by Oliver Skye
* * *
During breakfast the next morning, Mildred appeared uncharacteristically subdued. After more pointed questioning from Eleanor, she seemed eager to get back home. Once Mildred and Jeremy had taken their leave, they rushed down to the parked convertible.
‘Any more questions from her and I would’ve screamed,’ Mildred seethed as they climbed into the car. ‘On awakening I thought it had all been a bad dream,’ she said, now close to tears. ‘Your poor uncle! I can still see the look on his face as his chair spun round like that. And the electrical smoke and those shards flying all over the place. Do you think it has something to do with those strange shoes he was wearing? And I wonder where he is now?’
Mildred had a desperate look and Jeremy couldn’t help thinking her appearance rather wild-looking. ‘This is all just too much,’ she whined. ‘Please tell me it didn’t really happen and that your uncle’s as safe as houses—’
Jeremy was feeling perplexed himself. As his aunt’s car pulled off with a sudden jerk, all he could manage was to mumble, ‘Well, at least we know he’s still alive, Aunt Mildred.’
The trip to North London was the most pleasant Jeremy had ever had with his aunt driving. She actually stopped at stop signs and waited for traffic lights to turn green before modestly pulling off. She even lingered behind slower traffic without performing some of her usual hair-raising overtaking stunts.
On arriving at Canterbury Lane, Jennifer and Doreen were waiting in the gloomy hallway. Mildred had phoned the previous evening from Eleanor’s home to keep them posted about their employer’s unusual absence. They, of course, had also closely followed the story on television.
The housekeepers gasped as Mildred walked in. She looked a dreadful sight. She had black rings under her eyes and make up smeared all over her face, while her hair looked as if it’d been through a car wash.
Notwithstanding the shocking sight, Doreen told Mildred the latest news concerning her brother: that commuters had seen him flying through the air at Waterloo station. Mildred looked at her uncomprehendingly, making a dismissive gesture as if she couldn’t take any more. As she lurched into the kitchen, while shakily asking Doreen to run an extra hot bubble bath, the telephone rang, its eardrum-piercing racket echoing down the hallway.
‘That wretched parrot!’ Mildred snorted, turning to Jeremy. ‘Oh, it is the telephone after all! I can’t understand why your uncle’s never purchased a more modern one ... one with a normal ring volume....’
Jeremy suddenly wished he were at home. Events had changed dramatically since he was last at Canterbury Lane. He had reported events to his parents from Eleanor’s home, suggesting he stay with his aunt until they heard from his uncle. Despite his chivalry, he now wished he’d never visited 103 the previous morning. The clanging phone just made matters worse; though he hoped it was his uncle, deep down he knew it wasn’t.
Huffing impatiently, Mildred lifted the receiver from its cradle. ‘Grand Oriental Bazaar!’ she said shrilly, rolling up her eyes.
‘Oh! Madam Heese! So sorry ... this is Winter speaking. Roger Winter, from Heese & Sons ... er ... for Men. It’s just that two ghaaaa ... ghaaaa ... I mean, ghastly-looking mmmm ... mmmm....’
With a dark look on her already frightful-looking face, Mildred dropped the receiver back on its cradle. ‘Inopportune buffoon!’ she hissed, beads of perspiration appearing on her trembling upper lip.
A tense silence followed.
Doreen stealthily glanced at Jennifer.
Jeremy cautiously looked at his aunt’s livid green eyes. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see steam rising from the top of her head. He was just about to say something to break the torrid atmosphere when the phone rang again!
Mildred had the receiver to her mouth in a flash. ‘Thousands of howling Ostrogoths!’ she shrieked. ‘What is it NOW?’
Quickly holding the phone away from his ear, the startled greengrocer, Mr Boginess, timidly asked if Doreen was ready to give her weekly order. Realising whom it was, Mildred began sobbing into the mouthpiece. Weakly taking a seat she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, mopping her eyes.
Clucking very much like a hen, Doreen moved closer to pat Mildred’s slumped shoulder. Gently retrieving the phone from his aunt’s limp hand, Jeremy asked Mr Boginess if he wouldn’t mind calling back. And no he assured him, as far as he knew, there hadn’t been a death in the family.
Just as Jeremy replaced the receiver, the doorbell’s loud jangling interrupted the now tomb-like silence. Mildred jumped to her feet. ‘Will it ever STOP?’ she fumed, shaking her fists above her head.
Before Jeremy could warn her, Jennifer rushed to answer the door. The moment she opened it, a crowd of reporters burst in from behind the threshold. Armed with cameras and microphones, they all shouted questions down the hallway at the same time.
Jennifer beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen.
Stepping into the fray, Jeremy once again faced a fierce barrage of questions.
‘Did your daddy say what planet he’d be visiting before he disappeared?’
‘Does he possibly spy for a foreign government?’
‘Is he perhaps an extraterrestrial?’
‘Does he really eat golf balls for breakfast?’
‘Is it true your uncle’s engaged to Ella Bonsmara?’
Refusing to answer any more questions, and ushering them all back over the threshold, Jeremy instead handed out a few disposable memory sticks, all with pictures of his uncle in his usual attire.
* * *
The first late afternoon newspapers to hit the streets depicting a debonair-looking Norman satisfied the curiosity of most Londoners – who’d heard so much about him, yet didn’t have a clue what he looked like. Now they wanted to know all about what’d happened to him, if he’d popped up yet, and if he was safe.
The hysteria concerning the Knightsbridge shopkeeper seemed to grow by the minute. People from all over the country phoned newspapers – as well as TV and radio stations – reporting sightings of him. Someone claimed to have observed Norman running out of his dog’s kennel. One woman said she’d discovered him in her pantry – in the flour bin. Someone else reported seeing him running along house roofs in the moonlight. Another man declared he was Norman Heese, and was about to address the House of Lords.
Soon, enterprising people all over London sold t-shirts with Norman’s image printed on them, one having a black silhouette of Norman with brightly-coloured tie and shoes and a half-open chequered umbrella. Others had captions like:
NORMAN’S BRITISH!
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?
WANTED PICKLED OR ALIVE
NORMAN HEESE IF YOU PLEASE
And in its seventy years of existence, Heese & Sons had never had so many customers. By three o’clock that afternoon there was nothing left to sell, resulting in Roger Winter getting into an even bigger flap than usual.
* * *
Shortly before opening time, on the second morning Norman hadn’t arrived at his shop, Desmond Blaken, together with Sholto Gleave, arrived at the Knightsbridge outfitter. They aggressively knocked on the reflective glass doors until getting the assistants’ attention.
Sholto introduced himself as a Scotland Yard detective, claiming to be tracking down their employer. Both Roger Winter and Wilmot, who’d avidly followed the radio and TV news, by now realised that The Wheeze was in serious trouble.
Soon after the two men hurriedly left, a pack of reporters burst in. They refused to leave until wringing the missing shopkeeper’s home address from the shaken assistants, which Roger Winter had also foolishly given to the two earlier shady visitors.
After the news people had left, Wilmot convinced Roger Winter that the two men were bogus detectives. He had noticed that one of them – while never saying a word – was extremely nervous and behaving suspiciously. This was the reason Roger Winter urgently phoned Mildred ... to try to warn her!
Soon after Mildred had so rudely cut off the senior assistant, Wilmot vented h
is suspicions by calling Scotland Yard. ‘There were two men here looking for Mr Heese. But I’m sure they’re not policemen ... I mean, Scotland Yard detectives as they claim—’
‘Are you referring to Mr Heese from 103 Canterbury Lane ... the missing shopkeeper?’ an officer asked.
‘Yes ... yes, that’s the one, our employer. You see, Mr Winter, the senior assistant, because of the shock and all, and not thinking aright, gave them Mr Heese’s home address....’
* * *
Once Inspector Breeze heard that two men claiming to be police detectives were looking for Norman Heese, and that they now had his home address, it in his mind lent an entirely new and sinister angle to the peculiar affair. Now the inspector’s first priority was to locate the missing shopkeeper before anyone else did, hoping he would lead the police to the professor’s shoes.
After all, twenty-four hours had elapsed since the Mayfair incident. And apart from the strange sightings at Covent Garden and Waterloo, no one apparently had seen or heard from him. It also hadn’t escaped the Scotland Yard detective that – besides Professor McCrackenbatten and Norman – Mildred and Jeremy could also be in real danger.
Inspector Breeze now wanted to get to Mildred Heese’s home as soon as possible: he hadn’t managed to get much sense out of her the previous morning back in Mayfair. She’d had enough time to recover and he now urgently wanted to question her and her nephew more closely.
So immediately after receiving news of the clothing shop’s dubious-looking visitors, he sped towards North London – together with four heavily-armed London City police officers.
Panic at Canterbury Lane
WHILE JEREMY was answering reporters’ questions at Café Wiener Mischung, Desmond Blaken – while pretending to be a journalist – had edged in close enough to eavesdrop. He correctly assumed that the angular-looking woman in scarlet, together with the portly, pimply schoolboy, were related to the disappeared man.
Later that night he shared this information with Griffin, not long after Sholto unwittingly passed by Norman’s taxi going in the opposite direction. The London thug had observed the colourful flashing from within the cab, thinking it some new way-out London fad.
That lad’s lift doesn’t reach the top floor, Sholto had thought the first time he spoke to Desmond over the phone; so he hadn’t been too keen to meet him. But Griffin had his orders: PROJECT ACHILLES MUST REMAIN IN GREAT BRITAIN.
Griffin knew he must obey, realising the most likely avenue to the computer shoes was via the nervous New Yorker. Besides, Ulysses had told him that Ichabod had gone to great lengths to ensure that Project Achilles landed on British soil: to the point where their own men had masqueraded as airport security – to discourage Desmond Blaken from snatching the professor’s shoes at JFK.
On later arriving at Desmond’s hotel, Sholto was shocked to hear about what’d happened in Mayfair that morning – and what Dolly had witnessed in the professor’s laboratory back in New York. After hearing Desmond’s report – and learning about the presence of the vanished man’s sister and nephew at the coffee shop – Sholto decided to visit the Heese’s Knightsbridge men’s outfitter the next morning. He was sure this was the best way to locate the elusive shopkeeper – in the hope he’d since reappeared – and so lay hands on the professor’s shoes before the police did. Once securing them, getting rid of the jumpy American with the oddly shaped head would be simple enough. In the meantime, Sholto would play along with him until he’d outlived his usefulness. Then he planned to dispose of him ... permanently.
Ichabod, Sholto was sure, would reward him well.
* * *
The following morning, soon after leaving the Knightsbridge shop with Norman’s address, Sholto, reclining in his silver Jaguar saloon, parked near 103 Canterbury Lane. Desmond, fidgeting with the electric window button, sat beside him. They were just in time to see a contingent of reporters being shown out. Desmond recognised Jeremy handing something out to them before they all hurriedly left.
‘It doesn’t seem like our magic man’s here after all,’ Sholto observed in his peculiar lisp. ‘Otherwise the press wouldn’t be in such a hurry to skedaddle.’
Desmond listened to the scar-faced Englishman in a sleep-deprived stupor. ‘What we’ll do is grab the young tyke,’ Sholto added with a sly gleam. ‘At least we know he’s in the house. We’ll just keep him locked up until his Jack-in-the-box uncle reappears and hands the shoes over. If not, I’ll grind his nephew into mincemeat and feed him to my dachshund.’
Desmond didn’t realise that Sholto Gleave was ruthless and would do anything to get his hands on the professor’s shoes – and the money promised to him. He naïvely thought him a friend who’d help him secure his prize and happily send him back to Dolly in New York.
If events hadn’t transpired in the way they were about to, Desmond Blaken would’ve found himself in a lot more trouble than he already was – like ending up at the bottom of the Thames with a heavy weight chained to his waist and ankles.
* * *
Things hadn’t slowed down since Jeremy and Mildred arrived back home from Chelsea. Sitting in the kitchen enjoying a tea break – the gang of journalists having just left – the phone rang again. Jennifer was excitedly telling Mildred she was sure aliens had abducted her brother, while Doreen was busily preparing omelettes.
Jeremy rushed to answer the phone, not wanting to upset his aunt further. Immediately they all heard him yell ‘Uncle Norman!’ at the top of his voice.
Simultaneously the doorbell clamoured, while Wally began screeching loudly in the background.
Mildred – on the verge of going upstairs for her bath – jumped up, jamming her fingers in her ears.
Jennifer, not sensing any danger, ran to answer the door. Mildred was too stunned to stop her, having just heard Jeremy yell out her missing brother’s name.
Jennifer was again expecting a torrent of reporters. Instead, on opening the door slightly, she found herself staring into Sholto Gleave’s hideous-looking face.
Sholto, at the best of times, with his bulging forehead, looked like the leading role in a low-budget horror film. Desmond’s pockmarked visage was nervously peering over Sholto’s shoulder.
At this disturbing sight, Jennifer began screaming her lungs out.
Sholto swiftly shoved the door open, roughly pushed Jennifer aside and headed straight for Jeremy. ‘Where’s your wacky uncle you pimply little brat?’ Sholto shouted, grabbing him by one ear and viciously twisting it. With his head jammed in an unnatural position, still holding the receiver to one ear, Jeremy gaped uncomprehendingly up at Sholto.
‘Action stations!’ Wally piped up, loudly banging his beak against his cage.
‘He’s not here,’ Jennifer wailed panic-stricken, observing the unreal scene before her. ‘He’s gone off to Neptune in a flying saucer—’
On hearing the hullabaloo from the hallway, Doreen sprang into action. Purposefully she grabbed a large, heavy cast-iron frying pan – one with a long wooden handle usually found in hotel kitchens – as well as a heavy-duty rolling pin. Doreen couldn’t expect Mildred to do anything; she was staring slack-jawed towards the hallway as if she’d seen a ghost.
Sholto meanwhile was manhandling Jeremy, attempting to drag him down the front stairs to his Jaguar.
Desmond, meanwhile, was hanging round in the cluttered hallway, not sure what to do.
He was just about to respond to Sholto’s plea for help when Doreen charged out of the kitchen, brandishing her armaments. When Desmond saw her weaponry and menacing expression, the blood swiftly drained from his face. Ashen with fright, he lifted his hands in a defensive gesture. ‘Shucks, Nanny,’ he yelped, ‘now dontcha do anythang stupid!’
At the same time, he stepped forward intending to disarm her.
Nothing put Doreen off that easily. ‘Nanny!’ she blurted, taking a step back, ‘I’ll show you NANNY!’ Snarling, she kicked Desmond’s left shin with her pointy right boot. Howling, Desmond ho
pped about on one foot, holding his leg with both hands. Seeing her chance, Doreen swung the heavy skillet from behind her left shoulder, walloping him across his already dented head.
Desmond dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Mildred and Jennifer heard the resounding B-O-N-G echoing through the hallway.
‘Ding-dong!’ Wally cried.
Sholto Gleave, who was in the process of dragging Jeremy – hollering and kicking – towards his car, was happy to hear what had just happened to his goofy accomplice.
Firmly grabbing Jeremy by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants, he opened the car boot, bundled him inside and slammed it shut.
Jeremy’s Uncle on the Run
IT WAS RAINING hard when Norman climbed out of the taxicab at Waterloo International. By now the cabby’s eyes were on stalks, watching his passenger’s shoes flashing through every colour in existence. Ignoring his flabbergasted looks, Norman paid and turned to leave. ‘World’s gettin’ barmier by the day,’ he heard the cabby mutter. ‘Wonder what’ll be next ... a crash of rhinoceroses in pink tutus pullin’ the Queen’s carriage, I s’pose—’
Norman couldn’t care less what anyone thought of him right then. Instinctively, he knew there wasn’t a moment to lose. Somehow, he also sensed that the out-of-this-world shoes he was wearing were close to where they wanted to be. Clutching his umbrella and the shoe case (amazingly he’d been able to hang on to both since that morning), he broke into an awkward run towards the station’s elaborate entrance. Not being the athletic type, yet long-legged – anyone watching may have thought he had thumbtacks in his shoes – Norman looked a sight running along in the slanting rain.
