The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
scuppered.
So I gnawed my nails the whole way—God knows I was hungry enough—and finally reached Munich in a rare state of jumps, my belly as hollow as a coffin, and my problem still unsolved.
As soon as I stepped from the station, clutching my bag and huddling in my cloak, I felt the hairs rising on my neck. There was something in the air, and I’ve sensed it too often to be mistaken. I had felt it in Kabul, the night before the Residency fell; I was to know it again at Lucknow, and half a dozen other places—the hushed quiet that hangs over a place that is waiting for a blow to fall. You sense it in a siege, or before the approach of a conquering army; folk hurry by with soft footsteps, and talk in low voices, and there is an emptiness about the streets. The life and bustle die, and the whole world seems to be listening, but no one knows what for. Munich was expectant and fearful, waiting for the whirlwind that was to rise within itself.
It was a dim, chilly evening, with only a little wind, but shops and houses were shuttered as against an impending storm. I found a little beer shop, and spent the last of my coppers on a stein and a piece of sausage. As I munched and drank I glanced over a newspaper that someone had left on the table; there had been student rioting, apparently over the closure of the university, and troops had been called out. There had been some sharp clashes, several people had been wounded, property had been destroyed, and the houses of prominent people had been virtually besieged.
The paper, as I recall, didn’t think much of all this, but it seemed to be on the students’ side, which was odd. There were a few hints of criticism of King Ludwig, which was odder still, journalists being what they are, and knowing which side their bread is buttered—at all events, they didn’t see a quick end to the general discontent, unless the authorities “heeded the voice of popular alarm and purged the state of those poisons which had for all too long eaten into the very heart of the nation”—whatever that meant.
All in all, it looked as though Munich was going to be a warm town, and no place for me, and I was just finishing my sausage and speculating on how the devil to get away, when a tremendous commotion broke out down the street, there was a crash of breaking glass, and the voice of popular alarm was raised with a vengeance. Everyone in the shop jumped to his feet, and the little landlord began roaring for his assistants to get the shutters up and bar the door; there was a rising chorus of cheering out in the dark, the thunder of a rushing crowd, the shop window was shattered, and almost before I had time to get under the table with my bag there was a battle royal in progress in the street.
Amidst the din of shouts and cheers and cracking timber, to say nothing of the babble in the shop itself, I grabbed my bag and was making for the back entrance, but a stout old chap with grey whiskers seized hold of me, bellowing to make himself heard.
“Don’t go out!” he roared. “Here we are safe! They will cut you to pieces out there!”
Well, he knew what he was talking about, as I realised when the sound of the struggle had passed by, and we took a cautious peep out. The street looked as though a storm had swept through it; there wasn’t a whole window or shutter left, half a dozen bodies, dead or unconscious, were lying on the road, and the pavement was a litter of brickbats, clubs, and broken glass. A hundred yards down the street a handcart was being thrown on to an improvised bonfire; there were perhaps a score of fellows dancing round it, and then suddenly there were cries of alarm and they broke and ran. Round the corner behind came a solid mob of youths, rushing in pursuit with their vanguard carrying a banner and howling their heads off; some carried torches and I had a glimpse of red caps as they bore down, chanting “Allemania! Allemania!”
More than that I didn’t see, for we all ducked back inside again, and then they had stormed past like a charge of heavy cavalry, the sound of their chanting dying into the distance, and the occasional smashing of glass and crash of missiles grew fainter and fainter.
The old chap with whiskers was swearing fearfully beside me.
“Allemania! Scum! Young hounds of hell! Why don’t the soldiers sabre them down? Why are they not crushed without mercy?”
I remarked that crushing them was probably easier said than done, from what I’d seen, and asked who they were. He turned pop-eyes on me.
“Where have you been, sir? The Allemania? I thought everyone knew they were the hired mob of that she-devil Montez, who is sent to trouble the world, and Munich in particular!” And he called her several unpleasant names.
“Ah, she won’t trouble it much longer, though,” says another one, a thin cove in a stove-pipe hat and mittens. “Her time is almost run.”
“God be thanked for it!” cries the old chap. “The air of Munich will be sweeter without her and her filthy bordello perfumes.” And he and the thin cove fell to miscalling her with a will.
Now, as you can guess, I pricked up my ears at this, for it sounded like excellent news. If the good Muncheners were kicking Lola out at last, they would get three cheers and a tiger from me. She had been in my mind, of course, ever since I’d decided to make for Munich, although I’d determined to keep well clear of her and the Barerstrasse. But if she had fallen from favour I was agog to hear all about it; I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather listen to. I pressed the stout old fellow for details, and he supplied them.
“The king has given way at last,” says he. “He has thrown her out—the one good thing to come out of all this civil unrest that is sweeping the country. Herr Gott! the times we live in!” He looked me up and down. “But you, then, are a stranger to Munich, sir?”
I said I was, and he advised me to continue to be one. “This is no place for honest folk these days,” says he. “Continue your journey, I say, and thank God that wherever you come from has not been ruined by the rule of a dotard and his slut.”
“Unless,” says the thin chap, grinning, “you care to linger for an hour or two and watch Munich exorcising its demon. They stoned her house last night, and the night before; I hear the crowds are in the Barerstrasse this evening again; perhaps they’ll sack the place.”
Well, this was splendid altogether. Lola, who had dragged me into the horror of Schönhausen and Jotunberg at Bismarck’s prompting, was being hounded out of Munich by the mob, while I, the poor dupe and puppet, would be strolling out with my pockets lined with tin. She was losing everything—and I was gaining a fortune. It isn’t often justice is so poetic.
True, I still had to solve my immediate problem of getting out of Munich without funds. I daren’t try to pop any of my swag, and short of waylaying someone in an alley—and I hadn’t the game for that—I could see no immediate way of raising the wind. But it was a great consolation to know that Lola’s troubles were infinitely more pressing—by the sound of it she’d be lucky to get through the night alive. Would they sack her palace? The thought of being on hand to gloat from a safe distance was a famous one—if it was safe, of course.
“What about her Allemania?” I asked. “Won’t they defend her?”
“Not they,” says the thin man, sneering. “You’ll find few of them near the Barerstrasse tonight—they riot down here, where they conceive themselves safe, but they’ll risk no encounter with the folk who are crying ‘Pereat Lola’ at her gates. No,” says he, rubbing his mittens, “our Queen of Harlots will find she has few friends left when the mob flush her out.”
Well, that settled it; I wasn’t going to miss the chance of seeing the deceitful trollop ridden out of town on a rail—supposing the Germans had picked up that fine old Yankee custom. I could spare an hour or two for that, so off we set, the thin chap and I, for the Barerstrasse.
A mob is a frightening thing, even when it is a fairly orderly German one, and you happen to be part of it. As we came to the Barerstrasse, across the Karolinen Platz, we found ourselves part of a general movement; in ones and twos, and in bigger groups, folk were moving towards the street where Lola’s bijou palace stood; long before we reached it we heard the rising murmur of thousands of voices, swelling into a sullen roar as we came close to the fringes of the mob itself. The Barerstrasse was packed by an enormous crowd,