by P. B. Kerr
CHAPTER 18
GROANIN GOES WEST
As anyone who has traveled on a flying carpet will tell you, the experience is a peculiar one. For one thing, the carpet itself feels quite solid, like a wooden floor; and for another, the air seems to slip to either side of the carpet so that the passenger does not have to endure the discomfort of having the wind in his face. All of this makes standing up on a flying carpet quite safe.
Groanin would have stood up but for his fear of heights. At only ten feet wide, the flying carpet seemed hardly wide enough and whenever the butler was obliged to fetch something from his box of stores, he had to crawl there on his hands and knees. It wasn’t that Groanin was acrophobic, which is the proper word to describe someone who has a fear of heights, but unlike the djinn, who have no fear of heights, most mundanes feel a little uncomfortable when they are several thousand feet in the air with only ten feet of Moroccan silk carpet to support them. So, wrapping himself tightly in Nimrod’s fur coat, which was now Groanin’s fur coat, the butler pressed his back against the box of stores, closed his eyes, and did his best to put out of his mind all thoughts of the cold Atlantic Ocean beneath him. And after a while he fell asleep.
When, several hours later, he awoke, Groanin’s flying carpet was still over the Atlantic but it seemed to him that in some indefinable way his situation had somehow changed, and at least ten minutes had elapsed before he formed the idea that the carpet he was sitting upon was now narrower than it had been before.
Being a good butler, Groanin had a tape measure and, plucking up his courage, he hooked the end of the metallic measuring strip to one edge of the carpet and attempted to span its width.
“Flipping heck,” exclaimed Groanin as he read off the number on the strip. For there was no doubt in his mind that the carpet that had been ten feet wide on takeoff was now only eight feet wide. He was so shocked by this discovery that his nervous fingers switched off the spring return mechanism and the metallic strip of the tape measure zipped back with such force that Groanin dropped it onto the carpet, where it bounced twice and disappeared over the side and into the ocean. It seemed a very graphic demonstration of what now threatened to happen to Groanin himself. “Flipping heck,” repeated Groanin.
He crawled to one edge and found nothing amiss. And then crawled to the other — the edge he himself had cut earlier — where immediately he perceived the problem. A thread of the flying carpet had come unraveled from the back corner and was now trailing in the air for miles behind, like a fishing line.
“Flipping heck,” said Groanin, and crawled back to his luggage to find a pair of scissors. Crawling back to the thread again, he snipped the thread off as neatly as he was able. And thinking he must have solved the problem, he went back to his former position leaning against the box of stores.
For a while he read a newspaper — Nimrod had thoughtfully added a copy of the Daily Telegraph to his box of stores — and this took his mind off things, which, of course, is why people read newspapers in the first place: to forget their own problems and enjoy reading about someone else’s. Another twenty minutes passed before Groanin looked up and, once again, was possessed of the horrible sensation that the carpet was narrower than before. Crawling back to the corner where he had snipped the loose thread, he was appalled to find another loose thread trailing hundreds of feet behind him.
“Flipping heck,” said Groanin, and he snipped the thread a second time. This time he stayed put to make sure that his scissor surgery had been effective and, after several vigilant minutes, he was just about to relax when several hundred feet of thread seemed to unravel at once.
Groanin yelped and snipped at the thread. But the same thing happened again, and again, and before long Groanin’s scissors were snipping so much he felt like a demon barber in a gentleman’s hairdressers.
It was now uncomfortably clear to Groanin that after cutting the carpet on the mountaintop in Morocco, he had neglected to finish the edge of the carpet.
It was true, Groanin ought to have knotted one of the threads although he could hardly have known which one: There seemed to be thousands of them, although, in fact, there was really only one thread.
By now the whole frayed edge of the flying carpet — previously eight feet wide, but now perhaps just seven and a half — was trailing threads. They were flying somewhere over the United States but Groanin was close to panic. A hard landing on the ground from several thousand feet promised to be just as uncomfortable as a hard landing in the ocean.
“Blast that man, Nimrod,” Groanin shouted. “Blast him and his daft ideas. He’ll be the death of me, so he will.”
He shook his head in the hope that the motion might dislodge an idea that was sticking to the back of his mind like a boiled sweet.
“Flipping carpet,” he muttered. “I wish I knew what my dad would have done about this. I really do.”
For a moment, he pictured his dad, laying a carpet at Groanin’s childhood home in Burnley, and a Proustian smell of burning carpets filled the nostrils of his own remembrance of things past.
“Of course!” he exclaimed as suddenly he remembered his father melting the fibers along the edge of the carpet with something hot. And straightaway he went to his luggage, found a lighter, and applied a flame along the tattered edge of the flying carpet.
There were two reasons why this was a very bad idea. One was that most of the carpets Groanin’s dad had fitted had been very cheap and made of nylon, which means it’s possible to melt a neat edge on a carpet. However, the flying carpet was not made of nylon, but silk, which is extremely flammable. Which was the other reason it was a bad idea for Groanin to apply a naked flame to the edge of the flying carpet.
For a moment it seemed to work. And then things turned from bad to worse as the carpet caught fire.
“Flipping heck,” yelled Groanin. “That’s all I flipping need. A flying carpet that’s on fire.”
He stared anxiously over the edge at the ground, with no idea where he was in relation to Yellowstone.
“If this isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is,” said Groanin. Thinking to use the discrimens given to him by Nimrod, he added, “I wish this flying carpet would now land safely.”
Nothing happened. The flying carpet did not slow or even dip toward the ground. If anything, the carpet seemed to climb a little higher to avoid a rain cloud that lay immediately ahead.
Groanin was baffled for as long as it took for him to remember that he had carelessly wished away his one discrimens when he had wished to know what his dad would have done to the edge of the flying carpet to stop it from unraveling any farther.
He wondered which of the two problems now affecting his mode of airborne transport would precipitate him to the ground first: the fact that the carpet was still unraveling at the rate of about six inches an hour, or the fact that it was also on fire.
CHAPTER 19
CHEESE AND BISCUITS
Bumby’s luck had improved a little since John had persuaded Zagreus the Jinx to accompany him back to London. The local newspaper, the Bumby Chronicle and Echo, was even reporting that “green shoots of recovery” had been observed, which was a journalist’s way of saying that people were feeling a little more optimistic about the town’s fortunes. This newfound optimism was largely based on the recent success of the town’s annual cheese-rolling festival, in which several hundred of the stupider inhabitants chased a ten-pound roll of Bumby Cheddar down the slope of a very steep hill. Normally, at least a dozen competitors were injured — mostly broken legs and concussions — and given the town’s run of bad luck, the mayor, Mr. Higginbottom, had actually considered canceling this year’s race out of fear that it might result in some more serious injuries or even a fatality.
Mr. Higginbottom’s controversial decision to go ahead with the ancient race had been vindicated when, to everyone’s amazement, the race had gone ahead without any injuries at all. Not even a sprained ankle.
“What a ghastly
little town,” observed Moo as she flicked through the newspaper with its stories of stolen tortoises, lost cats, dead badgers, and radioactive beaches. “And you say that Mr. Groanin comes here every year for a holiday?”
“Yes,” said Philippa. “It’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Weird? I should say it is weird. The man needs his head examined.”
“Groanin’s always been a bit contrary,” said Philippa. “But he has a good heart.”
“Rag.” Moo tossed the newspaper in a trash bin and followed Philippa into the small family beachfront hotel where they had decided to stay. Mrs. Lightbottom, the proprietor of the Stately Pleasure-dome Guesthouse, eyed Philippa’s luggage, which included her rolled-up flying carpet, with unfriendly suspicion.
“What’s with the blue carpet?” she said sharply. “Linoleum not good enough for you Americans, I suppose.”
“It’s my exercise mat,” lied Philippa.
“Aye, well, I trust you’ll keep the noise down,” said Mrs. Lightbottom. “I wouldn’t want your exercise disturbing the other guests.”
“Are there any other guests?” inquired Moo.
“Of course there are other guests,” said Mrs. Lightbottom, coloring a little.
“You do surprise me,” said Moo, staring out the door so that she wouldn’t have to look at Mrs. Lightbottom’s unwelcoming fat face. Every time she saw its tight mouth and supercilious eyebrow she wanted to slap the woman, hard, and shout at her, “You’re a disgrace to British hotel keeping!”
“For your information,” Mrs. Lightbottom said crisply, “there’s an Indian gentleman in Room 11. Mr. Swaraswati.”
“Now there’s a name you don’t hear every day,” murmured Moo.
“Yes, it’s interesting,” agreed Philippa. “Mrs. Lightbottom? What does he look like, this Mr. Swaraswati?”
“What’s it to you?”
Moo sighed. She’d had enough of this woman’s obstreperous ways. She opened her bag and took out the identity card that identified her as the head of the British KGB. “Police,” she said sharply. “Just answer the question.”
Philippa and Mrs. Lightbottom noticed the large gun in Moo’s handbag, and the handcuffs, and the blackjack, which is a kind of police baton; there was also a police radio, a smaller gun, a pepper spray, a large roll of banknotes, and a makeup bag.
“Police?” Mrs. Lightbottom paled and then curtsied. “I’m sorry, Your Ladyship,” she said. “I don’t want no trouble or nothing.”
“Just answer the question, you silly woman,” Moo said brusquely.
Philippa was beginning to think Moo would be a useful person to have along on this adventure. She was a formidable old lady.
“Well, he’s an odd-looking sort and no mistake,” said Mrs. Lightbottom. “Very pale and thin — painfully thin — like he hasn’t eaten in a long time. All he’ll eat now are a few dried biscuits. I never seen anything like it. No appetite at all. A waste I calls it, me being such a good cook ‘n’ all. All he wants is dried water biscuits, almost like his stomach couldn’t handle much else.”
“What else?” said Philippa.
“Let’s see now. Well, he’s old. Very old. Hard to say how old exactly but I wouldn’t be surprised if you said he was a hundred. He wears a long gray beard. And a robe, like one of them foreign monks. And, well, I hope he’ll forgive me for saying so, but he’s just a bit dirty, like he doesn’t wash very much. And dusty, like he’s been lying on the ground.”
“Or in it, perhaps,” said Philippa. “As if he’d been buried alive for a long time.”
“You’re right, Philippa,” said Moo. “That could be our fakir. The one with the great secret that those fake fakirs are looking for.”
“He goes out every day like he’s looking for someone and just wanders around the town. A few years ago, he’d have stuck out like a sore thumb, but not these days. There are all sorts like him in Bumby these days. A regular Khyber Pass ‘round here, so it is.”
“That’s probably why he hasn’t been spotted yet,” said Moo.
“Does he have any friends?” asked Philippa. She was thinking of the fakir’s dasa, the servant who was supposed to guard the secret of the fakir’s burial place and be there to serve him now that he had returned after many centuries of being buried alive.
“None that I’ve seen. He keeps himself to himself. He’s always asking if anyone has left a message for him. But they never have. Not ever. Not so far.”
“Who’s paying his bill?” Moo asked suspiciously.
“He is.”
“With what?”
Mrs. Lightbottom looked guilty.
“Come on, come on.” Moo snapped her fingers. “We haven’t got all day.”
“Now look,” said Mrs. Lightbottom. “I was going to give him any money that was left over, you understand.”
“Left over from what?” asked Moo.
Mrs. Lightbottom opened a drawer in the reception desk and took out a cash box, which she unlocked with a little key that was hanging around her fat neck.
“This,” she said, and handed Moo a gold medallion. “It was hanging around Mr. Swaraswati’s neck when he came in and I said I’d hold on to it by way of a deposit against the final bill.” Mrs. Lightbottom started to wring her hands. “You’re not going to arrest me, are you?”
“Do shut up,” said Moo. “No, I’m not going to arrest you. Not so long as you continue to help us with our inquiries.”
Moo showed Philippa the gold medallion. On one side there was a swastika and on the other a goose.
“Nazi gold, is that?” Mrs. Lightbottom asked lightly.
Moo frowned at her. “What?”
“The swastika, I mean,” said Mrs. Lightbottom.
Moo shook her head. “The swastika is an ancient Hindu good luck or religious symbol,” she said. “Very ancient. The earliest recorded example is some three thousand years old.”
“Is that so?” said Mrs. Lightbottom. “I didn’t think he looked like a Nazi. Not with those sandals.”
“It’s him,” Philippa told Moo. “It has to be him.”
“I agree,” said Moo. “Is he in his room now?”
Mrs. Lightbottom looked at the key rack behind her head. There were only three keys missing: the two she had given Philippa and Moo, and one other, which was the key to Room 11.
“Yes,” she said.
Moo unfolded a sheet of printed paper and laid it on the reception desk. “Sign this,” she said. “What is it?”
“It’s the Official Secrets Act. Basically, it means you’ll be sent to prison if you tell anyone about the man in Room 11, or repeat the details of our conversation.”
“And if I don’t sign?”
“You’ll be sent to prison immediately,” said Moo.
Mrs. Lightbottom snatched up a pen, quickly signed the Official Secrets Act, and then curtsied again as Moo folded up the piece of paper and placed it carefully in her handbag.
“You mentioned a great secret,” said Mrs. Lightbottom. “Is this Mr. Swaraswati dangerous?”
“I can’t tell you how dangerous,” said Moo. “What he knows could affect the safety not just of the country, but of the whole world.”
Hearing this, Mrs. Lightbottom felt a little faint and sat down heavily.
Moo and Philippa went upstairs and along a cold corridor to Room 11.
“You know it’s just possible he really is dangerous,” Moo whispered.
“I was thinking the same thing,” confessed Philippa. “At the very least he’s likely to be a bit cranky. After all, you’re buried alive for centuries you expect a bit of TLC when you surface again.”
Moo took out her gun and checked that it was loaded.
But Philippa shook her head. “You won’t need a gun,” she said. “Really. I know what I’m doing. So, take it easy with that thing.”
To her own surprise, Philippa realized that she really did know what she was doing. For the first time in her young djinn life she felt entirely equal t
o the situation that now presented itself. And she supposed that this was all down to what Nimrod would have called “experience.” The kind of experience that told her it might just be a good idea to enter the room invisibly.
“Come on,” she said, walking farther along the corridor and opening the door to her own room. “I think we’d best do this the subtle way.”
Philippa lay down on her bed.
“This is no time to lie down on the job,” said Moo.
“I’m going to slip out of my body for a few minutes,” Philippa explained. “So that I can take a look in his room without any risk.”
“The softly, softly approach,” said Moo. “I understand. Good idea.”
“You won’t notice anything until I come back,” Philippa added. “Except that I’ll appear like I’m in a trance or something. So don’t worry. I’m not dead. Okay?”
Moo nodded. “Understood.” She sat down on a chair and slipped off her shoes to await Philippa’s return.
Philippa floated invisibly out of her room and back along the corridor. Outside Room 11, she paused for a moment and looked more closely at the door. Over a period of time she’d noticed that some materials were harder to penetrate as spirit than others, with steel being the hardest. It was easier slipping through solids when you knew exactly what they were made of. This door was made of wood, which was relatively easy to walk through. That is, as long as you were spirit. A transubstantiated state was a different thing altogether. It always struck Philippa as a strange paradox that a djinn could be trapped inside a lamp or a bottle merely because a djinn’s transubstantiated, smokelike form was very different from a djinn’s disembodied, spiritual state. As different as it was from a djinn’s physical body.
She braced herself and stepped through the door.
The room was plain and cold and, in this respect at least, it seemed to reflect Mrs. Lightbottom’s forbidding personality. The floor was covered in brown linoleum. On the wall was a picture of a Chinese girl wearing a brown dress with a golden collar that was the same as the one in Philippa’s own room and in the corridor outside. The Chinese girl had a sad, green face as if she’d eaten something that had disagreed with her badly, and for this reason it seemed like a strange picture to hang on a wall of a hotel where, if the smell from the kitchen was anything to go by, the food was likely to be quite horrible. It seemed more than likely that Mr. Swaraswati might have agreed with this: On the bedside table was a large plate of water biscuits and a glass of water.