Trickery Read online

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Two people have just brought it into my shop,’ Harry Gold whispered excitedly. ‘A man and a woman. Youngish. They’re trying to get it valued. They’re waiting out there now.’

  ‘Are you certain it’s my stone?’

  ‘Positive. I weighed it.’

  ‘Keep them there, Mr Gold!’ Robert Sandy cried. ‘Talk to them! Humour them! Do anything! I’m calling the police!’

  Robert Sandy called the police station. Within seconds, he was giving the news to the Detective Inspector who was in charge of the case. ‘Get there fast and you’ll catch them both!’ he said. ‘I’m on my way, too!’

  ‘Come on, darling!’ he shouted to his wife. ‘Jump in the car. I think they’ve found our diamond and the thieves are in Harry Gold’s shop right now trying to sell it!’

  When Robert and Betty Sandy drove up to Harry Gold’s shop nine minutes later, two police cars were already parked outside. ‘Come on, darling,’ Robert said. ‘Let’s go in and see what’s happening.’

  There was a good deal of activity inside the shop when Robert and Betty Sandy rushed in. Two policemen and two plain-clothes detectives, one of them the Inspector, were surrounding a furious William Haddock and an even more furious theatre sister. Both the young surgeon and the theatre sister were handcuffed.

  ‘You found it where?’ the Inspector was saying.

  ‘Take these damn handcuffs off me!’ the sister was shouting. ‘How dare you do this!’

  ‘Tell us again where you found it,’ the Inspector said, caustic.

  ‘In someone’s stomach!’ William Haddock yelled back at him. ‘I’ve told you twice!’

  ‘Don’t give me that crap!’ the Inspector said.

  ‘Good God, William!’ Robert Sandy cried as he came in and saw who it was. ‘And Sister Wyman! What on earth are you two doing here?’

  ‘They had the diamond,’ the Inspector said. ‘They were trying to flog it. Do you know these people, Mr Sandy?’

  It didn’t take very long for William Haddock to explain to Robert Sandy, and indeed to the Inspector, exactly how and where the diamond had been found.

  ‘Remove their handcuffs, for heaven’s sake, Inspector,’ Robert Sandy said. ‘They’re telling the truth. The man you want, at least one of the men you want, is in the hospital right now, just coming round from his anaesthetic. Isn’t that right, William?’

  ‘Correct,’ William Haddock said. ‘His name is John Diggs. He’ll be in one of the surgical wards.’

  Harry Gold stepped forwards. ‘Here’s your diamond, Mr Sandy,’ he said.

  ‘Now listen,’ the theatre sister said, still angry, ‘would someone for God’s sake tell me how that patient came to swallow a diamond like this without knowing he’d done it?’

  ‘I think I can guess,’ Robert Sandy said. ‘He allowed himself the luxury of putting ice in his drink. Then he got very drunk. Then he swallowed a piece of half-melted ice.’

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ the sister said.

  ‘I’ll tell you the rest later,’ Robert Sandy said. ‘In fact, why don’t we all go round the corner and have a drink ourselves.’

  Princess Mammalia

  First published in Two Fables (1986)

  When Princess Mammalia arose from her bed on the morning of her seventeenth birthday and examined her face in the looking-glass, she couldn’t believe what she saw. Up until then she had always been a rather plain and dumpy girl with a thick neck, but now she suddenly found herself staring at a young lady she had never set eyes on before. A magical transformation had taken place overnight and the dumpy little Princess had become a dazzling beauty. I use the word ‘dazzling’ in its purest and most literal sense, for such a blaze of glory, such a scintillation of stars, such a blinding beauty shone forth from her countenance that when she went downstairs an hour later to open her presents, those who gazed upon her at close quarters had to screw up their eyes for fear the brilliance of it all might damage their retinas. Even the royal astronomer was heard to murmur that it might be safer to view the lady through smoked glass, as one would the eclipse of the sun.

  Ever since she had learned to walk, Princess Mammalia had been much loved around the Palace for her modest and gentle disposition, but she very soon found out that it is much more difficult for a ravishing beauty to remain modest and gentle than it is for a plain girl. She discovered that the kind of extraordinary beauty she possessed endowed her with immense power. In the glittering presence of her new-found image, men became so overwhelmed with desire that they were hers to command. Caliphs and rajas, grand viziers and generals, ministers and chancellors, camel drivers and rent collectors, all of them melted into a froth as soon as she appeared on the scene. They fawned and simpered. They drooled and dribbled. They crawled and toadied. She had only to lift her little finger and they all started scampering around the room in their efforts to please her. They offered her rich jewels and golden bracelets. They suggested lavish feasts in cool places, and whenever one of them got her in a corner on her own, he began to whisper obscenities in her ear. There were also problems with the staff. A servant is just as much of a man as a courtier, and after several unsavoury incidents in the corridors, the King was forced, much against his wishes, for he was a kind king, to order that all male servants in the Palace be castrated immediately. Only the royal chef escaped. He pleaded that it would ruin his cooking.

  At first, and with charming innocence, the Princess simply sat back and enjoyed her new-found power. But that couldn’t go on. Nobody, let alone a maiden of seventeen, could remain unaffected for long. This was power indeed. It was power unheard of in one so young. And power itself, the Princess soon discovered, is a demanding taskmaster. It is impossible to have it and not use it. It insists on being exercised. Thus the Princess began consciously to exercise her power over men, first in small ways, then in rather bigger ones. It was ridiculously easy, like manipulating puppets.

  At this point, the Princess made her second discovery, and it was this. If the power of a female is so great that men will obey her without question, she becomes contemptuous of those men, and within a month, the Princess found that the only feelings she had towards the male species were those of scorn and contumely. She began to practise all manner of droll stratagems to humiliate her worshippers. She took, for example, to going on walkabouts in the city and displaying herself to ordinary men in the street. Surrounded by her faithful guard of eunuchs, she would watch with amusement as the male citizens went crazy with desire at the sight of her blazing beauty, hurling themselves against the spears of the guards and becoming impaled by the hundreds.

  Late at night, before retiring to bed, she would divert herself by strolling out on to her balcony and showing herself to the lascivious polloi who were wont to gather in their thousands in the courtyard below, hoping for a glimpse of her. And why not indeed? She looked more dazzling and desirable than ever standing there in the moonlight. In truth, she outshone the moon itself, and the citizens would go berserk as soon as she appeared, crying out and tearing their hair and fracturing their bones by flinging themselves against the craggy walls of the Palace. Every now and again, the Princess would pour a pipkin or two of boiling lead over their heads to cool them down.

  All this was bad enough, but there was worse to come. As we all know, power, with all its subtle facets, is a voracious bedfellow. The more one has, the more one wants. There is no such thing as getting enough of it, and over the next few months the Princess’s craving for power grew and grew until in the end she found herself beginning to toy with the idea of gaining for herself the ultimate power in the land, the throne itself.

  She was the eldest of seven children, all of them girls, and her mother was dead. Already, therefore, she was the rightful heir to her father’s throne. But what good was that? Her father, the King, who not so long ago had been the idol of her eye, now irritated her to distraction. He was a benign and merciful ruler, much loved by his people, and