The Devil in Amber Read Free Page A

bandaged hand on the wonderfully cold glass. The pain was somewhat tempered.
    I’ve dealt with Art and its shortcomings. Now, as promised, we shall examine the state of my other pursuit, namely espionage. Once again, for the newcomers (Keep up! Keep up!), I must devote a short passage to the Royal Academy of Arts, that bastion of theEstablishment in London’s Piccadilly (where else’s Piccadilly? Must I address you like simpletons?). Fact is, the RA is not what it seems. For strip away the facade of Burlington House–you can do that, you know. The whole Palladian front descends into a specially dug trench in case of mortar attack. No, really –and you’ll uncover a seething hotbed of plotting, counter-plotting and assassination. Of course, that’s what you’d expect to find in a building full of artists, but this is a different business altogether. For the RA is the true face of His Majesty’s Secret Service. Not that other lot of whom you may have vaguely heard: the blighters who go around destabilizing perfectly friendly democracies in Bolivia or knocking off the Nabob of Whatchamacallit. No, we’re the real thing: the ones who oil the wheels of the great machines of state; the ones who make it possible for you to sit down in Lyon’s Corner House with a cup of rosie and the ‘Thunderer’ without some greasy foreigner taking a pop at you with a Walther PP.7.65.
    As I’ve said, to me it was always the merest hobby of a dilettante, a little like collecting stamps or mounting Red Admirals–but my exploits amongst the Russian navy will have to wait for another day. No, from my youthful adventures at the tail end of the old Queen’s reign to my ill-starred work against the Bosch during the last big show, I reckoned myself one of the brightest and best of the Academicians; trotting merrily from continent to continent; cutting, thrusting, derring and doing.
    Now, though, the game seemed to be full of arrogant young-bloods like the odious Percy Flarge, an athletic Cambridge Blue of little discernible charm. If there’s one thing I cannot abide, it’s a smart alec. Unless that smart alec is me. And Percy Flarge was, from the crown of his trilby to the tips of his absurd coffee-and-cream brogues, smart as paint.
    At first I’d taken him for one of the legion of doe-eyed admirers who have crossed my path over the years. My fan-club , I suppose you would call them. Like so many others, he’d cornered me on thegrand staircase of the Academy, brimming with energy and stuffed with tales of my famous cases. The spectacular matter of the Spitzbergen Mammoth! That nasty business with the Italian volcanoes! The explosive urinals of Armitage Shankz and the colourful revenge of the Man with the Wooden Wig! (I’ve never written that one down, have I?). He was a looker too, which never hurts, forever bobbing aside his silly blond fringe and batting his lashes like a flapper at a Valentino flicker. I was absurdly flattered and rather let down my guard.
    Then came a change of regime at the top (more of that later) and Flarge’s attitude began, subtly at first, to alter. Sly jibes here, stifled giggles there. Surely old Boxy was past his best? Time for younger talents to take the lead. Of course what really rankled was the fear that the loathsome creature was right. Hubbard the Cupboard, for instance, should have presented scant challenge for the great Lucifer Box but the bounder had almost bested me, had almost derringered me into oblivion, and if it hadn’t been for that deplorably wiry and sunburnt colleague of mine, he would have succeeded.
    I was startled by the blast of the taxi’s horn and realized I had indeed flaked out on the cracked leather upholstery. At last we shushed through the filthy drifts and pulled up outside the snow-flecked frontage of my hotel. I felt light-headed still and the darkness, coupled with the ugly illumination of headlamps, conspired to make me giddy. Pressing a couple of dollars into the