'Oh, M. ’Utton!' cries he. 'So talkative, so shrewd! No doubt he offered you his theory that she slew Starnberg in cold blood because of a tendre for you? Bon sang de merde!' He gave a barking laugh. 'Enraged because he had wounded, perhaps slain, her lover! Perhaps you believe that yourself, because you were lovers in Berlin—oh, I know all about her `holiday task' for Blowitz! What, you do not believe ’Utton’s theory? I congratulate you!' He calmed after a few steps. 'Your affaire in Berlin was an amour passant, then. Not of the heart.'
Gad, they’re a tactful, tasteful lot, the French. 'Not on my side,' I told him.
'Nor on hers, whatever the so-shrewd ’Utton may think. Shall I tell you why she killed Starnberg as she did?'
Ile had stopped on the bridge, turned to face me. 'I told you her father and brothers fell in the war of ’70 against the Germans, and what she said of fighting in her own way. I did not tell you how they died. Papa and Jacques were killed in the battle at Gravelotte. Claude died of his wounds, neglected … in a German hospital. Valery was in the intelligence. He was captured at St Privat on a mission d’espionnage. He was shot by a firing squad of Fransecky’s Pomeranians, the day after the signing of the armistice, February the first, 1871!' Suddenly the eyes in the bulldog face were bright with angry tears. 'They knew the armistice had been signed, but they shot him just the same. Just the same! German chivalry.'
It had started to snow, and he was hunched up against the chill wind, staring down at the river.
'So they were gone, all four, it seemed in a moment … as the poet says of a snowflake on the water. Did I mention that the diplomat in Turkey and the informer in Egypt were both Germans? No? Well, Caprice does not like Germans. As the Count von Starnberg discovered. But I am keeping you standing in the cold, colonel! Give me your arm, my friend! Shall we seek a cafe and a cup of chocolate—with a large cognac to flavour it, eh?'
• • •
Some clever ass has said that 'if' is the biggest word in the language, but I say it’s the most useless. There have been so many coincidences in my life, good and bad, that I’ve learned the folly of exclaiming 'If only … !' They happen, and that’s that, and if the one that brought my Austrian odyssey to a close was uncommon disastrous—and infuriating, because I’d foreseen its possibility—well, I can be philosophic now because, as I’ve observed before, I’m still here at ninety, more or less, and you can’t ask fairer than that.
But that don’t mean I’ll ever forgive the drunk porter who mislaid my trunk at Charing Cross, because if he hadn’t … there, you see, 'if ' almost got the better of me, and no wonder when I think what came of that boozy idiot’s carelessness. Shocking state the railways are in.
However, we’ll come to Charing Cross all in good time. I’d have been there weeks earlier if (there it is again, dammit) Kralta hadn’t been so amorously intoxicated, and the circumstances of our reunion in Vienna so different from what I’d expected. When I took the train from Ischl early in December I was looking forward to a couple of cosy and intimate weeks in which I rogered her blue in the face, sparked her to the opera or whatever evening amusements Vienna offered, wined and dined of the best, saw the sights, took her riding (for she looked too much like a horse to be anything but an equestrian), viewed the Blue Danube from the warm comfort of her bedroom, and back to the muttons again. A modest enough ambition, and would have had me home again by Christmas. Well, I was taken aback, if not disappointed, by what awaited me at the Grand Hotel, and followed in the ensuing weeks.
I’d telegraphed from Ischl to advise her that I’d be rolling in, and when I arrived at the Grand, which was the newest and best-appointed of the leading hotels, she was awaiting me in a suit of rooms that Louis XIV might have thought too large and opulent for his taste. Vienna’s like that, you see; in most great cities the new districts are where the Quality hang out, but in Vienna the old sections are the exclusive ones, infested by the most numerous nobility in Europe, living in palaces and splendid mansions built centuries ago by ancestors who plainly felt that even a lavatory wasn’t a lavatory unless it could accommodate a hunt ball, with gilded cherubs on the ceiling and walls that looked like wedding cakes. Even new hotels like the Grand were to match, and the whole quarter reeked of money, privilege, and luxury in doubtful taste. It was reckoned to be the richest Upper Ten outside London, and the two hundred families of princes, counts, and assorted titled (rash spent ten million quid among ’em per annum, which ain’t bad for gaslight and groceries. They spent more, ate more, drank more, danced more, and fornicated more than any other capital on earth (and that’s Fetridge[23] talking, not me), and cared not a rap for anything except their musical fame, of which they’re wonderfully jealous—not without cause, I’d say, when you think of the waltz.
I’d arranged to arrive in town late, at an hour when Kralta would he cleared for bed and action, but when I reached the hotel close on midnight I saw that I’d been too long in the provinces; the hall was thronged with revellers, the dining salon was full, and an orchestra was going full swing. Even so, I was unprepared for the start I received when I was ushered into her drawing-room: where I’d looked to find her alone, there were thirty folk if there was one, all ablaze in the pink of fashion, and me in my travelling dirt.
And she, whom I’d imagined flinging aside her fur robe and flying to my arms, was magnificent in tiara, long gloves, and ivory silk, the image of her photograph, standing amidst her society gaggle, waiting calmly for me to approach, as though she’d been royalty. Which of course she was—European royalty, leastways.
But I couldn’t complain of her welcoming smile, with a hand stretched out for me to kiss. 'At last, we meet in Vienna!' says she softly, and then I was being presented to Prince This and Baroness That, and Colonel von Stuff and Madame Puff—and this I’ll say for them, there wasn’t a sneer or a sniff at my tweeds, such as you’d get from Frogs or Dagoes or our own reptilia; Vienna wasn’t only polite, it was downright friendly and hospitable, putting a glass in my hand, coaxing me to the buffet, inquiring after my journey, asking how long I’d been in town, exclaiming that I must call or dine or see such-and-such, the men frank and genial, the women gay and easy—some damned handsome pieces there were, too—and Kralta, smiling coolly with her hand on my sleeve, guided me effortlessly through the crowd and out into a secluded alcove—and then she was in my arms, her mouth open under mine, fairly writhing against me, and I was making up for weeks of abstinence and wondering when we could get to work in earnest when suddenly she left off and buried her head on my shoulder.
'Thank God you are safe!' says she, in a choking voice. 'When I heard what that … that vile traitor had done to you, I thought I should run mad! Oh, thank God, thank God!'
Thank a nimble little Parisienne cut-throat, thinks I, but all I did was murmur comfort, kissing her again and swearing that I’d been baying the moon at the thought of her, and when could we get shot of her guests? She laughed at that, holding my hands and regarding me fondly, and I found myself marvelling that a woman whose looks didn’t compare to half of those on view in her drawing-room could rouse such desire in me—mind you, there wasn’t a shape among ’em to match the splendid body in its ivory sheath, or a carriage to set beside that striking figurehead with its long gold tresses coiled beneath the diamond crown.
I had to bottle my ardour for more than an hour, for while the fashionable crowd soon dispersed, four who seemed to be her prime intimates stayed to sup with us. They were an oddish group,
I thought: some Prince or other, a distinguished greybeard with an order on his coat, and three females, all extremely personable. One of ’em, a countess, was dark and soulful and soft-spoken, and possessed of the most enormous juggs I’ve ever seen; how she managed her soup, heaven knows, for I’ll swear she couldn’t see her plate. T’others were a prattling blonde who flirted out of habit, even with the waiters, and a slender, red-haired piece who drank like a Mississippi pilot, with no visible effect. The Prince was plainly a big gun, and most courteous to me, and Kralta was at her most stately, so it was a decorous enough meal bar the blonde’s chatter and coquettish glances, which no one deigned to notice. Good form, the Viennese.
We parted at last, thank the Lord, with bows and nods and polite murmurs, Kralta led the way to her bedchamber, and I was all over her at once, with growls of endearment and a great wrenching of buttons. It was a true meeting of minds, for I doubt if a woman ever stripped faster from full court regalia, and we revelled in each other like peasants in a hayrick, from bed to floor and back again, I believe, but I ain’t sure. And when we were gloriously done, and I lay gasping while she wept softly and kissed the healed scar on my flank, murmuring endearments, I thought, well, this is why you came to Europe, Flash, and Ischl was worth it. She said not a word then or thereafter about Starnberg or the plot, and I was content to let it lie.
I staggered out presently to visit the little private lavatory in an ante-chamber off the drawing-room, and was taken flat aback when who should come out of the thunder-house but the Prince, clad in a silk robe with his beard in a net. What the deuce he was doing on the premises, I couldn’t imagine, but I admired his aplomb, for I’d ventured out in a state of nature, and he didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow, but waved me in with a courtly hand, bade me 'Gute nacht', and disappeared through a door on the far side of the drawing-room. I performed my ablutions in some bewilderment, and my good angel prompted me to wrap a towel round myself before venturing out, for when
