This explained everything. Mr. Porcupine was a spy. He would cross the front line disguised as a rodent doctor, part of the wounded exchange program, bound for the military hospital at St. Golliwoq. Once inside Toyland territory he'd throw off his disguise and travel about with a sharp eye out for troop movements and artillery batteries, calling himself a circus owner looking for new acts.
As the back of the caravan passed, the colonel clambered on, pulling Von Ratte up after him. When the caravan emerged from the trees, some rat dragoons came galloping up and, shouting for the gate to be opened, they escorted it inside.
The caravan trundled deeper into the compound and then came to a stop. De Filbert cut two peepholes in the canvas with his saber and they saw they were next to a long wooden trough which stood inside another barbed wire enclosure of considerable size. A line of bowlegged wrangler rats in ten-gallon hats and with barbed wire braided into their tails were passing buckets filled with a steamy slurry of sawdust gruel from hand to hand. As the colonel watched, a wrangler dumped the last of it and then banged on the trough with the empty bucket.
Out of the darkness at the far end of the enclosure rushed a good fifty beaver moving on all fours. Teenagers, judged the colonel. Beaver were notoriously nearsighted. These hadn't yet taken the eye test for the glasses they'd need to qualify for licenses to walk on their hind legs.
Colonel de Filbert uttered a curse. Better Dutch Elm disease than beaver. The very name made pine forests tremble and moan like the night wind working at the windows of a nursery dollhouse where a lonely toy yearns for sleep.
He and Von Ratte exchange pale glances. Then they returned to the peepholes to watch the beaver shoulder and fight each other to get at the skimpy gruel until the trough was dry.
Now the circus owner stepped up on the driver's seat of the caravan. He threw off his hat, duster, and long-tailed quill overcoat, revealing himself to be no porcupine but a beaver. And no mere beaver. The heavy gold chain now visible across his chest proclaimed him to be Big Beaver himself, Grand Master of All the Beaver Lodges.
As the beaver in the enclosure grunted loudly and unhappily around the empty trough, Big Beaver said, “My dear young friends, traditionally our people have held ourselves aloof from the Battle for Christmas, judging our rodent brothers effete city folk, delicate nibblers and noshers who scorned our lumberjack appetites. In its wisdom, our High Council has always asked this simple question: ‘What's in it for yours truly? Candy canes? Sugarplums?'” Big Beaver shook his smiling head.
Here a young beaver stepped forward. “Please, sir,” he asked, nodding at the trough, “can I have some more?"
"More?” said Big Beaver. “More? Oh, Oliver, you shall have much more. This very dawn you and I will breakfast on whole regiments of wooden soldiers freshly cut from juicy pine.” He smacked his lips. “There's richness for you. Yes, we beaver will grow fat beyond the dreams of gluttony. Just before dawn you will take up your positions.” Big Beaver mimicked Oliver's tiny voice to ask, “'But please, sir, how can we directionally deprived young beaver find our positions in the darkness?’”
Beaver, the colonel knew, had no sense of direction. Anything beyond upstream and downstream and they were lost.
"My fine young beaver,” continued Big Beaver, “if you're serious about breakfast, let these be your bywords: Follow the Glitterati!” With this oratorical flourish he stepped down to the pounding beaver tail applause and went over to confer with a circle of rat brass.
"'Glitterati'?” asked Von Ratte.
"It's rodent for will-o'-the-wisps."
"I don't get it,” said Von Ratte.
"Neither do I,” said the colonel. But he was more concerned with the image he had of a horde of hungry young beaver chasing wooden soldiers from the battlefield like wide-eyed, terrified gingerbread men. “You were right,” he admitted. “We've got to warn our people to call off the Big Push."
Von Ratte looked around hopelessly at the barbed wire and hostile garrison.
A moment later, a rat dragoon vaulted up into the driver's seat, turned the caravan around, and drove out the compound gate. He parked it in a garage beside the entrance, took the brass wind-up key, and left, closing the doors behind him.
Astonished by their sudden luck, the colonel and Von Ratte stretched out among the sacks. They'd wait until the coast was clear, sneak outside, and run like hell back to the Toyland lines. The Jumping Jacks in Signals would semaphore back to the high command. Orders for a disciplined pull back of the wooden regiments would come down the chain of command. Maybe a concentration of tin armor and a sustained artillery barrage could fill in the gap in the line.
Suddenly the colonel sat up straight. Hadn't he heard a click back there when the garage doors closed? He jumped down and checked. They were padlocked in.
They lit the caravan's lantern and searched the garage without finding another way out. Two hours to dawn. “Let's use our old noggins here,” urged the colonel. “Why lock the garage? What are they protecting?” He got up into the caravan. Von Ratte followed close behind with the lantern. The colonel thrust his saber into a gunnysack and watched as a stream of liquid silver poured out into his cupped hand. Then he poked at the puddle of silver with a finger. “Minced tinsel!” he exclaimed.
"Spanglesmith, my ass,” said Von Ratte. “When he left the estaminet our Mr. Porcupine-slash-Big Beaver paid a little visit to the local dealer in black-market tinsel."
The colonel nodded. “They're going to use the caravan like a tinsel spreader and make a trail the beaver can follow by moonlight."
Von Ratte brightened. “Hey, that means they'll have to come back for it.” Then he sagged. “By then it'll be too late to warn anyone.” With a shrug he said, “Minced tinsel. Who'da thunk it. Awhile back I dreamed of these seven little Hi-Ho brothers who sang a lot and mined kriskringlite in Tinseltown. Funny, right?"
The colonel knew toy dreams often pre-shadow some human event. So what? The dreamer never sees it come to pass. He blew out the lantern and turned away from the glow behind Von Ratte's lapels. His noggin worked better in the dark.
* * * *
As the colonel explained his plan, they heard rat voices outside and a key in a padlock. The nutcracker surprised the two dragoons come for the caravan, holding them in armpit headlocks until they passed out from lack of air. They left them both, gagged and tied up back-to-back to one of the garage uprights.
Von Ratte, in his rat-dragoon greatcoat, backed the caravan out of the garage and waved to the guards at the gate. Beyond the compound barbed wire they could hear the wrangler rats snapping their fierce tails, trying to whip the beaver into a herd. Then the caravan was rolling down the trail toward the road with the colonel in back shoveling tinsel out in double handfuls and the moon above them sailing high and free.
When they reached the road, Von Ratte called, “Now where?"
"Make like we're heading for the Front,” said De Filbert. With no time to warn the high command, maybe they could lead the beaver off on a long wild-goose chase.
After a few minutes, Von Ratte called back, “We're coming to a fork in the road. Call it. Left or right?"
"Take the one that looks the less traveled."
Von Ratte chose the right lane and that seemed to make all the difference. Before long the lane had turned and was running parallel to the Front.
They passed a ruined stone barn. “Hey,” shouted Von Ratte, “Now I know where we are. I scouted this area last year during the big Scandahoovian scare.” A chance sighting of picnicking rat senior citizens had sparked a rumor the Gray Norwegian breed had thrown in with the Rodent Alliance.
"So what?” asked the colonel.
"So up ahead a couple of miles there's this pine grove. It's well off the road to the north. Two toys carrying a couple of sacks of tinsel each could lay a trail back into it."
Abruptly the caravan slowed and rolled to a stop atop a narrow stone bridge over a creek. The colonel cursed and leaped out the
back. He was starting the first turn of the wind-up key when a rat cavalry patrol came galloping up. They must've found the rats in the garage and followed the tinsel trail.
When the six rat dragoons saw the nutcracker, they dismounted, becoming twelve. De Filbert drew his weapon. If they captured the caravan now, the rats would still have time to double back with it and get the beaver back on course. That mustn't happen. He ran the first two rats through the body as they charged. Then he snapped off the head of a third with his terrible jaws and spat it into the road.
The nine rats remaining fell back, panting and wary, for nutcrackers had a formidable reputation among their enemies. The colonel shouted to Von Ratte for help. But his companion was hunched over in the driver's seat, his fingers on his temples. Damn fine time to get a headache!
With a show of sharp yellow teeth, the rats charged again. De Filbert ran another through. A second rat wrapped his tail around the nutcracker's leg like a whip and tried to pull him off balance. When that failed he buried his teeth in the nutcracker's sword arm.
Tossing his weapon to his other hand, the Colonel severed the rat's head and fought on encumbered for several minutes until the dead rat's tail uncoiled from around his leg and the head released its grip on his sword arm.
Now a cheer went up from his attackers. A patrol of rat lancers arrived, the vanguard of the beaver herd. Behind them he heard the cries of the wranglers and the huff and puff of the beaver. Then he saw the herd itself, shapes moving beneath a tarpaulin of darkness.
About to be overwhelmed, the colonel pulled out the caravan's brass wind-up key, put it between his jaws, and bit it in half. As the taste of brass filled his mouth he heard creaking timber and a loud snap. His jaw had broken. De Filbert stood there agape, with his lower jaw resting on his chest, sword in hand, ready for death and immortality.
Just then the beaver herd arrived in a great pile-up. Promised the tinsel trail would lead them to breakfast, they milled about in truculent confusion, knocking riders from their mounts as they searched for their food with feeble eyes.
Suddenly Oliver, the beaver who'd asked for more, saw a shimmering figure running down the road beyond the caravan. “Follow that Glitterati,” he shouted. In an unstoppable rush the beaver shouldered the rats aside and pushed their way between the caravan and the bridge rampart, setting the vehicle rocking back and forth on its wheels. As the last beaver passed, the caravan overturned, blocking the bridge.
The colonel knew the will-o'-the-wisp was his comrade-in-arms Von Ratte, running naked toward the distant grove of pine to draw the beaver after him.
As the herd disappeared up the road, De Filbert waved his saber at the rats, inviting death. But they had their hands full dragging the caravan out of the way. It was some time before the rat cavalry could ride off after the beaver.
The wranglers, being civilians, stayed behind. They ignored De Filbert, made a campfire on the spot, and hunkered down around it. An old toothless one with a guitar struck up a homesick lament about how he missed Pickled Flats. Or was it pickled sprats? The colonel wasn't sure, for just then the cork artillery opened up from the Toyland lines. The Big Push had begun.
* * * *
An hour later, his broken jaw bound up with a strip of gunny-sacking, the Colonel came trudging up the road. He imagined he looked much like the dead Jacob Marley in a dream he had once, come back to haunt his partner Ebenezer Scrooge into changing his skinflint ways. Crazy the names you find in sleep.
Distant toy trumpets were sounding another advance when he found the place by the roadside where the underbrush was heavily trampled down. Soon he came to a half-demolished stand of pine trees and a heap of snoring and sated young beaver. He searched on. Of course the rats had returned to their regiments. It was Von Ratte he was looking for.
Finally he saw a glow as faint as fireflies through the trees. Hurrying over, he found his companion, or what the rats had left of him, scattered across a clearing, slashed by saber blades and pierced by lance heads.
The colonel gathered the bits and pieces into a pile like a heap of faint embers. Then, as he watched, the glow dimmed and was gone. He spread his greatcoat over the dark remains and stood there.
Whether Von Ratte believed it or not, toys who fall in the Battle for Christmas never die. Someday some aspiring cartoonist in a dull day-job business meeting will look down to find he's doodled Richthofen von Ratte's face on his notepad, the big ears, the disks for eyes. He'll smile and raise his pencil, meaning to hide what he's done behind a graphite downpour before his supervisor sees it.
But then he'll stop and smile again, half-remembering something, and he'll draw the hero's lederhosen shorts and add a buttoned front. Now the name Ricky von Rat will come to mind and be dismissed. No, not a rat. It doesn't even look like a rat. Besides, mice are nicer. Ricky von Mouse? Maybe. But let's lose the “von.” Milton Mouse? Manny? No. But he thought he was on to something. Resolving to work on the name, he'll fold the drawing and put it in his pocket.
A line of wooden soldiers with fixed bayonets moved across the clearing. The colonel watched them disappear through the trees, knowing he himself would never see action again or have another chance at immortality. Oh, old Toby's colleagues the glue doctors would give him back a profile as good as new. But his jaw would never be combat-worthy again.
No, Gilbert de Filbert, colonel of the Nutcrackers, would end his days an unsung commissariat desk jockey. Meanwhile, and you could bet on it, Richthofen von Ratte, a.k.a. Mr. Whatever, God bless him, would be a star with his name up there in lights.
Copyright ©2006 by James Powell
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THE THEFT OF THE FIVE-POUND by Edward D. Hoch
Far the most popular of all of Edward D. Hoch's series characters, eccentric thief Nick Velvet returns this month in a tale that takes him to Britain's Isle of Wight. Nick has traveled well around the world, with several volumes of the series’ stories in print in distant places such as Japan. The most recent Hoch collection, however, is More Things Impossible: The Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (Crippen & Landru.)
The woman who was paying Nick Velvet thirty thousand pounds to steal a five-pound British bank-note on the Isle of Wight had arranged to meet him at a casino in Berkeley Square. The name she'd given Nick was Mona Walsh and he wasn't too concerned about its authenticity so long as her money was authentic.
She said she'd be at the roulette table at nine o'clock, and he'd see her name. He should tell the man at the door that he was her guest.
Passing through a red velvet drape, he found himself in a moderately sized casino that bore little resemblance to those back home. The noise level was considerably lower due to the absence of slot machines, though he knew some London casinos had a few to satisfy American tourists, along with the Texas Hold ‘Em poker tables that had become so popular. Looking over the roulette tables, Nick could find no one who seemed a likely client. There were only three women at the roulette tables and all were firmly attached to middle-aged males.
Then he noticed one of the croupiers. She had an Irish face to go with a name like Walsh, and as he edged closer he saw that the name badge on her jacket read Mona. Just a moment after nine another young woman came to relieve her. Nick edged over a bit and followed her out of the casino into the adjoining hotel lobby. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked quietly as he caught up with her.
She smiled at him. “Smooth as velvet."
"That's me."
"Sure, let's have a drink in the hotel bar. Why not?"
The bar was large and crowded with tourists. She led the way to a corner booth out of sight from the door as Nick slid in next to her. “What'll you have?"
"Whiskey and water.” She was attractive in the innocent manner of young Irish women, wearing virtually no makeup and with her brown hair falling loosely around her shoulders.
He ordered the same. When the drinks came she passed a thick envelope along the table to him. “There's a
ticket from Waterloo Station to Portsmouth, and another for the ferry across to the Isle of Wight, plus your retainer and a tape recording of instructions. That's all you'll need."
"And why do you want this particular five-pound note?"
"No questions. You're being well paid."
He sipped his drink. “That I am. How soon do you need it?"
"What's today—Tuesday? How about Friday night, same time, right here?"
"Fine."
She stood up, leaving her drink unfinished, and headed for the restrooms. He sat there till she came out, walking quickly toward the front door while she slipped a pack of cigarettes from her purse.
He was leaving the casino a moment or two behind her when suddenly he heard her scream. A thin, pale man with a shaven head had accosted her and was spraying her with liquid from a bottle. Nick smelled the acrid odor of petrol and leaped forward. He knocked the still-unlit cigarette from her lips and pushed her down, then went after her attacker. But the bald man was too fast. He ran across Berkeley Square and Nick's pursuit was blocked by a truck. A moment later the assailant had vanished into the evening crowd.
Nick went back and helped her to her feet. “You'd better remove that jacket,” he told her. “What in hell was that all about?"
"There was a similar incident in Kensington recently. A patron who'd lost a large amount of money sprayed petrol on a woman croupier and the roulette table, trying to set them on fire. This seems to be a copycat crime. Thanks for your quick action."
"You're sure you're all right?"
"Just a bit shaken up. I have to get out of these clothes."
A small crowd had gathered and he saw a bobby working his way toward them. “The police will need a statement from you."
"Of course.” But she wasn't waiting to be questioned. She moved to mingle with the departing customers as a police car arrived in Berkeley Square. “Forget the whole thing. The deal's off."
"Your money—"
EQMM, January 2007 Page 9