The Dastardly Mr Winkle Meets His Match

by Rufus Offor

  “No problem.”

  Shoop went back inside and followed George down to the vaults. George led him to the alcove where the files were being kept.

  “What’ve you got for me George?”

  “Well, Jeeves’ filing system wasn’t quite as straight forward as we’d hoped it would be. It was full of codes and ciphers, bloody nightmare it was. The removal men weren’t much help, when we tried asking them questions they just grinned and told us that we should be drinking more tea. Very odd behaviour.”

  “Is there a point coming any time soon?”

  “Sorry, yeah, luckily Dr Komodo has a special talent for code breaking and mystical filing systems. He cracked it and we started packing up the important bits and pieces.”

  “Five percent rise for you on this one Komodo.”

  “Cheers boss.” If Dr Komodo was happy about the pay rise, he didn’t show it in his features. He held fast to his hard scrunched up scowl.

  “Talk me through what you’ve found, but not too in-depth, we haven’t got all night” continued Shoop.

  “I thought we were okay for time for the minute?”

  “I can’t believe that we’ll be as lucky as we have been for long. Sooner or later some one’s going to turn up and I’d rather not be here when they do.”

  “Well,” interjected Dr Komodo, “to start with, it looks like this Priory Of Sion thing has been going for around two thousand years.”

  “Blimey!” remarked Shoop.

  “Quite. There are papers here that suggest that it existed before that too, but we’ll need more time for digging on that.”

  “That worries me.”

  “How do you mean?” asked George.

  “Well,” Shoop went on, “if this organisation has existed beneath the radar for two thousand years, possibly more, then why the hell are we here looking through it’s supposedly more precious artefacts. I mean, where’s the security, how could they afford to let us in?” The others looked a little worried. “They know who I am, both Bunty and Jeeves had heard of me before, so they know what kind of operator I am. It just doesn’t make sense that they’d so easily let me just walk into their history, pick it up and walk off with it now does it? I mean, if they’re a several millennia old secret worldwide organisation, why are they being so damn slack?’”

  They all pondered for a moment.

  “Maybe they’re getting complacent,” ventured George, “I mean, The Sphere Of Influence know about them as well now. It could be that they just started messing up all of a sudden. They could be in decline.”

  “Doesn’t seem very likely though does it.” Said Shoop.

  ‘I don’t suppose it matters anyway. We’re here now and it appears that we don’t have any choice but to follow through on what we’ve started.’

  ‘Maybe, but I still don’t like it. It’s all just a little bit too easy, but like you say, we’re here now.’

  “There’s more,” said Dr Komodo.

  “It’ll have to wait!” interrupted Jim from the entrance to the passageway, “we’ve got company.”

  “How many?” asked Shoop. Through years of doing what he did, he instantly prepared himself for conflict, checking his guns like a machine. He loved conflict. Conflict made everything better.

  “At least six, could be more, they’re in a sizeable mini van.”

  “George, Komodo, stay here and get as much of this shit as you can into boxes, I want us out of here as soon as is humanly possible. Jim, Yan, Carl, you’re with me!”

  They sped up the stairs and went to greet their guests.

  The mini van pulled up ten yards from the front of the house and six dauntingly large men got out. They all looked very well built. Not one of them was under six feet tall and three feet wide at the shoulders. They were laughing and joking as if they didn’t have a care in the world. It was obvious that they didn’t expect to find Shoop, reclining on an old rocking chair at the front door, his feet resting high on the door frame. He appeared to be on his own. What the men didn’t know was that there were a number of guns trained on them, waiting for the slightest hint of action.

  It took them a moment to notice him as they walked up the gravel path and when they did, no fear crossed their faces, just curiosity.

  “Hello!” Said the foremost of the men.

  “Good evening gentlemen.” replied Shoop with seemingly unjustified confidence.

  “Um,” pondered the man, “I don’t think we’ve met before, my names Quentin, and you are?”

  “Me? Well, let’s just say that I’m your guardian angel for the evening.”

  The men stopped walking, ten feet shy of where Shoop was reclining.

  “I’m sorry? You’re our what?” said the man with an amused look on his face, looking around at his colleagues. They too looked entertained.

  “I said; I’m your guardian angel for the evening. I’ve been put here to make sure you don’t make a terrible mistake.”

  The men all tossed sideways glances at each other as if to silently confer. Quentin shrugged in way that was unmistakable. It was international sign language for; what the hell, let’s listen to him, it might be a laugh. “And what mistake might that be.” said Quentin smiling pleasantly.

  “It would be a big mistake to come any further. There are people who want to hurt you and they don’t want you to move. I fear it is my duty to deliver this information, as your guardian angel that is.”

  “Okay?” said Quentin looking slightly puzzled and a little less jovial. “And what are we supposed to do, stand here all night?”

  “You’re supposed to turn around, get back in your van and drive back to wherever it was that you came from very slowly indeed.”

  “Um, I’m not sure that we can do that.”

  “Be careful what you say there Quentin, you only get one warning and then things start getting messy.”

  Quentin considered his guardian angels words for a moment and then said, “How messy are we talking here, messy as in the aftermath of a new years eve party, or messy as in the aftermath of a dinner party?”

  “Messy as in the after math of a crowd of rabid German Sheppards in a flock of sheep messy.”

  “Oh…’ Quentin looked a little taken aback at this, ‘I see.’ He rubbed his chin for a while and then said, ‘Will you just give us a moment to confer?”

  “Don’t be long about it, I’m a busy little guardian angel and have a lot to do tonight.”

  The men huddled together for a moment and started murmuring. None of them appeared to have any sort of opinion on the matter one way or the other. They didn’t seem to be able to make up their minds. Quentin gave another “What the hell” shrug and turned back to Shoop.

  “The problem here is this. I’ve been told to come here and do something. I would very much like to do this thing because the man who asked me to do it is a very nice man. In fact, I see him as a sort of father figure really, and not doing what I’m supposed to do would mean that I’d let him down. I would hate to do something that would make him uneasy because, as I’ve said, I feel a certain kinship with him. A certain respect and admiration for the man oozes out of me, and I’m not alone with these feelings am I boys?” Quentin turned to the rest of them who nodded whole heartedly at his question.

  Shoop was a little confused. At first he thought Quentin was trying to wind Shoop up, stall for time so that they could manoeuvre themselves into a fighting position or something of that sort, but as it turned out he appeared to be being deadly serious. He sounded a bit like he was in a group therapy session and expected his words to be heard and applauded. He sounded like a damn hippy, and Shoop had very little love for hippies.

  He had prepared himself for a confrontation. He’d expected the men to be the muscle, the security, the bad news that he’d been waiting for to quell the feeling that everything was going just that little bit too smoothly, but instead the men were fast revealing themselves to be nothing more than a gathering of wet girls blouses.
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br />   Shoop’s patience was running out, but still the man rambled on.

  “Obviously in the grand scheme of things, letting one person down doesn’t really make much of a difference, but if you let one down, it becomes easier to let another down, and it’s a slippery slope from there isn’t it lads?” the men all nodded and smiled as if Quentin had just spoken the words of the gospel. One of them even said, “Right on brother!” like an over enthusiastic rally participant at a political demonstration.

  Quentin twittered on uncontrollably about how he felt about one thing; how the universe worked in regards to the thing that he’d just mentioned; how it was bad form for Shoop to be pretending to be an angel when he clearly wasn’t; how the world would be a nicer place if… and mankind would do a lot better for itself if… etc etc.

  Shoop couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. It was his shear disbelief that allowed Quentin to prattle on for so long. Surely he couldn’t really think that this was the right time to be discussing the way the universe worked and how it was his responsibility to stand up and fight for the spiritual evolution of mankind. Shoop had the feeling that he’d walked into some sort of surrealist comedy sketch.

  He looked around at Jim, Carl and Yan who had hidden themselves in various strategic spots. They simply shrugged in disbelief. Carl mouthed the words “can I shoot them now…. PPLLEEAASSEE!” Shoop gave this serious consideration for a moment as Quentin prattled on but then shook his head, much to the disappointment of the others.

  Shoop gathered himself and decided that it was time to a stop to Quentin’s sermon.

  “….and so, because I have these almost father son like connections to this man, and because of the importance of being true to oneself in order for the human race to evolve, I would feel that turning around and walking away would be a crass and irresponsible act, “ he glanced round at his listeners who were enraptured by his speech. “And so I would ask you, for the sake of mankind, to maybe give us another option. There must be a solution to this stalemate.”

  He appeared to have finished. The other men were hypnotised by him, but eventually started coming around and clapping, saying things like “wow, it was really brave of you to open up like that, “ and “ I feel the same way about you man!”. One of them actually started crying. The last straw was them all participating in a group hug.

  Shoop decided that they needed to be brought back to reality with a hard thump.

  “Okay, after hearing what you’ve said I’m going to respond.” He stood up, whipped out two revolvers from inside his jacket and said, “You’ve only two choices; you can fuck off or you can die!”

  The men looked at Shoop, looked at each other and then looked at their leader.

  “Huddle,” said Quentin.

  The men huddled together and mumbled away in quieted voice. Shoop was finding it all far too tedious. They clearly weren’t taking him seriously, so he shot one of them in the knee. The injured man dropped to the ground without uttering a single yelp. He just sat there looking at his leg, apparently fascinated by the abundant flow of blood.

  “Now,” said Shoop, “will you kindly FUCK OFF!!” the volume of Shoop’s voice rattled the men. This was behaviour that they weren’t used to. All the shouting and threats were apparently out-with the realms of their experience.

  They decided to leave.

  “Well, it was nice talking to you anyway, maybe you should drink herbal tea, it unblocks the chakras you know, and yours seem a bit clogged.” Said Quentin

  Shoop pointed a gun at his face.

  “Right you are!” said Quentin. He climbed into the drivers seat as the others piled the injured man into the back of the mini van. Within a minute they were driving away, very slowly as Shoop had asked.

  “Wet bastards!” Marvelled Shoop shaking his head in disbelief, “Let’s get a drink!” he suggested, to which his men answered enthusiastically in the affirmative.

  After a stiff drink, they managed to find some whisky hidden behind some books, a bit of shaking of their heads in befuddlement and some frowning, Shoop and his cronies made their way back down to the vaults under the cottage leaving Yan on the roof to keep watch. As they entered, George and Dr Komodo were frantically scrambling to get as much of the contents of the vast cellars into boxes as was possible. They didn’t stop working as they saw Shoop and company enter the chasm.

  “How’d it go?” panted George as he flung an armful of ancient looking books into a crate.

  “Um, I’m not really sure.” Said Shoop ponderously, still clearly bewildered at the group of men.

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure. Are they gone?” George kept moving frantically.

  Shoop slumped onto a crate and thought for a moment, “Yeah their gone, but it was all a bit, well, weird.”

  “So what happened?” George was intrigued now and stopped rushing around, as did Dr Komodo.

  “Well, their was six of them, they were very big, they talked nonsense at me for a while, I told them to leave, they talked some more, they had a group hug, I told them to fuck off, they talked a bit more, mostly about their responsibility to human evolution, I shot one in the leg, they said I should drink more herbal tea and then they drove off.”

  Shoop’s bemusement passed onto George as he said, “Eh?”

  “I said; they talked nonsense at me for a while, I told them to leave, they talked some more, they had a group hug, I told them to fuck off, they talked a bit more, mostly about their responsibility to human evolution, I shot one in the leg, they said I should drink more herbal tea and then they drove off.”

  “They had a group hug?”

  “They had a group hug!” said Shoop with a disgusted look on his face.

  “They actually had a group hug?”

  “They actually had a group hug?” Shoop gagged a little.

  “I didn’t think people really did that, not real people anyway, it usually only happens in bad films that woman who like pink things enjoy. That’s revolting. I’m surprised you managed restrain yourself and only shoot one of them.”

  “The thought did cross my mind to do a lot more than that!”

  “Who were they?”

  “To be honest, I didn’t think to ask. I was too distracted by the talking and hugging.”

  George’s eyes darted around inside his head as if trying to make sense of what he had heard. They searched the ether for some sort of frame of reference for such behaviour but couldn’t find any. Eventually he gave up the search and simply said with a deeply furrowed brow crushing the lenses of his thick glasses, “Weird!”

  “Yeah! I know!”

  “Well…..um…..what so we do now?”

  “I say we get the hell out of here as quickly as we can before more people turn up and hug at us. It was very disturbing.”

  “Right! Gotcha!” George shook his head as if to dislodge the image in his mind, it still held on however, “they….I mean, six very large fully grown men and they actually…they actually hugged?”

  “Yip, the main one’s name was Quentin!”

  “Quentin? Nobody’s called Quentin, not anyone with a chin anyway. Jesus!” he shook his head again, “That’s it, I agree, let’s get the buggery out of here.”

  Everybody pitched in to help pack up the remaining artefacts and books except Shoop, who went upstairs and finished off the whisky with his feet up.

  An hour and a half later the removal truck that had been parked by the side of the cottage was full and they were on their way to Shoop’s hideout in the highlands to take stock, each one of them trying desperately to forget the image of the hugging men.

  Chapter 10

  Jill looses Her Squash Partner

  The six men in the van were as good as their word and drove very slowly all the way back to their base. Their base was in Fife, the region to the north of Edinburgh. The drive would’ve taken them a good hour and a half to complete if they hadn’t been moving at snail pace. They managed to pull up to their destin
ation, a country house just to the north of a town called Glenrothes, four hours after leaving Jeeves’ house in the Pentlands.

  Some of the men tried to convince Quentin that he should be driving a bit faster as the man with the bullet hole in his leg was slowly bleeding to death. They were doing their best to try and stem the flow, but he was in desperate need of medical attention and he could get it at the base if only Quentin would get a move on. Quentin said that he’d gone back on an agreement once that day and he wasn’t going to do it again. He then went on to say that the slippery slope of failing the human race was far more important a concern. They all nodded in agreement, even the man with the bloody hole in his leg. Quentin did, however, call ahead and inform his superiors of every thing that had happened. They said that they’d have medical care waiting for the injured man.

  Quentin’s stubbornness didn’t kill the man, which was nice, but what it had done was to give Shoop Winkle a very good head start before anybody could think about tracking him. Shoop and his gang were safe on their way to a hideout in the highlands by the time people had been dispatched to recover the body of Jeeves and to untie the men in the vault of Jeeves’ house. There was no hope of Quentin’s superiors having the slightest chance of following them and finding out where they were. This wasn’t too much of a concern though as the person at the top of the organisation, the woman known as the Sion, as she had a peculiar way of knowing things that other people didn’t. She knew precisely where Shoop and his men were.

  When the news came through, Jill was overseeing a game of twister in a study of the ancient Scottish castle further north and west of the house in Fife. The room they were in was all tapestries, ornate bookshelves and an antique desk. The game was proving very comical as the participants were all getting tangled up in their plethora of ethnic neck beads. Mike was having problems getting his right hand onto a red dot on the game sheet while trying to disentangle his Native American Heshe necklace from a dumpy looking aboriginal girl from Northern Australia called Gemma’s dread-locked hair.