Читать книгу Beau Ideal - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 6
§3
ОглавлениеA long heavy silence was broken by Jacob the Jew.
“The lad we want here is the bold bright Rastignac ... Rastignac, the Mutineer....”
“Oh, did you know him?” said the Englishman.
“What about him?” asked the Frenchman.
“What about him? Ho, ho!... He gave the Government some trouble, one way and another.... They stuck him in the Zephyrs, but they didn’t keep him long. What do you think he did?...
“He used to carry a flexible saw-file round his upper gums from one cheek to the other, and they say he carried some little tool that he used to swallow—on the end of a string, with the other end tied round a back tooth—on search days.
“Well, he filed his manacles and got out.... And he killed two sentries, absolutely silently, by stabbing them in the back of the neck with a long darning-needle, to which he had fitted a tiny wooden handle.... There is a spot, you know, at the base of the brain, just where the skull rests on the backbone.... The point of a needle in there ... just in the right spot ... and pouff!...
“Rastignac knew the spot, all-right. And when he was clear, and dressed in a dead sentry’s uniform, did he run off like any other escaping prisoner?... Not he.... He broke into a Public Works Department shed ... took a pot of black paint, and a pot of white, and some brushes, and marched off at daybreak, as bold as brass....”
“Where to?” inquired the American.
“To the nearest milestone,” chuckled Jacob the Jew, “... and neatly touched up the black kilometre figures and their white border.... And then to the next.... And the next....
“When patrols passed, he gave them good-day and exchanged jokes and the latest news, for cigarettes and a drink.... They say he visited several camps and made himself useful, with his paint, to one or two officers, and reported some rascal who had smeared one of his nice black figures because he wouldn’t give him tobacco!...
“And so he painted his way, milestone by milestone, to Oran, where he reported himself, produced the dead sentry’s livret and leave-papers, and was wafted comfortably, by Messageries Maritimes, to France....”
“Well, and what would he do if he were here?” asked a querulous voice. “We may suppose that your Rastignac had neither the wings nor feet of a fly.... And if he were here and got us out, where could we go?... More likely to have caused the death of us all.... Like those two devils Dubitsch and Barre nearly did to their gang....”
“What was that?” asked Badineff.
“Why, these two unutterable swine were with a working-party in the zone dissidente, and at night were in a little perimeter-camp made with dry cactus and thick heavy thorn.... Their beautiful scheme—and they nearly brought it off—was to creep out on a windy night and to set fire to these great thorn-walls of the zareba! This stuff burns like paper, and they’d got hold of some matches.... It mattered nothing to them that the remaining ninety-eight of their fellow-convicts would inevitably be roasted to death in the process.... Those two would easily escape in the confusion, while the men of the escort were vainly doing their best to save the rest of the wretched prisoners.... Their position, as you may imagine, would be just that of a bundle of mice tied together by their tails and packed round with cotton-wool soaked in kerosene....
“As luck would have it—the luck of the other ninety-eight, anyhow—the first match was blown out, and a sentry had seen the glare of it.... He fired and challenged after, wounding Dubitsch and so flustering Barre, who had the matches, that he dropped the lot and was unable to strike another before the sentry was upon him....”
“What happened then?” asked the Englishman.
“The Sergeant-Major in charge of the escort simply returned them to their place in the gang—but took care that the gang should know exactly what had happened....”
“And then?...” prompted the Englishman, when the man stopped, as one who had said enough....
“Oh—they died ... they died.... They died that same night, of something or other.... Judging from their faces, they had not died happily....”
“Sounds as though you saw them,” observed Jacob the Jew.
“Quite,” observed the narrator laconically.
“Not like poor dear little Tou-tou Boil-the-Cat,” observed Jacob.
“What happened to him?” asked the Querulous Voice.
“Oh, he died ... he died.... He died suddenly, one night, of something or other.... But no-one was able to judge from his face whether he died happily or not....”
“Tell us about him,” suggested the American.
“About Tou-tou Boil-the-Cat?... He wasn’t a nice man.... Made quite a name for himself, Montmartre way, before he went to the Legion.... There was some talk about a Lovely Lady, the Queen of his Band.... Wonderful golden hair.... Known to all kind friends as Casque d’Or.... They say he cut it off.... Her head, I mean.... Got into bad trouble in the Legion too.... Life sentence in the Zephyrs....
“A brave little man, but he hadn’t the other virtue that one rather demands.... No.... Something of a stool-pigeon.... There were thirteen convicts in a tent ... a most unlucky number ... but it was soon reduced to twelve, through M’sieu Tou-tou Boil-the-Cat giving information that affected the career—indeed, abbreviated it—of one of his comrades....
“Yes ... thirteen went forth from that tent to labour in the interests of France’s colonial expansion that sunny morning, and only twelve returned to it, to sleep the sleep of the unjust, that dewy eve.... A round dozen....
“But they did not sleep through the stilly night, though the night remained quite stilly.... And behold, when another bright day broke, those twelve were now eleven....
“The guard, who was but a simple peasant man, could not make the count come to more than eleven.... The corporal—possibly a shade more intelligent, could not by any means make the count a dozen.... The Sergeant, a man who could count quite well, swore there were but ten and one.... Not the Commandant himself could make us twelve!...
“With the help of a bottle of absinthe he might make us twenty-two—but even then he realized that he should have seen twenty-four....
“No.... Tou-tou Boil-the-Cat was gone.... Gone like a beautiful dream ... or like the foul brutish nightmare that he was....
“And that, you know, puzzled our kind superiors....
“For, as it happened, it was quite impossible for anyone to have escaped from the camp that night—full moon, double sentries, constant patrols, and all-night wakefulness and uneasiness on account of expected Arab attack....
“But gone he had....
“We were interrogated severally, and collectively, and painfully ... until they must have admired our staunchness and the wonderful cleverness of the missing man....
“We eleven slept in the tent for a month ... and the country round was scoured until not one grain of sand was left upon another, and there was not a locust, a scorpion, a serpent nor a vulture, whose dossier was not known....
“And at the end of a month the whole camp moved on....”
“Did they ever find him?” asked Badineff.
“No ... they didn’t,” was the reply. “The jackals found him....”
“Where?” asked the Englishman.
“Under the sand that had formed the floor of the tent of the eleven ...” was the answer.
“Sounds as though you were there ...” said the Querulous Voice.
“Quite ...” replied Jacob the Jew, and yawned.
