The Doomsday Carrier

by Victor Canning

  Lady Cynthia turned her head towards him, wrinkling her brows, and said, “What are you talking about, Horace?”

  Horace took her hand and pressed it gently. “About love, my dear Cynthia. I love you, my dear one, and there is no greater happiness you could bestow on me than to hear you say that you, too, love me and will be my wife.” He raised her hand and kissed her bony knuckles warmly.

  For a moment or two Lady Cynthia was silent and then with a shrill laugh, almost a sharp whinny, she said, “My dear Horace—what an extraordinary man you are! Why I never dreamt for one moment that you felt like this! Oh, dear Horace, I don’t mean to be unkind—” she leaned towards him and kissed his cheek, her breath rich with the aroma of cigar, “—and in many, many ways I am deeply flattered. But, my dear Horace, the thing is utterly impossible.”

  The world began to collapse slowly around Horace, fragmenting silently through the mild purple light of the summer night, but as it fell he made a desperate attempt to stay the catastrophe.

  “Why, my dear Cynthia? Why is it impossible?”

  Lady Cynthia in the kindest way told him, and he was man enough to accept it philosophically, which as he knew full well was a far different thing from taking it lying down. A distinction which when he lay in bed later he pondered with a meticulous concern, remembering the details of Lady Cynthia’s reasons which could be summed up as the opposite of those inherent in the lines—Kind hearts are more than coronets. And simple faith than Norman blood. He woke once in the middle of the night and suddenly said aloud angrily, “What’s bloody wrong with being Anglo-Saxon and an orphan?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TRAGEDY AND COMEDY sometimes share the same bed Both are restless sleepers.

  Horace Simbath rose early. The latter part of an almost nuit blanche had confirmed in him the resolution to have no more to do with Lady Cynthia’s plans for Charlie. If she were so aristocratically blue-blooded, so conscious of her family and its traditions, so—no matter how regretfully expressed—concerned about the social gulf between them and—not positively expressed but hinted at—so sensitive of the view her friends and relatives would take of her marrying a commoner, then she could carry on with the rest of the Charlie project herself. He had done all the donkey work so far. Now she could do the rest. Anger and injured pride smouldering in him like a slow peat fire, he packed up his case, dismantled his dark room and collected his photographic equipment, and drove away in his shabby saloon car. The only person he saw was Paget coming up the drive from his cottage to begin work.

  He stopped the car and said to the gardener, “Paget, my dear fellow—” he was tempted to add ‘as one serf to another’ but decided against it, “—when you see Lady Cynthia will you be kind enough to tell her that I have had to go back to London on urgent business?”

  “Yes, sir, certainly.”

  “That’s a good chap.”

  For a moment he was tempted to mark his going with a moment of panache by handing the man a five-pound note as a tip, but as he had only fifteen pounds in his wallet and petrol and lunch to buy, and a bank overdraft much larger than usual, he decided against it. He drove off into the strengthening blue of the morning, the air full of bird song and the scent of the lime trees along the driveway, unmoved by the beauty of the day, aware only of the slow smouldering of the volcano within him.

  Paget went up to the house and about his business. One of his first tasks since Charlie had arrived was to go to the billiard room to clean it up and to water and feed Charlie. When he let himself in this morning Charlie was swinging happily from one climbing rope to another, chattering to himself. Seeing Paget he raised his head and greeted him with a succession of noisy hoots.

  Paget saw that during the night Charlie had been tugging and pulling at his water trough again and this time had finally managed to break it free from the holding screws in the planks of the floor. Paget put fresh food in Charlie’s feeding box and then went off to get his tools and new screws in order to fix the trough in a different position. Charlie dropped down from his ropes and squatting by the box began to make a breakfast of fresh carrots and slices of cut melon. When Paget came back and began to fix the trough, Charlie ambled over to him and, squatting on the floor, watched him.

  Paget, who liked Charlie, said, “Aye, you can well watch, Mister Charlie. These ’ere be three-inch screws—not like them others—and going into solid oak what was a growing tree a hundred years before you was just a gleam in your old monkey father’s eyes. You pull them out and I’ll call you Mister Samson in future.” Charlie blew gently through pouted lips and nuzzled his head against Paget’s.

  An hour later Lady Cynthia, never a late riser, strolled out on to the terrace to smoke a cheroot before breakfast. Paget, who had been surreptitiously levelling mole hills in the rough lawn, walked up to her.

  “Morning, my lady.”

  “Good morning, Paget. Lovely morning. Is Mr Simbath about yet?”

  “Aye, my lady. He was up early. Met him going down the drive in his car, I did.”

  “In his car?”

  “Yes, my lady. All packed up. He said would I tell you he’d had a call to go back to London on urgent business.”

  “Business?” Lady Cynthia frowned. “What business?”

  “He didn’t say, my lady, and I didn’t think it was my place to ask.”

  “No, of course not. Is Charlie all right this morning?”

  “Yes, my lady, though I’ve just had to fix his trough. He got it loose during the night.”

  Going in to her breakfast Lady Cynthia was a little concerned at the baldness of Horace’s message. But then you never knew with Horace. Probably something had occurred to him during the night, some new angle about Charlie and their crusade, perhaps. Yes, that could be it, and the dear man had been too considerate to disturb her so early.

  Lifting the silver cover from the eggs and bacon on the sideboard, she took two eggs and four rashers of bacon and, as she began to make a hearty breakfast, smiled to herself at the thought of dear Horace. How delightfully quixotic he could be at times. Where on earth had he got the idea that she might marry him? Oh dear, she had had to be very tactful in refusing him, and she must say he had been most understanding. As a friend, companion and a wonderful help in this Charlie project she could have wished for no one else. But marriage—even if she could remotely contemplate it after the tragic loss of her first and only love—would have been quite out of the question with Horace. After all the Chickleys were a family who had always married their own kind, people of rank, wealth and good blood. Snobbish it might be in this day and age. But high standards had to be kept. Spreading marmalade thickly on her toast she considered what on earth would her county friends have said? She could hear them . . . She must be going loopy . . . Couldn’t she see the man was only after her money?. . . And have you seen him? A glib little, quite impossible man . . . Common as dirt, my dear . . . Poor Cynthia.

  Taking an apple from the bowl on the sideboard she went along to the billiard room to make her morning visit to Charlie. He greeted her with an excited dash up his ropes and down the tree trunk and then galloped to her, calling, and holding out his hand for the apple.

  She gave it to him and he went swiftly up the tree trunk, perched at the top, and began to eat it.

  Watching him, Lady Cynthia saw herself in four days’ time, standing in Regent’s Park, the green of the grass obliterated by the crowd, an ocean of heads all turned her way . . . Charlie at her side, a stout leather belt around his waist with a chain attached to it which she would hold (dear Horace had thought of that) . . . and her voice ringing out, stirring the crowd to an emotional fervour that would sweep through them and spread over the whole country like a forest fire. Her eyes dimmed a little with tears at the thought as in her mind she began to go over the words of the great speech which Horace had already written for her.

  She turned away, her mind rioting with the vision and sound of those moments to come, and let hers
elf out of the billiard room. Then—as she closed the door behind her—a sudden dark thought struck her.

  Horace! Oh, no—it couldn’t be. But could it? Suppose he had been more upset than he had shown? What call could he possibly have had so early? No, Paget must have got it wrong. He’d had an idea, something brilliant and which needed action at once, and the dear man had hurried away. She looked at her wristwatch. Ten o’clock. He’d been gone four hours. Any moment now, perhaps already, he would be back in his London flat. With a sudden resolve she began to move quickly towards the morning room to telephone Horace. In her agitation she forgot to padlock the billiard room door on the outside.

  A little later Charlie, who tended to become bored and mischievous towards mid-morning, made an attempt to pull up the newly fixed water trough without success. Waa-waa-waaing with frustration he scooped his hands through the water and sprayed it all over the floor and then wandered to the billiard room door where he began to play with the bronze door-knob. A few seconds later the door was open and Charlie ambled out into the corridor which led to the main part of the house. A few yards along it was a sash window which had been left partly open at the tip against the summer heat. Charlie climbed on to the window seat, reached for the top of the lowered window pane and swung himself up and over it.

  * * * *

  At that moment Grandison was in the large, wainscoted room of the Minister of Defence. It was ten minutes past ten, almost the same time, seventeen days before, when Charlie had been given the plague injection. At twelve o’clock all radio and television programmes would be interrupted and the secretly prepared announcement by the Minister would go on the air.

  The Minister, smoking, and absently stirring the cup of coffee in front of him, looked across at the broad back of Grandison who stood staring out of the window. To himself as much as to Grandison, he said, “Mankind has a genius for getting itself into a mess. That’s the real lesson of history.”

  Grandison turned, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I wouldn’t argue with that philosophy. But it doesn’t help at the moment to know it. What would have helped would have been to tell the truth days ago. Politics and philosophy never did run in harness.”

  “You think that whoever holds Charlie will come into the open when the broadcasts go out?”

  “Yes, I do. Unless they are raving lunatics—and their press campaign disproves that. Nobody’s going to risk getting plague. But that will only be the beginning.”

  “And then the heads will begin to roll. Mine first.” The Minister pursed his lips ruefully. “Nothing can stop that.”

  Grandison polished his eyeglass. “Prayer might. A miracle.” He nodded at the telephone. “Pray hard enough and that phone might ring and Rimster or the police could be saying that they’ve located Charlie, even caught him.”

  “You believe in that kind of thing?”

  “No. But if I had my back against a wall facing a firing squad I think I would give prayer a try. God, so I’m told by modem churchmen, has a sense of humour and also of drama.”

  “And what has the Devil got? It might be his doing.” Grandison grinned. “Little hope there, I’m afraid—unless he’s in a good mood and is just going far enough to scare hell out of us, but not let all hell loose.”

  While they talked Rimster and Jean were having their midmorning coffee at Redthorn House.

  Rimster said, “Don’t look so glum. It’ll work you know. The moment that announcement goes out whoever has Charlie will start shouting for us to come and get him.”

  “God, I hope so. They couldn’t possibly think it was a trick just to get him back, could they?”

  “Not a hope. Anything that comes over the radio or the television officially interrupting all programmes, the Minister sitting there behind his big desk looking grave and solemn, is gospel. No, I’m certain that within half an hour of the announcement we’ll be on our way to pick up Charlie. Everything’s all ready outside, the van, the protective clothing—even if it is only the earliest infection day minus one I’m taking no risks. In a few days you’ll be able to go back to your George and live happily ever after.”

  “I wonder.”

  “Don’t. Given time the human mind has a wonderful capacity for forgetting unpleasant experiences, and the human conscience renews itself every few years, shedding all scar tissues.”

  Although he spoke lightly Jean was sure that there was no lightness in his heart and she wondered exactly at what point in his career he had given up being a man without a conscience . . . a walking, talking, cynical zombie of destruction.

  * * * *

  Horace reached his flat at eleven o’clock. Long before that, as he had driven along the motorway, he had reached a decision. Life was a matter of balance and when the scales tipped unevenly one just had to do something to bring them level again. Leaving Deanfinch Hall he had known more disappointment than anger. By the time he reached London he knew more anger than disappointment.

  Without hesitation he picked up his telephone and called the Salisbury police. Refusing to give his name or any information about himself, resolved only that Lady Cynthia Chickley should have her fair share of disappointment, he told the constable on duty the whereabouts of Charlie. When he put the telephone down, he turned to and began to pack his few belongings into a suitcase. He had no intention of hanging around and waiting for the possible consequences to himself. Fifteen minutes later he was driving away in his car, heading north and feeling relaxed. In the art of going to ground he had long graduated. He had a good wardrobe in his suitcases and a few pounds in his pocket. He owed a month’s rent on the furnished flat, had already begun to forget about his overdraft at the bank and was happily considering the future and a change of name. Scotland seemed a good bet. There was a big oil boom going on there, men with plenty of money, and firms who did not ask awkward questions about identity or national insurance numbers and . . . surely . . . somewhere maybe a wealthy widow or spinster he could charm who was entirely free of Norman blood or aristocratic snobbery.

  Charlie meanwhile was happily wandering around the thickets and woods of Deanfinch Hall garden. He climbed a large tulip tree and, sitting in its top branches, peered out through the leafy canopy. He had in view a corner of the walled garden where Paget was working, and a glimpse of the long lake where the duck, coots and moorhens foraged and fought. Away to the left part of the tower of the Chickley private chapel showed above the trees. A pair of jackdaws circled over it. Charlie leaned back, plucked a handful of leaves and began to chew them into a wad. Three hairy tiger caterpillars crawled within reach on a twig. He plucked them off and added them to the leaves for flavour. As he lay there Charlie saw Lily Harkness come from the house and walk down the rough path beside the lawn and disappear into the dense shrubberies on the far side of the walled garden. Still chewing, Charlie dropped down through the tree and ambled aimlessly away. He picked up a dead branch and threw it ahead of him. He raced after it and threw it again but it lodged in the top of a tall thicket of rhododendrons. Charlie abandoned it and moved on hoo-hooing gently to himself.

  In London the report of Mr Simbath’s message to the Salisbury police had reached Grandison and his Minister. It was decided to delay the public announcement until confirmation was received from Deanfinch Hall that Charlie really was there. Already Rimster and Jean were on their way there in the special van, led by a police car. Three helicopters had been detached from the day’s search pattern to cover the area and a party of troops were on their way by lorry to throw a cordon around the place.

  One of the helicopters was flown by Captain Stevens. Flying high, as instructed, over the old Tudor manor house he and his observer had a good view of the burgeoning activity below.

  “Hoax or the real thing?” queried the observer.

  “Don’t know and I don’t care,” said Captain Stevens. In the early days of searching it had been fairly interesting, hoping he might be the one to spot Charlie. Later there had been the growing chance
of winning the sweepstake. Now there was only boredom and some irritation because all this lark had meant the postponement of the advanced training which had brought him down to the Army School of Aviation.

  “Police car and that special van thing,” said the observer.

  The two vehicles had come up the tree-lined drive and stopped at the main terraced entrance to the house. Close behind them came an army staff car.

  As Rimster, Jean, a police Inspector and the army Colonel got out of their vehicles Lady Cynthia came out of the house and stood at the top of the steps. The four of them moved towards her. The Colonel and the Inspector gave her a brief salute and then the Inspector said, “Lady Cynthia Chickley?”

  “Yes. What can I do for you?” She knew what she could do for she was no fool. For the last half hour she had been trying to reach Horace Simbath on the telephone without success. Seeing all these people here now only confirmed what she had already more than half-guessed might happen.

  “We have been given information,” said the Inspector, “that you are holding here an escaped chimpanzee named Charlie, the property of the Ministry of Defence. Is that so, Lady Cynthia?”

  “No, it is not so, Inspector.” She stood tall and composed. After all the Ghickleys had faced adversity and disappointment many, many times through their long history only to triumph in the end. And triumph of a kind she had because only a few moments ago she had discovered that Charlie—through her own carelessness—had escaped. God speed you, Charlie, she told herself, and may the gods lead you to some other safe haven.