Operation Pax (39 page)

‘Do you think they’ll fight each other?’ Malcolm, always intent upon natural knowledge, glanced mildly round his companions. ‘They are usually aggregated, after all.’

‘Segregated, you silly stink-merchant.’ Some more lettered Tiger spoke with proper scorn from the rear. ‘Let’s poke them up a bit and see.’

The man who had attempted to free the wild beasts was gone; they could just hear his engine in the distance. There being no prospect of pursuing him, the suggestion just made had clearly considerable attraction for the younger and less responsible Tigers present. But at this moment there was a further diversion.

‘I can see the others.’ It was Stuart who spoke, and he pointed across the park. ‘Better join them. It’s different, I expect, now the police have come. And the shooting’s stopped.’

‘They’ve got hold of something.’ Miles’ face under its mop of untidy red hair lit up at the prospect of further excitement. ‘Come on. Let’s cut across and see.’

They ran the length of the terrace and out across the open park. The group approaching was certainly in some commotion; and it was contriving to make even more noise than their own group had done. It dropped on to a path as they drew near it; and in doing so it parted and revealed what was occasioning its clamour. In the midst of the children padded a large, tawny beast. Stuart gave a gasp of horror. ‘It’s one of the lions!’

‘We’ve got a lion! We’ve got a lion!’ The small red-haired girl called Marty was walking beside the beast, her arm plunged deep in its mane, and she was shouting at the top of her voice. ‘We’ve got a tame lion – it’s just like Miles in his cat!’

The lion was not, in fact, so very like Miles in his cat – for the simple reason that it was not nearly so aggressive. It shambled uneasily amid its new companions, looking now to one side and now to the other in a sort of amiable self-disparagement. It looked a very unhappy lion.

The two groups had begun to shout questions at each other, and were on the point of merging, when the motorcycle engine was heard again. They turned and saw the machine hurtling towards them. The man with the queer shoulders had failed to get away on the path he had planned. Now he was having another shot – and it was evidently a desperate one. He rounded a bend at suicidal speed and very badly – he did not appear to be a good rider – and as the Tigers scattered they could see his eyes glaring and his mouth working convulsively. Hastily they scrambled to safety on either side of the path. But not so the lion. The lion turned and lumbered off down the path in front of the motorbike. It behaved just like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car at night – without the wits to get off the path on one side or another…

It was all over in a flash. The man was almost up with the lion. The lion, increasingly terrified by the roar of the engine, slightly changed direction. The man swerved – far too wide and uncontrolled a swerve for his purpose – and the lion tried to turn. The front wheel struck the lion a glancing blow on the flank; the machine staggered; and the man went over the handlebars. The machine tumbled over and over, and came to rest with its front wheel spinning. The man lay quite still, with his head tucked oddly under him. The lion lay down at his side.

Some of the children moved uncertainly forward – including Dick, who had returned from some foray or reconnaissance ahead. But as they did so a man appeared before them as if from nowhere, for they had been so absorbed by the accident that none of them had seen his approach. His clothes were dripping wet. But he stopped them in their tracks with a single gesture of authority. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Stay where you are.’ He walked over to the motionless figure of the man with the queer shoulders, stopped over it for a moment, and then came back, looking them swiftly over.

‘Can we help, sir? Can one of us take a message?’ It was a subdued voice speaking from the middle of the group.

The man in the soaking clothes shook his head. ‘No,’ he said gently, ‘you can’t give any help here… Anybody in command of your lot?’

There was a moment’s hesitation, and then some shoving and pushing. A boy rather taller than the rest stepped forward. ‘Would you please,’ he said politely, ‘say who you are?’

‘I am Sir John Appleby.’ The man looked gravely at the children as a group, but addressed the tall boy. ‘I belong to the Metropolitan Police. I come, that is to say, from Scotland Yard.’

There was a moment’s silence that spoke of absolute awe. Even the tall boy appeared to have to think twice. But when he spoke it was with composure. ‘My name is Richard Martin,’ he said. ‘How do you do?’

‘How do you do.’ Sir John Appleby was looking at their blazers. ‘You all come from Oxford?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sir John Appleby turned for a moment and looked at the house, now cordoned by police. ‘And is one of you responsible for this remarkable turnout of the County Constabulary?’

Richard Martin answered without hesitation. ‘Yes, sir. I sent a telegram.’

‘I see.’

‘I hope, sir, it was all right.’

‘It saved the situation.’ Appleby’s eye had again strayed in a certain wonder to the mass of blue uniforms in the middle distance. ‘It’s an effect that I doubt if I could have achieved myself. You must be a natural master of the electric telegraph.’

This time Richard Martin violently blushed. But his voice maintained its composure. ‘I gave the wording some thought,’ he said.

‘Always a good thing to do.’ Sir John Appleby smiled, and glanced over the whole group. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘The police are much obliged to you all. And now you had better cut off home. Can you get a train part of the way?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. You might meet a headwind.’ Appleby nodded briskly. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, sir.’

Appleby turned away, and the Tigers moved off obediently in search of their bicycles. But a moment later a voice spoke at Appleby’s shoulder. ‘Sir, may we ask a question?’

Two of the boys had remained behind. One was red-haired and his eyes were still shining. But it was the other who had spoken.

‘Go ahead.’

‘My name is Stuart Buffin.’

‘I’ve heard of you. And I begin to understand. But what’s the question?’

‘May we talk about this?’

Appleby appeared to consider this question with a good deal of grave deliberation. ‘Even if you don’t,’ he said, ‘I suppose the younger ones would be bound to?’

‘I don’t think so, sir. We have them pretty well in hand.’

‘That’s an excellent thing.’ Appleby smiled. ‘But I think you can talk. Everyone his own story at tea. It’s a good part of the fun, after all.’

‘
Yes, sir!
’

Wreathed in smiles, Stuart Buffin and his companion hurried off after the other Tigers. Appleby walked back down the path. The lion was still lying close by the man. They were covered with the same dust. The brute looked at Appleby apprehensively, and sheepishly licked its paws. It looked a very harmless lion. Nor would the man now couched with it ever do any harm again.

Bodley by Night

Unwounded of his enemies he fell.

– SAMSON AGONISTES

Roger Remnant’s headlong drive to the desmenses of Milton Porcor et Canonicorum, involving as it had done much fast cornering, resulted in trouble during Jane Appleby’s much more cautiously conducted return journey. A tyre blew out just before Eynsham. And as Jane took some pleasure in debarring her companion from attempting to assist her in any way, and laboriously but effectively contrived to substitute the spare wheel herself, it was nearly five o’clock when she reached the Radcliffe Infirmary. There she handed over her charge, answered such questions as the mildly sensational nature of his wound made necessary, and then drove back the few yards to Somerville. Such clothes as she had hastily commandeered from Dr Cline’s deplorable clinic by no means became her, and the frailty of her sex obliged her to get out of them at the earliest possible moment. She changed quickly, resisted the conversational attempts of several interested friends, and returned to the car. It was her intention to return it to the rank where she had so fatefully picked it up, and then to retreat hastily into college without answering any questions. There she would await news from John with whatever patience she could muster.

The first part of this project went smoothly. She drove down to the end of St Giles’ and saw that there were no other taxis waiting in the rank. This was decidedly to the good. Remnant, presumably, had colleagues, and if one of these was about he might prove tiresomely inquisitive. She had just swung the car round to bring it out of the line of the traffic when she heard a vigorous hail from the pavement opposite. ‘Taxi!’ Since it did not occur to her that she herself might be the object of this shout she paid no attention. ‘Taxi!’ This time the shout was a bellow. She looked up and saw, first the silver knob of an elegant cane being brandished peremptorily in air, and then – beneath it and spread out far on either side, the massive figure of Mark Bultitude.

Jane was feeling both exhausted and grim. She had been the occasion that day of at least two notable acts of deliverance from evil; and these she regarded with deep and honest satisfaction. But the one thing that she had set out to accomplish – the one act of deliverance that lay nearest her heart – she had failed in, and her final desperate attempt to achieve it had resulted only in the wounding of a total stranger who had stood by her that day like the staunchest friend. Geoffrey had been snatched from her – almost literally from her grasp – with what had been in effect the maximum of cruelty. The situation now was worse than it had ever been, since she at last knew the quality of the people who held her lover in their hands. And despite her long-standing faith in her brother, and her almost equal faith in Roger Remnant, she found it very hard to take comfort from the reassurance they had tried to give her. That John would very quickly run to earth such of that evil gang as yet remained alive – that she would indeed receive news of this before the end of the day – she certainly believed. But she had been at too close quarters with the horrible madness underlying the criminal conspiracy she had uncovered to have anything but the direst forebodings as to what might be Geoffrey’s fate if he was no longer of any utility to it alive.

All this being so, Jane had very little use at the moment for any further encounter with Bultitude. She had come to the conclusion earlier that day that he was a foolish and rather offensive figure, who had displayed a purely impertinent interest in her troubles. So now she let her gaze pass him stonily by, and prepared to step quickly from the car and march off without explanation.

This, however, proved to be impossible. Bultitude had recognized her; for a moment his features expressed extreme but seemingly genuine astonishment; then he launched himself into St Giles’ with all the resistless momentum of a hippopotamus taking to the water. A Number 4 bus swerved violently away from him much as it would have done, Jane thought, upon the sudden materialization before it of a Centurion tank. And a moment later Bultitude was at her side.

‘Excellent!’ he said. ‘Excellent! In the morning the keen young student off to Bodley, and in the afternoon the resolute and emancipated breadwinner. But – my dear Miss Appleby – have you had the Proctor’s permission to follow this laudable avocation?’

Jane, who hadn’t thought of this one, eyed him askance. ‘I am putting it away for a friend,’ she said. Her tone was icy.

‘Then the misfortune is mine. I had hoped to hire you to take me to Trinity.’

‘To Trinity!’ Jane could have thrown a stone into the nearer precincts of this venerable place of learning from where she sat.

‘Certainly. I missed a luncheon party there and had intended to present my apologies to my host. However, that can be deferred.’

‘I expect there will be other taxis turning up presently.’

‘No doubt. But not other young ladies with whom I have a strong impulse to converse.’

Jane, who could think of no polite reply to this – and who was determined to be polite, since she suspected that earlier in the day she had been rather rude – said nothing.

‘I have already had some conversation with your brother, Sir John – on my way back from Milton.’

‘From Milton! You mean that you made your – your expedition, as you called it?’

‘I went to Milton Manor, decided that it was a very shady place indeed, and came back to think about it. Probably I should have decided to contact your brother in any case. I am not fond of policemen investigating the vagaries of Bede’s undergraduates, and I had – indeed, still have – some notion that I might clear the business up myself. Would you advise me to try?’

‘No – certainly not.’ Jane still spoke coldly. But Bultitude’s more direct manner of speech was making her look at him with new interest. ‘We have discovered that it was full of criminals, practising abominable scientific experiments upon people kept there by force.’

‘I must confess, Miss Appleby, to being not altogether surprised by what you tell me.’

‘I don’t see how you can know anything about it. And, if you did, it was your duty–’

‘It is the business of scientists – those few of them who are
not
engaged upon experiments abominable in one way or another – to put two and two together as rapidly as may be whenever queer appearances come their way. And that – since yesterday – is what I have been doing. And I may say I mean to have Geoffrey Ourglass back at Bede’s.’ Suddenly Bultitude looked Jane very straight in the eyes. ‘Where is he?’

‘They have him still. They got away with him at the last moment.

Bultitude gave a moment to studying the silver knob of his cane. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘John thinks they are unlikely to do him any harm now. Perhaps they will let him go.’

‘I see… I wish I could help.’ Bultitude tapped his cane on the ground. ‘And perhaps I can. The scientist sometimes remembers the importance of very simple things. When did you last have a meal?’