The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes Page 18

  Ffellowes' voice shook me out of my paralysis, or, to use a better phrase, in its older and better meaning, Glamour. "This is Jim Parker, Love. You've heard me speak of him often. A good friend, remember?"

  His wife bowed her head in a way that was both casual and somehow condescending, and even almost disdainful. I was damn glad to be free of those strange, flowing eyes but found myself just a little bit irritated, both at that regal head movement and the failure to even try to shake hands. Grand Duchess meets loathsome peasant to whom she must be polite, was the thought that flickered through my brain at that point.

  The Brigadier either saw something he didn't like or used some ESP. One never knew what he was capable of or what he saw. "My dear Parker, my wife's a foreigner. Doesn't grip hands, you know. Just as bad as the British in that respect"

  Then for the first time, I heard her voice. Never had I heard anything like it before and what with my surprise, the wild evening and this very odd meeting, well, it was really one more shock!

  "I know very well, My Dear, who Mr. Parker is. He writes those tales for magazines. Those stories about you, he writes and then calls you by a name that is not yours in them, so that no one will ever know your real name or what your real family is." If it were possible to contemplate a very large cat's purr, mingled with a deep contralto, that would give one a vague idea. My own thought as she spoke conveyed my instant feeling: Lioness Diva; just those two words.

  Ffellowes (which he will remain, now and in the future) was not a bit embarrassed. He grinned at me and stepped back just a little, anticipating his wife's next move.

  She stepped forward, her right hand out now, and I instinctively shook it. It was as large as mine, with a smooth-palmed, tight-glove, as warm as flesh, though I could feel the edge of the furry backing. Those feelings came later for then I could only stare into the broad-cheeked face and the great, glowing eyes.

  "You two go on away now, Donald. Take Mr. Parker up to your club and tell him some other histories of your past that he can write about." With that, she nodded to me, her wide, full-lipped mouth pleasant but with no trace of a smile, turned on her heel and headed up the path. In seconds the cottage door of the fabulous little house had opened and shut behind her stately back. I was left with the Brigadier in the shadowed court, frankly struck dumb and trying as hard as I could to keep my mouth tight shut so that it wouldn't fall open and leave me gaping.

  The Brigadier's chuckle helped somewhat. "We'll take her at her word, Parker, Old fellow. Don't look so staggered. Few folk meet my Phaona but those who have were all a bit numbed by it Frankly, I am at times myself. She takes one that way and it makes no mind whether it's Manhattan or a remote hamlet in the woods." He turned and led me along the far side of the alley to where a recessed door stood open just enough to show it was a hidden garage. In three minutes we were out on the murky street in his beautiful old Lagonda and humming our way uptown.

  Before we had parked two blocks away from the club's front door, he said only one more thing.

  "I've known those printed stories of yours since the first one came out, Parker. Very good, too. As long as you kept my title and real name and rank out of 'em and scramble the dates and areas as you do so neatly, I haven't the slightest objection." His head turned and the blue eyes fixed on mine for just one second only. They were utterly cold and frozen. "You're a gentleman and a man of honor. Please remain so."

  It took a real effort to get out of the car but I managed it and in five minutes we were alone in a corner of the Club Library.

  The Brigadier called for hot coffee and when we'd been served he leaned back in his leather chair and looked at me with his old smile.

  "Parker, I'm going to tell you and you alone, the story of my wife. It should interest you, I think. And I, My dear fellow, will be most intrigued indeed to see how you deal with this tale in one of your charming romances." Again the deep chuckle.

  -

  COUNTER MOVE

  It was a windy March afternoon in the Club. I had got out of my office a trifle earlier than I should, simply out of restlessness. Maybe it was a sign of Spring but the gloomy, windy, cold city sure didn't look it.

  I wandered into the library with a drink, thinking I might find an entertaining foreign journal or something, just to kill an hour with. I found something better. Much better.

  The big room was empty except for one reading alcove where a small light illumined a bent-over shape I knew well and had missed for months.

  "Brigadier!" I let out a joyful yelp. "Where you been, Sir? We were afraid you'd gone abroad for good or something. How are you, anyway?"

  Brigadier Donald Ffellowes' cold, blue eyes took me in and I thought or maybe hoped, warmed a bit. His smooth reddish face had no lines but it never did and his short-cut, white hair was neatly combed as always. He had a pile of battered-looking books next to him and had one open on his lap which he'd just been leafing through.

  "Hullo, Parker. Nice to see you too. Just been havin' a dekko at some oldish stuff, mostly fiction here. I picked up a batch of things I wanted down in one of those caves on, where is it? Oh yes, 4th Ave. Take a look, My lad. Sort of thing I expect would interest you perhaps."

  By the desk lamp on the small table in the alcove, I could indeed see familiar names on the covers, though most of the tides were unknown to me. There was, for God's sake, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar! Next to Burroughs lay a Rider Haggard I'd never seen, titled Heu-Heu or the Monster. Finally, there was something by one McNeile, whom I didn't know, called Island of Terror. Just a collection of old time thrillers, that was all.

  The Brigadier smiled at the perplexity in my face, and shut the rather massive tome in his lap. He then held that one up for me to see the somewhat lurid jacket plainly. I read Abominable Snowmen; legend come to life.

  Ffellowes laughed gently. "It's all right, Parker. I'm not zany yet. Let's say I am doing a spot of research and using some rather odd sources for my digging at, eh?"

  Behind me, I heard movement and then before I could even turn, a cry or several cries of delight "He's back, you guys! The Brigadier's come back. Come on over, come on up and let's see what he's been doing. Parker's got to him but so can the rest. Come on!"

  I was happy to see that Mason Williams was not in the crowd. It was just the gang of four or five of the "regulars," the fans who would have walked fifty miles and back for a chance at one of Ffellowes' stories. Some were very important men, in finance, law and medicine but around the Brigadier they were a gang of eager kids, tongues hanging out, waiting, hoping, ready to beg, just anything, if only to hear one of his quietly-told tales of strange and lurid adventure. In his years in the service of the British Crown, the Brigadier had been damned near everywhere and it seemed, had been attached to every branch of the British Services or if not attached, then loaned to them, or maybe "it".

  "Hullo, hullo, Chaps. Nice to see you all again" was the greeting they got as they pulled up chairs and formed a circle around his bay. "Parker here was wonderin' what I was doin' with these books, which are the rankest kind of escape literature, eh? Well," he went on, "I was doing a bit of pseudo-research. Frankly, I was wondering if any of these authors had any real idea of what they were writing about, you know, any actual facts on which to base these bits of wild and wooly fiction."

  The others had all been looking as hard as they could at the books he had started to show me and now Westcott spoke up. He was a very top lawyer in one of the big firms, I think maybe Silliman & Cramwell, but I knew he had once been a very sharp D. A. as well and his question proved the point.

  "There must be some connecting link, I should think, Sir, between those old novels and your own life. Maybe that big book in your lap is another?"

  "Very quick, Mr. Westcott," smiled Ffellowes. "Good, shrewd thinking you attorneys have." Ffellowes never forgot a thing about anyone he'd ever met, no matter how minor it was. Now he looked at the last book again for a second, before continuing.

 
"Have any of you chaps read much of this sort of thing? This one," and he tapped the fat book about Abominable Snowmen, "is not fiction at all. The man who wrote it, who's now dead, was a scientist himself, though he had imagination. He was trying to gather all the legends from every place on the planet, plus any facts he could find, and make an amalgam. These creatures, these hairy, ape-like, primitive things, are reported from damn near every place on Earth. Did you fellows know that? They are not just glimpsed or rumored in the Himalayas. No indeed! This man Sanderson in this book I have has Russian reports, Chinese reports, African reports and South American sightings. Oh yes, and the most reportage of all comes from of all places, this country we are sitting in." There was a brief silence in the big room and the Fifth Ave. traffic outside provided the only sound. For several moments no one spoke.

  Then a man on the other side of the group, a new member of the club, said something. "Isn't there that thing out in California or maybe it was Oregon. They call it 'Bigfoot' and I think it has other names. All they find is footprints and they fake pictures and claim they took them of a real animal."

  "Quite possibly correct," said Ffellowes. "Another name out there is 'Sasquatch.' American Indian dialect, one supposes."

  "But Brigadier Ffellowes," said Westcott, "what has this idea of some actual ape thing in the woods, this, well this monkey version of Loch Ness or supposed dinosaurs alive, what has any of it got to do with those old novels you were reading? Didn't Burroughs write Tarzan and that man Haggard, King Solomon's Mines?"

  "Yes indeed to both," said Ffellowes. "But consider this. In Tarzan, there are tribes of intelligent giant apes, creatures which don't exist in reality. This novel of Rider Haggard's is called Heu-Heu or the Monster. Same thing again, intelligent, man-sized, ape things. This last one is by the chap who wrote those old detective thrillers about Bulldog Drummond. Stuff I grew up on, myself. But this one's about an island off South America, and guess what? On that remote, little islet lives a mob of nasty, giant apemen. D'you begin to see why I'm interested?"

  I seldom talk when the Brigadier's around but I had a great idea and I had to speak. "What about Conan Doyle's adventure novel, Brigadier? What about the tropical tribe of apemen in the Matto Grosso in The Lost World?" I felt I had made a score, had finally caught the Brigadier out in a bit of arcane and useless knowledge.

  He smiled gently. "My dear fellow, I know the book by heart. I used it long ago on this pursuit of the nonsensical." Seeing my face fall, he went on. "Not to feel badly though. That book may have started all the other ideas and I've had it on my own mind for years."

  He put all the books away on the side table and shoved that aside as well. "Sun's over the Yardarm, Gentlemen. Let's have a small dose of the usual medicine. Then, if you're interested at all, I'll tell you why I have such a personal interest in this problem."

  If we'd all been dogs, you could have heard the sound of panting and slavering, felt the eagerness and the electricity that his words had released. We are going to get a story, a Ffellowes story and the Brigadier never told the same one twice!

  After the club waiter had brought the tray of cocktails and then gone away, we all started sipping, smoking and waiting. Ffellowes, who was having a glass of ale, gave us all a thoughtful stare and then began.

  "Haven't been down that way in years. Any of you fellows know the little colony that used to be British Honduras? It's called Belize now but that was only the name of the capital and the one town of any size in the whole place then. Just a flyspeck colony of ours, which never paid for itself and which the neighboring country of Guatemala wanted. Still does I think, but it was never theirs or even really Spanish before them. It was settled by a bunch of ex- and not so ex-pirates and judicially run from Jamaica for a couple of centuries. Sole export was mahogany. No oil, no minerals, no nothing. Now that it's allegedly independent. I wonder how it supports itself? Just north of it is that Quintana Roo place of Mexico's. Currently a big resort area now with Can Cun and all that—" He took a sip of his ale and went on.

  "It was in '47 I was sent there. It was an odd sort of job but the big war was over and I did often get the odd ones. I was technically or officially under the Foreign Office, if anyone really cared.

  "It seems that during the war, there was a lot of murmur about the locals selling food and drummed petrol to German subs. Nothing ever came of it and I think that fellow Stevenson, the one now called Intrepid, had some of his folk there, checking up and keeping an eye on matters for the Crown and its allies. In fact, this author, that chap Sanderson once was one of 'em.

  "Well, it seems a new message had come out of the place and it was this message that got me sent there. The message itself was very odd. It was in an obsolete code form, addressed to a man in MI-6 who'd been dead for three years and it didn't come through any channels at all. What happened was this:

  "A local skipper of a coasting schooner had got the message. He, the skipper, was a Bayman, as they're called down there. A big black, and I mean big, because I saw the man later. These folk, the Baymen, are very loyal to the idea of being 'British.' They once helped fight a whole Spanish fleet off, back in the 18th Century. I think myself they're the descendants of runaway slaves from the islands or maybe Spanish territory, but they don't like mestizos or Latins of any sort much. They speak good, if jumbled, English, though most can get along in some Spanish too. They usually live by or near the sea and are fine swimmers, boatmen and water people. The remaining inhabitants of the country are simply a straggle of southern Mayans, Maya Indians that is, just like the same folk over the border in Mexico but poorer and more spread out. There are a couple of modest Mayan temples in the back country but nothing very grand, like the ones in Mexico. Don't think anyone from a university ever bothered to do much digging, though a few gave the area a looksee on occasion.

  "Well, this skipper, whose name was Ambrose Hooper, had come up the coast in his old piece of floating junk and did a lot of small-time trading as he came. He could have started in Panama for all I know. Many of them did and paid small attention to customs, port duties or any other regulation. The whole coast of Central America was like that once. His story was this:

  "One night, while at anchor off the Monkey River, down off the mangroves in the south of the colony, he heard someone swimming out to him from the local mangrove belt. He quietly roused the crew, which meant one son and two nephews and they got their cane knives ready. That's what they call machetes and they all wear them, or used to.

  "It was a dark, overcast night and they could see little or nothing. The sound of someone swimming and they had good ears was that of a man, not an animal, and they finally called out, asking who and what it was.

  "For answer, they got something thrown neatly at them, right into the old schooner, barely missing Captain Hooper's head. They ducked and waited but that was all. Except that in the following quiet they heard the same sound of someone swimming, only this time it was away, back to the hot, black shoreline, the steaming mangrove coast from which it had come in the first place. Slowly, it seemed to them, the sound faded into the fetid night, until once more only the hum of countless mosquitoes and sandflies was audible.

  "When they could hear nothing more, Captain Hooper used a flashlight and they looked for whatever had been thrown into their vessel. They found it finally in the bilges and it was a small package, tied with twine, and wrapped in a filthy scrap of oilskin, which had kept the interior almost completely dry. In it was a scruffy pack of crude papers of some kind, very coarse stuff with frayed edges. On the paper was writing, blurred and in some brownish, dark ink of some sort.

  "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 p
ackage 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."