Flashman and the Tiger: And Other Extracts from the Flashman Papers. George Fraser MacDonald

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      Of course the blabberer in both cases had been Shuvalov, as I learned from Caprice, who had passed the glad tidings on to Blowitz via my tile. I was fearful that Shovel-off might twig he was being milked, but she ‘Pouf!’-ed it away; he was too dull and besotted to know what he was saying after she’d put him over the jumps, and depend upon it, says she, Stefan knew what he was about.

      She was right, too. The little fox had been angling, like every other scribbler, for an interview with Bismarck – and after the column about Dizzy appeared, hanged if he didn’t get one! Otto, you see, was so piqued and mystified that his precious Congress was being blown upon, that he invited Blowitz to dinner, no doubt hoping to learn what his source had been. Fat chance. Blowitz came away with a five-hour interview, leaving the Iron Chancellor none the wiser and fit to be tied, The Times triumphed yet again, and the rest of the press gang could only gnash their teeth.

      What between helping to spoil Bismarck’s digestion and whiling away the golden afternoons with Caprice (for we’d abandoned our nocturnal meetings, and I was collecting her reports in the mornings) I was in pretty bobbish form, and took to promenading about the town in search of amusement. I didn’t find it on one day at least, when chance took me down the Wilhelmstrasse past the Congress hall, and who should I meet face to face but dear Otto himself; he was with a group of his bag-carriers and other reptiles, coming down the steps to his carriage, and for one blood-freezing instant our eyes met – as they had not done since that day at Tarlenheim thirty years before when he’d launched me unsuspecting into his ghastly Strackenz murder plot. I’d never have recognised him if I hadn’t seen his mug in the papers, for the nasty young Norse God had turned into a jowly sausage-faced old buffer whose head seemed to grow straight out of his collar without benefit of neck. Just for a second he stared, and I thought bigod he remembers me, but there ain’t a thing he can do, so why don’t I exclaim: ‘Well, Otto, old sport, there you are, then! Drowned any Danish princelings lately?’ It’s the kind of momentary madness that sometimes takes me, but thank God I tipped my tile instead, he did likewise, frowning, and a moment later he was clambering aboard and I was legging it in search of a gallon or two of brandy. Quite a turn he’d given me – but then, he always did. Bad medicine, Bismarck; bad man.

      I kept clear of the official cantonment thereafter, and by the last week of the Congress was beginning to be infernally bored, even with Caprice; when I found myself knocking at her door in the expectation of having it opened by Elspeth, smiling blonde and beautiful, I realised it was time for the train home. Oddly enough, if I’d cut out then it wouldn’t have mattered, for Blowitz no longer needed her reports, although he continued to change hats with me at the Kaiserhof.

      The fact was his stock had risen so high with his three ‘scoops’ that he was being fed information by the bushel, the embassy fawns being anxious to stand well with him; he even put it about, very confidential-like, that Bismarck had promised to give him the treaty before it was published, which wasn’t true, but made them toad-eat him harder than ever. I knew nothing of this, of course, and on the penultimate day of the Congress, a Friday, as I was strolling home enjoying the morning after a strenuous late breakfast with Caprice, I was taken flat aback by Blowitz’s moon face goggling at me from the window of a drosky drawn up near my hotel.

      ‘In! In!’ hisses he, whipping down the blind, so I climbed aboard, demanding what the devil was up, and before I was seated he was hammering on the roof and bawling to the coachee to make for the station with all speed.

      ‘We leave on the 12.30 for Cologne!’ cries he. ‘Fear not, your bill is paid and your baggage awaits at the train!’

      ‘The dooce it does! But the Congress don’t end till tomorrow –’

      ‘Let it end when it will! It is imperative that I leave Berlin at once – that I am seen to leave, mortified and en colère!’ He was red with excitement – and beaming. ‘Regardez-moi – do I look sufficiently enraged, then?’

      ‘You sound sufficiently barmy. But what about the treaty – I thought t’wasn’t to be finished until this evening?’

      He pulled back the lapel of his coat, chuckling, whipped out a bulky document, waved it at me, and thrust it away again. ‘A treaty of sixty-four articles – approved, printed, fini! What d’you say to that, my boy? Nothing remains but the preamble and a few extra clauses to be adopted at today’s session.’ He rubbed his hands, squirming with delight. ‘It is done, dear friend, it is done! Blowitz triumphs! He is exalted! Ah, and you, my brave one, my accomplice extraordinary, I could embrace you –’

      ‘Keep your dam’ distance! Look here, if you’ve got the thing, what are you in such an infernal hurry for?’

      He smote his forehead. ‘Ah, forgive me – in my joy I go too fast. Let me explain.’ He was licking his lips at his own cleverness. ‘You remember I told you in Paris how I would persuade some diplomat of eminence to give me an advance copy of the treaty? Eh bien, this morning I received it. I rejoice, knowing that no other journalist will see the treaty until after the signing ceremony tomorrow. But in the meantime a crisis has raised itself. Since my interview with Prince Bismarck the German press has been in jealous agitation, and to pacify them he has let it be known that he will give them the treaty this evening! When I learn this, I am thunderstruck!’ He assumed a look of horror. ‘Of what use to me to have the treaty in my pocket if it is to appear in the Berlin journals tomorrow? Where then is my exclusive account, my priority over my rivals?’

      ‘Down the drain, I’d say. So why are you exalted?’

      ‘Because I see at once how to frustrate them. I go to Prince Hohenlohe, the German Minister, and demand that as a reward for my services to the Congress – and because I am Blowitz – Prince Bismarck should give the treaty only to me, so that I may publish it in The Times tomorrow. Hohenlohe consults Bismarck, who refuses (as I knew he would). He says I must wait until it is signed. But,’ he raised a pudgy finger, ‘I know Bismarck. He is one for strict justice. Having said I must wait until tomorrow, he will now make the German papers wait also. So, in effect, I have gained a postponement … you see?’

      I don’t know if Macchiavelli was a fat little cove with long whiskers, but he should have been.

      ‘When Prince Hohenlohe tells me my request is refused, I play my part. I am affronted. My disgust knows no bounds. I tell him I am leaving Berlin at once in protest. If Blowitz is to be treated with such contempt, they may keep their Congress and their treaty. Hohenlohe is dismayed, but I am adamant. I take my leave in what you call the dudgeon – and word flies from mouth to mouth that Blowitz is beaten, that he sulks like a spoiled child, my rivals rejoice at my failure – and breathe sighs of relief … and all the time the treaty is here –’ he tapped his breast, chortling ‘– and tomorrow it will appear in The Times and in no other paper in the world!’

      He paused to draw breath and gloat; you never saw smugness like it, so I pointed to the one fly I saw in his ointment.

      ‘But you haven’t got the preamble or the clauses they’re adopting today.’

      He gave a lofty wave. ‘Soit tranquil, my ’Arree. From Hohenlohe I go tout suite to M. de St Vallier, the French Ambassador – who I know has a copy of the preamble. In confidence I show him the treaty. He is staggered, he goes pale, but when I ask for the preamble and clauses, he throws up the hands, crying why not, since already I have so much? He cannot give me his copy of the preamble, but he reads it aloud, page upon page, and now it is here –’ he tapped his brow ‘– and will be dictated to my secretary after we board the train.’

      I ain’t given to expressions of admiration, as you know, but looking at СКАЧАТЬ