‘Easy, there!’ I said. ‘Do you want to lame the beast?’
‘She’s vicious,’ he said.
‘You are clumsy,’ said I, ‘you are not nailing a plank to a joist!’
He cursed me obscenely in Flemish, and when I said: ‘I beg pardon?’ he said in French: ‘I was simply saying “You are quite right, monsieur.”’
So, at last, Cocotte was shod and I led her back to the inn. Madame Morkens lingered for a few seconds. I heard the smack of a boorish kiss, and when she joined me she was wiping soot from her face with her apron. And then the rain came down again – but what rain! Every drop hit the mud with a smack and a splash like a musket-ball.
The landlord had prepared some pleasant concoction of mulled spiced wine. He said: ‘Well, so now you have your horse, all right and tight…. No doubt monsieur is an expert bareback rider, like the ladies in the circus?’ I asked him what he meant, as if I did not know. He continued: ‘Monsieur proposes, no doubt, to ride to Flushing without a saddle?’
‘Oh – oh!’ said I. ‘I never thought of that. Oh dear!’
‘As luck will have it,’ he said, ‘I have a fine English hunting saddle, almost brand-new. I can let you have it dirt-cheap, if you like.’
‘I’d like to have a look at it,’ I said.
You see, it was my intention to have him saddle and harness Cocotte, and then, pretending to try the saddle for comfort, to get my feet in the stirrups, give the mare the edge of my heel, and so away.
But he said: ‘Oh, the saddle’s in the stable, and the rain is coming down in bucketfuls. Let it give over. Why hurry?’
The saddle was in the stable, then; that was something worth knowing.
She said: ‘In any case it will soon be dark, monsieur, and the roads are terrible. Best take your dinner at your ease and stay the night, and make a good start at daybreak,’ and gave her husband a quick, sidelong look that chilled my blood.
She had seen milord give me my pay, thirty guineas, and ten guineas over and above that, for a pourboire; besides, I had twenty guineas more in my purse, some of it my own money and some of it petty cash for travelling expenses with which milord had entrusted me and of which I had neglected to remind him. And I have seen a throat cut for five francs in wayside inns in Flanders!
Morkens muttered in Flemish: ‘It’s dangerous….’
‘Fool!’ she said. ‘In a few days, after the battle, the whole countryside will be littered with stabbed carcasses. Who will count one more or less?’
I said: ‘I beg pardon?’
She said: ‘I was saying “More haste, less speed,” and telling my husband to go and kill a capon for dinner.’
‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘no doubt you are right. The weather is, as you say, impossible. I will go to my room and pack my little valise in readiness for the morning.’
They had given me a horrid little closet of a room overlooking the yard, and smelling abominably of the stable; but I was glad of it now. If the window was too small to let the daylight in, it was not too small to let me out, and if I hung by my hands from the sill, I should have only a six-foot drop to the yard. So far, so good.
Also, I had another idea. You know that I am still troubled periodically with my old Egyptian dysentery. When it begins to trouble me, I take ten drops of tincture of laudanum, which is nothing more nor less than opium. In case of emergency, I always carry a vial of it wherever I go. I took this vial out of my valise now, and slipped it into my pocket – a good two ounces of the stuff.
Then I went downstairs and waited. Madame Morkens was roasting the chicken and her husband was setting the table. I guessed that their plan was to make me comfortably drowsy with good food and wine – he had brought up a couple of sealed bottles of his best from the cellar – and then, quite simply, knock me on the head. The woman alone would have been more than a match for a shrimp like me, to say nothing of her ox of a husband. I carried a little pair of pocket pistols, it is true, but I always keep my small-arms for use if all else fails.
So. While we were picking the bones of the capon, I, pretending to be a little lively with wine, said: ‘Upon my word, madame, you are a cook fit for a king, and beautiful as a queen! And you, Monsieur Morkens, are a jolly good fellow! I’ll tell you what – I’ll stand you a bowl of rum punch in the English style, and mix it myself according to Lord Whiterock’s own secret recipe…. You, old fellow, will be so good as to fetch me a bottle of rum, a bottle of brandy, and a bottle of port wine. You, madame, will get me lemons and sugar, nutmeg and ginger, cinnamon and cloves … and I see a fine old ale-bowl over there which will be the very thing to mix it in!’
It worked. He went to fetch the spirits and the wine; she took her keys to the spice cupboard; and I, uncorking my bottle, emptied it rapidly into the bowl. It went without a hitch. In fifteen minutes the punch was mixed. Laudanum has a bitter, cloying taste, but the rum, the brandy, the port, the sugar and the spices that I mixed in that punch would have disguised it if it had been so much asafoetida. I insisted on filling immense bumpers. You understand – I had been taking laudanum therapeutically for twenty years or so, so that what I swallowed in my punch was merely a homeopathic dose. But the effect of the drug on the Morkenses soon became apparent. Their minds wandered; the pupils of their eyes contracted. They drank again and again, not knowing or caring how much they drank, never noticing that I had taken no more than one glass. All the same, they were tough, those two!
It was eleven o’clock before Madame Morkens became unconscious. Her husband saw her fall across the table. He pointed at her, chuckling stupidly, and then rolled sideways out of his chair and fell to the floor with a crash. ‘Hodi mihi, cras tibi,’ I said, ‘today to me, tomorrow to thee, my friends…. And now I think I will punish you a little. A vindictive man would burn your inn over your heads. But I …’
… In short, I went through their pockets, etcetera, for their keys. As I had guessed, it was the woman who had in her keeping the most important of the keys – one in particular, a little one, suspended on a piece of string which she wore about her neck. The key of the cash box, evidently. And where would they hide their cash box, these two? Unquestionably, under their bed. It was so. After twenty years in the Grande Armée one acquires experience in looting, eh?
I found the loose plank, and had that cash box open in five minutes. It contained banknotes and gold to the value of about seventy thousand livres, which I stuffed into my pockets.
Then I took my little valise, and put on my cloak and my hat, and went out. The landlord and his wife were stertorously snoring, almost as if their skulls had been smashed. I had nothing to fear from them. The great dog in the yard barked furiously, but luckily for me he was chained. I got into the stable with the aid of Morkens’s key, and lit the lantern, by good luck, in no time at all. I always keep my tinderbox dry, as you know. The saddle was hanging on a nail. It was a mouldering old English hunting saddle, but I made shift to buckle it on the mare Cocotte.
I had my left foot in the stirrup, and was ready to mount, when I heard another horseman approaching.
Now, the manner of his approach made me pause. A bona-fide traveller, coming to an inn at night, makes a noise, shouts ‘Landlord! Landlord!’ – is, in fact, in a devil of a hurry to get in out of the rain; especially on such a night as this was. Furthermore, I heard him speak to the dog in Flemish, and the dog was silent. A friend of the family, evidently. He tried the front door, and found it locked. Then, leading his horse, which was very weary, he came round to the back.