He swept his arms around, indicating the house, the grounds, everything. “All this, Mr. Spratt. How could I afford to let it go?” Spongg stared at him with a manic expression.
“That doesn’t explain how you’d get hold of Dumpty’s shares.”
As if on cue, the door opened behind Spongg. Lola Vavoom entered dressed in a sixties style catsuit. Jack looked around him, but he was still alone in the room; Randolph and Lola existed only in the reflection.
“Hello, Inspector dahling,” she cooed, threading an arm round Spongg’s waist. “I never liked the idea of a comeback, but for you I’d be willing to make an exception.”
She laughed as Jack looked at her in disbelief.
“You two…?”
“Yes, Inspector,” replied Lola. “Humpty and I were married; it wasn’t hard to persuade him—he adored me. I was to own thirty-eight percent of Spongg’s following my husband’s untimely death in the Zephyr, everyone catches verrucas with help from the Sacred Gonga, and before you can say Hallux valgus, Spongg’s is back on top!”
“Just through verrucas?”
“At first,” said Spongg. “Dr. Carbuncle was working on a corn serum to contaminate Britain’s water supply. Athlete’s-foot spore was to be introduced into the initial stages of sock manufacture. In under a year, Mr. Spratt, I could have bought out those sniveling dogs at Winsum and Loosum. Sold their company piecemeal as they were going to do to us and then fired all the executives after promising to take them on at increased salary—and then Lola and I could be married again!”
“Again?”
“Indeed,” Lola replied slowly, “it will be for the fifth time. Randolph was my third, seventh, tenth, fifteenth and soon my eighteenth husband. It’s an on-off sort of romance.”
They kissed aggressively on the lips.
“What about Willie Winkie? He saw you at Grimm’s Road?”
“I think we’ve talked enough,” said Randolph. “So it’s time for you and me to bid each other good-bye.”
“Why don’t we just call it au revoir?”
Randolph thought for a moment.
“No, let’s call it good-bye. My grandfather built a pneumatic railway that leads off beyond the perimeter of the grounds. There I have a Hornet Moth aircraft that will take Lola and myself to Europe. I have friends in Switzerland, and we will be in Geneva in time to hear of my own—and yours, of course—demise on the ten o’clock news. You, the house, that officer upstairs and unfortunately the Ffinkworths will be consumed by the detonation of this device.”
He opened a Tupperware container that had been lying on the table and took out a small triangular sandwich on a cardboard plate. It had a piece of foil on its two furthermost corners. Spongg connected each one by way of a crocodile clip to a battery and then in turn to a detonator stuck into six sticks of dynamite bundled together. He then laid a hair dryer on the table, pointed it towards the sandwich and set it to “hot.” The sandwich immediately started to curl, and Jack could understand the fiendish simplicity of the device. In a few minutes, the sandwich would curl up completely, the two corners would touch, set off the dynamite and—He shuddered.
“It’s a London and North East Railway garlic and lettuce special. They curl more than any others. We were approached in the sixties by the railways to find an anticurling agent. We developed one from our trench-foot remedies. It affected the taste, but that was not a primary consideration. This sandwich, Mr. Spratt, has not been treated. If you think this amount of dynamite won’t be enough, I have another ton of the stuff under the table. All that will be left of Castle Spongg will be a smoking hole in the ground.”
Spongg opened the door on his side of the reflection.
“Adieu!” he said with a cheery wave. “If it’s any consolation, I seriously underestimated you. I wouldn’t have dared try this with Friedland as head of the NCD. I thought you were just another plod. Oh, well, pip-pip!”
He and Lola walked out and closed the door quietly behind them.
“I’ve been underestimated before,” growled Jack under his breath.
He ran to the door and tried the handle, but it was no use—it had been firmly locked. He checked the chimney, but that was too small. Then he walked back to the mirror and stared as the reflection of sandwich curled some more. At the rate it was going, he had possibly five minutes—maybe less. He thought of yelling, but that might bring Mary and the others into the house, and that would be disastrous. He sighed, drew out a chair and sat down. He pulled off the vest, which had grown uncomfortable and was now redundant, and let it fall to the floor. He thought about Madeleine and the kids and regretted that he hadn’t been able to say good-bye. He’d miss Stevie’s birthday. All of them. He was just thinking of some way to leave a message for them that wouldn’t be destroyed when his eye fell upon a servant’s call button next to the marble fire-place. It was worth a try. After all, Ffinkworth was a gentleman’s gentleman, and he did say to call him if he needed anything. Jack ran to the wall and pressed it. Deep in the bowels of the house, a bell sounded, and less than thirty seconds later, Ffinkworth appeared through a trapdoor in the floor, which would not have seemed out of place on a stage. His reflection, Jack noted, did the same.
Ffinkworth brushed himself down and straightened his jacket. “Can I be of any assistance, sir?”
“I need to get out of this room.”
“Quite impossible, sir. The door is firmly locked—I made sure of it myself.”
“What about your trapdoor?”
“I’m afraid to say, sir, the mechanism for its operation is down below.”
Jack looked over at the sandwich. It was now almost completely curled up, only half an inch separating the two corners. He pointed at the mirror.
“Do you see that, Ffinkworth? On the table. It’s a bomb. If you don’t help me, we’ll all be blown to kingdom come. NOW, HOW DO I GET OUT OF THIS ROOM?”