The Camelot Caper (12 page)

The rope was there, still attached to the bole of a tree on the other side of the wall. Jess half expected to find something, or someone, else there; but the street was empty. The game was over for the evening. She was more confused than ever as to its purpose, and David grumpily refused to speculate. He pointed out, sharply, that they had missed dinner, and asked how long she thought he could go on like this, battling villains, without nourishment?

The first place they found was a Chinese
restaurant, and David led the way in with the air of a man who is in no mood for argument. The chop suey fascinated Jess. It didn't taste at all like the chop suey she had had in the States. But it was filling and hot, and it seemed to soothe David. The restaurant was equally soothing, being warm and crowded and dim. The dimmer the lights, the better, she felt; she had removed the cloak when they reached the High Street, and her poor suit was slightly out of press.

David finished his chop suey, ordered egg foo yung, ate it, and ordered chow mein. By that time his expression was slightly less grim; and when his eye fell on the heap of black material on the bench beside Jessica, he looked almost human.

“I'd forgotten that. Let's have a look at it.”

Held up in David's hand, the garment did not look particularly promising as a clue. It was black, made of some shiny cheap material, with a high collar.

“Looks like a stage costume,” David said. “Yes, there's a label. Wells. He bought this, or hired it, yesterday.”

“But why?”

“Can't imagine.” David shook the garment angrily, and then cocked his head. “Wait a sec. Did you hear something rustle?”

“The whole thing rustles. It looks like taffeta.”

“No, something else. Like paper. Wait, it's got a pocket.”

“Cloaks don't have pockets.”

“This one does. And…” David removed his hand. “There's something in the pocket.”

They spread the paper out on the table, and both heads bent over it.

“Regent Hotel, Bath,” Jess spelled out. She was reading upside down; by the time she had deciphered the larger letters of the heading, David had digested the body of the letter.

“Two single rooms booked for Friday night. That's two days from now. He must have shoved this into the pocket and forgotten about it. I can't believe it—are we going to have one chunk of good luck, for a change?”

“I don't suppose he expected to lose the cloak,” Jess said. “That's wonderful, David; it gives us time to do some planning. Hey—who's the letter addressed to?”

“Who do you think?” David folded the letter carefully and slipped it into his pocket. “I tell you, the lad ought to be on telly. It's addressed to a Mr. Arthur King.”

I
t was raining next morning. Jess groaned as from under heaped bedclothes she blinked sleepily at the windows, streaked drearily with raindrops. She sneezed experimentally and decided that she wasn't going to catch a cold after all. It was a miracle she hadn't, crawling around up to her chin in damp grass, plodding through puddles, drenched with rain every alternate day…. Then she remembered the letter which had mentioned Bath—but not until Friday. Perhaps David would let her spend the extra day here, in a nice warm bed. How heavenly…The rain on the window made a gentle pattering sound. She drifted off to sleep again.

The second time she was awakened, less pleasantly, by David's eruption into her room and by his cries of anguish.

“Do you know what those—those—”

“Never mind the epithets,” Jess croaked. She collapsed back onto her pillow, from which she
had sprung at David's entrance, expecting fire, flood or murder. “What have they done now? Left their hotel? But we know where they're going to be.”

“The motor's gone,” David said. He sat down on the foot of the bed and looked as if he were about to burst into tears.

“The motor of what? Oh, no—not the car? David, you must be kidding; they couldn't walk out of the place carrying an entire six-cylinder—or is it an eight-cylinder—”

“Not the whole thing. Just every part that could be detached. Or pulled out. Or ripped away. Or—”

“Well, that's shame. But can't it be fixed?”

“Oh, it can be
fixed
. Damn it, you don't understand; women never understand these things. It's like seeing your child mutilated—nose cut off, arms amputated—”

“Stop it, that's awful.” Jess sat up and circled her bent knees with her arms. She made sure David got a censored view of her upper parts, and was pleased to see that his dull eye brightened. “Cheer up, darling, we can follow them on foot. All over Glastonbury. In the rain.”

“They have left,” David said. “I checked on that as soon as I found out about the car.”

He was drenched, even to his hair, which
dripped pathetically onto his nose. Jess had an inner vision of David rushing pell-mell down the street, teeth bared, coatless and wild—seeking vengeance. No wonder he was frustrated.

“Poor David. But we know where they'll be tomorrow night. Cheer up, things aren't so bad. Why don't you change clothes, and then we'll have a nice big breakfast together?”

“Here?” David asked hopefully.

“Certainly not.” Jess pulled the blankets up to her chin. “I'll meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

Jess spent one of the loveliest days she had had yet—reading in bed, sleeping in bed, and just lying in bed doing nothing. David was busy snarling at garagemen; he would no more leave the car than he would have left the hospital when his dear old mother was undergoing an operation.

His efforts paid off. The car was repaired in record time, and by noon the next day they were in Bath. The weather was beautiful; a radiant sun beamed down on Aquae Sulis of the Romans.

The Romans have been gone for a long time. Bath is Regency, even now, and Jess adored it. She babbled of Beau Nash and Jane Austen and demanded to see Laura Place, where “our
cousins, Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret” had lived. David was learning her habits; he refused to stop and let her buy a guide to Bath, but he accepted without comment the rain of miscellaneous information she extracted from her general guidebook. As a result both of them were fairly happy, though their conversation might have sounded peculiar to an outsider.

“Beau Nash was the arbiter of society, whose dictates of amusements and polite behavior were slavishly obeyed.”

“If the Regent Hotel is largish, we can stay there.”

“He turned the city into a center of fashion. Everyone who was anyone went to Bath.”

“Incognito, of course. If you can invent a new passport number you may as well invent a new name. Any ideas?”

“Ladies and gentlemen began their day in the Pump Room, drinking in gossip along with the prescribed three glasses of the famous waters.”

“Helen Broderick? Josephine Dubois?”

“Sam Weller…”

“Sam? That's a man's name. Ermingard Wilberforce?”

“Catherine Morland and Miss Tilney…”

“That's not bad. Catherine Morland.”

It was perhaps just as well that Jess did not have to register as Miss Austen's heroine. The Regent Hotel was a charming old town house with an ornamental facade, but it could not have boasted more than six bedrooms, and David abandoned his first plan after one glance. The hotel had one advantage, however: Across the street there was a group of small shops, including a secondhand bookstore. After they had registered in a larger hotel some blocks away, David led the way back to the bookstore.

Jess generally approved of bookstores and was glad to see that David shared the mania. This one was especially pretty, being an old shop with the double bow windows characteristic of Bath's heyday. There were daffodils planted in boxes under each window.

“Bookshops, secondhand ones, are almost as good as pubs, for lookout points,” David explained happily. “The owners don't care how long people browse. We'll browse at the front, where we can look out the windows.”

He promptly disappeared into the rear of the shop and Jess, sighing, began to turn over a group of grubby volumes on a shelf marked “One Shilling.”

The books were about what one might expect
to find on sale for a shilling. Though the shop assistant appeared to be asleep at his desk, Jess soon became self-conscious and began reading one of the books, which she selected more or less at random, just to be doing something. A red-backed volume called
In Darkest India
, it was not a travel book, as she had thought, but a very lurid novel. By page 54 she was deeply engrossed in the activities of Lady Valerie and Captain Smythe-Wilkins.

Lady Valerie was being pursued around a harem by a lustful rajah who had kidnaped her (Jess's inner mind inqured, Harem? Rajah?—and was promptly shushed). His hot breath was on Lady Valerie's face when a hand fell on Jessica's shoulder. She clutched the book to her bosom with a good imitation of Lady Valerie's terrified gasp.

“It's a good thing I was watching,” David said mendaciously. “Why didn't you call me when they arrived?”

“Did they?”

“They must have come,” David pointed out, with irreproachable logic, “because there they go.”

“Oh. Both of them.”

“Yes. Shall we?”

“Wait a minute.” Jess fumbled in her purse
and approached the desk. It seemed a shame to waken the clerk, so she left the shilling by his hand.

“You didn't have to buy that.”

“I want to find out whether Captain Smythe-Wilkins will arrive in time.”

“In time for what?”

“Never mind, they're turning the corner. Let's hurry.”

They went down upper Church Street to Brock Street and around the Circus to Gay Street. On Milsom Street David had to take Jess firmly by the arm; she had come to a dead halt in front of a shop which might have been patronized by the immortal Jane herself. David's remarks on this occasion were pungent, and Jess forced herself to pay more attention to the quarry.

The villains were strolling, just like the tourists they always tried to ape. Jess was getting to know Cousin John's back quite well. Today he wore a dark-gray suit of irreproachable cut; he was bareheaded, and she felt sure that the brown locks were dyed, or tinted. His companion was half a head taller, but he slouched badly and his trousers were out of press. The crease in Cousin John's looked like a knife edge.

“They're heading for the Abbey,” David muttered. “Damn.”

“Why? I'd love to see the Abbey.”

“I'm getting very tired of fiascoes in and around churches.”

“You can't blame the churches for the fiascoes. But it is odd, the way they stick to the tourist places.”

For a change, their destination was not Bath Abbey, which Jess would have called cathedral if she hadn't dipped into her guidebook. Its lovely facade faced onto one of the most charming paved courtyards Jess had yet seen; the opposite side was an arcade opening onto a busy street, and the two long sides of the yard were lined with buildings out of the early nineteenth century. It was one of the tourist centers of town; both the ruins of the Roman baths and the famous Pump Room, as well as the Abbey, could be reached from the courtyard. The two familiar, dissimilar figures crossed the court and disappeared into the entrance of the Pump Room.

Later Jess realized that one reason why the adversaries had selected this spot was because they knew it would throw her, at least, completely off guard. Apart from its historic and literary associations, it was a beautiful room, long
and high, with a unique curved balcony at one end. The walls were tinted pale green, picked out with gold moldings on the capitals and pilasters between the high windows. There were red brocade drapes to match the red-figured carpet, and a huge crystal chandelier. The room was filled with little tables at which people were having tea, and a string trio played in the alcove under the balcony. A glass-enclosed bay on the side away from the windows held a complicated object which Jess recognized as the waters themselves, bubbling up in a many-spouted fountain.

David stopped in the doorway, his face a mixture of amusement and disbelief, his eyes intent on a table near the crimson-draped windows.

“Of all the gall!”

“They're having tea,” Jess said. “What's so wicked about that?”

“For twopence I'd join them.” David muttered; and then gulped. Cousin John had seen them. A smile of pleasure widened his mouth; he lifted one arm and waved vigorously.

David turned and looked around. There was a constant flow of tourists, in and out, but no one had responded to the greeting.

“He means us,” Jess said. Cousin John's wave
had turned into a beckoning gesture. He was nodding and beaming, and smirking and smiling as if he had just spotted two long-lost, rich relatives. “No—David! You can't—”

“Why not?” David's jaw squared in an expression that was oddly familiar. Jess identified it; the jaw of the hero of his most recent book, which she had perused during the leisurely day in Glastonbury, had been wont to square itself in just such a fashion.

“Why not?” she repeated indignantly. “
Timeo Danaos
…uh…” Even if her scanty high-school Latin hadn't failed, David probably would have paid no attention to the admirable warning conveyed in the quotation. He was already threading his way among the tables, and she followed, laden with foreboding.

Both men made the gesture of rising as she approached the table; but Algernon barely lifted his posterior from the chair, while Cousin John bounded airily to his feet and gave her a little bow.

“Marvelous to see you,” he exclaimed, pumping David's limp hand. “We were so afraid you'd be delayed. Where are you staying? Not the Regent, we were sorry to find; it's a delightful little place, you should have stopped there.”

The waitress arrived in the midst of this effu
sion and took Cousin John's order for another set of teas. He seated Jess with a flourish, and insisted that she take his cup. Algernon slid his cup toward David, who vigorously declined. His wary look brought a slight, unpleasant smile to Algernon's face. He took his cup back without comment and drank, long and ostentatiously.

Cousin John continued to burble, Algernon scowled, and David sat with his arms folded, trying to look menacing. Jess shrugged mentally and drank her tea. It was excellent tea.

David listened for five minutes to Cousin John's commentary on the beauties of Bath. During this time he consumed one eclair, one nut bun, and a sandwich. Fortified, he finally interrupted.

“Look here, it's time we had a showdown.”

“I do admire your grasp of American slang,” murmured Cousin John.

“Never mind that. What do you two want?”

The waitress arrived with the second order, and David assuaged his frustration with a second bun. He always ate in gulps; now, being quite angry, he barely chewed.

“I'd like a straight answer. Why are you following this lady?”

“Following her?” Cousin John thoughtfully sipped his tea. He put his cup in the saucer and
smiled disarmingly at David. “Dear boy, I had the opposite impression. Isn't she following us?”

“Who hit whom over whose head?” Jess demanded angrily. “Who dragged whom into whose car? Who tied who up—”

That doesn't come out quiet right,” Cousin John said critically. “Who tied up whom would perhaps—”

“Oh, stop talking like that! What do you want with me? It's possible, you know, that if you told me we might be able to make a deal.” Meeting the fixed, black stare of the second man, she added, “And why doesn't he ever talk?”

“Let's go,” said Algernon, rising, as if on cue.

“There, you see? You've hurt his feelings,” said Cousin John sadly. “I'm afraid there's no use trying to talk to him now.”

“Wait a second,” David said thickly, through a sandwich. “You can't just—”

“I'll try to persuade him,” Cousin John promised. “Perhaps in a day or two…But he's frightfully sensitive. Don't fret, we'll be in touch.”

“Sit down.” Jess caught David's sleeve. “It's no use, we can't chase them through the Pump Room. We haven't even paid for the tea!”

“Damnation.” David subsided, blinking. “I'm so angry I'm weak in the knees.”

“I know, he is maddening, isn't he? David, what was the point of all that?”

“Not to convey and information, certainly.”

“Searching our rooms again?”

“That must be dull for them; they've done it so often.”

“The car?”