Sheiks and Adders

by Michael Innes

  ‘On the whole, yes.’ Appleby had removed his dark glasses, and it was evident that he was mildly amused by this appeal. ‘Mr Chitfield may be described this afternoon as having a good deal on his hands. It’s all in the interest of some charity or other.’ Appleby glanced at the Emir. ‘Or nearly all.’

  ‘Well, at least I’ve contributed. They made me buy a ticket at the main gate. And I steered myself in here because snakes, you know, don’t care for a hubbub. It unsettles them. They’re sensitive creatures.’

  ‘That’s most interesting.’ Appleby was reflecting that the Emir, too, was in his way a sensitive creature – and wondering whether, this being so, he could be persuaded to take a ride along with a van-load of grass snakes and adders. And, while he was thus reflecting, Mr Gillam (or Dr Gillam, or Professor Gillam) found something more to say.

  ‘Then I’ll be on my way – going back as I came. There seems to be only one carriage drive to this fellow Chitfield’s place. From what I’ve heard of him, I’d have expected him to go in for something of more consequence, so to speak. And it’s odd that there should actually be chaps who have chosen this afternoon to dig a hole in the middle of it. Some emergency with the water or electricity, I imagine. Quite a small hole, and one of the fellows waved me past it. But do you know? As I’ve paid my penny, I might as well have a look round the show before driving off.’

  ‘Not a bad idea,’ Appleby said. ‘The Relief of Mafeking must be due any time now. It’s one of the highlights, and you’ll be guided to it by the shindy.’

  ‘Most amusing. Boy Scouts and their kidney putting on a turn, I suppose. But I’ll just batten things down first.’ And Gillam gestured towards the Range Rover. ‘Awkward if some of these little chaps got going among the crowd.’

  ‘Particularly among the ladies,’ the Emir said unexpectedly. ‘Women are sometimes terrified of serpents to a quite irrational degree. But at least at Oxford you have no women to be perturbed by them.’

  With this startling leap a century backwards, the usually well- informed Emir Hafrait offered the herpetologist a courteously dismissive bow, and walked on with Appleby through the greenhouses.

  18

  In the main conservatory, beneath the lofty palm tree’s shade, Appleby and the Emir found themselves confronted by Colonel Pride. The Chief Constable was now accompanied by a uniformed policeman – presumably the officer who had been in charge of the Panda car and in direct radio contact with the advancing forces of law and order now on their way to Drool Court. The constable (like all such subordinate characters in mystery stories) might have been described as stolid. Colonel Pride, on the other hand, betrayed a certain irritation – an irritation, indeed, that shaded into something like animosity as his glance travelled from Appleby to the Emir.

  ‘What the devil has gone wrong?’ he demanded. ‘Has somebody made off with the fellow’s – with the Emir’s – blasted Rolls Royce?’

  ‘Not quite that, Tommy. But it was unlocked as well as unattended, and probably under nobody’s observation for half an hour at a time. So there is just a possibility that it has been booby-trapped.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you shove him into your own car?’ The Chief Constable seemed unaware of anything discourteous in this manner of expressing himself. But the Emir, if offended, evinced no sign of displeasure. He might have been thinking of something totally other than his present situation. ‘Did he jib at it?’

  ‘He well might have done. But the car happens to be Judith’s baby Fiat, the topolino. You couldn’t hide a hen in it, let alone an eagle. And, as it happens, I’ve come across evidence that the booby-trap idea is being put into operation elsewhere. Bang under the drive to this house. The fact has been unconsciously vouched for by an eminent Oxford herpetologist.’

  ‘A what? Well, never mind. What do we do next?’

  ‘Obviate the risk of something merely bloody-minded. Not much of a risk, but we needn’t take chances. Your reinforcements are on the way to Drool now?’

  ‘Of course they are. Several cars packed with them.’

  ‘Stop them at once.’ Appleby – not very properly – turned to the constable. ‘You can do that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The constable tapped the small radio contraption hanging on his chest. ‘Just what am I to say?’

  ‘They are to stop instantly, parking their cars on the roadside. An adequate number of them must block traffic at either end of the drive until they have made a careful examination of its surface and satisfied themselves that it has not been mined or booby-trapped. The remaining officers are to make their way here on foot through the wood and the park.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ The constable glanced cautiously at his official superior officer and received a brisk confirmatory nod.

  ‘Perhaps I may be permitted to offer a comment?’ The Emir Hafrait made this inquiry in a suitably ironic tone. ‘I am not surprised at the scale on which this murderous operation is developing. First my car, and then, for good measure, the drive along which I may pass in it, or in another vehicle. But I do not think that my adversaries would blow up a large number of policemen on the side. They have a better sense than that of what is relevant. And now do we go back to the good Chitfield’s house, and to the further company of our friend the professor?’

  ‘It will no doubt be best that Your Excellency and Colonel Pride should do just that,’ Appleby said. ‘I myself want to take a further short stroll through the fête.’

  ‘Why the deuce should you do that, John?’ The Chief Constable appeared almost alarmed. ‘Best to keep together, I’d say.’

  ‘I’ll join you – and, I suppose, the Druids – almost immediately. I’m rather interested in the Basingstoke Druids. But I have just a small spot of what you might call contingency planning to get through first.’ And with this Appleby gave a casual nod, and walked away.

  ‘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-mugg
er 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.

  Thi
s 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.’