"I’ll not fight, I tell you!" I shouted, almost in tears. "You can’t make me!"
"True enough," says he. "And I can’t run a helpless man through, can I?" His smile became wicked. "Might persuade you, though … if you’ll just step this way …" He prodded me back-wards, along by the rails, and perforce I retreated, pleading and blaspheming by turn, while he requested me to "Pass along the bus, please," before seizing my shoulder, spinning me round, and gripping my bound wrists. "Steady the Buffs! Don’t want you fallin' and hurtin' yourself … yet."
I dam' near swooned. We were on the very lip of the cleft where the rails ended, and I was staring down aghast into a narrow chasm whose smooth walls were visible for only a few yards before they vanished into black nothingness. I swayed giddily on the brink, my crotch shrinking as I tried to rear back from that awful void, but Willem held me in an iron grip, chuckling at my shoulder.
"A soldier’s sepulchre, what? That’s where your mortal coil is goin', when you’ve shuffled it off. Can’t tell how deep it is, but it looks as though it narrows a bit, some distance down, like those jolly French oubliettes, so you’ll probably stick fast. You won’t mind, bein' dead. On t’other hand, if you won’t fight I’ll just have to drop you in alive, and the stickin' process might last some time, wouldn’t you think?"
That was when I broke. The horror of that gaping shaft, the thought of falling into blackness, the tearing agony of rasping to a flayed, bloody stop between the confining walls, jammed and helpless, to die by inches, rotting in the bowels of the earth … I raved, begging him to let me be, promising never to tell, struggling like a maniac until he pulled me away, and I sank to my knees, weeping buckets and babbling for mercy, promising him a fortune if he’d only spare me. He listened in some wonder, and then laughed as though a light had dawned.
"I’ll be jiggered!" cries he. "It’s the Flashman gambit … grovel and whine—then strike when your man’s off guard! Didn’t I tell you the guv’nor warned me to beware when you started showin' the white feather? Well, you’re doin' it a shade too brown, Harry—and t’won’t answer, you know. I’m fly to you. ’Sides, I probably have more cash in the bank than you do."
"Help!" I hollered. "Help, murder! Let me be, you lousy bully, you cruel bastard, you! I ain’t shamming, you infernal idiot, I swear I’m not! Oh, please, Starnberg … Willem, Bill, let me go and I’ll never tell! Help!"
"Oh, cheese it, you daft dummy!" He grabbed my neck and pushed me prone, and the cords at my wrists fell away as he cut them through. He stepped swiftly back, as though expecting me to go for him, and watched me warily—he absolutely wasn’t sure whether I was bluffing or not. That’s what a reputation does for you. Then he wheeled about, strode away to the camp-bed, picked up the other sabre, and sent it slithering and clinking over the stone in my direction.
"`Play-actor', the guv’nor called you, didn’t he?" says he. "Well, I don’t know—and what’s more, I don’t much care, but I’m gettin' cold, and if you don’t take up that tool double quick I’ll pitch you down that hole without benefit of clergy, d’ye hear? So get up and come on!"
"You can’t mean to butcher me!" I wailed. "My God, man, haven’t you any bowels?"
"Ne’er mind about my bowels!" sneers he, casting aside his jacket. "You’ll be admirin' your own presently. On guard!"
There’s a moment, and I’ve faced it more often than I care to remember, when you’re rat-in-the-corner, all your wriggling and lying and imploring have failed, there’s nowhere to run, and your only hope is to do your damnedest and trust to luck and every dirty dodge you know. For a split second I wondered if his last threat had meant that he’d tackle me bare-handed, and if perhaps I was stronger than he … but no, in my lusty youth perhaps, but not now against that lithe young athlete, all steel and whipcord. I must just take my chance with the blade.
I picked it up, and somehow the feel of the wire-bound grip steadied me, not much, but enough to face him as he waited, poised on his toes, sleek as a panther, the fine tawny head thrown back and the arrogant smile on his lips—and I felt the tiniest spark of hope.
