"But you saw nothing irregular yourself?"
"No … tho' I recall that at one hand—I can’t tell which—Cumming called out to his highness, `There is another tenner due here, sir,' and from what I have learned this evening I believe it may have been on an occasion when he … when he played … ah, wrongly." He was one of your decent asses, Williams, and didn’t like to say it plain.
"I remember distinctly telling him to put his stakes where I could see ’ern," says Bertie. "But I suspected nothing." "Who was sitting by him—the second night?"
Coventry gave a start. "Why, my wife—Lady Coventry. But I believe she gave her place up to Lady Flashman for one or two coups, did she not, Williams?"
"Why, so she did," says Williams, turning to me. "I remember now—Cumming was advising your wife about her stakes, Flash-man." He gave a ruptured grin. "They were being rather jolly about it, you know; she was … well, I gathered she did not know much about the game, and he was helping her."
"I don’t suppose she saw anything fishy," says Bertie bitterly. I knew what he meant: if Cumming had worn a black mask and made ’em turn out their pockets at pistol-point, she’d have thought it was all in the game.
"Well, there you are, Flashman," says Bertie. He flung down in a chair, a picture of disgruntled anxiety. "You know as much as we do. It’s past belief. That Gordon-Cumming, of all men …" He gave a despairing shrug. "But there can be no doubt of it … can there?" He was positively yearning at Coventry and Williams. "They are certain of what they saw?"
Sure as a gun, they told him, so I intruded the kind of question that occurs only to minds like mine.
"And you’re satisfied they ain’t lying?" says I, and was met by exclamations of dismay, paws in the air, whatever next?
"Of course they’re not!" barks Bertie. "Heavens above, man, would they invent such a dreadful thing?"
"It’s about as likely as Bill Cumming cheating for a few sovs," I reminded him. "But there it is, one or t’other—unless Levett and young Wilson were drunk and seeing double."
"Really, Flashman!" cries Williams. "And the other witnesses, on the second night? You’ll hardly suggest that Mrs Wilson or Mrs Lycett Green were—"
"No, general—but I will suggest that people often see what they expect to see. And I’m dam' sure both those ladies and Lycett Green sat down last night convinced, from what they’d been told, that Cumming was a wrong ’un. Very well," I went on, as they whinnied their protests and Bertie told me I was talking bosh, "have it as you please, I still say Cumming hasn’t been nailed to the wall hard enough to satisfy me … but he’s got a heap of explaining to do, I grant you." I set my sights on Bertie. "And since your highness has done me the honour to ask my advice, I respectfully suggest that you examine these five all-seeing accusers yourself—and Gordon-Cumming—before things go any further."
Since this was plain common sense, it earned me a couple of bovine looks and a royal glare and growl, so I begged leave to withdraw and loafed off, leaving the three wise men to blink at each other and resume their chorus of "What is to be done?"—five words which are as sound a motto for disaster as I know. I’ve heard ’em at Kabul before the Retreat, at Cawnpore, on the heights above the North Valley at Balaclava, and I won’t swear someone wasn’t croaking them as we laboured up the Greasy Grass slope . behind G. A. Custer, God rest his fat-headed soul. No one ever knows the answer, you see, so everyone looks blank until the man in command (in this case Good Prince Edward) makes up his mind in panic, and invariably does the wrong thing.
I took a turn in the empty billiard room, imbibing a meditative brandy and tickling the pills while I considered this unexpected but most welcome bit of mischief, which promised to enliven what had been a damned dull visit so far. I’ve never been any hand, as you know, at dancing attendance on royalty—unless it’s young and female, but especially not Beastly Bert—nor do I enjoy the unsought hospitality of Society parvenus in the wilds of Yorkshire (a sort of English Texas peopled by coarse braggarts and one or two decentish slow bowlers) with nothing to do but watch horses run in the pouring rain. Racing’s well enough when you’re young and riding yourself, but now that I was in my seventieth year and disinclined to back anything more mettlesome than an armchair,[a docile horse] I found it quite as interesting as a sermon in Gaelic.
So this baccarat nonsense, with its splendid possibilities of scan-dal, disgrace, and general devilment, looked made to order for diversion, provided it was properly mismanaged—which, with Bertie in a fine funk, Coventry and Williams advising, and myself ready to butter the stairs as chance offered, it probably would be. You may think this a tame enough occupation for one who has assisted at as many major catastrophes as I have, and a poor setting after the camps and courts of the mighty, but I was getting on, you know, and as the Good Book says, there’s a time for racketing about crying Ha-ha! among the trumpets, and a time for sitting back with your feet dipped in butter watching others fall in the mire.
And I may tell you, not all adventures are to be found ’midst shot and shell, thank God. What happened at Tranby Croft that September week of ’90 was as desperate a drama, in its quiet way, as any I’ve struck, and a mystery which has baffled the wise for twenty years . but will no longer, for I was in the thick of it, and can tell you precisely what happened and why, and since I’ll be snug in my long home ere this account meets the public eye (supposing it ever does) you may rely on its truth, incredible as it may appear.
In the first place, I’d never have gone near Tranby Croft but for Elspeth. She was a bosom chum of young Daisy Brooke, who was half her age and one of the leading Society fillies of the day, but cast in the same eccentric mould—well, you know what Elspeth' s like, and Daisy, who was known as Babbling Brooke, was a sort of mad socialist—even today, when she’s Countess of Warwick, no less, she still raves in a ladylike way about the workers, enough said. At the time of Tranby she was a stunning looker, rich as Croesus, randy as a rabbit, and Prince Bertie’s mount of the moment—indeed, I ain’t sure she wasn’t the love of his life, for he’d thrown over Lily Langtry in her favour and remained uncommon faithful to her until Keppel started wobbling her rump at him. I’ll say this for him, he had fine taste in bareback riders, as I should know; I’d shared Langtry with him, behind his back, and done my duty by pretty Daisy—as who hadn’t? Not La Keppel, though; she was after my time, worse luck, not heaving in view until I’d reached what Macaulay calls the years of chicken broth and flannel, when you realise how dam' ridiculous you’d look chasing dollymops young enough to be your daughter, and seek solace in booze, baccy, and books. Regrettable, of course, but less tiring and expensive.
Anyway, young Daisy Brooke had been first of the invited guests to Tranby, and had persuaded Bertie that the party would be incomplete without her pal Elspeth, Lady Flashman. I had my own jaundiced view of that, born of fifty years' marriage to my dear one who, I had reason to believe, had not been averse to male attentions in those years when I’d been abroad funking the Queen’s enemies. Not that I could be certain, mind you, never have been, and she may have been as chaste as St Cecilia, but I strongly suspected that the little trollop had been galloped by half the Army List—including H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and William Gordon-Cumming, Bart. True, ’twas only gossip that she and Bertie had been at grips in a potting-shed at Windsor in ’59, when I was off in Maryland helping to start the Yankees' civil war, but I’d seen him ogling her on and off ever since.