The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists Part 8

'If the Pirate Captain had a theme, how do you think it would go?' said the albino pirate.

'Oh, it would be lilting,' said the pirate in green, 'but at the same time have drums and things, because you'd have to show his myriad depths.'

'This is definitely our most cultural adventure yet,' said the pirate with gout.

'Right, tell us what's going on, you rogue, or I'll slice your gizzard open,' said the Pirate Captain, deciding to take the more direct approach, and waggling his cutla.s.s at Wagner's wilful chin. 'Bear in mind that I don't even know what a gizzard is so it would be a pretty messy exercise while I tried to find out.' The Captain did his best piratical glower. 'We were discussing the subject earlier, and Marx still thinks this is all something to do with his beard; whereas I'm convinced you're his long-lost brother gone evil. So which is it?'

Wagner sighed. 'Please, Pirate Captain, I am an innocent party in all of this. You must believe me. There is something unnatural here. I am beset by a demon! Something not of this world.'

'Piffle!' exclaimed Marx. 'You're not scaring us off with ghost stories.'

Wagner looked miserably at his shoes. 'It all started some months ago,' he explained. 'I received a strange anonymous letter from somebody who claimed to be my biggest fan. He offered to become my benefactor. At first I was delighted. He asked for a private box at wherever we should be touring to, but nothing more. I thought it was maybe a little odd that he would only communicate by leaving me notes, but I didn't pay it too much mind I simply a.s.sumed he wanted to preserve his anonymity. But the notes became more and more demanding. He brought in his own staff. He wanted changes made to my work. The truth is, I've grown tired of goblins and magic swords. It all seems rather childish now. My real ambition is to write light-hearted comedies, ones where people fall out of cupboards and vicars are always coming round for tea at awkward moments. But he was having none of it. And I fear that now my whole opera is being used for devilish purposes.'

'So you've never even seen this benefactor of yours?'

'Just once. But it was dark.' Wagner looked momentarily terrified. 'And he had such a countenance as I cannot describe.'

'A countenance like a wolf?' suggested Marx.

'No, not really like a wolf.'

'A countenance like a zombie?' suggested Jennifer.

'No, not much like a zombie either.'

'A countenance like a fish?' suggested the Pirate Captain.

'Well, shiny like a fish. So, yes, that's probably closest. But bigger, a veritable giant. And shrouded in smoke, with the glowing eyes of a demon. That's not just me using poetic language, he really looked like that.'

They stopped outside the entrance to an opera box. 'Here it is,' said Wagner, dabbing some sweat from his temple with a handkerchief. 'The phantom's secret box.'

'You know,' said the Captain, 'I keep a box in my office onboard the pirate boat. I wrote "Top Secret!" on the side, and I warn the men to never go near it. In actual fact, all that's in the thing is a pepper pot I made at school and a couple of nice pebbles I found on Brighton beach. But it drives the lads crazy. This glowing-eyed demon fellow is probably up to the same thing, but on a slightly bigger scale. Trying to give himself an enigmatic air of mystery.'

'I suppose that might be all there is to it,' said Wagner doubtfully. He looked at his pocket watch and gasped. 'I must return to the performance, or he will know something is amiss.' He cast a desperate gaze at the Pirate Captain. 'Do you think you can rid me of this demon?'

'Well, as something of an expert on this kind of phenomena, I have to say it all depends on the type of demon,' said the Captain, with a shrug. 'For instance, if it turns out that the opera house was built on the sight of an old Indian burial ground, then that could spell trouble. They're the worst kind of ghostly phantasm, Red Indians, because when they kill you they don't let any part of your anatomy go to waste, on account of them caring so much about their environment. I don't fancy eldritch spirits using my hands as bookends or something. But we'll do our best.'

Wagner shook his hand gratefully, bowed to Marx and Jennifer and then hared off down the corridor.

The trio crept inside. It was quite cluttered for an opera box there was a wardrobe, and a table, and piles of books, as if somebody very untidy had been living there. It certainly lacked a woman's touch. Some flickering candles cast spooky shadows across the walls, which were made even more spooky by the Pirate Captain doing shadow shapes of dinosaurs with his hands.

'That's really not helping,' said Jennifer.

'Sorry. Bit on the creepy side, all this.'

'You don't actually believe the culprit to be some kind of beast from the netherworld?' asked Marx. 'It's balderdash. Superst.i.tious mumbo-jumbo. There's no such thing as giant glowering-eyed demons. What Wagner saw was probably just a trick of the light, or a weather balloon.'

'Well, talking about it isn't going to help,' said Jennifer briskly. 'We should search for clues.'

'Yes, I suppose you're right,' said Marx, looking around. He frowned. 'What does a clue look like?'

'Hard to say. That's the trouble with clues. They can be all sorts. Hastily scrawled notes. A tell-tale piece of fabric left on a rusty nail. In this case it's probably a file marked top secret, or some sort of plan.'

'Where would you keep a plan?' asked Marx, still at a bit of a loss.

'Probably in a special drawer, or a nice new lever-arch file, something like that. We once had an adventure with a city council who wanted to build over protected fenland, and their plan was tattooed on the backs of a pair of twins who had been separated at birth.'

'Have you found any twins who have been separated at birth yet?' said Marx hopefully.

'Not yet,' said the Pirate Captain.

'A secret diary would be good too. They're a fantastic source of clues. Except of course you shouldn't really read other people's diaries, because it's extremely impolite.'

All of a sudden Marx froze. 'Look there!' he hissed, the blood draining from his face. 'There's somebody watching us from that wardrobe!'

He pointed to the corner of the opera box where a huge wooden wardrobe stood, its door slightly ajar. In the gloom it was just possible to see a pair of gimlet eyes peering out at them.

'What are they doing?' asked Jennifer.

'They're just . . . staring. Staring with cold, dead eyes,' whispered Marx.

'Psychotic eyes! The kind of eyes that wouldn't blink as they sliced you open!' added the Pirate Captain, ducking behind him.

'Oh, for goodness' sakes!' said Jennifer. She pushed past them, marched up to the wardrobe door and smartly yanked the door open. 'Get out of there,' she commanded.

The Crowned Head of Spain fell out on to the floor with a waxy thud.

'Aha,' said Marx, wiping his brow in relief. 'So that's what's happened to the waxworks.' Sure enough, the wardrobe was piled high with all the stolen crowned heads of Europe.

'Well done, Jennifer,' said the Pirate Captain, trying to make it look like he'd actually been tying his shoelace rather than ducking in fright. 'That was admirably feisty.'

'Not really,' said Jennifer, giving him a bit of a look. 'I've spent enough time on the pirate boat to get used to dealing with peeping Toms.'

The Pirate Captain stared guiltily at the floor, whistled a little tune and went back to busying himself with fascinating clue-hunting.

'How about this?' Marx indicated a big model town sat atop a desk. 'Do you think this could be a clue?'

'Yes, that's almost certainly a clue, though I'm not sure what it means,' said Jennifer.

'Oh, this is brilliant,' said the Pirate Captain happily. 'You see, this is what I like about those villainous ne'er-do-well types. They always have stuff like this. Before I was going to be a pirate, I was going to be an architect. Mainly because I really, really like these kinds of models. I wonder if it lights up? Oh, look! They've even done little people doing marches. Fantastic.'

'If you stand right next to it, it makes you look enormous!' grinned Marx.

'I'm King Kong!' said the Pirate Captain.

'I'm Gulliver!' said Marx.

Marx and the Pirate Captain were so busy pretending to be giants that it wasn't until Jennifer let out a gasp that they noticed a billowing cloud of diabolical fog rolling through the door.

Eleven.

SPONGE MADNESS.

'h.e.l.l's bells,' said the Captain, ducking behind the desk. 'It looks like a mysterious fog has been the villain all along!' He jabbed his cutla.s.s a bit pointlessly in the direction of the fog. 'Which is a nuisance, because they're notoriously difficult to fight, clouds of mysterious fog. On account of them being incorporeal and that. I have to say, if it was going to be something supernatural, I was hoping for a vampire, because they're a doddle. Stakes, garlic, holy water, true faith, sunlight, fire . . . I'm not sure there's anything that doesn't kill a vampire.'

There was an ominous clanking sound from the depths of the billowing fog. Then a foot appeared, and then a leg. Then a big metal head. Eventually, an entire colossal mechanical man stepped forward, and they could now see that the fog wasn't a supernatural miasma, but steam coming out of great big pipes stuck on the mechanical man's back. He was so huge he had to bend down slightly just to fit through the door.

'Aaaarrr,' said the Captain, thinking fast and pulling Marx and Jennifer, who had momentarily frozen, dumbfounded, down behind the desk with him. 'Don't worry it's not the first time I've encountered a mechanical man. The trick is to pose them an unsolvable logic puzzle. They can't stand that sort of thing. Makes all the cogs in their metal brain get stuck, and then their head falls off.'

'Do you know any logic puzzles?' whispered Marx.

The Captain paused for a moment. 'There's a farmer with a boat. And he's got a fox and a chicken and a sack of grain. Then some stuff happens which I forget. I think the answer is that the farmer has to make a nice pie out of them.'

'Excuse me,' boomed the gigantic mechanical man, with a polite metallic cough. 'It's just I know you're hiding behind the desk, because I can see the peak of your pirate hat.'

The Captain sighed. 'd.a.m.n my-'

'Oh, don't start all that again,' said Jennifer, getting to her feet. Marx and the Pirate Captain reluctantly stood up as well.

'h.e.l.lo there,' said the Pirate Captain for want of anything better to say. 'I'm the Pirate Captain, the one from the newspapers. This is Jennifer, a lady. And this is Karl Marx. He's the leader of the angry urban proletariat.'

'Yes, I know,' said the tin man. 'We've met.' His metal face couldn't really convey expressions, but there was a frosty note to his metallic voice.

'Really?' said Marx. 'I'm sure you're right, but I'm terrible with names.'

The tin man struck a clumsy sort of pose, with his legs apart and his hands on his hips.

'Soon everybody will know the name of Friedrich Nietzsche!' he announced dramatically.

'Oh dear,' the Captain muttered to Marx. 'In my experience, it's never a good sign when they start talking about themselves in the third person.' He turned to the mechanical man. 'You know, boasting really isn't a very attractive quality in a person.'

'Little Fred Nietzsche?' said Marx, looking the mechanical man up and down in surprise. 'Goodness me, you've grown! And there's something else. Have you changed your hair?'

'No,' said the big metal man, sounding a bit peeved. 'I've built myself this fantastic metal body.'

'Oh, yes, that's probably it.' Marx turned to Jennifer and the Pirate Captain. 'Friedrich here used to hang around the intellectual salons. He wrote a sort of philosophy fanzine, which as I recall, was full of slightly creepy fan fiction about Spinoza having secret romantic trysts with Descartes. I'm afraid none of us took him very seriously.'

'Well, I hope you've learnt an important lesson about not squashing young talent,' said the Pirate Captain. 'Because this is what happens: years later you get menaced by colossal mechanical men. I think it's what Buddhists call "coming back to bite you in the a.s.s".' The Captain turned to Nietzsche. 'So you're a philosopher too?'

'I certainly am,' said the mechanical man, sounding very pleased with himself. 'I've come up with a brand-new philosophy all of my own. It's called "Fascism". And it knocks Communism into a c.o.c.ked hat.'28 'I like your little town, by the way,' said the Captain.

'Thank you,' said Nietzsche. 'It's a model of London as it will look once it has become my new capital city. You'll see that I've replaced all the hospitals and schools with opera houses. And the buildings have been designed with tiny windows and lots of concrete, to encourage a general feeling of ennui and despair amongst the populace. Also, I've painted St Paul's Cathedral jet black.'

'That's very clever how you've done the gra.s.s. Is that the same stuff they have in greengrocers?'

'It is, yes,' said Nietzsche.

'Getting back to the point,' frowned Jennifer, knowing that the Captain could go off on this tangent for some time. 'Could we ask what all this is about?'

Nietzsche billowed a cloud of steam and looked into the middle distance. 'It's true, I was that poor boy snubbed by the uncaring intelligentsia. But I had what they call an epiphany.'

'I had one of those once,' said the Pirate Captain brightly. 'It was about five years ago. A perfectly normal day. I was just there in my hammock, not getting up to much. And then, right out of the blue, I thought, What's stopping me having ham for dinner as well as lunch? I haven't looked back since.'

'My epiphany was better,' said the tin man a bit petulantly. 'I realised that humanity is weak and stupid, like . . .' The colossal tin Nietzsche paused, looking for the right comparison.

'Like goats?' suggested the Captain.

'That's it, like goats. And what goats need is someone to rule over them with a tin fist!'

Marx huffed. 'Rubbish. Goats need socialised medicine and shorter working hours.'

'Surely goats actually just need a goatherd to feed them goat food and keep wolves away?' said the Pirate Captain. 'And maybe one of those little bells so you know if it's wandered off somewhere it shouldn't.'

'That's only what a weak and stupid goat thinks it needs. Actually, goats need a strong leader who treats them with the contempt they deserve a superman. An ubermensch!' He let out another big gout of steam and stomped his feet for effect. 'And here I am, the first of those ubermensch. Superior in every way!'29 'What actual ways?' asked Marx, puzzled.

The mechanical man looked stumped for a moment. 'Oh, you know. All sorts. I'm better at making clanking sounds. I'm much shinier than I was before. And, um, my tin hide is able to withstand temperatures of 449.47 degrees Fahrenheit.'

'Those hands look a bit clumsy, though.'

'Yes, well, superior in every way, except picking up pencils, or tying shoelaces.'

'And you've been making Dr Marx get the blame for drowning kittens and all that sort of thing so people would get so terrified of Communism they'd think they needed a big iron goatherd to protect them!' fumed Jennifer. 'It's very rude.'

The colossal tin Nietzsche looked guiltily at where his fingernails would have been if he'd had fingernails. 'Yes, that's pretty much it. I needed a bogeyman, and you communists just happened to be about. It wasn't really anything personal. It could just as easily have been single mothers, or immigrants, or something like that.'

'Or a spider with a baby's face!' said the Pirate Captain. 'That would have been pretty terrifying.'

'Yes, that would have done very well,' said the colossal tin Nietzsche.

'It's all been very inconvenient,' said Marx, waggling an admonishing finger. 'And I still don't understand the whole business with stealing the waxwork crowned heads. Is it to play practical jokes? You know, leaving them in people's beds and that sort of thing?'

'That's not the main reason,' said Nietzsche, fighting back a tinny grin. He did his dramatic voice again. 'For you see, soon every throne in Europe will be occupied by a waxwork!'

'But then the crowned heads won't have anywhere to sit,' pointed out the Pirate Captain.

'No, Pirate Captain. I intend to replace the actual crowned heads of Europe with my waxworks.'

'I'm not sure they'll be keen on the idea.'

'I imagine not. But that's academic, because at the unexpected climax of the opera tonight, a replica volcano will erupt, flooding the auditorium with magma and thereby boiling all the crowned heads into oblivion.'