You think twice about committing murder when you’re over seventy. Mind you, it’s not something I’ve ever undertaken lightly, for all that I must have sent several score of the Queen’s enemies to their last accounts in my time, to say nothing of various bad men and oddsbodies who’ve had the misfortune to cross me when my trigger-finger was jumpy. More than a hundred, easy, I should think – which ain’t a bad tally for a true-blue coward who’d sooner shirk a fight than eat his dinner, and has run from more battle-fields than he can count. I’ve been lucky, I suppose – and devilish quick.
But those were killings in the way of business, as a soldier, or in my many misadventures in the world’s wild places, where it was me or t’other fellow. Murder’s different, you see; it takes more courage than I’ve ever had, to think it out, and weigh the consequences, and keep your hand steady as you thumb back the hammer and draw a bead on the unsuspecting back. You need to be in a perfect fever of fear and rage, as I was when I threw de Gautet over the cliff in Germany in ’48, or when I sicked on that poor lunatic steward to shoot John Charity Spring, M.A., on the slave-ship off the Cuba coast. That’s always been more my style, to get some idiot to do the dirty work for me. But there comes a time when there’s no scapegoat handy, and you have to do the business yourself – and that’s when you sweat at the thought of the black cap and the noose at the end of the eight-o’clock walk. It makes my teeth chatter on the glass just to write about it – aye, and suppose you bungle it, and your victim turns on you, full of spite and indignation? That can easily happen, you know, when you’re an old man with a shaky wrist and a cloudy eye, too stiff in the joints even to cut and run. What business have you got at your time of life to be trying to slaughter a man fifteen years younger than you are, in the middle of civilised London, especially when he’s a high-tailed gun-slick with a beltful of scalps who can shoot your ears off with his eyes shut? For that’s what Tiger Jack Moran was, and no mistake.
So you understand why I say it takes a deal of thought before you determine to go after a man like that with fatal intent, knowing that your speed and cunning have been undermined by a lifetime of booze and evil living and your white hair’s coming out in handfuls. Dammit, I wouldn’t have tackled him in my prime, when I had size and strength and viciousness to set in the balance against my yellow belly. But there I was, a hoary old grandfather, full of years and dignity and undeserved military honours, with my knighthood and V.C., as respectable an old buffer as ever shuffled down St James’s with a flower in my buttonhole, pausing only to belch claret or exchange grave salutes with Cabinet Ministers and clubmen (“Why, there’s old General Flashman,” they’d say, “dear old Sir Harry – wonderful how he keeps going. They say it’s the brandy that does it; grand old chap he is.” That was all they knew.) But there I was, I say, at a time when I ought to have had nothing to do but drink my way gently towards an honoured grave, spend my wife’s fortune, gorge at the best places, leer at the young women, and generally enjoy a dissolute old age – and suddenly, I had to kill Tiger Jack. Nothing else for it.
What brought the beads out on my withered brow more than anything else was my recollection of our first meeting, so many years before, when I’d seen for myself what an ice-cold killing villain he was – aye, and it was in a place where sheer cool nerve and skill with a gun were the narrow margin between escape and horrible death. You’ll remember the name: Isan’lwana. I can see it still, the great jagged rock of the “Little House” rearing up above the stony, sun-baked African plain, the scattered lines of our red-coated infantry, joking and cat-calling among themselves as they waited for the ammunition that never came; the red-capped Natal Kaffirs scurrying back to take their positions on the rocky slope; a black-tunicked rider of Frontier Horse leaping the gun limbers bellowing a fatuous order to laager the wagons, which went unheeded and was too late by hours; Pulleine fumbling with his field-glasses and shouting hoarsely: “Is that a rider from Lord Chelmsford?”; a colour-sergeant frantically hammering at the lid of an ammunition box; the puffs of smoke from our advanced line firing steadily at the Zulu skirmishers; the rattle of musketry over the ridge to the left; the distant figures of Durnford’s men on the right flank falling back, firing as they came; a voice croaking: “Oh, dear God Almighty!” – and it was mine, as I looked nor’east over the ranks of the 24th, and saw the skyline begin to move, like a brown blanket stirred by something beneath it, and then all along the crest there was the rippling, twinkling flash of thousands of spear-points, and a limitless line of white and coloured shields with nodding plumes behind them, rank after rank, and down the forward slope came the black spilling tide of Ketshwayo’s impis, twenty thousand savages rolling towards our pitiful position with its far-stretched line of defenders, Death sweeping towards us at that fearful thunderous jog-trot that made the earth tremble beneath our very feet, while the spears crashed on the ox-hide shields, and the dust rolled up in a bank before them as they chanted out their terrible bass chorus: “Uzitulele, kagali ’muntu!” – which, you’ll be enchanted to know, means roughly: “He is silent, he doesn’t start the attack.”
Which was a bloody lie, from where I was standing petrified, and the horrible thing was, I wasn’t even in the Army, but was there by pure chance (how, exactly, I’ll tell you another time). Much consolation that was, you can imagine, as that frightful black horde came surging across the plain towards our makeshift camp beneath Isan’lwana rock, the great mass in the centre coming on in perfect formation while the flank regiments raced out in the “horns” which would encircle our position. And there was poor old Flashy, caught behind the companies of the 24th as they poured their volley-firing into the “chest” of the Zulu army, cheering and shouting for the ammunition-carriers, and Durnford’s bald forehead glinting in the sun above his splendid whiskers as he pulled his men back to the donga and blazed away at the left “horn” sweeping in towards them.
For one brief moment, as I cast a frantic eye behind me to pick out the quickest line of retreat to the Rorke’s Drift track, I absolutely thought it might be touch and go. You see, while we were most damnably trapped, without proper defences, in spite of the warnings old Paul Kruger had given to Chelmsford about laagering and trenching every night in Zulu country,1 and while we were only a few hundred white soldiers and loyal niggers against the whole Zulu army – well, a few dozen Martini-Henrys, in the hands of men who know how to use ’em, can stop a whole lot of blacks with clubs and spears. I’d been with Campbell’s Highlanders at Balaclava, when they broke the Ruski cavalry with two volleys, and I still bore the scars of Little Big Horn, where Reno’s troopers held off half the Sioux nation (the other half were killing Custer and me just down the valley, but that’s another story).a Anyway, as I watched the 24th companies on the Isan’lwana slope, pouring their fire into the brown, and the artillery banging away for dear life, cutting great lanes in the impis, I thought, bigod, we’ll hold ’em yet. And we would have done, but the ammunition boxes hadn’t been broken out, and just as the great mass of Zulus, a bare furlong from our forward troops, seemed to be wavering and hanging back – why, the 24th were down to their last packets, and the yelling and cheering turned to desperate cries of:
“Ammunition, there! Bring the boxes, for God’s sake!”
Our fire slackened, the 24th took a step back, the Natal Kaffirs came pouring away from the left under the lee of the hill, flinging their arms aside as they ran, the order “Fix bayonets!” rang out from the ranks immediately to my front, and the Zulus regiments rallied and came bounding in in a great mad charge, the rain of throwing spears whistling ahead of them like hail, and the stabbing assegais coming out from behind the white shields as they tore into our disordered front line, the roar of “’Suthu! ’Suthu!” giving way to their hideous hissing “’S-jee! ’S-jee!” as the spears struck home.
Time for the lunch interval, thinks I; let’s be off. Once they were at close quarters, there wasn’t a hope, and by the look of it, through that hell of smoke and gunfire and fleeing men, with Kaffirs rushing past, and the gunners and wagon-men frantically trying to inspan and flee, the surviving remnants of the 24th weren’t going to hold that huge press of Zulus more than a matter of minutes. Thus far in the battle, being only a well-meaning civilian, I’d made a tremendous show of trying to get the wagons to laager in a circle, so that we could make a stand if our forward troops gave way – it was the sensible thing to do, and it also kept me at a safe distance from the fighting. So I was well placed beside an inspanned cart when the dam burst, and the Nokenke regiment of Ketshwayo’s army (that’s who the historians tell me it was, anyway; I only know they were appalling bastards with leopard-skin head-dresses, screaming fit to chill your blood) came tearing up the hill.
I was into that wagon in a twinkling, bawling to the driver to go like blazes, and blasting away over the tailboard with an Adams six-shooter in each fist. I wish I’d a pound for every time I’ve looked out at a charging barbarian horde with my guts dissolving and prayers babbling out of me, but that one took the biscuit. They came racing in, huge black-limbed monsters with their six-foot shields up, eyes and teeth glaring over the top like spectres, the plumes tossing and those disgusting two-foot steel blades glittering and smoking with blood. I saw three men of the 24th, back to back, swinging their clubbed rifles, go down before the charge, and the Zulus barely broke stride as they ripped the corpses up with their assegais (to let the dead spirits out, don’t you know) and rushed on. I blazed away, weeping and swearing, thinking oh God, this is the end, and I’m sorry I’ve led such a misspent life, and don’t send me to Hell, whatever Dr Arnold says – and my hammer clicked down on an empty chamber just as the first Zulu vaulted over the side of the wagon, howling like a dervish.
I screamed and closed with him, seizing his right wrist as the spear-point swung at my breast, my hand slipping on that oily skin; I drove a knee at his groin, butting him for all I was worth and trying to bite his throat – all I got was a mouthful of monkey-skin collar, and God, how he stank! A shot crashed right beside my ear, and the Zulu fell away, his face a mask of blood.2 I never even saw who had shot him, nor did I pause to inquire, for as I reeled away to the side of the wagon, here came a gun-team thundering past, with an artilleryman crouched on one of the leaders, lashing at the beasts and at the Zulus who raced alongside trying to spear him from the saddle. Behind the team the gun was bouncing over the ground, with some poor devil clinging to the muzzle, his feet trailing in the dust, until a Zulu, leaping behind, dashed his brains out with a knobkerrie.
You don’t think twice at such moments; you truly don’t. I had one glimpse that still stays in my memory – of that rock-strewn slope, covered with charging Zulus spearing the last knots of defenders; of men screaming and falling; of a sergeant of the 24th rolling on the ground locked with a black warrior, while the others paused to watch; of a bullock lumbering past, bellowing, with an assegai in its flank; of bloody corpses, red-coated or black-skinned, sprawled among the dusty ruin of broken carts, ration boxes, and fallen equipment; of hate-filled black faces and polished black bodies – all that in a split second, and then I went over the side of that cart in a flying dive on to the gun that was racketing past, clutching frantically at the hot metal, almost slipping down between barrel and wheel, but somehow managing to stay aboard as it tore onwards, bouncing left and right, towards the little saddle of ground that runs from Isan’lwana hill.
How I survived the next minute I don’t know. I clung to the gun, keeping low, hearing a spear glance clanging from the metal; a club caught me a blow on the shoulder, but I stuck like a leech, and the gun must have picked up speed, because the closest Zulus were suddenly lost in the dust-cloud, and for a moment we were clear of the immediate pursuit, the driver still holding his seat on the leader and yelling and quirting away as the team topped the crest and went careering down the far slope towards the Rorke’s Drift track.
The slope was thick with fugitives, white and black, a few mounted but most on foot, going pell-mell down to the broken ground and distant scrub with only one thought in mind – to get away from the merciless black vengeance behind us. They seemed to be making for a deep ravine about half a mile to the left, where it seemed to me they were sure to be caught by the left “horn” of the Zulu army as it came circling in; I struggled up astride the gun and bawled above the din to the driver to bear right for the Rorke’s Drift road. He cast a terrified glance over his shoulder, pointing frantically and shaking his head; I looked, and my heart died. Already, round the far side of the Isan’lwana hill, the vanguard of the Zulu right “horn” was streaming down like a black lance-head to cut the track; I could make out the green monkey caps and plumes of the Tulwana regiment. Five minutes at most, and the ring of steel would have closed round Isan’lwana, and God help anything white that was still inside.
There was nothing for it but the ravine, and we rushed down the slope at breakneck speed, the driver lashing the exhausted horses, and Flashy going up and down astride that damned barrel like a pea on a drum. I stole a glance back, and beyond the scattered groups of running fugitives I could see the first ranks of the Zulu “chest” coming over the hill; this won’t do, my lad, thinks I, we’ll have to move a deal faster if we want to see Piccadilly again. The gun lurched under me, sickeningly, there was a yell of alarm from the driver ahead, and by God the right rear-wheeler had broken a trace and was veering madly off to the right, head up and snorting; she stumbled and went down as the second trace parted, and I shot off the gun as it slewed round, hit the ground with a fearful jar, and went rolling arse over elbow, tearing the skin off shoulder and knee on the rock-hard earth before I fetched up winded within a yard of the fallen horse.
I had a hand on its mane as it thrashed up again, hooves flying, and you may be sure I wasn’t the only one. Half a dozen fugitives had the same notion, and one, a sergeant gunner, was half-aboard the beast. “Mine, damn you!” roars he. “She can’t take two!”
“Right you are, my son,” says I, and knocked him flying. I got a limb across that heaving bare back – and that’s all I ever need.3 Thank God I’ve never seen the mount I couldn’t master; I wound my hands into the mane, dug in my heels, and went head down for the ravine, just as the gun I had lately left went careering into it – team, driver and all. It was a deep, narrow cleft – Christ! was it narrow enough to jump? I tensed myself for the leap, gave her my heel at the last moment, and we went soaring over; there was a horrible instant when we seemed to hang on the far lip, but we scrambled to safety by our eyebrows. I heard a scream behind me, and turned to see a big grey failing to make the same jump; she fell back into the ravine, with her rider crushed beneath her.
The ravine, and the bank I had just left, looked like Dante’s Inferno; they were fleeing down it among the rock and thorn, towards the Buffalo River five miles away, and those black devils were on the far lip – “’S-jee! ’S-jee!” and the assegais flashing up and down like pistons. I looked to my right front, where the Tulwana were streaking across the track; there was still a gap between them and the ravine, and I went for it hell-for-leather, the horse slithering on the loose rocks and me clinging like grim death. She was only an artillery screw, but there must have been a hunter ancestor in her somewhere, for she outraced that Zulu pincer with a hundred yards to spare, and I was able to hold her in as we shot into the safety of the scrub, with the screams and gunshots fading into the distance behind us.
That was how I made my strategic retreat, then, from the massacre of Isan’lwana – the greatest debacle of British arms since the Kabul retreat nearly forty years earlier.4 Oh, aye, I’d been in that, too, freezing and bleeding on that nightmare march which never reached the Khyber. But I’d been a thoughtless boy then; at Isan’lwana I was an older, much wiser soldier, and I knew I was a long way from safety yet. I couldn’t tell how many others had won clear (about fifty, in fact, against a thousand who fell under the assegais), but I could guess that the next stop along the line for Ketshwayo’s merry men would be Rorke’s Drift, eight miles away on the Buffalo. They’d gobble up the picquet there, and be over the Natal border by sundown; it behoved Flashy to bear away north, and try to cross the river well beyond the reach of the impis. The trouble was, even I didn’t know how fast Zulus can travel with the blood smell in their nostrils.5
It was about the middle of the afternoon when I came out of the scrub and boulders, into a little kraal perhaps ten miles from Isan’lwana. I reckoned I was clear of pursuit, but my beast was tuckered out, and I could have jumped for joy at the sight of an army wagon among the huts, and a burly red-cheeked sergeant puffing his cutty while he watched the native women tending a cooking-pot close by. It was a stray ammunition cart belonging to a flying column sent out north the previous day; they’d had a brush with some Zulu scouts last evening, and there were two or three wounded on blankets laid across the ammunition boxes. The cart was taking them down to Rorke’s Drift, the sergeant said.
“Not today you ain’t,” says I, and told him briefly what had happened to most of Chelmsford’s force. He goggled and dropped his pipe.
“Cripes!” says he. “Why, the rest of our column was makin’ for Isan’lwana this mornin’! ’Ere, Tiger Jack’s got to ’ear about this! Major! Major, sir – come quick!”
And that was when I got my first sight of Tiger Jack Moran. He came out of one of the huts in answer to the sergeant’s cry, and as soon as I clapped eyes on him, thinks I, this is a killing gentleman. He was perhaps forty, as big as I was, but leaner, and he walked with a smooth, pigeon-toed stride, like a great slim cat. His face was lean, too, and nut-brown, with a huge hooked nose, a bristling black moustache, and two brilliant blue eyes that were never still; they slid over you and away and back again. It was a strong face, but mean; even the rat-trap mouth had an odd lift at one side which, with the ever-shifting eyes, made it look as though he knew some secret joke about you. For the rest, he wore a faded Sapper jacket and a wide-awake hat, with a black sash round his hips; when he turned I saw he had one of the new long-barrelled Remington .44 revolvers reversed through the sash over his right rump – a gunfighter’s gun, with the foresight filed away, if you please. Well, well, thinks I, here’s one to keep an eye on.
“Chelmsford’s wiped out, you say?” The blue eyes looked everywhere but into mine; I wouldn’t have trusted this fellow with the mess funds in a hurry. “The whole command?”
“Half of it, anyway,” says I, guzzling away at a plate of salt and mealies the sergeant had given me. “Chelmsford himself’s off in the blue with Number 3 Column, and if he’s wise he’ll stay there. Ketshwayo’s army must be cayoodling round Rorke’s Drift by now, thousands of the brutes. There’s no hope that way – if it comes to that, I doubt if there’ll be anything white and living between Blood River and the Tugela by sunrise tomorrow.”
“You don’t say,” says he. “And you got away, eh? You’re not Army, though?”
“Not at the moment. I’m retired, but I imagine you’ve heard of me.” I didn’t like his manner above half, with his slippery eyes and half-smile. “My name’s –”
“Silence!” He threw up a hand, and his head jerked round, listening. The sergeant and I held our breath, listening with him. I couldn’t hear a thing, beyond the noises of the kraal; the fire crackling, the soft shuffling of one of the nigger women, a baby crying in one of the huts. Just hot silence, in that baking sun, and then Moran says sharply to me:
“You came on that horse – how long did it take you?”
“Two hours, perhaps – look here –”
“Inspan that wagon!” he barked at the sergeant. “Look alive, now! Get that damned black driver – sharp’s the word! We’ll have ’em on top of us before we know it!” And before I could protest he had swung away and was running between the huts, jumping on to a great boulder, and looking back the way I had come, shading his eyes.
You don’t waste time arguing with a man who knows his business. I felt the hot prickle of fear down my spine as I helped the sergeant get the beasts inspanned – they were horses, thank God; bullocks would have been useless if we were going to have to cut out as fast as Moran seemed to think we must. He jumped down from the rock and came striding back towards us, his head turning left and right to scan the ridges either side of the village, his hand twitching nervously at his right hip.
“Get those three wounded lying down! And get aboard yourselves – driver, start that rig moving!” He glanced at me, that sly grin turning the corner of his mouth. “I’d climb in, mister, if I were you. Unless my shikari’s instinct is playing me false, your black friends are closer than you think, and I don’t –”
Then it happened, and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’d not have believed it – and I knew Hickok in his prime, remember, before his eyesight went, and John Wesley Hardin, too.
The sergeant, in the act of climbing over the tailboard, let out a hell of a shriek; I glimpsed his face, red and staring, and his arm flung out to point, and then his eyes stared horribly, and he slumped down into the dust, with a throwing assegai between his shoulders, his limbs thrashing wildly. I turned, and there, not twenty yards away beyond Moran, standing on the boulder he’d just left and poised in the act of throwing, was a Zulu warrior. I could still tell you every detail of him (that’s what shock does to you) – the great black body behind the red and white shield, the calf-skin girdle, the white cow-tail garters, the ringed head with its nodding blue plume, even the little horn snuff-box swinging from his neck. It was a nightmare figure – and now there were two more, either side of him, leaping between the huts, screaming “’S-jee!” with their assegais raised to hurl at us.
Moran had spun on his heel at the sergeant’s scream, and I swear I never saw his right hand move. But the Remington was in his fist, and the boom-boom-boom of its triple explosion was almost like one echoing shot. The Zulu on the rock jerked upright, snatching at his face, and toppled backwards; the foremost of the two running towards us pitched headlong, with half his head blown away in a sudden bloody spray, and the third man stumbled crazily, dropping his shield and rolling over and over to finish a bare two yards from us, sprawled on his back. There was a hole where his right eye had been. And Moran’s pistol was back in his sash.
“Twins, by the look of ’em,” says he. “Did you know the Zulus think they make the best scouts?6 Well, don’t stand gawping, old fellow – there’ll be plenty of live ones on the scene presently. Mind the step!” And he was over the back of the moving wagon, with me tumbling breathlessly after him, shocked out of my wits by the speed and terror of it all. I’d say from the moment the sergeant fell to our jumping into the wagon had been a good five seconds – and in that time three men had died, thank God, and the man beside me was chuckling and pushing fresh shells into his revolver.
He was right about the live ones arriving, too – as our wagon wheeled out of the village on to a great empty stretch of plain beyond it, we could see black figures gliding in among the huts on the far side, and by the time we were a furlong out on the plain itself, with the driver lashing like fury and the wagon rolling dangerously from side to side, they were breaking cover in pursuit. There must have been more than twenty of them, and I don’t recall a more fearful sight than that silent half-moon of racing black figures, each with his mottled red and white shield and fistful of glittering spears, their white hide kilts and garters flying as they ran.
“Udloko, unless I’m mistook,” says Moran. “Good regiment, that. Let’s add to their battle honours, what?”
He had got a Martini from one of the wounded men who were lying pale and silent behind us in the jolting wagon, and now he snuggled the butt into his shoulder, keeping the barrel clear of the rattling tailboard, and let off four shots as fast as he could eject and reload. He hit three more Zulus – this at a range of two hundred yards, from a wagon that was bucking like a ship at sea, and at moving targets. I tell you, I was stricken between terror and sheer admiration.7
“Damnation!” says he, after his missed shot. “Bet he felt the wind of it, though.” He saw me staring, and grinned. “Don’t be alarmed, old boy; just pass up the cartridge packets and I’ll have our gallant foes discouraged in half a jiffy, just see if I don’t!”
But when I applied to the wounded for more cartridges, damned if there was a round among them.
“Well, we’re sitting on half a ton of the things,” says Moran, cool as you please, and tapped the ammunition boxes. “Let’s forage, shall we?” So we broke open a case – and it was carbine ammunition, quite unsuitable for Martinis. I swallowed my innards for about the twentieth time that day; all the boxes carried the same stamp. And there, still loping across the sun-scorched plain behind us, not apparently having lost any distance, were the twenty Zulus, looking as fit as fleas and a dam’ sight more unpleasant.
“Now, that’s vexing,” says Moran, laying down his rifle and unlimbering his Remington again. He spun the chamber. “Six shots – hm’m. Well, let’s hope none of the horses breaks a leg, what?”
“For God’s sake, man!” My voice came out in a dreadful squeak. “They can’t keep up this pace forever!”
“Who – the horses, or Ketshwayo’s sporting and athletic club?” He gripped the tailboard and weighed the distance between us and our pursuers. “I think, on the whole, I’d put my money on the blacks. More staying power, don’t you know? By George, can’t they run, though!”
“But, my God, we’re done for! They’re gaining on us, I tell you –”
“Quite,” says he. “Better think of something, eh? Unless we want our hides stretched over some damned Udloko war-drum, that is. Let’s see, now.” He stood up in the swaying wagon, clutching a support, and peered ahead under the canvas cover, resting a hand on the shoulder of the terrified nigger driver who was rolling his eyes and letting his team rip for all it was worth. “If I remember right, this blasted plain ends in a deep gully about a mile ahead – there’s a crazy kind of bridge over it … we came across it on the way up. It took the wagon, all right – but very slowly. ’Fraid by the time we get across our friends will be calling on us – an’ six shots won’t go far among that crowd, even if I make every one tell – which I would, of course. Wait, though!” And he dropped down on one knee, pushing one of the wounded men aside and ferreting among the ammunition boxes.
I was hardly listening to him; my eyes were fixed on that line of steadily-running black figures, coming on inexorably in our wake. They were losing distance, though, it seemed to me – yes, there must be nearly a quarter of a mile between us now – but our beasts were tiring, too; they couldn’t keep up this speed much longer, dragging a heavy wagon behind them. When we reached the bridge, would there be time for the wagon to make its careful way across, before they caught up? … I scrabbled at Moran’s arm, yammering hopefully, and he grinned as he straightened up from his search among the boxes, holding up a large packet of waxed brown paper in one hand.
“There we are, sonny boy,” says he, chuckling. “Thought I remembered it. Blasting powder – and a darling little primer! Now, watch your Uncle Jack!”
I don’t want to live through another five minutes like those last agonising moments while we sped across the plain, slower and slower with every yard, straining our eyes back at those distant black figures behind. Even when we reached the gully, a great rocky cleft that stretched as far as one could see on either side, like a volcanic crack, with a rickety plank bridge spanning its thirty feet, there was the time-consuming labour of getting the wounded out and across. The nigger driver and I managed it between us, and sinful hard it was, for two of ’em had to be carried the whole way. Moran, meanwhile, coaxed the team on to the swaying bridge, until the wagon was fairly in the middle of it; then we outspanned the horses and led them across, glancing back fearfully. There they came, those black fiends of the pit, a bare hundred yards away, sprinting full lick now that they saw we were halted and apparently stuck. They set up a great yell of “Suthu!” as they tore in towards the bridge, and Moran, who had been working in the wagon, jumped down and ran across to the little cluster of boulders where we had laid the wounded.
He dropped down beside me, looking back at the wagon; it was perhaps thirty yards off, with the waxed brown packet of gunpowder sitting on top of the ammunition boxes, and the tiny white primer fixed to the side of the packet. With a rifle, I might have hit it myself; all he had was a hand-gun.
“Well, here’s luck,” says he. “One shot’ll have to do it.”
He was right, I realised, and my mouth was parched with fear. If he missed the primer, his shot would hit the powder packet, but that wouldn’t explode it. It would just knock it over, and the primer would go God knew where. And the first Zulu was racing on to the bridge, shield aloft in triumph, with his hideous legion shrieking at his heels.
“Gather round, dear boys,” murmurs Moran, cocking his pistol. “Get yourselves nice and comfy round the bonfire … Christ!”
His head jerked up, the colour draining from his face. It may have been a puff of wind, or perhaps the Zulus swarming past the wagon on that shaky bridge had disturbed it – but the front flap of the canvas cover suddenly swung across, momentarily hiding the tiny white target. It flapped again – for a split second the primer was visible – the first half-dozen Zulus were past the wagon and within three strides of the solid ground, assegais gleaming and knobkerries brandished – howling black faces – another flap of the canvas – the crash of Moran’s revolver – and with a roar of thunder the wagon, the bridge, and everything on it dissolved in a great blast of orange flame. I was hurled flat, my ears deafened and singing; a piece of timber clattered against the rock beside me. I came dizzily to my feet, to stare at the empty ravine, with a great black cloud billowing in the air above it, a few shreds of rope and timber dangling from the far lip, and on this side, lying in the dust, a single assegai.
Moran reversed his revolver in his hand and pushed it into the back of his sash. Then he tilted his hat back and flicked his forefinger at its brim.
“Bayete, Udloko,” says he softly. “I do like a snap shot, though. Give the gentleman a coconut.”
That was in ’79, my first acquaintance with Tiger Jack, and it was to last only a few more feverish hours which I’ll describe at length some other day, for they don’t matter to the Tiger’s tale, which is strange enough without Rorke’s Drift to interrupt it. That was a nightmare in its own right, if you like – worse than Little Hand or Greasy Grass, for at least at those I’d been able to run. Why, at the Drift there wasn’t even room to hide, and it’ll make a ghastly chapter of its own in my African odyssey, if I can set it down before drink and senility carry me off.
Enough for the moment to say that Moran and I were driven absolutely into that beastly carnage. You see, with our wagon blown to pieces he and I lit out on two of the draught screws, leaving the wounded in a dry cave, Moran intent on fetching help for them, Flashy merely fleeing in his wake – and as dark fell we blundered slap into an impi, for the hills were full of the brutes by now. Then it was head down and heels in, nip and tuck for our lives through the Zulu-infested night with the fiends howling at our heels, and suddenly Moran was yelling and making for a burning building dead ahead, with all hell breaking loose around it, Zulus by the hundred and shots blazing, and there was nothing for it but to follow as he went careering through scrub and bushes, putting his beast to a stone wall, and then a barricade where black bodies and red coats were hacking and slashing in the fire-glare, bayonet against assegai, and my screw took the wall but baulked at the barricade, which I cleared in a frantic dive, launching myself from a pile of Zulu corpses, landing head first on the smoking veranda of what had been the post hospital, going clean through the charred floor, and being hauled half-conscious from the smouldering wreckage by a huge cove with a red beard who left off pistolling to ask me where the dooce I’d come from. I inquired, at the top of my voice, where the hell I was, and between shots he told me.
That, briefly, is how I came to join the garrison at Rorke’s Drift – and all the world knows what happened there. A hundred Warwickshire Welshmen and a handful of invalids stopped four thousand Udloko and Tulwana Zulus in bloody shambles at the mealie-bag ramparts, hammer and tongs and no quarter through that ghastly night with the burning hospital turning the wreckage of the little outpost into a fair semblance of Hell, and Flashy seeking in vain for a quiet corner – which I thought I’d found, once, on the thatch of the commissariat store, and damned if they didn’t set fire to that, too. Eleven Victoria Crosses they won, Chard with his beard scorched, Bromhead stone-deaf, and those ragged Taffies half-dead on their feet, but not too done to fight – oh, and talk. As an unworthy holder of that Cross myself, I’ll say they earned them, and as much glory as you like, for there never was a stand like it in all the history of war. For they didn’t only stand against impossible odds, you see – they stood and won, the garrulous little buggers, and not just ’cos they had Martinis against spears and clubs and a few muskets; they beat ’em hand to hand too, steel against steel at the barricades, and John Zulu gave them best. Well, you know what I think of heroism, and I can’t abide leeks, but I wear a daffodil as my buttonhole on Davy’s Day, for Rorke’s Drift.8
But that’s not to my purpose with Tiger Jack. He was in the thick of it, though I didn’t even glimpse him from the time we jumped the barricades, until next morning, when the impis had drawn off, leaving us to lick our wounds among the smoking ruins. It was only then that we learned each other’s name, when Chelmsford, who’d been traipsing out yonder with his column, rode in. When everyone had done cheering, he spotted me, and made me known to Chard and Bromhead, and that was when Moran, who was sitting by on a biscuit box cleaning his Remington, came suddenly to his feet, and for once the sliding blue eyes stared straight at me in astonishment. Presently he came over.
“Flashman? Not Sir Harry … Kabul, and the Light Brigade?”
I’m used to it; not the least irony of my undetected poltroonery is the awe my fearsome reputation inspires. They always stare, as Moran did, if not so intently. For a moment he even paled, and then the thin mouth was half-smiling again, and his eyes shifted away.
“Well, think o’ that,” says he, and chewed his lip. “I’d never have recognised you. By Jove –” and he gave a queer little laugh “– if I’d only known.”
Then he turned on his heel and walked away, with that quick, feline stride and the Remington on his hip, out of my life for the next fifteen years. When he walked back in, it was in a place as different from Rorke’s Drift as anything on this earth could be. Instead of a smoking, blood-stained ruin, there was the plush and gilt of the circle bar at the St James’s Theatre, instead of the Sapper jacket and .44 revolver there was an opera cloak and silver-mounted cane, and instead of dead Zulus for company there was Oscar Wilde. (I make no comparisons.)
It was pure chance I was at that theatre at all – or even in London, for it was still winter, when Elspeth and I prefer to snug up cosily at our Leicestershire place, where the drink and vittles are of the best, and we can snarl at each other comfortably. But she had insisted we go up to Town for the Macmillan christening9 – being Scotch herself, and fancying that she occupied a place in Society, she was forever burdening other unfortunate Caledonians with her presence – and I didn’t mind too much; I’d heard rumours from friends in the know that there was to be a monstrous increase in death duties at the next Budget, and being in my seventy-second year by then, with a fat sum in the bank, it seemed sensible to squander as much among the fleshpots as we indecently could.
So to Town we went, and in between brandy-soaked evenings with old comrades and hopeful prowlings after a new generation of loose women, I allowed myself to be talked into escorting my grand-daughter to the theatre to see Mrs Campbell drivelling abominably in Mrs Tanqueray. I’d much have preferred going to watch Nala Damajanti and her Amazing Snakes at the Palace, or the corsetted fat bottoms and tits in George Edwardes’ show, but being a besotted grandparent I’d have let my little Selina coax me into watching three hours of steady rain and been happy. She was a little darling, and the apple of my bleary old eye – how my son, as unpromising a prig as ever saddened a father’s heart by becoming a parson, could have sired such an angel, I’ve never been able to fathom. I call her little, but in fact she was one of your tall, stately beauties, with raven black hair (like mine, once), eyes flashing dark as a gypsy’s, and a face that could change from classical perfection to sparkling mischief in an instant. She was just nineteen then, a lovely, lively innocent, and I watched her like a jealous hawk where the Society boys were concerned – I know what I was like when I was their age, and I wasn’t having the dirty young rips lechering round my little Selly. Besides, she was officially affianced to young Randall Stanger, a titled muttonhead in the Guards, and their forthcoming nuptials would be quite an event of the Season.
She was chattering happily as we came out after the third act, and caught the eye of the bold Oscar, who was holding forth languidly to a group of his fritillaries near the bar entrance, looking as usual like an overfed trout in a toupé. He and I had known each other more or less since the days when I was being pursued by Lily Langtry; as I went past now, trying not to notice him, with Selly on my arm, he nudged one of his myrmidons and said sotto voce:
“Strange, how desire doth so outrun performance,” and then, pretending just to notice me: “Why, General Flashman! In London out of season? That can only mean that all the hares and foxes have left the country, or the French are invading it.” His group of harumphrodites all tittered at this, and the fat posturer waved his gold-tipped cigarette, well pleased with his insolence. I looked at him.
“Quoting Shakespeare, Oscar?” says I. “Pity you don’t crib him more often. Get better notices, what? My dear,” says I to Selly, “this is Mr Wilde, who writes comic material for the halls. My grand-daughter, Miss Selina Flashman.”
“You grandchild? Incredible!” drawls he. “But delightful – beautiful! Why, if dear Bosie were here, instead of indulging himself so selfishly in Italy, he would write verses to you, ma’mselle – verses like purple blooms in a caliph’s garden. I would write them myself, but my new play, you know …” He pressed her hand, with his fruity smile. “And I see, dear Miss Flashman, that you are discriminating as well as beautiful – you have had the excellent taste to choose as your grandfather one of the few civilised generals in the British Army.” He waited for her look of surprise. “He never won a battle, you know. May I present Mr Beasley10 … Mr Bruce … Mr Gaston … Colonel Moran …”
He turned her with a flutter of his plump hand to his toadies, and gave me his drooping insolent stare. “Do you know, my dear Sir Harry, I believe I have a splendid idea. I might –” he poked his gilded cigarette at me “– I might confer on you an immortality quite beyond your desserts. I might put you in a play – assuming the Lord Chamberlain had no objection. Think what a stir that would create at the Horse Guards.” He gave a mincing little titter.
“You do, Father Oscar,”11 says I, “and I’ll certainly confer immortality on you.”
“How so?” cries he, affecting astonishment.
“I’ll kick you straight in the tinklers – assuming you’ve got any,” says I. “Think what a stir that’ll create in the Café Royal.” I turned to Selly, who was out of earshot, listening to what one of Oscar’s creatures was saying. “Come, my dear. Our carriage will be –” And that was the moment when I found myself looking at Moran.
He was on the fringe of Oscar’s group – and so out of place among that posy of simpering pimps that I wonder I hadn’t noticed him earlier. But now recognition was instant, and mutual. His hair had gone, save a grey fringe about the ears, the splendid moustache was snow-white, and the lined brown face had turned boozer’s red, but there was no mistaking that hawk nose and the bright, shifting eyes. Dress him how and where you liked, he was still Tiger Jack.
He was looking at me with that odd quirky little smile at the corner of his thin mouth, and then the blue eyes turned from me to Selina, who was laughing happily at what someone was saying, fluttering her fan before her white shoulders, teasing the speaker innocently. Moran looked at her for a moment, and when his eyes came back to mine he was grinning – and it wasn’t a nice grin.
Now all this happened in an instant, while I was recognising him, and realising that he had recognised me. There was a second’s pause, and then as I was about to move forward and greet him he stepped quickly back, murmuring an excuse to Selly and the others, and slipped into the bar. I didn’t know what to make of it, but it seemed damned odd behaviour; however, it didn’t matter, and Selly was taking my arm and murmuring farewells, so I exchanged another disgusted glare with Wilde and led her away. She had noticed, though – sharp little creature that she was.
“Why did that gentleman – Colonel Moran – hurry off so suddenly?” says she, when we were in the carriage. “I’m sure he knew you.”
“He did,” says I. “At least, we met once – in a war.”
“But then, so many of these people seem to behave … most curiously,” says Selly. “Mr Oscar Wilde, for instance – is he not a very strange person, gramps?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” says I. “And don’t call me ‘gramps’, young woman; I’m grandpapa.”
Now, why the blazes should Moran have avoided me? Lots of fellows do, of course, but he had no earthly reason that I could think of. We’d met only once, as you know, and been comrades-in-arms after a fashion – indeed, he’d saved my life. It seemed odd, and I puzzled over it for a while, but then gave it up, and was snoozing in my corner of the carriage and had to be roused by a giggling Selina when we reached home in Berkeley Square.
Moran wasn’t alone in giving me the cold shoulder at that time, though. Only a couple of days after the theatre I was cut stone dead by someone a deal more important – the Prince of Wales, no less, shied violently away from me in the United Service card-room, and hightailed it as fast as his ponderous guts would let him, giving me a shifty squint over his shoulder as he went. That, I confess, I found pretty raw. It’s embarrassing enough to be cut by the most vulgar man in Europe, but when he is also a Prince who is deeply in your debt you begin to wonder what royalty’s coming to. For if ever anyone had cause to be grateful to me, it was Beastly Bertie; not only had I done my bit to guide his youthful footsteps along the path of vice and loose living (not that he’d needed much coaching), I’d even resigned Lily Langtry in his favour, turned a deaf ear to rumours that he and my darling Elspeth had behaved indecorously in a potting-shed, and only three years earlier had plucked him, only slightly soiled, out of the Tranby card scandal. If that wasn’t enough, he was still using a cosy little property of mine on Hay Hill to conduct his furtive fornications with the worst sort of women, duchesses and actresses and the like. Well, thinks I, as I watched him rolling off, if that’s your gratitude you can take your trollops elsewhere; I’d a good mind to charge him rent, or corkage. I didn’t, of course; a bounder he might be, but it don’t pay to offend the heir to the Throne.
Such rubs apart, I passed the next few weeks agreeably enough. There was plenty of interest about town, what with a Society murder – a young sprig of the nobility called Adair getting himself shot mysteriously in the West End – and a crisis in the government, when that dodderer Gladstone finally resigned. I ran into him in the lavatory of the Reform Club – not a place I belong to, you understand, but I’d been to a champagne and lobster supper in St James’s, and just looked in to unload. Gladstone was standing brooding over a basin in a nonconformist way, offensively sober as usual, when I staggered along, middling tight.
“Hollo, old ’un,” says I. “Marching orders at last, hey? Ne’er mind, it happens to all of us. It’s this damned Irish business, I suppose –” for as you know, he was always fussing over Ireland; no one knew what to do about it, and while the Paddies seemed to be in favour of leaving the place and going to America, Gladstone was trying to make ’em keep it; something like that.
“Where you went wrong,” I told him, “was in not giving the place back to the Pope long ago, and apologising for the condition it’s in. Fact.”
He stood glaring at me with a face like a door-knocker.
“Good-night, General Flashman,” he snapped, and I just sank my head on the basin and cried: “Oh, God, what a loss Palmerston was!” while he stumped off, and took to his bed in Brighton.12
However, that’s by the way: I must return to the matter of Colonel Tiger Jack Moran, who had gone clean out of my mind after that fleeting glimpse of him at the theatre, until a dirty night at the end of March, when I was sitting up late reading, Elspeth having taken herself off to bed with the new serial story. The house was still, the fire almost out, and I was drowsing over the paper, which was full of interesting items about the Matabele war, and the Sanitation Conference in Paris, and news of an action by the Frogs against my old chums the Touaregs at Timbuctoo, in which large numbers of sheep had been captured,13 when Shadwell, the butler, came in all agog to say that my grand-daughter was here, and must see me.
“At this hour?” says I, and then she came fluttering into the room in a rush of pink ball-gown, her lovely little face staring with woe, and fairly flung herself on my chest, crying:
“Oh, grandpapa, grandpapa, what shall I do? Oh, gramps, please help me – please!”
“In God’s name, Selina!” says I, staggered. I waved the goggling Shadwell out of the room, and sat her down, all trembling, in a chair. “My dear child, whatever’s the matter?”
For a moment she couldn’t tell me, but could only sit shuddering and sobbing and biting her lip, so I pushed a tot of brandy into her, and when she had coughed and swallowed she lifted her tear-streaked face and caught my hand.
“Oh, gramps, I don’t know what to do! It is the most dreadful thing – I think I shall die!” She took a great sobbing breath. “It is Randall – and … and Colonel Moran! Oh, what are we to do?”
“Moran?” I was dumfounded. “That fellow we saw at the theatre? Why, what the dooce has he to do with you, child?”
It took some more sips of brandy, punctuated by wails and tears, to get the story out of her, and it was a beauty, if you like. Apparently Moran was well known in gaming circles in Town, and made a practice of inveigling young idiots to play with him – that solved the mystery of why he’d been in Oscar Wilde’s company; there was never any lack of rich and witless young gulls round Oscar. And among the spring lambs he’d fleeced was Selina’s intended, Randall Stanger; by what she said, Moran had got into him for a cool few thou’.
“In God’s name, girl, if it’s only money –” I was crying out in relief, but it was worse than that; fatally worse. The half-wit Randall, afraid to tell his lordly Papa, had set out to recoup his losses, using regimental money, heaven help us, and had lost that, too. Which was black ruin, and disgrace, when the thing was detected, as it would be.
However, I’m an old hand at scandals, as you may guess. How much? I asked her briskly, and she bleated out, picking her fan to pieces: twelve thousand. I swallowed hard and said, well, Randall shall have it from my bank tomorrow – he can pay off Moran, and put whatever is necessary back into his mess funds double quick, and no one’ll be the wiser. (What the blazes, I’m not a charitable man, but the young fool was going to be my grandson-in-law.)
Would you believe it, she just wailed the louder, shaking her head and sobbing that it wouldn’t save him – nothing would.
“Colonel Moran knows – he knows where Randall has got the money from, and promises to expose him … unless …” She buried her face in the cushions, bawling fit to break her stays.
“Unless what, confound it? What does he want, except his money?”
“Unless … unless …” says she, gazing at me with those great tear-filled eyes. “Unless … I … oh, gramps, I must die first! He will expose Randall unless I … submit … oh, God! I’m his price! Don’t you see? Oh, what am I to do?”
Well, this was Act Two of “The Villain Still Pursued Her” with a vengeance, wasn’t it just? Not that I disbelieved it for an instant – show me melodrama, and I’ll show you truth, every time. And I didn’t waste effort clutching my brow, exclaiming “The villain – he shall rue this day!” I could even see Moran’s point of view – I’d played Wicked Jasper myself, in my time, twirling my whiskers at Beauty and chivvying ’em into bed as the price of my silence or good will. But this was my own grand-daughter, and my gorge rose at the thought of her at the mercy of that wicked old roué. She must be saved, at any cost.
“When do you have to answer him?” I asked.
“Next week,” she sobbed. “He will wait only a few days – and then … then I must be … ruined!”
“Does Randall know?” I asked, and she shook her head, snivelling into her handkerchief. “Well, don’t let him know, understand? No one must know – above all, not your grandmother. Let me see – first thing is an order on my bank for the twelve thousand, so that this idiot you’re going to marry can square his accounts –”
“But Colonel Moran –” she wailed, beating her little fist.
“I’ll see to him, never fear. Now, Selly, all is going to be well, d’you see? Absolutely well – and you don’t have to worry your pretty head over it, you understand me?” I took her hand and put my arm round her shoulders and rubbed my old whiskers against her brow, as I’d done since she was a baby, and she wept on my shoulder. “Now – you dry your eyes, and let’s see your best smile – no, your best one, I said – there, that’s my princess.” I wiped a tear from her cheek, and she flung her arms round my ancient neck.
“Oh, gramps – you are the dearest grandpapa! I know you will make it right!” She sniffed in my ear. “Perhaps … after all, if you offered him more money … he is such a greedy, odious person. But you will find a way, won’t you?”
That, of course, remained to be seen, and when I’d packed her off to bed, and sent word round to her fond parents’ house that she’d be staying the night with us, I sought enlightenment in brandy. I find it helps. Moran, thinks I to myself; evil, lecherous skunk. I thought of that shifty eye and wicked mouth – aye, he fitted the part he’d written for himself. Trying to ruin virginity, was he – and my little Selly’s at that, damn him. Well, now, if I was in his shoes (as I had been, of course) what would make me forego my dirty designs? Threats of violence? – well, they’d have worked on me, but they wouldn’t on Moran, that was certain. He was all cold steel and courage, that one; I’d seen him. Money, then? Aye, I could have been bought off – I had been, in the past. So – Flashy’s bank account was in for another rough shaking. Well, if needs must, so be it – I couldn’t see any other way.
Not that I was resigned to tamely paying up, you understand; if I could find a way of foiling the swine I’d do it, but I plied my wits through a bottle and a half by next afternoon, without striking pay dirt. However, until I saw Moran himself, there was nothing to be done, so I sought out his direction by discreet inquiry, and early evening found me round at his rooms, off Bond Street, sending in my card. I was ushered up, and there was the man himself, very much at his ease, in a most luxuriously fitted den, all leather and good panels and big game trophies on the walls. Chinese carpet, too, rot him; his price wasn’t going to be a cheap one.
“Well, well,” says he, setting his back to the mantel, very lean and cool. “I half-expected you’d be round, if not quite so soon.”
“All right, Moran,” says I, giving him my damn-you stare, and keeping my tile on. “What’s the game?”
“Game, my dear chap? The only game I’m interested in is big game, what? Reminds me – have you seen that rubbish in The Times sporting columns – review of some book on shikar’?” He sauntered forward to his desk, and picked up a paper. “Here we are – ‘No beast, perhaps, is more dangerous than the buffalo.’ What tosh, don’t you agree? Why, what buffalo that ever walked could compare with a wounded leopard, eh? Or a tiger, if it comes to that. But maybe you’ve another opinion?” He gave a short laugh, and the blue eyes slipped quickly over me. “What d’ye think of my collection, by the way? Only the best of it here, of course – rather fine, though. That ibex head, for example, and the snow leopard beside the window –”
“My only interest in your collection,” I growled, “is that it isn’t going to contain my grand-daughter.”
“No?” says he, lightly. “Thought she’d look rather well, mounted – wouldn’t you think? Don’t do anything foolish,” he added sharply, as I started to plough forward, snarling at his filthy insolence. “You’re past the age when you can lift your stick to anyone – not that you could ever have lifted it to me.”
My rage was almost choking me as I glared at him, standing so easy behind his desk, mocking me.
“Listen, you foul kite,” says I. “You’ll drop this vile … affront you’ve put on my girl, or by God it’ll be the worse for you! I’ll make this town too hot for you, so help me, I will! You think I’m helpless, do you? You’ll find out other –”
“Drop it, you old fool,” snaps he. “D’you think you can bluster at me? Think back to Isan’lwana and ask yourself if I’m the man to be brow-beaten. Yes – that makes you think twice!”
He was right there; I stood seething helplessly.
“Damn you! All right, then,” for I knew it had to come to this, “what’s your price?”
He laughed aloud. “Money? Are you seriously trying to buy me off? You’ve a poorer opinion of Miss Selina’s charms than I’d have thought possible in a rake of your experience.”
“Blast your lousy tongue – how much?”
He took a cigar from his pocket, lit it coolly while I boiled with anger, and blew out the match.
“You haven’t got that much money,” he drawled. “Not –” he blew smoke across the desk at me “– if you were Moss Abrahams in person. Oh, don’t think it wouldn’t give me great pleasure to beggar you – it would. But I’ll enjoy your plump little grand-daughter even more – oh, so much more! She’d be very much my meat in any circumstances – but the fact that she’s yours –” he poked his cigar at me, grinning “– oh, that makes her a prize indeed!”
This was beyond all understanding. I gaped at the man, dum-founded.
“What the devil d’you mean? That she’s my grandchild – what has that to do with it, in God’s name? What have I ever done to you? I don’t even know you, hardly – and you saved my skin in Zululand, didn’t you?”
“Aye,” says he. “If I’d only known, though – who you were! Remember, I told you at Rorke’s Drift? But I didn’t know – by God, if I had, you’d never have come over the Buffalo alive!” And for once the eyes were steady, glaring hate at me. I couldn’t fathom it.
“What the blazes are you talking about? Good God above, man, what the devil have you got against me? I’ve never injured you – or if you think I have, I swear I don’t know about it! What is it, damn you?” He said not a word. “And whatever it is, what’s my Selina to do with anything? Why should you want to harm her, you bastard? An innocent – dear God, have you no decency? And I? What have I done –?”
“You don’t know, do you?” says he, softly. “You truly don’t. But then – how should you? How would you remember – out of all the vile things you’ve done – why should you remember … me?”
This was beyond comprehension; I wondered was the fellow a lunatic. But mad or not, there was that in his baleful stare that terrified me – for Selly as much as for myself.
“Shall I remind you?” says he, and his voice grated like gravel. “You think we met for the first time in Zululand, do you?” He shook his head. “Oh, no, Flashman. Cast your mind back … forty-five years. A long time, eh? D’you remember an African slave-ship, called the Balliol College, trading into the Dahomey coast? A ship commanded by a human devil called John Charity Spring, M.A.? A ship on which you, Flashman, served as supercargo? D’you remember?”
Did I not? I’d never forget it.
“But … but what has that to do with – you? Why, you can only have been a child in those days –”
“Aye – a child!” he roared, suddenly, crashing his fist on the desk. “A child of fourteen – that’s what I was!” His face was crimson, working with fury, but he mastered himself and went on, in a rasping whisper:
“You remember an expedition upriver – to the village of King Gezo, who sold niggers to Spring? You remember that death-house, built of skulls, and the human sacrifices, and those savage Amazon women who were Gezo’s bodyguard? D’you remember? Oh, yes, I see that you do. And d’you remember the bargain that monster Spring struck with that monster Gezo – half a dozen Amazon women to be sold into slavery in exchange for a case of Adams revolvers which you – “his finger stabbed out at me” – demonstrated for that black fiend?”
As clear as day I could see it – the hideous Gezo leaping up and down on his stool, slobbering in excitement, with those great black fighting-women ranged by his throne; I could feel the Adams kicking in my fist as I blew holes in the skull wall for his edification.
“Six women in exchange for a case of revolvers and – what else?” Moran’s face was terrible to see. “What turned the scale in that infamous bargain – d’you recall? Again, I see you do.” His voice was barely audible. “Gezo demanded that Spring’s cabin-boy be left with him – as a slave. And Spring, and you, and the rest of that hell-ship’s crew – you agreed, and left the child behind.” He straightened up from the desk. “I was that boy.”
It was beyond belief. It couldn’t be true, not for a minute … but even as the denial sprang to my lips, my wits were telling me that no one – no one on earth, could have known the details of that shameful transaction of Spring’s, unless he’d been there. And yet …
“But that’s moonshine!” I cried. “Why, I remember that boy – a snivelling little Cockney guttersnipe with a cross-eye … nothing like you! And, damnation, you were educated at Eton – I looked you up in Who’s Who!”
“Quite true,” says he. “And like many a public school boy before me – and many since – I ran away … don’t tell me you never drove some panic-stricken little fag to do the same at Rugby. Oh, yes, I ran – and thought it would be a fine thing to go for a ship’s boy, and seek my fortune. I was a good enough actor, even then, to fake a Whitechapel whine – the genteel Captain Spring would never have shipped a little gentleman as cabin-boy, now would he?” The sneer writhed at the corner of his mouth. “But he was ready enough to drug him with native beer and sell him as a slave to that unspeakable savage, in exchange for a gaggle of half-naked black sluts! Oh, aye, you were all willing enough for that!”
“It’s a lie!” cries I. “It was all Spring’s idea – I knew nothing of it! Why, I even pleaded with him, I remember – but it was too late, don’t you see –?”
“Pleaded?” he scoffed. “When did you ever plead for anything except your own miserable self? What did you care, if a white child was left to the mercy of that … that gross black brute?” His eyes were darting about the room as he spoke, and his hand was shaking on the desk-top. “Two years I endured there – two years in that rotting jungle hell, praying for death, kicked and scourged and tortured by those animals … aye, you can stare in horror, you that left me to it! Two years – before I had the courage to run again, and by God’s grace was picked up by Portugee slavers, who carried me to the coast. Portugee scum, mark you – they saved me from the fate I’d been doomed to by fellow Englishmen.”
“But I’d no hand in that! I tell you, it was no fault of mine! By God, it must have been frightful, Moran – I don’t wonder you’re … well, upset … perfectly appalling, on my word … but it was all Charity Spring’s doing, don’t you see? I’m clean innocent – you can’t bear me a grudge for what that scoundrel did! Why, he’d kidnapped me, in the first place –”
“Spring’s long gone to his account,” says he, and laughed harshly. “So have several others. Oh, yes, I marked you all down for settlement.” For a fleeting second he met my eye. “You remember Sullivan, the Yankee bucko mate? I got him in Galveston in ’69.14 And the surgeon – what was his name? An Irishman. He went in Bombay. I took ’em as I found ’em, you see – and while I was making my own career, in the Indian Army, I often thought about you. But I never had the chance – till now.”
There was a moment’s silence, while I stood like a snared rabbit, too stunned and scared to speak, and he went on.
“But you’re too old to be worth killing, Flashman. Oh, it would be easy enough – you’ve seen me, and you possibly know I’m rated the best big-game shot in India, if not the world. If General Flashman were found with his head blown off on his Leicestershire estate – who’d ever suspect the eminent and respectable Colonel John Sebastian Moran?” He sneered and shook his head. “Poor sport. But little Miss Selina – there’s a worthwhile quarry, if you like. I saw how to strike at you, the night I saw her at the theatre. And you, you foul old tyke, can do nothing about it. For if she shrinks from me at the last – well, young Stanger’s name will be blasted, and her hopes with it – and yours. A splendid scandal there’ll be.” He leaned against the mantel again, his thumbs in his weskit, and gloated at me. “Either way, you’ll pay – for what you did to me. Personally, I think the young lady will save her lover’s honour at the expense of her own – I hope so, anyway. But I don’t much mind.”
This was appalling – for the fellow was mad, I was sure, eaten up with his hatred and lust for vengeance. And he had marked down Selly, to strike at me … and he was right, she’d sacrifice herself to shame to save Stanger – and if she didn’t, his life and hers would both be ruined. I could have wept, at the thought of her frail, tender innocence at the mercy of this crazy, murderous ogre – I absolutely did weep, begging him to accept any price, offering to ransom her as high as twenty thousand, or thirty (I called a halt there, I remember), promising to use my influence to obtain him patronage, or a title, literally pleading at the swine’s feet and drawing his attention to my white hairs and old age – and he simply laughed at me.
So I raged at him, threatening, vowing I’d be his ruin somehow – I’d kill him, I said, even if I swung for it, and he just jeered in my face.
“Oh, how I wish you’d try! How I would admire to see that! Go home and get your pistol and your black mask, and collect a gang of bullies – why don’t you? Or cross the Channel with me, and we’ll shoot it out on the sands! I can just see that! You pathetic old corpse!”
In the end he kicked me out, and I slunk off home in a rage of such fear and frustration and misery as I’ve seldom felt before. I was helpless – he couldn’t be bought, he couldn’t be moved, he couldn’t be bullied or bluffed. He was even invulnerable against the last resort of violence – oh, he might be near sixty, but his hand was still rock-steady and his eye clear, and even if there had been such a thing as a hired gun in the Home Counties, what chance would he have stood against the lightning skill I’d seen proved on Ketshwayo’s Zulus? No – Moran held all the aces. And Selina, my precious little darling, was doomed. I went home and drank myself blind.
You may think, for a man who puts a fairly low price on maiden virtue, that I was getting into a rare sweat at the thought of her being deflowered by Moran. But your own flesh and blood is something different; she wasn’t like the women of my youth – most of whom had been a pretty loose set, anyway. She was sweet and gentle and from a different stable altogether – the thought of Moran subjecting her brought me out in a sweat of horror. Damn Stanger, for his idiocy, and damn Gezo, for not cutting Moran’s whelp throat when he had the chance. Careless old swine. But there was no use cursing; I had to think, and if necessary (shocking thought) to act. And after an unconscionable amount of drink and heart-searching, I realised that I was going to have to kill Moran.
Maybe it was senile decay that brought me to this awful conclusion; I don’t know. I’ve been desperately driven in my time, and done some wild things, coward and all that I am; I can only say that it seemed worth the risk for Selina’s sake. Risk? Certainty, where Moran was concerned – and yet, need it be so certain? Granted he was the deadliest hand with a gun I’d ever seen – he was bound to turn his back sometime. And London wasn’t Zululand, or Abilene of the old days; no one expects to be shot in the back on Half Moon Street. A man in disguise, on a dark April night, if he shadowed his victim carefully, and bided his time, might get off the necessary shots and then slide into cover – our bobbies ain’t used to that sort of thing, thank God. It was desperate, but it was possible – I’d had more experience of skulking and shooting from cover than I cared to think of, and – but, dear God, I was an old man, and getting feeble, and half-fuddled with drink, and scared blue into the bargain. I sat there, maudlin, drivelling to myself and looking at Selly’s picture.
Then I put the bottle away, and went upstairs and rooted through my old clothes, and found myself opening a certain drawer. There they were: the old German revolver with which I’d shot my way out of Fort Raim dungeon; the Navy Colt that I’d blazed away with, eyes shut, at Gettysburg; the Khyber knife I’d got from Ilderim Khan in the Mutiny; the scarred old double-action Bulldog, and the neat little Galand pocket pistol – it had four rounds in it, too, confound it.15 Well, if I ever summoned up the nerve to draw a bead on Moran, I’d sure as hell not have the chance to use more than four rounds. He’d be blasting back after just one – happy thought, though: maybe he didn’t travel heeled. Not many London clubmen do – by Jove, if he was unarmed, that would be famous! And then a quick hobble round the corner, into the dark – why not?
It was at this point, as I said at the beginning of my story, that I decided murder is a chancy thing for a septuagenarian coward. I teetered on the brink, fearfully, and then I thought, what the devil, even if Palmer gets his Old Age Pension bill through, I still won’t qualify, because it specifically excludes drunkards from benefit.16 Selly’s worth it, says I, snuffling to myself. And so the die was cast.
Once I’m committed, I don’t do things by halves. I would have to settle the business at night, in the best disguise I could find, so I sorted out some of the motley garments I’d brought back from my travels and set about turning myself into an elderly down-at-heel of the kind that slinks round the West End streets, picking up cigar butts and sleeping in areas. It wasn’t difficult – in my time I’ve impersonated everything from a bronco Apache to a prince consort, and with my grey hairs I was halfway there.
So that was easy; the next thing was to decide where I was going to dry-gulch Moran. I had a week at most at my disposal, so for three or four nights I set off stealthily after dark, dressed in an ancient pea-jacket and patched unmentionables, with a muffler and billycock hat and cracked boots, Galand in one pocket and flask in t’other, skulking round Conduit Street to see what his movements were. I was in a putrid state of funk, of course, but even so I felt downright ridiculous – hanging about waiting to murder someone, at my time of life.
For two nights I never saw hide nor hair of him, and then on the Tuesday he broke cover, shortly after six, and I trailed him to a cab on Bond Street and lost him – for I couldn’t take a cab in pursuit; dressed as I was, any self-respecting cabby would have taken his whip to me, and if I’d tried to run after him I’d have been lying on the pavement wheezing my guts up inside ten yards. So that was another wasted night, but on the Wednesday he decided to walk, jauntering out of his rooms in full evening fig and strolling all the way to St James’s, where he spent four hours at the Bagatelle – dealing ’em off the bottom, no doubt. Then he took a cab home, and I was dished again.
This was desperate, I decided. There hadn’t been a chance, so far, to do him more mischief than curse, and nights spent hanging around street-corners had sapped my resolution abominably, as well as giving me the cold. I was having the deuce of a job getting in and out undetected at home, too, and to make matters worse I had a distraught Selly on my hands on Thursday morning, wanting to know what was to be done. She’d had a note from the swine; it simply said: “Well? M.”
The poor creature was nearly distracted with fear, and it was all I could do to stop her having hysterics, which my wife would certainly have heard. But one thing the sight of her distress did for me: I resolved that if Tiger Jack Moran was still alive on Friday morning, it wouldn’t be for want of effort on my part. If the worst came to the worst I’d stalk him home that Thursday night and kill him on his own front-door step and take my chance. (That’s what being a doting grandparent can do to you.)
I was late on my beat that night, though, on account of being dragooned into standing up with the Connaughts at the Army’s football challenge match at Aldershot in the afternoon17 – two sets of hooligans hacking each other in the mud – and it was near eight before I got on post in my rags, huddled in a doorway nipping at my pint flask of spirits with a quaking heart. But just on nine Moran came out, in opera hat and lined cloak, swinging his long cane jauntily. He strolled by within a yard of me; for a moment the gaslight fell on that fierce hawk profile and sprouting moustache, and I felt my innards turn to jelly, and then he was past. One odd thing I noticed; under one arm he carried a flat case. But I was too taken up with considering the loose, fit stride of the man, and the graceful way he carried himself – he looked as dangerous as they come – to worry about trifles.
I thought he might be for the clubs again, but to my surprise he turned up Oxford Street, sauntering calmly along, and then made north. I couldn’t figure why he hadn’t taken a cab; as it was, I had to move sharper than I cared to keep him in view, and when we got off Oxford Street, and people were scarcer, I had to hang back for fear of being spotted, hurrying to catch up whenever he rounded a corner. This was new territory to me, but I remember we had crossed Wigmore Street, and then I stopped with my heart racing, as he paused beside the entrance to a darkened arch and looked back; he glanced up and down the street – there was hardly a soul about – and then he turned under the arch and disappeared.
Meanwhile I was having minor fits. I couldn’t begin to guess what he was up to, but I knew it was now or never. I couldn’t hope for a better chance than this, in a network of streets which were as near to being deserted as central London ever is, with my quarry moving down a dark alley. I hurried forward as fast as I could, reached the archway with my lungs bursting, peered cautiously round the corner, and was in time to see him entering a doorway under a single guttering gas-flare at the other end. I waited a few seconds, and then stole forward, the butt of the Galand greasy with sweat in my hand.
I reached the doorway on tiptoe and paused. It was open. I strained my ears, and heard his feet creaking on stairs – up, up, up, turn, and up again. I didn’t hesitate – I couldn’t; if I waited, there was no certainty he’d come out again this way, and if I was to follow him I must do it while his own footsteps would drown out the sound of mine. I took one last pull at my flask for luck, and went through the door; the light filtering in showed me the foot of the stairs, and then I was sneaking up, into the stuffy darkness, gun out, keeping close to the rickety banisters.
It’s a strange thing, but however funky you may be – and I’ll take on all comers in that line – once you’re moving there’s a kind of controlled panic that guides your feet; I went up those stairs like an elderly ghost, holding my breath until I nearly burst, and crouched on the first landing. I heard his feet across the top landing, and then recede as though he’d gone into a room – then silence.
That was the worst part. Up there, on the top floor, was not only as dangerous a man as I’d ever met, but a top-hole shikari, a night-bird, a trained and skilful hunter who could catch the sound of grass growing. I felt the bile come up in my throat with fear – but I was armed, wasn’t I, and he probably wasn’t, and I’d been a pretty useful night-skulker in my time, too. I’d make no more noise going up than down – and I thought of Selina, and went on up, slow step after slow step, until my head was on a level with the top landing. I peeped over the top step – and that was as far as Flashy was going, no error.
Directly ahead of me was what seemed to be a closet, with the door ajar, and to its left was an open door. Through this I could see clear across a room to the window on the far side, and there, with the street-light beating in on his crouching figure, was Tiger Jack. He was down on one knee, peering through the glass, and keeping himself to the side, under cover. He had put off his hat, and his bald dome shone like a beacon.
It was only now, with a queer shock of surprise, that I found myself wondering what the devil he was about – creeping into an empty house in the middle of the night and staring out of windows. By God, it was fishy, and then as I watched I saw him fumble with the case he’d been carrying, pick up his cane, and unscrew its top. There was a scraping sound, and then a soft snap; he reached out and eased up the sash of the window, and gently pushed something out through the gap – and my bowels did a cartwheel as I saw that what his cane had become was the barrel of a rifle!
Petrified, I could only watch – and then I saw that he was surveying a window on the other side of the street; a lighted window, with a man’s silhouette clear on the blind. Moran gazed at it steadily – he was watching for movement, of course, and then he brought his made-up rifle up to his shoulder, with his right arm stretched out to the side as he flexed the fingers of his trigger-hand.
Suddenly I realised that this was the moment – the moment that would never occur again. I didn’t know what the hell he was up to, or who his mysterious victim might be – any devilment was nuts to Moran, and it didn’t matter a dam. What did, was that he was within twenty feet of me, with his back turned, and every nerve concentrated on his deadly task. Your bird, old Flash, thinks I, and I brought up the Galand, cocked it with the trigger back to make no sound, rested my gun-wrist on the top step, and drew a dead bead on the back of that great bald head.
It isn’t often that I’ve had cause to bless my trembling nerves – or my unsteady boozer’s hand. But by God they saved my neck then. For even as Moran brought his right hand to the stock of his rifle, and settled into his aim, my faltering trigger-finger got a fit of the shakes; my aim wavered, and I paused, sweating – and in that moment I learned that, old as I was, I was a better shikari than Moran would ever be. For in that second’s pause I realised something that he hadn’t noticed; I can’t explain it – call it sixth sense, or a coward’s instinct shaped and refined over a lifetime – but in that second I realised that we were not alone. There was someone else in the room with him – to the left, in the space hidden from me, watching him, and waiting.
I lay still as death, my hair rising on my scalp – and then as Moran hung on his aim there was a plop like a cork exploding from a champagne bottle and a distant crash of glass. I nearly had a seizure as a hidden voice bawled: “Now!” and as Moran swung from the window there was a scramble of feet and two dark shapes hurled themselves on him, fists swinging like billy-ho, and the three of them went down in a swearing, yelling tangle. There was a cry from the street, and a piercing whistle from the room where Moran was locked in combat with those two fine chaps, and then more whistles shrilled from below, there was the crash of a door being hurled back, feet racing on the stairs – and General Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., K.B., K.C.I.E., was into that closet like an electrified stoat, hauling the door to behind him and silently gulping another precious mouthful from his flask to prevent apoplexy.
It sounded like the Household Brigade coming up the stairs, pounding past my hiding-place into the room where the others were still wrestling and cursing away; that’s it, Tiger, thinks I, kick the bastards’ shins and good luck to you. Then the sounds faded, and I heard a murmur of voices, too indistinct to be made out. I didn’t mind, crouched in my cupboard with my heart clattering against my ribs, but then curiosity got the better of me as usual, and I pushed my door open a crack to listen. A high-pitched, nasal voice was talking, and sounding well pleased with itself:
“…Šwho else did you suppose it was, inspector? Well, well – permit me to introduce Colonel John Sebastian Moran, formerly of the Indian Army, and the deadliest game shot in either hemisphere. Tiger Jack, as I believe he was once known – but now himself bagged at last.”
Then Moran broke in, and he was cursing like a steamboat pilot with his toes in the mangle, until an official voice told him to hold his tongue, and after some more confused cussing and conversation which I didn’t catch, the high-pitched chap was heard again:
“I believe a comparison of the bullet fired tonight, with that which was found in the body of Ronald Adair, who was murdered last month, will prove instructive, inspector. It will be for you to decide, but it seems to me that a charge of murder must certainly lie …”
I went giddy at the words, and the rest of them were lost in the gurgling of my flask as I clapped it to my lips. Murder! I could have danced and sung in my closet! They’d got the old swine – I didn’t understand it, of course, or why he should have murdered the chap Adair whose death had been all through the papers, but what did it matter? Tiger Jack was for the Newgate polka, by the sound of it – and Selly was saved, for even if he tried to blacken young Stanger now, out of spite, who’d mind the yelping of a convicted felon? And I was out from under, too – I broke into a cold sweat at the thought of how close I’d been to squeezing my trigger; it could have been me that they were hauling downstairs now with the darbies on, full steam for the condemned cell.18
I almost cried from relief in that stuffy closet as I heard them clattering down and out to the Black Maria; the street door slammed, I listened, but there wasn’t a sound. Very cautiously I peeped out; all was still as sleep, so I tiptoed carefully down to the first landing, and leaned on the banisters to still my racing heart and get my breath back. Selly was safe, Moran was scuppered, and –
The creak of a door overhead gave me such a start I nearly pitched headlong into the stairwell – dear God, there was someone still up there!
“But of course, my dear fellow, you shall hear all about it – come along.” It was the high-pitched voice again, and at the sound of it I was scuttling frantically down the last flight, into the lane, and wheezing at high speed towards the arch when I came to a shuddering stop – plumb ahead, in the archway, was the unmistakeable silhouette of a police constable, feet planted, guarding my only escape. If I’d had the wind left I’d have squealed aloud – then I saw his back was to me, unsuspecting. But behind me, in the empty house, voices were descending the stairs; in two seconds they’d be in view, and I was trapped, helpless, in the alleyway between them and the Law!
I suppose, if I’d had time for reflection, I could have told myself that I was doing no wrong, had committed no offence, and could have faced anyone with a clean conscience. Aye, but there was the pistol in my pocket, and the likelihood that those interfering bobbies would have wanted to know who I was, and what business I had there – God, what a to-do there would be if it was discovered that the celebrated Sir Harry Flashman was creeping about disguised as a scarecrow, with a shooting iron in his pocket, at the scene of an attempted murder! How could I hope to explain – avoid scandal … oh, anyway, when you go about feeling as permanently guilty as I do, you don’t waste time over niceties. At all costs I must avoid detection; there was only one thing for it – I was dressed like a soup-kitchen derelict, and in a twinkling I had poured the rest of my flask down my coat-front, sprawled down against a convenient grating, and was lying there wheezing like an intoxicated grampus, trying to look like a stupefied down-and-out who has crept in to doss for the night, when the footsteps turned out of the house and came towards me.
If they’ve any sense they’ll just pass by, thinks I – well, don’t you, when you see some ragged bummaree sleeping it off in the gutter? But no, curse their nosiness, they didn’t. The footsteps stopped beside me, and I chanced a quick look at ’em through half-closed lids – a tall, slim cove in a long coat, bare-headed and balding, and a big, hulking chap with a bulldog moustache and hard hat. They looked like a poet and a bailiff.
“What’s this?” says the bailiff, stooping over me.
“A tramp,” says the poet. “One of the flotsam, escaping his misery in a few hours of drunken slumber.”
“Think he’s all right?” says the bailiff, rot him, and blow me if he wasn’t fumbling for my pulse. “Going at full gallop,” says he, and blast his infernal impudence, he put a hand on my brow. “My goodness, but he’s feverish. D’ you think we should get help for him?”
“You’ll get no thanks beyond a flood of curses if you do,” says the poet carelessly. “Really, doctor, even without close examination my nose can tell me more than your fingers. The fellow is hopelessly under the influence of drink – and rather inferior drink, at that, I fancy,” says he, stooping and sniffing at the fumes which were rising from my sodden breast. “Yes, American bourbon, unless I am mistaken. The odour is quite distinctive – you may have remarked that to the trained senses, each spirit has its own peculiar characteristics; I believe I have in the past drawn your attention to the marked difference between the rich, sugary aroma of rum, and the more delicate sweet smell of gin,” says this amazing lunatic. “But what now?”
The bailiff, having taken his confounded liberties with my wrist and brow, was pausing in the act of trying to lift one of my eyelids, and his next words filled me with panic.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “I believe I know this chap – but no, it can’t be, surely! Only he’s uncommonly like that old general … oh, what’s-his-name? You know, made such a hash of the Khartoum business, with Gordon … yes, and years ago he won a great name in Russia, and the Mutiny – V.C. and knighthood – it’s on the tip of my tongue –”
“My dear fellow,” says the high-pitched poet, “I can’t imagine who your general may be – it can hardly be Lord Roberts, I fancy – but it seems likely that he would choose to sleep in his home or his club, rather than in an alley. Besides,” he went on wearily, stooping a little closer – and damned unnerving it was, to feel those two faces peering at me through the gloom, while I tried to sham insensible –“besides, this is a nautical, not a military man; he is not English, but either American or German – probably the latter, since he has certainly studied at a second-rate German university, but undoubtedly he has been in America quite lately. He is known to the police, is currently working as a ship’s steward, or in some equally menial capacity at sea – for I observe that he has declined even from his modest beginnings – and will, unless I am greatly mistaken, be in Hamburg by the beginning of next week – provided he wakes up in time. More than that,” says the know-all ignoramus, “I cannot tell you from a superficial examination. Except, of course, for the obvious fact that he found his way here via Piccadilly Circus.”
“Well,” says the other doubtfully, “I’m sure you’re right, but he looks extremely like old what’s-his-name. But how on earth can you tell so much about him from so brief a scrutiny?”
“You have not forgotten my methods since we last met, surely?” says the conceited ass, who I began to suspect was some kind of maniac. “Very well, apply them. Observe,” he went on impatiently, “that the man wears a pea-jacket, with brass buttons, which is seldom seen except on sea-faring men. Add that to the patent fact that he is a German, or German-American –”
“I don’t see,” began the bailiff, only to be swept aside.
“The duelling scars, doctor! Observe them, quite plain, close to the ears on either side.” He’d sharp eyes, all right, to spot those; a gift to me from Otto Bismarck, years ago. “They are the unfailing trade-mark of the German student, and since they have been inexpertly inflicted – you will note that they are too high – it is not too much to assume that he received them not at Heidelberg or Gottingen, but at some less distinguished academy. This suggests a middle-class beginning from which, obviously, he has descended to at least the fringes of crime.”
“How can you tell that?”
“The fine silver flask in his hand was not honestly acquired by such a seedy drunkard as this, surely. It is safe to deduce that its acquisition was only one of many petty pilferings, some of which must inevitably have attracted the attention of the police.”
“Of course! Well, I should have noticed that. But how can you say he is a ship’s steward, or that he has been in America, or that he’s going to Hamburg –”
“His appearance, although dissipated, is not entirely unredeemed. Some care has been taken with the moustache and whiskers, no doubt to compensate for the ravages which drink and evil living have stamped on his countenance.” I could have struck the arrogant, prying bastard, but I grimly kept on playing possum. “Again, the hands are well kept, and the nails, so he is not a simple focsle hand. What, then, but a steward? The boots, although cracked, are of exceptionally good manufacture – doubtless a gratuity from some first-class passenger. As to his American sojourn, we have established that he drinks bourbon whisky, a taste for which is seldom developed outside the United States. Furthermore, since I noticed from the shipping lists this morning that the liner Brunnhilde has arrived in London from New York, and will leave on Saturday for Hamburg, I think we may reasonably conclude, bearing in mind the other points we have established, that here we have one of her crew, mis-spending his shore leave.”
“Amazing!” cries the bailiff. “And, of course, quite simple when you explain it. My dear fellow, your uncanny powers have not deserted you in your absence!”
“I trust they are still equal, at least, to drawing such obvious inferences as these. And now, doctor, I think we have spent long enough over this poor, besotted hulk, who, I fear, would have furnished more interesting material for the meeting of the Inebriation Society than for us. I think you will admit that this pathetic shell has little in common with your distinguished Indian general.”
“Unhesitatingly!” cries the other oaf, standing up, and as they sauntered off, leaving me quaking with relief and indignation – drunken ship’s dogsbody from a second-rate German university, indeed! – I heard him ask:
“But how did you know he got here by way of Piccadilly?”
“He reeked of bourbon whisky, which is not easy to obtain outside the American Bar, and his condition suggested that he had filled his flask at least once since coming ashore …”
I waited until the coast was clear, and then creaked to my feet and hurried homeward, stiff and sore and stinking of brandy (bourbon, my eye! – as though I’d pollute my liver with that rotgut) and if my “besotted shell” was in poor shape, my heart was rejoicing. It had all come right, for little Selly and me, and as I limped my way towards Berkeley Square I was in capital fettle. I was even whistling to myself as I loitered past the end of Hay Hill, and then my roving eye chanced to fall on a certain lighted window, and I bore up short, thinking hollo, what’s this?
For it was my window, in the chambers of my salad days, which as I’ve told you I had placed at the convenience of the Prince of Wales for the entertainment of his secret gallops. I remembered seeing in the morning’s paper that he had been due at Charing Cross that evening from France; by George, thinks I, the randy little pig can’t wait for his English muttons, for all that he must have been panting after half the skirt dancers of Paris this month past. No sooner home than he’s in the saddle again. I was shaking my head sadly over such scandalous conduct, when along comes a cab round the corner from Grafton Street, pulling up at the very door to my Hay Hill place – it was pretty late by now, and all quiet, very discreet. Aha, thinks I, here’s his little macaroon; let’s see who it is this time, so that we can tattle at the club in the morning.
So I shuffled close, just as a heavily-veiled lady got out, without paying the cab, which rattled off at once. That proved it, and as she crossed the pavement and passed into the entry I was abreast, glancing in. She pulled off her veil, and shook her hair, just as I passed, and for a split second I saw her face before she hurried on. And I staggered, as though from a blow, clutching the railings and sinking to the pavement. For there was no mistaking; it was my own granddaughter, little Selina.
I’ve been hit hard in my time, but that nearly carried me off. My own grand-daughter – going up to that pot-bellied satyr! I sprawled there against the railings, dumfounded. Selina, the wide-eyed, tender innocent – mistress to the revolting Bertie! No, no, it couldn’t be … why, only that morning she’d been pleading with me to save her from the embraces of Moran; she’d seemed almost out of her wits – by George, though, well she might be, if she was the Prince of Wales’s secret pet! She couldn’t afford to compromise herself with half-pay adventurers like Tiger Jack, not if she was to keep in favour with her royal lover. And she couldn’t be mixed up in scandals over her fiancé’s pilfering regimental funds, neither. She had had to get Moran silenced (with my money, she hoped) if she was to stay topsides with Bertie. No wonder she’d wailed on my bosom, the designing, wicked little hussy. And I’d been in a lather about her honour – her honour! My own grand-daughter.
That, of course, was the point. She was my grand-daughter, and what’s bred in the bone … oh, but she’d hocussed me properly, playing shrinking Purity, and I’d been ready to shell out half my fortune – and I’d come within an ace of committing murder for her. That was the far outside of enough – I stared up at that lighted window, bursting with outrage – and then for all my fury I found I was grinning, and then laughing, as I clung to the railings. Say what you like; consider that sweet, innocent, butter-melting beauty and the mind behind it – oh, she was Flashy’s little grandchild, all right, every inch of her.
“Wot’s all the row, then?” says a voice, and there was a burly, bearded copper shining his bull’s-eye on me. “Yore tight,” says he.
“No, guv’nor, not a bit,” I wheezed. “Just resting.”
“Don’t gimme none o’ your sauce,” says he. “This ’ere’s a respectable neighbour’ood – the likes o’ you can do yer boozin’ some place else, you follow? Nah then, ’op it.”
“Yuss, guv’nor,” says I. “Just goin’, honnist.”
“Orta know better, a man yore age. Look at yerself – proper disgrace, you are. Don’t you old rummies never learn?”
“No,” says I. “We never do.” And I set off, under his disapproving eye, across Berkeley Square.
a See Flashman and the Redskins