Free Money from Holme by Michael Innes Page B

of the technique to abstractions that I’ve been finding interesting.’ Surprised and gratified, Cheel produced some of his recent labours. ‘One can’t just be a critic all the time.’
    ‘Can’t one?’ For some minutes Holme studied with care the small paintings shown to him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see. You’re rather a clever person, Cheel.’ He turned away, suddenly indifferent. ‘Which doesn’t mean these things aren’t pretty average rubbish. They are.’
    ‘Thank you very much.’ For the first time in the course of his exchanges with the disagreeable Sebastian Holme, Cheel was really offended. Indeed, he was deeply mortified. He managed, however, to say no more than: ‘If that’s settled, perhaps we can get back to business.’
    ‘Exactly. You’re broke, or the next thing to it. And honest work isn’t your line. So you’ve decided that you can somehow cash in on having discovered me.’ A quick grin came over the young man’s face. ‘Money from Holme. That’s your notion.’
    ‘Money for Holme, too.’ Cheel was recovering something like good humour. It seemed to him that Holme’s rather crude phrasing of the matter wasn’t wholly unpromising. ‘But, of course, I may have got the thing wrong. So I want the facts. In the first place, about Wamba, or Wamba-Wamba, or whatever its name is.’
    ‘Wamba is the territory – the state, as they now call it. Wamba-Wamba is the town, or capital. The people are called the Wamba. They’re terrific. Particularly in a dapple of light through jungle foliage. You just wouldn’t believe what happens to their skins. There’s not the minutest area that you couldn’t explore for days. I’d done no more than make a beginning at that. And now I’ll never be able to go near the place again.’ Holme glanced up at Cheel – his mood of anxiety and incipient dependence suddenly returned to him. ‘I take it your damned cleverness doesn’t see a way to my doing that ?’
    ‘One thing at a time, my dear chap. We must walk before we can run. Now, what about your manner of living at present? To just what extent are you being your brother Gregory?’
    ‘I collect his money from the bank, to begin with. Only they tell me there isn’t much left.’
    ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ In point of fact, Cheel found this information satisfactory. Sebastian Holme had been forging his brother’s signature. Knowledge of this would be useful if the young man later turned recalcitrant. ‘What else?’
    ‘Well, I keep away from people who knew Gregory, and and I skip around pretty quickly from one set of digs to another. I couldn’t manage a real impersonation. And Hedda has been trying to contact me. I mean she’s been trying to contact Gregory. It’s all very confusing. And there’s no future in it, as I said. I wouldn’t have come back to England at all, if there hadn’t been some stupid difficulty about drawing on Gregory’s money abroad. And yet I wanted to come back. If I can’t be in Wamba, I’d sooner be in England.’
    ‘What sort of a person was your brother Gregory?’
    ‘Oh, absolutely splendid!’ Sebastian Holme spoke with a new animation. ‘When he first began to take me around his bits of Africa and so on it was on the score of his needing a reliable lieutenant. That’s how he represented it. But he really knew, I think.’
    ‘Really knew? I don’t follow you.’
    ‘That it was what I needed if my painting was going to be painting, of course. Mind you, my painting was useful to him , if anybody got too curious about the yacht, I’d set up a whacking great canvas on the deck and start painting as showily as possible. I was a wealthy amateur, and Gregory was just the nautical character I hired to get me around exotic parts.’
    ‘What was there about the yacht for people to get too curious about?’
    ‘Well, of course, our main business was gun-running. You’d hardly believe the number of people in Africa that you can flog guns to. Guns