Sheiks and Adders (16 page)

It might have been expected that this extraordinary speech would be followed by silence, at least for an appreciable space. But what did follow was more extraordinary still. The Emir Hafrait was amused. He was even condescending to laugh. Richard Chitfield, clearly alarmed by something wholly outside his experience of his haughty and severely-mannered guest, gaped rather as if there were suddenly being revealed to him some natural monstrosity such as a two-headed calf. Colonel Pride was merely looking thoughtful and dubious, perhaps estimating how the proposed prank would stand up, if anything untoward happened, before a judge of the High Court.

‘A prince,’ the Emir said, ‘pretending to be a plebeian pretending to be a prince. It is a fitting end to the very great piece of nonsense perpetrated here this afternoon. Sir John, I am with you. Let us go.’

At this moment, however, there came a knock on the library door.

In fact there came three knocks – the second by no means hurrying after the first, nor the third after the second. The effect was curiously ominous. Colonel Pride’s hand moved towards Robin Hood’s pocket. Sir John Appleby momentarily indulged the thought that if Fate had the habit of knocking on people’s doors other than in a merely metaphorical way this would be just the manner of it. Then the door opened and a tall figure robed in white stood revealed. The tall figure took two solemn paces forward and then raised a solemn arm in the air.

‘Grace to Maleldil,’ the intruder said in a deep voice.

‘And who the devil are you?’ It was with some difficulty that Mr Chitfield, already somewhat overwrought by the recent turn of events, managed to produce this brusque challenge.

‘Grace to Maleldil,’ the mysterious visitant reiterated in a yet deeper tone.

‘Grace to Maleldil,’ Appleby said. It was clear to him that here was one of the Basingstoke Druids – perhaps, indeed, the Archdruid, if a hierarchical system existed among them. And he recalled the Order of the Golden Dawn. Certainly the Basingstoke Druids borrowed whatever took their fancy. This peculiar salutation came, he happened to know, from a rather high-toned work of space fiction. But echoing it produced an immediate emollient effect.

‘Well, this is it,’ the druid said on a relaxed and colloquial note. ‘Everybody has to be out of the house in twenty minutes. That’s for the Perlustration. It’s only in an empty house that we can do the Perlustration – particularly when it’s with the Asperges. The Asperges don’t work, they don’t, with outsiders around.’

‘Go away. Go away at once.’ Mr Chitfield did his best to assume a commanding manner. ‘We have serious matters to discuss here, and want none of your nonsense. So clear out.’

‘It’s your missus we have our contract with.’ The druid’s tone had changed yet again, and verged upon the truculent. ‘“See there’s nobody left in the house,” she said. And that’s why I’m speaking to you now.’

‘Oh, very well.’ Mr Chitfield spoke resignedly. It was evident that in domestic matters – and this was in an odd fashion domestic – he was habituated to letting his wife have her way. ‘But I understood there was to be an audience for your event.’

‘That’s outside. Chairs and benches are being arranged there now. It’s the candles and torches and the like showing through the windows that your crowd will see. And then the procession to our vehicle. With the Grand Chant, that will be. We’ve made it clear, you know, that the Grand Chant’s another extra.’

‘No doubt – and you’re welcome to your imbecile extras. But go away now, and leave us to our affairs.’

‘Grace to Maleldil,’ the druid said – and retired with dignity from the library.

‘And now we’ll get going,’ Appleby said briskly. ‘But, Tommy, just how is it with this extraordinary fête? Have you simply let it go ahead, despite what has happened to the Emir’s unfortunate follower?’

‘Yes.’ The Chief Constable nodded emphatically. ‘It’s known there’s been some sort of accident on that archery field. But I’ve given instruction that what’s actually happened shouldn’t get spread around. If there’s diplomatic dynamite lurking in the affair it’s probably wise to keep a low profile until we get a word from the FO.’

‘I suppose you’re right there. And, in any case, a big crowd still milling around is to our advantage for the moment. But the most ticklish part of our plan comes first. Getting out of the house, that is. If one of the villains saw the two of us emerging through the front door, he’d be pretty thick if he didn’t turn suspicious straight away.’

‘Then we must emerge from the back, and by way of the servants’ quarters.’ This came, rather surprisingly, from the Emir. It was evident that something in the spirit of the impending exploit appealed to him. ‘Mr Chitfield can no doubt guide us to the appropriate corner of his modest country retreat.’

Mr Chitfield, although this description of Drool Court could scarcely have been agreeable to him, concurred in the proposal at once. He had plainly had enough of his exalted guest, however valuable a business prospect he might be. Between sheiks and druids, he might have been feeling, there was just nothing to choose.

‘John,’ Colonel Pride said abruptly, ‘you’d better take this little affair along with you. It can’t be called at all an impressive weapon, but it may be better than nothing.’ As he spoke, Colonel Pride produced a decidedly small automatic pistol.

‘No, Tommy, I think not.’ Appleby had shaken his head decisively. ‘This whole affair is so uncommonly ramifying and obscure that you may turn out to be in more need of it than I am. But it puts another question in my head.’ Appleby turned to Chitfield. ‘What about that guard of yours with the gun?’ he asked. ‘He might turn out useful, after all.’

‘When the meeting was over I told him to clear out. It struck me he’d been a mistake. When he got up and pointed the damned thing at Tibby Fancroft and yourself I didn’t care for it at all. So I told him to make himself scarce and send in his bill.’

‘It was an entirely prudent decision,’ the Chief Constable said severely. ‘No good ever comes of having thick-skulled thugs hanging around with illegal weapons. As things have turned out, I’ll admit that we might have found some use for him. But if he has taken his departure, we’d better not hear of him again.’

‘And I thought, you see, that the Emir would be going back to London at once.’ Richard Chitfield offered this further explanation in an aggrieved tone, as if the Emir’s continued enjoyment of his hospitality had been distinctly bad form.

‘Well,’ Appleby said, ‘he’s going back now – and the sooner I see his car departing down the drive the happier I’ll be. So be so good, Mr Chitfield, to get us out of this house and into that crowd as unobtrusively as you can.’

‘It had better not be by the kitchens, but through the conservatory and the string of glass-houses beyond it. They’re so crammed with damned-fool plants that nobody can see you going through, and at the other end there’s only the old stable yard. When you’re through that you’ll come out bang in the middle of things.’

And thus revealing himself as far from an ardent horticulturist, Mr Richard Chitfield led the way out of his library.

The conservatory at Drool Court proved to be a large and lofty affair, outrageously out of keeping with the character of the house itself. At its centre rose a species of lantern or cupola, the greater part of which was occupied by the head of a palm tree that somehow suggested itself as having given up a vain struggle to escape from the place and to have relapsed into a sulky lassitude. The Emir Hafrait paused before it, and his features briefly underwent a change which might have signalled either amusement or commiseration – or conceivably a mingling of the two. But when he then turned his glance upon Appleby it was in a fashion that was entirely serious.

‘It is a question, Sir John,’ he said, ‘whether I ought to have placed myself under your conduct in this way. You live, I presume, in retirement?’

‘Certainly I do.’

‘But you feel what may be termed the common citizen’s obligation to guard, as you have expressed it, your Sovereign’s peace?’

‘I suppose it’s just that. Shall we move on?’

‘Not, if you please, for one moment. I must explain to you that the measure of our common danger is greater than you perhaps imagine. That I was to be here at the person Chitfield’s house today appears to have been “leaked”, as they say, to a highly undesirable extent. So you are not to suppose that what threatens is confined to three men absurdly disguised as belonging to Chitfield’s impertinent bunch of pseudo-sheiks. I appreciate, may I say, your wit in so naming them.’

‘I am obliged to Your Excellency.’

‘There may be as many as a dozen men, by no means necessarily well-disposed the one to another, who are here with the intention of killing me. A dozen assassins, Sir John, or “hit-men” as now appears to be the common phrase. That I have survived up to this moment in what may perfectly fairly be called a trap, is due merely to the fact that they one and all are ignobly anxious to kill without being found out. But now consider what you and I are doing. We are making our way back to the easily identified motor car in which I came to Drool. Is it not only too likely that a skilled sharpshooter has his sights trained upon it at this moment?’

‘I can’t say that the possibility has eluded me. Mind the step.’ Appleby had contrived to get this loquacious potentate into motion again, and they were passing from the main conservatory to a string of interconnected greenhouses. ‘I must explain to you that Colonel Pride, the Chief Constable, is an old friend of mine and a yet older friend of my wife; that he has been for some wholly obscure reason inadequately briefed about your situation; and that I am simply making it my business to lend a hand in getting you back to town. Ah! Here we are in open air again, and presumably in what Chitfield called the old stable yard. And nothing stabled in it except that Range Rover. Oddly enough, it is familiar to me. When found, make a note of.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ The Emir, being presumably unfamiliar with
Dombey and Son
, was naturally perplexed.

‘I know its owner – although only to the extent of having exchanged a few words with him – and it is just possible he may be of help to us. But why he has driven in here, I can’t tell. His business is collecting snakes.’

‘Snakes?’ The Emir was yet more perplexed. ‘Serpents?’

‘Yes, indeed. They do happen in England, although there is seldom much mischief in them. The man is simply making a collection for scientific purposes in a laboratory attached to the University of Oxford. But now let us go ahead – through the crowd and down to the car park. And let me remind Your Excellency to shuffle. If you can contrive once or twice to trip over your robe, so much the better.’

This time the Emir Hafrait seemed undecided whether to smile or frown. He was, no doubt, unaccustomed to being even gently made fun of. But he moved on at once, and when he next spoke it was not in displeasure. ‘My dear Sir John, I really don’t like this at all – although the idea did amuse me when you advanced it. With one of my own people it would be another matter. They have their code, and we understand one another. But to lead into danger a person of eminence in the country of which I am a guest – that, I do not care for at all. It is itself a kind of shuffling, as you call it. I would be better pleased to go on alone.’

‘Leaving me ashamed of myself? My word went with my suggestion, and I’d be breaking it if I left off now.’

‘An unanswerable argument, Sir John. And I might do worse than quit this curious affair we call life in the company of an English gentleman. It occurs to me that we have not shaken hands. May we do so now?’

So the Emir Hafrait and Sir John Appleby solemnly performed this ritual act before stepping once more into the hubbub of Mr Richard Chitfield’s hypertrophied garden party.

Surveying the scene Appleby received the impression that the entire ramshackle occasion had turned out to be a fair success. This ran very much contrary to his earlier expectations. The diversity of the amusements on offer, together with the fact that the wearing of fancy dress becomes somewhat irksome and even embarrassing if sustained for long, would have resulted – so he had thought – in a very general inclination to feel that one had enjoyed one’s money’s worth and might now go home. But there was certainly no drift towards the car park – which was sited just within such a real park as Drool Court possessed, with beyond it the fringes of that extensive area of woodland in which Appleby had encountered Richard Chitfield’s disconsolate younger daughter the day before. The military band on the terrace was concealed behind a corner of the mansion, but its unwearied strains – still muted in deference to Mr Chitfield’s theatrical enterprise nearly a quarter of a mile away – continued to provide such entertainment as one cared to listen to.

Equally unwearied appeared to be the
passeggiata
performed by a large number of the variously disguised guests, so that the effect of a huge and mobile flower-bed was still unimpaired. The only sheik – pseudo or otherwise – at present on view was the previously parched Mr Pring. He was conversing, clearly in a deferential manner, with Nick Bottom, the textile tycoon. Nick had so far relaxed as to take off his ass’s head, but not to part with it; he was carrying it under one arm in a manner suggesting a monster which had miraculously survived decollation and was on the way to have the surprising achievement commemorated in the studio of some painter who went in for that sort of thing. In the middle distance the hot-air balloon, which now appeared to be straining at its moorings, happened to present itself behind these two conversing persons, and thus afforded the suggestion of a bright cloud or nimbus entirely appropriate to such a supernatural occasion.

‘We have a couple of hundred yards to cover,’ Appleby said to the Emir. ‘The first hundred, as you can see, is more or less within the fringes of the crowd. After that, we shall be noticeably on our own. The car park appears deserted, and at the moment nobody else is making for it.’