First you see me, then see me not.
What a funny name I’ve got.
‘We are now in Katchem,’ said the beautiful stewardess. ‘We hope you have enjoyed your journey with us and that you will ride with us again. Please do not leave the coach until it has completely stopped. Passengers wishing to continue their journey will please make their way to the terminal via the red area. On behalf of our coachman, Captain Broomstick, we thank you. Please make sure you do not leave any of your personal belongings on the coach. Thank you and have a nice night.’
Prince Igon was the last to leave the coach, or so he thought. He had picked up his luggage and was slowly walking away when he heard a sound that made him turn round. In the darkness he thought he saw a medium-sized carrying case making its way towards him a few inches above the ground. There didn’t appear to be anyone carrying the case, just the case itself. He narrowed his eyes to look harder but he saw no-one.
‘Coachlag,’ he thought. ‘That’s it, I’m suffering from coachlag.’ The case made its way past him. It stopped and put itself down on the ground. Then a voice about six feet above the case said, ‘Excuse me, but could you tell me the way to the best hotel. I think it’s called the Black Cat.’
‘Bat,’ Igon said. ‘The Black Bat.’ He pointed automatically towards the Black Bat Hotel. ‘It’s only a few minutes’ walk,’ he said to the area surrounding the case.
‘Thank you,’ a voice said above the case.
Igon watched as the case lifted itself off the ground and went forward to the said hotel. From a few feet above the case there came the sound of a popular tune of the day being whistled.
As the whistling receded into the distance, Igon made a decision to stop Vernon at his own game. The clock in the centre of the village chimed ten. He knew of one or two coffee houses close by that stayed open late to catch the trade from the last few stage coaches. He knew also that if he wanted any information, or the latest gossip, that was where he would find it. It didn’t much matter which coffee house, as they both served up the same gossip.
* * *
Vernon had the same idea. He’d followed his parents to their home, unseen. He’d been back to the castle to check it out … unseen. He now needed information and to get that he had to meet people, without them knowing who he was. Disguise, that was the only way to avoid being recognised. And a coffee house was a good place to meet people and get information.
The disguise was going to be difficult. There was no-one walking about from whom he could steal anything like a suit or a moustache or a beard, yet if he was going into a well-lit area he would have to be completely unrecognisable. He moved furtively from shadow to shadow and shop entrance to shop entrance. One of the shops was a clothes shop. It was too dark to see inside, but he could just about make out some figures in the shop window itself – dummies.
Now according to Vernon’s reckoning, dummies wore clothes. All he had to do now was to take one of the dummies out of the window and find a hiding place to change from his Vampire evening dress suit into something else, a sports outfit maybe.
All this was going through his mind as he very deftly and with the minimum of effort forced open the locked door of the shop. He slowly crept into the shop window and carefully picked up one of the dummies, except it wasn’t a dummy but one of the window dressers getting the window ready for the sales which started the next day. As he lifted the unfortunate window dresser off his feet, the man let out a scream that would have been heard the other side of Europe, if he hadn’t fainted.
In the ensuing panic, Vernon, who was as much surprised as the window dresser, dropped him on the floor, picked up another dummy and ran as fast as his legs would carry him.
He hid behind a wall and took stock of his dummy. It was wearing a very pretty red dress with a very pretty red handbag and a very pretty pert red hat with a very pretty red feather. There was no time to put his own clothes on the dummy. All he could do was to climb into the dress, hat and red shoes to boot.
* * *
The male receptionist of the posh Black Bat Hotel was a rather nervous, twitching type of man, who wore a black suit. His face was the same colour as the moon. He didn’t see the case enter the lobby of the hotel, having his back towards the main entrance at the time. He was busy sorting letters for the hotel guests and putting them in their pigeon holes.
‘Excuse me,’ a voice said, making the nervous man drop all the letters he was holding.
Without turning round he said, ‘Whoops-a-butter-cup! Now look what you’ve made me do!’
‘I’m sorry,’ the same voice said, as the man in black picked up the letters off the floor.
He turned his face towards what he thought was going to be a hotel guest. As he turned he smiled the set smile of all hotel receptionists.
‘Now then, Sir, what can I … do … for … you?’ His voice faded away as he realised he was actually talking to nothing and looking at no-one. He twitched his shoulders, then his left eye, and said, ‘Humff.’ His trained eyes looked professionally round the hotel lobby and saw no-one. He turned back to the job of sorting the letters.
‘Excuse me,’ the voice said again. ‘I’d like a room please.’
The receptionist almost jumped out of his black suit and quickly turned in the direction of the voice. He once again saw no-one. Putting his well-shaped and beautifully manicured hands on the reception desk, he leaned over it to look for the owner of the voice, thinking it might be some small person. He saw only a case resting on the floor in front of the desk. He leaned even further over to see if a very small person was hiding behind the stationary suitcase. He saw no-one.
A fat lady, some would even say a huge lady (one arm alone weighed over four stone and her legs were bigger than her arms), rolled slowly over to the reception desk and asked for her keys.
‘Room 27,’ she said sharply, feeling pangs of hunger, not having eaten for the last ten minutes. ‘Hurry, you silly little man,’ she commanded as three of her four chins wobbled to a halt.
A little to the left they both heard a voice say, ‘I was here first!’
The fat lady looked to her left, but could see no-one. She thought the receptionist was playing a joke by throwing his voice, as in a Punch and Judy Show.
‘Well,’ she thought, ‘seeing that my name is Judy, I’ll punch him!’ Which she did. Hard, fast and straight with unerring aim and perfectly on target.
Within three seconds of the punch being thrown, the left eye of the receptionist looked very different from the right one. For one thing it was closed, for another it was swollen, and for yet another it was altogether a different colour. A minute ago both his eyes had been one colour, a rather deep, languid blue. His right eye was still blue, but his left eye was black as well as blue, as well as green, as well as purple.
From slightly to her left the fat lady heard a chuckle of enjoyment. So once more she lashed out with the same unerring aim. Three seconds later both his eyes were the same colour – blue, black, green and purple.
The fat lady drew herself up to her full width and said, ‘Young man, I haven’t come to this hotel to be insulted.’
A little to her left she heard a voice say, ‘Oh well, to which hotel do you usually go?’
The poor receptionist never knew much about the handbag that hit him, except that it was large and extremely heavy. While he was falling to the floor and the fat lady was waddling to her room, he thought he saw a quill pen writing in the register. Out of sheer curiosity, he looked to see if a name had been added or if he had dreamt it. He saw a name that wasn’t there before he had been clobbered: a Mr C Menott, Room six. He remembered thinking, ‘Good Lord, that’s Wilf the Werewolf’s room,’ as he hit the floor and passed out.
The case made its way up the stairs. It stopped outside Room Six. A knocking sound was heard. There was no answer from inside the room. Mr C Menott saw a waiter walking down the corridor. The waiter couldn’t see him. He only saw the case outside Room Six.
Mr C Menott knocked hard on the door, at the same time shouting, ‘Let me out! Please, someone, let me out!’
The waiter stopped by the door as he heard the call for help, seemingly coming from inside Room Six. Mr C Menott carried on shouting, although he was standing by the waiter who now had his ear to the door. The waiter quickly took out his pass key and opened the door to Room Six. As he did so, Mr C Menott followed, sliding the case into the room with his foot. The waiter stood in the middle of the room. There was no-one to be seen. With a shrug of his shoulders, he left the room, not bothering to look at the suitcase that was now inside. As he left, he stepped over the case and closed the door.
C Menott lifted up the suitcase with a smile, not that anyone would have known, and put it on the bed. He opened it and unpacked an invisible suit, shirt and a very nice bright red cravat. He opened the wardrobe and hung them up. Only Mr C Menott could see them. He went into the bathroom and had a nice hot bath with lots of splashing and lots of singing. So much singing that the people in Room Five started knocking on the wall. He had almost finished his bath when the maid came into the room to turn down the bed. She didn’t notice the door to the bathroom was open and, had she walked into the bathroom, she wouldn’t have seen Mr C Menott anyway.
He was sitting on the dressing table chair, drying his hair with a visible towel, as the maid stood up from turning down the bed and started to leave. She was closing the door when, as always, she looked around the room to see if things were in order. She looked at the waving towel by the dressing table and, quite naturally, thought that the bedroom window must have been left open and was blowing the towel about. She walked back to where the towel was drying his hair and snatched it out of his hand.
Mr C Menott was almost as surprised as she was when he snatched it back. He then dropped it on the floor and, as she bent down to pick it up, he moved it with his hand. She followed the towel for a few unthinking seconds before realising that the towel was travelling alone and she was chasing it. She stood up and walked swiftly to the door without bothering to turn round. Her sole ambition was to leave the room as quickly as possible. Once more Mr C Menott smiled to himself. He sat on the bed waiting for the arrival of the man who had sent for him: Wilf the Werewolf.
* * *
As Vernon made his way to the coffee house he worked out his plan in his mind. One: to get into the castle without being seen. That should be easy. Two: to get his old lab back in working order. That could take a little time. Three: to get Igon, his brother, his mother and his father, and Wilf the Werewolf to the castle without their suspecting anything was wrong. That was the easy part. He would forge a letter from the idiot police Inspector, telling them to be at the old laboratory at a certain time, as he (the Inspector) had captured Vernon and wanted them to identify the body.
‘Oh yes,’ he thought, ‘that will get them all in one room at the same time and then I can kill them all at once. Wonderful! I am a genius!’
* * *
Valeeta made Victor a strong cup of hot tomato juice to cheer him up and to get some strength back into his tired body.
* * *
Sergeant Salt saw to it that Mr Fred Garden was taken safely home and, under Section Four of the Fifth Section of the Third Declaration, he was made to sign the Secrecy Note 222A, which confirmed a strict promise never to tell anyone that he had signed the Secrecy Note 222A, or that he had once died and had been brought back to life.
* * *
Inspector Speekup tried to regain control of himself by exercising in his office and shouting, ‘Come in,’ even though nobody knocked.
* * *
Mr C Menott was lying unseen and unheard on Wilf’s bed when he heard a knock on the door.
‘Come in,’ he shouted to the door.
Mr C Menott saw the nervous receptionist and the manager of the Black Bat Hotel almost slide into the room. Mr C Menott stayed as still as possible and ignored the manager’s first, second and third ‘ehrem’.
‘Maybe he’s having a bath, Sir?’ the nervous receptionist said, looking slowly around the room through the two swollen slits that were now his eyes.
‘Knock on the bathroom door and find out,’ barked the grumpy manager. It was, or should have been, obvious to the manager that the eyes of the receptionist were in need of medical care. But that was ignored.
‘Hurry, man,’ shouted the manager as he snapped his fingers in front of the poor receptionist’s face. ‘Can’t you do a simple thing like knock on a door?’
‘If I could see the door I might, Sir, but I’m finding it very difficult to see anything at the moment, Sir.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the pompous manager. ‘Oh very dear. Why I ask, why do I have to have people like you working for me, eh? You and your kind are nothing but problems.’ The manager breathed heavily. ‘How many fingers am I holding up, eh? Come on, man, how many fingers, eh?’ The manager held up four of his fingers in front of the almost sightless receptionist who was now twitching his shoulder rapidly. ‘Stop that, stop that twitching at once. How many fingers am I holding?’
‘Sir, I can’t even see your hand, let alone your fingers.’
‘Oh dear me. Oh very dear me. Leave me, go downstairs and bathe your eyes, you twitching oaf. Get out of my sight. Do you hear?’
‘Three,’ said the receptionist tentatively.
‘What?’
‘Three fingers, Sir.’
‘No.’
‘Nine?’
‘Get out, get out of this room, you’re guessing.’
The receptionist bowed and almost curtsied as he turned to leave the room. It took him a full minute to find the door. He walked into the wall twice. The manager snorted and swaggered to the bathroom door, one hand bunched into a fist ready for a hard knock.
Having watched all that had been going on, Mr C Menott, still lying on the bed thought, ‘I don’t think I like you, Mr Manager. I think you should be taught a short, sharp lesson.’
He rose from his bed and made his way towards the door leading to the corridor. He waited until the manager realised that there was no-one in the bathroom and came back to the door where Mr C Menott was waiting. The manager opened the door and left the room, very closely followed by the unseen Mr C Menott.
Once in the corridor the manager bowed and scraped to the hotel guests as they made their way to and from their rooms. It was then that Mr C Menott grabbed the seat of the manager’s trousers with one hand and his jacket collar with the other and ran with him along the corridor. No-one in the corridor could see Mr C Menott. What they saw was the manager running with the collar of his jacket almost over his head and the seat of his trousers all bunched up at the back, while his eyes were almost hanging on his cheeks with disbelief.
He was pushed all the way down to the lobby of the hotel where a queue was beginning to form outside the restaurant door. They all looked at the manager making a fool of himself. Odd words were heard from the people in the queue. Words like ‘drunk’ and ‘shameful’ or ‘shamefully drunk’.
Mr C Menott put his face as close as he could to the manager and shouted, ‘Yes, I’m very drunk. But not too drunk to tell you not to eat in that restaurant.’
Mr C Menott lifted the manager’s right arm and pointed it towards the door of the restaurant. He also moved the manager’s lower jaw as he shouted, ‘Anyone who stays here is a fool.’ He then jigged around the foyer again.
Within an hour the receptionist had been moved from the reception desk to an office with ‘Manager’ written on the door. He had also been given a very pretty secretary, although at the moment he couldn’t see her as she carefully bathed his eyes. The old manager was thrown out of the hotel and was never allowed back in again.