Warren Murphy: Hostile Takeover

A mousy-haired woman with long yellow teeth and a faded housedress answered, her face peering around the door as if she'd been expecting the Grim Reaper. "Yes, what is it?"

"I'm looking for Sir Chizick."

"No Sir Chizicks hereabouts."

"Are you sure? I was told that Sir Quincy Chizick lived on this street.

Her face brightened. "Oh, Sir Chiswick. Yes, yes, come in. You have the right place."

The inner hall was dank with old wood and several hundred years of accumulated food odors. Remo noticed the phalanx of grandfather clocks as the woman called up the stairs, "Professor, you have a caller."

"He'll be just a mo," the woman assured Remo.

"You say 'Chizick' and the nameplate says 'Chiswick.' Which is it?"

"How does that little ditty go? 'You say "potato" and I say "potato." You say "tomato," and I say-' "

"Never mind," Remo said sourly. "I get it."

A querulous voice called down from the landing at the top of the stairs.

"Yes, what is it, Mrs. Burgoyne?"

"An American to see you, Lord Chiswick."

A head popped out of the doorway. "An American, you say? What about?"

"Why don't you ask me that?" Remo asked, mounting the stairs.

"And who are you?" demanded Sir Quincy Chiswick. He was a bookish man of indeterminate age, with his haired combed back like a 1930's movie star's. His funereal black gown made Remo wonder if the clock had stopped for him the day he graduated from college.

"Call me Remo. I'm here about the letters you've been sending to the British government."

Sir Quincy Chiswick perked up. "You have?" he said in delight. "At last! I had been wondering if the postal department had mislaid them. Come in, come in," he added, waving Remo in.

The room was what Remo imagined his grandmother's place might have looked like had he ever known his grandmother. It was neatly shabby, if vaguely effeminate. There was an electric heater in the much-painted-over fireplace, and one wall was all bookshelves.

"Don't mind the place," Sir Quincy rumbled. "The woman who does for me doesn't come until Saturday."

"Does what?" Remo asked, looking around.

The professor blinked. "My domestic," he said. Then, seeing Remo's expression go even more blank, added tartly, "My char."

" I only speak American."

"Oh, bother! Never mind. Sit down, sit down. Would you care for a cuppa tea?"

"No, thanks. Look, I don't have time to beat around the teapot. Are you the one responsible for this economic mess?"

"Dear me, no. It was a mess to start with."

"That doesn't answer my question," Remo said edgily.

"What is your question, dear boy?" the don asked.

"Are you the one who's been writing the chancellor of the checks?"

"Exchequer. A check is an instrument of payment."

"Spare me the classroom lectures. Are you him or not?"

"I am he. I trust all is proceeding satisfactorily."

"Are you crazy? Stock markets all over the world are disintegrating. "

"Really?" The thought apparently intrigued Sir Quincy Chiswick, because his eyes grew momentarily reflective.

"Don't you read the papers?"

"Dear me, no. Dreadful nuisance, those rags. Not one of them worth a bent copper anymore."

"Well, congratulations," Remo snapped. "You've just wrecked the world's economy, and before I snap your stuffy throat in two, I want to know if you can stop it."

"Stop it? Why should I do that?"

"Because the British economy is going down the tubes, along with everyone else's."

"It's taking the underground?" Sir Quincy asked, perplexed.

"I mean, down the john."

"Eh?"

"The loo! The loo!" Remo said in exasperation. "Everything's going down the loo. Do you understand that?"

"No need to shout, dear boy. Would you care for a scone? They're a trifle hard now, but still scrumptious, I think. "

"Why? Just tell me why you're doing this."

"Because I received the signal to put into effect the Grand Plan."

"Now we're getting somewhere," Remo said. "What Grand Plan?"

Sir Quincy blinked. "Why, King George's, of course."

"King George III!" Remo exclaimed.

"Ah, you know your history. Good. Yes, it was George III's idea. My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was entrusted to be the expediter of the plan. I, as his descendant, have had that glorious duty fall upon my shoulders. And frankly, at my age, I had all but given up that I would ever receive the signal."

"What signal?"

"Why, the signal to effect the Grand Plan, of course. What other signal is there?"

"Silly me," Remo said distractedly. "Of course, that signal. Who gave it to you, by the way?"

"The Duchess of York-indirectly."

"Isn't she the redhead with the freckles?"

"That's the one. Good chap. Yes, the duchess. Although they all had a hand in it, from the queen mother to the relatives in the Netherlands and elsewhere."

"The royal family is behind this?"

"I do not care for your tone of voice, my good man. Now, keep schtum and let me finish my story."

Remo stood up.

"Sorry. You've told me all I need to know. It's time to go bye-bye."

"Where are we going?"

"I'm going back to America. And you're going to the nearest boneyard. Sorry, old chap. But that's the biz."

Just then, Mrs. Burgoyne's voice called up from downstairs.

"Professor. Another caller. A doctor. Says his name is Smith."

"Smith?" Sir Quincy Chiswick said, blinking owlishly.

"Smith?" Remo said in disbelief.

Chapter 29

If it hadn't been an emergency, if the economy of the entire world had not hung in the balance, Dr. Harold W. Smith could never have justified it to himself.

But time was critical, and so after disembarking from the British Airways jet at Heathrow, Smith eschewed the cheaper Piccadilly Line tube and actually hailed one of the ubiquitous black London taxis that reminded him of what the British version of a mythical 1938-vintage Edsel might have been.

Smith directed the driver to take him to Victoria Station.

At Victoria Station he actually told the driver to keep the change. It was painful but necessary. He could not wait for change.

Smith paid five pounds, fifty pence for a day-return ticket to Oxford and was told that it would depart in five minutes. Smith had already known that. He had timed his transatlantic plane trip to arrive with enough time for him to catch that bus.

Smith sat in the upper deck of the CityLink bus, oblivious of the darkening British countryside as it rolled past him; his briefcase was open and he was monitoring the world economic situation via his portable computer.

In America, the Big Board was upticking, as small investors, attracted by the bargains of the century, returned to the market in droves. Activity among the pool of Crown investors had slowed to a trickle. As Smith watched, the last Crown stockholder stopped trading. Smith smiled thinly. Success.

Reuters was reporting the discovery of a long-forgotten eighteenth-century document in the dusty archives on the Public Records office on London's Chancery Lane. Details of the document were not being released; a joint statement from Buckingham Palace and Ten Downing Street was issued, repudiating it.

Smith frowned as he read this.

Too little, too late, he told himself.

In one corner of the screen was a phone number. It was the number of a house on St. John's Street in Oxford, which his computer had spat out after several agonizing hours of backtracking through the Mayflower Descendants bulletin board. As Smith had suspected, the trace had gone through several terminals throughout the U. S. to a relay point in Toronto and from there to London-and finally to Oxford.

Because the computer net operated through telephone lines, Smith was able to access the phone number. The telephone was registered to a Mrs. Alfred Burgoyne, at fifty St. John's Street. It was there, he knew, he would find the person who controlled Looncraft and the others.