“I find that his conversation has become a trifle dull of late,” said Neville.
“I think it might pay to hear him out.” Pooley thrust his way through the throng with a glass of water. The postman spied out his approach. “What’s that for?” he snapped. “Going to give me a blanket bath, are you?”
Jim coughed politely. “You are feeling a little better then? I thought perhaps you might like to discuss whatever is troubling you.”
“I should enjoy another scotch to steady myself.”
The crowd departed as one man; they had seen all this kind of stuff many many times before. The ruses and stratagems employed in the cause of the free drink were as numerous as they were varied. The cry of “Camels”, although unique in itself, did not seem particularly meritorious.
“But I saw them, I did, I did,” wailed Small Dave, as he watched the patrons’ hurried departure. “I swear.” He crossed himself above the heart. “See this wet, see this dry. Come back fellas, come back.”
No-one had noticed John Omally quietly slipping away. He had become a man sorely tried of late, what with vanishing Council men and everything. The idea of camels upon the allotment was not one which appealed to him in the slightest. He could almost hear the clicking of tourists’ Box Brownies and the flip-flopping of their beach- sandalled feet as they trampled over the golf course. It didn’t bear thinking about. If there were rogue camels wandering around the allotment, Omally determined that they should be removed as quickly as possible.
John jogged down Moby Dick Terrace and up towards the allotment gates. Here he halted. All seemed quiet enough. A soft wind gently wrinkled the long grass at the boundary fence. A starling or two pecked away at somebody’s recently sown seed and a small grey cat stretched luxuriously upon the roof of Pooley’s hut. Nothing unusual here, all peace and tranquillity.
Omally took a few tentative steps forward. He passed the first concealed tee-box and noted with satisfaction that all was as it should be. He crept stealthily in and out between the shanty town of corrugated huts, sometimes springing up and squinting around, eyes shaded like some Indian tracker.
Then a most obvious thought struck him: there were only two entrances to the allotment and any camel would logically have to pass either in or out of these. Therefore any camel would be bound to leave some kind of spoor which could surely be followed.
Omally dropped to his knees upon the path and sought camel prints. He then rose slowly to his feet and patted at the knees of his trousers. What on earth am I doing? he asked himself. Seeking camel tracks upon a Brentford allotment, he answered. Have I become bereft of my senses? He thought it better not to answer that one. And even if I saw a camel track, how would I recognize it as one?
This took a bit of thinking out, but it was eventually reasoned that a camel track would look like no other track Omally had yet seen upon the allotment, and thus be recognized.
Omally shrugged and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. He wandered slowly about, criss-crossing the pathway and keeping alert for anything untoward. He came very shortly upon the decimation of Small Dave’s pride and joy. Half-munched cabbages lay strewn in every direction. Something had certainly been having its fill of the tasty veg. Omally stooped to examine a leaf and found to his wonder large and irregular toothmarks upon it.
“So,” said he, “old Posty was not talking through his regulation headgear, something
He scanned the ground but could make out nothing besides very human-looking footprints covering the well- trodden pathway. Some of these led off towards the Butts Estate entrance, but Omally felt disinclined to follow them. His eyes had just alighted upon something rather more interesting. Slightly in front of Soap Distant’s padlocked shed, an image glowed faintly in the dirt. Omally strode over to it and peered down. He was certain the thing had not been there earlier.
The Irishman dropped once more to his hands and knees. It had an almost metallic quality to it, as if it had been wrought into the dirt in copper. But as to exactly what it was, that was another matter. Omally drew a tentative finger across its surface but the thing resisted his touch. He rose and raked his heel across it but the image remained inviolate.
John peered up into the sky. It wasn’t being projected from above, was it? No, that was nonsense. But surely it had to come off, you couldn’t print indelibly on dust. He scuffed at the ground with renewed vigour, raising a fine cloud of dust which slowly cleared to reveal the image glowing up once more, pristine and unscathed.
Omally stooped again and pressed his eye near to the thing. What was it? Obviously a symbol of some sort, or an insignia. There was a vaguely familiar look to it, as if it was something he had half glimpsed upon some occasion but never fully taken in. It had much of the rune about it also.
“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
“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.
