He decided the economy of the world mattered more than being ticketed.
When he got out, Remo saw that the supposed fireplug was actually a postal drop box. It made him wonder what a British fireplug looked like-a litter basket?
The street was busy with passersby, many of them students carrying books. Remo decided to start with them.
"Excuse me, pal," he asked one. "I'm looking for a Sir Quincy. "
"Sorry. Never heard of the chap. And it is pronounced Quinsee, not Quin-zee, you know."
"Thanks a heap," Remo said, next approaching a middleaged woman, on the theory that no one knew a neighborhood better than a native housewife.
"Sir Quincy, you say, Yank?" she replied. "I don't believe there's ever been a Sir Quincy in these parts. Not as long as I've been here. Are you lost?"
"No," Remo muttered, "but Sir Quincy is. Any suggestions what I could do?"
"Yes. What you should do is have a good sit-down with a nice strong cuppa tea, while you get your bearings. You look positively knackered."
"Actually, I'm just wet," Remo said, wondering what "knackered" meant.
"Good luck to you, then," the woman said, walking away.
"I'll need it," Remo said glumly. "I'm wet, lost, and I barely speak the language."
It started to rain again, and Remo ducked into the nearest store. It was the comic-book shop.
Remo pretended to browse, wondering why there were no copies of Captain Marvel on the shelves. Maybe Billy Batson had finally grown up.
The bell over the door rang, and a pair of book-laden students came in, talking among themselves. One of them spoke American English in a distinctly Oklahoma accent, and to Remo it was as if he'd heard a foghorn in a sea mist.
"Hey, pal. Maybe you can help me," Remo began.
"Sure."
"Ever hear of a Sir Quincy? He's supposed to live around here."
"Sir Quincy Chiswick?" He pronounced it "Chizick."
"That's it," Remo said.
"I know him. He's a don."
"He's Mafia?" Remo said in surprise.
"No. He's a professor. Teaches history. They call them dons. Walk to the end of High Street and turn right. He's on St. John's Street."
"Thanks," Remo said, leaving the store. He ran through the rain, one hand over his eyes. He got lost immediately.
Remo stopped an elderly man in a tweed cap, who seemed completely oblivious of the downpour.
"Can you point me in the general direction of St. John's Street?" Remo pronounced it "Sinjin's Street," because, unlike the American student, he knew that the Brits pronounced "Saint John" as "Sinjin."
"sorry," the elderly man clipped out. "No Sinjin Street in Oxford."
Remo watched him go, muttering, "I must have accidentally blundered into the Twilight Zone or something."
Deciding the old man might possibly have misheard him, Remo entered a dark musty pub.
"Sinjin's Street," he called out. "Anybody ever hear of it?"
"It's pronounced 'St. John's Street,' Yank," a gruff voice called back.
"I thought you Brits pronounced 'St. John' as 'Sinjin,' " Remo complained.
"That we do. But 'St. John's' we pronounce 'St. John's.' "
"Do you people have a rulebook for this stuff; or do you just make it up as you go along?"
"Do you want directions or do you want to hang about complaining?" he was asked.
"I'll take directions. I can always complain later."
"Up the street, walk east and it's at the crosswalk."
Remo found St. John's Street just as the rain began to slacken off: He was soaked to the skin and cold. He willed his blood to move faster through his system to generate heat. Steam actually began to rise from his shoulders and back.
Instead of cold and wet, he felt hot and wet. It was not much of an improvement, and Remo started to look forward to leaving Great Britain.
At Number Fifty St. John's Street, Remo found several nameplates. One said "Chiswick." That couldn't be it. The student had said the last name was "Chizick."
Remo canvassed the street in both directions twice before he realized that finding Sir Quincy Chizick wasn't going to be easy.
It was all he had, and so reluctantly he pressed the bell under the Chiswick nameplate at number fifty.
A mousy-haired woman with long yellow teeth and a faded housedress answered, her face peering around the door as if she'd been expecting the Grim Reaper. "Yes, what is it?"
"I'm looking for Sir Chizick."
"No Sir Chizicks hereabouts."
"Are you sure? I was told that Sir Quincy Chizick lived on this street.
Her face brightened. "Oh, Sir Chiswick. Yes, yes, come in. You have the right place."
The inner hall was dank with old wood and several hundred years of accumulated food odors. Remo noticed the phalanx of grandfather clocks as the woman called up the stairs, "Professor, you have a caller."
"He'll be just a mo," the woman assured Remo.
"You say 'Chizick' and the nameplate says 'Chiswick.' Which is it?"
"How does that little ditty go? 'You say "potato" and I say "potato." You say "tomato," and I say-' "
"Never mind," Remo said sourly. "I get it."
A querulous voice called down from the landing at the top of the stairs.
"Yes, what is it, Mrs. Burgoyne?"
"An American to see you, Lord Chiswick."
A head popped out of the doorway. "An American, you say? What about?"
"Why don't you ask me that?" Remo asked, mounting the stairs.
"And who are you?" demanded Sir Quincy Chiswick. He was a bookish man of indeterminate age, with his haired combed back like a 1930's movie star's. His funereal black gown made Remo wonder if the clock had stopped for him the day he graduated from college.
"Call me Remo. I'm here about the letters you've been sending to the British government."
Sir Quincy Chiswick perked up. "You have?" he said in delight. "At last! I had been wondering if the postal department had mislaid them. Come in, come in," he added, waving Remo in.
The room was what Remo imagined his grandmother's place might have looked like had he ever known his grandmother. It was neatly shabby, if vaguely effeminate. There was an electric heater in the much-painted-over fireplace, and one wall was all bookshelves.
"Don't mind the place," Sir Quincy rumbled. "The woman who does for me doesn't come until Saturday."
"Does what?" Remo asked, looking around.
The professor blinked. "My domestic," he said. Then, seeing Remo's expression go even more blank, added tartly, "My char."
" I only speak American."
"Oh, bother! Never mind. Sit down, sit down. Would you care for a cuppa tea?"
"No, thanks. Look, I don't have time to beat around the teapot. Are you the one responsible for this economic mess?"
"Dear me, no. It was a mess to start with."
"That doesn't answer my question," Remo said edgily.
"What is your question, dear boy?" the don asked.
"Are you the one who's been writing the chancellor of the checks?"
"Exchequer. A check is an instrument of payment."
"Spare me the classroom lectures. Are you him or not?"
"I am he. I trust all is proceeding satisfactorily."
"Are you crazy? Stock markets all over the world are disintegrating. "
"Really?" The thought apparently intrigued Sir Quincy Chiswick, because his eyes grew momentarily reflective.
"Don't you read the papers?"
"Dear me, no. Dreadful nuisance, those rags. Not one of them worth a bent copper anymore."
"Well, congratulations," Remo snapped. "You've just wrecked the world's economy, and before I snap your stuffy throat in two, I want to know if you can stop it."
"Stop it? Why should I do that?"
"Because the British economy is going down the tubes, along with everyone else's."
"It's taking the underground?" Sir Quincy a
sked, perplexed.
"I mean, down the john."
"Eh?"
"The loo! The loo!" Remo said in exasperation. "Everything's going down the loo. Do you understand that?"
"No need to shout, dear boy. Would you care for a scone? They're a trifle hard now, but still scrumptious, I think. "
"Why? Just tell me why you're doing this."
"Because I received the signal to put into effect the Grand Plan."
"Now we're getting somewhere," Remo said. "What Grand Plan?"
Sir Quincy blinked. "Why, King George's, of course."
"King George III!" Remo exclaimed.
"Ah, you know your history. Good. Yes, it was George III's idea. My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was entrusted to be the expediter of the plan. I, as his descendant, have had that glorious duty fall upon my shoulders. And frankly, at my age, I had all but given up that I would ever receive the signal."
"What signal?"
"Why, the signal to effect the Grand Plan, of course. What other signal is there?"
"Silly me," Remo said distractedly. "Of course, that signal. Who gave it to you, by the way?"
"The Duchess of York-indirectly."
"Isn't she the redhead with the freckles?"
"That's the one. Good chap. Yes, the duchess. Although they all had a hand in it, from the queen mother to the relatives in the Netherlands and elsewhere."
"The royal family is behind this?"
"I do not care for your tone of voice, my good man. Now, keep schtum and let me finish my story."
Remo stood up.
"Sorry. You've told me all I need to know. It's time to go bye-bye."
"Where are we going?"
"I'm going back to America. And you're going to the nearest boneyard. Sorry, old chap. But that's the biz."
Just then, Mrs. Burgoyne's voice called up from downstairs.
"Professor. Another caller. A doctor. Says his name is Smith."
"Smith?" Sir Quincy Chiswick said, blinking owlishly.
"Smith?" Remo said in disbelief.
Chapter 29
If it hadn't been an emergency, if the economy of the entire world had not hung in the balance, Dr. Harold W. Smith could never have justified it to himself.
But time was critical, and so after disembarking from the British Airways jet at Heathrow, Smith eschewed the cheaper Piccadilly Line tube and actually hailed one of the ubiquitous black London taxis that reminded him of what the British version of a mythical 1938-vintage Edsel might have been.
Smith directed the driver to take him to Victoria Station.
At Victoria Station he actually told the driver to keep the change. It was painful but necessary. He could not wait for change.
Smith paid five pounds, fifty pence for a day-return ticket to Oxford and was told that it would depart in five minutes. Smith had already known that. He had timed his transatlantic plane trip to arrive with enough time for him to catch that bus.
Smith sat in the upper deck of the CityLink bus, oblivious of the darkening British countryside as it rolled past him; his briefcase was open and he was monitoring the world economic situation via his portable computer.
In America, the Big Board was upticking, as small investors, attracted by the bargains of the century, returned to the market in droves. Activity among the pool of Crown investors had slowed to a trickle. As Smith watched, the last Crown stockholder stopped trading. Smith smiled thinly. Success.
Reuters was reporting the discovery of a long-forgotten eighteenth-century document in the dusty archives on the Public Records office on London's Chancery Lane. Details of the document were not being released; a joint statement from Buckingham Palace and Ten Downing Street was issued, repudiating it.
Smith frowned as he read this.
Too little, too late, he told himself.
In one corner of the screen was a phone number. It was the number of a house on St. John's Street in Oxford, which his computer had spat out after several agonizing hours of backtracking through the Mayflower Descendants bulletin board. As Smith had suspected, the trace had gone through several terminals throughout the U. S. to a relay point in Toronto and from there to London-and finally to Oxford.
Because the computer net operated through telephone lines, Smith was able to access the phone number. The telephone was registered to a Mrs. Alfred Burgoyne, at fifty St. John's Street. It was there, he knew, he would find the person who controlled Looncraft and the others.
It was there that Harold Smith would be forced to make the ultimate choice of his life-between loyalty to his country and duty to his father.
For the hundredth time, Smith read through the closely typed letter his father had written so many years ago.
Finally he put it back into its original envelope and closed the briefcase. He closed his red-rimmed eyes as well. The long ride from London to Oxford would be about one hundred minutes long. And Smith knew he'd need his sleep for the final resolution of this incredible matter.
Chapter 30
"Sir Quincy, I am Harold W. Smith. Harold Winston Smith."
Sir Quincy blinked. "Of the Vermont Smiths?"
"Exactly. I received my orders today."
"Well, dash it all, man. What are you doing here? You should be going about your business. There is work to be done."
"Hold the phone," Remo Williams put in. " I have a question."
Both Smith and Sir Quincy looked to Remo.
"What happened to your wheelchair?" Remo demanded hotly.
"Not now," Smith said peevishly.
"Yes, now. I've been working for you on this because you needed me. You couldn't use your legs, you said. And here you just stroll in like a frigging stork in a three-piece suit. "
"Remo, Please. I have to know about Sir Quincy's operation. "
"Be glad to fill you in," Remo snapped. "He's behind it, all right. Says the royal family put him up to it. He's some mastermind, too. He's not exactly up on the fine details. I was just about to take him out when you sauntered in."
"No," Smith said firmly. "You will not kill this man. That's an order."
"I don't work for you, so I don't take orders from you," Remo said, grabbing Sir Quincy by the collar. He lifted the man off the threadbare rug.
"Unhand me, you . . . you vulgarian!" Sir Quincy sputtered.
" I was thinking about a heart-stopping punch," Remo suggested. "Say, right about here." He stabbed Sir Quincy in the chest, above the heart muscle.
Sir Quincy went white. He looked like a crow that had gotten his head into a flour sack.
"Remo, no!" Smith said hoarsely. He grabbed for Remo's hand, desperately attempting to pry his fingers loose from Sir Quincy's gown collar. They might have been cast of metal.
"What's with you, Smith?" Remo asked in exasperation. "This is the head market manipulator. We take him out and it's over."
"No, it is not over. This man knows the secret behind a conspiracy that dates back to the days of the American Revolution."
"He said something about that, yeah," Remo admitted. "How'd you know that?"
"Put him down and I'll tell you," Smith said calmly.
Remo shook Sir Quincy like a drowned rat. "I like killing him better."
"You no longer work for the organization," Smith pointed out. "Killing this man is not your responsibility."
Remo thought about that. He released Sir Quincy from his grasp. The don struck the rug like a black sack of kindling.
"I don't like being manipulated," Remo warned Smith.
"This is important," Smith said, helping Sir Quincy to his feet. He sat him down on a faded lumpy sofa near the fireplace.
Remo folded his arms angrily, but he didn't interfere.
"Sir Quincy, first let me apologize for your rude treatment."
"What!" Remo exploded.
"I must ask you this," Smith went on "Who gave you the signal?"
"I can answer that," Remo said. "The Duchess of York, no less."
&nb
sp; Smith shot Remo a harsh glance. "That is not funny."
"It is true," Sir Quincy said as he brushed off his gown.
"What? The Duchess of York? Prince Andrew's wife?"
"Quite. It was planned all along. As the Royal Reclamation Charter stipulates, when a member of the royal family gives birth to a girl and names her Beatrice, that will be considered the signal to begin implementing the Grand Plan."
"What?" Smith's haggard face was comical in its dumbfoundedness.
"It's really quite sound, my dear chap. As you know-as you should know-the royal family must obtain the approval of every branch of the family, no matter how distant, before a name can be decided upon. Not only the queen mother and the queen, but the distant relatives in the Netherlands and elsewhere must be consulted. And agreement must be unanimous. It is quite foolproof."
"I see," Smith said. "And the nature of the takeover?"
"Actually, I'm somewhat muddy on the details. The Loyalists handle that end of it, chiefly Percy."
"Percy?" Remo wanted to know.
"Looncraft," Smith supplied.
"Sterling lad. Like his forefathers. The Looncraft family quartered in the Fourth Regiment-the King's Own-during the Rebellion, you know. Yes, the Looncrafts were the family charged with the duty of effectuating the Grand Plan once they received the signal from me."
"By computer?" Smith asked.
"Confounded nuisance," Sir Quincy said gruffly. "I do not like the bloody things. Refuse to have a telephone. But the mails, you know, they're so dashed slow these days. "
"It's like that in the States too," Remo said sourly.
"Quiet " Smith said flatly. "Go on, Sir Quincy. What is the plan?"
"Why, dear boy, you must have an inkling by now. To compel the colonies back into the fold, of course."
"By force?"
"No, dear boy. Nothing so dreadful. We bear no ill will toward our wayward cousins. Even back to King George. He felt that the colonies couldn't survive without the protection of Mother England. That proved untrue, which he foresaw, and so he created the Grand Plan. The idea was brilliant. To force America into financial ruin, so that it must rejoin the empire. I imagine this stockmarket business has something to do with it."
"Sir Quincy," Smith said firmly, "you must know that the British economy is in very sorry shape right now."
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