Had anyone been working on something like that? Should he look for that? Should he back away? Had any of his now dead men given him away? Would these two strange bodyguards with the deadly new machine come after him?
Would he have to face them himself? If so, with
79
what? But even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. He had counted on Moombasa's stupidity to finance one five-million-dollar score for the House of Wissex, and already the greedy dictator had paid for two. If two, why not more? And Wissex would keep squeezing the insolent turnip until he had drained every cent he could out of the dictator, and, in the process, had killed the two bodyguards. If indeed they were even alive at the moment.
So engrossed was the young Lord Wissex in his thoughts that he did not hear his uncle Pimsy hobble up the stone steps with his trusted poodle Nancy. He did things with that dog that the Wissexes did not talk about. No one interrupted Uncle Pimsy, however, because if he didn't have the poodle, he might have to go back to little boys and girls. And that always caused a ruckus of sorts.
Lord Pimsy was nationally known as the founder of Children Scouts, a Britannic approach to nature and youth. It had 3,000 members before anyone found out what Uncle Pimsy was doing at those camps that he provided for London's "city-bound waifs."
Quite a scandal but as British scandals went, it was good for only a week until some other lord was found with all those bodies he had promised to bury free. Hadn't buried them at all, but kept them in a freezer locker in his basement. Two hundred of Her Majesty's subjects had to be thawed, washed, reclothed, and buried. Bit of a mess.
"Problem, Neville?" harrumphed the old Lord Pimsy.
80
"Business," said Neville.
"Stee!. Good British steel. Honest steel. Steel."
"Thank you, Uncle," said Lord Neville.
"British steel. You can count on it."
"Yes, Uncle."
"Steel to the gut."
"Well, Uncle, it's a bit more complicated than that," said Lord Neville.
"Nothing is so complicated that good British steel can't cut through," said Uncle Pimsy.
"We've already used knife fighters and failed."
"Knife fighters?"
"Our trusty Nepalese Gurkhas."
"Wogs. Can't use wogs. Good British steel with English lads behind them. Will take the measure of any man."
"Yes, that is an option."
"Option? It's your course, boy. Charge."
"Yes, well, thank you, Uncle. How's Nancy?'
"Bit off her feed but a fetching lass, isn't she?"
Pimsy petted the poodle who wearily stood her ground as she was trained to do.
"Uncle Pimsy, we are up against a new machine that v/e can't fathom. It is a new age. There are no more kings to service, no more crowns in the West to assure. This is a new world. With new machines and new clients."
"Your wogs again, boy," said Uncle Pimsy.
"The wogs have the need and the money, Uncle. The industrialized world has its own in-house staff. They don't need us. If we went to Number 10 Downing Street and offered our services, they would laugh us out. Yes, wogs."
81
"Steel's good against wogs. But powder's better. The little yippie beasts run at the big bangs."
"Not anymore, Uncle. We can't survive murdering girl-friends for Henry VIII forever."
"That's a lie," said Pimsy heatedly. "We put away one embarrassment and our enemies have bruited it about for the past three centuries. And you believe them. You've always thought the worst of the Wissex. I don't mind telling you, I was against your taking over. Yes. There you have it. Out in the open. The truth."
'You've been telling me that every month for the past seven years, Uncle."
"Have I? Well, doesn't hurt to restate it."
"Yes, but we have grown rather wealthy in that time. And look. My hands are clean," said Neville. "I have never skulked in an alley or had people blazing at my backside as I ran from an open window."
"You demean the name of Wissex."
"You're not limping, Uncle, because someone didn't get a round off at you."
"Honorable wound," Uncle Pimsy sputtered. "On an honorable mission. Not like these things you have the house involved in now. Fleecing some towel-head with the brains of a porcupine. Frightful form, Neville. Mine was an honorable wound."
"And you got an honorable seven thousand pounds for it, and already this week, I've made ten million dollars for our House from that towel-head Moombasa as you call him. And now I have a problem with a machine that fires no projectile, yet crushes bones, is so portable that no traces of it exist, and can be worked by one of those wogs you
82
complain about and a white. That is what I have to wrestle with while you play with your doggy and talk of the old days."
"A wog?"
"Yes, wog," said Lord Wissex.
"What kind of wog?"
"Oriental."
"What kind of Oriental?" asked Uncle Pimsy.
"I don't know."
"What was he wearing?"