Flashman And The Tiger

You may think, for a man who puts a fairly low price on maiden virtue, that I was getting into a rare sweat at the thought of her being deflowered by Moran. But your own flesh and blood is something different; she wasn’t like the women of my youth—most of whom had been a pretty loose set, anyway. She was sweet and gentle and from a different stable altogether—the thought of Moran subjecting her brought me out in a sweat of horror. Damn Stanger, for his idiocy, and damn Gezo, for not cutting Moran’s whelp throat when he had the chance. Careless old swine. But there was no use cursing; I had to think, and if necessary (shocking thought) to act. And after an unconscionable amount of drink and heart-searching, I realised that I was going to have to kill Moran.

Maybe it was senile decay that brought me to this awful conclusion; I don’t know. I’ve been desperately driven in my time, and done some wild things, coward and all that I am; I can only say that it seemed worth the risk for Selina’s sake. Risk? Certainty, where Moran was concerned—and yet, need it be so certain? Granted he was the deadliest hand with a gun I’d ever seen—he was bound to turn his back sometime. And London wasn’t Zululand, or Abilene of the old days; no one expects to be shot in the back on Half Moon Street. A man in disguise, on a dark April night, if he shadowed his victim carefully, and bided his time, might get off the necessary shots and then slide into cover—our bobbies ain’t used to that sort of thing, thank God. It was desperate, but it was possible—I’d had more experience of skulking and shooting from cover than I cared to think of, and—but, dear God, I was an old man, and getting feeble, and half-fuddled with drink, and scared blue into the bargain. I sat there, maudlin, drivelling to myself and looking at Selly’s picture.

Then I put the bottle away, and went upstairs and rooted through my old clothes, and found myself opening a certain drawer. There they were: the old German revolver with which I’d shot my way out of Fort Raim dungeon; the Navy Colt that I’d blazed away with, eyes shut, at Gettysburg; the Khyber knife I’d got from Ilderim Khan in the Mutiny; the scarred old double-action Bulldog, and the neat little Galand pocket pistol—it had four rounds in it, too, confound it.[15] Well, if I ever summoned up the nerve to draw a bead on Moran, I’d sure as hell not have the chance to use more than four rounds. He’d be blasting back after just one happy thought, though: maybe he didn’t travel heeled. Not many London clubmen do—by Jove, if he was unarmed, that would be famous! And then a quick hobble round the corner, into the dark—why not?

It was at this point, as I said at the beginning of my story, that I decided murder is a chancy thing for a septuagenarian coward. I teetered on the brink, fearfully, and then I thought, what the devil, even if Palmer gets his Old Age Pension bill through, I still won’t qualify, because it specifically excludes drunkards from benefit.[16] Selly’s worth it, says I, snuffling to myself. And so the die was cast.

Once I’m committed, I don’t do things by halves. I would have to settle the business at night, in the best disguise I could find, so I sorted out some of the motley garments I’d brought back from my travels and set about turning myself into an elderly down-at-heel of the kind that slinks round the West End streets, picking up cigar butts and sleeping in areas. It wasn’t difficult—in my time I’ve impersonated everything from a bronco Apache to a prince consort, and with my grey hairs I was halfway there.

So that was easy; the next thing was to decide where I was going to dry-gulch Moran. I had a week at most at my disposal, so for three or four nights I set off stealthily after dark, dressed in an ancient pea jacket and patched unmentionables, with a muffler and billycock hat and cracked boots, Galand in one pocket and flask in t’other, skulking round Conduit Street to see what his movements were. I was in a putrid state of funk, of course, but even so I felt downright ridiculous—hanging about waiting to murder someone, at my time of life.

For two nights I never saw hide nor hair of him, and then on the Tuesday he broke cover, shortly after six, and I trailed him to a cab on Bond Street and lost him—for I couldn’t take a cab in pursuit; dressed as I was, any self-respecting cabby would have taken his whip to me, and if I’d tried to run after him I’d have been lying on the pavement wheezing my guts up inside ten yards. So that was another wasted night, but on the Wednesday he decided to walk, jauntering out of his rooms in full evening fig and strolling all the way to St James’s, where he spent four hours at the Bagatelle—dealing ’em off the bottom, no doubt. Then he took a cab home, and I was dished again.