Scruffy - A Diversion (25 page)

Vaguely through his somewhat fume-invaded mind there passed recollections of instructions, warnings, a contraption of strings, straps, and slings and rubber bands, and white powder in an envelope, leather gloves, Top Secret, hush-hush, and “For God’s sake, old man, don’t fail us.”

The gloves, he suddenly remembered, were back in the aeroplane, some ten miles off, but the envelope with the knock-out powder which would enable him to place Ramona in her box was in the inside breast pocket of his tunic, and he could feel it crackling there.

Señor Irun came up and said, “Here, what’s this, Howard? You are looking serious? This is not the time for serious! Gay-gay-gay! Always gay! You have make me the best party. Come, we weel have a dreenk of Black and Whites together and then you will laugh again.”

But now that memory had returned Cranch was not to be put off. He said, “No, no, old boy, it isn’t that easy. We’ve got a problem on our hands. You remember that little box I brought? We’ve got to get Ramona into it so she won’t get hurt.” He produced the envelope with the powder and said, “They gave me this to quiet her down—but how the devil do we get it inside her?”

The Señor who, like Cranch, gave no outward sign of the amount of liquor he had consumed, found himself equally baffled by the problem, but knew one ready step to solution. He said, “We weel go have a drink, and perhaps these will give us idea.” He put his fingers to his mouth and emitted a shrill whistle, whereupon Ramona came running and hopping from wherever she had been and leaped on to his shoulder.

They went up to the Señor’s bedroom, where the case of Scotch had been stashed, since it would have been fatal to let the thirsty mob at it in one fell swoop, and they had been doling it out a bottle at a time. They poured themselves each a dollop and toasted one another.

Somehow a whiff of the spirit was wafted to Ramona, and she reached up a long, thin arm and begged for a sip. The Group Captain and the Spaniard exchanged glances as the penny dropped simultaneously for both of them. Not a word was spoken. Cranch produced the envelope with the powder, Señor Irun filled a fifth of a tumbler with Scotch whisky, the powder dissolved without a trace, leaving the liquid clear and amber-coloured. The Señor handed the potion to Ramona, who tossed it off like a debutante, sneezed, coughed, and then applauded violently, smacking her lips at the same time.

“There you are, my pretty,” said the Señor, “you will sleep now. Come, you shall sleep on my bed, for it is your last night here before you journey to Gibraltar to be a bride.”

He picked up the monkey and laid her on the silken coverlet of his bed, where she curled up with her hands over her face, as though to shield herself from the light.

“Come,” said Señor Irun, “she will be asleep in the morning when we will return and put her in the box, and you will fly away. But now there are still more hours left to be gay. When will you show us your tricks with streeng?”

As they left the room Cranch looked back over his shoulder. He had the impression that the fingers of the ape’s hands had opened, and that her golden-brown eyes looking through them were watching them depart. He could not quite catch the expression in them.

There was only one incident to mar the best of all parties: someone stole a bottle of the Scotch whisky, a breach of hospitality that Señor Irun would not have believed possible even from some of the town characters. But there was no doubt about it; when they returned to the bedroom for a fresh bottle, one was missing. Someone had found their cache. On the silken counterpane Ramona was sleeping like an angel, the potion having evidently knocked her for six in jig-time, as Major Bailey had predicted. A search of the room yielded no clues. Señor Irun then decided to put the little unpleasantness out of his mind entirely, and to prevent a repetition of it he and Cranch gathered up the remaining bottles and took them below. The pace and tempo of the party stepped up.

Eventually came the party’s end and the dawn. Unlike the song, Ramona was not “gawn” but still reposed on the silk coverlet, out like the well-known light. She was not only out, she was limp, and tight as they were themselves, the two men had no difficulty in inserting her into the intricate network of webbing that Major Bailey had devised for her security.

Now that he saw how it worked, the Group Captain was quite stiff with admiration for the ingenuity of his colleague. “Clever chap,” he kept muttering. “Damned clever chap! She’ll ride like a baby.” While Señor Irun kept repeating, “Well,” over and over.

He insisted upon driving the Group Captain to the air-strip himself in his special-bodied Fleetwood Cadillac, the back of which he first loaded with a parting gift of the last remaining bottle of Scotch, a case of champagne, a case of sherry, and half a dozen bottles of Fundador brandy of a superior type which was almost drinkable, for at some time during the morning he and Cranch had sworn blood brotherhood and eternal friendship, and the promise of another party when the war was concluded.

At the air-strip the Guardia Civil formed ranks, Ramona, slumbering still peacefully in her shock-proof crate, was placed next the pilot, where the whisky had been, after which the potables were stowed in a way that wouldn’t interfere with the balance of the Albatross or meet the eye of casual inspection.

The Group Captain and his host expended five minutes of
embrazios
, after which the flyer climbed into his seat, pushed the self-starter button, revved up his engine and took off.

Since flying was a gift as well as a profession with him, he aviated quite as well with his bloodstream full of alcohol, if not better. His landing on the Gibraltar air-strip before the anxious eyes of Tim Bailey, Major McPherson and Gunner Lovejoy was an absolute masterpiece—a fairy kiss of lightness. When he rolled to a stop the three men were at his side in a utility car. They shouted up to him: “Have you got her? Is she all right, sir? Was there any trouble? It’s O.K., isn’t it?”

Cranch was at first tempted to launch into a description of how O.K. everything had been, but then something warned him that considering the amount he had imbibed it might be just as well not to engender jealousy in the hearts of his inferiors in rank. Looking down from the officer of the bomber he merely said, “Tickety-boo, lads. Tickety-boo.” And then without realizing it added, “Well!”

They invaded his aircraft and tenderly lifted the crate containing Ramona and brought it to earth. Major Bailey raised the lid and peered at the ape safely suspended by his brilliant contraption. McPherson also glanced inside with a sigh of relief.

“Oh good, sir,” Tim said to the Group Captain, who by this time had climbed down out of the aircraft and stood leaning against it in what seemed to be a nonchalant pose but actually expressed a need for support. “Splendid! It all worked out just as I said. She’s still asleep.”

Into this tender scene of mission accomplished and congratulations cut the harsh voice of Gunner Lovejoy, who was feeling about the same as the Group Captain, having had to stay up all night with the two officers waiting for the aircraft, without recourse to Guinness and lime juice. “Asleep!—my eye and Betty Martin,” he rasped, “she’s dead. She’s deader than Kelcy’s you-know-what,” a phrase he had learned from some American. “I’d say she’s been dead for a couple of hours.”

The cries of anguish and dismay that rose from the throats of the four men were sincere: “What?— Oh, no!— Oh, I say, not dead?”

His heart sinking and his conscience already saddened by the necessity for some thumping lies, the Group Captain came over and looked into the box. “Why, the little rascal was alive and kicking when I put her in this morning,” he said. “We had the devil’s own time. Here—you can see the print of her teeth in my thumb. Oh well—it’s worn off by now.” Then, and he hated to do this to a junior officer who was probably not a bad chap, he said, looking at Tim Bailey, “It’s that confounded contraption of yours strangled her to death, I’ll wager. She was just as gentle—I could have brought her over sitting on my shoulder. That’s what did it, that blasted net of yours. Well, sorry, boys. I’m for some shut-eye.” He hoisted his parachute over his shoulder and marched off, leaving young Major Bailey staring aghast into the box at the death-trap he had set for this much-needed female.

It was to Cranch’s credit that he felt like a thorough rotter—but after all, what else had there been to do? If there was any comfort in the situation, the monkey was dead and couldn’t talk, and nobody would ever find out about the party. The liquor he had brought with him could bide in the aircraft until nightfall, when he could safely remove it.

This complacent frame of mind lasted just thirty-six hours, when he returned to his office from an observation flight to find an official envelope from the Medical Officer on his desk addressed to himself. It was a carbon copy of an autopsy report on the body of the ape Ramona, conducted by Major Llewellyn Jones, R.A.M.C., and read in part:

“As a result of an autopsy conducted by me upon the body of a female of the species of African Macaque, or Barbary ape, delivered to me at 0900 hours on the 15th November by Major McPherson, Major Bailey, O.I.C. Apes, and Gunner Lovejoy, it is my conclusion that this specimen died of acute alcoholic poisoning.

“An analysis of the blood showed the presence of 13 per cent per c.c. of alcohol in the brain and circulatory system, of which 6 per cent may be considered a fatal dose.

“Analysis of some of the contents of the stomach indicated that this alcohol was Scotch-type whisky.

“Off the findings, I would deduce unofficially that this ape had consumed from three-quarters to four-fifths of a bottle of Scotch whisky before being embarked.

“All other indications of death negative.”

(Signed) Llewellyn Jones,
M.D., R.A.M.C., etc.

The Group Captain sat staring down at the document. He rested one finger on the side of his nose and said, “Whish,” but this time with no tiptoeing about the room, only with infinite sadness, to which he added an “Oh dear, oh dear”. He knew now what had become of the missing bottle of Scotch.

The final disaster took place a month after the return of Group Captain Cranch to the Rock with the remains of the female Macaque and sent the Majors Bailey, McPherson and Clyde and Gunner Lovejoy into an anxious and worried huddle in McPherson’s office which Clyde was using as a base.

Towards the end of August there had been another violent thunderstorm of shattering intensity, accompanied by torrential rain, high winds and destructive lightning which had worked considerable damage to installations on the Rock. On its heels instead of a warm, dry period, had followed a Levanter, the first and fatal harbinger of summer’s end, a cold damp cloud that clamped itself upon the up-jutting Rock and had maintained its grip for seventy-two hours, at the end of which time half of the inhabitants of the Rock were down with influenza, colds, bronchitis, or Gibraltar fever, and most of the ape pack were dead. It was all the more tragic because construction of the shelters had begun. If they had been ready for use practically all of the beasts would have survived.

“All right, Lovejoy,” Clyde said, “let’s have it.”

“There ain’t too much to ’ave,” Lovejoy replied. “It’s like Major Bailey said, there’s old Scruffy and four hapelets. Three of them sick. We might pull one through—”

“So to all intents and purposes,” suggested Major Clyde.

“There’s only old Scruff,” concluded the Gunner, “and if he wasn’t so tough we’d be at rock bottom and on the way to being cleaned out.”

“If we can keep the Germans from finding out—”

“We can keep them from knowing,” Major Clyde said, “but not from guessing. I could write the next German broadcast for you: ‘As a result of the severe electrical storm followed by a dangerous Levanter, further deaths have occurred in the ranks of the Barbary apes located on Gibraltar, diminishing the pack to the point where panic is about to set in among the British stationed there,’ and so on and so on.”

“I suppose we ought to keep Scruffy under lock and key. But how can we when we haven’t even—”

“That’s just what we don’t do,” Clyde contradicted. “We are going to have to rely on Scruffy to show the flag for us—or rather show the monkey.”

It was Lovejoy who twigged first. “Spread him around town, eh sir?” he said.

“That’s it. We will have to take a chance. He’s tough and that’s a fact. The more places he’s seen—”

“He can do enough mischief by hisself for a whole pack of monkeys,” the Gunner observed.

“That’s the purpose of the exercise. We need a breather. Tim, what have you got to report?”

Tim produced a folder of correspondence. His expression was glum.

“I’ve cabled some and written others,” he said. “We’ve drawn nothing but blanks. Some moved away, some no have apes, several no reply at all, but most of them had ape but sold recently. It’s almost like a pattern developing.”

Major Clyde had his lank form wrapped around an office chair, and was regarding Tim quizzically. “Well, what did you expect?”

“Why I— Good Lord, Bill, you don’t mean—”

“Oh yes,” Clyde said. “They’ve been buying them up like stink. We have had chaps out. They’ve been scouring North Africa. The Germans are always ahead of us. Thorough bastards when they think they’re on to something. We’ve got lines out to trap some wild ones, but so far no go. They may even have some men up in the hills scaring them off. And anyway they wouldn’t do us much good for rebuilding the pack. You’ve said they want to be at least half domesticated before they’ll breed.”

“Particularly with old Scruff,” Tim said, “he’d be apt to kill a wild one.”

“In that case,” Major Clyde said, “I think I had better be off to London.” They all looked at him. Clyde said, “Whatever in the world anyone might want, the chances are that at least one of it can be found in London.”

Tim shook his head, “I doubt if you will turn one up in the Zoo. Not according to our records. We haven’t sent a female to England since 1924. Look here, Bill, maybe if I went to Africa—”

Major Clyde shook his head, “Nothing doing. The place for an O.I.C. Apes is with his apes, whether he’s got any or not. Look here, lads! Here’s the plot.” Major Clyde unwound himself from his chair and reached for a pencil and pad on which to doodle while he talked. “We’re in a damn bad spot and there’s no use our not admitting it. The Germans know we’ve lost the bulk of our apes and that it’s the kind of thing likely to put the wind up, but fortunately they don’t know how near the bottom of the barrel we are. And it’s up to us to keep them from finding out. That’s where you and Lovejoy come in, Tim. Everything normal on the Rock, food supplies go out to Prince Ferdinand’s Battery as usual, even if you have to eat it yourselves. Apes seen around town. Scruffy tears up the Chaplain’s garden. We’ll get the local rag to print another editorial about the apes fouling the water catchments, and Something Must Be Done About It. If the Jerries put a real hot spy in here, a chap who knows his onions as well as his apes, Mac will turn him up and land him in the cooler, so they’ll have to rely upon information which will be both inexpert and inaccurate. In the meantime I’ll beetle off to London—”