‘What is it?’ the Professor demanded. ‘You know, don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Jim Pooley. ‘We know well enough, but believe me the thing will not be easily tampered with. It will take an electronics expert with the brain of an Einstein to dismantle it, and where are we going to get one of those in Brentford?’
Norman Hartnell was not a happy man. Apart from being barred from the Swan with darts night rapidly approaching, which was the kind of thing that could easily drive a sensitive soul such as himself to the point of suicide, he also was suffering a grave amount of concern over his camel. Still wedged firmly into the eaves of his lock-up garage, and gaining bulk from its hearty consumption of cabbage leaves, the beast still showed no inclination whatever to return to Earth. On top of these two insoluble problems, Small Dave’s untimely return to Brentford and his disconcerting perceptions were causing the shopkeeper a good deal of grief.
He really would have to get rid of the camel. It was damning evidence by any account, and he also had the definite feeling that Small Dave was on to him. The nasty vindictive grudge-bearing wee bastard seemed to be dogging his every move. If he was ever to transfer the Great Pyramid of Cheops from its present foundations in Egypt to its planned relocation upon the turf of Brentford football ground, he really couldn’t have the dwarfish postman blundering in and spoiling everything before the project was completed.
Norman dropped into his kitchen chair and did a bit of heavy thinking. The mantel clock struck eleven, time once more to feed the camel. Norman glanced despairingly about; perhaps he should simply blow the garage up. The trouble was that he was really growing quite attached to the mouldy-looking quadruped.
He’d never been allowed to have a pet when he was a lad, and dogs didn’t exactly take to him. But Simon, well, Simon was different; he didn’t snap at your ankles or climb on your furniture. True, he didn’t exactly do anything other than sleep in the rafters and roar for food when hungry, but there was something about the brute which touched Norman. Possibly it was his helplessness, relying upon him, as it did, for his every requirement. Perhaps it was that he had Simon exclusively to himself, nobody forever patting at him and offering him biscuits. Whatever it was, there was something. Simon was all right. He was cheap to feed, living as he did upon Small Dave’s cabbages, and his droppings made excellent manure for the roses. Norman wondered for one bright moment whether a camel might be trained to eat dwarves; shouldn’t be but a mouthful or two. Pity camels were exclusively vegetarian.
Norman rose from his chair, drew on his shabby overcoat and put out the kitchen light. Stepping silently through the darkened shop, he put his eye to the door’s glass and peered out at the Ealing Road. All seemed quiet, but for the distant sound of police sirens. Small Dave was nowhere to be seen.
The shopkeeper drew the bolt upon the door and slipped out into the night. He scuttled away down Albany Road, keeping wherever possible in the shadows. Down the empty street he hurried, with many a furtive glance to assure himself that he was not being followed.
Young Chips, who was returning from some canine equivalent of a lodge meeting, had been watching the shopkeeper’s progress for some moments. Now where is Norman off to, he asked himself, and who is the character in the Victorian garb hard upon his heels? If I wasn’t half the dog I believe myself to be, I would be certain that that is none other than the famed American author, Edgar Allan Poe. Scratching distractedly at a verminous ear, the dog lifted his leg at a neighbour’s Morris Minor, and had it away for home.
Norman reached the allotment gates and peered around. He had the uncanny feeling that he was being watched, but as there was no-one visible he put the thing down to nerves and applied his skeleton key to the lock. A wan moon shone down upon the allotments, and when Norman had had his evil way with Small Dave’s already depleted cabbage crop, no living being watched him depart with his swag.
The row of lock-up garages slept in the darkness. As Norman raised the door upon its well-oiled hinges, nothing stirred in the Brentford night. ‘Simon,’ he said in a soothing tone, ‘din dins.’
Having closed the door behind him, he switched on the light, illuminating the tiny lock-up. Simon looked down from his uncomfortable eyrie, and Norman sought some trace of compassion upon the brute’s grotesque visage.
‘Yum yums,’ he said kindly. ‘Chow time.’
If camels are capable of displaying emotions, other than the ‘go for the groin if cornered’ variety, Simon was strangely reticent about putting his about. As he hung in the air, the great ugly-looking beast did little other than to drool a bit and break wind. ‘You cheeky boy,’ said Norman. ‘It’s your favourite.’
Behind him, Edgar Allan Poe eased himself through the closed garage door and stood in the shadows watching Norman making a holy show of himself. Simon saw Edgar at once, and Simon did not like the look of Edgar one little bit.
‘WAAAAAARK!’ went Simon the zero-gravity camel.
‘Come, come,’ said Norman, flapping his hands, ‘there is nothing to get upset about. It’s really only cabbage, your favourite.’
‘WAAAAAARK!’ the disconsolate brute continued.
‘Shhh!’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Calm yourself, please.’
‘WAAAAAARK!’ Simon set to wriggling vigorously amongst the eaves.
‘Stop it, stop it!’ Norman frantically waved the cabbage leaves about. ‘You’ll have the whole neighbourhood up.’
Edgar Allan Poe was fascinated. Times had certainly changed since he had shuffled off the old mortal coil. Small Dave had spent a goodly amount of time impressing upon him the importance of finding a camel. But to think that people actually kept them as pets now, and that they were no longer tethered to the planet of their birth by gravity. That was quite something. ‘Stone me,’ said Edgar Allan Poe.
John and Jim were taking the long route home. After the incident earlier that evening at the Swan they had no wish to cross the allotment after dark. It was a brisk, cloudless night, and as they slouched along, sharing a late-night Woodbine, they were ill-prepared for the ghastly wailing cries which suddenly reached their ears.
‘What is it?’ Pooley halted in mid-slouch.
Omally peered up and down the deserted street and over his shoulder to where the allotment fence flanked an area of sinister blackness.
‘It is the plaintive cry of the banshee,’ said he, crossing himself. ‘Back in the old country no man would question that sound. Rather he would steal away to his own dear hovel and sleep with his head in the family Bible and his feet in the fireplace.’
‘I have never fully understood the ways of the Irish,’ said Jim, also crossing himself just to be on the safe side. ‘But I believe them to be a people not without their fair share of common sense, best we have it away on our toes then.’
Another horrific cry rose into the night, raising the small hairs on two ill-washed necks, and causing Pooley’s teeth to chatter noisily. This one, however, was followed almost at once by vile but oddly reassuring streams of invective, which could only have arisen from one local and very human throat.
‘Could that be who I think it could?’ Pooley asked.
‘If you mean that very electronics expert with the brain of a veritable Einstein to whom you previously alluded, then I think that it might just be.’
The two men strained their ears for another sound, but none was forthcoming. Slowly, they proceeded along the street, halting outside the row of lock-up garages.
‘Would you look at that,’ said Omally, pointing to where a line of orange light showed beneath one of the doors. ‘Now what would you take that to be?’
‘I would take it to be another trap,’ said Jim. ‘I have recently had a very bad experience through entering sheds without being asked.’
Omally shuddered. The thought of those icy-black subterranean waters was never far from his mind. ‘Caution then?’ he asked, creeping close to the door and pressing his ear to it.
It was at that exact momen
t that Edgar Allan Poe, who had been badly shaken by the floating, screaming camel, chose to make his departure from the garage. Passing discreetly through the solid wood of the garage door he slid right into the skulking Omally. For one ghastly moment the two forms, one solid and smelling strongly of drink, the other ectoplasmic and probably incapable of bearing any scent whatever, merged into one.
‘Holy Mary, Mother of God!’ screamed Omally, clutching at his head. ‘The very devil himself has poked his clammy finger into my ear.’
‘Who’s out there?’ Norman spun away from Simon, who was now silent beneath the falcon hood of a potato sack which had been rammed over his head.
‘Night watchman,’ said Pooley unconvincingly. Twelve o’clock and all’s well. Goodnight to you, stranger.’
‘Pooley, is that you?’
‘Norman?’
The garage door rose a couple of feet and Norman’s face appeared, peeping through the opening. ‘Is Small Dave with you?’ asked the persecuted shopkeeper.
‘That vindictive grudge-bearing wee bastard? Certainly not.’
Norman crawled out under the door and drew it rapidly down behind him. ‘Just servicing the old Morris Minor,’ he said.
‘Sounds a bit iffy,’ said Omally.
‘A bit of gear trouble, nothing more.’
‘Let me have a look at it then.’ Omally was all smiles. ‘I know the old Morris engine like the back of my hand.’ He extended this very appendage towards the garage door handle, but Norman barred his way.
‘Nothing to concern yourself about,’ he said, ‘nothing I cannot handle.’
‘Oh, no trouble, I assure you. There are few things I like better than getting to grips with a monkey wrench and a sprocket set.’
‘No, no,’ said Norman, ‘I think not, it is growing late now and I have to be up early in the morning.’
‘No problem then, I have no a.m. appointments, to me the night is yet young. Leave me the garage key and I will post it through your letter-box as soon as I am done.’
‘You are kindness personified,’ said Norman, ‘but I could not impose upon you in such a fashion. My conscience would not allow it. I will just lock up and then we shall stroll home together.’ He stooped to refasten the padlock.
‘You’d better switch the light off before you go,’ said Jim Pooley.
Norman’s hand hovered over the padlock. A look of terrible indecision crossed his face.
‘Allow me,’ said John Omally, thrusting the shopkeeper aside and taking the handle firmly in two hands. ‘I should just like to have a look at this car of yours before we depart.’
‘Please don’t,’ whined the shopkeeper, but it was too late. The door flew upwards and the light from the lockup garage flooded the street, exposing Norman’s secret to the world.
Pooley took a step backwards. ‘My God,’ was all that he had to say.
Omally, however, was made of sterner stuff. ‘Now, there we have a thing,’ he said, nudging the cowering shopkeeper. ‘Now there we have a thing indeed.’
Norman’s brain was reeling, but he did his best to affect an attitude of bland composure. ‘There, then,’ he said, ‘satisfied? Now if you don’t mind, it is growing late.’
Omally stepped forward into the garage and pointed upwards. ‘Norman,’ he said, ‘there is a camel asleep in your rafters.’
‘Camel?’ said Norman. ‘Camel? I don’t see any camel.’
‘It is definitely a camel,’ said John. ‘If it were a dromedary it would have but one hump.’
‘You have been drinking, I believe,’ said Norman. ‘I can assure you that there is nothing here but a Morris Minor with a tetchy gearbox. I have read of folk suffering such hallucinations when they have imbibed too freely. Come, let us depart, we shall speak no more of these things.’
‘It’s definitely a camel,’ said Jim.
‘Dear me,’ said Norman shaking his head, ‘another victim of Bacchus, and so young.’
‘Why is it in the rafters?’ Pooley asked. ‘I was always of the opinion that camels preferred to nest at ground level and in somewhat sunnier climes.’
‘Perhaps it is a new strain,’ said Omally. ‘Perhaps Norman has created some new breed of camel which he is attempting to keep secret from the world. A flying camel would no doubt revolutionize desert travel.’
Norman chewed upon his lip. ‘Please be careful where you stand, Omally,’ he said. ‘Some of the primer on the bonnet is still wet.’
Omally put his arm about the shopkeeper’s shoulder. ‘Why not just make this easy on yourself?’ he asked. ‘Although I accept that mentally you are a fearsome adversary, surely you must realize that the game is up? Cease this folly, I beg you.’
‘Don’t scuff the spare wheel with your hobnails,’ said Norman.
Pooley raised his hand to speak. ‘If I might make a suggestion,’ he said, ‘I think that the matter could be easily settled with a little practical demonstration.’
‘Yes?’ said Norman doubtfully.
‘Well, you suggest that Omally and I are suffering some kind of mental aberration regarding this camel.’
‘You are.’
‘And we say that your Morris Minor is only notable for its complete and utter invisibility.’
‘Huh!’
Pooley drew out his pocket lighter and struck fire. ‘You rev up your Morris,’ he said, ‘and I shall toast the feet of my camel.’
‘No, no!’ Norman leapt into life. ‘Not toast his dear feet, not toast the feet of my Simon.’
‘The camel has it,’ said Jim Pooley.
Norman sank to his knees and began to sob piteously. Omally suggested that Jim should lower the garage door and this he did.
‘Come, come,’ said Omally to the crumpled shopkeeper, ‘there is no need for this undignified behaviour. Clearly we have intruded upon some private business. We have no wish to interfere, we are men of discretion, aren’t we, Jim?’
‘Noted for it.’
‘Not men to take advantage of such a situation are we, Jim?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Even though this manifestation is clearly of such singularity that any newspaper reporter worthy of his salt would pay handsomely for an exclusive.’
‘Say no more,’ moaned Norman between sobs. ‘Name your price. I am a poor man but we can possibly come to some arrangement. A higher credit rating, perhaps.’
Omally held up his hand. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘are you suggesting that I would stoop to blackmail? That I would debase the quality of our long-standing friendship with vile extortion?’
‘Such I believe to be the case,’ said Norman dismally.
‘Well then,’ said Omally, rubbing his hands together, ‘let us get down to business, I have a proposition to put to you.’
18
After leaving Norman’s lock up in the early hours of the morning, Pooley found little joy in the comforts of his cosy bed. He had listened with awe and not a little terror to the amazing revelations which Omally had skilfully wrung from the shopkeeper. Although Jim had plaintively reiterated that the Earth-balancing pyramid theory which Norman had overheard, that lunchtime so long ago, was gleaned from the pages of an old comic book, as usual nobody had listened to him. What small, fitful periods of sleep he had managed were made frightful with dreams of great floating camels, materializing pyramids and invading spacemen.
At around six o’clock Pooley gave the whole thing up as a bad job, dragged on an overcoat, thrust a trilby hat on to his hirsute head, and trudged off round to the Professor’s house.
The old man sat as ever at his desk, studying his books, and no doubt preparing himself for the worst. He waved Pooley to an armchair without looking up and said, ‘I hope you are not going to tell me that during the few short hours that you have been gone you have solved the thing.’
‘Partially,’ said Jim without enthusiasm. ‘But I think John should take full-credit this time.’
The old man shook his head. ‘Do you ever feel
that we are not altogether the masters of our own destinies?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Jim. ‘Never.’
‘And so, what do you have to tell me?’
‘You will not like it.’
‘Do I ever?’
Pooley eyed the whisky decanter as a source of inspiration but his stomach made an unspeakable sound.
‘Would you care to take breakfast with me, Jim?’ the Professor asked. ‘I generally have a little something at about this time.’
‘I would indeed,’ said Jim. ‘Truly I am as ravenous as Ganesha’s rat.’
The Professor tinkled a small Burmese brass bell, and within a few seconds there came a knocking at the study door which announced the arrival of Professor Slocombe’s elderly retainer Gammon, bearing an overlarge butler’s tray loaded to the gunwales with breakfast for two.
It was Pooley’s turn to shake his head. ‘How could he possibly know that I was here?’
Professor Slocombe smiled. ‘You ask me to give away my secrets?’ he said, somewhat gaily. ‘Where would I be if you deny me my mystique?’
‘You have mystique enough for twenty,’ said Jim.
‘Then I will share this one with you, for it is simplicity itself.’ He rang the small bell again and Gammon, looking up from the coffee he was pouring into the fine Dresden china cups, said, ‘Certainly, sir, two lumps it is.’
‘It is a code with the bell-ringing,’ said the enlightened Jim.
The Professor nodded his old head. ‘You have found me out,’ said he. In reality, of course, Pooley had done nothing of the kind.
Gammon departed at a mental command, closing the door behind him. Pooley set about the demolition of the steaming tray load. Between great chewings and swallow-ings, he did his best to relate to the Professor all that he had seen and heard that night.
Professor Slocombe picked delicately at his morning repast and listened to it all with the greatest interest. When Pooley had finished his long, rambling, and not a little confused monologue, he rose from his chair and took out a Turkish cigarette from the polished humidor. Lighting this with an ember from the grate, he waggled the thing at Pooley, and spoke through a cloud of steely-blue smoke. ‘You would not be having one over on me here, would you Pooley?’ he asked.
The Brentford Triangle (The Brentford Trilogy Book 2) Page 14
