and although a small mystery would remain to puzzle him,
no doubt it would be solved one day when he would be the
true Lord of Sherwood rather than the mere proprietor of
some woods and a big house rented at a nominal sum from
TerraForma™. Why someone should want to own the hat
he might never know, but only Mrs B-C would be put out
and doubtless not for very long. Indeed, the first chance he
got he would have her a new and equally hideous hat made
and sent to her home back in Cygnus or wherever it was.
Everyone would be thoroughly satisfied.
What if - and here he found himself on the verge of choking
on his glass of port - what if the real thief were to ransom
the hat? Even now someone could be slicing a feather or two
from the stolen titfer and sending a message to Mrs Banning-
Cannon's personal V indicating where to leave dosh in used
oncers if the apple of her eye were to be returned without
further mutilation. He gulped. And this time Mrs Banning-
Cannon noticed his condition, chirruping, much to Mr B-C's
astonishment, an expression of concern in the direction of
her host. 'My dear Lord Sherwood! You are having, I think, a
reaction to the adventures of the evening! As brave a face as
you are putting on things, it is clear to some of us that you are
suffering a delayed shock. In other words, your encounter
with the thieves, while an act of unconscious courage, has
affected your highly tuned nerves.'
It came as something of a surprise amongst those who knew
him that old Bingo Lockesley had any nerves, highly tuned
or otherwise. He babbled something about being perfectly
all right while giving his by now celebrated performance of a
space-beacon on full traffic-duty, blushing red and blanching
white in a matter of seconds as his conscience swung him
swiftly from a state of high anxiety to one of low terror.
Then, realising that he had a perfectly legitimate excuse to
offer, he mentioned that he had a long game ahead of him in
the morning and maybe he'd better turn in. Happily he was
saved from further torment by W.G. Grace strolling round the
corner, her bow-case under her arm, shrouded in a cloud of
smoke from her massive cigar and talking whackit averages
to one of the centaurs. Leaving them chatting, he sloped off
in the direction of his bedroom.
Chapter 6
Yellow
BINGO HAD ONLY A few minutes to climb into his pyjamas before
there came a tap at his door. His first impulse was to jump
under the duvet and pretend to be asleep, but then he was
moved by curiosity. What if this were the real thief, for whose
dirty work he was receiving shares of praise and blame, come
to put the squeeze on him? What if he refused to answer?
Reluctantly, Bingo turned the handle and opened the door
a crack. There stood Urquart Banning-Cannon all in white
ties, still nervously puffing on his cigar and fanning himself
with his toppers. Only then did Bingo wonder if Mr B-C had
not insured himself against his, Bingo's, failure and possibly
employed a back-up.
Tssst,' said Mr Banning-Cannon.
'Sorry?'
'Let me in, dammit!' The tycoon hurried into the room
and closed the door firmly behind him. 'Congratulations,' he
pumped Bingo's still-uncertain hand. 'I can only stay a few
minutes. What did you do with it?'
'With -?' For a moment Bingo was blank. 'Oh! Oh! You
mean the hat?'
'Naturally the hat. What else? You're a positive Svengali,
the way you made it vanish! Do I mean Svengali?'
'Maybe Mantovani?'
Urquart banged the side of his head. 'These nano-
translators aren't too hot on history. Oh, I know Fellini.'
'I'm coming up with Whodunit.'
'Houdini?'
'So what about him?'
'You mentioned him.'
'Did I? OK. The hat. How did you get it out of there?'
'That's a bit of a trade secret,' said Bingo, admiring his
own unexpected quickness of mind.
'You'll let me know eventually, right.'
Something like steel had suddenly entered Bingo
'Of course, old boy. As soon as I have it all signed, sealed
and delivered. The contract?'
'My word is my bond. The job's done. The planet's
yours.'
'I think we need something a little more concrete.'
'Anything. Believe me. I'll write you a letter. You can
trust me. I'll have the contract in your hands by tomorrow.'
Urquart made to leave. 'You seem different...'
'How do you mean, different?' Bingo felt his desperation-
fuelled belligerence fading rapidly. He was beginning to
blush again. Then he turned pale.
'I don't know. Probably cost you a lot of adrenalin, eh?
Anyway, 111 have that contract for you. But meanwhile, the
planet's yours. To do whatever you like with.'
Bingo cleared his throat. Urquart opened the door to his
own room. 'I'll leave this way. OK? That's funny! Do you
smell something? I'd better get out of here.' And he left.
Bingo knew what he meant. It was an odd smell. Familiar,
though. He just couldn't put his finger on it. Lavender?
He stumbled back to bed and climbed under the quilt. He
was beginning to worry. He felt he had received a hint of the
future and he wasn't entirely sure if it was going to be quite
as good as it seemed to be on the surface.
Another knock. He was determined not to answer. He
remained under the quilt, safe in the knowledge that he had
locked both doors to his room.
And then someone was standing over him.
'Um, Lord Sherwood? It's the Doctor. I wondered if...'
'No,' he said, then: 'Go away. I'm sleeping. I don't need a
doctor. I'm right as rain. See you for breakfast. I recommend
the kedgeree.'
'The police have been called. By Mrs Banning-Cannon
actually. She thought Mr Banning-Cannon didn't quite
understand the urgency involved. So they're coming in the
morning... I thought you—'
'P-police?' The Earl of Lockesley put his nose above the
duvet. 'M-me?'
'Well, yes. Mrs Banning-Cannon thought the sooner the
case, as she calls it, was put into the hands of the district
magistrate, the better. Between you and me, the local
constables might not be taking the theft of a hat too seriously.
You can see that from her point of view... Well, meanwhile,
of course, everything's being turned upside down in the hope
there's been an oversight...'
Reluctantly, Bingo again bade farewell to the Land of
Nod. 'I was thinking that probably it's a bit soonish to be
calling in the magistrates. Constables are all that are needed
in the circumstances, surely? The hat'll probably turn up in
the morning. Left at the hotel or something. I mean it's only
a dashed hat!'
'Not to Mrs B-C. Do you have any idea how much those
things cost? And you know how much pull she has with the
authorities. I'd guess that
between them, the Tarbuttons and
the Banning-Cannons practically own the local law.'
'The c-constables are c-crooked?'
'Of course not.' The Doctor paused just long enough for
Bingo not to believe him, before clarifying: 'They're probably
like most police forces - they know whose property they're
supposed to look after first and foremost. After all, they owe
their jobs to the terraforming companies. The companies
are the ones who make the planets and help populate them.
Generally the officers do their best to keep the peace, enforce
the law - and they are an honest bunch, all in all, I expect - but if it's a question of my lost archery cap, worth a few buttons,
and a creation of Diana of Loondoon worth hundreds of
thousands of bluebacks... Well, we both know which crime
they'll take most seriously.'
Bingo sat up in bed. 'I hadn't thought of that. My uncle's
the local Investigating Magistrate. I'll talk to him.'
The Doctor sat down on the edge of his bed. 'I understand
that Mrs B-C also made Mr B-C call him. He said he'd be
round in the morning. I gather he's a stickler for the letter of
the law. And of course hell want to interview you.'
'M-me?'
'Well, yes, because you overheard the thieves and tried
police will want to go over what you might have seen. They
have trained minds, you see. They're impossible to deceive,
even when we are accidentally deceiving ourselves.'
'Ah, yes. N-naturally I'll do all I can. There's just that funny
seaside smell. That's all I noticed, same as you.'
'It will probably mean something to a sleuth. It might even
point the finger in the direction of a felon!'
'Yes, I can see that. Who might or not be human, eh?'
'Well, of course, under normal circumstances the victim's
husband would most likely be the Number One Suspect.
'Eh?'
'Think about it. He was known to hate the hat. He is, sadly,
subject to some form of arachnophobia and was overheard
begging his lady wife not to wear the thing tomorrow. He
already asked me what I knew on the subject of fear of spiders,
and he had referred to the hat as 'that great monstrous spider
squatting on top of her head' to a few of his fellow travellers.
He was thought to be preparing to take to his bed tomorrow
rather than confront it.'
'Really? I knew nothing of this.' (Or very little, at any rate,
thought Bingo in some relief). 'Afraid of hats, was he?'
'Not all hats,' said the Doctor. 'Just a certain kind of hat.
Hats resembling spiders. And anything else resembling
spiders. Including spiders themselves, I expect. There's a
definite spider motif,' he added in case there was any doubt.
'Well, you can see how he would take against the hat, then.
Shame. For a bloke to suffer so. You'd think—'
'That he'd do something about it. He'd tried. He saw many
specialists all over the galaxy. He even asked my advice.'
'Makes sense. But you couldn't help him?'
'I'm not that sort of doctor.'
'Of course that does rule him out as the thief,' Bingo
pointed out.
'Why so?' asked the Doctor.
'Because he couldn't get within a mile of the thing without
exploding into hives and so forth.'
'Ah, yes. So they'll doubtless want to know if he had
anything to do with it.'
'How do you mean?'
'If he commissioned someone to do the deed. Conspired.'
'Ah, yes.' Bingo made an odd swallowing sound.
'But they'll probably go for a different theory.'
'Yes, let's hope so!'
'Um... Why should we hope so?'
'Oh, well. Ah. Because it would be jolly awful if one of
us were to fall under the shadow of suspicion, don't you
know!'
'Yes. That's true. So you can't come up with any hint? I
mean, you can't guess at who amongst your guests might
have left the smell of hot seawater behind them?'
'Not unless it's - ha, ha - some sort of half-baked fish,
eh?'
Bingo winced at his own appalling joke. He was beginning
to feel rather glad that he had been unsuccessful in managing
the great hat heist, after all. Yet what if Mr Banning-Cannon
pointed the finger at him and he cracked under interrogation?
As he might. Thinking that Bingo had pinched the damned
hat, as Bingo had allowed him to believe.
'Well,' said the Doctor rising, 'I thought I'd pop in and talk
this over with you. Just in case you knew of anything. Or if I
could help, perhaps?'
'Very decent of you, Doctor. Much obliged. I'll put my
mind to it.'
He murmured 'Good night' to the lanky mystery man,
who left, closing the door quietly behind him.
But now, of course, Bingo was wide awake. He sat
upright in bed gnawing his fingernails and trying to gather
his thoughts. But, try as he might, the thoughts remained
ungathered. They seemed rather determined, in fact, to
remain at large. He slept fitfully that night, waking from time
to time to feel what might be cold steel around his wrists. His
dreams, when they came, generally involved him suffering
some form of incarceration. He imagined Mrs Banning-
Cannon pointing an accusatory finger in the direction of Mr
B-C who, in turn, was inclined to point a similar finger at
him.
He awoke early the next morning muttering to himself,
his head, neck and shoulders bathed in cold, clammy sweat
while from dry lips came over and over again the words: 'I'm
innocent, innocent. I'm innocent I tell you. Ask him. I never
did it.'
Which was perfectly true, of course, but somehow didn't
convince him, let alone his imagined interviewers.
Admittedly, as a local landowner, he was not likely to be
accused of the petty theft of an over-large hat, but he knew
that non-local owners of many planets tended to carry rather
more weight than he did. His only hope, he told himself,
was that his Uncle Rupoldo came in to investigate the case.
He was the appropriate local magistrate and, since the Code
Napoleon tended to be the legal system preferred in this
part of the universe, he stood a better chance of receiving
a fair trial with his uncle on the job than if Anglo-Saxon or
Barsoomian law were to be utilised. As he shaved his face
that morning, staring hard into the mirror to see if he looked
anything like a criminal mastermind, he mulled over the
chances of Sir Rupoldo de Crespigny coming up with a not-
guilty verdict or whether that old incorruptible would insist
on investigating every aspect of the matter. There again, with
luck, the hat would turn up, having been delivered to the
wrong room on its way from the Claremont to Lockesley
Hall. But that wasn't very likely.
Traipsing down to breakfast a few minutes later, feeling
in better spirits after his morning ablutions, he entered the
room to find all eyes turned on him.
'H
ello!' he cried, rather noisily. 'What's up? Hat been
found I take it!'
All eyes turned back to their previous position.
Following them he saw that they had fixed on the dark
blue uniform and silver buttons of a man dressed in the rather
splendid scarlet-trimmed uniform of an Inspector-Magistrate
in the Sussex and Surrey Bacon Street Regulators, a branch
of which kept the peace in this particular arm of the galaxy
and had done for several millennia since the collapse of Law
soon after the last Dark Age but one in these parts following
the fifth, or possibly sixth, interplanetary war. Above this
livery beamed a face of such kindliness and bucolic good
will that Bingo was immediately reassured. He should have
been, since it belonged to Inspector-Magistrate Sir Rupoldo
de Crespigny, who had not only once dandled Bingo on his
knee, but, a keen sportsman, had also taught him almost
everything he knew about tournament re-enactments and
their associated games. Normally, Bingo would have fallen
on his uncle's kindly shoulder and greeted him with nothing
but hoots of happy goodwill, but today the old chap's
expression was of such considerable gravity that Bingo could
tell something decidedly serious was afoot.
'Ah,' he said. 'No hat's turned up, eh? That's a shame!'
'That's exactly what it is, young Rob,' declared Sir
Rupoldo. 'You're going to have to call off your game, I'm
afraid. And nobody's going to be allowed to leave the castle
and grounds, at least not before they can explain their actions
of last night.'
'You think the hat's still on the premises, do you?'
Mr Banning-Cannon said, addressing his remarks to the
Inspector-Magistrate but directing a look of pleading concern
at his host. 'I'd be pretty sure that the crooks would have
made off with it last night, wouldn't you, Lord Sherwood?'
It became immediately clear to Bingo that he had nothing
much to fear from being fingered by Mr B-C, since the
terraforming tycoon had as much to lose from any revelations
as he himself. His spirits lifted by about a mile on realising
this.
But then the horror at what he had just been told struck
him. 'Did you say the match was cancelled?'
'I'm afraid I did.'
'So what's happening tomorrow?'
'Tomorrow? I can't say. No doubt if the hat is discovered
or we are sure it is no longer on these premises, then everyone