Scruffy - A Diversion Read online

  Nervous though he was he anticipated no difficulties at the British control point on the border. He was well known to the police, Army and customs guards; working in a sensitive part of the Navy Yard his pass and security were A.1. The customs man gave a perfunctory glance at the paper bags in the rear of the car from which protruded the usual fresh fruits such as bananas, oranges, apples, etc., and waved him through. Mr. Ramirez drove swiftly to his home, mounted the stairs, entered and locked the door, closed the shutters and unpacked the dangerous-looking object which would be the means of his regaining his lost self-respect. There only remained the question of the how and the when of the delivery.

  As to the method by which he would persuade the big monkey to hug his own annihilation to his bosom, Ramirez didn’t envision any grave problem. The Rock apes were known to be inveterate thieves, appropriating for themselves any article that was not nailed or tied down. Since Scruffy was the leader of the Queen’s Gate pack, he would most surely pre-empt this beautiful shiny blue and mysterious object for himself and defy all attempts to remove it from his possession. When the fuse reached the appalling amount of powder that must be stored in the cylinder—Mr. Ramirez’s precise and methodical mind had already worked out the number of cubic centimetres of explosive that would go up—that would be that. No more Scruffy! No more snide, sly, side glances at him. No more laughter. There only remained the when, since Ramirez must be able to plant his bomb unseen and be far away when it went off.

  The time, the place and the occasion were supplied by none other than the Governor, though behind him, or rather behind the event, was a psychological warfare boffin, that certain Major Clyde, former Christchurch don, on loan to the Army.

  The Major’s name didn’t even appear in the orders that came from London for the Governor to show the flag on the Rock at a kind of Army Day parade and review, but the letter suggesting this was composed in conciliatory terms, having been written by Major Clyde himself.

  Shortly there would occur the opportunity to celebrate the defence of Gibraltar during the great siege against the French and Spanish in 1779 by General Sir George Eliott.

  The Governor fixed the day of celebration by decree. Ceremonies were devised to take place in the square before General Eliott’s monument, an hour-long parade scheduled, flags ordered out, review stands set up and all in all a rousing show organized that would bring every man, woman and child either into the reviewing square or along the route of procession.

  And this, of course, provided exactly the opportunity sought for by Mr. Ramirez. On that occasion and during that time there would be not a soul anywhere in the vicinity of Prince Ferdinand’s Battery or Queen’s Gate Road where the apes hung out.

  The day could not have dawned more beautifully for the event. The sky presented its most enticing southern blue. The sun outdid itself glowing from the firmament. Gibraltar was a mass of red, white and blue bunting, Union Jacks and the colours and flags of regiments and Services. The streets and the square were black with people, for the factories had closed down at three that afternoon to give the Spanish workmen, for whom after all the show was being staged, the opportunity to join the celebrations and see the fun. Although the ceremony was for a General who had defeated them, a fiesta was a fiesta and they all joined in with a will. Gibraltar was never gayer or more feverish with crowds and music and colour.

  Tucked away in side-streets preparing to lead the procession as per their schedule the various regimental bands tootled away. Street vendors hawked colours. Pretty girls wore their best dresses. Shopkeepers did a rousing business. Everybody was happy and if the enemy were looking, as the Governor, the Colonial Secretary and Major Clyde were sure he was, he would be most disconcerted at this display of Empire insouciance and high morale.

  The high officials augmented by Admiral French, the General, the Brigadier and Group Captain Howard Cranch of the Royal Air Force attended by their staffs and aides decked out in all their finery of uniform, medals, gold lace and cords, were ensconced in the reviewing stand. In the distance with a crashing of cymbals and the glitter of sunlight upon the yellow brass of instruments a band burst into Pomp and Circumstance March Number One. At the same time a far-off cheer arose from the throats of the spectators. The dignitaries in the reviewing stand stopped their neighbourly chatting and stiffened into proper attitudes, the parade had begun and soon its first elements would be winding into the square. And on the upper Rock, unhurried, unmolested, Alfonso T. Ramirez was going about the business of getting even.

  He was unhurried because again at the behest of his German blood he had been quietly efficient and had gone through several dry runs of his scheme.

  Parking his car at the side of Queen’s Road, Ramirez looked down into town where he could see the populace collected like black ants along the route of procession. The apes were gathered a slight distance farther up the road, some still nibbling at scraps of the lunch Lovejoy had brought them at midday, some fighting, some scratching or skin picking, some torpid.

  In their midst Ramirez saw Scruffy, his old wig still clutched in his paw. Rage filled the heart of Ramirez as he saw the object held by the monkey, but it was replaced almost immediately by his little “o” of a mouth forming itself into rather a horrid smile of joy. According to the schedule Scruffy had little more than twenty-one minutes left to live.

  Mr. Ramirez produced his blue-lacquered bomb from the back of his car and uncoiling the length of the twenty-minute fuse laid its end carefully in the grass behind his vehicle and walked up the road concealing it in the shrubbery at the side.

  As he approached the apes they became alerted to his presence and sat up regarding him or moving restlessly, all except Scruffy who squatted like an old Pasha eyeing the newcomer and what he carried, calculating no doubt, as always, what was in it for him.

  From far below, wafted on a bit of warm breeze from the Continent of Africa, came a snatch of band music. Ramirez reflected happily that his old enemy would expire to the strains of an Empire march.

  He had now, as he had calculated, reached the end of the piece of fuse and he set the giant salute down on the ground a few yards from the big ape who was watching him out of his golden eyes. Ramirez sat down himself beside the big cannon cracker and held it to his side as though it was something precious and valuable. He was convinced that Scruffy had all of the human faculties. Hence he had a scenario carefully worked out.

  For five minutes Ramirez sat there cuddling and nursing the blue firecracker, while from below arose the thump, thump, thump of beaten drums and the crash and blare of martial music. Scruffy watched him.

  When Ramirez judged that five minutes had passed he looked at his watch and examined it as though remembering an appointment somewhere, arose and went off leaving the firecracker poised on the ground behind him.

  As he walked away he saw out of the corner of his eye a lightning-like movement as Scruffy bounced forward, collected the blue cylinder and held it clutched to him. The coughings, barkings and scoldings he heard from behind him confirmed the fact that other apes were disputing Scruffy’s ownership of this new prize, and that Scruffy was determined to hang on to it whatever the odds.

  Filled with admiration for the mind beneath the toupée which had conceived this revenge, Ramirez reached his car, knelt for a moment, ignited the end of the fuse and then leaping into the driver’s seat set off down the hill as fast as safety would permit. Through his brain there sang an unctuous and self-congratulatory German phrase, “Alles geht wie geschmiert”—everything goes as though greased. And it did indeed.

  Encountering not a single car or lorry on the roads, he fairly whizzed down the mountain-side and arrived at his destination in eleven minutes flat. The parking space he had selected for his car was still vacant. He cut through a back lot down a side alley and around by Trafalgar Cemetery, and in three minutes more found himself mingling with the crowd in the square in front of the grandstand where, to his delight, he spotted Gunner Lovejoy w
ho had never held with parading and had got out of this one on the score of his duties with the apes. However, he was there to take in the sights. Pleased with this piece of luck in encountering someone who could identify him, and if need be furnish him with an alibi, Ramirez joined up with him at once and began to make conversational time. When the explosion rang out from the upper rock, Ramirez’s presence in the Main Square would have been already established.

  The parade and ceremony had been thoroughly organized and prepared and by now the last of the procession led by the band was entering the plaza, already jammed packed with the crowd, regiments of Artillery, Infantry, Engineers, Naval forces, all of the power that the British could muster on their isolated bastion, a brave, glittering and imposing sight.

  Ramirez hugged himself. In exactly two hundred and forty more seconds the bastardly monkey who had stolen his toupée and caused him to be held up to ridicule would be dead, dead, dead.

  On the upper Rock the drama was drawing to its conclusion, though no longer quite in the manner that had been planned.

  Two-thirds of the Queen’s Gate pack were now gathered in a circle about Scruffy and the gleaming blue object he was hugging to himself, and from their ranks now moved another dog ape by the name of Arthur, Scruffy’s only formidable rival for domination of the pack.

  Arthur wanted the cracker. His whole covetous monkey being was convulsed with jealousy. He craved it not only because of its lovely colour and the fun it would be to tear it to pieces to see what was inside it, but also because Scruffy had it. Barking his challenge and intention to contest he moved warily closer while the rest of the apes spread out and occupied grandstand seats for what was obviously going to line up as the battle of the century.

  There was no yellow in Scruffy. He was never one to decline a good brawl, particularly with Arthur who he felt he could lick with one hand tied behind him. But now his possessions, the old and the new, the wig and the pretty blue thing, posed him a problem. If he put them down or dropped them to take on Arthur he might lose one or the other or both.

  There was a sudden and startling flash of brown fur and glazed blue cardboard as Scruffy solved his dilemma. Pinning back Arthur’s ears could wait. What he wanted now was to be alone with his new toy. He headed down the road at top speed.

  With a scream of rage, bilked not only of his battle but the desired object, Arthur set off behind him, and after Arthur the rest of the Queen’s Gate pack.

  Under ordinary circumstances, with Scruffy burdened and Arthur unhindered, even with Scruffy’s surprise head start, Arthur would have caught up with him after a few dozen yards and had things out. But now another and wholly unexpected element manifested itself. Scruffy found himself pursued not only by his angry rival and all his friends, but also by a long, fire-from-the-wrong-end-spitting snake. This snake, an elongated, white ropy thing with sparks and smoke cracking and hissing from its tail, was coming after him, and the faster he ran, the faster it came.

  Panic engendered by this startling development lent him speed beyond anything he had ever revved up before. He went pelting down the side of the Queen’s Road, skirting the iron fence at the edge of the cliff, whizzing past trees and bushes and when he slackened for an instant to look over his shoulder the snake was still there, and if anything even a little closer. With but one thought, to shake it off, he now veered sharply to the left and plunged down King Charles V Wall in the direction of town. If Scruffy knew anything about snakes, Mr. Snake wouldn’t like that. On his heels, hard put to keep up with the acceleration brought on by Scruffy’s terror, followed Arthur and the gang.

  The Macaque, when he wants to, can move with incredible speed. Scruffy wanted to and so did his pursuers. They fairly poured down the wall and into town, over roof-tops and the continuation of the wall which led directly to the twin arches of the Old Cannon Gate overlooking the square where at that very moment the military hierarchy, to the strains of the massed bands, was preparing to pay its respects to its illustrious predecessor, General Sir George Eliott.

  With a leap and a bound Scruffy was perched atop the arch and with similar graceful leaps and bounds the pack joined him there. However, the sound of the music and the glitter and colour of the close-packed military, as well as the crowds in the square below, drained all thoughts of battle from Arthur, while Scruffy made the agreeable discovery that the thing which had been pursuing him was not a snake at all, in fact it had practically disappeared. There was still something fizzing, cracking and smelling from the end of his toy, but it appeared not to be bent upon harming him. For the moment he had it, his wig, and all nine points of the law.

  It was the combined murmur and laughter of the crowd and the cry of Gunner Lovejoy, “Gord bless me, it’s old Scruff. What’s that imp of Satan got ’old of now?” that drew the attention of Mr. Ramirez to the event that was about to take place, not only in his presence, but that of the Governor of Gibraltar, his Colonial military staff, the clergy, the laity, and most of the inhabitants.

  Lovejoy was not the only one to be appalled at the tableau. Young Captain Bailey stared aghast, not only at the apparition of Scruffy which in the Captain’s lexicon could only spell trouble, but at the object that Scruffy was nursing. For his trained Artilleryman’s eye saw at once that it was either a dangerous firework or an even more dangerous dynamite bomb from which depended now no more than a short length of burning fuse which was growing shorter every second.

  So horrified was he at what he could only diagnose as the imminent dissolution of the brute upon whom he had expended so much energy and affection that he committed the military crime of stepping out of ranks, leaving his appointed place at the head of his Battery and striding forward into the square over which a stunned and shocked silence had fallen as all became aware of what was about to happen. He called up in anguished tones, “Drop it, Scruffy! I say drop it old boy!”

  But Scruffy had not the slightest intention of doing so, and besides, it was too late. There was only a matter of five seconds of count-down left for the burning fuse to traverse the last inch and ignite the thing.

  The sputtering flame reached the top of the giant cannon cracker, hesitated there for a moment and then dived down into its innards. For one fraction of a second while Alfonso T. Ramirez awaited his moment of glory, time seemed to stand still. Thousands of eardrums and nerves quivered in anticipation of the terrible explosion to come. What then took place, when time consented once more to move, was in a sense far, far worse than what had been awaited.

  For instead of the gigantic ear-splitting thunderclap expected by one and all, there was only a kind of soft “thup” as the top of the blue cardboard cylinder was wafted off, barely missing the nose of old Scruffy who chittered nervously, but showed no other signs of relinquishing his prize.

  If there was any black powder in the firework which Ramirez had purchased, it had been limited to an amount just sufficient to displace the lid of the thing and activate a series of powerful springs concealed in the interior.

  But when the proprietor of the factory had predicted something of grandeur and nobility, a veritable volcano which would leave none witnessing its eruption the same as they had been before, he had not lied. For, following the soft preliminary pop the thing began to erupt the most diverse and splendid party favours at an heroic rate and in more than generous quantities. To the utter enthralment of the apes and the equally hysterical joy of the crowd below, bon-bons, paper hats, whistles, hooters, horns, small toys, coloured handkerchiefs, and everything conceivable in the line of party delights rained down.

  The thing spewed forth clouds of confetti, uncoiled endless ribbons of coloured paper streamers and unloaded miniature parachutes, rubber balloons, gifts in the form of sets of crayons, celluloid dolls and small musical instruments.

  As far as the people in the street below were concerned, it was Christmas and the spectators forthwith broke up in a mad scramble for the seemingly unending shower of goodies that fortune, personified
by the ugly magot perched atop the arch, was pouring forth from his blue cornucopia.

  In a moment the square was filled with the braying of party horns, thumping of tin drums, shrilling of whistles and clamour of toy trumpets. Sweets, biscuits and further favours were being battled for. The distinguished guests in the reviewing stand were powdered with confetti, their shoulders festooned with coloured streamers.

  Atop the gate it was Yule for the Queen’s Gate pack as well. A good third of the loot erupting from the cylinder fell into their hands. Paper hats were donned, false noses and moustaches applied, whistles were shrilled, horns were blown or banged, packages of sweets, chocs and cakes unwrapped and gorged. Arthur, all thought of vengeance or battle driven from his mind, was wearing the paper shako of a Spanish Grenadier and clutching two hooters, a doll, a small box of plasticine and an assortment of stale goodies. He had never been happier.

  But the best had been reserved for the last. The slow match which had been releasing all this bounty finally reached the bottom of the case where it ignited a last half-teaspoonful of black powder, and with a plop hardly louder than the first introductory thup, propelled into the air a large flag attached to a parachute. The parachute opened, the flag unfurled and showed itself to be the red and yellow ensign of Franco Spain with the rousing slogan “Viva Espana” stencilled across one side and “Arriba Franco” on the other. There being no wind the ’chute descended in exactly the same line of the ascent, permitting the flag to drape the shoulders of Scruffy upon whom it lay like the mantle of a Cardinal.

  Again faced with a dilemma and not at all liking the thing which had fallen upon his shoulders, Scruffy proceeded to solve it in the manner of no ordinary monkey. In one hand he still clutched the blue cylinder which he had no intention of relinquishing and in the other he still had what everyone in the square below recognized as the famous stolen toupée.