The fellow with the lantern-jaw was called Messervy, and as soon as I stepped out of Seward’s stateroom and announced my change of heart, he took charge, cutting off the Senator’s cries of satisfaction and reminding Pinkerton, who surprised me by clasping my hand, that there was a day’s work to do in two hours, so good-bye, Senator, and let’s go. Then it was ashore in haste to the Black Maria, which was beginning to feel like home, with Pinkerton firing instructions at me as we rattled along, while Messervy sat aloof, stroking his moustache.
“Mandeville an’ yoursel’ will return to the Astor House tonight as though nothin’ had happened, and wait for Black Joe Simmons. He sent a telegraph tae Crixus this mornin’, sayin’ ye’d been found and were willin’ tae enlist wi’ Brown; Crixus’s reply has been at the New York telegraph office this three hours past, but Joe hasnae seen it yet – and won’t, until you’re safe back at the hotel. We’ve seen it, though – sure enough, Crixus is over the moon, haverin’ on about the returned prodigal, an’ biddin’ Joe take ye tae Concord wi’out delay, where ye’ll be presented tae Brown at the house of Frank Sanborn. So ye’ll be off tomorrow, likely – an’ neither Crixus nor Atropos will have an inkling o’ what’s happened today.” He permitted himself a sour grin. “The three Kuklos men who followed you this mornin’ are safe under lock an’ key, and will not see the light o’ day until this whole Brown business is by and done wi’ –”
“And when’ll that be?” In the rush of events I’d given no thought to it. Messervy spoke without looking round.
“Weeks. All summer, maybe.”
“What? But, my God –”
“Wheesht, and listen!” snaps Pinkerton. “Once you an’ Joe have left for Concord, Mandeville will return tae Washington tae inform Atropos that all’s well. It’ll be days afore he begins to wonder what has happened tae his three bravos – an’ we’ll have one or two ploys tae keep him guessin’, never fear. The main thing is, he’ll be satisfied that you’re safe wi’ Brown, workin’ your mischief – he thinks. Crixus will be under the same misconception.” He glanced at Messervy. “That’s my part done, I think.”
Messervy nodded, and we sat in silence until our paddywagon drew up behind the big brown building. It was growing dusk, and as we alighted Pinkerton turned to me:
“I’ll bid ye good-bye, colonel – but I’ll be keepin’ an eye on ye until ye leave for Concord.” He hesitated, and held out his hand. “Glad ye’re wi’ us. Take what care ye can of auld John Brown. He’s worth it.” He wrung my hand hard. “An’ my respects tae your good lady when ye see her. She’ll no’ mind me, but I carried her portmantle once, tae the Glasgow coach.”
Then he was gone, and Messervy swung his cane idly as he looked after him. “There goes a worshipper of John Brown … h’m. Follow me, colonel.”
In my time I’ve been sent into the deep field by some sharp politicals – Broadfoot, Parkes, Burnes, and Gordon, to say nothing of old Pam himself – but Messervy, the long-chinned Yankee Corinthian with his laconic style, was as keen as any and straight to the point, coaching me briskly even before we’d sat down, turning up his desk-lamps as he spoke in that lordly half-English accent that they learn in the best Eastern colleges.
“Whatever you’ve heard, Brown’s not mad. He’s a simple man with a burning purpose. His admirers like to think of him as a latter-day Oliver Cromwell. He is no such thing. He’s not a fool, but he lacks all capacity to organise and direct. His strength –” here he sat down, shooting his cuffs as he clasped his fingers before him on the desk “– which you would do well to remember, is a remarkable gift of inspiring absolute devotion, even in men far above him in education and ability – Pinkerton, for example, and the Eastern liberals who furnish him with money and arms. But it is among his personal followers – his gang – that this loyalty is most marked.”
He drew a sheet from a stack of papers at his elbow, and pushed it across.
“Those are their names – you can study them later. They are almost all young men, staunch abolitionists for the most part, and dangerous beyond their years. They include several of Brown’s sons; the others are adventurers, jacks-of-all-trades, a crank or two, some free blacks and escaped slaves; a number of them have been soldiers, one was a militia colonel, and most of ’em have fought in the Kansas troubles. Only one or two are what you would call educated.” He considered. “They’re tough, eager, and love nothing better than shooting up slave-owners, as they did a couple of months ago when they rescued a few niggers from Missouri and chased the militia. But for the most part they camp in the woods, do a little drill or target practice, a few gymnastics, and sweetheart the local girls. Brown will be looking to you to lick ’em into shape and plan his great stroke in Virginia.”
“How,” says I, “d’you suggest I stop him?”
He indicated the paper in my hand. “There aren’t above a dozen names on that paper – that’s his weakness, lack of numbers. Many have come and gone; those names you may regard as permanent. He’s never been good at recruiting – when he was camped out in Iowa, rallying support, he managed to muster the grand total of nine. It may well be that his want of men, his inability to plan anything sensible, and his habitual indecision, will be his ruin – with a little judicious hindrance from you, skilfully contrived. One thing you must not do, and that is try to undermine his men’s loyalty: it would be fatal. They love him; no other word for it.”
“What weapons has he got?”
“That we know of, two hundred revolvers and two wagonloads of Sharps rifles. And you heard about the thousand pikes.”
“Yes, to arm the niggers when he invades Virginia. It all sounds damned unlikely,” says I, “but you take him seriously.”
“Like nothing since the Revolution,” says he quietly. “He’s a man on fire, you see. And if the fit suddenly takes him, he may go storming into Virginia at half-cock, with his handful of gunfighters … and it just might start a war.”
“And you say he isn’t mad! Has he got any money?”
“He’s spent much of the past two years, when he hasn’t been raiding or writing half-baked constitutions, trying to drum up funds here in the East. Said he needed $30,000, and may have got close to a third of it, but in arms and equipment rather than hard cash.” He shrugged. “In other ways, though, I suspect he’s found it rewarding work. Unless I’m in error, his vaunted simplicity masks a substantial vanity: he seems to like nothing better than being received in abolitionist Society, playing the Old Testament prophet, preaching the wrath of God – he’s a poor speaker, by the way – being adored by maiden ladies from Boston who know Uncle Tom by heart, and admired by social superiors who treat him as another Moses. That’s one of them …”
He took a card from his stack of papers and pushed it across to me: a daguerre print of an earnest weed with flowing locks and a wispy goatee, like a poetic usher.
“… Frank Sanborn, one of the so-called ‘Secret Six’, the committee of influential abolitionists who are Brown’s leading supporters.32 You may meet some of ’em when you’re presented to him at Sanborn’s place in Concord. They hang on Brown’s lips, applaud his speeches, pass the hat, shudder deliciously when they think of him sabring Border Ruffians, go into prayerful ecstasies whenever he runs a nigger across the British border – and are in mortal terror that he’ll do something truly desperate.” He stroked his silky moustache. “Like attacking Harper’s Ferry.”
“They know he means to?”
“He told ’em so, a year ago – and they almost had apoplexy. You see, they thought the cash and arms they’d been giving him were to be used in the Free Soil campaign in Kansas; when he sprang it on ’em that he was planning to invade Virginia, arm the blacks, set up a free state in the hills, hold slave-owners hostage, and dare the U.S. Government to come on … you may guess what effect that had on our pious idealists. They besought him to give up the idea, he thundered Scripture and told them slavery is war and must be fought, they pleaded, he stood fast … and they gave in, like the old women they are. However, he decided to postpone his invasion when your compatriot, Hugh Forbes, his right-hand man, fell out with him over money, and betrayed the whole plot to various Republican senators … among them Mr Seward, whose eloquence so charmed you, I’m sure, this afternoon.” He raised an eyebrow at me, studied his nails in the lamplight, and went on:
“Seward’s a true-blue abolitionist, but he’s not a fool or a firebrand – and he has Presidential ambitions. He warned the ‘Six’ they were playing with fire, and must leave off. That set them shivering … but instead of cutting off Brown without a penny, they renewed their tearful pleas to him not to do anything rash, but if he did, please they’d rather not hear about it beforehand.”
Messervy sat back in his chair, and arched his fingers together. “And there, colonel, you have the liberal abolitionists of the North, in a nutshell: half hoping Brown will go wild, while they pull the blankets over their heads. Seward has more sense. He wants Brown stopped, which is why he spoke to you today, once we’d convinced him that you were the likeliest means of doing it. At the same time,” he added drily, “Senator Seward finds this a convenient moment to make the Grand Tour of Europe, which is a capital place for the Republicans’ favoured candidate to be while Brown is rampaging around breathing fire.”
“Hold on,” says I. “You say ‘we’ convinced Seward – by which you mean the secret service, and don’t tell me different! Aren’t you meant to be working for President Buchanan, who I believe is a Democrat? Not that I understand American politics –”
“I work for the United States,” says he coolly, “whose next President will not be a Democrat. My task is the peace and security of this country, by any means, despite the efforts of its politicians.”
“Spoken like a man!” I was beginning to take to this chap. “But if it’s peace and security you’re after, and you can’t stop Brown by arresting him, or openly interfering with him, for political reasons … tell me, as one government ruffian to another, why don’t you just shoot him quietly in the back of the head some dark night?”
“And have all hell break loose – North accusing South, the government itself (which is headed by a ‘doughface’,a remember) suspected of political assassination, people like Pinkerton outraged and demanding inquiry, the wild men calling for bloody retribution? God knows where it would end.” He gave a faint smile. “In any event, I don’t work for Lord Palmerston – my political masters didn’t learn their ethics at Eton College.”
“Oh, you’re out there! I’ve a notion Pam was at Harrow … what are you grinning at?”
“A kindred spirit, I suspect.” He rose, shed his coat, and loosed his cravat. “Please, be comfortable. Will you join me?” He produced a bottle – Tokay no less, and poured. “Now we can get down to cases,” says he, settling himself. “By the by, how much of the yarn you spun us this afternoon was true – and how much did you leave out?”
“Every word of it – and about half as much again.”
He nodded. “I guess that qualifies you. Well, here’s confusion to John Brown … one way or another.” He sipped, and sighed, a frown on the long clever face. “Now then – I’ve told you about him, and his gang, and his supporters; at least you know what to expect. If you can keep him quiet, by fouling his traces for him and helping him not to make up his mind – which, with your experience, you very well may – then that’s fine. But …” he set down his glass and gave his moustache another thoughtful tease, “…just suppose you fail … and Brown does cut loose and raises cain in Virginia for a day or two – for he’ll last no longer than that, you may be certain –”
“You’re sure of that? Even if he were to take Harper’s Ferry? Damn it all,” I demanded, “why don’t you put troops into the place?”
He made a disdainful noise. “The official answer to that is that we can’t be sure he’s still set on the Ferry – Forbes’s blowing the gaff may have scared him off it, he may be thinking of some other target altogether, and we can’t guard the whole Mason-Dixon line. Myself, I’d say a squad of Marines at the Ferry wouldn’t hurt – but try telling that to Washington mandarins who are too lazy or too dense or too smug to take Brown seriously.” He shrugged. “But ne’er mind that. Consider, I repeat, what happens if Brown does invade Virginia, tries to stir up the niggers, and shoots a few Southern citizens? What then?” Without waiting for a reply, he went on, tapping off the points on his slim fingers.
“I’ll tell you. The South will explode with fury and accuse the Republicans of being behind it. The Republicans, including the two Senatorial gentlemen you met today, will deny it. The North will bust with ill-concealed delight because Simon Legree has been kicked in the balls. The Southern States will raise the cry of ‘Disunion or death!’ … and then?”
“Then the bloody war will break out, according to you and that fat Senator!” says I, impatiently, and he nodded slowly and sipped the last inch from his glass.
“Yes, it very well may. I’d lay odds on it. But then again … there’s a chance – oh, a very slim one – that wiser counsels might prevail, provided …” he raised a finger at me “… provided Brown had been killed or lynched along the way. You see, if his raid had been a fiasco, and he had met his just deserts – well, it might take a little heat out of the South’s temper. And Northern rejoicing might be a little muted – oh, they’d go into mourning for their hero, and Mr Emerson and Mr Longfellow would write odes to the saint departed, and the Secret Six (having disclaimed Brown faster than you can blow smoke) would beat their breasts in public and give thanks in private that dead men can tell no tales … but many sober Yankees would be appalled and angry at the raid, and condemn Brown even while they mourned him. Many would say he’d been proved wrong, and that violence is not the way.” He shrugged again. “Who knows, in that mood, common sense might assert itself. The country might shrink back from war … provided John Brown were dead.”
“I don’t see that,” says I. “What odds would it make whether he was dead or alive?”
“Considerable, I think. Here, let’s finish the bottle.” He tipped the remains into my glass. “You see, if Brown survived the raid, and was taken, he’d stand trial – probably for treason. I’m no lawyer, but when a man writes constitutions for black rebel states, and fires on the American flag, I guess I could make it stick. But whatever the charge, one thing is sure: they’ll hang him.”
“Well, good luck to ’em!”
He shook his head. “No, sir. Bad luck – the worst. Right now, I doubt if one American in five has even heard of John Brown – but let him make his crazy raid, and swing for it, and the whole world will hear of him.” He smiled with no mirth at all. “And what will the world say? That America, the land of liberty, has hanged an honest, upright, God-fearing Christian whose only crime was that he wanted to make men free. A man who could stand for the archetype that made this country – why, he could pose for Uncle Sam this minute. And we’ll have put him to death – the damnedest martyr since Joan of Arc! And there will be such an outcry, colonel, such a blaze of hatred throughout the North, such a fury against slavery and its practitioners … and there is your certain war ready-made, awaiting the first shot.”
He hadn’t raised his voice, but just for a moment the cool nil admirari air had slipped a trifle. He smiled almost in apology.
“There are many ‘ifs’ along the way, to be sure. I’m envisaging the worst. Brown may not ride into Virginia this summer; his own incompetence and indecision, encouraged by you, may delay him long enough – if he doesn’t move before fall, I doubt if he ever will. He can’t hold his followers together forever, living on hope deferred, and fretting to get home for the harvest.”
He rose from his chair and went to a cupboard by the wall; his voice came to me out of the shadow beyond the pool of light cast by the desk-lamps.
“If you can keep him bamboozled for a couple of months, why, all’s well. But if you can’t, and if he does light out for Dixie with his guns on, and comes to grief … then for the sake of this country, and for tens of thousands of American lives, he must not survive for trial and martyrdom at the hands of the U.S. Government. No … John Brown must die somewhere along the road … oh, bully for us! – I knew there was another bottle!”
You will wonder, no doubt, why I’d remained cool and complacent during the conversation I’ve just described. I’ll tell you. Seward, in making it plain that if I didn’t toe the line he’d blacken my fair name to our sovereign lady and her ministers, had used a phrase which had quite altered my view of things. “At no peril to himself”, meaning me. You see, what had been proposed by Crixus and Atropos was that I should be one of a whooping gang of cutthroats invading the South to storm arsenals and stir up bloody insurrection – the sort of thing I bar altogether, as you know. The proposal made by the Senator and Pinkerton, hinted at by Seward, and illuminated by Messervy, was quite the opposite: I was to restrain, hinder, and prevent anything of the kind, and while the prospect of passing several weeks in the company of a pack of hayseeds, showing ’em how to shoulder arms and dress by the right, and discussing strategy with their loose screw of a commander, was not a specially attractive one – well, I’d known a lot worse. It would be hard lying and rotten grub, no doubt, but I’d be earning the gratitude of the next President, for what that was worth, and adding to my credit at home when the story reached the right ears – as I’d make dam’ sure it did. Above all, it would be safe – “at no peril to himself”. Not that I’d trust a politician’s word for the weather, you understand, but Messervy’s information had borne him out … until he’d made it plain that if the worst befell, I’d be expected to put Mr John Brown quietly to rest.
Fat chance. A scoundrel I may be, but I ain’t an assassin, and you will comb my memoirs in vain for mention of Flashy as First Murderer. Oh, I’ve put away more than I can count, in the line of duty, from stark necessity, and once or twice for spite – de Gautet springs to mind, and the pandy I shot at Meerut – but they deserved it. Anyway, I don’t kill chaps I don’t know.
But it wouldn’t have been tactful – indeed, it would have been downright dangerous – to say this to Messervy, so I received his disgusting proposal with the stern, shrewd look of a Palmerston roughneck who took back-shooting in his stride. I may even have growled softly. (And, d’ye know, I accepted it all the more calmly because I didn’t believe for a moment that there was any chance of the matter arising: Messervy and Seward and the others might regard Brown as a dangerous bogyman, but from all I’d heard he was a mere bushwhacker whose talk of invasion and rebellion was so much wind. Oh, I’d do my best to humbug him, but my guess was he’d stay quiet enough without my help. As for starting a war, it was too far-fetched altogether. Well, I was wrong, but I can’t reproach myself, even now; it was damned far-fetched.)
Anyway, I nodded grimly as he brought his bottle to the desk.
“You take the point?” says he, looking keen.
“Quite so,” says I. “Which reminds me, the sooner I have a gun in my pocket the better. Oh, and a decent knife – and a map of Harper’s Ferry, wherever it is.”
“Colonel,” says he, “it’s a pleasure doing business with you. Excuse me.” He went out humming and I punished the Hungarian until he returned with a neat little Tranter six-shooter, a stiletto in a metal sheath, and a map which he insisted I study on the spot and leave behind.
“There’s the Ferry – just inside Virginia, and only fifty miles from Washington.” He came to my elbow. “The odds are you’ll never see the place, but if Brown does go for it, and you have to do … what needs to be done, then your best course afterwards will be to make tracks for Washington and your ministry. The militia will round up the rest of Brown’s gang, and that’ll be that. You’ll have no difficulty with Lord Lyons, by the way; he’ll be given notice of your coming, with an assurance from a high quarter that you have rendered a signal service to the United States in a domestic matter, and we are most grateful. We shan’t tell him, officially, what the service was, and I’m sure he won’t ask, officially. But I’m sure he’ll speed your journey home.”
He folded the map. “If, as is most likely, John Brown spends a quiet summer, and nothing untoward takes place … well, when he starts to disband his followers, you can desert him at your leisure. Again, Lord Lyons will be advised to expect you, with our expressions of gratitude, et cetera. Very good?”
“I don’t know Lyons,” says I, “but I’ll bet he’s nobody’s fool.”
“He isn’t,” says Messervy. “Which is why, whatever course you have to take, all will be well.” He took another turn at his moustache. “It’s in a dam’ good cause, colonel. You know it, we know it, and Lord Lyons will know it.”
I thought it wouldn’t hurt to play my part a little. “You Yankees have a blasted cheek, you know. Ah, well … I say, though, when I’m out in the bush, with Brown, how do I –”
“Send messages to me? You don’t – too dangerous. Brown and his people might get wise to you; so might the Kuklos. Just because we’ve got three of their men in the Tombs doesn’t mean there won’t be others watching you – they’ll certainly have people keeping track of Brown himself. If either side suspected you were secret service …” He gave me a knowing look. “Quite so. Anyway, the fewer of our people who know we’ve got an agent with Brown – and a Briton, at that – the better. We’ll be keeping an eye on things, though, and if need arises, I’ll get word to you.”
He took a small purse from a drawer and tossed it over. “That’s $50 to keep in your money belt … if Joe should wonder how you came by it, Mrs Mandeville gave it you.” He frowned. “That’s another thing. Brown will welcome you with open arms –”
“Just suppose he doesn’t – what then?”
“He will, no question; you’re a gift from God. The point is, he’ll also welcome Joe; he’s all for black recruits. Well, I don’t have to remind you that Joe is a Kuklos man, and a good one.”
“He’s a damned rum bird,” says I. “Oh, I know he and Atropos have been chums in the nursery and all that tommy-rot – but hang it, he ought to be all for Brown and black freedom, surely? I don’t fathom him at all.”
“Some of these darkies who belong to the old Southern families are mighty loyal. They think of themselves as kin to their owners – and many of ’em are, though I doubt if Joe is. But all we know of him confirms that he’s staunch to Atropos.” He shrugged. “Maybe he reckons he’s better off slave than free, living high in the tents of wickedness rather than being a doorkeeper in the house of a God who’d expect him to earn his own living.” And having a free run at massa’s white lady from time to time, thinks I. “Anyway, beware of him,” says Messervy. “He’ll be watching you like a hungry lynx.” He glanced at his timepiece. “It’s half after eight, and Mrs Comber will be waiting. She hasn’t been told your real name, by the way. No need for her to know that.”
The building seemed to be deserted, and we went down the echoing stone stairs to a room on the ground floor where Annette was waiting, with a nondescript civilian who faded from view at a nod from Messervy. She seemed none the worse for her swooning fit of the morning, and didn’t give me a glance, let alone a word, as Messervy conducted us to a closed carriage in the back court, where he handed her in, bowed gallantly over her hand, and gave me his imperturbable nod. “Joe won’t be given Crixus’s message for another hour. By that time you’ll be having a quiet supper after a day’s sauntering and shopping on Broadway.” He indicated a couple of band-boxes on the floor of the cab. “Your purchases, Mrs Comber. One of our lady operators chose them, with regard to your taste, I hope.” The Yankee secret service evidently left nothing to chance. “Good luck, Comber … and,” he added quietly, “if need be, good hunting.” Cool as a trout, rot him, doffing his tile and knuckling his lip-whisker as we drove away.
Annette sat like a frozen doll for several minutes, and then to my astonishment broke out in a low hard voice: “You saved my life this morning. When that creature fired on us. My … my courage failed me. But for you, I would have been killed. I … thank you.”
I didn’t twig for a second, and then it dawned that she must have quite misunderstood why I’d seized hold of her when the lead started flying. Oh, well, all to the good. I waved an airy hand.
“My dear, ’twas nothing! I wasn’t going to be a widower so soon, was I?” I slipped an arm about her and kissed her soundly. “Why, it’s I should thank you, for steering me clear of those Kuklos villains. But, I say, you took me in altogether, you clever little puss – never a word that you were working for Brother Jonathanb all the time! And you a Southern Creole lady, too! How’s that come about, eh?”
“If you knew what it was to be married to that devil, you would not need to ask!” But she said it automatically, her mind still fixed on that fateful moment at Madam Celeste’s, sitting stiff as a board while I munched at her cheek. “I never shot at anyone before! I … I was in terror, not thinking what I was about or –”
“Nonsense, girl!” says I, squeezing her udders. “Why, you blazed away like a drunk dragoon – winged him, I shouldn’t wonder! Gave him a nasty start, leastways. But here we are, safe and sound, so … take that, you little peach!”
But it was like kissing a dead flounder. “I might have killed him!” she whispered, staring ahead. “It would have been murder – mortal sin! Thou shalt not kill! Oh, let me be, damn you!” She beat at my hands, trying to struggle free. “Have you no feeling? Can you think of nothing but … but your filthy lust – oh, when I might have had that upon my soul?”
I was so shocked I absolutely let them go. “Upon your what? Heavens, woman, what the dooce are you talking about?”
“I tried to kill him!” She turned on me, eyes blazing. “I had murder in my heart, can’t you understand?”
“And he didn’t, I suppose? My stars, he might have done for both of us! What the devil’s the matter?” I stared at the pale little face, so tight and drawn. “Ain’t you well? It’s all past and done with, we never took a scratch! Ah, but you’re still shaken – it’s the shock, to be sure! Come here, you goose, and I’ll put it right!”
“I might have killed him! I wanted to kill him!” She closed her eyes, and her voice was almost too faint to hear: “I would have been damned!”
Now, I’ve seen folk take all kinds of fits after a shooting scrape, or a battle, or a near shave, and the shock can be hours in coming on, but this was a new one altogether. Her eyes when she opened them were full of frightened tears, staring as though she were in a trance. “Damned,” she whispered. “Damned eternally!”
They don’t usually say that sort of thing until they’re at death’s door, and she was as fit as a flea. I wondered how to bring her out of it – she was too frail to slap, petting her hadn’t answered, and I couldn’t very well ravish her in a carriage on Broadway. So I tried common sense.
“Well, you didn’t kill him, and you ain’t going to be damned, so there’s no harm done, d’ye see? I know – we’ll try putting your head between your knees –”
“In my heart I murdered him!” cries she.
“Well, it didn’t do him a penn’orth of harm! Heaven’s alive, you never came near hitting the fellow –”
“The will was the deed! I would have killed him – I, who never thought to take life!”
This was too much, so I took a stern line. “Oh, gammon and greens! What about those black wenches of mine at Greystones? You had them half-killed – ’twasn’t your fault they didn’t kick the bucket, and you never thought twice about damnation! Anyway, who says there’s a Hell? Twaddle, if you ask me!”
It seemed to reach her, and she stared at me as though I were mad. “This was a human being!” cries she. “If I had killed him …” She closed her eyes again, and began to tremble, turning away from me. I waited for the waterworks, but they didn’t come, and I saw there was nothing for it but the religious tack.
“Now, see here, Annette, you didn’t kill him, and if it’s the wish to kill that’s troubling you, well, you’re a Papist, ain’t you? So if you tool along to the nearest priest, he’ll set your conscience right in no time.” I thought of my little leprechaun in Baltimore, and dear drunken old Fennessy of the Eighth Hussars. “If he’s got half as much sense as the padres I know, he’ll tell you that self-defence ain’t murder in the first place. And if you want to thank me,” I added, “you’ll do it best by recollecting that in a little while we’ll be seeing Black Joe, and we can’t have him wondering why you’re looking like Marley’s ghost!” I patted her hand. “So draw breath, there’s a girl, and forget about damnation until you see old Father McGoogle in the morning and get your extreme unction or whatever it is. The worst is past, and if you play up now – well, you’ll be doing your fat swine of a husband a dam’ bad turn, what?”
Possibly because of my healing discourse, possibly because we’d pulled up at the Astor House, she suddenly snapped her head erect, white as a sheet but compos mentis, and began to behave normally, but mute. As I followed her up to our suit, and presently down again to the dining-room, I found myself wondering if she was quite sane – and to this day I ain’t sure. I’d known her, by turns, a vicious tyrant, a voracious bedmate, a superb actress, a forlorn child, a gun-toting secret agent, and now, of all things, a penitent in terror of hell-fire because she might have shot a chap but hadn’t. Well, as they say in the North Country, there’s nowt so funny as folk – but I’d never have credited Annette Mandeville with a conscience. Nursery education, no doubt; God, these governesses have a lot to answer for.
She said not a word at supper – which she attacked with a fine appetite, I may say – but when we returned to our room and found Joe waiting, she was quite her old imperious self, and talked according. He was in a fine excitement, thrusting Crixus’s telegraph message into her hand; it was in code, and at length, but its purport was precisely what everyone, from Atropos to Pinkerton, had predicted: Joe was commended for his zeal in running me down, and helping me to see the light – not that Crixus had ever doubted I would come round in the end, even after I’d lit out, for he knew my devotion to the cause, and that reflection would guide me to a just and righteous conclusion, God bless me a thousand times. (I’d been doubtful, as you know, whether Crixus would swallow the tale that I’d been persuaded to change my mind, but Atropos had been proved right: he believed it because he wanted to, and it fulfilled his fondest hopes.) Finally, Joe was to lose no time in conducting me to Concord and our Good and Trusty Champion, that the Lord’s Will might be accomplished and His Banners go forward in Freedom’s Cause. Amen.
“We got no time to lose,” says Joe, all eagerness. “They’s a train leavin’ fo’ Boston fust thing, an’ –”
“You’ll take a later train, and reach Boston after dark,” snaps Annette. “You’ll stay the night there, and keep under cover, going on to Concord next day – and again, you’ll arrive after dark.” Joe would have protested, but she shut him up. “Do you think Sanborn wants you to be seen entering his house in broad daylight? Don’t you know he’s watched by government operators, you black dolt?”
“They don’ know us –”
“They’ll know you even less if they never see you! Oh, why did they entrust this business to a clod like you! Get out, and fetch me a train schedule – not now, in the morning!”
He could gladly have broken her in two, but all he did was mutter that he hadn’t seen Hermes’s men about the hotel, and did she know where they were? She told him curtly to mind his own business and let them mind theirs, and he left with a venomous glare – but no suspicion, I’ll swear, that there was anything amiss; her tongue-lashing performance had been altogether in her best style.
So then it was bedtime, and since I didn’t expect much carnal amusement chez Brown, I was determined to make the most of it. After Annette’s earlier vapourings, I half expected reluctance, but she was all for it, and if her conscience was still troubling her, she kept it on a tight rein, addressing heaven only in secular terms when amorous frenzy got the better of her. That interested me, for her usual form was to gallop in grim silence; more astonishing still, she was ready to talk afterwards, briefly enough at first, but little by little at greater length, until we were conversing almost civilly. Whether it was gratitude for having her life saved (as she thought, heaven help her), or I was in prime fettle, or she’d made her peace with God, or was just getting used to me, I can’t tell, but out came Annette Mandeville, Her Life and Times, and diverting stuff it was.
I’d known already that she came of impoverished bayou aristocracy who had literally sold her, aged fifteen, to the disgusting redneck Mandeville, with whom she’d been living at Greystones when I hove in sight in ’48. After my departure, Mandeville had drunk himself to death, leaving a heap of debt and Greystones mortgaged black and blue. As a personable enough young widow, she’d had offers a-plenty, but Mandeville had sickened her of marriage, if not of men, and after a succession of lovers she had decided that a career as a mistress was no great shakes, and had determined to try her luck on the stage – she’d been born with a talent for mimicry, and being vicious, immoral, and vain, she had taken to the theatre like a pirate to plunder. And it had taken to her; in a few years she was playing the principal houses in the States and Canada, making and spending money, mostly on men.
Then, during an engagement in Chicago, her company had been the victims of a daring robbery, and who should be called in when the police had failed but Allan Pinkerton, then making his mark as a private detective. He had been impressed by the help she’d given in pointing the way to the thieves, and identifying them, and had remarked that if ever she tired of acting, she might do worse than police work; it had been lightly said, and she’d forgotten it the more readily because a new and brilliant prospect had opened before her soon afterwards.
It was in a comedy at Orleans that she had caught the lustful gooseberry eye of Charles La Force, and while the very sight of him had set her shuddering, the size of his fortune, and the ruthless determination with which he’d pursued her, had made her think twice about repulsing him: he’d plied her with priceless gifts, haunted the theatre, and finally killed her beau of the moment in one of those ghastly knife-and-pistol duels which the Louisiana gentry favoured in those days, stalking each other through the bayous by night. After which his offer of marriage, with a royal cash settlement, had finally conquered her far-from-maiden heart, and she had trotted up the aisle with him, to her abiding regret.
For she had soon discovered that beneath his revolting exterior there lurked a monster whose depraved tastes would have had Caligula throwing up the window and hollering for the peelers; enforced bouts with Joe and other menials, while the husband of her bosom cheered them on, had been the least of it, and to make matters worse she had been drawn into the dark affairs of the Kuklos. But where any other wife would have lit out with whatever she could carry, Annette’s one thought had been to vent her hatred on him, and she had been hesitating between poison and a knife in bed when Pinkerton had again emerged, discreetly, upon the scene. By now he was undertaking occasional work for Washington, and had a finger on every pulse in America; he had kept her in mind, and when she had married Atropos he had seen her as an invaluable agent within the Kuklos, if she could be persuaded. She had leapt at the chance, and had been betraying Atropos happily ever since, until the present emergency had caused Pinkerton to employ her in more active work. And so, here we were.
It was plain from her account that loathing of Atropos was the ruling passion of her life, and knowing her cold and selfish nature, I found that odd. Granted she was compounded of equal parts of malice and cruelty, I’d still have thought she’d have preferred to decamp with his money and pursue her theatrical and amorous careers in France or England, rather than devote her existence to doing him despite. It didn’t seem to weigh with her, either, that in betraying him she was probably helping to destroy the way of life in which she’d been raised – the South, slavery, plantation society, and all that gracious magnolia stuff; no, she was wreaking vengeance on Atropos, and that was enough for her. Well, I’m a ready hater myself, God knows, and take the keenest pleasure in doing the dirty on deserving cases, but I’d never make grudgery my life’s work; I reckon you have to like, or love, something worth while, even if it’s just trollops and beer, or, if you’re lucky, cash and credit and fame … and Elspeth. It occurred to me, as I put Mandeville through her final mounting drill, that she wasn’t fit to fill my dear one’s corset, and I felt a great longing for those blue eyes and corn-gold hair and silky white skin and so forth, and for that brilliant simpleton smile of welcome and the witless prattle which would follow. At least I had that to look forward to; Annette Mandeville had nothing but her revenge. Oh, aye, and her eccentric conscience.
She was in a vile mood in the morning, snapping at me and roasting Joe, and for the last hour before he and I left to catch the train north, she sat in stony silence, staring out of the window. At the last, when Joe was putting our valises out in the passage, she closed the door quickly on him, and turned her pale elfin face to me; she was biting her lip, and then the tears came, and suddenly she was clinging round my neck, the tiny body shivering against me.
“Have a care!” she sobbed. “Oh, have a care!” Then she kissed me fiercely and ran into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.