"Tampered cartridges. Ne’er mind that now. What then?"
"She dogged ’em into the hills a few miles, first to a steiger’s [Steiger, the foreman in a salt-mine] hut at the foot o' the mountain, where they rested a spell. Then they put you on a stretcher and went up the mountain to the mouth of the salt-mine. She judged it best not to follow ’em in, but lay up in the rocks nearby, and about dawn the whole crew, as near as she could judge, came out with their dunnage and scattered—but no sign of you and Starnberg, which she couldn’t figure … neither can I. What was he about?"
"Settling a score. With me. In his own peculiar way." He frowned. "I don’t follow."
"You don’t have to. It don’t matter." It was none of his business to know about Rudi long ago, or Willem’s rum behaviour, killing me one moment, saving me the next. "Nothing to do with this affair, Hutton. A personal grudge, you could call it. Go on."
He gave me a hard look, but continued. "Well, she waited a while. Then she went in. Nick o' time, by the sound of it … but you know more than I do about that. She settled Starnberg, plugged the leak in you as best she could, and then ran hell-for-leather down the hill, seven or eight miles, to the rendezvous we’d fixed on beforehand. Delzons and I and a couple of our lads went back with her to the mine. I thought you were a goner, but Mamselle put a few stitches in you from the first-aid kit, and after dark we brought you down here to our bolt-hole. She’s nursed you these past few days, too. Regular little Nightingale." He shook his head in admiration. "She’s a trump and a half, colonel. Blessed if I ever saw a female like her. Smiling sweet and pretty as a peach and she bowled out Starnberg! How the dooce did she do it?"
"Nerve," says I. "And by being a better fencer than he was. Where is she?"
"At the moment, Ischl police station. With Delzons, helping the Austrians trace the Holnup fugitives. Doubt if they’ll catch any. No general alarm, you see. Oh, there was a fine hue and cry after you and Starnberg at first. But Delzons and I had our cyphers away to London and Paris soon after, the whole tale, Starnberg and all. That set the wires sparking to Berlin and Vienna." His lean face twisted in a sour grin. "Never knew our Foreign Office could shift so spry, but once they’d telegraphed our Vienna embassy, and the Frogs', and our ambassadors had requested an urgent audience with the Emperor in person … well, silence fell. No more hue and cry for you. London directed me to call on the governor of Upper Austria, no less, and assure him of our entire discretion. God knows what Franz-Josef thought of our presumption—and Bismarck’s—in saving his life behind his back. But not a word’s being said publicly. The Austrian peelers have been advised to treat us and Delzons' people as tourists. So presently we can all go home. Job well done."
He clapped his hands on his knees with finality and stood up, taking a turn to the window. "No question of you making a report. Not officially on service. But I’d be glad of your views on a couple o' things …" He cleared his throat. "This Princess Kralta—what about her?"
What with this and that, she’d gone clean out of my mind. "She’s Bismarck’s mistress, or was. Why, what’s happened to her?"
"Nothing. What you’ve just said explains why. The Ischl police questioned her after the lodge fracas, of course. Known companion of the missing Starnberg. No arrest, though." He gave an amused snort. "From what I’ve seen of the lady, I’d as soon try to collar the Queen. Very hoch und wohl-geboren. Anyway, whatever she told ’em, it brought a couple o' bigwigs post-haste from Berlin yesterday, and I was summoned by the governor and presented to the lady as though she were the Tsar of Russia’s aunt. Care to guess what she wanted? News of you." Even poker-faced Hutton couldn’t keep the curiosity out of his eyes. "I told her you were indisposed and she started up, white as paper. `Not injured?' cries she. I told her you were on the mend. `Thank God!' says she, and sat down again. Desired me to convey her wishes for your recovery, and trusts you’ll call upon her in Vienna, when convenient." He gave the ceiling a jaundiced glance. "Grand Hotel, 9 Karnthner King."
Drawing his own conclusions, no doubt. Well, honi soit to you, Hutton. I felt better already, for there’s no finer tonic than the news that a splendid piece of rattle is turning white as paper and thanking God that you’re on the mend. "We have Vienna", by gum—she’d truly meant it, the little darling.
"Hutton," says I, "how long before I’m on my feet?"
"Few days, the doctor says. Once the stitches are out. We can take it, then," says he, "that the lady was not a Holnup accomplice of Starnberg’s?"
"Well, Berlin don’t seem to think so! Nor the Austrians." I considered. "No … I’d say she’s a genuine Bismarck agent, and Starnberg hoodwinked her as he did the rest of us, the clever little bastard. If she’d been a Holnup she’d have been out of Ischl long before the traps caught up with her, wouldn’t she?"
The truth was I didn’t care a rap, and didn’t want to know—not when I thought of that voluptuous torso and long white limbs and the golden mane spilling over her shoulders, all waiting in Vienna. What the devil, you don’t bed ’em for their politics, do you?
He didn’t argue, but asked a few more questions about her which I answered with a discretion that didn’t fool him for a moment. I suspect the great long rat was jealous—and not only where Kralta was concerned, for he reverted to Caprice again, with a warmth which I thought quite unbecoming in a Treasury hatchet-man, the lecherous old goat.
"Never seen her like," he repeated, and sighed. "Dear delight to look upon, cold steel within. Mind you, she has her soft side. You should ha' seen her chivvying us up to the mine to bring you down. Fairly shrilling at us to make haste, swore you were dying by inches and we’d be too late. And when she stitched you up she was blubbing. Muttering in French. Quite a taking she was in." He sounded almost piqued.
"Well, you know what women are, ministering angels and all that," says I, pretty smug.
"Aye," says he, pretty dry, and added apropos of nothing that I could see: "She told Delzons she killed Starnberg in self-defence."
I remarked that when a chap was trying to cut your head off, it was a legitimate excuse.
"To be sure. We fished him out o' that pool, you know. Three wounds. One clean through the pump, a cut on his left wrist, and the third through his right arm. Odd, that."
"What’s odd about it?"
"You don’t truss a man’s sword-arm after you’ve killed him. I’d say he was already disarmed when she did him in."
I gave him my best country-bumpkin gape. "Now I don’t follow. He’s dead and good riddance, ain’t he? Well, then, self-defence’ll do, I’d say. Does it matter?"
"Not a jot," says he, and rose to depart. "But seeing how she mooned over you later, it struck me she might have been paying him out. On your account." He turned towards the door. "You must ha' known her pretty well in Berlin. About as well as you know that Princess Kralta."
"Hutton," says I, "you’re a nosey old gossip."
"Gossip—never. Nosey? That’s my trade, colonel."
Well, I’m used to the mixture of huff and perplexity and envious admiration that my success with the fair sex arouses in my fellow man. Seen it in all sorts, from the saintly Albert looking peeved when her fluttering majesty pinned the Afghan medal on my coat, to Bully Dawson, my Rugby fag-master, in a furious bait after I’d thoughtlessly boasted of my juvenile triumph with Lady Geraldine aforesaid. ("What, a high-steppin' filly like her, dotin' on you, damned little squirt that you are!") Most gratifying—and doubly so in Hutton’s case. So dear little Caprice had wept over me, had she? Capital news, for if the old fondness still lingered, why shouldn’t we resume our idyll of the Jager Strasse, once I was up and doing? Stay, though … what about Kralta, panting in Vienna? A ticklish choice, and I was torn. On one hand, there was an exciting variety about Caprice’s boudoir behaviour, the merry concubine performing for the fun of it; on t’other, my horsey charmer was wildly passionate and spoony about me—and there was more of her. Much to be said on both sides …