“Every day draws us nearer,” he told the struggling Irishman as Omally manhandled another half dozen weighty tomes into the study.
“You must surely have half the stock of the British Museum here by now,” said the perspiring John.
“I have almost all I need,” the Professor explained, “but I have another letter for you to post.”
“Talking of books,” said Omally, “I have loaned your Dimac training manual to Archroy.”
The Professor smiled briefly. “And what became of yours?”
“I never owned one,” said Omally, “it was a rumour put about by Pooley. It kept us out of fights.”
“Well, good luck to Archroy, he has suffered more than most over this affair. I hear that as well as losing his car, his magic beans and the use of his thumb, he was also unlucky enough to have had his arm broken and his head damaged by a lunatic in a Fair Isle jumper.”
Omally, who now no longer adopted that particular mode of dress, nodded painfully. “I am grateful that my companions at the Swan have been discreet over that particular matter and I must thank my good friend Jim for the permanent loan of his second suit.”
The Professor whistled through his teeth. “Two suits Pooley, a man of means indeed.”
Omally sipped at his drink thoughtfully and knotted his brow. “Will all this soon be over?” he asked. “Is there any end in sight?”
The Professor stood at the open French windows, the setting sun casting his elongated shadow back across the room. “Great forces are at work,” he said in a distant voice, “and as it is said, ‘The wheels of God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small’.”
If that was intended as an answer to Omally’s question the Irishman failed to understand it, but as the old man’s back was turned he took advantage of the fact and poured himself another very large scotch.
“Woosah!” An enormous scream and a startling figure clad in silk kimono, black trousers fastened tightly at the ankles and grimy plimsolls leapt from the allotment shed, clearing the five-foot bean poles in a single bound to descend with a sickening crash amongst a pile of upturned bell cloches.
“Damn it!” The figure stepped from the wreckage and straightened its wig, then, “Banzai!” The figure strutted forward, performed an amazing Kata and drove the fingers of his right hand back through the corrugated wall of his shed.
The figure was Archroy, and he was well on the way to mastering the secrets of the legendary Count Dante. The area around his shed was a mass of tangled wreckage, the wheelbarrow was in splinters and the watering can was an unrecognizable tangle of zinc.
Archroy strode forward upon elastic limbs and sought things to destroy. The Dimac manual lay open at a marked page labelled “The Art of the Iron Hand”.
“Aaaroo!” Archroy lept into the air and kicked the weathervane from the top of Omally’s shed, returning to the ground upon bouncing feet. He laughed loudly and the sound echoed over the empty dust bowl, bouncing from the Mission wall and disappearing over his head in the direction of the river. “Iron Hand,” he said, “I’ll show them.”
He had read the Dimac manual from cover to cover and learned it by heart. “The deadliest form of martial arts known to mankind,” it said, “whose brutal tearing, rending, maiming and mutilating techniques have for many years been known only to the high Lamas of Tibet, where in the snowy wastes of the Himalayas they have perfected the hidden art of Dimac.” Count Dante had scorned his sacred vow of silence, taken in the lofty halls of the Potala, never to reveal the secret science, and had brought his knowledge and skill back to the West where for a mere one dollar ninety-eight these maiming, disfiguring and crippling techniques could be made available to the simple layman. Archroy felt an undying gratitude to the black-masked Count, the Deadliest Man on Earth, who must surely be living a life of fear lest the secret emissaries from Lhasa catch him up.
Archroy cupped his hand into the Dark Eagle’s Claw posture and sent it hurtling through the padlocked door of Omally’s shed. The structure burst asunder, toppling to the ground in a mass of twisted wreckage and exposing the iron frame and sit-up-and-beg handlebars of Marchant.
“Luck indeed,” said Archroy, sniggering mercilessly. He lifted the old black bicycle from the ruins of the allotment hut and stood it against a heap of seed boxes which had escaped his violent attentions.
“You’ve had it coming for years,” he told Marchant. The bicycle regarded him with silent contempt. “It’s the river for you, my lad.” Marchant’s saddle squeaked nervously. “But first I am going to punish you.”
Archroy gripped the handlebars and wrenched them viciously to one side. “Remember the time you tripped me up outside the Swan?” Archroy raised his left foot to a point level with his own head, spun around on his right heel and drove it through Marchant’s back wheel, bursting out a dozen spokes which spiralled into the air to fall some twenty feet away.
Marchant now realized his dire predicament and began to ring his bell frantically. “Oh no you don’t.” Archroy fastened his iron grip about the offending chime and tore it free from its mountings. Crushing its thumb toggle, he flung it high over his shoulder.
The bell cruised upwards into the air and fell in a looping arc directly on to the head of John Omally, who was taking a short cut across the allotment en route to the post box on the corner of the Ealing Road.
“Ow! Oh! Ouch! Damn!” screamed Omally, clutching at his dented skull and hopping about it pain. He levelled his boot at what he thought must surely be a meteorite and his eyes fell upon the instantly recognizable if somewhat battered form of his own bicycle bell. Omally ceased his desperate hopping and cast his eyes about the allotment. It took hardly two seconds before his distended orbs fixed upon Archroy. The lad was carrying Marchant high and moving in the direction of the river.
Omally leapt upon his toes and legged it towards the would-be destroyer of his two-wheeled companion. “Hold up there!” he cried, and “Enough of that! Let loose that velocipede!”
Archroy heard the Irishman’s frenzied cries and released his grip. Marchant toppled to the dust in a tangle of flailing spokes. Omally bore down upon Archroy, his face set in grim determination, his fists clenched, and his tweed trouser-bottoms flapping about his ankles like the sails of a two-masted man-o-war. “What villainy is this?” he screamed as he drew near.
Archroy turned upon him. His hands performed a set of lightning moves which were accompanied by sounds not unlike a fleet of jumbo jets taking off. “Defend yourself as best you can,” said he.
Omally snatched up the broken shaft of a garden fork, and as the pupil of the legendary Count advanced upon him, a blur of whirling fists, he struck the scoundrel a thunderous blow across the top of the head.
Archroy sank to his knees, covering his head and moaning piteously. Omally raised his cudgel to finish the job. “No, no,” whimpered Archroy, “enough!”
Omally left him huddled in the foetal position and went over to survey the damage done to his trusty iron steed. “You’ll pay for this,” he said bitterly. “It’ll mean a new back wheel, chain set, bell and a respray.”
Archroy groaned dismally. “How did you manage to fell me with that damned stick?” he asked. “I’ve read the manual from cover to cover.”
Omally grinned. “I had a feeling that you were not being a hundred per cent honest with me when I lent it to you, so I only gave you volume one. Volume two is dedicated to the art of defence.”
“You bastard.”