“Woosah!” An enormous scream and a startling figure clad in silk kimono, black trousers fastened tightly at the ankles and grimy plimsolls leapt from the allotment shed, clearing the five-foot bean poles in a single bound to descend with a sickening crash amongst a pile of upturned bell cloches.
“Damn it!” The figure stepped from the wreckage and straightened its wig, then, “Banzai!” The figure strutted forward, performed an amazing Kata and drove the fingers of his right hand back through the corrugated wall of his shed.
The figure was Archroy, and he was well on the way to mastering the secrets of the legendary Count Dante. The area around his shed was a mass of tangled wreckage, the wheelbarrow was in splinters and the watering can was an unrecognizable tangle of zinc.
Archroy strode forward upon elastic limbs and sought things to destroy. The Dimac manual lay open at a marked page labelled “The Art of the Iron Hand”.
“Aaaroo!” Archroy lept into the air and kicked the weathervane from the top of Omally’s shed, returning to the ground upon bouncing feet. He laughed loudly and the sound echoed over the empty dust bowl, bouncing from the Mission wall and disappearing over his head in the direction of the river. “Iron Hand,” he said, “I’ll show them.”
He had read the Dimac manual from cover to cover and learned it by heart. “The deadliest form of martial arts known to mankind,” it said, “whose brutal tearing, rending, maiming and mutilating techniques have for many years been known only to the high Lamas of Tibet, where in the snowy wastes of the Himalayas they have perfected the hidden art of Dimac.” Count Dante had scorned his sacred vow of silence, taken in the lofty halls of the Potala, never to reveal the secret science, and had brought his knowledge and skill back to the West where for a mere one dollar ninety-eight these maiming, disfiguring and crippling techniques could be made available to the simple layman. Archroy felt an undying gratitude to the black-masked Count, the Deadliest Man on Earth, who must surely be living a life of fear lest the secret emissaries from Lhasa catch him up.
Archroy cupped his hand into the Dark Eagle’s Claw posture and sent it hurtling through the padlocked door of Omally’s shed. The structure burst asunder, toppling to the ground in a mass of twisted wreckage and exposing the iron frame and sit-up-and-beg handlebars of Marchant.
“Luck indeed,” said Archroy, sniggering mercilessly. He lifted the old black bicycle from the ruins of the allotment hut and stood it against a heap of seed boxes which had escaped his violent attentions.
“You’ve had it coming for years,” he told Marchant. The bicycle regarded him with silent contempt. “It’s the river for you, my lad.” Marchant’s saddle squeaked nervously. “But first I am going to punish you.”
Archroy gripped the handlebars and wrenched them viciously to one side. “Remember the time you tripped me up outside the Swan?” Archroy raised his left foot to a point level with his own head, spun around on his right heel and drove it through Marchant’s back wheel, bursting out a dozen spokes which spiralled into the air to fall some twenty feet away.
Marchant now realized his dire predicament and began to ring his bell frantically. “Oh no you don’t.” Archroy fastened his iron grip about the offending chime and tore it free from its mountings. Crushing its thumb toggle, he flung it high over his shoulder.
The bell cruised upwards into the air and fell in a looping arc directly on to the head of John Omally, who was taking a short cut across the allotment en route to the post box on the corner of the Ealing Road.
“Ow! Oh! Ouch! Damn!” screamed Omally, clutching at his dented skull and hopping about it pain. He levelled his boot at what he thought must surely be a meteorite and his eyes fell upon the instantly recognizable if somewhat battered form of his own bicycle bell. Omally ceased his desperate hopping and cast his eyes about the allotment. It took hardly two seconds before his distended orbs fixed upon Archroy. The lad was carrying Marchant high and moving in the direction of the river.
Omally leapt upon his toes and legged it towards the would-be destroyer of his two-wheeled companion. “Hold up there!” he cried, and “Enough of that! Let loose that velocipede!”
Archroy heard the Irishman’s frenzied cries and released his grip. Marchant toppled to the dust in a tangle of flailing spokes. Omally bore down upon Archroy, his face set in grim determination, his fists clenched, and his tweed trouser-bottoms flapping about his ankles like the sails of a two-masted man-o-war. “What villainy is this?” he screamed as he drew near.
Archroy turned upon him. His hands performed a set of lightning moves which were accompanied by sounds not unlike a fleet of jumbo jets taking off. “Defend yourself as best you can,” said he.
Omally snatched up the broken shaft of a garden fork, and as the pupil of the legendary Count advanced upon him, a blur of whirling fists, he struck the scoundrel a thunderous blow across the top of the head.
Archroy sank to his knees, covering his head and moaning piteously. Omally raised his cudgel to finish the job. “No, no,” whimpered Archroy, “enough!”
Omally left him huddled in the foetal position and went over to survey the damage done to his trusty iron steed. “You’ll pay for this,” he said bitterly. “It’ll mean a new back wheel, chain set, bell and a respray.”
Archroy groaned dismally. “How did you manage to fell me with that damned stick?” he asked. “I’ve read the manual from cover to cover.”
Omally grinned. “I had a feeling that you were not being a hundred per cent honest with me when I lent it to you, so I only gave you volume one. Volume two is dedicated to the art of defence.”
“You bastard.”
Omally raised his stick aloft. “What did you say?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“And you’ll pay for the restoration of my bicycle?”
“Yes, yes.”
Omally caught sight of the heap of splintered wood and warped iron that had once been his second home. “And my shed?”
“Yes, anything you say.”
“From the ground up, new timbers, and I’ve always fancied a bit of a porch to sit in at the end of a summer’s day.”
“You bas…”
“What?” Omally wielded his cudgel menacingly.
“Nothing, nothing, leave it to me.”
“Good, then farewell. All my best to you and please convey my regards to your dear wife.”
Omally strode off in the direction of the post box, leaving the master of the iron fist on the dusty ground thrashing his arms and legs and cursing between tightly clenched teeth.
The Professor’s letter duly despatched, Omally set his foot towards the Flying Swan. He looked up at the empty sky, blue as the eyes of a Dublin lass. He would really have enjoyed this unusual summer had it not been for the sinister affair he had become involved in. As he approached the Swan he ran into Norman. It was early closing day and like Omally he was thirsting for a pint of cooling Large and the pleasures of the pot room. The two men entered the saloon bar and were met by a most extraordinary spectacle.
Captain Carson, on whom none had laid eyes for several months, stood at the counter evidently in a state of advanced drunkenness and looking somewhat the worse for wear. He was clad in pyjamas and dressing-gown and surrounded by what appeared to be his life’s possessions in bundles and bags spread about the floor. “Thirty bloody years,” he swore, “thirty bloody years serving the troubled and down-at-heel, doing the work that should have won me a Nobel Prize, never a complaint, never a word said against me, and here I am, out on my ear, penniless, banjoed and broken.”
Omally followed Norman to the polished counter and the lad ordered a brace of Largi. “What’s all this then?” Omally whispered to the part-time barman.