by Greenberg
“Tomorrow,” said Paula, “I’m going to get Mrs. Mason to stoke up the boiler, and I’m going to run a hose into the big barn. I’ll use a proper stopcock, and we’ll build up the pressure. Then you’ll see what steam can do. Did you know that if you got a fine enough jet and sufficient pressure you could cut metal with steam?”
“For goodness’ sake, don’t try it,” said Richard. “We shall blow ourselves up.”
“You’re a coward,” said Paula. “By the way, did you see the Times this morning? It’s got something about Daddy in it.”
It was a paragraph on the Home News page. It said that Professor Gottlieb was confident of finishing his final revision of the White Paper on Planning before the end of the month. The professor had held a news conference, in which he had said that certain minor technical difficulties which had been holding him up had been satisfactorily disposed of.
“He’s trailing his coat,” said Paula.
“What do you mean?”
“You must think me an idiot if you imagine I don’t know what’s going on. He’s provoking those people to attack him, isn’t he? And that’s why I’ve been stowed away here, to be out of harm’s way.”
“Well – ” said Richard.
“And you’re my guard. There’s no need to apologize. I’m enjoying it – when I stop worrying about Daddy.”
“He’ll be well looked after,” said Richard.
Better looked after, he couldn’t help thinking, than Paula herself. He recalled the single afternoon of instruction he had been given – on the range in Wellington Barracks – with the automatic pistol which he now carried tucked under his left armpit by day and placed under his pillow each night. It was comforting to have a gun, but he was still far from certain that he could hit anything with it. Mrs. Mason, he knew, was connected with Fortescue’s organization, but if real trouble developed . . .
“What are you looking so serious about?” said Paula.
“Nothing,” said Richard. “I was working out what we had to do to the barn now that we’ve got the house in order.”
Visitors to the farm were few but regular, and already their visits had fallen into a pattern. The grocer from East Harling delivered on Tuesday and Friday. The fishmonger and butcher came out from Diss on Thursday. Twice every day the little red post van came bowling down the lane with letters and newspapers. And on Friday the dustcart arrived to carry away the week’s rubbish.
Mrs. Mason, doubtless acting on orders, allowed none of them near the house but went out to the gate to collect their offerings herself. To Richard they were blurred faces seen behind a windshield, except for the rubbish collectors, whose names were Ernest and Leonard and with whom he had exchanged local gossip.
The postman was a plump cheerful man. He operated from Diss, and had taken over the round which included Harwood Farm on the day before Richard and Paula arrived. He lodged in a back street and, although apparently a temporary, carried out his work in an efficient manner.
Indeed, so conscientious was he that in the evenings, after his rounds were completed, he would often take the van and tour the district, memorizing roads and lanes, houses and farms, and the position of telephone kiosks and AA boxes.
That Thursday night, when he returned to his lodging, he found a postcard propped up on the mantelpiece. The front showed a stout lady in a bathing dress, whose toe was being eaten by a crab. On the back was written: “Uncle Tom and the three boys planning to start for country tomorrow.” It was signed “Edna,” and the name was underlined three times.
“Three-line whip,” said the postman to himself. He went across to the cupboard and took out a violin case. But what he took out of it was certainly not a violin . . .
Friday was a perfect day. The sun rose through a cloak of early morning mist, scattered it and sailed in majesty across the heavens. Life at Harwood Farm pursued its unexciting course. The grocer came with groceries, and the postman on his morning round stopped for a gossip with Mrs. Mason. He seemed to do most of the talking. Mrs. Mason contented herself with nodding. She was a woman of few words. Her only relaxation was the Times crossword puzzle which she regularly finished in the kitchen when they had given it up in the drawing room. In the afternoon Paula rigged her steam hose, a fearsome contraption of plastic pipe and chromium fitting, and cleaned out the cowstalls at the end of the barn. The thin scalding jet stripped the filth of ages from the floors and wooden walls with the speed of a rotary plane.
It was five o’clock in the afternoon when the dustcart drove up. The driver reversed the lumbering vehicle in the space in front of the gate. He did it clumsily, crashing his gears, as if he was unused to driving it. Three men got out of the back. They walked quickly through the yard, ignoring the two dustbins and pushed into the kitchen.
Mrs. Mason jumped up, saw the gun in the hand of the leading man and said, calmly, “What do you want?”
“Take it easy,” said the man, “and you won’t get hurt.” As he said this the second man walked round behind her and smacked her across the back of the neck with a leather-covered cosh. The third man caught her as she fell forward.
“Put her in that cupboard,” said the leader. “There’s a bolt on the outside.”
Mr. Calder, turning the post van in at the top of the lane, saw signs of the ambush. The surface of the road was broken where the heavy dusteart had lurched to a halt, and the hedge was broken too. Mr. Calder jumped out to investigate, and found Ernest and Leonard in the ditch, their elbows and ankles strapped and their heads in paper dust sacks. He undid them and they sat up, swearing. Mr. Calder cut them short.
“There’s a public telephone three hundred yards down the main road,” he said. “Get there as quick as you can – ask for this number – and just say the word Action.”
Leonard, who was the younger and more spirited of the two, said, “Couldn’t we get after those bastards first?”
“No,” said Mr. Calder. “You’d be in the way. Just do what I told you. And quick.”
As they lumbered off down the road, he got back into his van. He could be heard coming, but that couldn’t be helped. Speed was now more important than surprise. Anyway, he had no intention of driving up to the house. He had long ago located a field track, usable in dry weather, which led off the lane to a point behind the barn . . .
The farmhouse being old and its walls thick, Richard, who was writing in the drawing room, had heard nothing of the goings-on in the kitchen. He did, however, hear heavy footsteps coming along the stone-floored passage, footsteps which could not belong to Mrs. Mason or Paula. He had time to get his gun out. It wasn’t a bad shot for a first attempt. He missed Cotter who led the rush through the door, but hit the man behind him in the knee.
Cotter, steadying himself, shot Richard through the right shoulder, knocking him off his chair onto the floor. Then he picked up his gun and took no further notice of him.
“We’ll look after Lawrie in a moment,” he said. “We’ve got to grab the girl before she runs for it.”
It was unfortunate for them that, being in a hurry, they came out of the door and into the yard together. Cotter realized their mistake when he heard the girl’s voice from behind them. She said, “This gun’s loaded, both barrels. Even I couldn’t miss you from here.”
The two men turned. Cotter’s gun was back in its shoulder holster. The other man had not drawn his. And the girl was holding a twelve-bore, double-barreled sporting rifle.
“Into the barn,” she said.
They moved slowly ahead of her. Cotter looked at the door as he went through to see if he could slam it, but it was too heavy and had been firmly wedged open with a stake.
“Down that end,” she said. “Now. Take your guns out slowly and drop them on the ground.”
The two men had spread themselves out. It was a deliberate movement. They knew very well that the odds were still on their side. As Cotter pulled his gun and dropped it onto the floor in front of him, he let it fall even farther to one
side, and shuffled after it. The other man did the same. The gun barrel wavered. They were now so far apart that one shot could not hit both of them.
“What are you planning to do?” said Cotter, edging over a little farther. He was now almost up against the side wall of the barn. “Keep us here till it’s dark?” He had seen the side door of the barn move and guessed that it was the fourth man, the driver of the van, coming to lend a hand. Keep her attention, and the driver could jump her from behind. No point in shooting her.
Paula saw the danger out of the corner of her eye. She swung round and fired both barrels. The first missed altogether. The second hit the driver full in the chest. As she fired, she dropped the gun, put out a hand without hurry, laid hold of the steam hosepipe and flicked open the faucet.
A jet of scalding steam, thin and sharp as a needle, hissed from the nozzle and seemed to hang in the air for a moment, then hit Cotter full in the face as he stooped for his gun. He went forward onto his knees. The hose followed him down, searing and stripping.
The second man got hold of his gun. Mr. Calder, standing square in the doorway of the barn, shot his legs from under him with his tommy gun.
When the carload of Special Branch men arrived they found Mr. Calder in the barn. The officer in charge was the same dark-haired young man whom Mr. Behrens had encountered at the police station. He introduced himself to Mr. Calder as Superintendent Patrick Petrella.
“We got your message,” he said, “and passed it on to London. Behrens will have rounded up Smythe and the others by now. I don’t think they’re going to give us much trouble. Cotter was the mainspring of the whole thing.”
“He’s a busted mainspring now,” said Mr. Calder. “There’s going to be a lot of clearing up to do. I’ve got three wounded men for you. And two dead.”
“I’ve yet to learn,” said Petrella, “that it’s a crime to resist an armed attempt at kidnapping. She’ll get a vote of thanks.” He moved across to the other end of the barn where two shapes lay, covered by sacks. “Which is Cotter?”
“This one,” said Mr. Calder. “He isn’t a very nice sight.”
“Good God,” said Petrella, shaken out of his phlegm. “What did she do that with?”
“She used a high-pressure steam hose,” said Mr. Calder. “Cotter made a mistake. He killed her dog and mutilated it. I know just how she felt. I’ve got a dog myself.”
IAN FLEMING
Octopussy
“You know what?” said Major Dexter Smythe to the octopus. “You’re going to have a real treat today if I can manage it.”
He had spoken aloud, and his breath had steamed up the glass of his Pirelli mask. He put his feet down to the sand beside the coral boulder and stood up. The water reached to his armpits. He took off the mask and spat into it, rubbed the spit round the glass, rinsed it clean, and pulled the rubber band of the mask back over his head. He bent down again.
The eye in the mottled brown sack was still watching him carefully from the hole in the coral, but now the tip of a single small tentacle wavered hesitatingly an inch or two out of the shadows and quested vaguely with its pink suckers uppermost. Dexter Smythe smiled with satisfaction. Given time – perhaps one more month on top of the two during which he had been chumming the octopus – and he would have tamed the darling. But he wasn’t going to have that month. Should he take a chance today and reach down and offer his hand, instead of the expected lump of raw meat on the end of his spear, to the tentacle. Shake it by the hand, so to speak? No, Pussy, he thought. I can’t quite trust you yet. Almost certainly other tentacles would whip out of the hole and up his arm. He only needed to be dragged down less than two feet for the cork valve on his mask to automatically close, and he would be suffocated inside it or, if he tore it off, drowned. He might get in a quick lucky jab with his spear, but it would take more than that to kill Pussy. No. Perhaps later in the day. It would be rather like playing Russian roulette, and at about the same five-to-one odds. It might be a quick, a whimsical, way out of his troubles! But not now. It would leave the interesting question unsolved. And he had promised that nice Professor Bengry at the Institute . . . Dexter Smythe swam leisurely off toward the reef, his eyes questing for one shape only, the squat, sinister wedge of a scorpionfish, or, as Bengry would put it, Scorpaena plumieri.
Major Dexter Smythe, O.B.E., Royal Marines (Retd.), was the remains of a once brave and resourceful officer and a handsome man who had had the sexual run of his teeth all his life, particularly among the Wrens and Wracs and ATS who manned the communications and secretariat of the very special task force to which he had been attached at the end of his service career. Now he was fifty-four and slightly bald, and his belly sagged in his Jantzen trunks. And he had had two coronary thromboses, the second (the “second warning” as his doctor, Jimmy Greaves, who had been at one of their high poker games at Prince’s Club when Dexter Smythe had first come to Jamaica, had half jocularly put it) only a month before. But, in his well-chosen clothes, with his varicose veins out of sight, and with his stomach flattened by a discreet support belt behind an immaculate cummerbund, he was still a fine figure of a man at a cocktail party or dinner on the North Shore. And it was a mystery to his friends and neighbors why, in defiance of the two ounces of whiskey and the ten cigarettes a day to which his doctor had rationed him, he persisted in smoking like a chimney and going to bed drunk, if amiably drunk, every night.
The truth of the matter was that Dexter Smythe had arrived at the frontier of the death wish. The origins of this state of mind were many and not all that complex. He was irretrievably tied to Jamaica, and tropical sloth had gradually riddled him so that, while outwardly he appeared a piece of fairly solid hardwood, inside the varnished surface, the termites of sloth, self-indulgence, guilt over an ancient sin, and general disgust with himself had eroded his once hard core into dust. Since the death of Mary two years before, he had loved no one. (He wasn’t even sure that he had really loved her, but he knew that, every hour of the day, he missed her love of him and her gay, untidy, chiding, and often irritating presence.) And though he ate their canapés and drank their martinis, he had nothing but contempt for the international riffraff with whom he consorted on the North Shore. He could perhaps have made friends with the more solid elements – the gentleman-farmers inland, the plantation owners on the coast, the professional men, the politicians – but that would mean regaining some serious purpose in life which his sloth, his spiritual accidie, prevented, and cutting down on the bottle, which he was definitely unwilling to do. So Major Smythe was bored, bored to death, and, but for one factor in his life, he would long ago have swallowed the bottle of barbiturates he had easily acquired from a local doctor. The lifeline that kept him clinging to the edge of the cliff was a tenuous one. Heavy drinkers veer toward an exaggeration of their basic temperaments, the classic four – sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic. The sanguine drunk goes gay to the point of hysteria and idiocy; the phlegmatic sinks into a morass of sullen gloom; the choleric is the fighting drunk of the cartoonists who spends much of his life in prison for smashing people and things; and the melancholic succumbs to self-pity, mawkishness, and tears. Major Smythe was a melancholic who had slid into a drooling fantasy woven around the birds and insects and fish that inhabited the five acres of Wavelets (the name he had given his small villa was symptomatic), its beach, and the coral reef beyond. The fish were his particular favorites. He referred to them as “people,” and since reef fish stick to their territories as closely as do most small birds, he knew them all, after two years, intimately, “loved” them, and believed that they loved him in return.
They certainly knew him, as the denizens of zoos know their keepers, because he was a daily and a regular provider, scraping off algae and stirring up the sand and rocks for the bottomfeeders, breaking up sea eggs and sea urchins for the small carnivores, and bringing out scraps of offal for the larger ones. And now, as he swam slowly and heavily up and down the reef and through the cha
nnels that led out to deep water, his “people” swarmed around him fearlessly and expectantly, darting at the tip of the three-pronged spear they knew only as a prodigal spoon, flirting right up to the glass of the Pirelli, and even, in the case of the fearless, pugnacious demoiselles, nipping softly at his feet and legs.
Part of Major Smythe’s mind took in all these brilliantly colored little “people” and he greeted them in unspoken words. (“Morning, Beau Gregory” to the dark blue demoiselle sprinkled with bright blue spots – the jewelfish that exactly resembles the starlit fashioning of a bottle of Guerlain’s Dans La Nuit; “Sorry. Not today, sweetheart” to a fluttering butter-flyfish with false black eyes on its tail; and “You’re too fat anyway, Blue Boy,” to an indigo parrotfish that must have weighed a good ten pounds.) But today he had a job to do and his eyes were searching for only one of his “people” – his only enemy on the reef, the only one he killed on sight, a scorpionfish.
The scorpionfish inhabits most of the southern waters of the world, and the rascasse that is the foundation of bouillabaisse belongs to the family. The West Indian variety runs up to only about twelve inches long and perhaps a pound in weight. It is by far the ugliest fish in the sea, as if nature were giving warning. It is a mottled brownish gray with a heavy wedge-shaped shaggy head. It has fleshy pendulous “eyebrows” that droop over angry red eyes and a coloration and broken silhouette that are perfect camouflage on the reef. Though a small fish, its heavily toothed mouth is so wide that it can swallow whole most of the smaller reef fishes, but its supreme weapon lies in its erectile dorsal fins, the first few of which, acting on contact like hypodermic needles, are fed by poison glands containing enough dotoxin to kill a man if they merely graze him in a vulnerable spot – in an artery, for instance, or over the heart or in the groin. It constitutes the only real danger to the reef swimmer, far more dangerous than the barracuda or the shark, because, supreme in its confidence in its camouflage and armory, it flees before nothing except the very close approach of a foot or actual contact. Then it flits only a few yards, on wide and bizarrely striped pectorals, and settles again watchfully either on the sand, where it looks like a lump of overgrown coral, or among the rocks and seaweed where it virtually disappears. And Major Smythe was determined to find one and spear it and give it to his octopus to see if it would take it or spurn it – to see if one of the ocean’s great predators would recognize the deadliness of another, know of its poison. Would the octopus consume the belly and leave the spines? Would it eat the lot? And if so, would it suffer from the poison? These were the questions Bengry at the Institute wanted answered, and today, since it was going to be the beginning of the end of Major Smythe’s life at Wavelets – and though it might mean the end of his darling Octopussy – Major Smythe had decided to find out the answers and leave one tiny memorial to his now futile life in some dusty corner of the Institute’s marine biological files.