“There was one other thing,” said the rattled Omally, drawing a crumpled cabbage leaf from his pocket.
“If it is not too much trouble, I wonder if you would be kind enough to settle a small dispute. Would you enlighten us as to what species of voracious quadruped could have wrought this destruction upon Small Dave’s cabbage patch?”
“His Pringlea antiscorbutica?”
“Exactly.” Omally handed the Professor the ruined leaf.
Professor Slocombe swivelled in his chair and held the leaf up to the light, examining it through the lens of a horn-handled magnifying glass. “Flattened canines, prominent incisors, indicative of the herbivore, by the size and shape I should say that it was obvious.” Swinging back suddenly to Omally he flung him the leaf. “I have no idea whatever as to how you accomplished that one,” he said. “I would have said that you acquired a couple of jawbones from Gunnersbury Park Museum but for the saliva stains and the distinctive cross-hatching marks of mastication.”
“So you know what it was then?”
“Of course, it is Camelus bactrianus, the common Egyptian Camel.”
There was something very very odd about Camelus bactrianus, the common Egyptian Camel. Norman squatted on his haunches in his rented garage upon the Butts Estate and stared up at the brute. There was definitely something very very odd about it. Certainly it was a camel far from home and had been called into its present existence by means which were totally inexplicable, even to the best educated camel this side of the Sahara, but this did not explain its overwhelming oddness. Norman dug a finger into his nose and ruminated upon exactly what that very very oddness might be.
Very shortly it struck him with all the severity of a well-aimed half-brick. When he had been leading the thing away to his secret hideout, it had occurred to him at the time just how easy it had been to move. And he recalled that although he, an eight-stone weakling of the pre-Atlas-course persuasion, had left distinctive tracks, the camel, a beasty of eminently greater bulk, had left not a mark.
And now, there could be little doubt about it, the camel’s feet no longer reached the ground. In fact, the creature was floating in open defiance of all the accepted laws of gravity, some eighteen inches above the deck.
“Now that’s what I would call odd,” said Norman, startling the hovering ship of the desert and causing it to break wind loudly – a thing which, in itself, might be tolerable in the sandblown reaches of the Sahara, but which was no laughing matter in an eight-by-twelve lock-up garage. “Ye gods,” mumbled Norman, covering his nose with a soot-stained pullover sleeve.
It was now that he noticed yet another untoward feature about the animal, which, had it been the property of the now legendary P.T. Barnum, would no doubt have earned that great showman a fortune rivalling that of Croesus himself: the camel had the appearance of being not quite in focus. Although Norman screwed up his eyes and viewed it from a variety of angles, the zero gravity quadruped remained a mite indistinct and somewhat fuzzy about the edges.
Norman took out an unpaid milk bill and scrawled a couple of dubious equations upon its rear. Weight being the all-important factor of his experiment, it was obvious that his calculations regarding molecular transfer were slightly at fault. He rose from his uncomfortable posture and, the air having cleared a little, picked up a clump of wisely commandeered cabbage leaves and offered them to the camel, now firmly lodged in the rafters. The thing, however, declined this savoury morsel and set up a plaintive crying which sent chills up the back of the scientific shopkeeper.
“Ssh… ssh, be quiets, damn yous,” whistled Norman, flapping his arms and searching desperately about for the wherewithal to silence the moaning creature. Something drastic would have to be done, of that there was no doubt. This camel, although living proof of his experiment’s success, was also damning evidence against him, and its disclosure to the public at such a time, when he stood poised on the very threshold of a major breakthrough, could only spell doom to his plans in dirty big red letters.
Norman groaned plurally. That must not be allowed to happen. He had had run-ins with the popular press before, and he knew full well the dire consequences. Some way or other he would have to dispose of his hovering charge. Perhaps he could merely await nightfall then drag it outside and allow it to float away upon the wind. Norman shuddered, with his luck the camel would most likely rise to a point just beyond reach and hang there for all the world to see. Or far worse than that, it might sweep upwards into an aircraft’s flight-path and cause a major disaster. These thoughts brought no consolation to the worried man.
The camel was still bewailing its lot in excessively loquacious terms and Norman, a man who was rapidly learning the true meaning of the word desperation, tore off his pullover and, having dragged the moaning beastie momentarily to ground level, stuffed the patchworked woolly over its head. A blessed silence descended upon the lockup, and Norman breathed a twin sigh of relief. Perhaps, he mused, with its obviously unstable molecular structure the camel might simply deteriorate to such a point that a slight draught would waft it away into nothingness.
This seemed a little cruel, as the camel was something of an unwilling victim of circumstance, and Norman was not by nature a cruel or callous man. But considering the eventual good which his great quest would bring to the people of Brentford, the shopkeeper considered the sacrifice to be a small and necessary one.
It will thank me for it in the end, he told himself. To die in so noble a cause. I shall see to it that a memorial is built, the tomb of the unknown camel. We might even organize some kind of yearly festival in its honour. Camel Day, perhaps? Hold it on Plough Monday, incorporate a few morris dancers in Egyptian garb and a maypole or two, make a day of it. Yes, the camel had played its part and it would not go unrewarded.
Anyway, thought Norman, if it doesn’t simply evaporate I can always speed the process up with a decent-sized weedkiller bomb.
9
Pooley and Omally sat at a secluded corner-table in the Flying Swan.
“I can’t understand the Professor,” said Jim. “Didn’t seem to be himself at all.”
Omally shook his head, “I don’t know,” he replied. “Appeared to me a clear case of keep-the-golfers-guessing. I suspect that he knows a good deal more than he was letting on to.”
“Not much ever gets by him. He certainly made short work of the cabbage leaf.”
Omally leant back in his seat and cast his arms wide. “But where are we?” he asked. “Nowhere at all! We have council men doing the impossible at their every opportunity, we have runic ideograms appearing magically upon the ground and camels working their way through the season’s produce. I don’t like any of it, it smacks to me of some great conspiracy to confound honest golfers and put them off their game.”
“I suspect that it goes a little deeper than that,” said Jim, “but I agree that it does nothing to enhance the play. Perhaps we should quit the allotment now. Move on to pastures new. There are several large bombsites down near the docks surrounded by high walls. I know of a secret entrance or two.”
“Never,” said Omally boldly. “I have had enough of running. If we do not make our stand now, the bastards will eventually drive us into the sea and I care little for the prospect of underwater golf.”
“Cork balls,” said Pooley.
“I beg your pardon?”