He followed the limping man into the taproom where a score of customers were seated at the tables. A blind fiddler was tuning his instrument in the chimney corner and he looked up sharply, white eyes blank, as Sally Hood uttered a squeak of alarm. She was staring at the gun in Sandman's hand. He raised it, pointing the blackened muzzle at the ceiling, and the two men took the hint and fled. Sandman carefully lowered the flint and pushed the weapon into his belt as Sally ran across the room. 'What's happening?' she asked, and in her anxiety she clutched Sandman's arm.
'It's all right, Sally,' Sandman said.
'Oh bleeding hell, it's not,' she said, and now she was looking past him, her eyes huge, and Sandman heard the sound of a gun being cocked.
He eased his arm from Sally's grip and turned to see a long-barrelled pistol pointing between his eyes. The Seraphim Club had not sent two men to fetch him, but three, and the third, Sandman suspected, was the most dangerous of all, for it was Sergeant Berrigan, once of His Majesty's First Foot Guards. He was sitting in a booth, grinning, and Sally took hold of Sandman's arm again and uttered a small moan of fear.
'It's like French dragoons, Captain,' Sergeant Berrigan said. 'If you don't see the bastards off properly the first time, then sure as eggs they'll be back to trap you.'
And Sandman was trapped.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sergeant Berrigan kept the pistol pointed at Sandman for a heartbeat, then he lowered the flint, put the weapon on the table and nodded at the bench opposite. 'You just won me a pound, Captain.'
'You bastard!' Sally spat at Berrigan.
'Sally! Sally!' Sandman calmed her.
'He's got no bleeding right to point a stick at you,' she protested, then turned on Berrigan. 'Who do you bleeding think you are?'
Sandman eased her onto the bench, then sat beside her. 'Allow me to name Sergeant Berrigan,' he told her, 'once of His Majesty's First Foot Guards. This is Miss Sally Hood.'
'Sam Berrigan,' the Sergeant said, plainly amused by Sally's fury, 'and I'm honoured, miss.'
'I'm bleeding not honoured.' She glared at him.
'A pound?' Sandman asked Berrigan.
'I said those two dozy bastards wouldn't take you, sir. Not Captain Sandman of the 52nd.'
Sandman half smiled. 'Lord Skavadale seemed to know me as a cricketer, not as a soldier.'
'I was the one what knew the regiment you served in,' Berrigan said, then snapped his fingers and one of the serving girls came running. Sandman was not particularly impressed that Berrigan knew his old regiment, but he was very impressed by a stranger who could command such instant service in the Wheatsheaf. There was something very competent about Sam Berrigan. 'I'll have an ale, miss,' the Sergeant told the girl, then he looked at Sally. 'Your pleasure, Miss Hood?'
Sally debated with herself for a second, deciding whether her pleasure was to reject Sam Berrigan's offer, then she decided life was too short to turn down a drink. 'I'll have a gin punch, Molly,' she said sulkily.
'Ale,' Sandman said.
Berrigan put a coin in Molly's palm, folded her fingers over it and then held on to her hand. 'A jug of ale, Molly,' he said, 'and make sure the gin punch is as fine as any we'd get at Limmer's.'
Molly, entranced by the Sergeant, dropped a curtsey to him. 'Mister Jenks, sir,' she whispered, 'he don't like sticks on his tables.'
Berrigan smiled, let go of her hand and put the pistol in a deep pocket of his jacket. He looked at Sandman. 'Lord Robin Holloway sent those two,' he said dismissively, 'and the Marquess sent me.'
'Marquess?'
'Skavadale, Captain. He didn't want you to come to any harm.'
'His lordship is very generous suddenly.'
'No, sir,' Berrigan said. 'The Marquess doesn't want to stir up trouble, but Lord Robin? He don't care. He's a halfwit is what he is. He sent those two to persuade you back to the club where he planned to challenge you.'
'To a duel?' Sandman was amused.
'Pistols, I imagine,' Berrigan was equally amused. 'I can't see him wanting to take you on with a blade again. But I told the Marquess those two would never force you. You were too good a soldier.'
Sandman smiled. 'How do you know what kind of a soldier I was, Sergeant?'
'I know exactly what sort of swoddy you was,' Berrigan said. He had a good face, Sandman thought, broad, tough and with confident eyes.
Sandman shrugged. 'I don't believe I had any particular reputation.'
Berrigan looked at Sally. 'It was the end of the day at Waterloo, miss, and we was beaten. I knew it. I've been in enough fights to know when you're beaten, and we was just standing there and dying. We hadn't given in, don't get me wrong, miss, but the bloody Crapauds had us beat. There was simply too many of the bastards. We'd been killing them all day and still they kept coming and it was day's end and the last of them was coming up the hill and there were four times as many of them as there were of us. I watched him,' he jerked his head at Sandman, 'and he was walking up and down in front of the line like he didn't have a care in the world. You'd lost your hat, hadn't you, sir?'
Sandman laughed at that memory. 'I had, you're right.' His bicorne hat had been blasted off by a French musket ball and it had vanished. He had immediately searched the fire-blackened ground where he was standing, but the hat had gone. He never did find it.
'It was his fair hair,' Berrigan explained to Sally. 'Stood out in a dark day. Up and down he walked and the Crapauds had a swarm of skirmishers not fifty paces off and they was all shooting at him and he didn't blink an eyelid. Just walked.'
Sandman was embarrassed. 'I was only doing my duty, Sergeant, like you were, and I was terrified, I can tell you.'
'But you're the one we noticed doing the duty,' Berrigan said, then looked back to Sally who was listening open mouthed. 'He's walking up and down and the Emperor's own guard are coming up the hill at us, and I thought to myself, that's it! That's it, Sam. A short life and a shallow grave, 'cos there were precious few of us left, but the Captain here, he was still strolling like it was Sunday in Hyde Park and then he stopped walking and he watched the Frenchies as cool as you like, and then he laughed.'
'I don't remember that,' Sandman said.
'You did,' Berrigan insisted. 'There's death in bluecoats coming up the hill and you were laughing!'
'I had a Colour Sergeant who made very bad jokes at inappropriate moments,' Sandman said, 'so I imagine he said something rather indecent.'
'Then I watched him take his men round the flank of the bastards,' Berrigan continued telling Sally his story, 'and he beat them into hell.'
'That wasn't me,' Sandman said reprovingly. 'It was Johnny Colborne who marched us round the flank. It was his regiment.'
'But you led them,' Berrigan insisted. 'You led.'
'No, no, no,' Sandman countered. 'I was just closest to you, Sergeant, and we certainly didn't beat the French guards alone. As I recall your regiment was in the thick of it?'
'We was good that day,' Berrigan allowed, 'we was very good and we bloody well had to be 'cos the Crapauds were fierce as buggery.' He poured two pots of ale, then raised his own tankard. 'Your very good health, Captain.'
'I'll drink to that,' Sandman said, 'though I doubt your employers would share the sentiment?'
'Lord Robin don't like you,' Berrigan said, 'on account that you made him look a bloody idiot, but that ain't difficult seeing as he is a bloody idiot.'
'Maybe they don't like me,' Sandman observed, 'because they don't want the Countess's murder investigated?'
'Don't suppose they care one way or another,' Berrigan said.
'I hear they commissioned the portrait, and the Marquess admitted knowing the dead woman.' Sandman tallied the points that counted against Berrigan's employers. 'And they refuse to answer questions. I suspect them.'
