The Mouse That Roared: eBook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 1)

by Leonard Wibberley

  During the journey to the dock, General Snippett recovered consciousness to demand what the hell everybody thought they were doing.

  “You’ll pay for this with the rest of your lives in jail,” he thundered. “Let me out of here, or I’ll call all the cops in New York out after you.” After he had fumed for a while without anyone paying any attention, he assumed a more reasonable tone and asked once again what it was all about.

  Tully explained to him patiently that he was prisoner of war of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, that he would be taken back to Grand Fenwick, treated according to his rank, which he judged to be that of a captain, and held there for ransom, according to the procedures of civilized nations. This produced another explosion from the General and when he had again subsided, he asked what or where was the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, and what was the cause of the war.

  The reply to this, that the duchy was an independent nation five miles long and three wide, contained in the northern slopes of the Alps, and that the war had been brought about as a result of the enterprise of some California wine makers, reduced the General to a stunned silence, for which Tully was grateful, for he had a number of things to think about and only a short while in which to make his decision.

  His first problem was to get Dr. Kokintz and the quadium bomb to Grand Fenwick safely. The only transportation at his disposal was the brig, which would take three weeks at least to get to the port nearest to the duchy. In that three weeks it might be set upon in the high seas and sunk by American craft, since a state of war existed between the two countries. He toyed with the idea of driving to the nearest airfield and commandeering a plane to fly the doctor and the bomb to Grand Fenwick. But there were potent arguments against such a plan. In the first place, it might prove impossible to find a plane and a pilot capable of making the transatlantic flight. In the second place, they might encounter in the drive to the nearest airfield, which he judged to be Idle-wild, such superior forces of the enemy that he would be unable to defeat them.

  He decided to trust to the brig. Despite the fact that it was almost incapable of defense, and would take so long to reach a home port, there was one factor in their favour. And that was the strange circumstance that the United States apparently did not know that it was at war with Grand Fenwick. Indeed, Tully now doubted that more than a handful of people in New York were aware that an invasion force had entered the city, marched to Columbia University, breached the building, and stolen the most valuable military secret which the United States possessed. Thus there was a strong possibility that all would arrive safely home in the duchy before the truth was discovered.

  The next point was whether he should remain with some of the men to carry out the original plan for an attack upon the White House and the seizure of the President. He decided against this. It was, he argued, unnecessary. The Fenwick forces had already seized, in the person of Dr. Kokintz and the quadium bomb, far greater booty, far more capable of bringing the United States to terms, than the person of the President.

  Thinking of Dr. Kokintz, he was reminded that the scientist had said he was from Grand Fenwick. Tully turned to Will, who sat on the other side of the General’s car, the General being between them.

  “Will,” he said, “do you ever recall a family by the name of Kokintz in Grand Fenwick?”

  Will thought solemnly upon the matter for a minute or two. “I don’t remember them myself,” he said at length, “but my father once spoke of some people called Kokintz. There was a man and a woman. They were gypsy folk, travelling through, and the woman was pregnant, and couldn’t go any further. The two were permitted to stay in Grand Fenwick until the baby was born.

  “My father said the woman died, and the Duke took pity on the man and said he could remain in the duchy as long as he pleased. He stayed about three years or maybe more, then he left, I believe, for America, taking his son with him. That’s all I ever heard of it.”

  “The name seems more familiar than that to me,” said Tully. He looked at the doctor, who was sitting between guards in the back seat of the convertible. He had the cage with his canary on his lap and was talking to the bird.

  “That’s it,” said Tully, suddenly. “Birds. Kokintz is the man who challenged my father when he wrote his book about the native birds of Grand Fenwick. He said that Grand Fenwick was too small to have any native birds. I remember now. Hey, you,” he called to the scientist, “didn’t you once write a paper saying that there were no native birds in Grand Fenwick?”

  “I did,” Kokintz replied, mildly.

  “Well, you’ll soon have an opportunity to correct your error,” Tully said grimly. “You’ll learn all about the native birds of Grand Fenwick starting with this one”—he pointed to the double-headed eagle on his surcoat—“and ending up with sparrows. Sparrows in Grand Fenwick have a tuft of feathers on the top of their heads.”

  “Probably nut-hatches,” said Dr. Kokintz, blinking through his thick glasses.

  “You can call them nut-hatches if you like over here,” retorted Tully, “or eagles if you want to. But in Grand Fenwick they’re sparrows and they have a tuft of feathers on the top of their heads.”

  By this time they had arrived at the Cunard dock. Pedro and his crew of five were lolling around the deck, dozing in the spring sun. A hail from Tully brought them quickly to their feet.

  “We’re coming aboard,” he said. “Prepare to cast off and make sail.”

  “How about a few hours’ shore leave?” asked Pedro. “Some of the boys haven’t seen an American girl in four or five years.”

  “Cast off,” roared Tully, “this is no time to think of wenching.”

  Pedro shrugged and signalled to the men who commenced to busy themselves with the fore and aft moorings. Dr. Kokintz, the General, the four policemen and the chauffeur were hustled down ropes to the deck of the brig and then put below in the main cabin. The rest of the Grand Fenwick force followed them. Tully remained alone on the dock after they were all aboard.

  “Stand by until I come down,” he said. “There is one thing more for me to do.” He took a grappling iron on the end of the rope and flung it to the roof of an adjoining building. On top was a flagstaff displaying the Stars and Stripes. This he lowered and bundled under his arm. Then he bent on the banner of Grand Fenwick, with the eagle which said, “Aye,” from one beak and “Nay” from the other, and raised it to the top of the staff.

  He then returned to the brig, which cast off, and was soon running under all plain sail down the river.

  Pedro at the wheel, still disgruntled that his crew had been denied shore leave in the sailors’ paradise of New York, said sarcastically, “Well, you were away about five hours. How did the war with the United States go?”

  “We won,” said Tully, calmly. Pedro was so surprised he swallowed his quid of chewing tobacco.

  CHAPTER XII

  The Secretary of Defence decided to call off the great air raid alert of the east coast after only six hours, and that for a number of reasons. The most potent of these was that the people would not stand for it lasting any longer, and he really had no choice in the matter. No portion of a nation, which in all its long history had been dedicated to individualism, to the proposition that there should be the least amount of law to govern the greatest number of people, would submit to being arbitrarily and indefinitely shut up in houses and in cellars, in subways and in shelters, forbidden the comforts of radios, of television, of refrigerators and iced drinks, of cups of coffee, and of slugs of whisky or glasses of beer.

  Risk of death after a while became preferable to this, which was, for such a people, a form of living death. Mothers who had been separated from their children, stood the separation for two hours, and then would stand it no more. All the pleadings of wardens, all the threats of police, all the appeals to their patriotism and the assurance that their offspring were being as well cared for as if they were in their own homes would not solace them. At the risk of being reduced to a spoonful of ashes
on the moment, they left their homes, to demand, with that appalling anger of which only women are capable, to be taken to their children immediately.

  Against their wrath, the forces of the Civil Defence Organization were of no avail. The women won, and in the suburbs and residential areas, the air-raid alert, though still officially on, faded gradually away. This happened, not only in the New York area, but in Boston and Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., and Providence, Rhode Island. For the first time in the history of the United States, if not in the world, women, in effect, cancelled a war.

  The rebellion was slower in getting started in the downtown areas of the cities, where most of those caught in the air-raid were men. Perhaps because generations of active participation in warfare had conditioned men to the necessity for being herded, it was three or four hours before there was any active rebellion against being enclosed in places of safety. In New York there had been the rumour that the city was being invaded by men from Mars, who had landed in flying saucers. The first effect of this, as already told, was panic. The panic was followed by a kind of false courage, or bravado, manifested in the singing of “Mairzy Doats,”

  “The Little Doggie in the Window,” and “Abide with Me” in the subways. This turned to impatience that nothing appeared to be happening. And the impatience became, in a little while, active rebellion in which those in the subways demanded to be let out to go to their homes.

  The Secretary of Defence had done all he could to keep the situation in New York under control, even to dispatching his Civil Defence Chief, General Snippett, to put down the rumour about the men from Mars. But three hours after he had sent him on this mission, there was still no report from General Snippett. And still the anguished appeals of other defence officials poured in, stating that the population was getting completely out of hand.

  At the Eighty-sixth Street West Side subway, a group of men started looting a train which had stopped there. They dismantled most of the motor and ripped up the seat cushions. Attempts to prevent them were blocked by others who were taking no active part in the looting. It seemed that New Yorkers who had long travelled on the subways, bore some kind of grudge against the dinginess and noisiness of the trains, and were seizing this opportunity to get a kind of revenge for their years of suffering and crowding.

  On the East Side, at the Seventy-seventh Street Station, a train had been derailed. Moustaches had been drawn on every poster in the station which bore a human face, whether male or female, and, by a strange coincidence, those who had been caught by the sirens at Fifty-ninth Street were short of cigarettes. There were, the wardens reported, about five hundred people in the station and no more than twenty packets of cigarettes. These had quickly been disposed of and the whole mob had taken up the chant, “I’d brave an atomic pile for a Camel.” This was followed by the whole five hundred roaring, “Call for Philip Morris,” the drawn-out cry echoing down the dark and silent tunnels and off the iron stanchions and girders.

  There were a dozen other symptoms of impending revolt of a like nature to be reported, not only from New York, but also from other cities. The plain fact of the matter was that there were too few officials to control the crowds. And the crowds, individually and collectively, would prefer to meet their fate in the open than be kept penned up in safety.

  That was the general situation which brought about the cancellation, after six hours, of a monster air-raid alert which was to have lasted much longer. There were particular reasons, however, why the Secretary of Defence decided to call off the exercise.

  The first and the most perplexing of these was the disappearance of General Snippett. When he did not report back three hours after being sent out to deal with the rumour of the men from Mars, the Secretary called the General’s headquarters in New York and sent out a search party for him. The search party, consisting of two hundred policemen on motorcycles, took every avenue and parallel street on Manhattan Island, from the Battery to the Bronx. But no sign of the General was to be found. His car, with two sound trucks and a mobile canteen, was, however, discovered at the Cunard dock. There were several dents in the body and most mysterious of all, an arrow, three feet long, embedded in the upholstery of the back seat. When this report was turned in, the Secretary ordered all four cars taken to the police garage and kept there until he had a chance to inspect them personally. On second thought, he asked that the arrow be sent to him immediately by special messenger.

  The police turned in one further report, though this was not until some time later. This was to the effect that the main door of the administration building of Columbia University had been smashed in, apparently by a battering ram made of a tree which had been cut down nearby.

  The final argument, if indeed one was necessary, for the cancellation of the alert, was pressure from the east coast Press. With the whole of their readership locked up, with their circulation, printing, type-setting departments unable to get to work, or to work even if they were already in their offices, newspaper publishers were unable to bring out their editions and were in danger of losing large sums of money for an indefinite period.

  In New York the editors of the Times, the Herald Tribune, the Daily Mirror, the Daily News, the Journal-American, the Compass, the Post, and the World-Telegram and Sun, met in defiance of the air-raid restrictions at Bleeck’s bar on Thirty-ninth Street, and putting aside their policy differences and professional criticisms the one of the other, solemnly vowed that they would have the scalp of the Secretary of Defence unless the air-raid was cancelled and their readership returned to them.

  “Unless we have a freely circulating daily Press, we have lost whatever war we are fighting, or are called upon to fight,” the editor of the Times announced. “It is one thing if people are prevented from reading newspapers because they have been killed by an atom-bomb, but quite another thing if they are prevented from reading newspapers for fear of being killed by an atom-bomb.”

  The editor of the Daily Mirror made a note of this on the back of an envelope and ran a box in the first post-air-raid edition to appear, summarizing the Times editor’s remarks under the headline: Times Claims Precedence Over A-bomb.

  So the great alert was cancelled and the confusion which followed was almost as chaotic as that which preceded it. The telephone exchanges were overwhelmed as a liberated population called relatives, newspapers, fire stations, police stations, radio stations, television stations, indeed all sources of information to inquire whether all was well, whether the men from Mars had withdrawn, whether it was true that Manhattan was a shambles, and whether it was true that all the water had been rendered radio-active by agents ranging from atomic explosives to fiery darts, hurled from the silent reaches of space. Those in the cities sought to go to their homes; those in their homes in the suburbs, seized by an irresistible curiosity, sought to get to the cities—in Boston to view the reported shambles of Old North Church; in Philadelphia to examine the wreckage of Independence Hall; in New York to gaze with horror and wonder on what report had it was the blackened skeleton of the world’s proudest city.

  Thus thousands of families missed their immediate reunion, adding to the confusion. Reports of missing persons, turned in by distraught husbands and wives, ran into tens of thousands. The police, the Civil Defence Organization, the Red Cross, the Traveller’s Aid—all were quite unable to cope with them. And in this morass of rumour and of inquiry, of hysteria and of bustling about from one place to another, Mrs. Reiner’s report that her boarder, Dr. Kokintz, had not been home for three days and was not to be found anywhere, was utterly lost.

  Mrs. Reiner, however, had not spent fifty-five years living in Brooklyn to have her own aims and interest set aside or swallowed in a furor involving millions.

  “You find Mr. Kokintz,” she instructed the Missing Persons’ Bureau, Manhattan Division, “or I come over there and find him myself. What for you think I pay taxes?”

  “Lady,” said the weary clerk, to whom her call had been switched, �
��we got maybe ten thousand people reported missing in the last three hours. Four of our own men in the Missing Persons’ Bureau are missing, and there ain’t nowhere we can report them to. How do you spell his name?”

  “Kokintz,” said Mrs. Reiner. “Anybody knows how to spell Kokintz. It’s a natural name, easy to spell, like Schmidt.”

  “Well,” replied the clerk, “maybe I might spell it wrong. You spell it for me.”

  “Look,” said Mrs. Reiner, “I’m not spending ten cents calling you for you to get fresh about my spelling. Kokintz is the name. A very nice bachelor gentleman that sometimes stays out at night. Working at the Columbia University, he says. But he never stayed out two nights and three days before.”

  “We’ll look for him,” replied the clerk, “and let you know what we find.” He hung up and filled out a routine report, saying that a Mr. Kokinz, bachelor, aged about fifty, wearing thick glasses, bird lover, fond of staying out at night, was missing. He put the form with twenty others he had filled out in the past hour and turned to the next call.

  Mrs. Reiner, however, was not satisfied. She had already called Dr. Kokintz at his special number at the University, the private line whose secret she shared with the President of the United States, and got no reply. She debated whether she should go over to Columbia and make inquiries personally. But she had other boarders to look after, and there was a quantity of grocery shopping to do for them. She did her shopping, fretting the while, and then decided that she would write a letter to the President about her missing boarder.

  The letter took her a full hour to compose, but she felt the time was well spent when she was finished. It read: