‘So,’ said a voice suddenly, ‘you are a secret Mohammedan, are you, Omally?’ The Irishman rose to confront a grinning Jim Pooley. ‘Surely Mecca would be in the other direction?’
Omally dusted down his strides and gestured towards the gleaming symbol. ‘Now what would you make of that, lad?’ he asked.
Pooley gave the copper coloured image a quick perusal. ‘Something buried in the ground?’ he suggested.
Omally shook his head, although the thought had never crossed his mind.
‘Is it a bench mark then? I’ve always wondered what those lads look like.’
‘Not a bench mark, Jim.’
‘It is then perhaps some protective amulet carelessly discarded by some wandering magician?’ Although it seemed almost a possibility Omally gave that suggestion the old thumbs down. ‘All right, I give up, what is it?’
‘There you have me, but I will show you an interesting thing.’ Omally picked up Pooley’s spade, which was standing close at hand, raised it high above his head and drove it edgeways on towards the copper symbol with a murderous force. There was a sharp metallic clang as the spade’s head glanced against the image, cleared Pooley’s terrified face by the merest of inches and whistled off to land safely several plots away.
‘Sorry,’ said John, examining the stump of spade handle, ‘but you no doubt get my drift.’
‘You mean you cannot dig it out?’ Omally shook his head.
‘Right then.’ Pooley spat on his palms and rubbed them briskly together.
‘Before you start,’ said Omally, ‘be advised by me that it cannot be either erased, defaced or removed.’
Pooley, who had by now removed his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves, paused a moment and cocked his head on one side. ‘It has a familiar look to it,’ he said.
John nodded. ‘I thought that myself, the thing strikes a chord somewhere along the line.’
Pooley, who needed only a small excuse to avoid physical labour, slipped his jacket back on. He took out a biro and The Now Official Handbook of Allotment Golf.
‘Best mark it out of bounds,’ said Omally.
Pooley shook his head and handed him the book. ‘You’re good with your hands, John,’ he said, ‘make a sketch of it on the back. If such a symbol has ever existed, or even does so now, there is one man in Brentford who is bound to know what it is.’
‘Ah yes.’ Omally smiled broadly and took both book and Biro. ‘And that good man is, if I recall, never to be found without a decanter of five-year-old scotch very far from his elbow.’
‘Quite so,’ said Jim Pooley. ‘And as we walk we will speak of many things, of sporting debts and broken spades.’
‘And cabbages and camels,’ said John Omally.
8
Professor Slocombe sat at his study desk, surrounded by the ever-present clutter of dusty tomes. Behind him twin shafts of sunlight entered the tall French windows and glittered upon his mane of pure white hair, casting a gaunt shadow across the mountain of books on to the exquisite Persian carpet which pelted the floor with clusters of golden roses.
The Professor peered through his ivory-rimmed pince-nez and painstakingly annotated the crackling yellow pages of an ancient book, the Count of St Germaine’s treatise upon the transmutation of base metals and the improvement of diamonds. The similarities between his marginal jottings and the hand-inscribed text of the now legendary Count were such as would raise the eyebrows of many a seasoned graphologist.
Had it not been for the fact that the Count of St Germaine had cast his exaggerated shadow in the fashionable places of some three hundred years past, one would have been tempted to assume that both inscriptions were the product of a single hand, the Count’s text appearing only the work of a younger and more sprightly individual.
But even to suggest such a thing would be to trespass dangerously upon the shores of unreason, although it must be said that Old Pete, one of the Borough’s most notable octogenarians, was wont to recall that when he was naught but a tousle-haired sprog, with ringworm and rickets, the Professor was already a gentleman of great age.
Around and about the study, the musty showcases were crowded with a profusion of extraordinary objects, the tall bookshelves bulged with rare volumes and the carved tables stood heavily burdened with brass orreries and silver astrolabes. All these wonders hovered in the half-light, exhibits of a private museum born to the Professor’s esoteric taste. Golden, dusty motes hung in the sunlight shafts, and the room held a silence which was all its own.
Beyond the French windows, the wonderful garden bloomed throughout every season with a luxuriant display of exotic flora. But beyond the walls existed a changing world for which the Professor had very little time. He trod the boundaries of the Borough each day at sunrise, attended certain local functions, principally the yearly darts tournament at the Flying Swan, and accepted his role as oracle and ornamental hermit to the folk of Brentford.
Omally’s hobnails clattered across the cobbled stones of the Butts Estate, Pooley’s blakeys offering a light accompaniment, as the two marched purposefully forward.
‘No sign of the wandering camel trains then?’ asked Jim.
Omally shrugged. ‘Something had been giving Dave’s cabbage patch quite a seeing to,’ he said, ‘but I saw no footprints.’
‘Neville put the wee lad out, shortly after you’d gone.’
‘Good thing too, last thing we need is a camel hunt on the allotment.’
The two men rounded a corner and reached the Professor’s garden door. Here they paused a moment before pressing through. Neither man knew exactly why he did this; it was an unconscious action, as natural as blinking, or raising a pint glass to the lips. Omally pushed open the ever-unbolted door and he and Pooley entered the magical garden. The blooms swayed drowsily and enormous bees moved amongst them humming tunes which no man knew the words to.
The Professor turned not his head from his writing, but before his two visitors had come but a step or two towards the open French windows he called out gaily, ‘Good afternoon, John, Jim. You are some distance from your watering hole with yet half an hour’s drinking time left upon the Guinness clock.’
Pooley scrutinized his Piaget wristwatch, which had stopped. ‘We come upon business of the utmost import,’ he said, knowing well the Professor’s contempt for the mundane, ‘and seek your counsel.’
‘Enter then. You know where the decanter is.’
After a rather undignified rush and the equally tasteless spectacle of two grown men squeezing together through the open French windows Pooley and Omally availed themselves of the Professor’s hospitality. ‘You are looking well, sir,’ said Jim, now grinning up from a brimming shot-crystal tumbler. ‘Are you engaged upon anything interesting in the way of research at present?’
The old man closed his book and smiled up at Pooley. ‘The search for the philosopher’s stone,’ he said simply. ‘But what of you fellows? How goes the golfing?’
Omally brought his winning smile into prominence. ‘We pursue our sport as best we can, but the Council’s henchmen have little love for our technique.’
Professor Slocombe chuckled. ‘I have heard tell of your technique,’ he said, ‘and I suspect that your chances of membership to Gleneagles are pretty slight. I myself recently followed up some reports of UFO sightings above the allotments at night and my investigation disclosed a cache of luminously painted golf balls. Although your techniques are somewhat unorthodox, your enterprise is commendable.’ The old man rose from his desk and decanted himself a gold watch. ‘So,’ he said at length, ‘to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’
Pooley made free with a little polite coughing and drew out The Now Official Handbook of Allotment Golf which he handed to the Professor. The snow-capped ancient raised his bristling eyebrows into a Gothic arch. ‘If you seek an impartial judgement over some technicality of the game I will need time to study this document.’
‘No, no,’ said Jim, ‘on the back.’
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Professor Slocombe turned over the dog-eared exercise book and his dazzling facial archway elevated itself by another half inch. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you think to test me out, do you, Jim?’
Pooley shook his head vigorously. ‘No, sir,’ said he, to the accompaniment of much heart crossing. ‘No ruse here, I assure you. The thing has us rightly perplexed and that is a fact.’
‘As such it would,’ said Professor Slocombe. Crossing to one of the massive bookcases, the old man ran a slender finger, which terminated in a tiny girlish nail, along the leathern spines of a row of dusty-looking volumes. Selecting one, bound in a curious yellow hide and bearing a heraldic device and a Latin inscription, he bore it towards his cluttered desk. ‘Clear those Lemurian maps aside please, John,’ he said, ‘and Jim, if you could put that pickled homunculus over on the side table we shall have room to work.’
Pooley laboured without success to shift a small black book roughly the size of a cigarette packet, but clearly of somewhat greater weight. Nudging him aside, the Professor lifted it as if it were a feather and tossed it into one of the leather-backed armchairs. ‘Never try to move the books,’ he told Jim. ‘They are, you might say, protected.’
Jim shrugged hopelessly. He had known the Professor too long to doubt that he possessed certain talents which were somewhat above the everyday run of the mill.
‘Now,’ said the elder, spreading his book upon the partially cleared desk, ‘let us see what we shall see. You have brought me something of a poser this time, but I think I shall be able to satisfy your curiosity. This tome,’ he explained, fluttering his hands over the yellow volume, ‘is the sole remaining copy of a work by one of the great masters of, shall we say, hidden lore.’
‘We shall say it,’ said John, ‘and leave it at that.’
‘The author’s name was Cagliostro, and he dedicated his life, amongst other things, to the study of alchemic symbolism and in particular the runic ideogram.’
‘Aha,’ said Omally, ‘so it is a rune then, such I thought it to be.’
‘The first I’ve heard of it,’ sniffed Pooley.
‘It has the outward appearance of a rune,’ the Professor continued, ‘but it is a little more complex than that. Your true rune is simply a letter of the runic alphabet. Once one has mastered the system it is fairly easy to decipher the meaning. This, however, is an ideogram or ideograph, which is literally the graphic representation of an idea or ideas through the medium of symbolic characterization.’
‘As clear as mud,’ said Jim Pooley. ‘I should have expected little else.’
‘If you will bear with me for a while, I shall endeavour to make it clear to you.’ The Professor straightened his ivory-framed spectacles and settled himself down before his book. Pooley turned his empty glass between his fingers. ‘Feel at liberty to replenish it whenever you like, Jim,’ said the old man without looking up. The pendulum upon the great ormolu mantel clock swung slowly, dividing the day up, and the afternoon began to pass. The Professor sat at his desk, the great book spread before him, his pale, slim hand lightly tracing over the printed text.
Pooley wandered aimlessly about the study, marvelling at how it could be that the more closely he scrutinized the many books the more blurry and indecipherable their titles became. They were indeed, as the Professor put it, ‘protected’. At length he rubbed his eyes, shook his head in defeat, and sought other pursuits.
Omally, for his part, finished the decanter of five-year-old scotch and fell into what can accurately be described as a drunken stupor.
At very great length the mantel clock struck five. With opening time at the Swan drawing so perilously close, Pooley ventured to enquire as to whether the Professor was near to a solution.
‘Oh, sorry, Jim,’ said the old man, looking up, ‘I had quite forgotten you were here.’
Pooley curled his lip. It was obvious that the Professor was never to be denied his bit of gamesmanship. ‘You have deciphered the symbol then?’
‘Why yes, of course. Perhaps you would care to awaken your companion.’
Pooley poked a bespittled finger into the sleeper’s ear and Omally awoke with a start.
‘Now then,’ said Professor Slocombe, closing his book and leaning back in his chair. ‘Your symbol is not without interest. It combines two runic characters and an enclosing alchemic symbol. I can tell you what it says, but as to what it means, I confess that at present I am able to offer little in the way of exactitude.’
‘We will settle for what it says, then,’ said Jim.
‘All right.’ Professor Slocombe held up Omally’s sketch, and traced the lines of the symbol as he spoke. ‘We have here the number ten, here the number five and here enclosing all the alchemic C.’
‘A five, a ten and a letter C,’ said Jim. ‘I do not get it.’
‘Of course you don’t, it is an ideogram: the expression of an idea, if I might be allowed to interpret loosely?’
The two men nodded. ‘It says, I am “C” the fifth of the ten.’
The two men shook their heads. ‘So what does that mean?’ asked Omally.
‘Search me,’ said Professor Slocombe. ‘Was there anything else?’ Pooley and Omally stared at each other in bewilderment. This was quite unlike the Professor Slocombe they knew. No questions about where the symbol was found, no long and inexplicable monologues upon its history or purpose, in fact the big goodbye.
‘There was one other thing,’ said the rattled Omally, drawing a crumpled cabbage leaf from his pocket. ‘If it is not too much trouble, I wonder if you would be kind enough to settle a small dispute. Would you enlighten us as to what species of voracious quadruped could have wrought this destruction upon Small Dave’s cabbage patch?’
‘His Pringlea antiscorbutica?
‘Exactly.’ Omally handed the Professor the ruined leaf.
Professor Slocombe swivelled in his chair and held the leaf up to the light, examining it through the lens of a horn-handled magnifying glass. ‘Flattened canines, prominent incisors, indicative of the herbivore, by the size and shape I should say that it was obvious.’ Swinging back suddenly to Omally he flung him the leaf. ‘I have no idea whatever as to how you accomplished that one,’ he said. ‘I would have said that you acquired a couple of jawbones from Gunnersbury Park Museum but for the saliva stains and the distinctive cross-hatching marks of mastication.’
‘So you know what it was then?’
‘Of course, it is Camelus bactrianus, the common Egyptian Camel.’
There was something very very odd about Camelus bactrianus, the common Egyptian Camel. Norman squatted on his haunches in his rented lock-up garage upon the Butts Estate and stared up at the brute. There was definitely something very very odd about it. Certainly it was a camel far from home and had been conveyed into its present locale by means which were totally inexplicable, even to the best educated camel this side of the Sahara, but this did not explain its overwhelming oddness. Norman dug a finger into his nose and ruminated upon exactly what that very very oddness might be.
Very shortly it struck him with all the severity of a well-aimed half-brick. When he had been leading the thing away to his secret hideout, it had occurred to him at the time just how easy it had been to move. And he recalled that although he, an eight-stone weakling of the pre-Atlas-course persuasion, had left distinctive tracks, the camel, a beasty of eminently greater bulk, had left not a mark.
And now, there could be little doubt about it, the camel’s feet no longer reached the ground. In fact, the creature was floating in open defiance of all the accepted laws of gravity, some eighteen inches above the deck.
‘Now that’s what I would call odd,’ said Norman, startling the hovering ship of the desert and causing it to break wind loudly - a thing which, in itself, might be tolerable in the sand-blown reaches of the Sahara, but which was no laughing matter hi an eight-by-twelve lock-up garage. ‘Ye gods,’ mumbled Norman, covering his nose with a soot-stained pullover sleeve.
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sp; It was now that he noticed yet another untoward feature about the animal, which, had it been the property of the now legendary P.T. Barnum, would no doubt have earned that great showman a fortune rivalling that of Croesus himself: the camel had the appearance of being not quite in focus. Although Norman screwed up his eyes and viewed it from a variety of angles, the zero gravity quadruped remained a mite indistinct and somewhat fuzzy about the edges.
Norman took out an unpaid milk bill and scrawled a couple of dubious equations upon its rear. Weight being the all-important factor of his experiment, it was obvious that his calculations regarding molecular transfer were slightly at fault. He rose from his uncomfortable posture and, the air having cleared a little, picked up a clump of wisely commandeered cabbage leaves and offered them to the camel, now firmly lodged in the rafters. The thing, however, declined this savoury morsel and set up a plaintive crying which sent chills up the back of the scientific shopkeeper.
‘Ssh . . . ssh, be quiets, damn yous,’ whistled Norman, flapping his arms and searching desperately about for the wherewithal to silence the moaning creature. Something drastic would have to be done, of that there was no doubt. This camel, although living proof of his experiment’s success, was also damning evidence against him, and its disclosure to the public at such a time, when he stood poised on the very threshold of a major breakthrough, could only spell doom to his plans in dirty big red letters.
Norman groaned plurally. That must not be allowed to happen. He had had run-ins with the popular press before, and he knew full well the dire consequences. Some way or other he would have to dispose of his hovering charge. Perhaps he could merely await nightfall then drag it outside and allow it to float away upon the wind. Norman shuddered, with his luck the camel would most likely rise to a point just beyond reach and hang there for all the world to see. Or far worse than that, it might sweep upwards into an aircraft’s flight-path and cause a major disaster. These thoughts brought no consolation to the worried man.