The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (29 page)

             
"Now what got the men excited was this. On the outside of the bundle, in the same ink, but printed, not written, was the following: 'On His Majesty's Service. Take to English Consul at
once!' Oh yes, and below that was printed equally bold,
'MOST SECRET.'

             
"Well, I've told you how loyal to England these
Baymen
were and for all I know, still are. The Captain rewrapped the package and tied it up again and then swore his crew of relatives to silence. Nothing more was said and at daybreak they sailed north again but with not a stop until they made the port town and/or capital of Belize. Remember, that was only a town name then and the whole dinky colony was called British Honduras or '
B
.
H
.
' locally. Captain Hooper took the package himself to the Consul and insisted on giving it to him in person and not to his one secretary. Then he left, his duty to the Crown accomplished.

             
"The Consul thought it was some sort of joke induced by tropical fever, but he looked carefully at it and he found a London address clearly printed. The rest of the scrawled pages were in English but in some sort of code, and no sort he had ever seen."

             
The Brigadier took a pull of his ale and stared past or through us at the library wall. Outside the street noises penetrated faintly but in the big room, empty save for our small group, there was only silence. We all knew that he was seeing something none of us ever would or could see and that he was far away mentally, lost in some vision of the past, in some "lost world" of his own. Then he straightened again and his cold blue eyes flickered over us in casual appraisal, before he started to talk and to resume his tale.

             
"I'll cut a few corners here, Gentlemen. The bundle of papers got to first, the Foreign Office and then trickled through several others in turn. They finally ended up in the place they were meant to go and there they caused both
laughter and incredulity. Let's call that last depository one or another HQ of a foreign-related intelligence division, eh? That tells you all you need to know." He didn't add "or ever will," but it didn't need adding.

             
"The papers were in a code, but a long-expired one. It was one of the codes given to agents in the field at a time of confusion, early in World War II. It had a use then, for it was easy to memorize, and even at that was only given to chaps who were considered of small importance and whose work was largely routine. A typical type would be some "small-timer" whose job was reporting shipping movements from obscure
Portugese
coastal areas of Africa, say. Once in a great while, these men and/or women in a few cases, would come up with something arresting, such as news of a Kraut surface raider or submarine, but this was not normal."

             
The Brigadier lifted his eyes and stared at the ceiling. A faint but audible sigh came from his lips. Then he went on.

             
"The agent who had signed this package was interesting to the bureau involved for a couple of reasons. First, he was low on the scale, having been nothing but a very modest coastal trader along the Caribbean littoral for five years before WW II. But, long before a misspent life had commenced, he'd been a, well, to be a bit obsolete, a "gentleman." He was, in fact, a
latterday
survival of an old Victorian custom, being a 'Remittance Man' of sorts, who had left his family, his country and all that when he got a bit embarrassing. His family, which we'll call 'Jones,' heard little from him but sent him small sums of money through a lawyer at intervals, with the unspoken agreement that he would stay away, far away, and not bother them. One found these oddities here
and there, mostly in the Tropics, to a much later date than is generally realized. Their offenses ranged from drink and women to actual criminality, though that was the rarest
—"

             
Ffellowes paused here, and reaching down beside his leather armchair, pulled up another book, a very long and
very thick book, which looked both used and used hard, being scuffed and with tiny holes in it
.
He held it up, facing outward, so that with a leaning from those on the edge, we could all read the words printed under the stained crown on the cover. They were simple, being
Atlas of British Honduras
and the date, 1939.

             
"Here's the old official map book," he said. "It was all we had until quite a while after. If I refer to something, it might make it easier on you fellows for me to indicate it on this thing than something more up-to-date, which I don't have anyway, at least here."

             
He eyed the book with amusement and affection for a moment "Full of rot and a few wormholes, this one. Any book carried into real tropical bush doesn't last long." He flicked it open and held it up and rotated it for us to see a map of the entire tiny country, which looked a bit like a shortened, bent version of the state of Vermont
.
Then, with his forefinger, he indicated a certain area, a largely blank area, two thirds of the way down or South and also in the center.

             
"This patch is all hills, covered with limestone crags, domes and heavy bush. There are bits of real tropical rain forest in places but a lot of
it's
scrub jungle. Full of ravines and also streams, being quite well watered. There are swamps also in places in depressions in the hills or where the ravines broaden. The area's known, or was known then, as 'The Maya Mountain
'
. Well, the whole country inland was full of Amerindians of Mayan stock and probably still is. They have strong kinship systems, and now and again will leave their
milpas
, their corn patches, and go off visiting relatives on foot, some of whom are a long way off, such as due North up in Mexican Quintana
Roo
where famous ancient Mayans lived. You men have heard about
Chichen
Itza and all that
.
Or, they might drift due South or Southwest and end up in Guatemala with still other relatives. Made
little
of borders they did, and as the news tells us, they have
not changed since the place became independent around 1971." He sipped his ale and went on, a reflective tone now in his voice.

             
"An odd folk and keep very much to themselves, unless they've changed a lot
.
In
B.H
. very few spoke any English and their Spanish was archaic and full of loan words of Mayan. They preferred that and didn't care much for anyone who was not Mayan. A dour, silent people, hardworking and living on tiny corn patches and a little hunting and fishing. They did not live on or even near the coast, leaving that to the negro
Baymen
and mestizo mixed
-
blood and the few Caucasians who were there, either for official reasons or for private ones.

             
"Now this brings us back to the mysterious message thrown on the boat by that unknown swimmer. Look at this map and see a lot of creeks hitting the sea almost due East of the Maya Mountains? See that area marked Seine Bight? All heavy swamp on that stretch and that's where the
Baymen's
coaster was moored when that message arrived.

             
"So then, we can get back to the message itself and to Jones, the supposedly dead and certainly vanished agent of the British Government, who had sent it, or at least had signed it with his long-defunct, assigned number. His first name was really Percy, I mean really. Sticks in my
mind, it does, being rather effete for a man of this sort
.

             
"The message was scrawled with some very crude sort of implement, perhaps a split piece of reed, it was, to put it mildly, confused as well as confusing, that is, to those who had to decipher and make what sense they could out of it
—"
The Brigadier stared away again, obviously trying to coax his memory.

             
"Well it went something like this, and I'm giving you a digest of what I can recall: 'Send Troops to
B.H
. in secret! Send at least one half
Batt
, well-trained in Bush Fighting, artillery not needed. Send at once! Send to compass bearing XYZ, in the heart of Maya Mountains.' "

             
Ffellowes chuckled grimly at this point "Good thing he thought to put in the country involved and the Maya Mountains. The compass bearing was wildly askew and the latitude-longitude readings were someplace off Cape Horn in the sea. The whole thing seemed to indicate a very sick man, probably writing in the grip of some fever or other, or perhaps wounded or maybe both.

             
"There was a bit more to come and the next and last bit was the wildest and most weird of the lot
.
It went on in this way, all broken up, you know and not consecutive, like shorthand taken by a drunk stenographer. Here are enough pieces to give you some indication of what it was like: 'Devils! They hate us and all like us! If the scientists are correct, though, they are us! Us as we were and they know it, by God!' " A strange smile flickered briefly over the Brigadier's smooth face. "I'm not gassing you people when I use points of emphasis, that is verbal exclamation points and such. There are ways in a code of doing just that, to mean something's most important and/or vital. Well, poor Percy Jones used that mark on every line, every scratched sentence, in fact on every place he could fit it in at all." He sighed again, sadly, and we all felt his sympathy in our own minds as well for that poor lost man and his strange plight
.

             
"Not too much more," went on Ffellowes. "A few bits like this though: 'They can see in the dark, better than cats; they have keen noses and can hear an ant crawling; they eat meat whenever they can get it and they don't care what sort; they eat green stuff mostly, all kinds of plants; I think they raid a few lonely farms for corn and for other purposes; they must do that! How else could they get those other blank
-
blank?' Now here," the Brigadier went on, "one word was very hard to get straight
.
The best opinions seemed to be a mix. Some of the backroom boys thought it was 'female,' either singular or plural. Other opinions give it as 'rulers' or even 'female rulers.' Then there was another word that cropped up all the time and that was often blurred or run. This was
something or appeared to be, olfactory. It was translated as 'stench,' 'smelling' and even 'perfume
'
. There were continued references to 'night,' to 'dark' and to the apparent proclivities of 'them'
,
w
hoever 'they' might be for darkness or the dark hours."

             
He looked down at the open map book for a second and then up again quickly. "Oh yes, there was or were, still other repeated phrases of some sort
.
One was to 'breeding' and also 'trying to breed
'
. That came in a lot rather at random. With it were words like 'peril' and 'danger'
/
'War' and 'revolution' were not absent
.
And finally, there were constant references to some sort of hirsuteness. 'Hair' and 'fur' appeared a lot and also 'pelt'
—

             
"It didn't really come to an end at all. There was some scribble about
'Danger!' and mixed in was 'Hurry!' and 'Act at once!' and more like that all with the emphasis on Now, Urgent, Instantly, and in general, 'Hurry Up' plus
'Move!'
"

             
He stopped talking for a moment and there was silence in the big room. The noise of traffic was audible through the curtained windows, the roar of New York that never stops. But no one felt like talking and we simply waited. The Brig, didn't like being interrupted at any time but it was more than that
.
We were all far away, trying to hear a strange message in our minds from a lost soul.

             
"At any rate," he finally went on, "Certain powers that be, or were then, got mildly intrigued. The bloody place was still a sort of dubious possession of the Crown. Somewhere in it a long-lost man had tried to communicate. It ought to get a quick look, if no more." He chuckled quietly. "I had always been noted as an oddity, if no more and I happened to have no current job. So, to make a long story one inch longer, I was off to Belize, the then capital and only sizeable town in all
B.H
.