pocket and tore after the others with (also) unexpected agility.

  Dashing through the arch, he paused only to pluck the hat with the green-ribbon rosette from the head of the dead man and crumple it into the same large pocket. He picked up Sir Nick’s dusty hat-cum-periwig and was brushing it as he reached the outer arch.

  There he found his friend, sword in hand, stamping and raving before a solid wall of vehicles.

  “This dog, this—” Sir Nick swallowed hard. “He made ’scape through there. How do I seek him now?”

  “You can’t, Nick! Gently, now; be persuaded!”

  Fitting the periwig in some tolerable fashion over his companion’s head, which seemed only to confuse Nick, George attempted to soothe him.

  “Nick,” he said, nodding in the direction of Temple Bar and beyond, “there are above a score and three score of twisty alleys or lanes (d’ye follow, Nick?) which will take him back to Alsatia. Once there, the rogue is safe.”

  “Because ’tis a sanctuary?”

  “More, Nick. Scratch me, a whole trainband—nay, a company of soldiery with flintlocks—durst not venture in there!”

  “Then here’s one who will!”

  “No, Nick,” George said quietly. “I’ll not let you.”

  “Not let me? As how?”

  “As—thus!” said George, and suddenly, behind him, locked his arms round Sir Nick in a powerful wrestling grip.

  “Let be, curse ye! Let …”

  Sir Nick tried to open his shoulders and break the grip, but he could not do it. As they reeled and thudded back against the wall, there was not one yell or howl of interest.

  At least one Abram-cove saw the bulge of the heavy money purse in Sir Nick’s pocket; of ordinary, he could have slit down the middle of the pocket with a knife so swans-down light that the bag would fall out unnoticed into his hand. But even the frantic held back; even the urchin did not cry out.

  When you see a court gentleman, with mad eyes above bloodied­ sword and hands bloodied well above the cuffs, a-struggle­ with another of his breed in silent ferocity, this is too serious. The hand of Jack Ketch squirms through all. One constable­ (such were the breed) saw it and immediately disappeared­. Only a magistrate—magistrates for the most part were stern inflexible men—would have dared to interfere.

  “No!” panted George. “’Fore God, Nick, I’ll hold you till your brain cools and the vapours are gone!”

  “Will you?” panted Sir Nick, wrenching one arm free.

  George instantly locked it again. They reeled out towards the kennel and the crashing wheels, they staggered back, turning again—and Sir Nick’s left leg struck something or somebody.

  The only one who had dared approach (since most sidled past with heads down and gaze on the cobbles) was a very young shoeblack, carrying his many rags together with his shallow tin vessel of soot mixed with rancid oil. Sir Nick’s knee sent him sprawling; the soot-and-oil mixture splashed out and ran along the street into the kennel.

  “Nay, now!” said Sir Nick gently. His arms went limp. George, swinging him round, saw that his eyes were conscience-stricken. “I meant no harm. Truly I meant no harm.”

  George let him go altogether. Sir Nick knelt down, to help up a frightened and black-faced urchin. “This sword; you are afeared; nay, back into the scabbard.” Back it went into the scabbard. “Here … here’s money; a gold angel; stay, take a handful; they are yours.”

  He closed the boy’s hand on the coins.

  “But be advised,” he added. “That is all I would tell you. When you are grown up, and are become a man, this you must do: towards the weak and helpless, you shall shew humility, which is of the angels. But if they be proud and insolent,”—his fingers began to tighten on the boy’s arm, but unloosed before they hurt—“then smite them across their sneering faces, and have no mercy!” His tone changed. “Stay, I would not harm you! I …”

  Slowly Sir Nick straightened up. His knees tottered. With George making room for him, he stumbled and set his back against the wall. One arm went up and covered his face, elbow across the eyes. He remained there for a little time, and then dropped his arm.

  “Er—George,” he said.

  Lord George Harwell gave a start which was almost a jump, and a shiver of superstitious dread went through him.

  It was a different voice, an utterly different voice from old Nick’s! Stay! It was the same grave, courteous, kindly voice, pitched in Nick’s tone but like that of an older philosopher, which had perplexed George all day until it altered in the apothecary’s shop.

  “How came we back here?” asked the voice. “I remember, in the apothecary’s shop, I began to grow a trifle vexed with you—but over some absurd matter, a mere trifle—and I can remember nothing more.”

  Thus Professor Fenton opened his eyes, and looked round him. He felt shaken, as though he had been through a bad experience. That was all.

  George desperately wished to pray, which he would have died rather than have admitted. But he could remember only a prayer for the dying, which did not seem applicable.

  “Come, now!” he exclaimed, with false heartiness. “’Twas a matter of less than ten minutes in all.”

  “Ten minutes!” repeated Fenton.

  His wandering gaze travelled across the hanging gables across the street. As he had seen before, both lattices of one window were open. The pretty, tousle-headed slattern of sixteen, who wore no attire to speak of, was now lazily leaning both elbows on the window ledge and had not yet even finished her beer in the tankard.

  “Why,” George told him soothingly, “you did but kill one man and wound another. —Come, don’t look at me so! Or down at your hands! You’ll not be taken up: whosoever finds Long-legs’s body, they’ll shake his hand because someone hath saved the expense of a hanging. He’s an Alsatian; his life was already forfeit.”

  “But …”

  “Your great need, Nick, is for food,” George said heartily. “Scratch me, my own guts growl for my dinner! Come, there’s a cookshop, the Fat Capon—not ten yards from here—will do us well for such. Take my arm; man, you’re weak; and I’ll tell you the story as we go.”

  “Yes, by all means! But …”

  George, glancing to his right, stopped abruptly. Slowly his large face grew crimson.

  “Nick!” he said in a low voice. “Look there! Here’s your own coach approaching, and Meg York inside it, a-tapping on the glass and smiling. Nick, Nick,”—there was a tremble in the voice—“durst I meet her, d’ye think?”

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE LORD OF THE GREEN RIBBON

  THE PREMISES AT THE SIGN OF THE FAT CAPON, though fairly wide and deep, were smokily dark except for the bed of red-glowing coals in the vast iron-and-brick chimney at the rear. Its heat flowed out heavily, past perspiring walls, and through the open lattice at the rear.

  “‘Hell is murky,’” Fenton quoted to himself, as George drew out a chair at one of the black, long tables. It would be, he decided, an admirable smoky red-g
lowing place to met the devil. But would he meet the devil again?

  “Sit you merry, gentlemen!” said the landlord, a very fat man with up-rolled sleeves and a broad belt with a brass buckle round his middle. “And how may I tempt your appetite?”

  “For me,” answered George, “a good capon and (say) four good pigeons.” He gave the other a sinister look. “They are fat pigeons, ripe, and melting to the teeth?”

  “Sir,” the landlord retorted haughtily, “they are so, else you would not find them here.”

  “And for this gentleman,” said George, who saw that Nick’s periwig was lowered and that he stared in deep thought at the table, “hah! I have it! A meat pie, large with rich gravy and a fine beef or the like. For each of us, a pot of your best canary.”

  Fenton was only just beginning to enjoy himself again since they had seen Meg’s coach lumber to a stop.

  That conversation with Meg, a few minutes ago, had thrown the dice at a new and more dangerous fall. Was he never, Fenton wondered, to be at ease, without fangs all about him? His mind went back to the Strand, when he and George had climbed into the coach at Meg’s bidding.

  “To go on foot is so horrid!” Meg had said. “You go but a few yards? Nay then! you must sit here for a merry discourse with me.”

  The coach, a monstrous great box with wheels higher than a man, was curved underneath and slung on heavy leather straps. It had a periwigged coachman and was drawn by two heavy bay horses. It was painted bright gilt to its pinnacled roof, save for mudstains and Sir Nick’s arms, four quarterings, under the glass windows.

  “S-sweetest madam,” bumbled George, his face fiery in the presence of one he adored, “I have no desire to—to intrude …”

  Whereupon he fell all over his own feet on the step up to the coach, and dropped (to his further embarrassment) on the soft wine-coloured upholstery just opposite Meg, who took fiendish delight in teasing him.

  “George!” her voice caressed softly. “Could you ever intrude?”

  Fenton swung lightly into the coach and dropped into the farthest corner opposite Meg.