Read Online Monsieur Pamplemousse on the Spot by Michael Bond - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Bond
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the remaining cuttings. Something about the type-face rang a bell. In fact, he’d seen it quite recently. A loud snore from behind reminded him; a moment’s comparison confirmed his suspicions. Bits of identical newsprint were sticking to Pommes Frites. They must have come from the journal he’d been lying on in the wood.
The odd thing was that although they looked genuine enough on the surface, many of them didn’t make sense. As with the cuttings, words were misspelt, letters transposed. The whole thing was clearly a fake; it couldn’t possibly ever have been a part of something seriously offered for sale to the general public. But why? For what purpose? Who would go to all the trouble of printing a mock-up of a journal simply to cut out particular words? Presumably they were meant to be put together at some stage to form a message, but why print the words separately to start with – why not print the entire message? And if they had gone to all that trouble, why not get it right? It was all so amateurish.
His senses quickened as he felt under Pommes Frites and came across another piece of newsprint from which a single word had been cut out, part of a headline which read RUSSIAN SUBMARINE …
A quick search through the pile of cuttings on his desk revealed the missing word: DANGRE . It was neatly pasted on to a sheet of plain paper, but when he held it underneath the gap in the original it fitted exactly.
He sat down again and counted the words. There were seventeen – none were duplicated. Gazing at them he found himself reminded of the time he’d spent in England shortly after the war. In an effort to improve his English he’d become a crossword addict, revelling in the crypticclues and the anagrams. The present problem was like an anagram, only using words instead of letters.
He set them out in no particular order, just as he had been in the habit of doing with the crossword: OF , ONE , HURRY, MESSEGE, YOUR, DANGRE, MY, NEXT, POLICE, LOVED, IS, NOT, AWAAIT, DO, IN-FORM, LIFE, IN.
Mathematically the number of possible combinations was beyond his ability to calculate. At least with a crossword one could eliminate certain letters by solving other clues, either across or down. He felt a bit like the proverbial monkey sitting at a typewriter trying to prove the theory that if it kept on typing at random for long enough it would eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. That kind of time, however, was not at his disposal; according to the Director he only had until Friday at the latest.
Bringing logic to bear on the problem, he tried another approach – pairing certain words with each other in the hope of reducing the number of variations: IN-FORM with POLICE, LIFE with DANGRE, LOVED with ONE, NEXT with MESSEGE .
He added AWAAIT to NEXT MESSEGE , YOUR to LOVED and ONE .
Suddenly things began to slip into place. He had a complete sentence: AWAAIT NEXT MESSEGE OF YOUR LOVED ONE .
Returning to the first two pairings, he added MY , IS and IN , and it became IN-FORM POLICE MY LIFE IS IN DANGRE , leaving him with HURRY , DO and NOT .
Laying the words out carefully in a long line Monsieur Pamplemousse reread the complete message: IN-FORM POLICE MY LIFE IS IN DANGRE. DO NOT HURRY. AWAAIT NEXT MESSEGE OF YOUR LOVED ONE .
A sense of elation came over him. He felt a sudden need to communicate his success. What was it the Director had said? My office telephone will be manned day and night. Perhaps even now he was sitting at his desk, drumming.
Reaching for the handset, Monsieur Pamplemousse pressed the appropriate button for an outside line and was halfway through dialling when he hesitated. What had he achieved? He’d pieced together a presumably as yet unsentmessage, albeit in double-quick time, but it hadn’t got him any further. Repeated over the telephone it would sound like a non-event. It would trigger off a set of questions to which he had, as yet, no answers. Far better to sleep on the
The odd thing was that although they looked genuine enough on the surface, many of them didn’t make sense. As with the cuttings, words were misspelt, letters transposed. The whole thing was clearly a fake; it couldn’t possibly ever have been a part of something seriously offered for sale to the general public. But why? For what purpose? Who would go to all the trouble of printing a mock-up of a journal simply to cut out particular words? Presumably they were meant to be put together at some stage to form a message, but why print the words separately to start with – why not print the entire message? And if they had gone to all that trouble, why not get it right? It was all so amateurish.
His senses quickened as he felt under Pommes Frites and came across another piece of newsprint from which a single word had been cut out, part of a headline which read RUSSIAN SUBMARINE …
A quick search through the pile of cuttings on his desk revealed the missing word: DANGRE . It was neatly pasted on to a sheet of plain paper, but when he held it underneath the gap in the original it fitted exactly.
He sat down again and counted the words. There were seventeen – none were duplicated. Gazing at them he found himself reminded of the time he’d spent in England shortly after the war. In an effort to improve his English he’d become a crossword addict, revelling in the crypticclues and the anagrams. The present problem was like an anagram, only using words instead of letters.
He set them out in no particular order, just as he had been in the habit of doing with the crossword: OF , ONE , HURRY, MESSEGE, YOUR, DANGRE, MY, NEXT, POLICE, LOVED, IS, NOT, AWAAIT, DO, IN-FORM, LIFE, IN.
Mathematically the number of possible combinations was beyond his ability to calculate. At least with a crossword one could eliminate certain letters by solving other clues, either across or down. He felt a bit like the proverbial monkey sitting at a typewriter trying to prove the theory that if it kept on typing at random for long enough it would eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. That kind of time, however, was not at his disposal; according to the Director he only had until Friday at the latest.
Bringing logic to bear on the problem, he tried another approach – pairing certain words with each other in the hope of reducing the number of variations: IN-FORM with POLICE, LIFE with DANGRE, LOVED with ONE, NEXT with MESSEGE .
He added AWAAIT to NEXT MESSEGE , YOUR to LOVED and ONE .
Suddenly things began to slip into place. He had a complete sentence: AWAAIT NEXT MESSEGE OF YOUR LOVED ONE .
Returning to the first two pairings, he added MY , IS and IN , and it became IN-FORM POLICE MY LIFE IS IN DANGRE , leaving him with HURRY , DO and NOT .
Laying the words out carefully in a long line Monsieur Pamplemousse reread the complete message: IN-FORM POLICE MY LIFE IS IN DANGRE. DO NOT HURRY. AWAAIT NEXT MESSEGE OF YOUR LOVED ONE .
A sense of elation came over him. He felt a sudden need to communicate his success. What was it the Director had said? My office telephone will be manned day and night. Perhaps even now he was sitting at his desk, drumming.
Reaching for the handset, Monsieur Pamplemousse pressed the appropriate button for an outside line and was halfway through dialling when he hesitated. What had he achieved? He’d pieced together a presumably as yet unsentmessage, albeit in double-quick time, but it hadn’t got him any further. Repeated over the telephone it would sound like a non-event. It would trigger off a set of questions to which he had, as yet, no answers. Far better to sleep on the
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