by Simon Brett
But at that moment, facing the ruins of Shanghai Billee’s, uncertain as to whether his sister’s life had been claimed by fire or drowning, his mood was uncharacteristically lugubrious. Oh, broken biscuits, he said to himself. Biscuits broken into very small pieces indeed!
As he turned away from the wreckage, in the vain hope of seeing his sister on dry land, he found himself repeating out loud his earlier question, ‘Twinks! Twinks, where are you?’
There was a silence longer than that which would have followed the announcement to his mother that he was going to marry a chorus girl.
Then he heard distantly the perky cry of, ‘I’m here, Blotto me old trouser button!’
Turning again towards the ruins of Shanghai Billee’s, he could at first see nothing through the mingled smoke and fog, but then he caught a glimpse of a slender arm waving from the waters of the Thames beyond.
He rushed to the water’s edge and, standing on a still-burning beam, shouted, ‘I’m coming in to get you, me old kipper!’
‘Don’t be a Grade A poodle!’ the reply came back. ‘You know I’m a strong enough swimmer to represent Great Britain at the sport, but for the fact that only oikish people do that kind of thing.’
As if to prove her point, Twinks struck out and, with a few short efficient strokes from her sylphlike limbs, was soon alongside her brother. She reached up her arm and with one firm pull Blotto had her out of the water.
Twinks, though drenched to the skin and covered with slime whose provenance it wouldn’t have been tasteful to go into, still managed to look stylish. Though her blonde hair was plastered round the outline of her skull, the azure eyes had lost none of their sparkle.
‘I’d forgotten what a lark swimming can be,’ she trilled. ‘Absolute larksissimo. I must do more of it.’
‘But you’re as wet as a Riviera sponger,’ said Blotto, removing his blazer. ‘Here, put this round the old shoulder-blades.’
Twinks did as he suggested, and moved closer to the smouldering debris of the opium den. ‘Shanghai Billee’s can do me the final service of drying me out.’
She looked round at the groggy and groaning Chinamen on the roadway. ‘Your doing, I assume, Blotto?’
He grinned in self-deprecation. ‘Oh, I did have a bit of help.’
‘Who from?’
‘Oh, no actual boddos. Just mean it wasn’t only my dukes and the Marquis of Queensberry. I used the cricket bat too,’ he added apologetically.
‘I don’t think you need feel bad about that,’ said Twinks, who had a reputation as an arbiter in matters of chivalry and derring-do. She looked down at the scattering of discarded firearms on the road. ‘Some of the stenchers did have guns, after all.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ But his tone showed he wasn’t quite convinced. Defeating bad tomatoes with one’s bare hands would always slightly have the edge over using a weapon.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, remembering the circumstances which had got him into the fight, ‘do you have any tinkling what happened to that Will Tyler lump of toadspawn?’
‘Well, he was coffinated the minute the bullet binged him. Then the whole rombooley went into the drink. I’d imagine in a couple of days’ time the Thames River Police would find something nasty on the end of their boathooks.’
‘Do you know if any of the Chinamen got one-way tickets?’
‘I should think a few must have done. Nobody could have come out of that inferno alive.’
‘You did, Twinks.’
‘Yes, but, well . . .’ It was a rare moment of his sister looking sheepish. Though she had no problem with being extolled for her beauty and intellectual capacity, she always felt a bit shy about her physical achievements.
Cheerily Blotto changed the subject. ‘Anyway, at least I bagged the important one alive.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The stencher who coffinated Tyler. I’ve got him tied up to that lamp-post over there.’
But, as his own eye followed his gesture, Blotto could see that the murderer had got away. All that remained on closer inspection was a pigtail tied to the lamp-post. And it wasn’t even a real pigtail. It was a pigtail wig.
‘Rodents!’ he said, as he showed the object to his sister. ‘What does this mean, Twinks?’
‘It means that the League of the Crimson Hand’s tentacles stretch further than we thought.’ Blotto looked characteristically blank. ‘And there’s more evidence of it.’
He looked where she was pointing, and noticed something strange was happening to the faces of the unconscious Chinamen nearest to the blaze that had once been Shanghai Billee’s. The pigmentation which so distinguished them from British citizens was melting and trickling away in the heat, to reveal pink flesh underneath.
Toad-in-the-hole, Twinks! What’s going on?’
‘You’ve heard of the “Yellow Peril”, Blotters, haven’t you?’
‘Of course I have. It’s the evil scheme, masterminded by Dr Fu Manchu, for the civilized world to be taken over by the powers of the Orient.’
‘Yes, that’s what we’re meant to think. As a result, we’re meant to distrust people of other, faraway nations.’
‘Well, doing that’s not such a tough rusk to chew, is it? I mean, if you’re British, it is a kind of instinct.’
‘But it’s not true. Our thoughts are being manipulated.’
‘Sorry, you’re going to have to spell this one out for me, Twinks me old tin tray. Come on, uncage the ferrets.’
‘Very well. How useful for people who want to disrupt the government of a country it is to get the people frightened by some external threat . . .’
‘Exactly what I was saying, Twinks. That’s where the Yellow Peril and Dr Fu Manchu come in.’
‘No, Blotto. That’s where we’re meant to believe that the Yellow Peril and Dr Fu Manchu come in.’ Once again, she had her brother bewildered. ‘Look at these men.’ She crouched down and rubbed the face of one of Blotto’s victims. Her finger came up stained with yellow. ‘Greasepaint. As used in pantomimes and music halls. These thugs have not come from China. It’s a guinea to a groat that the furthest they’ve come from is Wapping.’
To prove her point further, she felt along the man’s hairline and removed another pigtail wig, revealing the mousy thatch beneath.
There was a silence. Then Blotto said, ‘I’m afraid my touchpaper hasn’t ignited yet, Twinks.’
‘What has happened,’ she explained patiently, ‘is that the Western World has been the victim of a conspiracy to make us distrust the Eastern World. Disguising thugs like this is part of the process of convincing us that we face the threat of a Yellow Peril, a Yellow Peril that doesn’t exist.’
Blotto was flabbergasted. ‘Twinks, are you saying that the Yellow Peril doesn’t exist?’
‘That’s just what I did say, Blotto.’
‘Yes, but did you mean it?’
‘Of course I meant it. The Yellow Peril is a fabrication of evil men who wish to destabilize the good relations between nations.’
‘Well, I’ll be jugged like a hare!’ said Blotto. ‘And who are these evil men?’
‘The League of the Crimson Hand,’ replied Twinks. She shifted Blotto’s blazer around her elegant shoulders before announcing, ‘And now I think it’s time for me to have a very deep, hot bath.’
‘What, we’re going to Lyminster House, are we?’
Blotto referred to the Tawcesters’ London base, a large mansion in Mayfair, which was kept permanently staffed and ready for any family members who might need it.
‘No,’ said Twinks.
‘Why not?’
‘Sloggo’s staying there.’
She did not need to say any more. Blotto and Twinks tolerated their sister-in-law at Tawcester Towers, because she and the Duke had their own wing of the house and the place was big enough for the four of them not to meet very much. But the thought of Sloggo’s company for a whole evening in the cramped conditions of the twelve-bedroomed London house was mor
e than either of them could cope with.
‘Good ticket,’ said Blotto. ‘So what do we do?’
‘We book a suite at the Savoy,’ his sister replied as she started towards the Lagonda.
‘Just one thing, Twinks,’ asked Blotto plaintively. ‘All that guff you were saying about the Yellow Peril . . . does it mean that Dr Fu Manchu really doesn’t exist?’
When they reached the Lagonda, they found that its fabric roof had been slit open with a knife. And there was no sign of Laetitia Melmont inside.
‘Great whiffling water rats!’ said Twinks. ‘The League of the Crimson Hand have got her!’
14
Three What?
Blotto and Twinks had no difficulty in procuring a suite at the Savoy. The Tawcester name still counted for something, and the family of a Huddersfield mining magnate, in London to celebrate his daughter’s wedding, were quickly shunted off to inferior accommodation. After brother and sister had soaked off the grime of Limehouse in the separate bathrooms of their suite, they changed into evening dress (intending to dine later in the Grill downstairs) and reconvened in the sitting room over cocktails sent up from the bar.
Generally speaking, cocktails weren’t Blotto’s cut of the joint. He liked his spirits ungarnished – brandy or whisky with the merest whoosh from the soda syphon. But, as in all things, he bowed to his sister’s greater knowledge and sophistication. Twinks kept abreast with all the latest fashions in drinking, and had a network of chums to keep her informed of the latest creations by every barman in London. She had heard that in the cocktail world the new incumbent in the Savoy was a whale amongst whales.
‘I’m going to go for the Cobbler’s Awl,’ she had confided to Blotto after consulting the list of possibilities.
‘What’s in that?’
‘Oh, about seven different spirits, two contrasting champagnes and a dash of absinthe.’
‘Sounds beezer. Shall I go for one of the same?’
‘Don’t think so, Blotto. A Cobbler’s Awl is a bit of a ladies’ drink.’
‘Oh. So what’d fit my pigeon-hole?’
‘I think a St Louis Steamhammer would match your sock-suspenders, Blotto.’
‘Right, a St Louis Steamhammer it is, Twinks me old muffin.’
As ever, his sister’s choice had been impeccable. Deciding sensibly that one cocktail might not be enough to see them through their discussion of the case, when ordering on the internal telephone Twinks had requested that a full shaker of each of their choices should be delivered to the suite. The Room Service waiter was commendably speedy in discharging his duty. He arrived, filled the appropriate glass for each of the guests, and left the two cocktail shakers on ice. He had also, at the request of Twinks, brought up a commercial directory of London phone numbers.
When he had left the room, Twinks toasted their enterprise. ‘To tracking down the other men with tattooed fingers!’ she said as she raised her glass.
‘Good ticket!’ said Blotto, raising his.
‘And to finding Laetitia Melmont!’ Twinks continued.
‘Oh yes,’ Blotto agreed with a little less enthusiasm. In the warm comfort of his bath he’d managed to forget that little problem. Also to forget the inevitable pressures towards matrimony that would be exerted by his mother when he did rescue ‘the Snitterings Ironing-Board’.
‘And to the destruction of the League of the Crimson Hand!’ Twinks concluded in a ringing voice.
There fortunately was a sentiment with which Blotto had no problem in agreeing. He took a long swallow from his St Louis Steamhammer.
The effect was not immediate. He tasted a sweetness on his tongue, a sweetness with a slight tang of asperity, but nothing else seemed to happen. He grinned amiably at his sister, who had just taken a delicate sip of her Cobbler’s Awl and was also waiting to feel the benefit.
Then Blotto understood the reason for the St Louis Steamhammer’s name. He felt as though he had been tapped firmly on the head by a blunt instrument upholstered in velvet. Not just one tap, but an accelerating crescendo of taps, building to a drum roll of sensation that reverberated through his skull, bouncing and echoing off the bony interior of his cranium. He wouldn’t be surprised to find that small jets of blue steam were being expelled through his ears.
Toad-in-the-hole . . .’ Blotto murmured. It was his highest form of praise.
‘The Cobbler’s Awl is larksissimo too,’ said Twinks reverently. But then she got down to business. ‘Now listen, Blotto me old gumdrop, we’ve actually achieved the first part of our mission . . .’
‘Have we?’ he asked, confused.
‘Yes. Our first aim was to track down the murderer of the Dowager Duchess of Melmont, so that we can get Corky Froggett released. That has been achieved. As we thought, Will Tyler was the perpetrator. He admitted as much.’
‘Yes. And now he’s dead,’ said Blotto, a shadow crossing his face. ‘Which is a bit of a candle-snuffer, because it means we can’t hand him over to the proper authorities.’
‘I’m sure Inspector Trumbull and Sergeant Knatchbull will survive the disappointment.’
‘Yes, but that’s a bit of our investigations that I always enjoy. You know, when we’ve solved the case – or rather you’ve solved the case – and you write up all the evidence into a dossier and pass it over to Inspector Trumbull and Sergeant Knatchbull. And then they always manage to convince themselves that they reached the conclusion under their own steam.’
‘Well, I’m afraid we’re going to miss out on that bit of the investigation, so far as Will Tyler’s concerned.’ Then, to blow away the residual gloom on her brother’s face, Twinks continued, ‘But think how fizzulated the ancient Inspector and Sergeant will be when we hand over the entire League of the Crimson Hand to the proper authorities.’
‘Good ticket, Twinks.’
‘So, though we’ve solved the murder – which wasn’t a very hard rusk to chew – we now have another crime on our hands, don’t we?’
‘Do we?’
‘The kidnapping of Laetitia Melmont.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Blotto uneasily.
Seeing her brother’s reaction, Twinks suggested encouragingly, ‘I suppose we could just inform the police and let them get on with a Missing Persons inquiry . . .? While we get on with foiling the evil plans of the League of the Crimson Hand.’
But, as she had rather suspected, Blotto wouldn’t dream of being party to such an idea. He knew the matrimonial risks of rescuing Laetitia Melmont, but in such a situation he was too much of a gentleman to consider his own interests. ‘We can’t do that, Twinks me old biscuit barrel. That poor girl was under my protection when she was abducted. It was my Lagonda that she was snaffled from.’
‘But equally it was your Lagonda she stowed away in, so if we’re looking for a balance of moral –’
Blotto raised a hand and his sister was obediently silent. ‘No,’ he said, rather magnificently. ‘Laetitia was kidnapped on my watch. If I didn’t do my best to rescue her, I’d feel the worst kind of bad tomato. Saving her must be my overriding priority. Once she’s safe, then we’ll turn our attentions to the League of the Crimson Hand.’
‘Of course,’ observed Twinks, ‘it’s quite possible that sorting out one of the problems will also sort out the other one. Two budgies with the same boomerang.’
‘Sorry, Twinks, not on the same page as you . . .?’
Patiently his sister explained. ‘There is a very strong likelihood, Blotto me old cigarette case, the people who kidnapped Laetitia Melmont were in fact members of the League of the Crimson Hand.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole . . .’
‘That’s what I said to you when we found the Lagonda empty.’
‘Yes, true, old pineapple. I’d forgotten that.’
‘So tomorrow morning, soon as we’ve finished the Savoy brekker, we want to shift like a pair of cheetahs in spikes and find Davy ap Dafydd.’
‘Said Davy ap Dafydd being the boddo with the next tat
too on his finger?’
‘Give that pony a rosette!’ said Twinks. ‘You’ve bonged it right on the nose, Blotters.’
‘Hmm . . .’ Blotto’s perfect brow furrowed beneath its thatch of fair hair. ‘But how do we find the stencher?’
‘Oh, come on, bro. Will Tyler did give us a pretty solid clue with his dying breath, didn’t he?’
The clouds cleared on Blotto’s brow. ‘Of course! “The Three –” But The Three What?’
‘You got any thoughts?’ Twinks’s question was pure politeness. Blotto rarely had.
‘The Three Musketeers . . .?’ he hazarded. ‘The Three Rs . . .? The Three Cheers . . .? The Three-Piece Suit . . .?’
‘We are looking for the name of a public house.’
‘Ah. Tickey-tockey. You got any ideas, Twinks?’
‘Well, the obvious ones, I suppose, would be The Three Castles, The Three Crowns, The Three Horseshoes and The Three Tuns. But I’m not sure any of those fit the pigeonhole.’ Her alabaster brow wrinkled with the effort of memory. ‘I’m sure there was another clue in Will Tyler’s dying words . . .’
‘All you told me he said was that he used to meet this Davy boddo in a pub called The Three Something.’
‘No, there was more.’ Her brow cleared. ‘He said that the place was a hell-hole.’
‘A lot of London pubs would be, I imagine. Full of people of the oikish classes. I don’t think we’d meet many of our sort in that kind of place.’
‘Certainly not dressed in full evening fig. But “hellhole” . . . “Hell-hole”,’ she repeated. ‘I was wondering whether it might be something to do with Cerberus. Do you know Cerberus, Blotto?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he replied cautiously. ‘I’m a bit of an empty revolver when it comes to names. Was he at Eton?’
‘No. He was the Guardian of the Underworld.’
‘I thought they called them porters.’
‘Porters?’
‘Yes, those boddos who work on the Tube.’
‘I said Underworld, not Underground, Blotto.’
‘Ah. So this chap . . . Cerby . . . thing . . . guarded the Underworld . . .?’
‘Yes. Or, in other words, hell. He guarded the hell-hole.’
