Flying Dutch

encampment. “It’s over!” he screamed. “Yippee! No more work! No more work!” He danced—literally danced— round the room, kicking things as he went.

“Look, Professor,” Vanderdecker said, “I’m delighted for you, of course, but could we just have a quick chat about my policy? Then you can dance about all you like, but…”

“The policy?” Montalban stopped dead, turned round and stared Vanderdecker in the face. “You can stuff your policy!” he squealed. “That’s it, you can stuff it! I don’t care any more, I’m free.”

Something rather improbable fell into place in Vanderdecker’s mind, like the tumblers of a combination lock. “Professor,” he said, “are you trying to tell me you don’t like being a scientist?”

“My dear fellow,” gibbered the Professor, “I hate it. I hate it, do you hear? It’s horrible. It stinks. I’ve always hated it, even when I was a boy and my mother said I was wasting my time composing madrigals and I should grow up and learn alchemy like my father. I’ve always hated it, and…and I’ve had to do it for five hundred years! My God,” said Montalban savagely, “you think you’re hard done by, do you, sailing round the world with nothing to do all day? You don’t know you’re born. Imagine, just imagine what I’ve had to put up with. I’d have changed places with you like a shot. Day after day after day in a foul, stinking laboratory, fiddling with sulphate of this and nitrate of that, doing equations and square roots and…and now I’m free. I don’t have to do it any more. No more electrons. No more law of the conservation of matter. No more Brownian motion. Dear God, Vanderdecker, you can’t imagine how thoroughly depressing it all was, the endless, endless difficulties, five hundred years of them—having to do it all myself; nobody—absolutely nobody—to help, all up to me, all that bloody, bloody work! I hate…work!”

“Oh good,” Vanderdecker said, calmly, “you won’t have to do that any more.”

“No,” said the Professor, quietly, grinning, “no, I won’t. I need a drink. Will you join me?”

“And the policy?” Vanderdecker said.

“Oh, sod the policy,” Montalban replied. “Now that that’s all done with, I don’t need the bank any more. Just so long as I never have to do another day’s work in my life, the bank can go bust for all I care and jolly good luck to it. Let someone else sort something out, just for once.”

“I know how you feel,” Vanderdecker said gently, “believe me.”

“Thirsty?”

Vanderdecker nodded. “That too. Look, I’ve just got to go and deal with something and then I’ll be right back.”

“You’d better hurry,” said the Professor, pouring whisky into a big glass, “because I’m not going to wait for you. Tea!” he sneered. “The devil with tea! I don’t have to keep a clear head any more, I can get as pissed as a mouse.”

“Rat.”

“Precisely, my dear fellow, as a rat. Hurry back!”

“I might just do that,” Vanderdecker said, and he ran off into the gardens again.

¦

Some time later a car—more than a car; the biggest Mercedes you ever saw—pulled up outside the front door. It was full of accountants.

Mr Gleeson got out. He rang the doorbell. After a long, long time a drunken man in a kilt answered it. In the background, someone was playing “My Very Good Friend The Milkman Says” on the harpsichord.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Miss Doland,” said Mr Gleeson.

The man in the kilt sniggered. “You’re not the only one,” he said. He was slurring his words slightly.

“Just get her,” said Mr Gleeson. As befits a high-rolling accountant, Mr Gleeson had authority and presence. He was used to being obeyed.

“Piss off,” said the man in the kilt, and slammed the door. Mr Gleeson was surprised. According to the latest charging-rate guidelines, it costs at least fifteen pounds plus VAT to slam a door in the face of an accountant of partner status. He rang the bell again.

“I said piss off,” said a voice through the letter-box.

Mr Gleeson muttered something in a low voice, and two other accountants rang the doorbell for him. This is known as the art of delegation.

Eventually the door opened again.

“Sorry about that. Can I help you?”

This time it was a man in a kilt with a beard. He seemed rational enough, and Mr Gleeson stepped forward. Far away in the distance, a nightingale sang.

“My name’s Gleeson,” he said. “Moss Berwick, accountants. Where’s Miss Doland?”

“She’s inside,” said the man with the beard, “but you don’t want to see her. You want to see me. My name’s Vanderdecker.”

For a moment, Mr Gleeson simply stood and stared. Then he pulled himself together. “We have to talk,” he said.

Vanderdecker shook his head. “Perhaps you may have to talk, I don’t know,” he said. “If it’s some sort of obsession you have, maybe a psychiatrist could help. I knew a man once…”

“Please,” said Mr Gleeson. “This is no time for flippancy. Have you any idea what is happening on the markets?”

“Heavy falls in jute futures?”

“We must talk,” said Mr Gleeson.

“We are talking,” Vanderdecker replied. Gleeson drew in a deep breath and started to walk past Vanderdecker into the house. But the Flying Dutchman put the palm of his hand on Mr Gleeson’s shirt front and shoved. There was a ripple of amazement among the other accountants. Vanderdecker smiled. “So what’s happening on the markets?” he said.

“Massive rises,” said Gleeson. “The situation has got completely out of hand. It is imperative that we…”

“Hold on a minute,” Vanderdecker said, and he stepped back into the hallway, called out, “Sebastian! Make him stop that bloody row, will you?” and turned to face Mr Gleeson again. Muted grumbling in the background, and the harpsichord music ceased.

“Sorry about that,” said the Flying Dutchman, “but I think you’ll find everything will be back to normal on your beloved markets in a few minutes. The Professor’s got completely ratted and he’s started playing things on the harpsichord, forgetting that it’s a computer too. You don’t understand a word of that, but what the hell, you’re only a glorified book-keeper. Clerks, we called them in my day. Used to shave the tops of their heads and talk Latin at you. I see you shave your head too, or is that just premature hair loss?”

“All right,” said Mr Gleeson, “that’s enough from you. Where is Miss…”

But before he could say any more, Vanderdecker had grabbed him by various parts of his clothing, lifted him off the ground and tossed him into a flower-bed.

“Now listen,” Vanderdecker said, “the lot of you. The phrase “under new management” springs immediately to mind; also, “the King is dead; long live the King.” If in future you wish to see Miss Doland, you will have to make an appointment. Miss Doland has left the accountancy profession and has gone into banking. She is now the proprietor of the First Lombard Bank.”

There was a very long silence—if the accountants had had their stopwatches running, about twelve hundred pounds worth, plus VAT—and then Mr Gleeson said, “You what?”

“Miss Doland,” Vanderdecker said, “has exchanged entitlements as sole beneficiary by assignment of what I believe you meatheads call the Vanderdecker Policy for a fifty-one per cent shareholding in Quicksilver Limited, which is—I hope I’m getting all this right, it’s not exactly my field, you know—which I believe is the holding company which owns the First Lombard Bank, Lombard Assurance, Lombard Unit Trusts plc, and all sorts of other money sort of things with the word Lombard in them. The remaining forty-nine per cent goes to me. We’ve just had a very pleasant half-hour with the previous owner signing stock transfer forms while drinking apple brandy and singing “Lilliburlero” in Dutch. If any of you people fancy dropping by at about eleven-thirty tomorrow morning, you can help out with the Capital Gains Tax. For now, though, you will kindly shove off before I set the cat on you. Goodnight.”

The door slammed again, and there was the sound of a chain going on. Mr Gleeson picked himself up,