* unspeakable desolation pouring down from the stars *
CHAPTER SIX
I WAS SITTING IN an extremely comfortable armchair. Unseen hands had removed the corks from my ears and the blindfold from my eyes. To my right stood a delicately-latticed birdcage in which a chaffinch tweeted. To my left, a tattooed thug brandished a pointed stick. In front of me, ten people dressed entirely in black sat behind a long wooden table: each sported a turquoise badge, pinned over their hearts. The table was cluttered with incomprehensible paraphernalia.
"We are the Turquoise Badge Ten," said the person fifth from the left. I can't say I was surprised. "Each of us will ask you one question," she continued, "You will answer the questions fully and frankly. Should we suspect that you are withholding from us any information, whether or not we deem it pertinent we will bid our thug to poke at you with his pointed stick."
If you have ever found yourself in a situation remotely similar to this, you will understand why my immediate reaction was to ask where the lavatory was. All ten of them sighed as one, as if they were used to such shenanigans. The thug pointed to a yellow painted arrow on the floor.
"Follow the arrows," he said, "And come right back."
The lavatory was at the end of a twisting series of corridors. There were five cubicles and a single urinal. When I had poohed, flushed, and washed my hands at the strangely gigantic sink, it struck me that there was nothing to stop me roaming at will through the HQ until I saw fit to return to my interrogation. Leaving the lavatory, I pranced off down yet another corridor, and pushed open the first door I came to.
The room I entered was dark and dingy. I was unable to find a light-switch, so I closed the door behind me and waited until my eyes had got used to the gloom. Before they had done so, I was almost overpowered by the unmistakeable smell of hamster. I held a kerchief over my nose and gagged. Why had I not noticed the stench as soon as I opened the door? Oh, let's just say I forgot to mention it. Gradually, I picked out the details of the room: flock wallpaper; scuffed lino; enormous bells, their clappers removed, lying on their sides; a hospital trolley shoved into a corner; torn bits of maps pinned higgledy-piggledy on the walls; a pile of papers jammed into the open drawer of a filing-cabinet; a jewel-encrusted spittoon; a dead moth; a garden incinerator; an empty crate; a cage containing abundant straw and seemingly dozens of hamsters; a glass eye in a bowl of water; and a cracked jug upon the mantelpiece, on the handle of which a beetle dozed. Was there anything here worthy of my attention? No.
Back in the interrogation room, I found that the thug had been replaced by a coeval, fairer of complexion, and armed with a proper spear rather than a pointed stick.
"You were gone rather longer than we expected," said one of the Turquoise Badge Ten, "We sent our other thug off to track you down."
"I got a bit lost," I explained.
"Wool cannot be pulled over our eyes," I was told, "Bear that in mind."
"Right," I said, sitting down hurriedly in the armchair seconds before Thug Number 2 was about to manhandle me into it. "We will each now ask you a question," said the one furthest to the right, "I will go first. What is your name?"
"Ignatz Milkbone," I lied: it was, of course, an anagram. The fact that not one of the Ten batted an eyelid reassured me: apparently it was possible to pull wool over their eyes. I can be quite naive, I'm afraid.
"Why are you wearing a false moustache?"
Damn! Maybe they weren't as credulous as I had thought.
"Er," I mumbled, "It was given to me by a friend as an, um, St Septimus' Day present. If I hadn't stuck it to my upper lip with industrial-strength adhesive, he'd have been heartbroken. Hm. I can see that you're not convinced. Shall I try again? Be full and frank, you said. The moustache is part of my Tip-Top Disguise Kit. Before setting out from home, I adopted a variety of devices designed to conceal my true identity."
Feeling rather foolish, I detached the moustache, removed the wads of cotton wool which I had wedged inside my mouth to puff out my cheeks, and took off the clear-glass spectacles set in violent crimson frames which I had been wearing since I set out on my adventure. Scarcely had I done so than the third question was rapped at me.
"Have you ever read The Dictionary of Stains by Walter Mad?"
There was no need to think up a pack of lies this time. I had never even heard of the book.
"During your journey here, on the Thursday night when you camped on a knoll next to the Great Frightening River, our special agent went through your pockets. Among the items which he has brought to our attention is a commemorative postage stamp depicting the captain of the winning team in the 1904 Hooting Yard Water-Tennis Championship. The cancellation is rather smudged. We believe that the stamp is one of a set belonging to a client of ours. Would you care to tell us how it came into your possession?"
"Certainly," I replied, eager to please. "It is a stamp I have always treasured. It was given to me by a school-friend. He was lanky, and covered in boils. His name is [forgotten, alas!], and I believe he is the nephew of the philatelist Istvan Plunkett."
I was rather pleased with my reply. It was honest, for one thing, and it contained little details which I hoped would ingratiate me with my questioners. They did not stir: I might as well have been prating in a foreign tongue.
"The fifth question is not, strictly speaking, a question at all. It is more in the way of a command. Tell us everything you know about Istvan Plunkett."
"Oh, I could go on for hours," I replied, "I have read, what, three or four biographies of that towering figure."
"Tell us everything you know," the speaker repeated.
I was not exaggerating when I said I could go on for hours. By the time I had reached the exciting story of Plunkett's trip to Iceland when he was seventeen, the thug had dozed off. The Turquoise Badge Ten were surprised, I think, at the breadth of my erudition. I could not have done better had I been Plunkett himself. I knew all about the blotting paper scandal, the woodland hike which ended with the accidental death of Plunkett's mentor and champion, Father Pod, the rigours of his boating, the weft of his tunics, the grease on his sister's lantern: I went on and on, so much so that the thug had to be roused to fetch me a glass of water. Eventually, one of the Ten held up her hand and bid me cease.
"Wait, wait!" she cried, "This is most interesting, but I think we have heard enough for one day. Let us retire to our hammocks, and reconvene in the morning."
I had no idea what time it was: the special agent had pocketed my tin-and-titanium alarm clock. The Turquoise Badge Ten filed out of the room, and, at a prod from the thug's spear, I followed them. We passed down the twisting corridors to the Chamber of Hammocks, a lushly-carpeted room in which a dozen hammocks had been strung up in a neat row. I was guided to mine by the thug, but before I could clamber into it, one of the Ten held aloft a Vitus Bering Pennant and everyone else in the room stood to attention. I thought it best to ape them.
"Let us sing a sea shanty!" shouted the pennant-bearer, whereupon the lot of them, thug included, burst into song.
Yo ho ho! Land ahoy! Paint the deck with varnish!
We've been at sea for twenty years and we've run out of rum.
Picture our atrocious state: we are quite disgusting.
The captain's beard is caked with salt, his timbers have been shivered.
What a useless ship we've got! The wood is surely rotten.
The whole hulk stinks of mouldy meat and half the crew has scurvy.
We shall dock in half an hour, if they'll let us in.
If they won't, just you watch, we'll start our cannons roaring.
The harbourmaster's flying flags, not one of them's a white one.
One's got a plague warning writ upon it, and one's stained red for danger.
Yo ho ho! We'll sail on! There is no berth here for us.
We have no berth in any port, but what the hell, life is short,
We'll sail upon these ugly seas until we're stricken by disease,
Until each crewman's sickened and died, each corpse been hurled over the side,
And washed to shore on the high tide, and washed to shore on the high tide.
And with that, they all tumbled into their hammocks and started to snore. They made such a din that I couldn't be bothered to even try to sleep. Instead, I crept tippy-toes out of the room and scurried along the corridors until I found a cocoa-dispensing machine. I started to read the instructions, but they were so complicated that I gave up, and extricated a steaming hot plastic tumbler of cocoa by means of a few well-aimed kicks and a great deal of shaking and clattering.
Squatting on the floor, I reviewed the situation. The Turquoise Badge Ten, Walter Mad, and Istvan Plunkett: all of them were in some way connected with the purloined stamp collection. Fig-like, I leapt intuitively to a theory. Indefatigable collector that he was, I conjectured, Plunkett had an obsessive desire to own Mister Patch's pre-adhesive album: the Ten were charged with the task of obtaining it for him. They in turn employed Walter Mad as their agent. If this was the case, I was wasting my time - and possibly risking my life - by remaining at the HQ. I had to track down Plunkett, obviously. Draining my cocoa-tumbler, I got to my feet, and capered off down the gas-lit corridor to find the way out.
* a novel by frank key *