The Mouse On The Moon: eBook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 2)

by Leonard Wibberley

  "Like what?" demanded Vincent.

  "Like listening to people," said Cynthia. "There aren't any degrees given for it, but it is something someone has to do."

  When she said this Vincent felt more ashamed of himself than ever. Cynthia seemed more of a complete human being than he was, and the thought first annoyed him and then humbled him. But the annoyance persisted, for Vincent of Mountjoy had this in common with his father—he did not like to be reminded by sensing the virtues of others that he himself was not perfect.

  Whenever he thought of the brilliant career in engineering that lay ahead of him, he could see no place for Cynthia Bentner or Grand Fenwick in it. The two were strangely linked with each other, as if the girl were the personification of the country. And yet there were times when the thought of life without her to listen to him seemed the bleakest prospect. But he assured himself that this feeling arose out of boredom and sentimentality and he would be rid of it when freed of the year he had to spend in the Duchy.

  Certainly some, though not the major, part of the Count's anxiety arose then from this relationship between his son and Cynthia Bentner. For the father was horrified at the thought of his son marrying so intellectually undistinguished a girl and, seeing the two of them more and more together, began to wonder whether he was wise in keeping Vincent in Grand Fenwick.

  He was in a dilemma. If Vincent went away he would be lost to his father and Grand Fenwick for good. If he remained he might, the Count argued, ruin his life by marrying the wrong woman.

  "It is a pity there is no one in the Duchy suitable for my son to marry," the Count said one day to Tully.

  "Perhaps it is not such a pity," replied Tully. "Vincent is too young to marry yet."

  "He's twenty-five years of age," retorted the Count.

  "Yes, but he's emotionally immature," said Tully. "He still thinks of himself as the most important person in the world—the one who has to be suited in all things. That is the attitude of the perennial bachelor, who by his nature is emotionally immature.

  "By the way we got some excellent pictures of the bobolinks at last. The first set of negatives were fogged though. Light leak."

  "Congratulations," said the Count. "I've no doubt that's very important."

  "It will cause a great deal of stir among ornithologists," said Tully. "Bobolinks are normally confined to the northeast coast of the United States."

  "And a very good place for them too," replied the Count, and went off leaving Tully wondering why he was so edgy.

  Awaiting then, in an agony of anxiety, the American reply to his note, the Count once more sought consolation from Dr. Kokintz. Others did not like to disturb the doctor when he was busy in his study, but the Count of Mountjoy felt himself bound by no such nicety and, having given a perfunctory knock, entered the scientist's apartments.

  "Did you find my overcoat?" asked the scientist, who was busy at a bench littered with chemical glassware.

  "Your overcoat?" echoed Mountjoy.

  Kokintz turned and looked at him blankly. "You are not Mrs. Plummer," he said as if this was, in some way, the Count of Mountjoy's fault.

  "No," said the Count.

  "Well, then you cannot find my overcoat for me," said Kokintz. "And it is very important to find it. What did you do with it?"

  "I?" said the Count surprised. "Nothing."

  "Please find Mrs. Plummer and ask her what she did with my overcoat," said Dr. Kokintz. "If it is not the overcoat, then I do not understand it." The scientist was plainly distracted and, although the Count of Mountjoy resented being made into an errand boy, he went off in search of Mrs. Plummer and returned some minutes later with the overcoat and Mrs. Plummer, who took care of the scientist's wardrobe.

  "Ah," said Dr. Kokintz. "If it is not the overcoat, it is a mystery."

  "Well, it's a mystery to me right now," said the Count of Mountjoy. "Would you mind explaining what all the fuss is about?" For answer the scientist produced a number of developed photographic plates. They were all of them jet black without a single mark on them. "This one is the apple. Nothing," said Kokintz. "This one the yo-yo. Again nothing. This one my green pencil. Nothing again, as you can see."

  "This still doesn't make any sense to me," said Mountjoy.

  "There should be streaks on some of them," said Kokintz, "and there aren't. It must be the overcoat."

  When Dr. Kokintz was perturbed in this manner, it was impossible for the Count to get any sense out of him.

  "What did you do with this overcoat?" demanded Kokintz of Mrs. Plummer, holding up the overcoat.

  "Sponged and pressed it," said Mrs. Plummer.

  "Sponged and pressed it!" cried the doctor. "You may have sponged and pressed away a tremendous scientific discovery. You went through the pockets first?"

  "Yes."

  "You found anything?"

  "There was one of them things (pointing to a photographic plate holder) and an old crumpled-up envelope."

  "And what did you do with them?"

  "I put that thing (again pointing to the plate holder) in the bottom of the closet. And I threw the envelope down there with it."

  "Please get both of them immediately," said Kokintz, plainly very anxious.

  Mrs. Plummer went off and returned with the two oddly assorted items. Without another word Dr. Kokintz took the plate holder and went into his darkroom, where he remained for some time. The Count of Mountjoy dismissed Mrs. Plummer, who went away somewhat ruffled but recovered her good spirits by relating to her fellow servants that Dr. Kokintz was up to his experiments again and might bring the whole castle down about their ears before the night was out.

  The Count awaited the return of the scientist from the darkroom, but he was a long time coming and in any case was concerned with incomprehensible problems dealing with fogged photographic plates. The Count therefore left to brood in his own quarters about his own problems, first among them the reply from the United States Secretary of State.

  CHAPTER VI

  Mail for the Duchy of Grand Fenwick usually came through France, being delivered at the Duchy's borders by a bus running from Pontarliers to Baume des Dames. It may have been rushed across the world by jet plane at a speed of ten miles a minute or more. But it reached Grand Fenwick at ten miles an hour or less carried in a flat-nosed Renault bus which wheezed and shuddered up and down the piedmont country skirting the Grand Fenwick border.

  The driver of the bus had a fine Gallic disregard for schedules and punctuality. He looked on the compiling of a schedule by the owners of the bus as, first an attempt to enslave him by binding his movements to the dictates of a clock and, secondly, a piece of supreme folly since even if, being in a good mood, he wished to abide by the schedule, the Renault could not be relied upon to cooperate.

  Added to this, the bus sometimes left before the mail for Grand Fenwick arrived at Pontarliers. Or the bus driver, in a fit of pique, decided not to carry any mail for Grand Fenwick on that day. And so the delivery of mail to the Duchy was haphazard and this added considerably to the torments of the Count of Mountjoy, awaiting his reply from the Secretary of State of the United States of America.

  When the mail came on the bus, it was deposited in a letter box which was attached to a stone pillar on the Duchy's border where the road into the Duchy met the Pontarliers-Baume des Dames highway.

  Grand Fenwick had not got a mailman of its own. The system was for anyone who happened to be passing the mailbox to take a look inside and see if there were any letters. If there were, they brought the letters back and delivered them to the addresses.

  In short, anybody in Grand Fenwick who happened to be near the mailbox was the mailman, and quite often people put letters in their pockets and forgot to deliver them for a day or two, though no one took umbrage at this.

  It was not to be wondered at then that when the Count of Mountjoy got his reply from the Secretary of State, it had been two days in the pocket of a farmer who had picked it up from the mailbox and wh
o, having a sick cow on his hands (he had gone to the mailbox to get a bottle of physic for the cow for which he had sent away), administered first to the cow and then, belatedly, brought the letter to the Count.

  Mountjoy snatched it hastily from the man, dismissed him with an impatient wave of his hands and hurried trembling to his study, where he opened the letter. The first thing his eyes lit on in the letter was the figure $50,000,000. He stared at it, his heart pounding wildly.

  "Fifty million dollars," he cried. "There must be a mistake!" He snatched up the envelope to check the address, for the wild thought crossed his mind that the communication was not intended for Grand Fenwick but for Italy or France or some other larger nation which by reason of its size would be in need of this monstrous sum.

  But the envelope was addressed to him; and turning once more to the letter, he found that the sum of $50,000,000 was written out in words after the figures, so there was no possibility even of a typist's error. Calming his nerves, he forced himself to read the letter through word by word, and as he read, his initial panic at the thought that he had put Grand Fenwick into debt to the tune of $50,000,000 subsided, to be replaced, when he was through with the reading, with triumph and exultation.

  The letter stated that the request for a loan of funds with which to start research on the problem of sending a manned rocket to the moon had been given careful consideration and the United States, anxious to avoid any suggestion of monopoly or of national ambition in the exploration of space, was pleased to grant the sum of $50,000,000 to the Duchy for this purpose.

  The letter continued:

  The Government of the United States is completely sincere in its desire to make the exploration of space a project for all mankind. It is therefore the Government's wish that this money should be considered an outright gift of funds, without any obligation for repayment either of the principal or of interest on the principal.

  "Great Heavens!" cried Mountjoy. "What a magnificent nation! I ask for sufficient funds with which to build a shower-bath and I receive enough for a marble tub with gold fittings and mink around the edges. God bless America—the hope of the world and the solace of all." He was highly excited and deeply moved by this tremendous American generosity and in this mood he cried, "We must defend them. Such a nation must not be allowed to perish through the schemings of the baser sort. I will send a strong note to Russia on behalf of the United States immediately, firmly placing Grand Fenwick beside that magnificent country in its stand on Berlin."

  He was so delighted with the prospect of having, as a result of this astonishing American generosity, all the hot and cold running water needed in every part of the castle, that he strode swiftly into the small stone chamber where the hip-bath in which he was accustomed to bathe was placed on the floor and gave it a hearty kick. The hip-bath had just been filled with water for him; the kick split the ancient seam in the bottom and the water cascaded over the floor.

  "Bah!" cried the Count of Mountjoy. "I will soon be through with you and your outrageous indignities."

  Such enormous good news the Count could by no means keep to himself. There were two people with whom he could share it immediately. The first was of course Dr. Kokintz, to whom the Count always turned whether in depression, boredom or excitement. He rushed to Kokintz’ apartments but Kokintz was busy with photographic plates in which he had recently been taking an astonishing interest.

  "Fifty million dollars, my dear Doctor," cried the Count, waving the letter. "We shall have everything that we need here."

  The scientist looked at the Count absently over his rimless and thick glasses, nodded his head, and went on with his fussing with the plates without a word. It was plain that he had not understood what was said to him. Rather than attempt to penetrate the thick fog of concentration that surrounded Dr. Kokintz, Mountjoy left him, a little piqued, to find Tully Bascomb and break the news to him.

  Bascomb's reaction, however, was not at all what the Count had anticipated.

  Mountjoy related all the details of his correspondence with the Secretary of State, and concluded jubilantly, "Just think, my friend, how brilliantly I have succeeded—there is a lesson in statesmanship for you. Not five million dollars but fifty million dollars. Not chromium-plated faucets but solid-gold faucets and bathtubs of onyx if we wish. We can make Grand Fenwick the tourist paradise of the world. And of course an Imperial Russian Sable fur coat for Her Grace. It is beyond all my wildest expectations. Of course, I am going to need your help in explaining how all this came about to the Council of Freemen. I must plead guilty to exceeding my—er—instructions from them. But the reward in this case certainly justifies my little deception."

  "Let me see that letter," said Tully, and taking it from Mountjoy, he read it through with great deliberation.

  "This letter says that the money is given us to spend on research aimed at sending a manned rocket to the moon," he said when he had done. "There isn't a word in it about spending the money on anything else."

  "Of course not, my dear fellow," said Mountjoy. "That's statesmanship—diplomacy. One never sets forth the real reasons and motivations in exchanges of this kind. I ask for the money for rocket research, providing an excellent opportunity to the United States for granting it; they give us the money, officially for rocket research, but they don't care at all what we spend it on. They get fifty million dollars' worth of excellent propaganda, being able to go before the world, in all sincerity, and show that they have made a practical effort toward internationalizing the conquest of space. We get fifty million dollars' worth of bathtubs. So both sides are pleased and a solid step toward breaking the East-West deadlock on space exploration is achieved."

  Tully shook his head. "It won't do," he said. "We in Grand Fenwick haven't yet come to the point when we cheat people—when we obtain money under false pretenses, particularly from the United States of America, which is a nation with strong and worthy ideals and a nation far younger than we are. We should be helping the United States and advising and supporting it, as a younger nation than we are. Not cheating it. We must send the money back."

  "But, my dear fellow," cried the Count in deep distress, "you can't do that to my good friend, the American Secretary of State. You can't let him down in this manner. When he offers us fifty million dollars of his own free will—it was entirely voluntary on his part for I suggested only five million—you can't turn around and tell him that you don't want it! Just think for a moment what you are proposing. Nobody has ever rejected an offer of American money. It's absolutely unheard of. It would produce some kind of a world crisis—perhaps irreparably shake the faith of world financiers in the American dollar, with disastrous results to the whole of the Western economy.

  "He has offered us the money in good faith, with every expectation that we would accept it. It would be a dreadful breach of faith not to cooperate by accepting the money. It is the only honorable thing to do."

  "He offered us the money for the express purpose of rocket research," said Tully obstinately. "It will be spent on rocket research, or returned. That's final."

  "You don't understand at all," said the Count of Mountjoy, quite exasperated. "The trouble is that you have been ruined in your youth by being brought up to think in a straightforward manner and never as a statesman. 'Honesty is the best policy' is a text you have copied out so many times in your youth that it has quite ruined your mind. Honesty—frankness—is not in the slightest commensurate with wise statesmanship. If people knew everything that was going on in their governments, everything that was planned for them in the future, they'd lose their nerve. If they were brought face to face with every crisis their governments face every day, there would be national hysteria followed by anarchy. Governments are elected so that nations may prosper while really not knowing what is going on at all. That is the art of successful government.

  "Nor can governments carry on their business effectively with each other by telling each other frankly what are their policies an
d their objectives.

  "Good heavens, what a monstrous handicap such an arrangement would prove.

  "No plan for national advancement could ever be put into effect, for it would be immediately seized upon and thwarted by some other nation. Deceit, my dear boy, is the very lubricant of the machinery of international diplomacy. It is by subterfuge that the whole complicated mechanism works smoothly, and nothing is so embarrassing for governments as to be brought together at roundtable conferences, charged with doing that one thing which cannot be done if progress is to be achieved—talk frankly to each other.

  "It is for this reason that huge staffs have to draw up the agendas for such time-wasting devices and whole corps of experts have to provide the chiefs of state with a mass of information on all kinds of questions which can be dragged in to obscure the objectives which each wishes to achieve.

  "At the end of these conferences (and there have, as you know, been a plethora of them since World War Two) all that can be announced is that progress has been made, and a cordial atmosphere has prevailed throughout the talks.

  "Then the whole thing is put back where it belongs, in the hands of experienced statesmen who, proceeding by the time-honored techniques of indirection, achieve what is best for their countries. Meanwhile the public is assured that all is well and tensions are relaxed.

  "So you must see that it is an outrageous abuse of the trust of another nation to state plainly what is one's objective in any negotiation. And it is certainly intolerable when a loan is granted to use the money for the purposes officially advanced for giving the loan. It is quite well understood that these loans and grants are to be put to whatever purpose best suits the nation receiving them. And in our case, plumbing comes far ahead of rocketry."

  "From whom does this money come in the first place?" asked Tully, who was somewhat bemused by this snowstorm of diplomatic interpretation.