The Mouse That Saved The West: ebook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 4)

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The Mouse That Saved The West: ebook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 4) Page 7

by Leonard Wibberley


  "To the problem of increased production I do not propose to address myself at this time," said Mountjoy. "It is the problem of equitable distribution and equitable pricing which must be solved immediately. Your Grace may not be aware of it, but my own studies show that much of the present crisis as regards price results from the deliberate actions of the oil magnates. They have bought oil from the OPEC countries at one price and sold it at a greatly inflated price. It is not surprising then that the OPEC countries should decide, by raising the price themselves, to cut out much of this unwarranted profit. Greed has always been bad for business, but it is surprising how long it takes businessmen to learn this lesson. Their creed has been to charge as much as the market will bear. They may do that with ready-baked pies, but they may not do it with oil, which is the very blood of industry.

  "I think, Your Grace, if you will leave the matter in my hands, we may look for an international conference on this question to be held in Grand Fenwick in the near future."

  "But," Gloriana asked, "how could we provide hot water and heat and transport for the delegates?"

  "We won't," said Mountjoy. "That will be an important aspect of the conference."

  A few days after this encounter, Mountjoy, who had now a shocking head cold in common with a large proportion of the Duchy's population, received an unexpected telephone call from Paris.

  "This is Mr. Birelli's secretary," said the caller. "Mr. Birelli is in Paris and wishes to call to see you."

  "Who, may I ask, is Mr. Birelli?" demanded the Count, stifling a sneeze. There was a shocked silence on the line and then Miss Thompson, for it was she who was making the call, said, "Mr. Birelli is chairman of the board of Transcontinental Enterprises, which includes among its holdings Pentex Oil, a company of which you may have heard. He would like to talk to you about the oil shortage."

  "Excellent," said Mountjoy. "I suppose he finally got hold of one of our press releases?"

  "Press release?" said Miss Thompson, mystified. "I don't think so. Mr. Birelli has urgent reasons for wanting to consult with you. I am afraid I can say nothing further on the telephone."

  "When can I expect him?" asked Mountjoy.

  "He will be flying from Paris tomorrow in his private plane. I assume it will be possible for him to land in Grand Fenwick?"

  "Definitely not," said Mountjoy. "The nearest airport is at Besançon on French territory. He will have to come the rest of the way, perhaps one hundred and twenty kilo meters, by car. When the speedometer shows one hundred and sixteen kilometers the chauffeur should watch for a side road marked by a grove of beech trees. He should turn left there, otherwise he will miss Grand Fenwick altogether. There was a sign but it has been destroyed. The French, you know."

  There was another silence on the line and Miss Thompson said, her voice a trifle unsteady, "Mr. Birelli will come the rest of the way by helicopter. I assume that there is an appropriate landing place?"

  "In that case," said Mountjoy, "he should land at the north end of the castle courtyard. If he lands at the south end, he will disturb the cattle. Sours the milk. Try to have the thing come down quietly." With that he hung up and rang for Meadows.

  When the butler arrived Mountjoy said, "Have Hitch-comb, Keeper of the Portcullis, paint a large white cross at the north end of the courtyard behind the donjon keep. We're expecting a helicopter tomorrow. Of course the radio station is out and I'm not able to make an announcement to the nation."

  He glanced at his watch. It was one-thirty in the afternoon and a Wednesday. The Grand Fenwick Times, which came out every Thursday, was probably being printed at that very moment, the flywheel of the press on which it was produced being turned by hand for lack of power. He picked up the telephone, was fortunate to get a free line and asked the operator to connect him to Stedforth, editor of the paper.

  "Stedforth," he said, "Mountjoy here. How are you?"

  "I've got a hell of a cold."

  "So have half the people in the Duchy," said Mountjoy. "We're running a story about it in tomorrow's edition," said Stedforth. "Calling it Arabian flu. Serve 'em right."

  "Look here," said Mountjoy, ignoring this. "I have something I want you to put prominently in the paper."

  "Can't," said Stedforth. "Locked her up last night. Got about three hundred run off right now. Won't be able to print over fifty more at the best. Printers are ready to strike. Can't say I blame then. That flywheel's shocking heavy."

  "Hang the printers," said Mountjoy. "This is a matter of national concern. A helicopter is to land in Grand Fenwick tomorrow afternoon. It's important that everybody should know about it. This is a friendly visit. We are not being invaded and I don't want anybody shooting arrows at it."

  "Tomorrow afternoon?" cried Stedforth. "We won't have the paper folded and ready for delivery until about eleven in the morning. The best thing to do is send people around on bicycles to warn everybody. Even so I'm afraid they can expect a few arrows if they come in low."

  "Good God," cried Mountjoy. "Spread the word by messengers? Hang this energy crisis. We've been booted straight back into the Middle Ages. Well, do what you can. It is, as I have said, a matter of national concern. Send some of your circulation people out on bicycles right now."

  "Who's going to pay them?" demanded Stedforth.

  "I will," snapped Mountjoy and added in tones that Garrick might have envied, "Was ever a nation's fate dependent upon bicycles?"

  "Well, the crown of England was lost for lack of a horse," said Stedforth drily and hung up. A few minutes later, half a dozen reluctant bicyclists, representing the total force of the circulation department of the Grand Fenwick Times, mounted their machines and cycled reluctantly to the four quarters of the Duchy. Each had been equipped with a megaphone and as they passed farmhouse, hamlet and tiny village, they shouted, "We're not being invaded. Don't shoot at the helicopter." It is the nature of such messages, always at the mercy of air currents, to be garbled. Some got it right. Some got only "Helicopter. We're being invaded." Grandson, sire and grandsire left field, garden plot and vineyard and going to their cottages fetched down their bowstaves from the rafters in which they were stored—six-foot bows of best English yew of the kind that saw service at Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt.

  "Must be them blooming Arabs," they agreed and converged on the castle to practice at the butts in the courtyard beyond the stables.

  Meanwhile Mountjoy had gone to inform Gloriana of the unexpected visitor and Gloriana's first question was where Birelli was to be housed.

  "In the Acre Tower, of course," said Mountjoy. (All the towers of Grand Fenwick castle were named after towns made famous in the various crusades, to which the Duchy had always sent a contingent, though often enough of only four longbowmen under a man-at-arms.)

  "Oh, not the Acre Tower," said Gloriana. "It's so cold and damp there. He'll freeze to death. The tower is right over the moat."

  "The Acre Tower would be entirely suitable in the case of Mr. Birelli," said Mountjoy. "He should certainly be given a sample of that which he is bringing to the world."

  "I won't hear of it," said Gloriana with surprising firmness. "I do not wish to add to Mr. Birelli's accomplishments the loss of plain courtesy towards a guest. The great disaster to the world would be when we all start losing our manners."

  Mountjoy blushed and bowed his head under the rebuke.

  "Forgive me, Your Grace," he said. "I was not myself."

  "Oh, Bobo," said Gloriana. "Of course I forgive you. I do the same thing myself several times a day. But just where shall we put him? He's got to be warm and cozy and it must be somewhere in the castle."

  "The solarium then," said Mountjoy. "Its stained-glass windows face south, as you know, and the play of the colors from the setting sun on the walls and floor is very pretty. There's a good fireplace and a fourposter bed with goosefeather mattress. And he'll have all the privacy he wishes."

  That being settled—it was for Gloriana the most important aspect of the vis
it—she then turned to the purpose of Birelli's mission and Mountjoy, drawing extensively upon speculation and fragments of memory, tried to enlighten her.

  "Alfonso Birelli is the czar, if not the mogul, of the oil industry," he said. "I recall something of him now. He is not, I think, in the production end of the industry, which, as Your Grace knows, lies very largely in the hands of the OPEC nations, but rather the purchasing, refining, distribution and marketing aspects. Others pump the oil out of the ground. He buys it and sells it to the world. Not he alone, of course. But he is the major figure in the area of marketing and as such exercises a strong influence, indeed control, over world retail prices.

  "I have no doubt that he sells at one hundred percent of the price at which he buys after taking out all his shipping and refining and other expenses. The OPEC nations have raised their prices in order to cut into Birelli's profits. All Birelli has done has been to raise his price to compensate. So the whole thing mounts."

  Mountjoy went on talking about the effect of this on inflation, cost of production of goods, closing down of factories, unemployment and even (as he saw it) the collapse of nations. He was in a jubilant mood that such a figure had decided to visit him. Gloriana had no head for such stuff. Mountjoy, plunging on, quite lost himself in his prophecies of a world trying to live with the energy output of the early 1900s, and Gloriana at last interrupted him saying, "Bobo, why should a man as great as he be coming to Grand Fenwick?"

  "The answer to that will be provided by Mr. Birelli himself," said Mountjoy. "But I say with some pride that I have baited the trap and he has entered it. I look forward to his visit with the greatest interest. We are on the verge of splendid things."

  "Do be careful," said the Duchess.

  "I will," replied Mountjoy. "The fate of mankind now rests in my hands." He very much liked the idea.

  Down in his laboratory among his birds, Dr. Kokintz had at last devised a kite for Katherine guaranteed not to fall on its head or its tail irrespective of the nature of the wind and air currents. (Mountjoy's attempt had been a failure and Katherine had gone back to the scientist again for help.) It looked like a series of airplane wings, arranged on a stick one below the other, and held together with a very strong glue he had made out of several candy bars, bought at the village store.

  He had made something else too—a thickish liquid with a slightly blue tinge to it. It showed no reaction of any kind to all standard tests from litmus paper to electrolysis, including short bursts from the white laser he had devised. An electric current, whatever the voltage, would now not pass through it. It was electrically inert. It had only one peculiar property which excited him and which he had discovered by accident. He had placed a test tube, containing a few drops of this bluish liquid, next to one of the many birdcages with which he was surrounded.

  The cage contained a chaffinch. When Kokintz came to feed it, the chaffinch emitted a trill of delight and the test tube rose in the air, circled the room gracefully for a minute and then crashed in smithereens on the floor.

  Kokintz squinted through his spectacles at the splinters of glass and then at the chaffinch.

  "Bird water," he said. "It seems that I have discovered bird water." Neglecting the chaffinch for the moment, he went to a wall of his laboratory lined with books and tomes of every kind. He took down Hazlitt's "Ultra-sonic Notes of European Wild Birds" and Tu-sin Yung's "Periods of Atomic Particles." He was soon lost in these volumes, and for once in his life he forgot to feed his birds.

  CHAPTER X

  Despite the warning of Mountjoy and the added efforts of David Bentner, who had of course been informed of what was to take place, Alfonso Birelli's helicopter was greeted with a thicket of arrows when it landed in the courtyard of the castle. The tires were punctured, several stuck in the underbody, while others glancing off, were smashed to pieces by the rotor. This necessitated the sending of a new rotor (by bus) to Grand Fenwick from Paris.

  The astonished Birelli descended from the helicopter to be greeted by Mountjoy, Bentner and a crowd of Fenwickians who shouted "Arabs go home" and "Walk a mile with your camel," for they were free men, accustomed to speaking their minds, and they were convinced, on the solid foundation of rumor, that some Arabian prince was coming to see them, perhaps to buy the castle at some fabulous sum, and fill it with shameless hussies as had been done in Beverly Hills and elsewhere—that also on the solid foundation of rumor.

  Birelli, stooping, cleared the arc of the rotors and then standing upright looked about him, a tall gray wolf of a man surveying a flock of healthy, bleating sheep. Only Mountjoy stood as tall as he. The shouting died down as these two—the one an aristocrat of industry and the other a peer of the blood—confronted each other, each the champion of his particular level of society, both of them well above the masses, both of them men who, however heavily beset, gave no quarter.

  "Mr. Birelli, I presume," said Mountjoy, who never could rid himself of the formula with which Stanley had greeted Livingstone in his grandfather's time.

  "You can call me Al," Birelli replied, reaching out a powerful hand and eyeing the other keenly.

  "Mountjoy," said the Count as if he were displaying his escutcheon with his coat of arms (wyvern argent, rampant et regardant on a field, gules). "This is Mr. David Bentner, Leader of Her Grace's Loyal Opposition," he added.

  Bentner, who didn't know whether the occasion was formal or not, had compromised in his dress by putting on a pair of striped pants under a corduroy jacket, topping the whole thing with his best bowler hat. He didn't know much about Birelli except that he was a rich and powerful man in the oil business. He had brought with him a gift—a pleasantly made basket in which on a bed of wool lay two bottles of Pinot Grand Fenwick, 1965—a year of considerable unrest about the world which was ameliorated to some degree by a premier grand cru wine from the Duchy.

  "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Machiavelli," he said. "I've brought a present for you: wine and wool produced in Grand Fenwick and the best in the world." Birelli smiled, took the basket and decided that the slip-up over names was not an intentional slur.

  "May I introduce my secretary, Miss Thompson," he said, motioning her forward. Mountjoy bowed with a grace that brought a smile of pleasure to the sweet motherly face of the hard-as-steel Miss Thompson. Bentner shook her hand warmly. And the crowd stared at the plump and pleasant Miss Thompson in her motherly tweeds and high-necked blouse, then at the striking, handsome figure of Birelli, whose eyes glittered like a stiletto unsheathed in a dark corner, and then at each other.

  They were puzzled. If he was a rich, handsome, powerful American, as he now seemed to be, instead of an Arabian prince, why was he traveling with that nice neighborly lady instead of—well, you didn't have to put a word on what he could be traveling with.

  "Something's wrong," said Bert Green, owner of the bicycle shop and the gas station, which now had no gas. "There's something about all this that I don't like."

  "Mountjoy will get the better of him," said another. "You can see by that look on his face. Pleasant as a scythe blade in the sunlight."

  Mountjoy escorted his guests into the castle, where tea was served in the small armory, a chamber of medium size once used to store suits of man and horse armor either in the process of manufacture or in need of repair. Around the walls here and there stood the unused armor, in styles dating from the pot-helmeted chain-mail suits of the crusaders to the fluted graceful plate armor of the Maximilian period. Banners were draped from the walls, gray with the cold breath of the centuries and tattered by the passing of time. Some of the fabric was so thin as to be but a ghostly veil of what was once rich cloth, for the war trophies of Grand Fenwick through the whole of its history were displayed in the small armory. Birelli was startled, looking about, to see among the ancient trophies a new copy of the Stars and Stripes.

  "You've got the American flag—Old Glory—hanging here?" he said, pointing.

  "Yes," said Mountjoy casually. "We invaded the United
States and won. That comes off the Customs Shed in New York. Perhaps you were in college at the time. The history books would hardly have been revised at that date. Indeed I notice some hesitancy about revising them at all. But then history is truth whittled to the national purpose. Do you take sugar? It's orange pekoe."

  "I'd sooner coffee," said Birelli. "Indeed?" said Mountjoy. "We have Brazilian and Nigerian, which I find a trifle better. Which do you prefer?"

  "Brazilian for Mr. Birelli," said Miss Thompson, sensing the polite conflict between the two. "One loaded teaspoonful to a cup. He likes it steaming hot." These orders were transmitted to the butler, who, opening a little cupboard set against the wall, wrote the order on a piece of paper and sent it down a shaft elevator to the kitchen a hundred and fifty feet below. The coffee was back in a remarkably short while, for the old-fashioned kitchen range was now in use, fed by blocks of wood, and the gas-powered stove sulked unused in the corner. The advantage of the old kitchen range was that there was boiling water available in kettles and pots at all times.

  There was now a round of small talk. Birelli had hoped to be greeted by Gloriana XII and Mountjoy was determined that he would not be. Gloriana was a ruling sovereign; Birelli, whatever his power, a mere merchant. To forestall Gloriana's normal democratic and hospitable tendencies (she had once been delighted to have as her guest in the castle a lady from Kansas City, Kansas, who taught in a real American public school)—to forestall these tendencies Mountjoy had asked her to ride her bicycle into France.

  "I don't want you to greet Birelli when he arrives," he said, "and I know that if you stay in the castle you just won't be able to avoid him. It would be better if you aren't in the Duchy at all when he turns up."

  "Why, Bobo?" asked Gloriana.

  "Just leave it to me," pleaded Mountjoy. "Later on you can perhaps meet him. At an appropriate time. When meeting him would do us all some good."

 

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