Stiff Upper Lip (6 page)

In a single bound I was at Dovebasket's side. I whipped the handkerchief from his face. “Unmasked,” I hissed. It was just as I thought. He was blowing hard upon one of those whistles which, while inaudible to the human ear, produced a high-pitched buzz calculated to unnerve dogs. “It was simply an experiment,” he said with a sickly smile, “De Mandeville betted me an even tenner that my whistle wouldn't work.”

“Experiment!” I cried. “Look around you, you wretched youth.” The scene was a terrible one to witness. I have not seen anything to equal it—except perhaps once when someone released a grass-snake at a Pen Club Conference in Venice. I turned upon Dovebasket. “Give me that foul instrument,” I cried in a voice of thunder. “I confiscate it. And as soon as it is safe to get down I shall conduct you to your Chief of Mission.”

But he only smirked. He was incorrigible, the little blackhead. When later that day I told Polk-Mowbray about the whistle he was beside himself with rage. “Dovebasket must go,” he said in ringing tones. And duly—these things take an age to arrange—Dovebasket went. He was promoted to the rank of Senior Military Attaché in Delhi. Upwards, old boy. It's always upwards in the service. That is perhaps the tragedy of it all.

The Thumb … was an iron one

7

The Iron Hand

Have you ever noticed (said Antrobus) that people called Percy are almost invariably imbeciles? Perhaps the name confers a fateful instability upon the poor souls; perhaps it is chosen as the most appropriate for those who, from birth, show all the signs of being lathe-turned morons.… Anyway it is a fact. Hearing the name I know I need never look at the face. I am sure of the ears spread to the four winds like banana-leaves, sure of the lustreless eyes, the drooling mouth, hammer-toes and so on … Percy is as Percy looks in my experience.

Nor was Percy, the Embassy second-footman, any exception. In fact to call him a footman was an insult to what is, after all, a
métier.
He was a superannuated potboy with the sort of face one sees slinking out of cinemas in places like Sidcup and Penge—idle, oafish and conceited. He spent hours tending the spitcurl on his receding forehead and complacently ogling the housemaids. He rode a bicycle round and round the flower-beds until Polk-Mowbray (bird-watching from his office) became giddy and ordered him to desist. He whistled with a dreadful monotonous shrillness. He chewed gum with a sickening rotary action that turned the beholder's stomach.

Well, when Drage went on leave the domestic arrangements of the Embassy were confided to this junior Quasimodo, and that is how the business of the iron hand came about. Normally Percy was never allowed to touch either the Embassy plate or the suit of armour which stood in the Conference Room and which we used to call “The White Knight”. Personally I hated the thing, though Drage loved it dearly. It was always giving us frights during Secret Conferences. Once the beaver came down with a clang just as Polk-Mowbray was about to Come To A Decision and we all got a dreadful start. On another occasion smoke was seen curling out of its mouth and the cry of “Spy” went up from one and all. Trampelvis had dropped a cigar-end into it. After this I had it moved into the hall. Once a month Drage used to take it apart and polish it up. Now Percy had his glaucous eye fixed firmly upon “The White Knight”, and no sooner had Drage left than he at once began to fool around with the thing.

He put the headpiece on and scared the housemaids by gargling at them through the buttery hatch after dark. He even went for a twilight ride on his bicycle dressed in the thing—out of one gate and in at the other—which made the startled Vulgarian sentries rub their eyes. Why they didn't shoot him I don't know. It must have seemed clear evidence that the Secret Service was going over on to the offensive—and one little arpeggio on a submachine gun would have saved us so much subsequent trouble.…

Well, these benighted pranks went on until one day Percy met his Waterloo. After a successful appearance as Hamlet's father he regained the buttery one day, panting happily, and started to divest himself of helm and codpiece in time to serve a pre-dinner Martini in the sitting-room. Judge the poor mawk's surprise when he found that the right hand wouldn't unscrew according to plan. All the wrenching and pulling in the world could not budge it. In a flash he realized that unless he cut along the dotted line this grotesque mailed fist was with him for life. The press-stud or what-have-you was jammed against the demi-quiver of the bassinet, more or less. The first I heard of it was a noise which suggested that someone was trying to shoe a mettlesome carthorse in the Residence—rustic, yet somehow out of keeping with Polk-Mowbray's ways. It didn't seem natural. It didn't fit into Our World. Listening more carefully I thought I heard the sound of human groans, and I was not wrong. The cry for a certified obstetrician had already been raised.

Percy was sobbing like a donkey, surrounded by frightened housemaids. He realized that he was dished. There he sat on the three-legged stool in the buttery, bathed in tears, and holding up this expensive-looking piece of ironmongery in dumb appeal. “Wretched oaf!” I cried. “You have been told a hundred times not to touch ‘The White Knight'.” I pulled and tugged, but it was no go; the iron boxing-glove was stuck clean as a cavalry boot. Various fruitless suggestions were made, various attempts to divest him were carried out. In vain. I took him into the Chancery in search of qualified advice. Spalding tried, De Mandeville tried. We pushed and pulled and heaved in unison. Percy sobbed more loudly. But the thing refused to yield. Polk-Mowbray and a couple of archivists made their appearance, intrigued by the noises from a normally sedate Chancery. They brought fresh blood and fresh impetus to his rescuers. While Polk-Mowbray stood on his chest we formed a human chain—like getting the Lowestoft Lifeboat in—and tried to wrest the article from him by brute force. It was no go. A little more and we should have shredded Frederick. A private socket would have given. “There's no need to yell so,” said Spalding angrily. “We are only trying to help you.” We desisted panting and had another conference. Dovebasket summoned the Embassy chauffeurs and took counsel with them. Now plans were formulated involving expensive and bizarre equipment—for they planned to saw their way in with a hacksaw and so deliver the lad. But they punctured him. Then Polk-Mowbray boldly tried to hammer the thing off with a croquet mallet. The noise was deafening, the result nil. I must say those medieval farriers, artificers—or whatever they were called—knew their business. It didn't look much, this olde worlde gauntlet, but heavens how it stuck. Percy was by now very much frightened and perhaps slightly bruised around the edges. We plied him with bonded gin to bring the roses back. There he sat in Spalding's swivel-chair, letting out a moan from time to time, and drinking thirstily. Occasionally one of us would have a new idea and advance upon him, whereupon he would swivel wildly in order to avoid further pain. In this way he dealt Butch Benbow a backhand stroke with his glove across the shoulders which felled our redoubtable Naval Attaché and kept him down for the count. More gin, more moans. There seemed to be no way out of the
impasse.
Time was running out. Guests were expected. “I've a good mind to dress you up in the rest of this thing and send you back to your mother by air!” cried Polk-Mowbray in a transport of fury. I felt for him.

The awful thing was that the Dutch were due to dine with us that evening. It always seemed to be the fate of the Dutch to be invited on crisis evenings. That evening was a real
kermesse héroique.
Percy was a poor butler at the best of times but tonight he bordered on the really original. He shambled round and round the room sniffing, half anaesthetized by gin and … well, you can imagine our guests' faces when a mailed hand appeared over their shoulder holding a soup-plate. They
must
have felt that there was something uncanny about it. Clearly they longed to pop a question but the Iron Laws of the Corps forbade it. They held their curiosity in leash. They were superb. Normally Percy always got his thumb in the soup—but the thumb this evening was an iron one. I shudder to recall it. Yet by a superhuman effort we remained calm and Talked Policy as coolly as we could. The old training dies hard. Somehow we managed to carry it off. Yet I think our hosts felt themselves to be in the presence of irremediable tragedy. They pressed our hands in silent sympathy as we tucked them into their cars. All of a sudden one felt terribly alone again—alone with the Iron Hand.…

Well, my dear fellow, everyone had a go at that blasted hand—the Chaplain, the cipher staff, finally the doctor. The latter wanted to heat the whole thing up with a blowtorch until the press-stud expanded but that would have incinerated Percy. By this time, of course, I hardly cared what they did to him. I would willingly have amputated the arm from somewhere just above the waist, myself. But meanwhile an urgent appeal had gone out to the Museum for a professor of armour to advise us; but the only available specialist in chain-mail was away in Italy on leave. He would not return for another two days. Two days! I know that it doesn't sound a great deal. But in the middle of the night Percy found that he had lost all trace of feeling in the arm. It had got pins and needles. He sat up in bed, haunted by a new terror. It seemed to him that gangrene had perhaps set in; he had heard the doctor muttering something about the circulation of the blood.… He bounded down the stairs into the Residence roaring like a lion and galloped into Polk-Mowbray's bedroom waving the object. Our esteemed Chief Of Mission, after the nervous strain of that evening, had turned in early, and was enjoying a spell of blameless slumber. Awakened by this apparition, and being unable to understand a word of Percy's gibberish, he jumped to the purely intuitive conclusion that a fire had broken out upstairs. It was a matter of moments to break glass and press button. Woken by that fateful ringing the Embassy are squads swept gallantly into life, headed by Morgan find Chowder, pyjama-clad and in steel helmets. Just how Percy and his Ambassador escaped a thorough foam-bath that night is a mystery to me. Neither seemed very coherent to the gallant little band of rescuers as they swept through the dining-room with their sprinklers and up the stairs.

At last order was restored and the doctor summoned, who did much to soothe Percy's fears. But he did on the other hand take a serious view of the pins and needles. The circulation was being impeded by the gauntlet apparently. Percy must somehow keep the blood flowing in it—keep the circulation going—until help from the outer world arrived. How? By banging it, if you please, banging it repeatedly on anything that was to hand, banging it day and night lest the gangrene set in. I tell you, my dear chap, that that fateful banging, which lasted two whole days and nights, rings in my ears even now. Banging on the walls, the buttery table, on the floor. Neither work nor sleep was possible. An army of poltergeists could not have done half as well. Bang, bang, bang … now loud and slow, now hollow and resonant, now sharp and clear. Day and night the banging haunted us until at last the Professor appeared. We received him with tears of entreaty in our eyes.

He took a look at Percy and nodded sagely. He knew, it appeared, all about these press-studs. He applied some olive-oil on a feather to the relevant joints, tapped twice with his pince-nez and Presto: Percy was free. It seemed almost too good to be true—all that silence. A united sigh went up from us all—a sigh such as I have never heard from dips before or since. Silence at last descended on us, the silence of a normal embassy oozing along at the normal cruising speed. No longer the goods' yards at Swindon, no longer a branch of Bassett-Lowke, no longer a boiler-makers' jamboree in Sheffield. No. Just H.M. Embassy as ever was, as ever would be in future, we hoped. But just to make assurance doubly sure Polk-Mowbray had the arms taken off the suit of armour and sent home. I can't say it improved the appearance of “The White Knight”; but then it was questionable whether anything ever could.