The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(99)

There was also something to drink which they said was distilled from rice. It had the deceptively innocent taste which made Pimm’s No. 1 such a handy drink for seducing girls when I was at University. I went gratefully back towards my room, smiling at one and all. I was in that delightful stage of not-quite-drunkenness when one overtips happily and there was no lack of minions to overtip. I even pressed a sheaf of currency into the hand of someone who proved to be an American guest; he said, ‘OK, Father, whaddya fancy?’ Realizing my mistake, and remembering my clerical kit or garb, I waved an airy hand and told him to play it for me on anything he fancied: it would all go to the poor. Then I found my room, crashed the Mortdecai turnip onto the pillow and completed the cure with a couple of hours of the dreamless.

By late afternoon the cure was completed and I felt strong enough to open the sealed envelope of instructions which Johanna had given me at Heathrow Airport.

‘Lo Fang Hi,’ it read, ‘Doctor of Dentistry and Orthodontics.’ Clearly a poor joke but nevertheless I looked him up in the telephone-book (even if you do know that the Chinese keep their surnames where we keep our Christian ones, a Chinese telephone directory is a skull-popper) and found him. I telephoned him. A shrill and agitated voice admitted to being Dr Lo. I resisted the temptation to say ‘Hi’ and said, instead, that I was a toothpaste-salesman – for that was what I had been told to say. What he said was that I might come around as soon as I liked, indeed, he suggested I came very soon. Yes, very soon indeed, prease. I hung up, musingly. The Roman collar had been tormenting my neck and I recalled that I had rarely seen a toothpaste-salesman in a cassock, so I changed into an inconspicuous little burnt-orange lightweight which that chap in the Rue de Rivoli ran up for me in the day when ￡300 would still buy a casual suit.

The address, to my surprise, was not ‘In the Street of the Thousand Baseballs, ’Neath the sign of the Swinging Tit’ as the old ballad has it, but in Nathan Street, Kowloon, which proved to be a dull, respectable sort of boulevard, reminiscent of Wigmore St, London W1. (I do not know who Mr Nathan was nor why he should have such a street named after him; indeed I know nothing of Mr Wimpole, no, nor even Wigmore, although I could tell you a thing or two about Harley.)

The cab-driver spoke American with a pronounced Chinese accent. He was also the proud owner of a sense of humour: he had evidently taken Buster Keaton’s correspondence-course. When I told him to take to No. 18, Lancaster Buildings, Nathan Road, Kowloon, he leaned over his seat and eyed me in a tiresome, inscrutable way.

‘Cannot take you there, buddy.’

‘Oh? And why not, pray?’

‘Can take you to Rancaster Birradings, Nathan Rod, but not Number 18.’

‘Why not?’ I asked, a tremor in my voice this time.

‘Number 18 on third floor; taxi does not fit into erevator.’

‘Ha ha,’ I said stiffly, ‘but I notice that your meter is running; laugh on your own time, or while driving me capably to Lancaster Buildings, Nathan Road.’

‘You a poreeseman?’

‘Certainly not. I happen to be a toothpaste-salesman, if you must know.’

He wagged his head respectfully, as though I had said something impressive, or perhaps funny. He took me to Lancaster Buildings in an expert and blessedly silent fashion. On arrival I under-tipped him by precisely 2?% – not enough to cause a scene but just enough to make it clear that taxi-drivers should not jest with sahibs.

Number 18 was indeed on the third floor of Lancaster Buildings and the door to Dr Lo’s consulting-room was clearly inscribed RING AND ENTER. I rang, but could not enter, for the door was locked. Hearing sounds within I rapped irritably on the frosted glass, then louder and still louder, crying words such as ‘Hoy!’ All of a sudden, the door opened, a large, tan-coloured hand reached out, grabbed the front of my lightweight Paris suit and whisked me inside, depositing me upon an uncomfortable armchair. The owner of the tan-coloured hand was grasping a large, crude Stechkin automatic pistol in his other tan-coloured hand and waving it in an admonitory sort of way. I understood his desires instantly, for the Stechkin is by no means a lady’s handbag-gun, and sat in my nice chair as quiet as any little mouse.

There was a patient in the dentist’s operating-chair, being attended to by a brace of dentists. At first it seemed odd to me that the dentists were wearing dark-blue mackintoshes, just like the chap with the Stechkin, while the patient was wearing a white dentist’s smock. (Sorry, a dentist’s white smock.) I began to believe that the patient was, in fact, Dr Lo and that the dentists were quite unqualified in dentistry, especially when I noticed that they were using the drill on him although he refused to open his mouth. When Dr Lo – for it must have been he – passed out for the third or fourth time, his assailants were unable to bring him round. He had not uttered a word through his clenched teeth, although he had squealed through his nose a little, from time to time. I remember thinking that Mr Ho would have done much better, making much less mess.

The chaps in blue mackintoshes conversed in quacking tones together for a while, then turned on me.

‘Who you?’ asked one of them. I clapped my hand against my jaw in a piteous way and mimed the miseries of a tooth-ache sufferer. The man took my hand away from my jaw and slammed it with the side of his heavy pistol. Then he picked me up from the floor, sat me back in the chair.

‘Tooth-ache better now?’ I nodded vigorously. ‘You recognize our faces again maybe?’ There was no longer any need to mime suffering.