‘Thanks, Don.’ P. Rockingham passed over the keys to me. ‘Say, you might look after these, friend. I’m a perfect rube on keys, I’d sure lose ’em.’
‘And now,’ Don Louis gave his graceful bow, ‘you must permit me to offer you a little lunch; my house, as you know, is not prepared, but if you would allow me to be your host at the hotel?’
Our luncheon proved lengthy, and afterwards my large friend would not let the Spaniard go. He insisted that we should drive out together to a café on the headland of the bay.
Don Louis wished to bank his money, but P. Rockingham waved the suggestion aside. ‘I’ve carried that ten thousand around these three months,’ he laughed. ‘Nothing’s goin’ to happen to it in just one day—’sides, if you pay it in you’ll only have to draw it out tomorrow to square the Jew.’
In the end Don Louis remained with us till well after midnight, and the last we saw of him was as he drove off, making the night hideous with the noise of his rackety car.
Our boat sailed at ten o’clock next morning. I was downstairs early, and having packed my things went to the office to settle my bill.
Lyckidopolous presented it with an oily smile; it was extortionate for such a place, and I paid it grudgingly, after having rectified a mistake in the addition. The Greek became voluble in his apologies as he rubbed his yellow hands.
I was walking away when he suddenly called after me. ‘Pardon, sir, I had forgotten—the lunch of yesterday—is it you who will pay for that or Mr. Budd?’
‘Why—no,’ I said. ‘We were both the guests of Don Louis d’Ulloa.’
He gave me a queer look. ‘Don Louis d’Ulloa?’ he repeated. ‘You mistake, sir, he is abroad.’
‘Abroad?’ I exclaimed. ‘But it was he who lunched with us yesterday!’
‘No, no,’ he assured me volubly. ‘Don Louis is a fat man with a heavy beard, I know him well. He owns the big villa on the hillside across the bay which is shut up; he is a wealthy man, and rarely comes to Cyprus.’
My brows contracted. Then our friend of yesterday was a fraud—he had taken advantage of Don Louis’s absence to show us over the villa. The caretaker must have been in his pay. My thoughts flew to the wine. I asked if the real Don Louis had a cellar in the town, and described the whereabouts of the one to which we had been taken.
The Greek shook his head. ‘Don Louis has no such bodega—the one you speak of has been empty for some years.’
I left Lyckidopolous gaping and hurried out—the keys were in my pocket. I reached the lodge and let myself in. Seizing a heavy piece of wood from the cooper’s shed I attacked the bung of the first cask I came to—I hammered it until it loosened and got it out. Quickly I inserted the rubber tubing just as I had seen the fake Don Louis do. I sucked hard for a second—a jet of liquid struck the roof of my mouth. I spat it out, it was cold water.
I tried some of the other casks; each one was the same—full to the bung with nothing more precious than water. I ran all the way back to the hotel. If anything was to be done it must be done quickly. The yarn about the Jew was obviously untrue. If we hurried we might catch our swindler at the bank.
P. Rockingham Budd was in his room packing when I burst in on him.
‘I say,’ I cried, ‘I’ve got bad news for you.’
Thet so? Cough it up, son,’ he drawled. ‘Don’t tell me the boat’s delayed?’
‘No, no, but that chap yesterday—he wasn’t Don Louis d’Ulloa at all!’
‘Say, now,’ he grinned, ‘have you only just tumbled to it?’
‘Do you mean to say you knew?’ I spluttered.
‘Sure,’ he said quietly. ‘When a guy points out a picture of Charles V as his ancestor who fought under Alva, it soon puts me wise.’
‘But the wine,’ I exclaimed impatiently. ‘There isn’t any, it’s water.’
‘You don’t say—I was wondering what was in them casks.’
I grew desperate. ‘But damn it, man,’ I cried, ‘you’ve paid for it—ten thousand dollars cash.’
Budd’s wide smile spread over his broad mottled face. ‘You didn’t happen to see that bird hunting around for any watermarks on them greenbacks?’ he asked.
‘What?’ I gasped. ‘They were—?’
‘That’s so,’ he nodded. ‘Guy I know turns ’em out by the hundred in a little joint way back of Satan’s Alley in Noo York, makes ’em special for innercent travellers to hand out to birds like Don Louis. I guess he’ll throw a fit when he does get to that bank!’
I sat down, breathless.
P. Rockingham Budd closed one eye in a solemn wink. ‘Great day we had yesterday,’ he grinned, ‘six-sixty bucks and a heap of fun. Say, friend, we’d better hurry or we’ll miss our boat.’
STORY XX
MOST of us make our best friends when we are quite young; particularly if we go to a boarding school. This is easily accounted for by the long periods of daily intimacy which circumstances rarely enable us to enjoy with people sympathetic to us that we meet later in life.
I, however, was particularly blessed in that for me very similar circumstances arose when I was in my middle forties. For three years I was cooped up in the famous fortress basement under Sir Winston Churchill’s wartime headquarters, and for long periods of that time the officers with whom I worked remained the same. This resulted in my making an entirely new set of intimate friends and I am happy to say that many of them remain treasured friends today.
As the officers of the Joint Planning Staff were specially selected for their abilities, it was the natural springboard to High Command; so, in due course, a considerable number of them became Admirals, Generals, and Air Marshals; an outstanding example being Sir William Dickson. It was he who secured me my wartime appointment and I rejoiced to see him rise from a Group Captain to Marshal of the Royal Air Force and—pinnacle of a Service career—Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and Chief of Defence.
During the years after the war, several of these good friends kindly invited me to stay at their Headquarters. Among them Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfred Dawson, when he was at N.A.T.O.; General Sir Richard Gale, when he was G.O.C. Army of the Rhine; Air Marshal Sir Laurence Darvall, when he was Commandant of the N.A.T.O. Staff College for senior officers in Paris; and Air Chief Marshal Sir William Elliott, when he was head of the British Military Mission in Washington.
The British Mission had its officers in the Pentagon and one day during my visit Sir William took me there with him. He then told his A.D.C., Captain the Honourable Guy Wyndham, to show me round that vast and fascinating building. With delight and admiration I saw that Wyndham was not wearing dreary battle-dress, but Bedford cord breeches, riding-boots polished to mirror brightness, the chainmail epaulets of a famous Cavalry regiment and, on his chest, decorations for gallantry won in the Korean War. It can be imagined how, during our long tour, scores of American officers cast at him looks of envy and how I rejoiced at this ‘Showing of the Flag’. It would have warmed any British heart to be seen in such company.
Anyhow, you may take it that the description given of the Pentagon in this story is accurate.
MURDER IN THE PENTAGON
THEY say there has never been a murder in the Pentagon. As I stared down the muzzle of Colonel Somolo’s automatic I knew that there was going to be one now. The weapon looked like a toy, and was almost hidden in his big, knobbly hand. Its report would not be heard through the nearly soundproof walls, but its bullet would kill me as certainly as one from a 4.5.
His widely spaced blue eyes were watery and looked as if he was about to cry. But that did not mean a thing. They were always like that and there was no hint of mercy in them. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead and, just as a drowning man is said to recall the high-spots of his life, there flashed through my mind the stages in the silent, secret battle we had fought.
Our country, Montebania, is small and poor; so when it joined N.A.TO. it was decided that only the Colonel and myself should be sent to Washington
. Like the military missions of other nations, we were given offices in the foreign section of the Pentagon.
The vastness of the American war-house staggered us. It must be seen to be believed. In its bowels there are bus garages, taxi-ranks and an enormous hall round which are ranged as many shops, clinics and cafeterias as one would find in a small town. Seventeen thousand men and women go to work there every day.
One can buy anything from nylons to travel; get teeth filled, have clothes pressed or go to church. A number of people have died there and several been born. No doubt the reason why there has never been a killing is the almost insoluble problem of disposing of a body. But Somolo had solved it and told me how he meant to get rid of mine.
We had been settled in the Pentagon for three months when I found him out. The Americans proved very cagey about letting us into any of their major secrets, but they had to let us attend the larger meetings. So, in that way, and through the gossip in our international warren, we managed to pick up quite a lot.
It was on Massachusetts Avenue one night that I chanced to find myself walking along behind my chief. On a street corner he paused and asked a lounger for a light, then gave the man a folded newspaper he was carrying and walked on. As I passed the lounger I recognised him as a Montebanian Communist whom I had once arrested in a riot. The encounter I had witnessed could mean only one thing. Somolo was selling us out to the Soviets.
As he had wangled his appointment by political pull, a report to our Minister of War would never have been believed unless accompanied by supporting evidence, so I set about trying to get it. For ten days I watched him like a hawk, searched his files and came back to the office at unexpected times in the hope of catching him making a copy of some secret document. Instead, he caught me.
Late one night I had been going through his desk when I noticed that his blotter had several lines of ink markings on it. Getting out a pocket mirror that I carry, I turned the blotter up and tried to read the reflection of his writing. It was at that moment that he came in.
Swiftly I pretended to be tidying up and changed the sheet for a clean one; but that was our secretary’s job. The shifty glance in his watery eyes told me at once that he guessed what I had been up to. He said nothing. But from that instant it was silent war between us.
The following evening, in a turning near my lodgings, I was nearly run down by a car. That might have been an accident. But two days later a parcel came for me by post. By the grace of God the pretty little bomb it contained failed to go off; but I knew for certain then that he meant to kill me.
Perhaps I ought to have gone to the Americans. But to denounce my own chief as a spy would have brought dishonour on Montebania. For me such a course was unthinkable. Instead, I took refuge in the Pentagon, as the one place where it seemed certain that he would not dare to murder me and I might still hope to get the better of him. For a fortnight I never left the building, but I must have scared him into playing for safety, as I failed entirely to secure the slightest indication of his guilt.
This afternoon he sent our secretary to hunt up some data for him at the Bureau of Statistics and told her she need not come in again until tomorrow. An hour later two porters arrived and carried in an old-fashioned tailor’s dummy, with a wax face and real hair. It had a uniform cap on its head and was clothed in a battle-dress similar to that of an American G.I., but slightly darker in colour.
Somolo smiled at me and asked: ‘What do you think of our new Montebanian uniform? I borrowed the dummy in order that we might show it off with advantage to our international colleagues.’
I had heard nothing of any new uniform, but replied that it seemed both practical and smart. Then he said: ‘I should like to see how it looks on a real person. Oblige me, please, by putting it on.’
Suspecting nothing, I unbuttoned my tunic. Even when he walked to the door and bolted it I thought he had done so only to prevent anyone walking in while I was undressed.
Together we laid the dummy down, unscrewed the stand on which it stood and removed its boots, gaiters and breeches. While I put them on he reseated himself behind his desk. It was as I turned to pick up the battle-blouse that he said:
‘You need go no further. I don’t want to make a bullet-hole through your nice new uniform.’
Swinging round, I found myself staring down the muzzle of his gun.
‘I don’t know how you got on to me,’ he announced, ‘but I know you have. So, as they say, it’s “curtains for you”, Captain Vidor.’
Seized with sudden terror I blurted out: ‘You’ll never get away with this! You can’t! Not here, in the Pentagon.’
‘Oh yes I shall.’ His voice was quietly confident. ‘By three o’clock in the morning rigor mortis will have set in. You will be as stiff as that dummy and I shall screw its stand back on to your boots. In my attaché case I have two glass eyes to replace yours and a pot of wax with which to coat your face, neck and hands. The dummy will be easy to dispose of. It is filled only with sawdust and enough small shot to bring it to your weight; so that even if the same porters who brought it up carry you down they will not notice the difference. Without the least suspicion that they are carrying a corpse, they will take you out to my car.’
By then I was trembling. I am not yet thirty. In the spring I had hoped to get married. All the best of my life was before me. I was appalled by the thought that in another few moments I would be dead. Yet he had thought of everything. There seemed no way out.
In my country most of us are Roman Catholics, and I managed to stammer: ‘My rosary and medallion blessed by His Holiness. They’re in my tunic pocket. May I … may I hold them as you…’
He shrugged contemptuously. ‘You may say a Hail Mary if you wish; but I shall fire at the first sign of a trick.’
In my country many of us also amuse ourselves by throwing knives, and for years I had carried a small one up the left sleeve of my tunic. As I threw it and flung myself flat he fired. His bullets buried themselves in the wall, but my knife got him through the throat.
Inserting the glass eyes in his head was a nasty business, but the rest was simple. Two hours before dawn I dumped his body far out in the marshes of the Potomac.
They still say there has never been a murder in the Pentagon, but that is no longer true.
STORY XXI
HERE again is something different to add, I hope, a little spice to this mixed pudding. It is a one-act play, and therefore an example from my attempts at story-telling in yet another medium.
Perhaps the word ‘spice’ is a little inadvised in this connection as the theme happens to be abortion; but anyone rash enough to expect a Rabelaisian conte will be disappointed. The necessity for abortion is never amusing and almost invariably a frightening and tragic matter. That I have here possibly succeeded in giving a farcical touch to an otherwise sordid little tragedy is my only excuse for printing this cynical and highly improbable playlet.
I should never have written Thyroid at all had it not been for my old friend, Bertie Van Thai. In many capacities he has been connected with books and plays and films for even longer than I have known him, which is long before I ever started to write seriously myself. After my early successes I met him at a party one night. He told me that he was seeking a curtain-raiser for a very famous actress. With his usual boundless enthusiasm he assured me that I was just the man to provide the very thing he wanted.
That his optimism was entirely misplaced was no fault of his whatever; but it was certainly infectious. Fully convinced that I was the world’s coming playwright I went away and wrote this one-act play. But poor Bertie was quite shattered when he read it. In the tones of an indulgent father pained by his young, he told me that two subjects should always be avoided by any author who wishes to be well regarded by the British Public; the one is the White Slave Traffic, the other is Abortion.
Basically he was probably right; certainly, as far as the accepted literary conventions of the past are concerned. But I am incli
ned to believe that the British Public of today is prepared to regard both these subjects with a well-balanced detachment. We all know that the world is far from being the place we would like it to be, and that our laws are far from perfect, and therefore have no objection to seeing these facets of life portrayed in fiction, provided they are presented decently.
To my mind the fact that the girl in this playlet should have been tempted to get rid of an unwanted infant is by no means so evil a thing as the hideous tyranny exercised over his household by her ‘Victorian’ father. Young people of today may find it difficult to believe that such bigoted and tyrannical parents ever had any real existence, but had they been their present age at the beginning of this century they would have accepted such a portrait as by no means overdrawn.
The poetic justice of the finale still gives me a good laugh, which enables me to hope that you will also get one from it.
THYROID
A PLAY IN ONE ACT
CAST
FATHER (Mr. Cotton): A man of sixty. Big, heavy build. Round, ruddy face. High, Bold forehead. Brown hair. Walrus moustache. Round, staring eyes. Very slow and deliberate in speech and manner. Walks like a wooden soldier—or as though suffering from locomotor ataxia. Dressed in pepper and salt suit, stiff collar, very small black bow tie.
MOTHER (Mrs. Cotton): A woman of fifty-five. Fat, untidy, good-natured, but obviously harassed by life. Talks rather fast. Rather common. Dressed in navy-blue redingote piped with red and lace yoke, badly cut.
WENDY COTTON (their Daughter): A girl of twenty to twenty-one. Pretty, nice voice, a trifle above her family in manner and speech. Dressed nicely but inexpensively.
ROBERT COTTON (their Son): A young man of nineteen. Tall nervous, rather long untidy dark hair, weak mouth. Dressed in worn grey flannels.
CHARLES WILLMOTT: A medical student, in love with Wendy, age twenty-four. Good clothes, smart appearance, pleasant manner and speech. Of a somewhat higher social level than his girl friend’s family.
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