The Bringing Down of the Meinertzhagen League
Jeez, old people! You wanna know what the problem with old people is? They're crazy. You see'em in the movies and they're wise and always helping the local kids out of tough spots, but in real life they're nothing but grumbling, cantankerous, nutty old coots.
You wanna know what another problem with old people is?
They've all got weapons in their hands.
Sure, sure, no one suspects them, but they've got canes and ear trumpets and bags of rocks. Well, okay, that last one isn't something old geezers usually have, but these ones did.
See, it all started when the Colonel ordered me to talk to our contact at the Natural History Museum in Hamelburg. We used it as a way station to pass along stuff and things had been going great for months, but then poof! All the plans and maps and codebooks we were hiding in the exhibits started going missing. Anyway, trust my luck to get the short straw. Now I had to go and do the Sherlock Holmes routine while the others got to go to the Hofbrau and ogle the new waitress. The Colonel always says you make your own luck, but why it had to be me going to the museum the same night a bunch of goofy old geezers decided to try their luck at kidnapping is something I'd sure as heck like to know!
So I'm at the museum one minute, looking at a mannequin in some kind of fur number painting a deer on the wall of a cave, and then whammo! Everything goes dark and when I come to, I'm tied to a chair in a broom closet and somebody's yelling at me demanding to know where the duck is.
Sheesh, make your own luck, that's a hot one!
"Huh?" I shouted.
"The Labrador Duck, you obstructive whippersnapper!" the voice shouted, but then whoever it was started coughing a lung out and I heard someone else say, "Where are the lozenges?"
"WHAT?" another voice yelled.
"THE LOZENGES!"
"Fassbender! You are undermining my efforts at intimidation!" the guy who wanted to duck shouted.
"You said my real name!" Fassbender cried. "I thought I was going to be Dirk!"
"SHOULDN'T WE OPEN THE DOOR?" the third voice yelled.
"Yes, let's open the door!" Fassbender agreed. And, well, if the Purple Gang had escaped from the nearest nuthouse in their bathrobes, you'd know what I saw when they finally opened that stupid closet.
"We," wheezed the one in the middle, an old guy leaning on two canes, "are the Meinertzhagen - "
"Gang!" shouted a huge fat guy and I recognized him as Fassbender. He seemed thrilled by what was going on and he kinda reminded me of Schultzie. That is, if Schultzie were about two hundred years old.
The one in the middle, the duck one, glared at him. "League," he said. "It's more distinguished."
"But gang is more tough!" Fassbender said. He looked so disappointed I actually felt a little bit sorry for him.
"League, Fassbender. I will not have my name associated with the term gang." You'd think the word was poison the way he said it. "Now, you," he snapped at me, "Where is the Labrador Duck?"
The Labrador Duck? Oh boy, that's where our contact was going to hide the specs to the new rocket the Krauts had dreamed up!
"The what?" I said, acting like I didn't know.
"You don't fool me, you execrable young toad! You're working for Wernstrom! No, don't deny it! Him and his odious goal of spiriting away all of our best specimens for that ridiculous exhibit in Berlin he has planned!"
What? Specimens? What was going on?
"Honest, I swear, I haven't got any idea of what you're talking about!"
"Nonsense! A young Lieutenant like you not at the front! You must have connections, and no one goes to the museum anymore now that it's nothing but a front for spouting Nazi drivel. Not unless they have some sort of nefarious plan! You are working for Wernstrom and you have stolen the Labrador Duck. It's all a plot to discredit us and shut the museum down!"
"DOES HE HAVE THE DUCK?" the third one yelled. He was short and mostly bald, but with long strands of grey hair sticking out from the sides of his head and even with a giant ear trumpet he didn't seem to be able to hear anything.
"WE DON'T KNOW, GRAHL," Fassbender shouted.
"YES, WE DO!" Meinertzhagen hollered.
"OH, NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY, YOUNG MAN," Grahl said, wagging a finger at me. "STEALING SUCH A TREASURE!"
I thought that was a pretty good one coming from a gaggle of kleptomaniacs like these, because now I could look around and see what was going on: the walls were stacked with glass cases of insects pinned to cards, skulls and thigh bones, rocks with funny designs on them, and stuffed animals of every kind mounted on bases. And everything bore museum plaques.
They were robbing the place blind!
"And now, you self-important ignoramus, what have you and Wernstrom done with the Labrador Duck?" Meinertzhagen demanded, and then he actually had the nerve to swat at me with one of his canes!
"Nothing, I swear! I don't even know what a Labrador Duck looks like!"
"Oh, here," Fassbender said, "I'll show you this picture. See the striking white and black piebald colouration? And the unusual bill structure with it's wide, flattened tip? Oh, it's a wonderful specimen! Such a shame for it to go to Berlin. Those boys, tsk, they are never thorough like they should be when they write up their placards. It's all superior race this and superior race that. Why - "
Meinertzhagen rolled his eyes. "Fassbender," he interrupted. "This man is one of them."
"Oh, not really, are you?" Fassbender asked me anxiously.
"No, I'm not! I'm…" I nearly said I was a nothing but a technical sergeant. "I'm an aide to General Kinchmeyer, that's all."
"An aide to General Kinchmeyer!" Meinertzhagen seemed pretty surprised by this. "Is he the one behind Wernstrom and his plot to shut down our museum?"
"Uh… I don't think so."
He looked at me and then waved the other two over to the far side of the room. Of course, that didn't do any good.
"He's lying," Meinertzhagen said.
"WHAT?" yelled Grahl.
"HE'S LYING!" Meinertzhagen repeated.
"HE'S FLYING? WHEN? WHERE'S HE GOING?" Grahl bellowed. And, well, you get the picture. They had to shout everything so loud for Grahl that I heard it all. General Kinchmeyer was in cahoots with this Wernstrom fella, and they were going to stop him by holding me for ransom.
Holy cow.
But it didn't end there, oh no. They were going to go to the museum tonight to leave the ransom note.
You wanna know what the worst problem with old people is? Sooner or later you get to thinking of'em like they're somebody's grandpa.
See, the pass to our courier was going to happen tonight. The curator, who worked for us, was going to stick the rocket specs in the base of the Labrador Duck, and then the courier, disguised as the night watchman, would find it and take it to London. Well, our courier is kind of a nervous fella, which is only natural I guess, but the upshot is that he's a bit eager with the old trigger finger.
So I ask you, what else could I do? Just because someone's a loony kleptomaniac who's kidnapped you doesn't mean you should let them get shot.
First off, I tried to argue them out of the whole ransom idea. I told them flat out the General wouldn't pay a cent for me (which was likely true because I'd knocked over Kinch's radio just this morning and I wouldn't have given a plugged nickel for my chances of him paying to get me back). When that didn't work, I argued that they should have me call so'd the General would know they really had me.
"Fine, fine," Meinertzhagen agreed. "But hurry up, I haven't got much time."
"Boy, I'm sorry. That's rotten luck. Are you sure they can't cure it?"
"What?"
"Maybe you should get a second opinion."
"Good heavens, man, what are you talking about?"
"This dreadful disease you've got. Is that why you're so cranky? I guess I'd be pretty miserable too if I didn't have much time to live."
"You putrid cretin!" he yelled at me, and hit me with his cane again. "I meant that I'm in a hurry! Just because I'm old does not mean that I'm at death's door."
"Sorry, sorry."
"You'll be old too, one day."
Only if I survive tonight, I thought.
My next move was to call General Kinchmeyer. Or, pretend to anyway. Nobody, but nobody, was going to make me call the guys and tell them I was being held hostage for a duck!
"…yes, that's right, they're really serious. They want the Labrador Duck, and they want all plans to shut down the Museum stopped," I said frantically to the dial tone.
Meinertzhagen was a sharp old bird though. "Why can't I hear the General?"
"He's got laryngitis. He can only talk very softly." The old guy might not be as deaf as Grahl, but I was praying his hearing wasn't good.
"Bah!" he said, but he didn't take the phone from me. Probably too embarrassed to admit he wouldn't be able to hear the General on the line even if he was there.
After that, I could only stall as best I could. They'd untied me to talk on the phone, so the first thing I did was bump into Grahl and 'accidentally' knock his glasses off. And then, wouldn't you know it, I stepped on them and broke them.
"Oh, Mein Gott, that is terrible," Fassbender said. "Where is your spare pair, Heinrich?"
"WHAT?"
"WHERE IS YOUR SPARE PAIR, HEINRICH?"
"OH, OH, UPSTAIRS, I THINK!"
So guess who had to go get them? Not the fat guy or the guy with two canes, that's for sure. But you gotta look on the bright side - while I was up there I knocked over a whole shelf of pickled specimens in jars. It made a loud enough racket that Meinertzhagen heard it at least. I had a good fifteen minutes while he made his way up the stairs.
"ACK, what have you done?"
"It's not my fault! What do you expect when you order someone to look for something and you've got all this junk lying around?"
"JUNK?" he screeched. I think he could have had a stroke right there.
After the old coot stopped seething and we went downstairs, we found Fassbender and Grahl eating some pastries. Now, you gotta understand, I hadn't eaten since lunch that day - Lebeau had made barley soup for supper and I can't stand that - so the sight of those pastries did something to me. They didn't want to give me any, but they soon got caught up in an argument about the best places to find Bavarian pine voles and stopped paying attention to me.
While all this was going on, my fingers edged towards the pastries and quick as anything, I got four of them into my pockets. A few minutes later, two more went in under my shirt. Meanwhile, the argument was heating up.
"I know what I'm talking about," Fassbender said. "And what's more, Bucheim thinks I'm right. He says I am the biggest expert on voles in Germany!"
"Are you sure he didn't simply mean size?"
"Nein! He thinks no one knows more than I do!" Fassbender defended himself.
"So would I if I poured schnapps on my porridge every morning." Boy oh boy, that Meinertzhagen was definitely the snippy one of the bunch. He reminded me of Newkirk.
But I didn't care. I could almost have looked forward to going back to the broom closet, just so I could shove those pastries in my mouth without them seeing. Oh, but now Meinertzhagen was reaching for the plate. He'd see they were all gone any second now!
"What…why you greedy swine, you've eaten all the pastries!" he suddenly yelled. At Fassbender!
"No I didn't! You shrivelled old imbecile, you know I haven't! I've been arguing with you the whole time! You would've seen me eat them!"
"Who else would eat five pastries!" Meinertzhagen shot back.
"Grahl did it!" Fassbender shouted, "Look, he's still got crumbs in his moustache!"
"WHAT?" Grahl said with a snort, just waking up.
Well, long story short, it didn't take much to get these old codgers squabbling with each other. They must have been rivals from away back, because it wasn't long before the were fighting about old papers about frogs and trilobites and accusing each other of dropping valuable fossils and whatnot.
I was hoping things might've ended there and I could've snuck away, but no such luck. Meinertzhagen got in his head that we should all go to the museum after all, to arrange for the swap: me for the duck.
What happened next wasn't my fault. It could have happened to anyone! Besides, they started it by torturing me. Nobody could have put up with that kind of driving and not screamed in protest.
We started off with Fassbender behind the wheel. He drove about fifteen miles an hour. Then Meinertzhagen took over. He drove like a madman and the other two complained it was too hard on their nerves. Then they turned things over to Grahl.
"You gotta be kidding me," I said. "He's as blind as a bat! He's going to drive us into a tree!"
He didn't drive us into a tree. He drove us into fence.
Finally, they let me drive. But who could blame me if I went the wrong way and got us lost? "You try driving with some two hundred year old geezer holding a gun on you and his arm's shaking like the dickens!" I asked old beak nose.
"Nobody wants to hear you complain, you young idiot!" was Meinertzhagen's answer.
Gee, I always thought old people were supposed to be polite. That's what they're always demanding from everybody else.
Another thing you gotta know about old people is that they've got weak bladders. After an hour of driving around the woods trying to find the main road, they tell me to stop the car.
You ever take three old men into the woods for a pit stop? It's a great way to kill a few hours, as long as you don't mind ripping all your hair out. I mean, first, they walk slow. And then they don't see so good so you gotta watch they don't stumble over something. And then they've each got to have their privacy, so they wander off in three different directions.
But it does make it really easy to get them turned around, which eats up a little more time. Then they each need help, which gives you the chance for more stalling, but I don't want to talk about it. Let's just say it involved fumbling with belt buckles, arthritis, and balance problems. However, I did take the opportunity to kick Grahl's ear trumpet into a bush and so we had to waste even more time looking for it.
Anyway, in the end, a patrol found us near dawn. I guess they must have heard the three old coots yelling across the forest paths at each other. They were fighting again, this time mostly because of the things I added to each one's words as I had to repeat what each one said in a holler to the others. Turns out even Meinertzhagen and Fassbender couldn't hear well enough deep in the woods.
But we came out all right. A bit dirty, thirsty, tired, but none of us were dead or anything. So that's why what they did next really hit below the belt.
They told me they didn't want to kidnap me anymore! Imagine, after all the trouble I went through to keep them safe, and they tell me I'm too much of a trial for anyone sane! Boy oh boy, of all the gosh-darned nerve!
And what in the heck was I going to tell the Colonel after being out all night? I tell ya, it's just not fair! It really isn't!