Sheiks and Adders (18 page)

‘Odd chap,’ Colonel Pride said. ‘But devilish deep at times. I’ve relied on him quite surprisingly every now and then. Very acute – very acute indeed – is Appleby. And after all those years pretty well doing standard leather-bottom stuff behind a desk in New Scotland Yard. Remarkable thing.’

‘Your commendation, my dear Colonel, does not surprise me. I have myself considerable confidence in your colleague. I wonder whether – since he seems to have retired from his important English command – he would consider an appointment overseas?’

‘I don’t know at all, I’m sure.’ And Colonel Pride glanced in mild astonishment at one whom he felt decidedly to be an unwelcome guest. ‘Worth asking him, I suppose. He has a wife with a nice little property and isn’t in need of money. But no harm in having a go.’

The Chief Constable felt that he had dealt with this bizarre inquiry rather well. The thought of John Appleby beefing up one set of ruffians against another in some outlandish corner of the globe entertained him very much. But now he made a polite gesture towards the house, and they both returned to the somewhat precarious shelter of its library.

Appleby, as a solitary perambulating sheik, found himself not liking things at all. It wasn’t that he lacked a fairly distinct view of what had to be done. By one means or another, the Emir Hafrait must be whisked clear of Drool Court and all its present absurdities as rapidly as possible. But there was something rambling and untidy about the entire situation, a lack of anything that could be called a clear-cut mystery at the centre of it, which was decidedly not to his taste. It was true that some minor puzzles still cluttered up the main action. Where, for example, did the Basingstoke Druids fit in – if indeed they fitted in at all? Were they to be reckoned among the enemy in any significant regard? There was undoubtedly something bogus about them, which could escape the observation only of somebody as woolly-minded as Mrs Chitfield, their sponsor at Drool. If they were in any way an element in the operation designed to kill or kidnap Hafrait, then that operation at least commanded hugger-mugger or miching mallecho on a lavish scale.

As Appleby reflected on this he became aware that preparations were going forward for the Druids’ final turn: the solemn Perlustration of Drool Court. Two rows of chairs had been arranged in a semicircle before the house for those of Mr Chitfield’s guests who cared to sit rather than stand through the ceremony, and beyond this there was a species of roped-off lane at the farther end of which was now parked an entirely prosaic motor-coach in which the celebrants were presumably to return to Basingstoke. Appleby recalled that the dwelling had to be entirely vacated before the rites began, and he wondered whether, in the peculiar circumstances obtaining, Mr Chitfield would put his foot down so far as this aspect of the nonsense went. At the moment Chitfield, McIlwraith and the Emir were presumably within the precarious refuge of the library. Appleby felt he had better get back to them as quickly as was compatible with the business he now had in hand. So, for a start, he lost no time in searching out his recent acquaintance the Oxford herpetologist.

‘Yes – yes, indeed,’ the herpetologist said. ‘I appreciate the situation, and have little doubt that what you suggest would have the desired effect. But I am bound to say that I feel most reluctant to agree to your request. It would be a most awkward yarn with which to return to Oxford. No, really – I think you must hold me excused, Mr – Dear me! I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.’

‘Appleby. John Appleby.’

‘Great God in heaven!’ The herpetologist (whose own name we know to be Gillam) produced this profane ejaculation with sudden extraordinary energy. ‘Sir John Appleby! My dear sir, your name is a legend among us. In the senior common room of my college, that is; and it may well be with the undergraduates as well. The celebrated affair was long before my time, but you may be sure I have heard of it in considerable detail. The manner, that is, of your solving the mystery of our then President’s having been murdered in his Lodging. Yes, indeed – the unfortunate Josiah Umpleby. Of course I never set eyes on him. It must have been many years ago.’

‘1936, Dr Gillam.’

‘Dear me! Is that so? If it had been 1066 I think we should still be talking about it. And now my services are wholly at your disposal, I need hardly say.’

Such may be the uses – Appleby reflected as he made for his next objective – of even minor celebrity. And now fortune again favoured him. Scattered on the grass before Mr Chitfield’s theatre were about a dozen boys who could be seen at a glance as not at all pleased with things. They were clothed, somewhat anachronistically, in combat-jackets, and stacked beside them in orthodox threesomes were the service rifles which had presumably held at bay the Boer forces intent upon capturing that legendary township in Bechuanaland. Only Master William Birch-Blackie,
alias
Colonel Baden-Powell, was on his feet, and he was employing them in a kind of gloomy sentry-go in front of his companions.

‘Well, William,’ Appleby said in what he hoped was a breezy fashion, ‘did everything turn out as it should? Mafeking was relieved in the nick of time?’

‘Yes, it was. And no it didn’t.’ The hero of the Boer War had last seen his father’s elderly friend dressed up as Robin Hood, and had thought this stupid enough. That the old chap should now have taken it into his head to assume the appearance of a camel-driver or some such was really a bit on the pitiful side. William was still much disenchanted with the whole afternoon, as his next remarks showed. ‘The siege business was as tame as you wouldn’t believe. It might have been a silly game at a kids’ party. Not a shot was fired. We’re all pretty chuffed, Sir John. I can tell you that.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it. No ammo on issue?’

‘Of course we were given ammo. Two clips of blank to each of us. But then Mr Chitfield sent a message that there mustn’t be any firing because it might alarm the ladies.’

‘What about those bayonets, William?’

‘Oh, we fixed bayonets, all right – and did a charge with them. We know all about it, of course, since we’ve all done our first year in the CCF at school. And a fixed bayonet is a damn-sight more dangerous than a blank cartridge, believe you me.’

‘Most certainly it is.’ And Appleby nodded sagely. ‘As a matter of fact, I have something rather less tame to suggest to you.’

‘Just to me, or to the whole platoon?’

‘To the whole lot of you, certainly. And it’s a genuine paramilitary operation I have in mind.’

What this produced from Master William Birch-Blackie was a long appraising stare. But when he turned away it was to give a word of command.

‘All you chaps,’ he shouted, ‘gather round! On your feet! Jump to it, I say! One two, one two!’

And so, in next to no time at all, Sir John Appleby was uttering wonderful and astounding words. The recently enacted siege of Mafeking had been a make-believe siege and had no doubt been extremely boring for everyone concerned. But it had been a make-believe siege within a perfectly real siege. He wouldn’t go into much detail, since time was pressing. In outline the situation was this: somebody rather important (important enough, Appleby contrived to suggest in passing, to enjoy the services of a retired Commissioner of Metropolitan Police) was enduring virtually siege conditions at Drool Court now. It had to be made possible for him to break out, and there was a role that William Birch-Blackie and his thoroughly soldier-like companions could play. Appleby said only a little more than this, and when he had finished William had only a single brief question to ask.

‘When you blow a whistle, sir?’

‘Just that. I’ll borrow one from a bobby – and know how to blow it, because I was once a bobby myself.’

‘Sir!’

‘Always remember’ – Appleby said solemnly and to his auditory at large – ‘that every private soldier carries a Field-Marshal’s baton in his knapsack.’

Apart from these rapidly recruited
soldats d’élite
, Richard Chitfield’s theatre and its surroundings were now deserted. The hot-air balloon, although inflated to the point at which it had assumed the proportions of an up-ended pear, was still at its moorings, and only a small clump of people were any longer paying any attention to it. Interest appeared now centred on Drool Court itself. Surveying the scene from what was still a respectful distance, Appleby could distinguish that all the seats ranged in front of the house were occupied, and that a considerable crowd of Mr Chitfield’s visitors were standing behind them. It was evident that only in the Perlustration did any great interest remain at this oddly contrived fête. And this, Appleby thought, was just as it should be. The crowd, having waited thus far in expectation of an out-of-the-way spectacle, were now unlikely to call it a day and make for home before this expectation had been gratified. So the policemen still probably treating the drive as a prohibited area would not be having too ticklish a time of it. And a little congestion round Drool Court itself would be just right for what he had in mind.

And now – wasting no time, yet preserving something of the purposelessness proper in a pseudo-sheik – Appleby made his way to the balloon. When he arrived at it he was at once confirmed in the impression that it had – at least in a metaphorical sense – misfired. Perhaps it had failed, for some technical reason, to take off at its advertised time, so that all but a few gazers had drifted away. Its aeronaut, previously glimpsed as habited in a fashion designed for the exploration of outer space, had divested himself of these somewhat theatrical properties, and was lounging against the basket-like contraption in which he should by now, it was to be supposed, have been wafted many leagues from Drool. He was a small dark man, who somehow immediately suggested himself as of a socially unassuming order. He also suggested, at least to a retired policeman, a degree of inebriety which might have brought him within the scope of the law had his vehicle been designed to perform on terra firma rather than in the heavens. Undue delay, perhaps, had led to his making too many short walks to Mr Chitfield’s bar.

This was a slightly discouraging state of affairs. A drunk some thousands of feet in air is probably quite as dangerous as a drunk on the A4. On the other hand, he might with luck be the more ready to accept uncritically the proposition upon which Appleby immediately embarked.

‘Good afternoon,’ Appleby said. ‘It’s been a bit of fancy dress for everybody this afternoon, has it not? I wish I could get rid of mine as you seem to have got rid of yours. But I’m dressed up like this to amuse a friend. He’s the real thing: the ruler of a fabulously wealthy state in the Middle East.’

‘I don’t hold with any of that sort.’ The balloon man, as he supplied this information, treated Appleby to a glance of cautious and uncertain animosity.

‘And he happens to be very interested in balloons. Would you say, now, that you’re here at Drool Court on an amateur basis or on a professional one?’

‘I’m not a bloody taxi, if that’s what you mean.’

‘It is what I mean, more or less. But you do undertake something like what might be called chauffeur-driven private hire?’

‘Funny man, are you?’ The balloon man asked this question quite ferociously. ‘I’m on a stupid enough job as it is. I’m supposed to go up, and while I’m still over this blasted place drop a lot of silly little envelopes that have something to do with a raffle. But nobody seems interested, so it’s a bloody frost.’

‘But at least you’ll get your fee.’

‘I’ll get my fee, or see that Chitfield bastard a damn-sight further.’

‘Well, I have a slightly different proposition. You take up myself and this prince–’

‘I don’t hold with wogs.’

‘He isn’t a wog. He’s the wealthiest and most powerful man in all Arabia.’ Appleby was rather pleased with this. ‘You take us up, and we sail away, and you come down again wherever you think proper. Only it must be more than five miles from Drool. My friend would insist on that.’

‘How much?’

‘One might appropriately say the sky’s the limit. But better be precise. Fifty pounds down – I have that in a pocket under this idiotic get-up.’ Appleby paused for a moment. ‘And the remaining nine hundred and fifty more or less on demand after the trip.’

‘No kidding?’ The balloon man was obviously much shaken by this.

‘Absolutely none. But you’ll have to be nippy. So keep a look out for us. The prince isn’t accustomed to be kept waiting.’

‘At a cool thousand,’ the balloon man said, ‘I’m your pal for the rest of the day.’ He spoke almost as if he had been sobered up by this sudden contact with high finance. But then he took a dive into his basket and produced what was certainly a half-empty bottle of gin. ‘Have a swig on it, chum,’ he asked hospitably.

‘Later, perhaps,’ Appleby said. ‘And just keep off any more of it yourself. They don’t approve of alcohol in Arabia.’

And Sir John Appleby turned and walked composedly away.

But if Appleby was composed, he was wary as well. He still knew, he told himself, far too little precisely what was cooking at Drool Court. Somewhere in the crowd (unless, indeed, he had by now made off) there lurked somebody, whether himself Arab or not, who at least for a time had believed himself to have been successful in assassinating the Emir Hafrait. This person was almost certainly one of a gang. And there might conceivably be more gangs than one. There might be one gang simply set on killing the Emir, and another intent upon the more ticklish task of making a hostage of him. The Emir himself seemed to take it as a matter of course that he had one set of enemies here and another there.

It was true that, once a substantial body of police arrived and the carriage-way up to Drool Court had been declared free of hazard, getting Hafrait clear of the place and back to his own Embassy or whatever need not be all that risky. Pride had even talked about a bullet-proof car. But an unknown degree of difficulty here lay with the Emir himself. This was because he was, in fact, an excessively touchy chap. Or perhaps only an excessively political one. He was concerned, that was to say, to project an image which would be impaired if it became known that he had to be hustled around by a bunch of English rural policemen. It might be briefly expressed by saying that a princely hauteur made him a difficult fish to deal with.