Читать книгу The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 40

Getting away from London was no great bother. Elspeth pouted a little, but when I had given her a glimpse—a most fleeting one—of Lauengram’s signature and of the letter’s cover, and used expressions like “special military detachment to Bavaria” and “foreign court service", she was quite happily resigned. The idea that I would be moving in high places appealed to her vacant mind; she felt vaguely honoured by the association.

The Morrisons didn’t half like it, of course, and the old curmudgeon flew off about godless gallivanting, and likened me to Cartaphilus, who it seemed had left a shirt and breeches in every town in the ancient world. I was haunted by a demon, he said, who would never let me rest, and it was an evil day that he had let his daughter mate with a footloose scoundrel who had no sense of a husband’s responsibilities.

“Since that’s the case,” says I, “the farther away from her I am, the better you should be pleased.”

He was aghast at such cynicism, but I think the notion cheered him up for all that. He speculated a little on the bad end that I would certainly come to, called me a generation of vipers, and left me to my packing.

Not that there was much of that. Campaigning teaches you to travel light, and a couple of valises did my turn. I took my old Cherrypicker uniform—the smartest turnout any soldier ever had anywhere—because I felt it would be useful to cut a dash, but for the rest I stuck to necessaries. Among these, after some deliberation, I included the duelling pistols that a gunsmith had presented to me after the Bernier affair. They were beautiful weapons, accurate enough for the most fastidious marksman, and in those days when revolving pistols were still crude experimental toys, the last word in hand guns.

But I pondered about taking them. The truth was, I didn’t want to believe that I might need them. When you are young and raw and on the brink of adventure, you set great store by having your side-arms just right, because you are full of romantic notions of how you will use them. Even I felt a thrill when I first handled a sabre at practice with the 11th Light Dragoons, and imagined myself pinking and mowing down hordes of ferocious but obligingly futile enemies. But when you’ve seen a sabre cut to the bone, and limbs mangled by bullets, you come out of your daydream pretty sharp. I knew, as I hesitated with those pistols in my hands, that if I took them I should be admitting the possibility of my own sudden death or maiming in whatever lay ahead. This was, you see, another stage in my development as a poltroon. But I’d certainly feel happier with ’em, uncomfortable reminders though they were, so in they went. And while I was at it, I packed along a neat little seaman’s knife. It isn’t an Englishman’s weapon, of course, but it’s devilish handy sometimes, for all sorts of purposes. And experience has taught me that, as with all weapons, while you may not often need it, when you do you need it badly.

So, with a word to Uncle Bindley at Horse Guards—who said acidly that the British Army might survive my absence a while longer—and with half of my £500 in my money belt (the other half was safe in the bank), I was ready for the road. Only one thing remained to do. I spent a day searching out a German waiter in the town, and when I had found a likely fellow I offered him his fare home and a handsome bonus, just to travel along with me; I had no German at all, but with my gift for languages I knew that if I applied myself on the journey to Munich I should have at least a smattering by the time I arrived there. I’ve often said that the ideal way to learn a language is in bed with a wench, but failing that an alert, intelligent travelling companion is as good a teacher as any. And learning a new tongue is no hardship to me; I enjoy it.

The fellow I picked on was a Bavarian, as luck had it, and jumped at the chance of getting home. His name, I think, was Helmuth, but at any rate he was a first-rate choice. Like all Germans, he had a passion for taking pains, and when he saw what I wanted he was all enthusiasm. Hour after hour, in boat, train, and coach, he talked away to me, repeating words and phrases, correcting my own pronunciation, explaining grammatical rules, but above all giving me that most important thing of all—the rhythm of the language. This is something which only a few people seem to have, and I am lucky to be one. Let me catch the rhythm, and I seem to know what a man is saying even if I haven’t learned all the words he uses. I won’t pretend that I learned German in a fortnight, but at the end of that time I could pass my own elementary test, which is to say to a native: “Tell me, speaking slowly and carefully, what were your father’s views on strong drink,” or religion, or horses, or whatever came to mind—and understand his reply fairly well. Helmuth was astonished at my progress.

We did not hurry on the journey, which was by way of Paris, a city I had often wanted to visit, having heard that debauchery there was a fine art. I was disappointed: whores are whores the world over, and the Parisian ones are no different from any other. And French men make me sick; always have done. I’m degenerate, but they are dirty with it. Not only in the physical sense, either; they have greasy minds. Other foreigners may have garlic on their breaths, but the Frogs have it on their thoughts as well.

The Germans are different altogether. If I wasn’t an Englishman, I would want to be a German. They say what they think, which isn’t much as a rule, and they are admirably well ordered. Everyone in Germany knows his place and stays in it, and grovels to those above him, which makes it an excellent country for gentlemen and bullies. In England, even in my young day, if you took liberties with a working man you would be as likely as not to get a fist in your face, but the lower-class Germans were as docile as niggers with white skins. The whole country is splendidly disciplined and organised, and with all their docility the inhabitants are still among the finest soldiers and workers on earth—as my old friend Bismarck has shown. The basis of all this, of course, is stupidity, which you must have in people before you can make them fight or work successfully. Well, the Germans will trouble the world yet, but since they are closer to us than anyone else, we may live to profit by it.

However, all this I was yet to discover, although I had an inkling of it from studying Helmuth on our journey. I don’t bore you with details of our travels, by the way; nothing happened out of the ordinary, and what I chiefly remember is a brief anxiety that I had caught the pox in Paris; fortunately, I hadn’t, but the scare I got prejudiced me still further against the French, if that were possible.

Munich, when we reached it, I liked the look of very well. It was clean and orderly on the surface, prices were far below our own (beer a halfpenny a pint, and a servant could be hired at two shillings a week), the folk were either civil or servile, and the guide-book which I had bought in London described it as “a very dissolute capital”. The very place for old Flash, thinks I, and looked forward to my stay. I should have known better; my eagerness to see Lola again, and my curiosity about what she wanted, had quite driven away those momentary doubts I had felt back in London. More fool I; if I had known what was waiting round the corner I would have run all the way home and felt myself lucky to be able to run.

We arrived in Munich on a Sunday, and having dismissed Helmuth and found a hotel in the Theresienstrasse, I sat down to consider my first move. It was easy enough to discover that Lola was installed in a personal palace which the besotted Ludwig had built specially for her in the Barerstrasse; presumably I might stroll round and announce my arrival. But it pays to scout whenever you can, so I decided to put in an hour or two mooning round the streets and restaurants to see what news I could pick up first. I might even gain some hint of a clue to why she wanted me.

I strolled about the pleasant streets for a while, seeing the Hofgarten and the fine Residenz Palace where King Ludwig lived, and drank the excellent German beer in one of their open-air beer-gardens while I watched the folk and tried out my ear on their conversation. It could hardly have been more peaceful and placid; even in late autumn it was sunny, and the stout contented burghers with their pleasant-faced wives were either sitting and drinking and puffing at their massive pipes, or sauntering ponderously on the pavements. No one hurried, except the waiters; here and there a group of young fellows in long cloaks and gaudy caps, whom I took to be students, stirred things a little with their laughter, but for the rest it was a drowsy, easy afternoon, as though Munich was blinking contentedly in the fine weather, and wasn’t going to be bustled by anybody.

However, one way and another, by finding a French newspaper and getting into talk with people who spoke either French or English, I picked up some gossip. I soon found that one did not need to ask about Lola; the good Muncheners talked about her as Britons do about the weather, and with much the same feeling—in other words, they thought she was bad and would get worse, but that nothing could be done about her anyway.

She was, it seemed, the supreme power in Bavaria. Ludwig was right under her thumb, she had swept out the hostile Ultramontane cabinet and had it replaced largely with creatures of her own, and despite the fact that she was a staunch Protestant, the Catholic hierarchy were powerless against her. The professors, who count for much more there than do ours in England, were solidly against her, but the students were violently split. Some detested her, and had rioted before her windows, but others, calling themselves the Allemania, constituted themselves her champions and even her bodyguard, and were forever clashing with her opponents. Some of these Allemania were pointed out to me, in their bright scarlet caps; they were a tough-looking crew, tight-mouthed and cold-eyed and given to strutting and barking, and people got out of their way pretty sharp.

However, with Ludwig infatuated by her, Lola was firmly in the saddle, and according to one outspoken French journalist whose story I read, her supremacy was causing alarm far outside Bavaria. There were rumours that she was an agent of Palmerston, set on to foment revolution in Germany; to the other powers, striving to hold down a growing popular discontent that was spreading throughout Europe, she appeared to be a dangerous threat to the old regime. At least one attempt had been made to assassinate her; Metternich, the arch-reactionary master of Austria, had tried to bribe her to leave Germany for good. The truth was that in those days the world was on the edge of general revolution; we were coming out of the old age and into the new, and anything that was a focus of disorder or instability was viewed with consternation by the authorities. So Lola was not popular; the papers fumed against her, clergymen damned her in their sermons as a Jezebel and a Sempronia, and the ordinary folk were taught to regard her as a fiend in human shape—all the worse because the shape was beautiful.

Here ends Professor Flashman’s historical lecture, much of it cribbed from a history book, but some of it at least learned that first day in the Munich beer-gardens.

One thing I was pretty sure of, and it flies in the face of history: whatever may be said, Lola was secretly admired by the common people. They might shake their heads and look solemn whenever her cavalry escort drove a way for her through a crowd of protesting students; they might look shocked when they heard of the orgies in the Barerstrasse palace; they might exclaim in horror when her Allemania horse-whipped an editor and smashed his presses—but the men inwardly loved her for the gorgeous hoyden she was, and the women hid their satisfaction that one of their own sex was setting Europe by the ears. Whenever the insolent, tempestuous Montez provoked some new scandal, there was no lack of those who thought, “Good for you,” and quite a few who said it openly.

And what the devil did she want with me? Well, I had come to Munich to find out, so I scribbled a note that Sunday evening, addressed to the Chamberlain Lauengram, saying that I had arrived and was at his disposal. Then I wandered over to the Residenz Palace, and looked at Lola’s portrait in the public gallery—that “Gallery of Beauties” in which Ludwig had assembled pictures of the loveliest women of his day. There were princesses, countesses, actresses, and the daughter of the Munich town-crier, among others, and Lola looking unusually nun-like in a black dress and wearing a come-to-Jesus expression.²⁰ Underneath it was inscribed a verse written by the king, who was given to poetry, which finished up:

Oh, soft and beauteous as a deer

Art thou, of Andalusian race!

Well, he was probably in a position to know about that. And to think that only a few years ago she had been a penniless dancer being hooted off a London stage.

I had hoped, considering the urgency of Lauengram’s original letter to me, to be bidden to Lola’s palace on the Monday, but that day and the next went by, and still no word. But I was patient, and kept to my hotel, and on the Wednesday morning I was rewarded, I was finishing breakfast in my room, still in my dressing-gown, when there was a great flurry in the passage, and a lackey came to announce the arrival of the Freiherr von Starnberg, whoever he might be. There was much clashing and stamping, two cuirassiers in full fig appeared behind the lackey and stationed themselves like statues on either side of my doorway, and then in between them strolled the man himself, a gay young spark who greeted me with a flashing smile and outstretched hand.

“Herr Rittmeister Flashman?” says he. “My privilege to welcome you to Bavaria. Starnberg, very much at your service.” And he clicked his heels, bowing. “You’ll forgive my French, but it’s better than my English.”

“Better than my German, at any rate,” says I, taking stock of him. He was about twenty, of middle height and very slender, with a clean-cut, handsome face, brown curls, and the wisp of a moustache on his upper lip. A very cool, jaunty gentleman, clad in the tight tunic and breeches of what I took to be a hussar regiment, for he had a dolman over his shoulder and a light sabre trailing at his hip. He was sizing me up at the same time.

“Dragoon?” says he.

“No, hussar.”

“English light cavalry mounts must be infernally strong, then,” says he, coolly. “Well, no matter. Forgive my professional interest. Have I interrupted your breakfast?”

I assured him he had not.

“Splendid. Then if you’ll oblige me by getting dressed, we’ll lose no more time. Lola can’t abide to be kept waiting.” And he lit a cheroot and began to survey the room. “Damnable places, these hotels. Couldn’t stay in one myself.”

I pointed out that I had been kept kicking my heels in one for the past three days, and he laughed.

“Well, girls will be girls, you know,” says he. “We can’t expect ’em to hurry for mere men, however much they expect us to jump to it. Lola’s no different from the rest—in that respect.”

“You seem to know her very well,” says I.

“Well enough,” says he negligently, sitting himself on the edge of a table and swinging a polished boot.

“For a messenger, I mean,” says I, to take some of the starch out of him. But he only grinned.

“Oh, anything to oblige a lady, you know. I fulfil other functions, when I’m so inclined.” And he regarded me with an insolent blue eye. “I don’t wish to hurry you, old fellow, but we are wasting time. Not that I mind, but she certainly will.”

“And we mustn’t have that.”

“No, indeed. I imagine you have some experience of the lady’s fine Latin temper. By God, I’d tame it out of her if she was mine. But she’s not, thank heaven. I don’t have to humour her tantrums.”

“You don’t, eh?”

“Not hers, nor anyone else’s,” says Master von Starnberg, and took a turn round the room whistling.

Cocksure men irritate me as a rule, but it was difficult to take offence at this affable young sprig, and I had a feeling that it wouldn’t do me much good if I did, so while he lounged in my sitting-room I retired to the bed-chamber to dress. I decided to wear my Cherrypicker rig, with all the trimmings of gold-laced blue tunic and tight pants, and when I emerged Starnberg cocked an eye and whistled appreciatively.

“Saucy regimentals,” says he. “Very pretty indeed. Lola may not mind too much having been kept waiting, after all.”

“Tell me,” I said, “since you seem to know so much: why do you suppose she sent for me?—I’m assuming you know that she did.”

“Oh, aye,” says he. “Well, now, knowing Lola, I suggest you look in your mirror. Doesn’t that suggest an answer?”

“Come now,” says I, “I know Lola, too, and I flatter as easily as the next man. But she would hardly bring me all the way from England, just to …”

“Why not?” says he. “She brought me all the way from Hungary. Shall we go?”

He led the way down to the street, the two cuirassiers marching at our heels, and showed me into a coach that was waiting at the door. As he swung himself in beside me, with his hand on the window-frame, his sleeve was slightly pulled back, and I saw the star-shaped white scar of a bullet-wound on his wrist. It occurred to me that this von Starnberg was a tougher handful than he looked at first sight; I had noticed the genuine cavalry swing, toes pointing, as he walked, and for all his boyishness there was a compact sureness about him that would have sat on a much older man. This is one to keep an eye on, thinks I.

Lola’s house was in the best part of Munich, by the Karolinen Platz. I say “house”, but it was in fact a little palace, designed by King Ludwig’s own architect, regardless of expense. It was the sight of it, shining new, like a little fairy-tale castle from Italy, with its uniformed sentries at the gate, its grilled windows (a precaution against hostile crowds), its magnificent gardens, and the flag fluttering from its roof, that brought it home to me just how high this woman had flown. This magnificence didn’t signify only money, but power—unlimited power. So why could she want me? She couldn’t need me. Was she indulging some whim—perhaps going to repay me for being in Ranelagh’s box the night she was hissed off the stage? She seemed to be capable of anything. In a moment, after clapping eyes on her palace, I was cursing myself for having come—fear springs eternal in the coward’s breast, especially when he has a bad conscience. After all, if she was so all-powerful, and happened to be vindictive, it might be damned unpleasant …

“Here we are,” says Starnberg, “Aladdin’s cave.”

It almost justified the description. There were flunkeys to hand us out, and more uniformed sentries in the hall, all steel and colour, and the splendour of the interior was enough to take your breath away. The marble floor shone like glass, costly tapestries hung on the walls, great mirrors reflected alcoves stuffed with white statuary and choice furniture, above the staircase hung a chandelier which appeared to be of solid silver, and all of it was in a state of perfection and brilliance that suggested an army of skivvies and footmen working full steam.

“Aye, it’s a roof over her head, I suppose,” says Starnberg, as we gave our busbies to a lackey. “Ah, Lauengram, here is Rittmeister Flashman; is the Gräfin receiving?”

Lauengram was a dapper little gentleman in court-dress, with a thin, impassive face and a bird-like eye. He greeted me in French—which I learned later was spoken a good deal out of deference to Lola’s bad German—and led us upstairs past more lackeys and sentries to an anteroom full of pictures and people. I have a soldier’s eye for such things, and I would say the loot value of that chamber would have kept a regiment for life, with a farm for the farrier-sergeant thrown in. The walls appeared to be made of striped silk, and there was enough gold on the frames to start a mint.

The folk, too, were a prosperous-looking crew, courtly civilians and military in all the colours of the rainbow; some damned handsome women among them. They stopped their chattering as we entered, and I took advantage of my extra three inches on Starnberg to make a chest, touch my moustache, and give them all the cool look-over.

He had barely started to introduce me to those nearest when a door at the far end of the room opened, and a little chap came out backwards, stumbling over his feet, and protesting violently.

“It is no use, madame!” cries he, to someone in the far room. “I have not the power! The Vicar-General will not permit! Ach, no, lieber Herr Gott!” He cowered back as some piece of crockery sailed past him and shattered on the marble floor, and then Lola herself appeared in the doorway, and my heart took a bound at the sight of her.

She was beautiful in her royal rage, just as I remembered, although now she had clothes on. And although her aim seemed as vague as ever, she appeared to have her wrath under better control these days. At all events, she didn’t scream.

“You may tell Dr Windischmann,” says she, her rich husky voice charged with contempt, “that if the king’s best friend desires a private chapel and confessor, she shall have one, and he shall provide it if he values his office. Does he think he can defy me?”

“Oh, madame, please,” cries the little chap. “Only be reasonable! There is not a priest in Germany could accept such a confession. After all, your highness is a Lutheran, and—”

“Lutheran, fiddlesticks! I’m a royal favourite, you mean! That’s why your master has the impertinence to flout me. Let him be careful, and you, too, little man. Lutheran or not, favourite or not, if I choose to have a chapel of my own I shall have it. Do you hear? And the Vicar-General himself shall hear my confession, if I think fit.”

“Please, madame, oh, please!” The little fellow was on the verge of tears. “Why do you abuse me so? It is not my fault. Dr Windischmann objects only to the suggestion of a private chapel and confessor. He says …”

“Well, what does he say?”

The little man hesitated. “He says,” he gulped, “he says that there is a public confessional at Notre-Dame, and you can always go there when you want to accuse yourself of any of the innumerable sins you have committed.” His voice went up to a squeal. “His words, madame! Not mine! Oh, God have mercy!”

As she took one furious step forward he turned and ran for his life past us, his hands over his ears, and we heard his feet clatter on the stairs. Lola stamped her foot, and shouted after him, “Damned papist hypocrite!”, and at this the sycophantic crowd in the ante-chamber broke out in a chorus of sympathy and reproach.

“Jesuit impertinence!”

“Intolerable affront!”

“Scandalous insolence!”

“Silly old bastard.” (This was Starnberg’s contribution.)

“Impossible arrogance of these prelates,” says a stout, florid man near me.

“I’m Church of England myself,” says I.

This had the effect of turning attention on me. Lola saw me for the first time, and the anger died out of her eyes. She surveyed me a moment, and then slowly she smiled.

“Harry Flashman,” says she, and held out a hand towards me—but as a monarch does, palm down and pointing to the ground between us. I took my cue, stepping forward and taking her fingers to kiss. If she wanted to play Good Queen Bess, who was I to object?

She held my hand for a moment afterwards, looking up at me with her glowing smile.

“I believe you’re even handsomer than you were,” says she.

“I would say the same to you, Rosanna,” says I, cavalier as be-damned, “but handsome is too poor a word for it.”

Mind you, it was true enough. I’ve said she was the most beautiful girl I ever met, and she was still all of that. If anything, her figure was more gorgeous than I remembered, and since she was clad in a loose gown of red silk, with apparently nothing beneath it, I could study the subject without difficulty. The effect of her at close quarters was dazzling: the magnificent blue eyes, the perfect mouth and teeth, the white throat and shoulders, and the lustrous black hair coiled up on her head—yes, she was worth her place in Ludwig’s gallery. But if she had ripened wonderfully in the few years since I had last seen her, she had changed too. There was a composure, a stateliness that was new; you would always have caught your breath at her beauty, but now you would feel a little awe as well as lust.

I was leering fondly down at her when Starnberg chimes in.

“‘Rosanna’?” says he. “What’s this, Lola? A pet name?”

“Don’t be jealous, Rudi,” says she. “Captain Flashman is an old, very dear friend. He knew me long before—all this,” and she gestured about her. “He befriended me when I was a poor little nobody, in London.” And she took my arm in both of hers, reached up, and kissed me, smiling with her old mischief. Well, if that was how she chose to remember our old acquaintance, so much the better.

“Listen, all of you,” she called out, and you could have heard a pin drop. “The Rittmeister Flashman is not only the closest to my heart of all my English friends—and those, you remember, include the noblest in the land—but the bravest soldier in the British Army. You see his decorations”—she leaned across me to touch my medals, and the presence of two almost naked, beautifully rounded breasts just beneath my face was delightfully diverting. Lola was always vain of her bosom,²¹ and wore it all but outside her gown; I wished I had had a pinch of snuff to offer her. “Who ever saw a young captain with five medals?” she continued, and there was a chorus of murmured admiration. “So you see, he is to be honoured for more reasons than that he is my guest. There is no soldier in Germany with a higher reputation as a Christian champion.”

I had sense enough to look quizzical and indulgent at this, for I knew that the most popular heroes are those who take themselves lightly. I had heard this kind of rot time without count in the past few years, and knew how to receive it, but it amused me to see that the audience, as usual, took it perfectly seriously, the men looking noble and the women frankly admiring.

Having delivered her little lecture, Lola took me on a tour of introduction, presenting Baron this and Countess that, and everyone was all smirks and bows and polite as pie. I could sense that they were all scared stiff of her, for although she was her old gay self, laughing and chattering as she took me from group to group, she was still the grande dame under the happy surface, with a damned imperious eye. Oh, she had them disciplined all right.

Only when she had taken me apart, to a couch where a flunkey served us Tokay while the others stood at a respectful distance, did she let the mask drop a little, and the Irish began to creep back into her voice.

“Let me look at you comfortably now,” says she, leaning back and surveying me over her glass. “I like the moustaches, Harry, they become you splendidly. And the careless curl; oh, it’s the bonny boy still.”

“And you are still the most beautiful girl in the world,” says I, not to be outdone.

“So they say,” says she, “but I like to hear it from you. After all, when you hear it from Germans it’s no compliment—not when you consider the dumpy cows they’re comparing you with.”

“Some of ’em ain’t too bad,” says I carelessly.

“Ain’t they, though? I can see I shall have to keep an eye on you, my lad. I saw Baroness Pechman wolfing you up a moment ago when she was presented.”

“Which one was she?”

“Come, that’s better. The last one you met—over there, with the yellow hair.”

“She’s fat. Overblown.”

“Ye-es, poor soul, but some men like it, I’m told.”

“Not I, Rosanna.”

“Rosanna,” she repeated, smiling. “I like that. You know that no one ever calls me by that name now. It reminds me of England—you’ve no notion how famous it is to hear English again. In conversation, I mean, like this.”

“Was that why you sent for me—for my conversation?”

“That—and other things.”

“What other things?” says I, seeing a chance to get down to business. “What’s this very delicate matter that your chamberlain talked about?”

“Oh, that.” She put on a coy look. “That can wait a little. You must know I have a new motto since I came to Bavaria: ‘pleasure before business’.” She gave me a sleepy look from beneath those glorious black lashes that made my heart skip a little. “You wouldn’t be so ungallant as to hurry me, would you, Harry?”

“Not where business is concerned,” says I, leering again. “Pleasure’s another matter.”

“Wicked,” she says, smiling lazily, like a sleek black cat. “Wicked, wicked, wicked.”

It is remarkable what fatuities you can exchange with a beautiful woman. I can think shame when I consider the way I sat babbling with Lola on that couch; I would ask you only to remember that she was as practised a seductress as ever wore out bed linen, and just to be beside her, even in a room full of people, was in itself intoxicating. She was overpowering, like some rich tropical flower, and she could draw a man like a magnet. The same Dr Windischmann, Vicar-General, whose name she had been taking in vain so recently, once said that there was not even a priest in his charge who could have been trusted with her. Liszt put it more bluntly and accurately when he observed to me: “As soon as you meet Lola, your mind leaps into bed.”

Anyway, I mention this to explain how it was that after a few moments with her I had forgotten entirely my earlier misgivings about her possible recollection of our parting in London, and my fears that she might harbour a grudge against me for the Ranelagh affair. She had charmed me, and I use the word exactly. Laughing and talking with her over the Tokay, only one thought was in my mind: to get her bedded as swiftly as might be, and the devil with anything else.

While we were chatting so amiably and I, poor ass, was succumbing to her spell, more people were arriving in the ante-room, and presently she had them called up, with Lauengram playing the major-domo, and talked to them in turn. These levées of hers were quite famous in Munich, apparently, and it was her habit to hold court to all sorts of folk: not just distinguished visitors and such odds and ends as artists and poets, but even statesmen and ambassadors. I don’t recall who was there that morning, for between Lola and the Tokay I was not paying much heed, but I know they scraped and fawned to her no end.

Presently she announced that we would all go to see her cuirassiers at exercise, and there was a delay while she went off to change; when she returned it was in full Hussar rig, which showed off her curves admirably and would have caused the police to be called in London. The sycophants “Ooh-ed” and “Aah-ed” and cried “Wunderschön!”, and we all trooped after her to the stables and rode out to a nearby park where a couple of squadrons of cavalry were going through their paces.

Lola, who was riding a little white mare, took great pleasure in the spectacle, pointing with her whip and exclaiming authoritatively on the manoeuvres. Her courtiers echoed her applause faithfully, all except Rudi Starnberg, who I noticed was watching with a critical eye, like myself. I ought to know something about cavalry, and certainly Lola’s cuirassiers were a smart lot on parade, and looked very well as they thundered past at the charge. Starnberg asked me what I thought of them; very fine, I said.

“Better than the British?” says he, with his cocky grin.

“I’ll tell you that when I’ve seen ’em fight,” says I, bluntly.

“You won’t deny they’re disciplined to perfection,” cries he.

“On parade,” says I. “No doubt they’d charge well in a body, too. But let’s see ’em in a mêlée, every man for himself; that’s where good cavalry prove themselves.”

This is true; of course, no one would run faster from a mêlée than I, but Starnberg wasn’t to know that. For the first time he looked at me almost with respect, nodding thoughtfully, and admitted I was probably right.

Lola got bored after half an hour or so, and we returned to her palace, but then we had to turn out again because she wanted to exercise her dogs in the garden. It seemed that whatever she did, everyone else was expected to tag after her, and by God, her amusements were trivial. After the dogs, there was music indoors, with a fat bastard of a tenor sobbing his soul out, and then Lola sang herself—she had a fine contralto, as it happens—and the mob raised the roof. Then there was a reading of poetry, which was damnable, but would probably have been even more painful if I had been able to understand it fully, and then more conversation in the ante-room. The centre of it was a long-jawed, tough-looking fellow whose name meant nothing to me at the time; he talked interminably, about music and liberal politics, and everyone lionised him sickeningly, even Lola. When we went into an adjoining room for a buffet—“erfrischung” as the Germans call it—she introduced him to me as Herr Wagner, but the only conversation we had was when I passed him the ginger and he said “danke”. (I’ve dined out on that incident since, by the way, which shows how ridiculous people can be where celebrities are concerned. Of course, I usually expand the story, and let on that I told him that “Drink, puppy, drink” and “The British Grenadiers” were better music than any damned opera, but only because that is the sort of exaggeration that goes well at dinner parties, and suits my popular character.)²²

But my memories of that afternoon are necessarily vague, in view of what the night was to bring forth. Briefly, I stayed at the palace all day, being unconscionably bored, and impatient to get Lola by herself, which looked like being damned difficult, there was such a crowd always in attendance on her. From time to time we had a word or two, but always with others present, and when we dined I was halfway down the table, with the fat Baroness Pechman on one side of me, and an American whose name I’ve forgotten on the other.²³ I was pretty piqued with Lola for this; quite apart from the fact that I thought I deserved a place near her at the table top, the Yankee was the damnedest bore you ever met, and the giggling blonde butterball on my other side was infuriating in her shrieks of amusement at my halting German. She also had a tendency to let her hand stray on to my thigh beneath the table—not that I minded the compliment, and she would have been pretty enough in a baby-faced way if she had weighed about six stones less, but my mind was on the lovely Lola, and she was a long way off.

Being bored, I was careless, and didn’t keep too close an eye on my glass. It was a magnificent dinner, and the wines followed each other in brilliant succession. Everyone else punished them tremendously, as the Germans always do, and I simply followed suit. It was understandable, but foolish; I learned in later years that the only safe place to get drunk is among friends in your own home, but that evening I made a thorough pig of myself, and the long and short of it was that “Flashy got beastly drunk”, to quote my old friend Tom Hughes.

Not that I was alone; the talk got steadily louder, faces got redder, jokes got coarser—the fact that half those present were women made no difference—and eventually they were roaring and singing around the table, or staggering out to be sick, no doubt, and what conversation there was consisted of shouting at full pitch. I remember there was an orchestra playing incessantly at one end of the hall, and at one point my American companion got up unsteadily on to his chair, amid the cheers of the multitude, and conducted them with a knife and fork. Presently he tumbled down, and rolled under the table. This is an orgy, thinks I, but not a proper orgy. I got it into my head—quite understandably—that such a bacchanalia should be concluded in bed, and naturally looked round for Lola. She had left the table, and was standing off in an alcove at one side, talking to some people; I got up and weaved my way through such of the guests as were standing about—those who were fit to stand, that is—until I fetched up in front of her.

I must have been heroically drunk, for I can remember her face swimming in and out of focus; she had a diamond circlet in her dark hair, and the lights from the chandelier made it glitter dazzlingly. She said something, I don’t recall what, and I mumbled:

“Let’s go to bed, Lola. You an’ me.”

“You should lie down, Harry,” says she. “You’re very tired.”

“Not too tired,” says I. “But I’m damned hot. Come on, Lola, Rosanna, let’s go to bed.”

“Very well. Come along, then.” I’m sure she said that, and then she turned away, and I followed her out of the din and stuffiness of the banqueting chamber into a corridor; I was weaving pretty recklessly, for I walked into the wall once, but she waited for me, and guided me to a doorway, which she opened.

“In here,” she said.

I stumbled past her, and caught the musky sweetness of her perfume; I grabbed at her, and dragged her to me in the darkness. She was soft and thrilling against me, and for a moment her open mouth was under mine; then she slipped away, and I lost my balance and half-fell on to a couch. I called out to her to come back, and heard her say, “A moment; just in a moment,” and then the door shut softly.

I half-lay on the couch, my head swimming with drink and my mind full of lustful thoughts, and I believe I must have passed into a brief stupor, for suddenly I was aware of dim light in the room, and a soft hand was stroking my cheek.

“Lola,” says I, like a moon-calf, and then there were arms round my neck and a soft voice murmuring in my ear, but it was not Lola. I blinked at the face before me, and my hands came in contact with bare, plump flesh—any amount of it. My visitor was Baroness Pechman, and she was stark naked.

I tried to shove her off, but she was too heavy; she clung to me like a leech, murmuring endearments in German, and pushing me back on the couch.

“Go away, you fat slut,” says I, heaving at her. “Gehen Sie weg, dammit. Don’t want you; want Lola.”

I might as well have tried to move St Paul’s; she was all over me, trying to kiss me, and succeeding, her fat face against mine. I cursed and struggled, and she giggled idiotically and began clawing at my breeches.

“No, you don’t,” says I, seizing her wrist, but I was too tipsy to be able to defend myself properly, or else she was strong for all her blubber. She pinned me down, calling me her duckling, of all things, and her chicken, and then before I knew it she had suddenly hauled me upright and had my fine Cherrypicker pants round my knees, and was squirming her fat backside against me.

“Oh, eine hammelkeule!” she squeaked. “Kolossal!”

No woman does that to me twice; I’m too susceptible. I seized handfuls of her and began thrusting away. She was not Lola, perhaps, but she was there, and I was still too foxed and too randy to be choosy. I buried my face in the blonde curls at the nape of her neck, and she squealed and plunged in excitement. And I was just settling to work in earnest when there was a rattle at the door handle, the door opened, and suddenly there were men in the room.

There were three of them; Rudi Starnberg and two civilians in black. Rudi was grinning in delight at the sight of me, caught flagrante seducto, as we classical scholars say, but I knew this was no joke. Drunk as I was, I sensed that here was danger, dreadful danger when I had least expected it. It was in the grim faces of the two with him, hard, tight-lipped fellows who moved like fighters.

I shoved my fat baroness quickly away, and she went down sprawling flabbily on her stomach. I jumped back, trying to pull up my breeches, but cavalry pants fit like a skin, and the two were on me before I could adjust myself. Each grabbed an arm, and one of them growled in execrable French:

“Hold still, criminal! You are under arrest!”

“What the devil for?” I shouted. “Take your hands off me, damn you! What does this mean, Starnberg?”

“You’re arrested,” says he. “These are police officers.”

“Police? But, my God, what am I supposed to have done?”

Starnberg, arms akimbo, glanced at the woman who had climbed to her feet, and was hastening to cover herself with a robe. To my amazement, she was giggling behind her hand; I wondered was she mad or drunk.

“I don’t know what you call it in English,” says he coolly, “but we have several impolite names for it here. Off you go, Gretchen,” and he jerked a thumb towards the door.

“In God’s name, that’s not a crime!” I shouted, but seeing him silent and smiling grimly, I struggled for all I was worth. I was sober enough now, and horribly frightened.

“Let me go!” I yelled. “You must be mad! I demand to see the Gräfin Landsfeld! I demand to see the British Ambassador!”

“Not without your trousers, surely,” says Rudi.

“Help!” I roared. “Help! Let me loose! You scoundrels, I’ll make you pay for this!” And I tried in frenzy to break from the grip of the policemen.

“Ein starker mann,” observed Rudi. “Quiet him.”

One of my captors shifted quickly behind me, I tried to turn, and a splitting pain shot through the back of my head. The room swam round me, and I felt my knees strike the floor before my senses left me.

I wonder sometimes if any man on earth has come to in a cell more often than I have. It has been happening to me all my life; perhaps I could claim a record. But if I did some American would be sure to beat it at once.

This awakening was no different from most of the others: two damnable pains, one inside and one outside my skull, a stomachful of nausea, and a dread of what lay ahead. The last was quickly settled, at any rate; just as grey light was beginning to steal through the bars of my window—which I guessed was in a police station, for the cell was decent—a uniformed guard brought me a mug of coffee, and then conducted me along a corridor to a plain, panelled room containing a most official-looking desk, behind which sat a most official-looking man. He was about fifty, with iron grey hair and a curling moustache, and cold eyes flanking a beaky nose. With him, standing at a writing pulpit beside the desk, was a clerk. The guard ushered me in, bleary, unshaven, blood-stained, and in the fiend’s own temper.

“I demand to be allowed to communicate with my ambassador this instant,” I began, “to protest at the outrageous manner in which—”

“Be quiet,” says the official. “Sit down.” And he indicated a stool before the desk.

I wasn’t having this. “Don’t dare to order me about, you cabbage-eating bastard,” says I. “I am a British officer, and unless you wish to have a most serious international incident to answer for, you will—”

“I will certainly have you whipped and returned to your cell if you do not curb your foul tongue,” says he coldly. “Sit.”

I was staring, flabbergasted at this, when a cheerful voice behind me said:

“Better sit down, old fellow; he can do it, you know,” and I wheeled round to find Rudi Starnberg lolling against a table by the door, which had hidden him from me when I came in. He was fresh and jaunty, with his undress cap tilted forward rakishly over one eye, smoking a cheroot in a holder.

“You!” cried I, and got no further. He shushed me with a gesture and pointed to the stool; at the same time the official rapped smartly on his table, so I decided to sit. My head was aching so much I doubt if I could have stood much longer anyway.

“This is Doctor Karjuss,” says Rudi. “He is a magistrate and legal authority; he has something to say to you.”

“Then he can start by telling me the meaning of this dastardly ill-treatment,” cries I. “I’ve been set upon, my skull cracked, thrown into a filthy cell, denied the right to see my ambassador, and God knows what else. Yes, by the lord, I’ve been threatened with flogging, too!”

“You were placed under arrest last night,” says Karjuss, who spoke tolerable French. “You resisted the officers. They restrained you; that is all.”

“Restrained me? They bloody well half-killed me! And what is this damned nonsense about arrest? What’s the charge, hey?”

“As yet, none has been laid,” says Karjuss. “I repeat, as yet. But I can indicate what they may be.” He sat very prim and precise, his cold eyes regarding me with distaste. “First, obscene and indecent conduct; second, corruption of public morals; third, disorderly behaviour; fourth, resisting the police; fifth—”

“You’re mad!” I shouted. “This is ridiculous! D’you imagine any court in the world would convict me of any of this, on the strength of what happened last night? Good God, there is such a thing as justice in Bavaria, I suppose—”

“There is indeed,” snaps he. “And I can tell you, sir, that I do not merely imagine that a court could convict you—I know it could. And it will.”

My head was reeling with all this. “Oh, to the devil! I’ll not listen to this! I want to see my ambassador. I know my rights, and—”

“Your ambassador would be of no help to you. I have not yet mentioned the most serious complaint. It is possible that a charge of criminal assault on a female may be brought against you.”

At this I staggered to my feet in horror. “That’s a lie! A damned lie! My God, she practically raped me. Why, she—”

“That would not be the evidence she would give before a judge and jury.” His voice was stone cold. “Baroness Pechman is known as a lady of irreproachable character. Her husband is a former Commissioner of Police for Munich. I can hardly imagine a more respectable witness.”

“But … but …” I was at a loss for words, but a horrible thought was forming in my brain. “This is a plot! That’s it! It’s a deliberate attempt to discredit me!” I wheeled on Starnberg, who was negligently regarding his nails. “You’re in this, you rascal! You’ve given false witness!”

“Don’t be an ass,” says he. “Listen to the magistrate, can’t you?”

Stunned and terrified, I sank on to the stool. Karjuss leaned forward, a thin hand tapping the table before him. I had the impression he was enjoying himself.

“You begin to see the seriousness of your position, sir. I have indicated the charges which could be brought—and without doubt, proved—against you. I speak not as an examining magistrate, but as a legal adviser, if you like. These are certainties. No doubt you would persist in denial; against you there would be at least four witnesses of high character—the two police officers who apprehended you, Baroness Pechman, and the Freiherr von Starnberg here. Your word—the word of a known duellist over women, a man who was expelled for drunken behaviour from his school in England—”

“How the devil did you know that?”

“Our gathering of information is thorough. Is it not so? You can guess what your word would count for in the circumstances.”

“I don’t care!” I cried. “You can’t hope to do this! I’m a friend of the Gräfin Landsfeld! She’ll speak for me! By God, when she hears of this, the boot will be on the other foot …”

I went no further. Another horrid thought had struck me. Why hadn’t the all-powerful Lola, whose lightest word was law in Bavaria, intervened by now? She must know all about it; why, the ghastly affair had happened in her own palace! She had been with me not five minutes before … And then, in spite of my aching, reeling head, the full truth of it was plain. Lola knew all about it, yes; hadn’t she lured me to Munich in the first place? And here I was, within twenty-four hours of meeting her again, trapped in what was obviously a damnable, deliberate plot against me. God! Was this her way of punishing me for what had happened years before, when I had laughed at her humiliation in London? Could any woman be so fiendishly cruel, hating so long and bitterly that she would go to such lengths? I couldn’t believe it.

And then Karjuss spoke to confirm my worst fears.

“You can hope for no assistance whatever from the Gräfin Landsfeld,” says he. “She has already disclaimed you.”

I took my aching head in my hands. This was a nightmare; I couldn’t believe it was happening.

“But I’ve done nothing!” I burst out, almost sobbing. “Oh, I galloped that fat trot, yes, but where’s the crime in that? Don’t Germans do it, for Christ’s sake? By God, I’ll fight this! My ambassador—”

“A moment.” Karjuss was impatient. “It seems I have talked to no purpose. Can I not convince you that, legally, you are without hope? And, on conviction, I assure you, you could be imprisoned for life. Even on the minor charges, it would be possible to ensure a maximum sentence of some years. Is that clear? This, inevitably, is what will happen if, by insisting on seeing your ambassador, and enlisting his interest, you cause the whole scandal to become public. At the moment, I would remind you, no charges have been formulated.”

“And they needn’t be,” says Rudi from behind me. “Unless you insist, of course.”

This was too much for me; it made no sense whatever.

“No one wants to be unpleasant,” says Rudi, all silky. “But we have to show you where you stand, don’t you see? To let you see what might happen—if you were obstinate.”

“You’re blackmailing me, then!” I stared from the thin-lipped Karjuss to the debonair stripling. “In God’s name, why? What have I done? What d’ye want me to do?”

“Ah!” says he. “That’s better.” He tapped me twice smartly on the shoulder with his riding-switch. “Much better. Do you know, Doctor,” he went on, turning to Karjuss, “I believe there is no need to trouble you any longer. I’m sure the Rittmeister Flashman has at least realised the—er, gravity of his situation, and will be as eager as we all are to find a mutually satisfactory way out of it. I’m deeply obliged to you, Doctor.”

Even in my scared and bewildered state, I noticed that Karjuss took his dismissal as a lackey does from a master. He stood up, bowed to Starnberg, and with his clerk at his heels, strode out of the room.

“That’s better too,” said young Rudi. “I can’t endure these damned scriveners, can you? I wouldn’t have troubled you with him, really, but there’s no doubt he explains legal technicalities well. Cigar? No?”

“He’s explained nothing, except that I’m the object of a damned conspiracy! God, why do you do this to me? Is it that damned bitch Lola? Is this how she takes her revenge on me?”

“Tut-tut,” says Rudi. “Be calm.” He seated himself on the edge of Karjuss’s desk, swung his legs a moment, and looked at me thoughtfully. Then he gave a slow chuckle.

“It’s too bad, really. I don’t blame you for being annoyed. The truth is, we haven’t been quite honest with you. You’re sure you won’t have a cigar? Oh, well, here’s how it is.”

He lit himself another weed, and held forth.

“I think Karjuss has convinced you that you’re in a most devilish mess. If we choose, we can shut you up for ever, and your own ambassador, and your government, would be the first to say ‘Amen’. Considering the charges, I mean.”

“Trumped-up lies!” I shouted. “False blasted witnesses!”

“But of course. As you yourself said, a dastardly plot. But the point is—you’re caught in it, with no choice but to do as you’re told. If you refuse—the charges are brought, you’re convicted, and good-night.”

And the insolent young hound grinned pleasantly at me and blew a smoke-ring.

“You devil!” cries I. “You—you dirty German dog!”

“Austrian, actually. Anyway, you appreciate your position?”

Oh, I appreciated it, no question of that. I didn’t understand how, or why, they had done this to me, but I was in no doubt of what the consequences would be if I didn’t play their infernal game for them—whatever it was. Blustering hadn’t helped me, and a look at Rudi’s mocking face told me that whining wouldn’t either. Robbed of the two cards which I normally play in a crisis, I was momentarily lost.

“Will you tell me why you’ve done this—why to me? What can you want of me, in heaven’s name?”

“There is a service—a very important service—which only you can perform,” says he. “More than that I can’t say, at the moment. But that is why you were brought to Munich—oh, it was all most carefully planned. Lola’s letter—dictated by me, incidentally—was not altogether inaccurate. ‘Most delicate’ really sums it up.”

“But what service could there possibly be that only I—”

“You’ll have to wait and see, and for heaven’s sake stop expostulating like the victim in a melodrama. Take my word for it, we didn’t go to so much trouble for nothing. Now, you’re a sensible man, I’m sure. Will you bow to the inevitable, like a good chap?”

“That bitch Lola!” I growled. “She’s up to the neck in this—this villainy, I suppose.”

“Up to a point, not up to the neck. She was the means of getting you to Germany, but it wasn’t her idea. We employed her assistance—”

“‘We’? Who the devil’s ‘we’?”

“My friends and I. But you shouldn’t be too hard on her, you know. I doubt if she bears you any ill-will—in fact, I think she’s rather sorry for you—but she knows which side her bread is buttered. And powerful as she is, there are those in Germany whom even she finds it wise to oblige. Now, no more silly questions: are you going to be a good boy or aren’t you?”

“It seems I’ve no choice.”

“Excellent. Now, we’ll have that crack in your head seen to, get you a bath and some clean linen, and then—”

“What then?”

“You and I will make a little journey, my dear Flashman. Or, may I call you Harry? You must address me as Rudi, you know; ‘dirty dog’ and ‘devil’ and ‘swine’ and so on are all very well between comparative strangers, but I feel that you and I may be on the brink of a really fruitful and profitable friendship. You don’t agree? Well, I’m sorry, but we’ll see. Now, if you’ll come along, I have a closed carriage waiting which will take us to a little place of mine where we’ll have you repaired and made all klim-bim, as the Prussians say. Devilish places, these jails, aren’t they; no proper facilities for a gentleman at all …”

Well, what could I do, but trot along at his heels with a mouthful of apprehension? Whatever “they” were up to, I was in for it, and in the meantime there was nothing to do but go with the tide. With my sure instinct, I knew that the “service” I was being blackmailed into was sure to be unpleasant, and quite likely damned dangerous, but my queasy guts didn’t interfere with my logical process. I’m a realist, and it was already in my mind that in whatever lay ahead—a journey, initially, according to Rudi—some opportunity of escape must surely present itself. Unless you are actually locked up, escapes are not as difficult as many folk think; you simply bolt, seize the first available horse, and go like hell for safety—in this case probably the Austrian frontier. Or would Switzerland be better? It was farther, but Rudi and his sinister friends probably had influence in Austria. And they would not reckon on me trying a forced ride to the Swiss border …

“Oh, by the way,” says Rudi, as we left the police office and he handed me into a carriage, “to a man of action like yourself it may seem that an opportunity will arise of giving me the slip. Don’t try it. I would kill you before you’d gone five yards.” And he smiled genially as he settled himself opposite me.

“You’re mighty sure of yourself,” growls I.

“With cause,” says he. “Look here.” He gave his right arm a shake, and there was a pocket pistol in his right hand. “I’m a dead shot, too.”

“Naturally,” says I, but I decided it was probably true. Anyone who keeps a pistol in his sleeve can usually use it.

“And, in all modesty, I’m probably your master with the sabre as well—or with a knife,” says Master Rudi, putting his pistol away. “So you see, it wouldn’t pay you to run for it.”

I said nothing, but my spirits sank a few notches lower. He was going to be an efficient watch-dog, rot him, the more so since he believed me to be “a man of action”. He knew enough of my reputation, no doubt, to put me down as a desperate, dangerous fellow who didn’t give a damn for risks. If he’d known me for the poltroon I was he might have been less alert.

So in the meantime, I was at the mercy of Freiherr Rudolf von Starnberg, and if I’d known him then as I knew him later I’d have been even more nervous than I was. For this gay, devil-may-care youngster, with his curly head and winning smile, was one of the hardest cases I’ve ever encountered—a thoroughly bad, unscrupulous and fatally dangerous ruffian—and, as you can imagine, I have known a few. Not many of them, scoundrels that they were, delighted in wickedness for its own sake, but Rudi did. He enjoyed killing, for example, and would kill laughing; he was without shame where women were concerned, and without pity, too. I dare say there may have been crimes he didn’t commit, but it can only have been for want of opportunity. He was an evil, vicious, cruel rascal.

We got on very well, really, I suppose, all things considered. This was not just because I shared most of his vices, but because he believed erroneously that I shared his only virtue, which was courage. He was too young to know what fear was, and he imagined that I was as big a daredevil as he was himself—my Afghan reputation was pretty glorious, after all. But in addition I must admit that he could be a good companion when he chose—he had a great fund of amiable conversation and a filthy mind, and loved the good things of life—so it was not difficult to get along with him.

He was all consideration that first day. At the house he took me to there was a most competent French valet who dressed and bathed my head, provided me with a bath and a suit of my own clothes—for they had brought my baggage from my hotel—and later cooked us both a most splendid omelette before we set off for the station. Rudi was in haste to catch the train: we were bound for Berlin, he told me, but beyond that I could get nothing out of him.

“Wait and see,” says he. “And while you’re waiting, I’d be obliged if you would stop talking French and practise your German—you’re going to need it.”

With that mysterious instruction I had to be content—and I had to be obedient, too, for devil a word of French would he say or listen to from then on. However, with a bottle of hock inside me, the unknown future looked a little less bleak, and when we boarded the evening train I was at least momentarily resigned to my situation. Time enough to start fretting again when we reached Berlin.

The journey took us three days, although nowadays you would do it in a matter of hours. But those were the early years of railways, and the line between Munich and Berlin was not complete. I know we did part of the trip by coach, but I can’t recall where; one night we spent in Leipzig, certainly, but I was paying no great heed to my surroundings. As the miles went by my apprehension was growing again—what the devil did “they” want me for? I tried several times to pump Rudi, but without success.

“You’ll find out in good time,” was all he would say, with a knowing grin. “I’ll tell you this much—I’d do the job in a moment if I had the chance. I envy you, indeed. But you’re the only man for it—and don’t fret: it’s well within your powers.”

That should have cheered me up, but it didn’t. After all, my powers, so far as he and the world knew them, were all concerned with war, slaughter, and heroism, and I wanted none of that if I could help it. But I had sense enough not to let him get a glimpse of my lily liver; no doubt, if my worst fears were realised, he’d see all he wanted of it, in time.

We spent much of our time in the train playing piquet and écarté, and recognised each other as fairish sharps, but neither of us was able to take much interest in the game. I was too inwardly nervous, and he was too busy keeping an eye on me—he was one of these extraordinary folk who can be on the hair trigger of action for days and nights on end, and not once in that journey was there a decent chance to take him unawares. Not that I’d have dared to try if there had been; I had got a healthy respect for young Rudi by now, and didn’t doubt that he would shoot me without the slightest hesitation, and take his chance on the consequences.

So we came to Berlin, on a night of bitter snow and wind, and there was another coach at the station to whirl us away through the busy lamp-lit streets. Even with our fur-collared coats, and rugs and hot bricks, it was damnably chilly in that coach after the warmth of the train, and I wasn’t cheered by the fact that our journey was obviously not going to be a short one—that much was clear from the fact that we had a couple of hampers of food with us and a basket of bottles as well.

It lasted another three days, what with snow-choked roads and the coach shedding a wheel, and damned uncomfortable it was. I guessed we were travelling west, at about twenty miles a day, but beyond that there was nothing to be learned from the dreary German landscape. The snow stuck to the windows, and the coach was like an ice-house; I cursed and grumbled a good deal, but Starnberg sat patiently in his corner, huddled in his great-coat, whistling softly through his teeth—his observations were either insolently cheerful or caustic, and I couldn’t decide which I disliked more.

It was towards evening on the third day that I awoke from a doze to find Rudi with the window down, peering out into the dusk. The snow had stopped for the moment, but there was a keen wind whistling into the coach, and I was about to tell him brusquely to shut the window before we froze, when he pulled his head in and said:

“Journey’s end, thank God. Now for some decent food at last and a proper bed.”

I leaned forward to look out, and I’ve seen cheerier prospects. We were rolling slowly up a long avenue of trees towards a huge, bleak house, half mansion, half castle; in the fading light, with the wintry sky behind it, it looked in silhouette like the setting for some gothic novel, all towers and spires and rugged stonework. There were lights in some of the windows, and a great lantern shone yellow above the pointed archway of its main door, but they served only to exaggerate the ancient gloom of the place. Childe Flashy to the Dark Tower came, thinks I, and tried not to imagine what lay within.

It proved to be a match for the exterior. We were shown into an immense, stone-flagged hall, hung round with faded tapestries and a few old trophies of arms and the chase; there were archways without doors leading out of it, and in keeping with a general air of medieval ghastliness, there were even torches burning in brackets on the walls. The place felt like a tomb, and the ancient butler who received us would have made an excellent gravedigger.

But what daunted me most of all was the presence in the hall of a strapping trio of fellows, all of military cut, who welcomed Rudi and weighed me up with cold, professional eyes. One was a massive, close-cropped, typical Prussian, whose fleshy face was wealed with a great sabre cut from brow to chin; the second was a tall, supple, sinister gentleman with sleek black hair and a vulpine smile; the third was stocky and stout, balding and ugly. All were in undress uniforms, and as tough-looking a set of customers as you could wish for; my spirits sank even farther as I realised that with this crew on hand my chances of escape had dwindled out of sight.

Rudi performed introductions. “My friends Kraftstein”—the big Prussian clicked his heels—“de Gautet”—a bow from the sinister Scaramouche—“and Bersonin”—the bald ugly one barely nodded. “Like you and me, they are military men, as you see. You’ll find they are devoted to your welfare and er … safekeeping,” says Master Rudi pleasantly, “and any one of them is almost as tough as I am, nicht wahr?”

“Ich glaube es,” says the sleek de Gautet, showing his teeth. Another confident bastard, and decidedly unpleasant.

While he and Kraftstein stayed talking with Rudi, I was conveyed to a room on the second floor by Bersonin, and while he kept a bleak eye on me I was graciously permitted to change, wash, and eat a meal which the ancient butler brought. It was tolerable food, with an excellent Rhenish, and I invited the taciturn Bersonin to join me in a glass, but he shook his head. I tried my German on him, but getting nothing but grunts for my pains I turned my back on him and devoted myself to my meal. If he wanted to play the jailer, he could be treated like one.

Presently back comes Master Rudi, very debonair in a clean shirt, freshly-pressed breeches and polished boots, with the Brothers Grimm, Kraftstein and de Gautet, at his heels.

“All fed and watered?” says he. “Capital. I can see you two have been getting along famously. I trust our good Bersonin hasn’t overwhelmed you with his inconsequential chatter. No?” He grinned impudently at Bersonin, who shrugged and scowled. “My, what a madcap he is,” went on Rudi, who had evidently dined too, and was back at the top of his most amiable form. “Well, come along with me, and we’ll see what other entertainment this charming establishment can offer.”

“All the entertainment I want is to find out what the devil I’m doing here,” says I.

“Oh, you haven’t long to wait now,” says he, and he conducted me down the corridor, up another stairway, and into a long gallery. Just as we set foot in it, there sounded from somewhere ahead of us the unmistakable crack of a pistol-shot; I jumped, but Rudi only grinned over his shoulder.

“Rats,” says he. “The place is thick with ’em. We’ve tried poison and dogs, but our host believes in more direct methods. There he goes again,” he added, as another shot sounded. “They must be out in force tonight.”

He paused in front of a stout, metal-studded door. “Here we are,” cries he, throwing it wide, and waving me in. “Your patience is rewarded.”

It was a fine, spacious room, far better appointed than anything I had seen so far, with carpet on the flags, a bright fire in the huge grate, solid-looking leather furniture, several shelves of books round the panelled walls, and a long, narrow polished table running down the centre under a brilliant candelabra. At the far end of the table sat a man, his feet cocked up on the board, reloading a long pistol, and at the sight of him I stopped as though I had walked into a wall. It was Otto von Bismarck.