A Hundred Thousand Dragons

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘It probably won’t, Philip,’ agreed Lady Rivers, ‘but you never know. At least the book will give Jack something to occupy his mind. Besides that, I hope as there’s just the two of us in the car, he might get things off his chest. I’m worried about him.’

  ‘It’s this ghastly business with this German feller,’ said Sir Philip, shifting uncomfortably. ‘He’d be much better off not brooding over it. In my opinion,’ he said with sudden insight, ‘this girl, Freya, or whatever she’s called, is the trouble. She’s complicated things.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lady Rivers quietly. ‘I rather think she has.’

  As the sun set on the mountains of Steamer Point, Aden, Mrs Cynthia Coire sat upright in the button-backed plush chair next to the dressing table. She always sat upright; posture, training and disposition dictated it.

  All the homely noises of Aden flooded though the open window. The creak of the waterwheel, the bray of a donkey and the shouts from the parade ground mingled with the musical, carrying voices of Somalis, the higher accents of the Hindustani cook and the occasional guttural note of Arabic. She was glad to be back. Noise in England had a grim, impersonal quality.

  Her ayah served tea and Cynthia Coire relaxed, watching as Ayah unlocked her trunk. Her cup of tea was good. Ayah knew just how she liked it. Tea in England, in those new, noisy tea shops with palm trees and orchestras, often left much to be desired, both in quality and presentation. Here, in her own house, things were different.

  It was good to be home. Mrs Coire’s family usually travelled P&O but the mail boat had been perfectly acceptable.

  Ayah opened the cabin trunk on the floor. The smells were richer here than in England. Flowers, hot earth, mustiness. Very musty . . . Cynthia Coire wrinkled her nose and made a mental note to inspect the kitchens. The cook wasn’t going to serve second-rate meat disguised as fresh at her table.

  Ayah rose from beside the trunk holding, not the sensible, well-cut suit of navy blue shantung that Cynthia Coire knew should be at the top, but a wispy creation in red.

  Cynthia Coire glared at the excuse for a dress and sat up even straighter in her chair. ‘That is not mine,’ she declared and looked hard at the cabin trunk. It was hers, no doubt about it. The trunk was new, bought from the Army and Navy Stores, only six weeks before. Her labels were on it, and there was the scratch which had cost the porter his tip at St Pancras. She looked closer. The scratch wasn’t there.

  Cynthia Coire crossed to the trunk and rapidly removed the top layer of clothes. And then, for the first time in her life, she screamed. Underneath three cocktail dresses and wrapped in a blue wool coat, lay the rather awful remains of Freya Von Erlangen.

  FOURTEEN

  Taking her glasses from her bag, Lady Rivers looked at the book of watercolour paintings Bill Rackham had laid out on the table in Jack’s rooms. She was glad Rackham was there. Jack hadn’t said much, but she knew the strain he was under and guessed how volatile his mood was. The big, easy-going Rackham was just the sort of person Jack needed and she thoroughly appreciated his common sense. ‘Do you think this book contains some sort of message, Mr Rackham?’ she asked.

  Rackham ran a hand through his ginger hair. ‘I did,’ he said cautiously. ‘When you look at the poem and so on, it certainly sounds as if it means more than it apparently all adds up to.’

  Lady Rivers read the title page softly. ‘A hundred thousand dragons lie, Underneath an Arabian sky. The Silent Ones, when asked, will measure, the hidden way to dragons’ treasure. With a body once so fair, a princess guards the dragons’ lair.’ She looked up. ‘I see what you mean. It has a sort of significant quality, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oddly enough, Aunt Alice,’ said Jack, ‘it wasn’t so much the dragons that got us going, but the quote from Julius Caesar.’ He put his finger on the page. ‘A Tide In The Affairs Of Men, which, as Arthur pointed out, leads on to fortune. We worked out that the fortune in question was the gold from Craig’s convoy.’

  ‘And so these dragons and so on don’t really matter then?’ asked Lady Rivers in disappointment.

  ‘That’s what my expert concluded,’ said Rackham. ‘Apparently those words mean exactly what they say. Which isn’t very much,’ he added in an undertone.

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said Jack. ‘You see, I had a bright thought about those dragons.’ Lady Rivers breathed a little sigh of relief. She’d been right; he needed to get his teeth into something.

  He cocked his head as the telephone in the hall rang. His eyes gleamed with suppressed excitement. ‘And if I’m lucky, that’s my answer. I’ll be back in a tick.’ Lady Rivers and Bill Rackham looked blankly at each other as Jack left the room.

  When he came back, he had a broad smile. ‘Got it!’

  ‘What?’ asked Lady Rivers.

  Jack grinned. ‘That was Bingo Romer-Stuart on the phone from the War Office. I asked him how much gold was in this convoy of Craig’s.’ He took a flat brown leather box from his pocket. ‘I’d like you to look at this. It’s the present Arthur gave me for being his Best Man.’

  ‘It’s a watch and chain,’ said Lady Rivers, puzzled, opening the leather box. ‘I know.’

  ‘And Arthur had it inscribed with my name and the date.’

  ‘Well, so he did . . .’

  ‘And he also attached a newly minted sovereign to the watch chain. It looks good, doesn’t it?’

  Lady Rivers held the watch in her hand. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at, Jack.’

  ‘Look at the sovereign, Aunt Alice. Look at the picture on the coin.’

  ‘It’s the King.’

  ‘And on the reverse?’

  Lady Rivers turned the coin over and stared. ‘It’s a dragon. St George and the dragon.’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Jack in delight. ‘And the convoy consisted of gold. Gold sovereigns.’

  Bill Rackham gasped. ‘Blimey! How much was there, Jack?’

  ‘A hundred thousand pounds in gold sovereigns. Or, to put it another way, a hundred thousand dragons. Bill, this book has to contain a message.’

  ‘But how, Jack?’ demanded Rackham. ‘I agree. Don’t get me wrong, I agree. This dragon thing ties in so neatly it has to mean the convoy. It’s too great a coincidence for it not to. But our expert analysed that poem every which way it could be analysed and found nothing.’

  ‘So therefore the answer isn’t in the poem, it’s in the pictures.’

  ‘But he looked at those, too,’ said Rackham in frustration. ‘Yes, you can make a code out of pictures, but he knows that.’ He flicked through the pages of the book and sighed. ‘It doesn’t add up.’

  A piece of paper fluttered out of the book to the floor. ‘What’s this?’ asked Lady Rivers, picking it up and putting in on the table.

  Jack twisted his head to see. It was a drawing of a pyramid with the letters I.E. Simes, R.A. arranged around it. R at the top, A underneath it, M at the side and so on, round the pyramid. ‘Isabelle drew it.’ He smiled affectionately. ‘Pyramids! She was thinking of her honeymoon, I’ll bet.’

  ‘I imagine she was,’ said Lady Rivers. ‘I enjoyed planning the Egyptian trip with her. They’re visiting Tutankhamen’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings and going up the Nile to the Second Cataract. Abu Simbel really is magnificent. There’s an enormous temple built of sandstone with four vast statues at the entrance . . .’

  Jack knew his aunt was still speaking, but her voice seemed to be coming from far away. He stared at the paper on the table. He gave a low exclamation. Pyramids meant Egypt, meant the sphinx, meant the Valley of the Kings, meant Abu Simbel, meant four vast statues carved out of sandstone . . .

  ‘Did you say Abu Simbel, Aunt Alice?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Lady Rivers, taken aback. ‘Abu Simbel. The temples of Rameses the Second and . . .’ She frowned. ‘Now who’s the other temple dedicated to? One of his wives, I think. He seemed to have dozens but she was the important one. His temple is the biggest, of course. The entrance is stunn
ing. As I said, there are four absolutely enormous statues, all of him . . .’

  ‘Rameses the Second,’ interrupted Jack in an odd voice. His mind was racing. Rameses the Second, the greatest pharaoh of all, worshipped as a god, demanding immortality by nailing down the land with temples and statutes. ‘There are four huge statues of Rameses the Second at Abu Simbel.’

  ‘All right, Jack, so there are four whacking great statues of Rameses the Second at Abu Simbel,’ repeated Bill Rackham. ‘We’ve got the point. So what?’

  Jack seized a pencil and, taking Isabelle’s drawing, scribbled a word down rapidly, and passed it across to Rackham. With a puzzled frown Rackham glanced down at the piece of paper, and gasped.

  The letters I.E. Simes, R.A. had magically transformed themselves into Rameses II.

  Lady Rivers took the paper from his hands. ‘The names are the same,’ she said in sudden apprehension. ‘The same letters, I mean. Did Simes – Von Erlangen, I mean – think of himself as Rameses?’

  ‘He had a pretty good opinion of himself, that’s obvious,’ said Rackham. ‘I say, Jack, do you remember when we tried to crack the code before? You said we needed a keyword. Is this it?’

  ‘What’s a keyword?’ asked Lady Rivers.

  ‘Well, to put it briefly,’ said Jack, ‘a keyword gives you the key to understanding any coded message in the Playfair system. Playfair invented a well-known military code. It’s easy enough to understand. We thought that Von Erlangen, who was an officer, after all, would have used it.’

  ‘That’s what Professor Bruce, my expert, thought as well,’ said Rackham. ‘What d’you think, Jack? Is Rameses the Second the key we’ve been looking for?’

  Jack got to his feet and walked to the mantelpiece, where he stood for a few moments, deep in thought. ‘I can’t see it,’ he said eventually. ‘I.E. Simes, R.A. might be Rameses the Second but the word’s scattered throughout the book. I remember saying to Belle you’d have to be goofy to send the keyword and the cipher in the same document. It’s too simple.’

  Rackham laughed derisively. ‘You really think so?’

  Jack nodded vigorously. ‘Simple for him, I mean. Say we did find out what the code was and used I.E. Simes, R.A. as the keyword. The letters are the same as Rameses the Second, and although there’d be parts of the code that wouldn’t make sense, it’s wouldn’t take anyone who’d done basic signalling, or even had a natural aptitude, long to figure out that other parts of the code did fall into place and what order the actual letters of the keyword should be in.’

  ‘Could the keyword be Madison?’ asked Rackham. ‘I remember you scratching your head about that.’ He turned to Lady Rivers. ‘He’d written it on one of the other books we found in his room, a thing about desert travel. You thought it was odd, didn’t you, Jack?’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Jack. ‘The name was a bit of a mouthful. Adler Zelig Yohann Madison, but what puzzled me was the exclamation mark after the name. It was as if he’d done something smart. I suppose Madison could be the keyword, but once again, it seems a bit simple for a tricky devil like him.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you can turn Adler Zelig Yohann Madison into anything clever?’ asked Lady Rivers hopefully.

  Jack shook his head. ‘I can’t. I tried.’

  She frowned at him over the top of her glasses. ‘All right. The name Simes has to be more than a coincidence, though. Did he ever call himself Rameses the Second or use the name in any way?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No, not that I . . .’ He broke off and stared at her.

  ‘Here we go again,’ muttered Rackham. ‘What is it this time, Jack?’

  Jack ignored him. ‘Aunt Alice, do you remember when I was a kid, you used to read stories and poems and so on to me when I came to stay?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course I do,’ she said in surprise. ‘You loved being read to.’

  Jack crossed the room to the bookcase by the window. ‘I’ve still got some of the books you and Uncle Phil gave me.’ He knelt down, running his finger along the spines of the books. ‘There’s some real old favourites here. Treasure Island, Marryat and Robin Hood and so on . . .’ He paused in his search. ‘But it’s this I’m after.’ He held up a green-covered book triumphantly. On the front cover, blocked in gold, was the title: A Child’s Garden of Verse.

  ‘Go on,’ said Rackham with a laugh. ‘Tell us what a child’s book of poetry has to do with anything.’

  Jack grinned and, bringing the book back to the table, started to flick through the pages. ‘It’s a Victorian thing,’ he explained. ‘There’s some good stuff in here and it’s all very educational and improving. The hard words are explained, there’s historical and factual notes and some lovely illustrations. Like this one. It’s the illustration to Ozymandias by Shelley.’

  The picture was of a gigantic, shattered statue of an Egyptian king, lying in ruins on the desert sands. In the distance were the pyramids and the Sphinx. At the top of the page was a note in italics.

  Ozymandias is a sonnet, a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter. The poet Shelley reflects how wealth, fame, pride and power are vanquished by the relentless march of time. The ruined statue in the sonnet is a colossal depiction of Rameses II, also known as Rameses the Great, the ‘Mighty Pharaoh’ of the book of Exodus in the Bible, who vainly attempted to keep Moses and the Israelites enslaved. The Greek traveller, Diodorus, refers to Rameses II as Ozymandias.

  ‘Ozymandias!’ breathed Rackham. ‘Jack, it’s what Von Erlangen called himself. Ozymandias.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jack in deep satisfaction. Rackham saw his eyes narrow thoughtfully. ‘Hang on a mo.’ He picked up the pencil once more, pulled the piece of paper towards him and jotted down the name. After a few moments he glanced up. ‘Look at this. We’ve got Ozymandias and Adler Zelig Yohann Madison. Now, if we simply put Madison’s initials in, so his name reads A.Z.Y. Madison and switch the letters round a bit, what have we got?’

  He had written the letters of both names in two circles. Rackham whistled in appreciation. ‘Ozymandias! Damn me – sorry, Lady Rivers – the letters are the same! Ozymandias is A.Z.Y. Madison and vice versa.’

  ‘And that’s his keyword,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll swear to it.’ He looked at them both and grinned. ‘You can applaud now, if you like.’

  Lady Rivers clapped her hands together softly. ‘You deserve it. Well done, Jack.’

  ‘I think that calls for a drink, don’t you?’ asked Jack. Walking over to the sideboard, he took out three glasses. ‘Is sherry all right for everyone? I know it’s a favourite of yours, Aunt Alice.’

  Bill Rackham accepted the glass Jack gave him with a frown. ‘Look, Jack, I don’t want to spoil the party, but are you sure Ozymandias can be the keyword? Wouldn’t he go for something more obscure?’

  Jack sat back in his chair. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said after a few moments. ‘The name Ozymandias obviously means a great deal to him. It’s a powerful name, but it’s concealed power, a secret power. That fits his character, you know? This is all a guess, but I bet he wanted to keep a memory of the name when he got to New York. As Ozymandias he had been known and feared and keeping the name, even if it was concealed as Simes or Madison, must have been a sort of promise to himself that he wasn’t finished yet.’

  Rackham lit a cigarette disconsolately. ‘You’re probably right, you know. Ozymandias is as good a guess as any. But it’s not much good having a keyword and no code to go with it.’

  Lady Rivers picked up the book from the table and opened it on her knee, turning to the first page. ‘What lovely pictures,’ she said thoughtfully. She looked at the first page, with its pictures of an Arab in bright sunlight, four palm trees and rocks silhouetted against the evening sun. ‘Three pictures,’ she murmured. She turned the page. ‘And the next page has three, as well, but the page after that has . . . goodness me, eleven,’ she said, rapidly counting them. She frowned. ‘Jack, isn’t there a Sherlock Holmes story that uses pictures as a code?
’

  ‘There is. It’s called The Dancing Men, but there the pictures stood for clearly defined letters and, not to be too dismissive, once you know it’s a code, it’s a bit of a sitter. Do you remember that one, Bill?’

  ‘I do,’ agreed Rackham. ‘If it were as simple as that, I can’t see it puzzling Professor Bruce for very long.’

  Lady Rivers clicked her tongue. ‘The number of pictures don’t stand for letters of the alphabet, do they? Three pictures equals the letter C, for instance?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘’Fraid not. We’ve tried that.’

  Lady Rivers stared at the book and sighed. ‘The clarity and the precision of the drawing is outstanding. I can’t help thinking that with such a talent at his fingertips, it’s worse than ever that he should be so wicked. I learnt how to paint and draw, of course, when I was a girl, as it was the sort of thing which girls did, but artists were always suspect. Even the fashionable ones had to be treated with caution, what with life classes and drinking extraordinary things and everybody living in each other’s pockets and wanting to run off with everyone else’s wives, but that’s not wickedness but just ordinary immorality and the sort of thing one would expect, really.’

  Jack exchanged glances with Rackham and laughed. ‘You seem to expect some rum things, Aunt Alice.’

  ‘I mean for people in those circumstances,’ said Lady Rivers, laughing too. She broke off as she saw Jack’s frown. ‘Have I said something wrong?’

  ‘Not wrong, exactly,’ he said slowly, ‘but you’ve done something I haven’t. You’ve looked at the pictures as works of art. I got so caught up with the idea of the book being a code that the paintings as paintings got obscured.’ He knelt down beside her chair and looked intently at the pictures. ‘Can you turn the pages for me?’ he asked after a little while.

  Lady Rivers did so.

  ‘We noticed, of course, how the pictures are grouped in a very odd way,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘but I didn’t see what you pointed out, Aunt Alice, that the drawing is outstanding. It’s very, very sharp.’ He rocked back on his heels.