The Yellow Glass
you.
    “Tamang is one of the masterminds behind all the
technical gubbins, Kathleen.   Sorry, let
me introduce you two.   Jay Tamang, this
is my wife Kathleen.   Kathy Smith to her
fans, of course.   Now, as I said, we need
your help.”
    “Apparently we have to go down a slide,” Kathleen
added.
    He was taken aback.  
    “ The slide?”
    “Yes,” I replied.   “There are eyes out and about and we need to avoid them.   The slide seems the obvious solution.   We just want to get it operational and then
we can slip out and nobody will be any the wiser.”
    Tamang smiled, “You mean, you haven’t got permission
from upstairs, Mr Upshott?”
    “Not as such, no.”
    “The Stone girl smashes my glass and now this .
.”  
    “Rosa smashed some glass?”   Kathleen asked.   “Can’t you just glue it back together again?”
    “Never mind that,” I interjected, keen to change the
subject, “there’s been one hell of a blowback and we’ve already had tails
behind us with shooters several times tonight . .”
    “ Several times?   Not when Rosa was with you?   Tristram?”   Kathleen broke in.
    “ . . and it’s vital we go to ground safely.   If you could just get it operational, Tamang,
I’ll take any flak that comes our way, tomorrow.   What do you say?”
    Tamang looked dubious, then shook his head,
vigorously.   It wasn’t encouraging.   Frankly, he was my last hope; if the boy
couldn’t help then I didn’t see how I was going to get the idea off the
ground.   That is . . until my wife piped
up.
    “Oh, come on Mr Tamang,” she said, “we can’t hang
about here all night.   Whatever this
slide is, why don’t you come down it, too ?   You’d be doing me a favour.   I tell you, the way I’m feeling at the
moment, if I’m left alone with my husband, I’m liable to commit murder.”
    God knows how, but Kathleen had instinctively found a
way to get through to him.   I supposed it
was working in a job where all the excitement happened to other people that did
it.   (I mean, if you were left in a dark corner to re-wire sprockets, or whatever it
was he did, and - even when you’d re-wired your sprockets and invented some
ingenious bit of kit - you knew that you’d never actually get to see any of it
in action, well, wouldn’t you jump at
the chance to speed along the slide at midnight with a glamorous blonde in
tow?)  
    Young Jay Tamang’s dark face lit up:
    “I shouldn’t be doing this, Mr Upshott.   I’m sure Professor Monkington would not be pleased, but . . give me a minute
and I’ll be right with you.”
    He dived into a shrouded area of his den and began to
toss things about.
    “Well done, Kathleen,” I thought I’d give her her due.
    However, now that we were alone, she appeared to be
hyperventilating.  
    “Rosa got shot at?   And now Rosa’s disappeared?”   She
hissed at me, like a goose.   “I cannot believe how you could’ve been such an
arrogant sod as to’ve involved her in this, Tristram!”
    I did my best to ignore her.   There was plenty of time for all that
later.   We had to get cracking.
    “Hurry up,” I urged Tamang.   “What’s taking so long in there?   Can’t you just find the switches and levers
for us?”
    Tamang reappeared bearing a small, rectangular
object.   He was beaming from ear to ear,
so I was surprised by his reply.
    “I’m sorry, I cannot do that for you.   I have no idea where the switches and levers
are.”   
    Well, that seemed to be that.   (However, the fact that he was pulling on his
duffle coat and stuffing the remains of his supper into a pocket suggested it
might not be that.)
    “But I do have this little device, Mr Upshott and I would be most interested to have the
chance to test it out.   That is, if you
and Mrs Upshott have no objections?”  
    He didn’t wait for a reply, but dashed towards the
basement stairs.  
    “Come!”   He
grinned at us.   “I’m presuming we have a
car?”

 
     

Similar Books

Feudlings

Wendy Knight

My Kind of Girl

Candace Shaw

Gun Games

Faye Kellerman

Belle Cora: A Novel

Phillip Margulies

Zero to Love

Em Petrova

Kalila

Rosemary Nixon