by Simon Brett
She looked across at her brother. He was pensive, not to say downright melancholic. Twinks didn’t need to ask what was gnawing away at him. It was the thought of his Lagonda and whether it’d be safe at Croydon Aerodrome or whether some other frightful stencher from the League of the Crimson Hand was likely to steal it again.
She was about to say something reassuring, but was stopped by Jerome Handsomely announcing, ‘Our sausage-muncher’s preparing to land his kite.’
Blotto and Twinks looked ahead and saw that the tail-lights of the Frimmelstopf Fliegflügel were indeed descending. ‘What are you going to do, Jerome?’ asked Twinks.
‘See where the tinkety-tonker lands. If it’s at a big commercial aerodrome, then giant aspidistras! I can land there too and no one’ll think it’s odd. If it’s on a private landing strip, that could be more of a knuckle-cracker.’
‘Why?’ asked Blotto.
‘Because,’ his sister explained patiently, ‘we’ll be seen arriving there, and Gerhardt Sachs will know that he’s being followed.’
‘Ah, good ticket.’
‘The sausage-muncher’s circling,’ Jerome Handsomely observed. ‘He’ll be tickling the tarmac soon.’ A slight adjustment to the controls caused his Accrington-Murphy Painted Lady Biplane to mirror the spiralling movements of the Frimmelstopf Fliegflügel, but at a much greater height.
‘Not going to lose sight of the stencher, are we?’ asked Blotto.
‘No,’ the pilot reassured him. ‘Even if we do lose sight of him, there’s no way that away-chocker’s going to land his crate on an unlit airstrip. That’d be a booming certain recipe for Pilot Flambé. The switch-clickers he’s visiting will have lit up the target area for him, and we’ll see that, even if we can’t see him.’
As he spoke the words, a visual confirmation of them appeared. Out of the murk beneath, Blotto and Twinks could see a small rectangle of lights, whose glow illuminated the frontage of a very large country house.
‘Oh, wingless biplanes!’ said Jerome Handsomely. ‘The bally stopcock-twiddler is landing on a private airstrip. If I follow suit, that’d be announcing our arrival with a booming great fanfare. Have to move to Plan B – or even Plan C
‘Have you got a Plan B and a Plan C?’ asked Blotto cautiously.
‘Trucky-trockle, never leave home without them. Come to that, I’ve also always got a Plan D.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Laying down my life for Twinks.’
‘Yes,’ said the object of his devotion, ‘but we’ve already established that now isn’t quite the moment to put Plan D into action.’
He saluted her. ‘Order received and understood.’ Then he looked down to the rectangle of light beneath them. ‘Great dithering dragonflies! The Frimmelstopf Fliegflügel has landed!’
‘So what are your Plans B and C?’ asked Blotto after a moment of silence.
‘Plan B is: we find the nearest commercial aerodrome, tickle the tarmac there and then try to work our way back here.’
‘And Plan C?’ asked Twinks.
‘Plan C does come with a booming great risk attached.’
Blotto’s eyes gleamed. ‘I like it already. What do we do?’
‘Well, the knuckle-cracker with it so far as I’m concerned is that the scheme doesn’t involve me in any dust-up that may lie ahead. It’d be just you two facing whatever dangers these tinkety-tonkers might come up with.’
‘That’s grandissimo with us, Jerome. Blotto and I are used to facing danger together.’
‘Hoopee-doopee!’ her brother agreed. ‘So tell us what your Plan C is.’
‘Right. I keep this crate circling over the landing strip and then you two parachute down.’
Toad-in-the-hole!’ said Blotto.
‘That’ll be pure creamy éclair!’ said Twinks.
‘Have either of you parachuted before?’ asked Jerome Handsomely.
They both admitted that they hadn’t. ‘But it can’t be too hard a rusk to chew,’ said Blotto. ‘I mean, gravity does most of the work, doesn’t it?’
‘Ye-es. But there are still a few tips I ought to give you.’
‘Well, come on, Jerome me old greengage, uncage the ferrets.’
So the pilot passed on the basics of parachuting to them while they struggled in the confined space to attach their parachute packs. ‘The most important thing,’ he concluded, ‘is that you keep that lighted airstrip in sight and aim for it. Those lights are going to be your fixed point. If you don’t come down somewhere near there things could get pretty crocking for you. So keep that in sight, otherwise you could end up on a mountainside or stuck in a tree.’
‘Good ticket,’ said Blotto.
Getting out of the Accrington-Murphy Painted Lady Biplane was not the easiest manoeuvre the brother and sister had ever attempted, but they managed it. Jumping free, they followed Jerome Handsomely’s instructions, counting to five and then pulling the ripcords of their parachutes. Soon they were floating through the tingling night air, still resplendent in their dinner wear.
‘Oh, what larks!’ murmured Twinks ecstatically.
At that moment the rectangle of lights which showed their destination were all extinguished.
‘Oh, larksissimo!’ cried a joyous Twinks.
19
The Black Mountains
The night through which they floated was blacker than Beluga caviar. Neither Blotto nor Twinks had a clue where they were, but the rush of air as they descended gave them a sensation of gleeful irresponsibility. Both thought idly that they should perhaps have asked Jerome Handsomely for a pointer to their geographical location, but it didn’t seem that important.
Their only mild worry was that, not knowing when they were about to hit the ground, they didn’t know when to brace themselves for the impact. Still, they thought, what’s a broken leg? They’d both sustained them on occasion in hunting accidents and yes, they were a bore, but survivable. Though they did realize that broken limbs might render them a little less efficient in their approaching confrontation with Gerhardt Sachs . . . and maybe with other members of the League of the Crimson Hand.
Jerome had warned them of the dangers of trees, but as it turned out trees were their salvation. The crackle of the bare branches through which they fell was their first clue to how close to the ground they were. And the speed with which the crackling noises mounted told them they were going far too fast for safety. Maybe two broken legs, they both thought with the stoicism inculcated in them by their mother’s inattention to her children’s injuries.
But, as the ropes of their parachutes began to tangle in the trees, their descent slowed. Their fall, rather than their legs, had been broken. Blotto and Twinks ended up dangling from the branches, bobbing gently up and down, their feet some six inches off the ground. They released their harnesses, dropped down and adjusted their clothing. Though she could see very little, Twinks instinctively drew a powder compact from her reticule and repaired her make-up. Blotto straightened his white tie and flicked the tails of his coat. They both once again looked perfectly accoutred for dinner at the Savoy.
But of course their immediate task was a less comfortable one than that. They had to find Gerhardt Sachs and check what was tattooed on his middle finger. And if their experience with the other Letter-Bearers was anything to go by, he might well resist their attentions.
Blotto and Twinks’s eyes were now adjusting to the darkness and they began to have a vague sense of the space around them. What they saw told them how very lucky they’d been in their landing. There were very few trees in the undulating landscape, but a good few exposed crags. A landing on one of them would have been a lot less welcoming than their descent through the branches.
Though they could see the blurred outlines of a few sheep, there was no sign of any human habitation. ‘Where the strawberries are we, Twinks me old biscuit barrel?’ asked Blotto. ‘Have you got a mouse squeak of an idea?’
‘Well, given the direction in which we were f
lying, and the outline of the landscape here, I’d say we were in the Black Mountains.’
‘Ah, Black Mountains,’ echoed Blotto. Then after a moment he said, ‘And where are they?’
‘Wales. On the Welsh-English border.’
‘Oh. I’ve never been to Wales.’
‘I know that, Blotto.’
‘Never seen the necessity.’
‘No.’
‘And here I am – in Wales.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’ll be jugged like a hare . . .’ He looked at the darkened countryside around him. ‘So what do we do now, Twinks? Choose a direction and start walking in it?’
‘No, we walk towards the big house where Gerhardt Sachs landed.’
‘Good ticket. Only gluepot there is: we don’t know which direction it’s in.’
‘Yes, we do.’ Twinks pointed out a slender and determined arm.
‘But how do you know that’s where it is?’
‘I noticed as we were parachuting down.’
‘How? I kept spinning around as if I was seriously wobbulated. I’ve no idea whether the house is east, west or sideways.’
‘I kept taking bearings on the stars, like Jerome did.’
Toad-in-the-hole, Twinks! You are quite a girl. Once again I find myself asking how all that brain manages to fit into such a tiny cranium without spilling out your ears. Do you have a spare tank hidden somewhere inside your body for all the extra cells?’
His sister let out a tinkling laugh. ‘Don’t talk such toffee, Blotto. Come on, let’s find Gerhardt Sachs.’
Needless to say, Twinks’s sense of direction was impeccably accurate, and they soon found themselves outside a high brick wall enclosing an estate. They were a little footsore by now. The muddy terrain had been very tough on Twinks’s silver slippers, and not much kinder to Blotto’s patent leather evening shoes.
‘You reckon it was in here that the Frimmelstopf Fliegflügel landed?’ asked Blotto in a hoarse whisper.
‘I’d put my last solitary sapphire on it,’ Twinks replied.
‘So what do we do – walk round until we find the spoffing entrance?’
‘I think that could be asking for trouble, Blotto me old gumdrop. If this place is guarded – and if I had another sapphire left, I’d put that on the fact that it is – the guards are going to be concentrated by the gates. We’ll do better getting in over the wall.’
‘The old “convenient tree” routine?’
‘Exactly.’
Blotto looked along the wall in each direction. Now fully adjusted to the darkness, his eyes could see a lot further. ‘Look!’ He pointed triumphantly. ‘A convenient tree!’
It was a matter of moments for them to reach the tree, for Blotto to shin up it, reach a hand down to give his sister a lift, and for both of them to straddle the top of the wall and drop down inside the estate.
They could see now that Twinks’s surmise had been correct. Before them rose the huge house they had glimpsed from the sky. And in front of it was an airstrip on which stood Gerhardt Sachs’s Frimmelstopf Fliegflügel.
‘Hoopee-doopee!’ whispered a delighted Blotto. ‘You’ve found it! Give that pony a rosette! So what do we do now, Twinks?’
‘We go up to the house. But we must be as silent as a butler’s shoes. I’m pretty sure there are guards around this place.’
As if to provide a helpful illustration to her words, at that moment they heard the approach of heavy feet and shrank into the shadows of the wall until a uniformed man with a gun on his shoulder had walked past them.
Brother and sister waited a few moments before moving cautiously ahead. They were fortunate, in that the garden was formally laid out with walls and hedges, ideal for lurking and scuttling behind.
They lurked and scuttled their way up to the house. Through the gloaming they could see more uniformed guards at the front entrance, so they lurked and scuttled a bit more round to the side. They trod through the soft earth of flowerbeds up against the walls, which, as well as being quieter, were easier on their sore feet. And each time they passed a window, Blotto bobbed up to take a peek inside.
For the first four windows his scrutiny was unrewarded. Thick curtains were closed tight, and no chink of light escaped them.
But on the fifth window, the curtains had been incompletely drawn, leaving a small triangle of light at the bottom through which Blotto could look into the room.
The first thing he saw was Laetitia Melmont.
Though it was the middle of the night, she was dressed. Not in the clothes in which he had last seen her on their journey to London, but in a kind of shapeless dark blue overall, on the front of which, against her ironing-board chest, was the embroidered outline of a Crimson Hand. She had in her hand what looked like a prayer book, which she was reading with great concentration.
Around one of her wrists was a handcuff, from which a chain ran to a large metal radiator, where it was attached by a padlock.
‘Toad-in-the-hole,’ murmured Blotto to his sister. ‘Now we know we’re on the right track.’
‘You’re bong on the nose there, Blotto. Do you reckon we’ll be able to rescue the poor greengage?’
‘Of course we will. A job like this is absolutely my size of pyjamas.’
He tested the security of the window. If he had to break the glass, he would, but he knew doing that would risk making a noise which might alert Laetitia’s captors. If he could slide up the sash window in the conventional way, that would be a lot safer.
Blotto was in luck. The guards from the League of the Crimson Hand must have reckoned that the chain would prevent their prisoner getting anywhere near the window, so they hadn’t bothered to lock it. By exerting upward pressure on the top of the lower part, Blotto had the satisfaction of feeling it move, and he continued to push.
The noise alerted Laetitia. She looked up from her book with an expression of horror, which melted into ecstasy when she saw who it was entering the room.
‘Blotto!’ she cried, fortunately at a lower level of decibels than she usually favoured. ‘You’ve come to rescue me! To show your love for me!’
‘Oh, biscuits!’ said Blotto under his breath. He’d forgotten how such an act of chivalry was likely to be interpreted by the ‘the Snitterings Ironing-Board’. To cover his embarrassment, he turned to help Twinks up over the sill into the room.
His sister immediately put a finger to her lips to silence further effusions from Laetitia Melmont. ‘We’ll get you free, but we must be as silent as a butler’s shoes. While we release you, you must uncage the ferrets – very quietly, though – about how you came to be here and what kind of stenchers we’re up against.’
‘Righty-ho,’ said Laetitia.
‘Just one thing, Twinks me old biscuit barrel . . . How’re we going to free her from this spoffing chain? I’d happily have a pop at it with my bare teeth, but I’m not sure that I’d win any coconuts.’
‘Don’t worry, Blotto, I’ve got a file in my reticule.’
‘Well, that’s extremely fizzulating news. You really are the lark’s larynx, you know, Twinks.’
‘I do my best.’ She reached into her reticule and produced the file, with which her brother immediately began to attack Laetitia’s chain. A look at the sturdiness of the handcuff on her wrist told him he wasn’t going to get through that, so he started filing through the link nearest to it.
‘Oh, Blotto,’ purred Laetitia, ‘it is so good to feel you so close to me.’
Broken biscuits, he thought, it’s going to be very sticky going getting out of this particular gluepot.
But fortunately his sister intervened before he was subjected to any more amorous displays. ‘Shift your shimmy, Laetitia. Tell us everything that happened from the moment you were snatched outside Shanghai Billee’s.’
Laetitia Melmont did as she was told, with difficulty keeping her natural Master of Foxhounds voice to a low level. She had been taken from the Lagonda in Limehouse by a gang of
what she had assumed to be Chinamen – though what Blotto and Twinks now knew to have been members of the League of the Crimson Hand in disguise. She had been bundled into a nearby car and driven all the way to where they were now, which she informed them was called Llanystwyth House. And she confirmed Twinks’s surmise that it was set in the Black Mountains.
Her captors had not ill-treated her, though she had been left in no doubt that they weren’t about to set her free. Her food was brought and she was escorted to the bathroom by uniformed guards who would not allow themselves to be engaged in any kind of conversation. The only person in Llanystwyth House she could identify by name was a man called Wellborough Choat, who either owned or was in charge of the place. He had questioned her a few times since she’d been there, asking about the set-up at Snitterings and also the nature of her association with Devereux and Honoria Lyminster.
‘Rodents!’ said Blotto. ‘That means the stenchers are on to us.’
‘This man Choat,’ asked Twinks, ‘did you happen to notice whether he has a tattoo on his hand?’
‘I couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid. He’s been wearing gloves every time he’s come to see me.’
Twinks nodded thoughtfully. The man might have been wearing the gloves deliberately, like Davy ap Dafydd, to hide the tattoo. Maybe Wellborough Choat was the Letter-bearer of the Index Finger . . .? And if Gerhardt Sachs really was the Letter-Bearer of the Middle Finger, then right there in Llanystwyth House lay all the information they required to take them to the Crimson Thumb himself. She tried to repress the surge of excitement the thought gave her. Twinks never liked counting her blue tits before they were born.
‘Hoopee-doopee!’ said Blotto as he released the chain holding Laetitia. ‘Now you’re as free as an untethered Zeppelin. But I’m afraid you’re stuck with that spoffing great bracelet till we can find a key for it.’
‘I can’t thank you enough, Blotto. Particularly because I know that everything you do for me is done because you love me.’
