‘I suppose you’re right there. And, in any case, a big crowd still milling around is to our advantage for the moment. But the most ticklish part of our plan comes first. Getting out of the house, that is. If one of the villains saw the two of us emerging through the front door, he’d be pretty thick if he didn’t turn suspicious straight away.’
‘Then we must emerge from the back, and by way of the servants’ quarters.’ This came, rather surprisingly, from the Emir. It was evident that something in the spirit of the impending exploit appealed to him. ‘Mr Chitfield can no doubt guide us to the appropriate corner of his modest country retreat.’
Mr Chitfield, although this description of Drool Court could scarcely have been agreeable to him, concurred in the proposal at once. He had plainly had enough of his exalted guest, however valuable a business prospect he might be. Between sheiks and druids, he might have been feeling, there was just nothing to choose.
‘John,’ Colonel Pride said abruptly, ‘you’d better take this little affair along with you. It can’t be called at all an impressive weapon, but it may be better than nothing.’ As he spoke, Colonel Pride produced a decidedly small automatic pistol.
‘No, Tommy, I think not.’ Appleby had shaken his head decisively. ‘This whole affair is so uncommonly ramifying and obscure that you may turn out to be in more need of it than I am. But it puts another question in my head.’ Appleby turned to Chitfield. ‘What about that guard of yours with the gun?’ he asked. ‘He might turn out useful, after all.’
‘When the meeting was over I told him to clear out. It struck me he’d been a mistake. When he got up and pointed the damned thing at Tibby Fancroft and yourself I didn’t care for it at all. So I told him to make himself scarce and send in his bill.’
‘It was an entirely prudent decision,’ the Chief Constable said severely. ‘No good ever comes of having thick-skulled thugs hanging around with illegal weapons. As things have turned out, I’ll admit that we might have found some use for him. But if he has taken his departure, we’d better not hear of him again.’
‘And I thought, you see, that the Emir would be going back to London at once.’ Richard Chitfield offered this further explanation in an aggrieved tone, as if the Emir’s continued enjoyment of his hospitality had been distinctly bad form.
‘Well,’ Appleby said, ‘he’s going back now – and the sooner I see his car departing down the drive the happier I’ll be. So be so good, Mr Chitfield, to get us out of this house and into that crowd as unobtrusively as you can.’
‘It had better not be by the kitchens, but through the conservatory and the string of glass-houses beyond it. They’re so crammed with damned-fool plants that nobody can see you going through, and at the other end there’s only the old stable yard. When you’re through that you’ll come out bang in the middle of things.’
And thus revealing himself as far from an ardent horticulturist, Mr Richard Chitfield led the way out of his library.
16
The conservatory at Drool Court proved to be a large and lofty affair, outrageously out of keeping with the character of the house itself. At its centre rose a species of lantern or cupola, the greater part of which was occupied by the head of a palm tree that somehow suggested itself as having given up a vain struggle to escape from the place and to have relapsed into a sulky lassitude. The Emir Hafrait paused before it, and his features briefly underwent a change which might have signalled either amusement or commiseration – or conceivably a mingling of the two. But when he then turned his glance upon Appleby it was in a fashion that was entirely serious.
‘It is a question, Sir John,’ he said, ‘whether I ought to have placed myself under your conduct in this way. You live, I presume, in retirement?’
‘Certainly I do.’
‘But you feel what may be termed the common citizen’s obligation to guard, as you have expressed it, your Sovereign’s peace?’
‘I suppose it’s just that. Shall we move on?’
‘Not, if you please, for one moment. I must explain to you that the measure of our common danger is greater than you perhaps imagine. That I was to be here at the person Chitfield’s house today appears to have been “leaked”, as they say, to a highly undesirable extent. So you are not to suppose that what threatens is confined to three men absurdly disguised as belonging to Chitfield’s impertinent bunch of pseudo-sheiks. I appreciate, may I say, your wit in so naming them.’
‘I am obliged to Your Excellency.’
‘There may be as many as a dozen men, by no means necessarily well-disposed the one to another, who are here with the intention of killing me. A dozen assassins, Sir John, or “hit-men” as now appears to be the common phrase. That I have survived up to this moment in what may perfectly fairly be called a trap, is due merely to the fact that they one and all are ignobly anxious to kill without being found out. But now consider what you and I are doing. We are making our way back to the easily identified motor car in which I came to Drool. Is it not only too likely that a skilled sharpshooter has his sights trained upon it at this moment?’
‘I can’t say that the possibility has eluded me. Mind the step.’ Appleby had contrived to get this loquacious potentate into motion again, and they were passing from the main conservatory to a string of interconnected greenhouses. ‘I must explain to you that Colonel Pride, the Chief Constable, is an old friend of mine and a yet older friend of my wife; that he has been for some wholly obscure reason inadequately briefed about your situation; and that I am simply making it my business to lend a hand in getting you back to town. Ah! Here we are in open air again, and presumably in what Chitfield called the old stable yard. And nothing stabled in it except that Range Rover. Oddly enough, it is familiar to me. When found, make a note of.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ The Emir, being presumably unfamiliar with Dombey and Son, was naturally perplexed.
‘I know its owner – although only to the extent of having exchanged a few words with him – and it is just possible he may be of help to us. But why he has driven in here, I can’t tell. His business is collecting snakes.’
‘Snakes?’ The Emir was yet more perplexed. ‘Serpents?’
‘Yes, indeed. They do happen in England, although there is seldom much mischief in them. The man is simply making a collection for scientific purposes in a laboratory attached to the University of Oxford. But now let us go ahead – through the crowd and down to the car park. And let me remind Your Excellency to shuffle. If you can contrive once or twice to trip over your robe, so much the better.’
This time the Emir Hafrait seemed undecided whether to smile or frown. He was, no doubt, unaccustomed to being even gently made fun of. But he moved on at once, and when he next spoke it was not in displeasure. ‘My dear Sir John, I really don’t like this at all – although the idea did amuse me when you advanced it. With one of my own people it would be another matter. They have their code, and we understand one another. But to lead into danger a person of eminence in the country of which I am a guest – that, I do not care for at all. It is itself a kind of shuffling, as you call it. I would be better pleased to go on alone.’
‘Leaving me ashamed of myself? My word went with my suggestion, and I’d be breaking it if I left off now.’
‘An unanswerable argument, Sir John. And I might do worse than quit this curious affair we call life in the company of an English gentleman. It occurs to me that we have not shaken hands. May we do so now?’
So the Emir Hafrait and Sir John Appleby solemnly performed this ritual act before stepping once more into the hubbub of Mr Richard Chitfield’s hypertrophied garden party.
17
Surveying the scene Appleby received the impression that the entire ramshackle occasion had turned out to be a fair success. This ran very much contrary to his earlier expectations. The diversity of the amusements on offer, together with the
fact that the wearing of fancy dress becomes somewhat irksome and even embarrassing if sustained for long, would have resulted – so he had thought – in a very general inclination to feel that one had enjoyed one’s money’s worth and might now go home. But there was certainly no drift towards the car park – which was sited just within such a real park as Drool Court possessed, with beyond it the fringes of that extensive area of woodland in which Appleby had encountered Richard Chitfield’s disconsolate younger daughter the day before. The military band on the terrace was concealed behind a corner of the mansion, but its unwearied strains – still muted in deference to Mr Chitfield’s theatrical enterprise nearly a quarter of a mile away – continued to provide such entertainment as one cared to listen to.
Equally unwearied appeared to be the passeggiata performed by a large number of the variously disguised guests, so that the effect of a huge and mobile flower-bed was still unimpaired. The only sheik – pseudo or otherwise – at present on view was the previously parched Mr Pring. He was conversing, clearly in a deferential manner, with Nick Bottom, the textile tycoon. Nick had so far relaxed as to take off his ass’s head, but not to part with it; he was carrying it under one arm in a manner suggesting a monster which had miraculously survived decollation and was on the way to have the surprising achievement commemorated in the studio of some painter who went in for that sort of thing. In the middle distance the hot-air balloon, which now appeared to be straining at its moorings, happened to present itself behind these two conversing persons, and thus afforded the suggestion of a bright cloud or nimbus entirely appropriate to such a supernatural occasion.
‘We have a couple of hundred yards to cover,’ Appleby said to the Emir. ‘The first hundred, as you can see, is more or less within the fringes of the crowd. After that, we shall be noticeably on our own. The car park appears deserted, and at the moment nobody else is making for it.’
‘But do I not see a police car at the far end of the ground?’ The Emir Hafrait was thoroughly alert. ‘What is called a Panda car, I believe. And there appears to be an officer in it.’
‘Perfectly true – and he is in some sort of radio communication with the outer world. But he won’t be armed, and I don’t think we should improve matters by making our way to him. Incidentally, since the car park is at a distinctly lower level than we are, we have a better view of it as a whole than he has. But what about your own car – can you point it out to me?’ Appleby paused for a moment. ‘But not, Your Excellency, too ostentatiously. Remember that we are two pseudo-sheiks, simply wandering around. Perhaps we are interested in motor cars, and are therefore taking an idle stroll in their direction. But just a stroll it must continue to be. It wouldn’t do at all to stride purposefully ahead.’
‘Quite so. And my own car is the grey Rolls Royce almost in the middle of the park. You can perhaps distinguish, Sir John, what Colonel Pride was pleased to describe as its little flag.’
‘I certainly can.’ It was evident to Appleby that national flags were among the things that the Emir was inclined to be touchy about. ‘I suppose,’ he asked abruptly, ‘that the doors are sure to be locked?’
‘The doors of my car? I suppose so, too. Yet it is only a supposition. I did not myself see, that is to say, that my unfortunate compatriot performed the action.’
‘But you yourself have a key to the doors as well as to the ignition?’
‘Most certainly.’ The Emir, while doing his best to move forward in a slouching and plebeian fashion, frowned majestically. ‘Has it occurred to you, Sir John, that the nearer two fancy-dress sheiks approach to an authentic sheik’s car the more likely is the enemy, if watching from some point of vantage, to penetrate to the true state of the case?’
‘Indeed it has.’ Appleby frowned in his turn. The two men were now clear of the crowd – which at least obviated the necessity of maintaining their features in a state of contented vacancy. ‘It will be our plan abruptly to change gear, as it were, at the crisis of the operation. We shall have paused beside one car and another in a connoisseur’s fashion. But when we get to your Rolls, you will unlock the door in a flash, jump in, start the engine, and depart from Drool Court with all the formidable acceleration that such a vehicle commands.’
‘And you, too, Sir John?’
‘Dear me, no. Nobody is going to risk capture for the satisfaction of taking a pot-shot at a retired policeman. And there are one or two other matters at Drool that I am not without curiosity about. So I shall wave you farewell, and return to see what’s what. But here we are. Let us make our first pause before that sporty little Morgan.’
This they did – and went through the same pantomime two or three times more. It was at least an activity that no one who knew the Emir Hafrait would suppose it likely he would indulge in. And then the moment had come. The Rolls was before them.
‘Unlocked.’ The Emir’s hand had gone out to the door beside the driver’s seat. ‘So now–’
‘Stop!’ It was perhaps seldom that Sir John Appleby had put more urgency into this injunction. ‘And stroll on.’
It was equally seldom, perhaps, that the Emir Hafrait had for many years obeyed a command. But he did so now. And he glanced almost mildly at Appleby.
‘You have changed your mind?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I have. That the car has been left unlocked and therefore accessible changes the whole state of the case. Somebody may have slipped into it totally unobserved, and left a small token of his intrusion behind him. And I’ve been an idiot not to think of it. Your having turned the key on the ignition might have activated something more than the engine.’
‘How very true.’ The Emir remained entirely calm. ‘What is called – or used to be called – an infernal machine. My dear Sir John, we must think again.’
‘Certainly we must. And you, on your part, if I may say so, must rethink that disinclination to depart only in a dignified fashion in your own vehicle. We will stroll on to that Panda car, and the constable must instantly drive you away in it. I am fairly well known in these parts, and he is unlikely to resist my authority for a moment. You agree?’
‘I do.’ The Emir Hafrait accompanied this reply with a grave inclination of the head certainly not commanded by any sheik of the Pring order.
For some moments the two men walked on in silence, and then the police car came fully into view.
‘Yes,’ the Emir said. ‘Yes – we are distinctly out of luck, are we not?’
‘We are, indeed.’ Appleby glanced only briefly at the Panda car, which was now deserted. ‘The fellow has been called away again – I suppose on his walkie-talkie. And he certainly won’t have left his car unlocked. It’s an absolute instruction with them to make all secure even if they’re away for no more than five minutes.’
‘May he perhaps have received, from a police station or some such place, a message which he is now conveying to Colonel Pride in Chitfield’s house?’
‘That may well be it. And I think our best course may be to return to the house ourselves.’
‘And join, Sir John, in what I think I heard called the Perlustration?’
‘That’s still a little time ahead. But I can’t say I altogether like the look of the Basingstoke Druids – and how Chitfield’s wife came by their services I don’t know at all. Let us take a glance, Your Excellency, at another car or two, and then retrace our steps.’
‘I am under your command, Sir John.’ The Emir said this distinctly in his more majestic manner, while at the same time remembering to toddle forward in a Pring-like fashion. ‘I am full of admiration,’ he continued, ‘for the English police. Nothing ruffles them – and any outbreak of armed violence appears to be the last thing that comes into their heads.’
‘Just so.’ Appleby was amused by this obliquely phrased criticism. ‘And they like, as you heard Pride expressing it, to keep a low profile as they work. From
the start of things today, Pride has had a couple of his men in plain clothes keeping their eyes open amid this confusing jamboree. But they are certainly not armed. And now he has sent for reinforcements – which probably means a dozen uniformed men, with perhaps a couple of reliably cool-headed marksmen among them. As a last resort, of course, there are the Armed Forces of the Crown.’
‘Which could be sent in, I suppose, only on the authority of the Prime Minister?’
‘Ah, that, Your Excellency, is rather a deep matter. I am inclined to think that the Lord Lieutenant of the county, or even perhaps at a pinch the High Sheriff, could set the troops marching.’
This badinage, which the Emir Hafrait appeared to accept as an agreeable novelty, brought the two men back into the old stable yard. The Range Rover was still there. But now the Range Rover’s owner was there as well.
It seemed civil to pass the time of day with this itinerant herpetologist, and Appleby did so.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘I hope you have enjoyed good hunting.’
‘Good afternoon. Yes, indeed. But dear me!’ For a second the herpetologist seemed at a loss before this remark from a stranger strangely attired. Then the explanation came to him. ‘We exchanged – did we not, sir? – a few words yesterday afternoon. My name is Gillam. This appears to be a very large-scale fancy-dress affair. And I take it that you and your friend decided to impersonate the same sort of person.’
‘My name is Appleby. And that is not quite the situation. What you say holds good, after a fashion, of myself – but my companion must be described as in his ordinary clothes. So let me, in fact, present you to the Emir Hafrait.’
‘How do you do?’ It didn’t appear that Mr Gillam was much struck by the oddity of this situation, nor by the fact that the Emir had made him a very formal bow. But he did appear to feel that he should explain his own presence. ‘I’ve been doing a good deal of my collecting,’ he said, ‘on Mr Chitfield’s land. But he and I haven’t met, since I received his permission to go ahead simply by an exchange of letters. So I thought a polite call might be in order before I returned to Oxford. I drove in here intending to walk up to the house and present myself. But when I saw this tremendous carnival affair going forward I decided I’d be merely a nuisance, and that another letter would be the polite thing. Would you be inclined to agree with me?’
Sheiks and Adders Page 13
