The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
By good luck I had a piece of string with me, which I looped over two of his toes, placing a nice sharp pebble in between them. I put a stick through the loop and twisted it a little. It always used to liven the Rugby fags up, although of course one couldn’t go too far with them, and de Gautet’s response was gratifying. He squealed and writhed, but I held his legs down easily.
“You see, my boy,” says I, “You’d better open your potato trap or it’ll be the worse for you.”
“You villain!” cries he, sweating with fear. “Is this how you treat a gentleman?”
“No,” says I, enjoying myself. “It’s how I treat a dirty, cowardly, murdering ruffian.” And I twisted the stick, hard. He screamed, but I kept on twisting, and his yells were such that I had to stuff my glove in his mouth to quiet him. I’d no real fear of interruption, for he had been at such pains to get me alone that I doubted if any of his precious friends were in the district, but it seemed best to keep him as mum as possible.
“Nod your head when you’ve had enough, de Gautet,” says I cheerfully. “When I’ve broken all your toes I’ll show you how the Afghan ladies treat their husbands’ prisoners.”
And I went back to work on him. I confess that I thoroughly enjoyed it, as only a true coward can, for only your coward and bully really understand how terrible pain can be. De Gautet wasn’t much braver than I am; a few more twists and he was jerking his head up and down like Punch, and for some reason this put me into a great fury. I gave him a few more twists for luck, until the string broke. Then I pulled the gag out.
He was groaning and calling me filthy names, so I taught him manners with the point of the knife in his leg.
“Now, you bastard, why did you try to kill me?”
“It was the Baron’s order. Ah, dear God!”
“Never mind God. What for? What about my ten thousand pounds, damn you?”
“It … it was never intended that you would be paid.”
“You mean I was to be murdered from the start, is that it?”
He rolled over, moaning and licking his lips, looking at me with terror in his eyes.
“If I tell you … all … oh, my feet! If I tell you … do you swear, on your honour as a gentleman, to let me go?”
“Why should I? You’ll tell me anyway. Oh, all right then, on my honour as a gentleman. Now, then.”
But he insisted that I swear on my mother’s memory, too—what he thought all that swearing was worth I can’t imagine, but he wasn’t feeling himself, I dare say, and foreigners tend to take an Englishman’s word when he gives it. That’s all they know.
So I swore his oaths, and it all came tumbling out. The Prince Carl Gustaf hadn’t had pox at all; he was clean as an old bone. But Bismarck had plotted with Detchard to spirit him away and put me in his place—as they had indeed done. The pox story had simply been an excuse for my benefit, and if it seems ludicrously thin now I can only assert that it seemed damned convincing coming from Bismarck in his lonely stronghold with Kraftstein waiting to fillet me if I didn’t believe it. Anyway, their little plan was that after a few days, when Strackenz was convinced it had got a genuine consort for its Duchess, I was to be murdered, in the Jotun Gipfel, and de Gautet was to vanish over the German border. There would be a hue and cry, and my body would be found and carried back to Strackenz amid general consternation.
And then, wonder of wonders, papers would be found in my clothing to suggest that I wasn’t Prince Carl at all, but a daring English impostor called Flashman, an agent of Lord Palmerston, if you please, and up to God-knows-what mischief against the security and well-being of the Duchy of Strackenz. There would be chaos and confusion, and a diplomatic upheaval of unprecedented proportions.
I couldn’t take it in at first. “You bloody liar! D’ye expect me to believe this cock-and-bull? For that matter, who in the world would credit it?”
“Everyone.” His face was working with pain. “You are not the Prince—you would be identified for what you really are—even if it took time, witnesses who knew you could be brought. Who would doubt it?—it is true.”
My brain was reeling. “But, in God’s name, what for? What could Bismarck gain from all this?”
“The discredit of England—your Lord Palmerston. Utter bewilderment and rage, in Strackenz. Dane and German are on a knife-edge here—there would be bloodshed and disorder. That is what the Baron wants—ah, Herr Gott, my feet are on fire!”
“Damn your feet! Why the hell does he want bloodshed and disorder?”
“As a—pretext. You know that Strackenz and Schleswig and Holstein are bitterly divided between Dane and German. Disorder in one would spread to the others—the old rivalry between Berlin and Copenhagen would be fanned into flame—for the sake of German interest, Berlin would march into Strackenz, then into the other two. Who could stop her? It is only the—excuse—that is lacking.
“And how would my murder be explained, in God’s name?”
“It would not need—explaining. That you were an English agent—that would be enough.”
Well, that seemed the silliest bit of all, to me, and I said so—who was going to buy me as an agent?
“Feel the lining of your tunic—on the right side.” For all his pain, he couldn’t keep a grin of triumph off his face. “It is there—feel.”
By God, it was. I ripped out the lining with my knife, and there was a paper, covered in tiny cryptograms—God knows what they meant, but knowing Bismarck I’ll wager it was good, sound, incriminating stuff. I sat gazing at it, trying to understand what de Gautet had been telling me.
“It has all been exactly planned,” says he. “It could not fail. Confusion and riot must follow on your death—and Germany would seize the opportunity to march.”
I was trying vainly to make sense of the whole, incredible scheme—and to find a flaw in it.
“Aha, hold on,” says I. “This is all very fine—but just because Bismarck has fine ideas about marching into Strackenz don’t mean a thing. There’s a government in Berlin, I believe—suppose they don’t share his martial ardour—what then?”
“But it is planned, I tell you,” cries he. “He has friends – men of power—in high places. It is concerted—and when the chance comes in Strackenz, they will act as he says. He can force the thing—he has the vision—das genie.”
Aye, perhaps he had the genius. Now, of course, I know that he could have done it—I doubt if there was any diplomatic coup that that brilliant, warped intelligence couldn’t have brought off; for all that he was the most dreadful bastard who ever sat in a chancellery, he was the greatest statesman of our time. Yes, he could have done it—he did, didn’t he, in the end, and where is Strackenz now? Like Schleswig and Holstein, it is buried in the German empire that Otto Bismarck built.
It was just my bad luck that I had been cast—through the sheer chance of an uncanny resemblance—to be the first foundation-stone of his great dream. This was to be his initial step to power, the opening move in his great game to unify Germany and make it first of the world’s states. Squatting there, on the damp turf of the Jotun Gipfel, I saw that the crazy scheme in which he had involved me had a flawless logic of its own—all he needed was something to strike a spark in Strackenz, and I was the tinder. Thereafter, with him gently guiding from the wings, the tragic farce could run its course.
De Gautet groaned, and brought me back to earth. He was lying there, this foul brute who would have put a bullet in my back—aye, and had already planted his sabre cuts in my skull. In a rage I kicked him—this was the pass that he and his damned friends had brought me to, I shouted, stranded in the middle of their blasted country, incriminated, helpless, certain to be either murdered by Bismarck’s