Марджери Аллингем - Mystery for Christmas and Other Stories

“So that’s it — you’re a Marxist-Leninist elf!” shouted Bigtoes.

“No!” said Crouchback sharply. “But I’ll use the Russians to achieve a better world. Who else could eliminate Acme Toy? Who else could limit world population to our rate of toy production? And they have agreed to that in writing, Bigtoes. Oh, I know the Russians are grownups too and just as corrupt as the rest of the grownups. But once the kids have had the plastic flushed out of their systems and are back on quality hand-crafted toys, I, Dirk Crouchback, the New Santa Claus, with the beautiful and beloved Carlotta Peachfuzz at my side as the New Mrs. Santa, will handle the Russians.”

“What about Brassbottom?” asked Bigtoes contemptuously.

“Brassbottom will be Assistant New Santa,” said Crouchback quickly, annoyed at the interruption. “Yes,” he continued, “the New Santa Claus will speak to the children of the world and tell them one thing: Don’t trust anyone over thirty inches tall. And that will be the dawning of a new era full of happy laughing children, where grownups will be irrelevant and just wither away!”

“You’re mad, Crouchback. I’m taking you in,” said Bigtoes.

“I’ll offer no resistance,” said Crouchback. “But five minutes after Santa fails to appear at his first pit stop, a special edition of The Midnight Elf will hit the streets announcing that he has been the victim of a conspiracy between Hardnoggin and the CIA. The same mob of angry elves that breaks into Security headquarters to tear Hardnoggin limb from limb will also free Dirk Crouchback and proclaim him their new leader. I’ve laid the groundwork well. A knowing smile here, an innuendo there, and now many elves inside SHAFT and out believe that on his return Santa intended to make me Director General.”

Crouchback smiled. “Ironically enough, I’d never have learned to be so devious if you Security people hadn’t fouled up your own plans and assigned me to a refrigerator in the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. Ever since they found a CIA listening device in their smoked sturgeon, the Russians had been keeping a sharp eye open. They nabbed me almost at once and flew me to Moscow in a diplomatic pouch. When they thought they had me brainwashed, they trained me in deviousness and other grownup revolutionary techniques. They thought they could use me, Bigtoes. But Dirk Crouchback is going to use them!”

Bigtoes wasn’t listening. Crouchback had just given him an idea — one chance in a thousand of saving Santa. He dived for the phone.

“We’re in luck,” said Charity, handing Bigtoes a file. “His name is Colin Tanglefoot, a stuffer in the Teddy Bear Section. Sentenced to a year in the cooler for setting another staffer’s beard on fire. Assigned to a refrigerator in the DEW Line station at Moose Landing. Sparks has got him on the intercom.”

Bigtoes took the microphone. “Tanglefoot, this is Bigtoes,” he said.

“Big deal,” said a grumpy voice with a head cold.

“Listen, Tanglefoot,” said Bigtoes, “in less than seven minutes Santa will be flying right over where you are. Warn the grownups not to shoot him down.”

“Tough,” said Tanglefoot petulantly. “You know, old Santa gave yours truly a pretty raw deal.”

“Six minutes, Tanglefoot.”

“Listen,” said Tanglefoot. “Old Valentine Woody is ho-ho-hoing around with that ‘jollier than thou’ attitude of his, see? So as a joke I tamp my pipe with the tip of his beard. It went up like a Christmas tree.”

“Tanglefoot—”

“Yours truly threw the bucket of water that saved his life,” said Tanglefoot. “I should have got a medal.”

“You’ll get your medal!” shouted Bigtoes. “Just save Santa.”

Tanglefoot sneezed four times. “Okay,” he said at last. “Do or die for Santa. I know the guy on duty — Myron Smith. He’s always in here raiding the cold cuts. But he’s not the kind that would believe a six-inch elf with a head cold.”

“Let me talk to him then,” said Bigtoes. “But move — you’ve got only four minutes.”

Tanglefoot signed off. Would the tiny elf win his race against the clock and avoid the fate of most elves who revealed themselves to grownups — being flattened with the first object that came to hand? And if he did, what would Bigtoes say to Smith? Grownups — suspicious, short of imagination, afraid — grownups were difficult enough to reason with under ideal circumstances. But what could you say to a grownup with his head stuck in a refrigerator?

An enormous squawk came out of the intercom, toppling Sparks over backward in his chair. “Hello there, Myron,” said Bigtoes as calmly as he could. “My name is Rory Bigtoes. I’m one of Santa’s little helpers.”

Silence. The hostile silence of a grownup thinking. “Yeah? Yeah?” said Smith at last. “How do I know this isn’t some Commie trick? You bug our icebox, you plant a little pinko squirt to feed me some garbage about Santa coming over and then, whammo, you slip the big one by us, nuclear warhead and all, winging its way into Heartland, U.S.A.”

“Myron,” pleaded Bigtoes. “We’re talking about Santa Claus, the one who always brought you and the other good little boys and girls toys at Christmas.”

“What’s he done for me lately?” said Smith unpleasantly. “And hey! I wrote him once asking for a Slugger Nolan Official Baseball Mitt. Do you know what I got?”

“An inflatable rubber duck,” said Bigtoes quickly.

Silence. The profound silence of a thunderstruck grownup. Smith’s voice had an amazed belief in it. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

Pit Stop Number One. A December cornfield in Iowa blazing with landing lights. As thousands of elfin eyes watched on their television screens, crews of elves in coveralls changed the runners on Santa’s sleigh, packed fresh toys aboard, and chipped the ice from the reindeer antlers. The camera panned to one side where Santa stood out of the wind, sipping on a hot buttered rum. As the camera dollied in on him, the jolly old man, his beard and eyebrows caked with frost, his cheeks as red as apples, broke into a ho-ho-ho and raised his glass in a toast.

Sitting before the television at Security headquarters, a smiling Director General Hardnoggin raised his thimble-mug of ale. “My Santa, right or wrong,” he said.

Security Chief Bigtoes raised his glass. He wanted to think of a new toast. Crouchback was under guard and Carlotta and Brassbottom had fled to the Underwood. But he wanted to remind the Director General that SHAFT and the desire for something better still remained. Was automation the answer? Would machines finally free the elves to handcraft toys again? Bigtoes didn’t know. He did know that times were changing. They would never be the same. He raised his glass, but the right words escaped him and he missed his turn.

Charity Nosegay raised her glass. “Yes, Virginia,” she said, using the popular abbreviation for another elf toast; “yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

Hardnoggin turned and looked at her with a smile. “You have a beautiful voice, Miss Nosegay,” he said. “Have you ever considered being in the talkies?”

“Christmas Eve,” Art Hippie was thinking to himself, “would be a good time for the murder.”

The thought was both timely and characteristic. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon of December 24, and though the murder would have got an eager welcome from Art Hippie any day at all, his disdainful attitude toward the prolonged hurly-burly of Christmas sentiment and shopping made that the best possible date for it. He did not actually turn up his nose at Christmas, for that would have been un-American; but as a New York cop not yet out of his twenties who had recently been made a precinct dick and had hung his uniform in the back of the closet of his furnished room, it had to be made clear, especially to himself, that he was good and tough. A cynical slant on Christmas was therefore imperative.