Operation Pax

by Michael Innes

  These and other dark thoughts had disposed Stuart Buffin to make a most belated appearance at breakfast that morning. They disposed him, when he realized that his mother wanted to get the table cleared, to sit owlishly over the repast, nibbling his way through toast and marmalade at the steady rate of one slice every twelve minutes. This recalcitrance, however, was visited with its just penalty, and Stuart found himself implacably roped in to help with the washing up. By the time that this tiresome operation was accomplished and he had emerged into the hall the clock was striking ten. He wished that he had fixed something up with Martin or Miles or Dick or Malcolm. As things were, he addressed himself gloomily to climbing the stairs, being persuaded that nothing lay before him but a morning’s communion with his stamp collection. And stamp collecting, he was rapidly coming to feel, was a nauseating practice… It was at this moment that the telephone bell rang.

  Stuart’s mood being not at present co-operative, he at first felt disposed to ignore the instrument. His father had already left the house. If his mother had to hurry in from coping with the hens in order to answer the thing, or if Mrs Sparks emerged from her soap suds to deal with it and got the message hopelessly muddled – well, that was just too bad. Stuart, however, was really a child tolerant of – indeed, amiably disposed towards – those with whom fate had directed that he should live. Partly because of this, and partly because the call was probably from one of his father’s pupils, tiresomely wanting to change the hour of a tutorial – in which event Stuart would give himself the satisfaction of replying to the great lout with the most awful and freezing courtesy – he decided to answer the summons after all. He moved over to the telephone and picked up the receiver. What he heard was a low voice with a foreign accent. What he believed this voice to say was ‘Stuart, is that you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Stuart growled this reply with a good deal of moroseness. He had jumped to the conclusion that some silly ass of his acquaintance was having him on.

  ‘This is Anna.’ The voice was really a woman’s – and it was tense and vibrant. ‘The place is called Milton Manor, near Milton Porcorum. The danger is now too great. And it is to the boy.’ The voice grew suddenly yet more urgent, so that Stuart felt a queer pricking in his spine. ‘Come at once, Kurt. Bring–’

  And then the voice broke off. It broke off with a sharp, interrupted cry and a smothered gasp: it was as if powerful hands had closed round the speaker’s throat. There was a thump – a very horrid thump – and then the click of a receiver being set down. The line was dead.

  Stuart … Kurt. It had been a wrong number – they were always happening – and he got a message not meant for him. Stuart Buffin found that he was trembling and wet all over, as if he had tried to break the record in the school quarter-mile. He found that he had sat down – and it was only because of this, he realized, that he was not rushing to his mother for all he was worth. For he was not in the slightest doubt about the kind of thing with which he had been in contact over some unknown distance. It was violence…danger…evil. And suddenly his eyes rounded. It was more even than that. It was the proof of what he had known: that things happen. He took a deep breath. He glanced in quick stealth about the hall, listened for footsteps, for any sound in the nearer rooms. There was nobody about. He picked up the telephone again and swiftly dialled a number. And when he got an answer his voice was as urgent as the woman’s he had just heard.

  ‘This is Stuart Buffin; please may I speak to Miles?… Miles, it’s Stuart. Ring round and get everybody to your place now. I’m coming straight across… Everybody…Miles, it’s something sticking out…it’s tremendous…’

  He banged down the receiver and dashed upstairs, taking the steps three at a time. When he came down again a moment later he was wearing his dark blue blazer with the crouching tiger on its pocket and its peremptory injunction: Symmetry. In the pockets were his purse, his torch, his big clasp knife.

  Stuart’s mother, returning from her hens, was just in time to see the boy disappearing on his bicycle. For a moment she was sharply anxious. But he was safely past the crossroads – the quiet one which she was convinced could be so treacherous. Thank goodness, she thought, Stuart seemed to have found something to do. It had looked like being a sticky half-term.

  9

  Miles never did things by halves. There was a formidable gathering of Tigers in the hut, and soon debate ran high. The red-haired Tigers – known throughout Oxford to be the most temerarious and terrible – were on the side of Stuart, and of Miles, who was their natural leader. But (as in the great consult in Satan’s Pandemonium) there were other voices that urged caution. Of these the first was Dick’s – that cool intelligence who, as Dick Whittington, had maintained so lofty a port amid answering confusion the evening before.

  ‘I think it’s too far,’ Dick said. ‘We could make it. But look at that hilly terrain.’ His finger went down with a staff officer’s decision on the map spread before him. ‘It might take up to three hours.’ He shook his head sombrely. ‘A good many of us would never get back.’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’ Miles was obstinate. ‘Coming back, a lot of it will be downhill.’

  ‘I know that, idiot. But we’d have a headwind against us.’

  ‘A headwind!’ Miles was rash and eager. ‘How can you tell that?’

  Silently, Dick moved his finger first to the pocket compass by which he had set the map, and then to a window through which it was just possible to see a neighbouring weathercock. Everybody was impressed. Stuart saw that things were going badly. ‘But the wind’s sure to change,’ he said. ‘It nearly always does, in the afternoon.’

  ‘That’s right!’ Several Tigers, mostly red-headed, immediately took up in all innocence this mendacious statement. ‘Stuart’s right. The wind always changes. Ask Malcolm. Malcolm knows.’

  And Malcolm, the scientifically minded child who had been somewhat overborne by the complexities of theatrical lighting the evening before, nodded gravely. ‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘It has something to do with the cooling off of the central land mass. But I’m not quite sure about the details.’

  ‘I bet you’re not.’ Dick was angry. ‘And there’s another objection. We’d have to leave some sort of word. We can’t all just go off. And if we once let parents and people know–’

  But this was a mistake, and was at once cried down. ‘Rot!’ ‘We can all go off till supper time.’ ‘That’s only the kids.’ ‘Just say it’s a picnic.’ ‘And so it would be if we took some sandwiches.’ ‘Leave some sort of message to be found later.’

  ‘Very well. I agree we could go – if we could make the distance.’ The lucid Dick was quick to abandon an untenable position. ‘But there is the distance. And there’s another thing. I think it more important. Stuart says this may be frightfully serious. That means we ought to speak out about it. Probably to the police.’

  ‘And what good would that do?’ Miles advanced into the centre of the assembly. This delay infuriated him, and his face was growing increasingly pink beneath its mop of red hair. ‘Everybody would say that Stuart had been dreaming – or sogging himself in flicks. One never does get things like that believed.’

  ‘Here, here!’ ‘Miles is right.’ ‘They’d laugh at it.’ ‘They’d laugh at it – and then keep an eye on us.’ ‘No good.’ There was now clamour from all over the hut, and most of it was in the form of a demand for action. A crowd was milling round the map, disputing fiercely. Dick walked away from it moodily – rather as Napoleon might have withdrawn himself from the burdensome society of a group of excited Marshals.

  ‘Why not go by train?’

  Everybody turned and stared. There were several girl Tigers in the gathering, and it had been a small and very red-headed one who spoke. Dick turned round. ‘Nonsense. Go and look at the map, Marty, I’ve been through this Porcorum place by car. It’s miles from a railway station.’

  The girl called Marty thrust her way close to the map, and with some difficulty got her nose
above the level of the table. ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘We can put our bikes on the eleven twenty-five, and be in Bourton-on-the-Water an hour later. And from there we can strike.’

  There was a moment of awed silence. Of Tigers it is particularly true that the female of the species is more deadly than the male. The small person called Marty was challenging the gathering with flashing eyes and dilated nostrils. Dick was clearly wavering. But a new and solid point occurred to him. ‘And what about the fares?’ He ran his eye over the assembled crowd. ‘It would be an enormous sum. And bicycle tickets, too. We wouldn’t have anything like it even if we pooled all we got.’

  ‘We’ve got the money for the Dumb Friends from last night. It came to pounds. Martin has it. He was treasurer.’

  Again there was a hush. Before this female ruthlessness the predominantly male assembly was momentarily speechless. Then a serious-looking boy spoke from the back. ‘Isn’t that,’ he asked, ‘what’s called embarrassment?’

  Yells of mirth from the better informed greeted this unhappy malapropism, mingled with urgent demands for Martin and the money box. Dick, like the Homeric hero hither and thither dividing the swift mind, and seeing that the issue was in fact decided, instantly took the course necessary to maintain his predominance not only of the gathering as a whole but of the insurgent and triumphant faction of the redheads. ‘All back here with bikes in fifteen minutes,’ he shouted. ‘Sandwiches, chocolate, macs, compasses, and all useful weapons. Proceed by Banbury Road, St Giles’, and Beaumont Street. Roll call at the station, and Martin and I buy all the tickets. Nothing to be said at anybody’s home except that it’s a picnic.’ He raised his voice against a chorus of excitement, ‘And I hope – you silly twerps – you won’t make all that row if we have to go into action. You might be a crowd of howling Chinese.’

  Without paying much attention to this tart remark, the crowd hastily dispersed. Stuart Buffin and his crony Miles, wild with joy at having carried the day, dashed for their bicycles. But before they could leave the hut they were cornered by the unremittingly clear-headed Dick. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘trying to talk sense to these silly asses is no good at all. But I’d better tell you.’

  ‘What do you mean – tell us?’ Stuart was suspicious. ‘This is jolly well my affair. It’s for me to be telling you.’

  ‘Forget it.’ Dick frowned at hearing himself drop into this vaguely transatlantic expression. ‘All I want to say is this. Before that train goes out I send a telegram from the station – see?’

  ‘Who do you want to send a telegram to?’ Miles was quite as wary as Stuart.

  ‘I couldn’t care less.’ This time Dick seemed to take satisfaction in the raciness of the expression. ‘The police, your father, my father, the Prime Minister: you can take your pick. But to somebody I send back word of just where we’re going. No reason why we shouldn’t keep in touch. We’re not bandits, you know. We’re part of the law.’ He took a quick glance at Stuart and Miles, uncertain whether he had hit on a line that would appeal to their childish intellects.

  ‘Very well.’ Miles was pink and furious. ‘But if we find a couple of country bobbies at this Bourton-on-the-Water place, told off by telephone to pack us off home, I’ll – I’ll scrag you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ And Dick went briskly out. A little Secret-Service Boy stuff, he was reflecting, had its amusing aspects. There was no harm in giving the young a day out with Biggles – provided that one kept, for one’s own part, the realities of the situation in mind. Riding off to collect his sandwiches, he began composing his telegram. It looked like being a long one.

  But presently, and as he furiously pedalled, his serious air relaxed. There was nobody to see him. He grinned broadly. For even this serious child had a proper streak of fantasy. He looked forward to the confusion at the railway station when a small army arrived with bicycles and insisted on loading them on the sleepy little train for Bourton-on-the-Water. After that, there might, or might not, be adventure in the thing. He had an open mind. He always had.

  Part 5

  Nemesis at Milton Manor

  And they, so perfect is their misery,

  Not once perceive their foul disfigurement.

  – COMUS

  1

  Appleby made a final jotting on the pad in front of him. ‘Thank you, Superintendent. The facts seem to be pretty well as I remembered them. But there’s one thing more – about the place Milton Manor… Yes, I know it’s that. What I want is something much fuller. Get on to the General Medical Council. These concerns must be registered, and you can get a bit of a line through that. Who sends people there, and why – you see?… Yes, of course they’re often sticky. If there is delay, ask the Commissioner to be good enough to tackle somebody high up at once. But remember the time factor. I don’t want a bulging file next Friday; I want what you can get by noon… And – Superintendent – one more thing. You’ve spotted this place on the map? Good. Well, if you don’t hear from me between two and three o’clock, carry out Instruction D… You needn’t sound so surprised… Yes, I did say D… Thank you – that’s all.’

  The Provost of Bede’s knocked out his pipe into the comfortable fire glowing in his study, and waited until Appleby had put the receiver down. ‘Well, well,’ he said; ‘and to think that all those meditative essays you used to read to me were leading to this… You are become a very brisk fellow, my dear John.’

  ‘They weren’t meditative; they were merely thorough.’ Appleby smiled rather absently, and walked across the long room to stare out of the window. ‘As for briskness, since you became the Head of a House, you are a model of it yourself.’

  The Provost reached for a decanter. ‘I attribute the still comparatively unclouded state of my faculties to the observance of one single rule. I have taken to nothing but solitary drinking. Drink does no harm if you are in a position to give your mind to it. Moreover the habit is very inexpensive. Two glasses of brown sherry – or, for a change, of light hunting port – consumed slowly between 11 a.m. and noon: I do all my work on it.’ The Provost raised the decanter. ‘But, for this once, I will have somebody join me. Perhaps I may convert you.’

  Appleby took the glass held out to him, and shook his head.

  ‘The prescription is useless to me. My hours of labour are not so agreeably contracted. Frequently I work right on into the middle of the night – only to be hit on the head in a quiet Oxford road and carried away in a van. If many of your guests are served in the same way, it will positively give the place a bad name. I think you ought to take the matter up with the Proctors.’

  ‘It will be simpler, John, that you should take it up with the criminals. And that is just what you have rather the appearance of being engaged in.’ The Provost took the poker and gave a vicious thrust at a sluggish lump of coal. ‘Look here – I wish you’d tell me what all this is about. Is this tramp, or whatever he was, that you hit up with last night – Routh, did he call himself? – really connected with our missing undergraduate?’

  ‘I think there can be small doubt about it.’ Appleby’s voice was grim. ‘For my sister’s sake, I wish it wasn’t so.’

  ‘You think the young man was once hit on the head and put in a van, too?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Because I don’t think Routh’s adventures began that way either. Nor Miss Kolmak’s.’

  ‘Miss Kolmak? Who on earth is she?’

  ‘Well – that’s not, come to think of it, her name. She’s Mrs Something-or-other – some name with a decidedly farther-side-of-the-iron-curtain twist to it, I imagine. And she is the adopted daughter of your Kurt Kolmak’s aunt. She, too, appears to have been kidnapped, together with her small son.’

  ‘God bless my soul! Do you mean to say, John, that such outrageous things happen in this country?’ The Provost, who had been about to set down the poker, appeared to think better of it – much as if a handy weapon might be needed at any moment.

  ‘It seems they do.’ Appleby made a wry face. ‘
Unexplained vanishings do from time to time occur. And lately some have occurred in a way that has set us thinking.’

  ‘You mean that this queer and disgraceful business here somehow hitches on to a situation you have been investigating already?’

  ‘I think it just possibly may. And, while I’m waiting for a little more data, I propose to tell you about it – just as I used to bring you philosophical problems that were too tough for me.’

  The Provost, while receiving this analogy with evident scepticism, abruptly put aside the poker and sat down. ‘Good,’ he said.

  ‘Well, then – here is the first problem I’d put to you. Suppose, Provost, that you are to all appearances a law-abiding Englishman – one engaged, indeed, in some wholly beneficent profession–’

  The Provost grinned. ‘You always did begin, my boy, with some wild hypothesis.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. Suppose that, although your way of life is entirely blameless, you yet keep a Minotaur in your back yard. This creature must have its regular tribute of youths and maidens. Not a vast number, for this is a small and abstemious Minotaur. Still, its appetite is steady, and must be satisfied. How would you do the catering?’