"H. Beam Piper - He Walked around the Horses" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

that he had not been inside the inn until a few minutes before, when he had burst in shouting accusations,
and that there had been no secretary, and no valet, and no coachman, and no coach-and-four, at the inn,
and that the gentleman was raving mad. To all this, he called the people who were in the common room
to witness.
I then required the stranger to account for himself. He said that his name was Benjamin Bathurst, and
that he was a British diplomat, returning to England from Vienna. To prove this, he produced from his
dispatch case sundry papers. One of these was a letter of safe-conduct, issued by the Prussian
Chancellery, in which he was named and described as Benjamin Bathurst. The other papers were
English, all bearing seals, and appearing to be official documents.
Accordingly, I requested him to accompany me to the police station, and also the innkeeper, and three
men whom the innkeeper wanted to bring as witnesses.
Traugott Zeller
Oberwachtmeister
Report approved,
Ernst Hartenstein
Staatspolizeikapitan




(Statement of the self-so-called Benjamin Bathurst, taken at the police station at Perleburg, 25
November, 1809.)
 My name is Benjamin Bathurst, and I am Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the
government of His Britannic Majesty to the court of His Majesty Franz I, Emperor of Austria, or, at
least, I was until the events following the Austrian surrender made necessary my return to London. I left
Vienna on the morning of Monday, the 20th, to go to Hamburg to take ship home; I was traveling in my
own coach-and-four, with my secretary, Mr. Bertram Jardine, and my valet, William Small, both British
subjects, and a coachman, Josef Bidek, an Austrian subject, whom I had hired for the trip. Because of
the presence of French troops, whom I was anxious to avoid, I was forced to make a detour west as far
as Salzburg before turning north toward Magdeburg, where I crossed the Elbe. I was unable to get a
change of horses for my coach after leaving Gera, until I reached Perleburg, where I stopped at the
Sword & Scepter Inn.
Arriving there, I left my coach in the inn yard, and I and my secretary, Mr. Jardine, went into the inn.
A man, not this fellow here, but another rogue, with more beard and less paunch, and more shabbily
dressed, but as like him as though he were his brother, represented himself as the innkeeper, and I dealt
with him for a change of horses, and ordered a bottle of wine for myself and my secretary, and also a pot
of beer apiece for my valet and the coachman, to be taken outside to them. Then Jardine and I sat down
to our wine, at a table in the common room, until the man who claimed to be the innkeeper came back
and told us that the fresh horses were harnessed to the coach and ready to go. Then we went outside
again.
I looked at the two horses on the off side, and then walked around in front of the team to look at the
two nigh-side horses, and as I did I felt giddy, as though I were about to fall, and everything went black
before my eyes. I thought I was having a fainting spell, something I am not at all subject to, and I put out
my hand to grasp the hitching bar, but could not find it. I am sure, now, that I was unconscious for some
time, because when my head cleared, the coach and horses were gone, and in their place was a big farm
wagon, jacked up in front, with the right front wheel off, and two peasants were greasing the detached
wheel.
I looked at them for a moment, unable to credit my eyes, and then I spoke to them in German, saying,
"Where the devil's my coach-and-four?"
They both straightened, startled: the one who was holding the wheel almost dropped it.