Stephen Barr - Best of the best detective stories - 25th anniversary collection

“Put out that lamp , Neely!” she said sharply. “Gasoline costs money! ”

“Yes, Granny,” the river pirate said obediently.

Denny the Dip stared in stupefaction at the sudden appearance of a steak sandwich’s most important ingredient. Then he stared at the winged visitor which had appeared a second after the steak. The winged visitor stared back — or, perhaps “glared” would be the mot juste — out of burning yellow eyes. “Cheest!” said Denny the Dip.

There had been a time when, so skillful was The Dip, that he had picked the pocket of a Police Commissioner while the latter was in the very act of greeting a Queen. (He had returned the wallet later, of course, via the mails, out of courtesy, and, of course, minus the money.) But Time with her winged Flight, and all that — age and its concomitant infirmities, much aggravated by a devotion to whatever Celtic demigod presides over the demijohn — had long rendered The Dip unfit for such professional gestures.

For some years now he had been the bane of the Mendicant Squad. His method was to approach lone ladies with the pitch that he was a leper, that they were not to come any nearer, but were to drop some money on the sidewalk for him. This, with squeaks of dismay, they usually did. But on one particular evening — this one, in fact — the lone lady he had approached turned out to be a retired medical missionary; she delivered a lecture on the relative merits of chaulmoogra oil and the sulfonamides in the treatment of Hansen’s Disease (“—not contagious in New York, and never was—”), expressed her doubts that The Dip suffered from anything worse than, say, ichthyosis; and the paper she gave him was neither Silver Certificate nor Federal Reserve Note, but the address of a dermatologist.

Her speech had lasted a good quarter of an hour, and was followed by some remarks on Justification Through Faith, the whole experience leaving Denny weak and shaken. He had just managed to totter to one of those benches which a benevolent municipality disposes at intervals along Central Park West, and sink down, when he was espied by the 22nd Baron and 11th Marquess aforesaid, Arthur Marmaduke et cetera, who was walking his dog, Guido.

The dog gave Denny a perfunctory sniff, and growled condescendingly. Denny, semisubliminally, identified it as a whippet, reidentified it as an Italian greyhound, looked up suddenly and whimpered, “Lord Grey and Gore?”

“Grue and Groole,” the dog’s master corrected him. “Who the juice are you?” The dog was small and whipcord-thin and marked with many scars. So was his master. The latter was wearing a threadbare but neat bush jacket, jodhpurs, veldt-schoen, a monocle, and a quasi-caracul cap of the sort which are sold three-for-two-rupees in the Thieves’ Bazaar at Peshawar. He scowled, peered through his monocled eye, which was keen and narrow, the other being wide and glassy.

“Cor flog the flaming crows!” he exclaimed. “Dennis! Haven’t seen you since I fingered that fat fool for you aboard the Leviathan in ’26. Or was it ’27? Demned parvenu must have had at least a thousand quid in his wallet, which you were supposed to divide with me fifty-fifty, but didn’t; eh?”

“Sixty-forty in my favor was the agreement,” Denny said feebly. “Have you got the price of a meal or a drink on yez, perchance?”

“Never spend money on food or drink,” said the Marquess primly. “Against my principles. Come along, come along,” he said, prodding The Dip with his swagger stick, “and I’ll supply you with scoff and wallop, you miserable swine.”

The Dip, noting the direction they were taking, expressed his doubt that he could make it through the Park.

“I don’t live through the Park, I live in the Park, mind your fat head, you bloody fool!” They had left the path and were proceeding — master and hound as smoothly as snakes, Denny rather less so — behind trees, up rocks, between bushes, under low-hanging boughs. And so came at last to the cave. “Liberty Hall!” said the Marquess. “After you, you miserable bog-oaf.”

A charcoal fire glowed in a tiny stove made from stones, mud, and three automobile license plates. A kettle hummed on it, a teapot sat beside it, in one corner was a bed of evergreen sprigs covered with a rather good Tientsin rug woven in the archaic two blues and a buff, and a Tibetan butter-lamp burned on a ledge. There was something else in the cave, something which lunged at Denny and made fierce noises.

“Cheest!” he cried. “A baby eagle!” And fell back.

“Don’t be a damned fool,” his host exclaimed pettishly. “It’s a fully grown falcon, by name Sauncepeur... There, my precious, there, my lovely. A comfit for you.” And he drew from one of his pockets what was either a large mouse or a small rat and offered it to the falcon. Sauncepeur swallowed it whole, “Just enough to whet your appetite, not enough to spoil the hunt. Come, my dearie. Come up, sweetheart, come up.”

The Marquess had donned a leather gauntlet and unleashed the bird from the perch. Sauncepeur mounted his wrist. Together they withdrew from the cave; the man muttered, the bird muttered back, a wrist was thrown up and out, there was a beating of wings, and the falconer returned alone, stripping off his gauntlet.

“Now for some whiskey... Hot water? Cold? Pity I’ve no melted yak butter to go with — one grew rather used to it after a bit in Tibet; cow butter is no good — got no body. What, straight? As you please.”

Over the drink the 11th Marquess of Grue and Groole filled in his visitor on his career since ’25 — or was it ’26? “Poached rhino in Kenya, but that’s all over now, y’know. What with the Blacks, the Arabs, and the East Injians, white man hasn’t got a prayer in that show — poaching, I mean. Ran the biggest fantan game in Macao for a while, but with the price opium’s got to, hardly worthwhile.

“Signed a contract to go find the Abominable Snowman, demned Sherpas deserted only thirty days out, said the air was too thin for their lungs that high up, if you please, la-de-da — left me short on supplies, so that when I finally found the blasted yeti , I had to eat it. No good without curry, you know, no good atall.

“Lost m’right eye about that time, or shortly after. Altercation with a Sikh in Amritsar. Got a glass one. Lid won’t close, muscle wonky, y’know. Natives in Portuguese East used to call me Bwan-a-Who-Sleeps-With-One-Eye-Waking; wouldn’t come within a hundred yards after I’d kipped down for the night.”

He paused to thrust a Sobranie black-and-gold into a malachite cigarette holder and lit it at the fire. With the dull red glow reflected in his monocle and glass eye, smoke suddenly jutting forth from both nostrils, and the (presumably) monkey skull he held in one hand for an ashtray as he sat cross-legged in the cave, the wicked Marquess looked very devilish indeed to the poor Dip, who shivered a bit, and surreptitiously took another peg of whiskey from the flask.

“No, no,” the Marquess went on, “to anyone used to concealing himself in Mau Mau, Pathan, and EOKA country, avoiding the attention of the police in Central Park is child’s play. Pity about the poor old Fakir of Ipi, but then, his heart always was a bit dicky. Still, they’ve let Jomo out of jail. As for Colonel Dighenes—”

And it was brought to the attention of the bewildered Dip that the Marquess had fought for , and not against, the Mau Maus, Pathans, EOKAs, et cetera. The nearest he came to explaining this was, “Always admired your Simon Girty chap, y’know. Pity people don’t scalp any more — here, give over that flask, you pig, before you drink it all. It’s a point of honor with me never to steal more than one day’s rations at a time.