As clear as day I could see it—the hideous Gezo leaping up and down on his stool, slobbering in excitement, with those great black fighting-women ranged by his throne; I could feel the Adams kicking in my fist as I blew holes in the skull wall for his edification.
"Six women in exchange for a case of revolvers and—what else?" Moran’s face was terrible to see. "What turned the scale in that infamous bargain—d’you recall? Again, I see you do." His voice was barely audible. "Gezo demanded that Spring’s cabin-boy be left with him—as a slave. And Spring, and you, and the rest of that hell-ship’s crew—you agreed, and left the child behind." He straightened up from the desk. "I was that boy."
It was beyond belief. It couldn’t be true, not for a minute … but even as the denial sprang to my lips, my wits were telling me that no one—no one on earth, could have known the details of that shameful transaction of Spring’s, unless he’d been there. And yet…
"But that’s moonshine!" I cried. "Why, I remember that boy—a snivelling little Cockney guttersnipe with a cross-eye … nothing like you! And, damnation, you were educated at Eton—I looked you up in Who’s Who!"
"Quite true," says he. "And like many a public school boy before me—and many since—I ran away … don’t tell me you never drove some panic-stricken little fag to do the same at Rugby. Oh, yes, I ran—and thought it would be a fine thing to go for a ship’s boy, and seek my fortune. I was a good enough actor, even then, to fake a Whitechapel whine—the genteel Captain Spring would never have shipped a little gentleman as cabin-boy, now would he?" The sneer writhed at the corner of his mouth. "But he was ready enough to drug him with native beer and sell him as a slave to that unspeakable savage, in exchange for a gaggle of half-naked black sluts ! Oh, aye, you were all willing enough for that!"
"It’s a lie!" cries I. "It was all Spring’s idea—I knew nothing of it! Why, I even pleaded with him, I remember—but it was too late, don’t you see -? "
"Pleaded?" he scoffed. "When did you ever plead for anything except your own miserable self? What did you care, if a white child was left to the mercy of that … that gross black brute?" His eyes were darting about the room as he spoke, and his hand was shaking on the desk-top. "Two years I endured there—two years in that rotting jungle hell, praying for death, kicked and scourged and tortured by those animals … aye, you can stare in horror, you that left me to it! Two years—before I had the courage to run again, and by God’s grace was picked up by Portugee slavers, who carried me to the coast. Portugee scum, mark you—they saved me from the fate I’d been doomed to by fellow Englishmen."
"But I’d no hand in that! I tell you, it was no fault of mine! By God, it must have been frightful, Moran—I don’t wonder you’re … well, upset … perfectly appalling, on my word … but it was all Charity Spring’s doing, don’t you see? I’m clean innocent—you can’t bear me a grudge for what that scoundrel did! Why, he’d kidnapped me, in the first place—"
"Spring’s long gone to his account," says he, and laughed harshly. "So have several others. Oh, yes, I marked you all down for settlement." For a fleeting second he met my eye. "You remember Sullivan, the Yankee bucko mate? I got him in Galveston in ’69.[14] And the surgeon—what was his name? An Irishman. He went in Bombay. I took ’em as I found ’em, you see—and while I was making my own career, in the Indian Army, I often thought about you. But I never had the chance—till now."
There was a moment’s silence, while I stood like a snared rabbit, too stunned and scared to speak, and he went on.
"But you’re too old to be worth killing, Flashman. Oh, it would be easy enough—you’ve seen me, and you possibly know I’m rated the best big-game shot in India, if not the world. If General Flashman were found with his head blown off on his Leicestershire estate—who’d ever suspect the eminent and respectable Colonel John Sebastian Moran?" He sneered and shook his head. "Poor sport. But little Miss Selina—there’s a worthwhile quarry, if you like. I saw how to strike at you, the night I saw her at the theatre. And you, you foul old tyke, can do nothing about it. For if she shrinks from me at the last—well, young Stanger’s name will be blasted, and her hopes with it—and yours. A splendid scandal there’ll be." He leaned against the mantel again, his thumbs in his weskit, and gloated at me.. "Either way, you’ll pay—for what you did to me. Personally, I think the young lady will save her lover’s honour at the expense of her own—I hope so, anyway. But I don’t much mind."
This was appalling—for the fellow was mad, I was sure, eaten up with his hatred and lust for vengeance. And he had marked down Selly, to strike at me … and he was right, she’d sacrifice herself to shame to save Stanger—and if she didn’t, his life and hers would both be ruined. I could have wept, at the thought of her frail, tender innocence at the mercy of this crazy, murderous ogre—I absolutely did weep, begging him to accept any price, offering to ransom her as high as twenty thousand, or thirty (I called a halt there, I remember), promising to use my influence to obtain him patronage, or a title, literally pleading at the swine’s feet and drawing his attention to my white hairs and old age—and he simply laughed at me.
So I raged at him, threatening, vowing I’d be his ruin somehow—I’d kill him, I said, even if I swung for it, and he just jeered in my face.
"Oh, how I wish you’d try! How I would admire to see that! Go home and get your pistol and your black mask, and collect a gang of bullies—why don’t you? Or cross the Channel with me, and we’ll shoot it out on the sands! I can just see that! You pathetic old corpse!"
In the end he kicked me out, and I slunk off home in a rage of such fear and frustration and misery as I’ve seldom felt before. I was helpless—he couldn’t be bought, he couldn’t be moved, he couldn’t be bullied or bluffed. He was even invulnerable against the last resort of violence—oh, he might be near sixty, but his hand was still rock-steady and his eye clear, and even if there had been such a thing as a hired gun in the Home Counties, what chance would he have stood against the lightning skill I’d seen proved on Ketshwayo’s Zulus? No—Moran held all the aces. And Selina, my precious little darling, was doomed. I went home and drank myself blind.
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.