Sheiks and Adders

by Michael Innes

  The Perlustration appeared now to be far advanced, since the torches and candles of the Basingstoke Druids were glimmering feebly through the windows of the ground-floor rooms. And the Druids, as if conscious that this in itself was a little on the unimpressive or unentertaining side, had begun a species of outlandish chanting – or rather yowling – which perhaps indicated that the climax of their mysterious activity had been attained. It was certainly true that a certain degree of tension was building up; among the more impressionable of the female spectators in particular there were occasional exclamations of apprehension and even horror, rather as if there was a distinct possibility that some hideous sacrificial deed was about to be perpetrated before them.

  And then – in a slow and sinister fashion – the main portals of Drool Court turned on their hinges, and there stepped over the threshold, side by side, two figures already familiar to Appleby: the Grace-to-Maleldil Druid and the female Druid bedecked with mistletoe. Both held their elbows and clasped hands before them beneath their voluminous robes, and moved down a flight of steps from the terrace at a sort of stately leisure which was by no means unimpressive in itself. Then all the other Druids followed, similarly comporting themselves and similarly two by two.

  And it was at this point that Appleby blew his whistle.

  It was, in its setting, a startling sound – but not nearly so startling as what immediately succeeded. From one side of the assembled company there erupted volley upon volley of deafening rifle fire; upon the other, and from a source which few remained sufficiently composed to discern, there advanced what appeared to be a writhing sea of serpents. An observer of literary inclination might have felt that the well-kept lawns of Drool Court were thick swarming now with complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and Asp, and Amphisboena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Ellops drear. It was within nobody’s comprehension that here was nothing more than a van-load of grass snakes, no doubt companioned by a few mildly dangerous indigenous English adders. And the very small minority of Mr Chitfield’s guests who might have retained their senses before this spectacle were submerged beneath the panic of the majority by further deafening salvoes of musketry apparently coming nearer and nearer on the other flank. There could be no doubt of what was happening. The great Chitfield fête was ending in pervasive and discreditable panic.

  And most panic-stricken of all were the Basingstoke Druids. The head of their procession was now about half-way to its coach, and its more resolute members were keeping up their yowling – if only with the determination of despair, but sufficiently to contribute distinguishably to the disordered noises alike of the unnerved mob which the spectators had become, and of a peculiarly savage yelling and cheering on the part of the still invisible rude soldiery. For some moments the Druids were of two minds. Those in the rear made indecisively to retreat to the house; those in front were for struggling on to their waiting coach. But only the coach conceivably offered effective escape, and soon they were all shoving and clawing their way ahead. Here and there, as a consequence, bouts of fisticuffs between these priestly persons and the more enraged among the spectators broke out in a ragged but spirited fashion. And it was at this point that Appleby found the Emir Hafrait standing beside him.

  ‘Thieves,’ the Emir said composedly. ‘Altogether, Sir John, a remarkable spectacle.’

  This was undeniable. The struggling Druids had perforce abandoned that curious box-like posture by which their arms had been held out in front of them beneath their ample robes, and as a consequence their path was marked by a trail of all the most superior knick-knackery in the Chitfield mansion. Some of it, being of the most delicate and precious porcelain, was doomed from the moment it fell. So, probably, was a number of small pictures collected during the Perlustration by those industrious but nefarious visitors. Among them – horribile dictu and horresco referens – was that work of art so admired by Tibby Fancroft, François Boucher’s rosy and arsy-versy girl. But what chiefly bestrewed the sward was the Chitfield family silver, which might conceivably be recovered in no more than a slightly scratched and dented condition.

  ‘Remarkable, indeed,’ Appleby said. ‘But not likely to distract your murderous compatriots for more than three or four minutes at the most. So we run.’

  ‘Run!’ exclaimed the Emir.

  ‘Yes, run. And just follow me.’

  And the Emir Hafrait ran.

  The balloon was by now attracting no interest whatever, and was straining at its moorings as if anxious to see the last of a thoroughly unsatisfactory afternoon. At a first glance its proprietor himself (to whom Appleby had promised – strictly on behalf of the Emir – a taxi-fare of a thousand pounds) appeared to have deserted his post. But this was not so, since a shout brought his uncertainly swaying head and shoulders up from within the large basket-work affair which might be termed the passengers’ accommodation provided by this kind of craft.

  ‘Two shousand pounsh!’ he now bellowed truculently. And to lend emphasis to this ultimatum, he picked up and brandished above his head a bottle which until lately had held a certain amount of gin.

  ‘Drunk and incapable,’ Appleby said to the Emir. ‘So we must take the fellow’s balloon by storm – you from the far side while I operate from here. He can’t fend off both of us at once. So over the top, Your Excellency, and between us we’ll chuck him out.’

  This summary procedure went like clockwork, and within seconds the bemused aeronaut had been ejected from the basket and was attempting, but with no success, to get on his feet with sufficient security to contrive some further effective action. The speed with which so satisfactory a state of affairs had been achieved was just as well. For it was now possible to see that two figures had detached themselves from the continuing chaos in front of Drool Court, and were running towards the balloon with a purposiveness which reflected a good deal of credit on their ability to think rapidly on their feet.

  ‘And now we are our own navigators,’ Appleby said. ‘And the initial moves I imagine to be easy enough. We simply cast off those two ropes or hawsers, chuck out a couple of bags of sand – and Your Excellency takes his leave of Mr Chitfield’s unfortunate fête in a suitably elevated fashion. And just to think that I was lately considering the possibility of stuffing you into the boot of a car.’

  The Emir took this last remark in good part, and proved remarkably adaptable to the needs of the moment. So they were airborne within seconds, and suffered no further immediate inconvenience than the passage, between them or beneath them, of a few revolver bullets discharged by the two baffled pursuers below. These elicited from the Emir what was presumably a malediction in his native tongue.

  ‘I think,’ Appleby said, ‘that we are going to pass straight over the house, and with plenty of height to spare. And then there will be what is rather grandly called the Forest of Drool. It’s quite a pleasant stretch of country for walking, but might be a little awkward to attempt a landing in. Ah! Things seem to be calming down beneath us.’

  This was true. Richard Chitfield and Dr Gillam could be distinguished as standing together on the terrace – and Gillam was no doubt offering an appropriate apology for any inconvenience which a misfortune to his Range Rover had occasioned. The defenders of Mafeking, it occurred to Appleby, might momentarily be in severe disfavour, but Tommy Pride could be trusted to make it clear that they had in fact rendered signal assistance to the preserving of law and order. The coach of the Basingstoke Druids, now rapidly shrinking to the dimensions of a Dinky toy, remained where it had been, with its late occupants vainly clamouring round it: they would be picked up, no doubt, by the advancing posse of police.

  ‘They’ve spotted us,’ Appleby said.

  This was true also: first in small groups, and then throughout the whole concourse, heads were being tilted back as their owners focused upon the object overhead. The Emir seemed to find this circumstance appropriate and ag
reeable.

  ‘I am conscious,’ he said, ‘of having occasioned our friend Chitfield a good deal of inconvenience in the course of the afternoon. He cannot, indeed, be acquitted of a certain degree of injudicious behaviour, and in point of high policy and raison d’état his conference was of no value whatever. Nevertheless to him and his guests it will be proper to offer a courteous farewell.’ Having said this, the Emir stood up somewhat hazardously on what appeared to be a sackful of sand, so that the greater part of his person was visible from below. Thus positioned, he raised both extended arms shoulder-high and let his open hands, each slightly cupped, gently rise and fall in the air. It was a gesture, Appleby thought, papal rather than regal in suggestion; not the mere movement of the wrists with which royal personages in Britain can do much, but rather that repeated sursum corda motion whereby the Bishop of Rome exalts and edifies whole multitudes of the faithful.

  Appleby himself took what was perhaps a more realistic view of the situation. He had never in his life gone for a ride in a balloon. And now, looking up at the underside of the gaily variegated fabric from which, with a gentle pendulum-like sensation, he and the Emir depended, he felt himself to be in a situation of the sort that wonderfully concentrates the mind. It all looked so easy, floating up and along like this. But how on earth did one control the thing? It couldn’t be exactly complicated, since there seemed to be very little to be complicated with. So there must be all the more need for a bit of know-how about what there was.

  ‘We have to remember,’ Appleby said, ‘that balloons of this sort are brilliantly coloured partly just for fun, but also so that they can be spotted from quite far off by anything that might get in their way.’

  ‘Concorde, for example, Sir John. We must certainly avoid that.’

  ‘But we also have to avoid any further rendezvous with your enemies down there. So, for the moment, it’s all to the good that we’re gaining altitude fairly rapidly. But the climb might become uncomfortable if it went on too long. I have an idea that the red lever on those controls is for going up rather than coming down, and that what it does is to start a most alarming burst of flame under the open mouth of the thing. It generates more hot air, and up you go.’

  ‘And to come down?’

  ‘Trickier, I rather think. It would, of course, come down eventually without our taking any action at all. But whether it would be over land or over the North Sea, I haven’t a clue. We’re certainly going almost due east now.’

  ‘It is to be supposed that in some fashion one gently deflates the balloon.’

  ‘Just so, Your Excellency. And it’s my guess that the blue nylon cord so carefully secured over there operates what one might call a zip. But the manoeuvre is probably irreversible. So one would proceed with caution.’

  ‘I am well accustomed, my dear Sir John, to delicate situations. Caution and prudence are not among the major virtues. Nevertheless, there are situations that demand them. Your career and mine, I judge, have in equal measure made us aware of that.’

  Appleby (who was coming rather to like the Emir Hafrait) conjectured that this last remark had been of a complimentary nature, and he murmured an appropriate reply. But he then added a more forthright remark.

  ‘I’d be uncommonly glad,’ he said, ‘to be sure we had a good dinner ahead of us.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. And accompanied with a glass of champagne.’ But this avowal seemed to perturb the Emir. ‘That, my dear Sir John, is – as one says to the newspaper men – not for the record. The Prophet – praise be to his name – disapproved of music. Yet all Islam innocently indulges in it. The Prophet – praise be to his name – forbade the use of alcohol. But there, some of us at least a little slip up at times.’

  ‘A matter of what Catholics call a venial sin.’

  ‘Precisely so. How well we have come to understand one another, my dear Sir John.’

  So the flight (if a balloon is to be described as in flight) continued. Drool Court and its demesnes had dipped over even an extended horizon some time ago. Woodland lay now beneath them, with here and there a glade across which trees cast long shadows thrown by the westering sun. And the balloon was by this time losing altitude. Appleby took no step to alter this. But he gave much attention to the terrain as it flowed on like a gigantic panorama on its cylinders below.

  ‘I really think,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Sir John?’

  ‘I really think that a moment for action has arrived.’

  And Appleby began, quite gently, to pull on the blue nylon cord.

  So the balloon grounded, neatly if not altogether happily, in the middle of Lady Appleby’s shrub roses. (There were to be a few survivors among the Fantin Latours, but the Nuits de Young proved annihilated for good.) The effect was as if some monstrous and garish bloom from science fiction’s outer space had suddenly crashed down upon the carefully cultivated wild garden of Long Dream Manor. It was unlikely that Judith Appleby would be amused.

  As for Sir John and the Emir Hafrait, they were considerably shaken, terra firma seeming to have suddenly surged upwards in a malign fashion and bruised them all over. Both were on their feet, however, before the aged Hoobin, disturbed in his second perusal of that morning’s Daily Mirror in the gardener’s shed, arrived on the devastated scene. Hoobin was accompanied by his nephew Solo – who, although yawning frequently, was at least half-awake.

  ‘Furriners!’ Hoobin said. ‘Drat me if they ain’t furriners.’

  ‘Moon-folk,’ Solo suggested. ‘Dropped from one of them rockets.’ And Solo, as if conscious of having indulged an unseemly loquacity, retreated hastily behind his uncle. But Hoobin was himself now alarmed. He had recognized his employer – who had left home earlier in the day dressed up as Robin Hood, and had now returned from the heavens swathed (like his companion) in what appeared to be a number of table-cloths, but which might well be cerements or grave-clothes too hastily wound around a Sir John Appleby mistakenly supposed to be dead.

  ‘Hoobin,’ Appleby said, ‘there is nothing that can be done about this at present. So take Solo away, and get back to that newspaper. And if Your Excellency feels up to eighty yards on foot after that thumping and drubbing, we’ll make our way indoors and find my wife.’

  It was thus, then, that Appleby and his guest exchanged Drool Court for Long Dream Manor. They were met in the hall by Lady Appleby, who had been conscious of brief but sinister noises in the garden, and was on her way to investigate their cause. Suddenly confronted by her husband and a stranger, both weirdly attired, she was only mildly surprised and not at all disconcerted – her husband’s peculiar profession, now become a hobby, having not infrequently in one way or another invaded his domestic sanctities.

  ‘My dear,’ Appleby said, ‘I have the honour of presenting you to His Excellency the Emir Hafrait.’

  ‘How do you do?’ Judith said – and firmly took the initiative in shaking hands. ‘I hope you’ll stay to dinner.’

  ‘It will be a pleasure,’ the Emir said, and the Applebys listened while he expanded upon this through several well-turned sentences.

  ‘But then,’ Appleby said, ‘the Emir must unfortunately get back to town. After we’ve washed and brushed up, I’ll make a telephone call or two about that.’

  ‘It will add to your kindness,’ the Emir said.

  ‘By the way, I’m afraid there will be a bill from, or on behalf of, that balloon man. We did treat him a shade roughly, did we not?’

  ‘That is undeniable, Sir John. But the experience – so novel, at least to me – will have been worth the money. And it will be politic to treat him as having been wholly co-operative. So he had better be given a decoration as well.’

  Note on Inspector (later, Sir John) Appleby Series

  John Appleby first appears in Death at the President's Lodging, by which time he has risen to the rank of Inspe
ctor in the police force. A cerebral detective, with ready wit, charm and good manners, he rose from humble origins to being educated at 'St Anthony's College', Oxford, prior to joining the police as an ordinary constable.

  Having decided to take early retirement just after World War II, he nonetheless continued his police career at a later stage and is subsequently appointed an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, where his crime solving talents are put to good use, despite the lofty administrative position. Final retirement from the police force (as Commissioner and Sir John Appleby) does not, however, diminish Appleby's taste for solving crime and he continues to be active, Appleby and the Ospreys marking his final appearance in the late 1980's.

  In Appleby's End he meets Judith Raven, whom he marries and who has an involvement in many subsequent cases, as does their son Bobby and other members of his family.

  Appleby Titles in order of first publication

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. Death at the President's Lodging Also as: Seven Suspects 1936

  2. Hamlet! Revenge 1937

  3. Lament for a Maker 1938

  4. Stop Press Also as: The Spider Strikes 1939

  5. The Secret Vanguard 1940

  6. Their Came Both Mist and Snow Also as: A Comedy of Terrors 1940

  7. Appleby on Ararat 1941

  8. The Daffodil Affair 1942

  9. The Weight of the Evidence 1943

  10. Appleby's End 1945

  11. A Night of Errors 1947

  12. Operation Pax Also as: The Paper Thunderbolt 1951

  13. A Private View Also as: One Man Show and Murder is an Art 1952