I had to admire him. "Crafty little half-pint, ain’t you, though? Here, give us another squint a t that picture … by Jove, lucky old Shovel-off ! But hold on, Blow—she may romp each day’s doings out of him, but she can’t get you the treaty word for word—and that’s what you want, surely?"
"Mais certainement! Am I an amateur, then? No … I absorb her reports by the day, and only when all is concluded, and the treaty is being drafted, do I approach a certain minister who holds me in some esteem. I make it plain that I am au fait with the entire negotiation. He is aghast. `You know it all?' he cries. `A matter of course,' I reply with modesty, `and now I await only the text of the treaty itself.' He is amazed … but convinced. This Blowitz, he tells himself, is a wizard. And from that, cher ’Arree," says he, smiling smugly, "it is but a short step to the point where he gives me the treaty himself. Oh, it is a technique, I assure you, which never fails."
It’s true enough; there’s no surer way of getting a secret than by letting on you know it already. But I still couldn’t see why he was telling me.
"Because one thing only is lacking. It is out of the question that Caprice should communicate with me directly, for I shall be jealously observed at all times, not only by competitors, but by diplomatic eyes—possibly even by the police. It is the price of being Blowitz." He shrugged, then dropped his voice. "So it is vital that I have what you call a go-between, n’est-ce pas?"
So that was it, and before I could open my mouth, let alone demur, his paw was on my sleeve and he was pattering like a Yankee snake-oil drummer.—
"’Arree, it can only be you! I knew it from the first—have I not said our fates are linked? To whom, then, should I turn for help in the greatest coup of my career? And it will be without inconvenience—indeed, to your satisfaction rather—"
"So that’s why you wangled me the Order of the Frog!"
"Wangle? What is this wangle? Oh, my best of friends, that was a bagatelle! But this what I beg of you … ah, it imports to me beyond anything in the world! And I would trust no other—my destiny … our destiny, would forbid it. You will not fail Blowitz?"
When folk yearn and sweat at me simultaneous, I take stock. "Well, now, I don’t know, Blow …"
"Shall I give you reasons? One, I shall be forever in your debt. Two, my coup will enrage Prince Bismarck … that pleases, eh? And three …" he smirked like a lascivious Buddha "… you will make the acquaintance … the intimate acquaintance, of the delicious Mamselle Caprice."
At that, it wasn’t half bad. It was safe, and I could picture Bismarck’s apoplexy if his precious treaty was published before he could make his own pompous proclamation. I took another slant at the photograph lying between us … splendid potted palms they were, and while her pose of wanton invitation might be only theatrical, as Blowitz had said, I couldn’t believe she wasn’t enjoying her work.
"Well … what would I have to do?"
D’you know, the little villain had already reserved me a Berlin hotel room for the duration of the conference? Confidence in des-tiny, no doubt. "It is in the name of Jansen … Dutch or Belgian, as you prefer, but not, I think, English." He had it all pat: I would rendezvous with Caprice at her apartment near the French Embassy, and there, in the small hours of each morning, when she had sent Shuvalov on his exhausted way, she would give me her reports, writ small on rice paper.
"Each day you and I will lunch—separately and without recognition, of course—at the Kaiserhof, where I shall be staying. You will have concealed Mamselle’s report in the lining of your hat, which you will hang on the rack at the dining-room door. When we go our respective ways, I shall take your hat, and you mine." This kind of intrigue was just nuts to him, plainly. "They will be identical in appearance, and I have already ascertained that our sizes are much the same. We repeat the performance each day … eh, voila! It is done, in secrecy the most perfect. Well, my boy, does it march?"
The only snag I could see was being first wicket down with the lady after she’d endured the attentions of blasted Shovel-off, and would be intent on writing her reports. Happy thought: being a mere diplomat, his performance might well leave her gnawing her pretty knuckles for some real boudoir athletics—in which case the reports could wait until after breakfast.
Well, if I’d had any sense, or an inkling of what lay years ahead, or been less flown with Voisin’s arrack, I’d have given the business the go-by—but you know me: the promise of that photograph, and the thought of dear Otto smashing the chandelier in his wrath, were too much for my ardent boyish nature. And it never hurts to do the press a good turn.
• • •
So it was with a light heart and my hat on three hairs that I found myself strolling under the famous lime trees to the Brandenburg Thor a few weeks later, taking a long slant at the Thier Garten in the June sunshine, and marvelling at the Valkyrian proportions of German women—which awoke memories of my youthful grapplings with that blubbery baroness in Munich … Pech-something, her name was, a great whale of a woman with an appetite to match.
That had been thirty years ago, and I hadn’t visited Germany since, with good reason. When you’ve been entrapped, kidnapped, forced to impersonate royalty, shanghaied into marriage, half-hung by Danish bandits, crossed swords in dungeons with fiends like Rudi von Starnberg, drowned near as dammit, and been bilked of a fortune … well, Bognor for a holiday don’t look so bad.[See Royal Flash] Thank God, it was far behind me now; Rudi was dead, and lovely Lola, and even Bismarck had probably given up murder in favour of war … not that he’d done much in that line for a few years. Mellowing with age, like enough. Still, I’d steer well clear of their Congress: Otto aside, I’d no wish to have D’Israeli inveigling me into a game of vingt-et-un.[See Flash for Freedom!] Nor had I any great desire to "do" Berlin; it may have the finest palaces in Germany, and the broadest streets, which is capital if you enjoy miles of ornamented stucco and don’t mind tumbling into drains which are mostly uncovered, but it also has the disadvantage of being full of Germans, most of ’em military. They say there’s a garrison of 20,000 (in a town no bigger than Glasgow) and it seemed to me the whole kit-boodle of ’em were on Unter den Linden—sentries presenting arms at every door and the pavements infested by swaggering Junkers with plumed helmets and clanking medals, still full of Prussian bounce because they’d licked the Frogs eight years before, as though that mattered.
The Congress was to begin on the 13th, and it was on the evening of the 12th that I left my modest hotel on the Tauben Strasse and walked the short distance to the discreet, pleasant little court off the Jager Strasse where Mamselle had her apartment—both of us quietly tucked away (trust Blowitz) but convenient for Unter den Linden, and the Wilhelmstrasse where the Congress was to sit. Blowitz had fixed the time, and primed her; his note awaiting me at my hotel had hinted delicately that she knew I wasn’t a puritan, exactly, and would expect to be paid in kind for my services, so I was in excellent fettle as I knocked at her door. My one doubt was that, being used to coupling for her country (or, in this case presumably, for The Times), she might be a dutiful icicle with one eye on the clock and her mind elsewhere, in which case I’d just have to jolly the sparkle into her eyes.
I needn’t have fretted; it was there from the first in the mouth-watering vision who opened the door determined to practise her art on Flashy. Like all good actresses, she’d decided exactly how to play her part, and dressed according in a déshabillé of frothy black lace clinging to a petite hourglass shape which recalled the Maharani Jeendan of intoxicating memory. Without her turban, her hair showed light auburn, cut in a fetching schoolgirl fringe above a lovely impudent, face whose smile of invitation would have melted Torquemada. For an instant it faded on "Hen … Jansen?" only to return as I made my gallant bow.