Flashman And The Tiger

"Sleeping sound," chuckles a voice from the dark, and Hutton turned back to me. "Four more unlucky citizens will be assaulted and robbed this fine night, so your cove won’t seem out o' place. Damnable, these garotters! Bad as London … So your best plan, colonel, is to discover our unconscious friend and raise the alarm, see? How’s that for establishing your bona fides?" He called it "bonnyfydes"—and why the devil I should remember that, of all things, you may well wonder.

"Time to go!" snaps Hutton, straightening up. "Find another victim, eh, Delzons? Off with you, then!" His hand clapped my shoulder again. "All clear, colonel? Not a word about this to Starnberg, mind! You’ll see me again … afterwards. Good hunting, sir!"

And so help me, he and his lousy Frog accomplice were gone like phantoms into the dark, without another word, leaving me in a rather disturbed state. I’d have cried out after them if I’d been capable of speech; as it was, I had wit enough to see the wisdom of his advice anent Beefy, and after a few seconds' frantic search in the bushes I found the brute, dead to the world, and was waking the echoes with shouts of: "Helfen! Polizei! Ein Mann ist tot! Helfen, schnell, helfen!" Thereafter it seemed politic to run towards the casino, repeating my alarm and guiding interested parties to the scene of the crime.

It worked perfectly, of course. Willem was among the first on hand, fairly blazing with unspoken suspicion, which I allayed by explaining that I’d been waiting by the fountain for Kralta when sounds of battery in the bushes had attracted my attention, and on investigating I’d found Beefy supine with two sturdy footpads taking inventory of his pockets. They had fled, I had pursued but lost them in the dark, and returned to minister to Beefy and raise the alarm. And where the blazes were the police, then?

It didn’t convince him above half, I’m sure, not at first; I could guess he was wondering why I hadn’t taken the chance to vanish … and coming slowly to the conclusion that I hadn’t wanted to. What sealed the thing was the discovery, a few minutes later, of another unfortunate wandering dazed on the gravel walks and gasping out a tale of armed footpads who’d knocked him down and pinched his watch and purse; half an hour afterwards a third was found unconscious by one of the casino gates, similarly beaten and robbed.

By that time the peelers had arrived in force, shepherding the frightened mob back into the casino, where Beefy and the other victims were being attended to. Plainly a gang of footpads had marked down the casino patrons as well-lined targets, and were making a lightning sweep of the grounds. I made a statement to a most efficient young police inspector, watched closely by a still puzzled Willem with Kralta at his elbow; they were talking sotto voce, and if I’d felt like laughing I dare say I’d have been amused at the slow change of expression on Willem’s face, for it was clear that she was insisting that here was proof of my sincerity, since not only had I not made for the high hills, I’d absolutely come to Beefy’s aid and been first to holler for the law. At last he nodded, but I guessed he was still leery of me—Rudi would have been.

Nothing was said, though, about my "bonnyfydes" as we returned to the Golden Ship, Kralta on my arm murmuring thanks that I hadn’t been molested, and Willem snapping impatiently at Beefy who brought up the rear with his head in a sling. I gathered from their half-heard conversation that Beefy was lamenting the loss of a lock of hair belonging to some bint called Leni which he’d carried in the back of his watch, and getting scant sympathy; Prussians, you know, care not two dams about their inferiors. Neither do I, but I know it’s good business to pretend that I do, and looked in on Beefy before retiring to lay a consoling hand on his thick skull; he just gaped like a ruptured bullock.

One of the lessons that I’d impress on young chaps is this: if you want to pull a bluff, do it with your might, no half-measures. However unlikely the ploy, if your neck is brazen enough, it’s odds on you’ll get away with it. Take the time I was caught in flagrante in a Calcutta hotel by an outraged husband, and sold him on the idea that I was a doctor sounding her chest, or the occasion when they found me climbing through Jefferson Davis’s skylight and I pretended I was a workman come to fix his lightning-rod. A moment’s guilty hesitation, and I’d have been done for; indignant astonishment at being interfered with saw me through. But I’ve never done better than Willem von Starnberg in Franz-Josef’s woods above Ischl; that was a bravura performance, and would have been a pleasure to witness if I hadn’t been writhing in pain after he’d dam' near broken my leg. His father would have been proud of him.