Part 16 (1/2)
”Oh, G.o.d!” he thought, ”if it were anything--anything--except Disgrace!”
In a miserable den, an hour or so before--there are miserable dens even in Baden, that gold-decked rendezvous of princes, where crowned heads are numberless as couriers, and great ministers must sometimes be content with a shakedown--two men sat in consultation. Though the chamber was poor and dark, their table was loaded with various expensive wines and liqueurs. Of a truth they were flush of money, and selected this poor place from motives of concealment rather than of necessity.
One of them was the ”welsher,” Ben Davis; the other, a smaller, quieter man, with a keen, vivacious Hebrew eye and an olive-tinted skin, a Jew, Ezra Baroni. The Jew was cool, sharp, and generally silent; the ”welsher,” heated, eager, flushed with triumph, and glowing with a gloating malignity. Excitement and the fire of very strong wines, of whose vintage brandy formed a large part, had made him voluble in exultation; the monosyllabic sententiousness that had characterized him in the loose-box at Royallieu had been dissipated under the ardor of success; and Ben Davis, with his legs on the table, a pipe between his teeth, and his bloated face purple with a brutal contentment, might have furnished to a Teniers the personification of culminated cunning and of delighted tyranny.
”That precious Guards' swell!” he muttered gloatingly, for the hundredth time. ”I've paid him out at last! He won't take a 'walk over' again in a hurry. Cuss them swells! They allays die so game; it ain't half a go after all, giving 'em a facer; they just come up to time so cool under it all, and never show they are down, even when their backers throw up the sponge. You can't make 'em give in, not even when they're mortal hit; that's the crusher of it.”
”Vell, vhat matter that ven you have hit 'em?” expostulated the more philosophic Jew.
”Why, it is a fleecing of one,” retorted the welsher savagely, even amid his successes. ”A clear fleecing of one. If one gets the better of a dandy chap like that, and brings him down neat and clean, one ought to have the spice of it. One ought to see him wince and--cuss 'em all!--that's just what they'll never do. No! not if it was ever so. You may pitch into 'em like Old Harry, and those d----d fine gentlemen will just look as if they liked it. You might strike 'em dead at your feet, and it's my belief, while they was cold as stone they'd manage to look not beaten yet. It's a fleecing of one--a fleecing of one!” he growled afresh; draining down a great draught of brandy-heated Roussillon to drown the impatient conviction which possessed him that, let him triumph as he would, there would ever remain, in that fine intangible sense which his coa.r.s.e nature could feel, though he could not have further defined it, a superiority in his adversary he could not conquer; a difference between him and his prey he could not bridge over.
The Jew laughed a little.
”Vot a child you are, you Big Ben! Vot matter how he look, so long as you have de success and pocket de monish?”
Big Ben gave a long growl, like a mastiff tearing to reach a bone just held above him.
”Hang the blunt! The yellows ain't a quarter worth to me what it 'ud be to see him just look as if he knew he was knocked over. Besides, laying again' him by that ere commission's piled up hatsful of the ready, to be sure; I don't say it ain't; but there's two thou' knocked off for Willon, and the fool don't deserve a tizzy of it. He went and put the paint on so thick that, if the Club don't have a flare-up about the whole thing----”
”Let dem!” said the Jew serenely. ”Dey can do vot dey like; dey von't get to de bottom of de vell. Dat Villon is sharp; he vill know how to keep his tongue still; dey can prove nothing; dey may give de sack to a stable-boy, or dey may think themselves mighty bright in seeing a mare's nest, but dey vill never come to us.”
The welsher gave a loud, hoa.r.s.e guffaw of relish and enjoyment.
”No! We know the ins and outs of Turf Law a trifle too well to be caught napping. A neater thing weren't ever done, if it hadn't been that the paint was put a trifle too thick. The 'oss should have just run ill, and not knocked over, clean out o' time like that. However, there ain't no odds a-crying over spilt milk. If the Club do come a inquiry, we'll show 'em a few tricks that'll puzzle 'em. But it's my belief they'll let it off on the quiet; there ain't a bit of evidence to show the 'oss was doctored, and the way he went stood quite as well for having been knocked off his feed and off his legs by the woyage and sich like. And now you go and put that swell to the grindstone for Act 2 of the comedy; will yer?”
Ezra Baroni smiled, where he leaned against the table, looking over some papers.
”Dis is a delicate matter; don't you come putting your big paw in it--you'll spoil it all.”
Ben Davis growled afresh:
”No, I ain't a-going. You know as well as me I can't show in the thing.
Hanged if I wouldn't almost lief risk a lifer out at Botany Bay for the sake o' wringing my fine-feathered bird myself, but I daren't. If he was to see me in it, all 'ud be up. You must do it. Get along; you look uncommon respectable. If your coat-tails was a little longer, you might right and away be took for a parson.”
The Jew laughed softly, the welsher grimly, at the compliment they paid the Church; Baroni put up his papers into a neat Russia letter book.
Excellently dressed, without a touch of flas.h.i.+ness, he did look eminently respectable--and lingered a moment.
”I say, dear child; vat if de Marquis vant to buy off and hush up? Ten to von he vill; he care no more for monish than for dem macaroons, and he love his friend, dey say.”
Ben Davis took his legs off the table with a crash, and stood up, flushed, thirstily eager, almost aggressive in his peremptory excitement.
”Without wringing my dainty bird's neck? Not for a million paid out o'
hand! Without crus.h.i.+ng my fine gentleman down into powder? Not for all the blunt of every one o' the Rothschilds! Curse his woman's face! I've got to keep dark now; but when he's crushed, and smashed, and ruined, and pilloried, and drove out of this fine world, and warned off of all his aristocratic race-courses, then I'll come in and take a look at him; then I'll see my brilliant gentleman a worn-out, broken-down swindler, a dying in the bargain!”
The intense malignity, the brutal hungry l.u.s.t for vengeance that inspired the words, lent their coa.r.s.e vulgarity something that was for the moment almost tragical in its strength; almost horrible in its pa.s.sion. Ezra Baroni looked at him quietly, then without another word went out--to a congenial task.
”Dat big child is a fool,” mused the subtler and gentler Jew. ”Vengeance is but de breath of de vind; it blow for you one day, it blow against you de next; de only real good is monish.”
The Seraph had ridden back from Iffesheim to the Bad in company with some Austrian officers, and one or two of his own comrades. He had left the Course late, staying to exhaust every possible means of inquiry as to the failure of Forest King, and to discuss with other members of the Newmarket and foreign jockey clubs the best methods--if method there were--of discovering what foul play had been on foot with the horse.