Posted by The Hooded Hood continues with the saga of Mumphrey Wilton and the Lost City of Mystery on June 13, 2001 at 11:37:30:
Part the Fifth: The Hidden City and the Lady’s Secret
“I think those bullets
punctured our fuel tank,” Terry Lucas, the CrazySugarBlast-offLad warned Sir
Mumphrey Wilton and Miss Canterbury. “We’re having trouble with number one
engine.” “Well, any landing you can walk away from,” quoted Mumphrey, lighting up a
cigar to burn the river-leeches off his companions. “This way, Sir Mumphrey,” Miss Canterbury urged. “There’s a sort of game
trail.” In our next exciting episode: Talking apes, sucking chest wounds,
enslaved damsels, lost cities, and the Blanchford diaries decoded.
The Hooded Hood's
Homepage of Doom
“And how many engines does this plane of yours have, Mr Lucas?” Miss
Canterbury enquired.
“One,” Lucas admitted. “We can’t be far from our
destination now. We’re somewhere over central equatorial Africa, in places where
cartographer is a local word for ‘take-away’. I’m going to look for a body of
water we can set down on, since nobody has bothered to make us a
runway.”
“Please tell me this is a seaplane equipped for water landings,”
Miss Canterbury urged.
“Oh sure,” CSBL! agreed. “It just doesn’t usually
have so many holes.
“I’m sure you’ll do an absolutely splendid job,” Mumphrey
assured the young pilot. “It’s our own fault really for havin’ to leave Persia
in such a hurry. I’ll miss that pipe I left in m’luggage.”
“And I’ll miss all
those unripped blouses,” added Miss Canterbury ruefully.
“Oh that’s alright
Miss Canterbury,” Mumphrey answered without thinking. “Er, I mean being
gentleman we’re not really noticing…”
Miss Canterbury had noticed him not
noticing.
“There’s some safari gear in the back,” Terry Lucas told them.
“Hmm. I think I can see a river down there. This is going to be fun.”
“We
have to get as near to the legendary city of Vesalia as possible,” Mumphrey
warned. “We’re in a hurry to get the coded parts of old Blanchford Bertram’s
diary translated from Vesalian, before the Nazi bounders we’re up against find
someone who can do it. Vesalia’s the logical place to find a Vesalian-speaker,
what?”
“We’re going down,” Lucas warned his passengers as the last of the
fuel was spent and the monoplane became a glider. “Hold on!”
“You have your,
um, your rocket pack,” Miss Canterbury pointed out. “Couldn’t you just fly us
out of here?”
“That would be cheating,” grinned CSBL! as his plane skimmed
the treetops. “Wheeeeeee!!!”
“Sorry. We were doing so
well until the waterfall,” Lucas said wistfully.
“Yes,” Miss Canterubury
agreed. “Until the waterfall.”
“I’ll fly off for help,” CSBL! assured them.
“At full thrust I reckon I can be in civilisation in around two days, and back
here with a replacement plane a couple of days after.”
“That should give us
time to penetrate the interior,” Mumphrey considered, staring at the wall of
tropical jungle before them. Some obscure mental associations caused him to
add,” Er, if Miss Canterbury doesn’t mind bein’ here unchaperoned with me, that
is.”
“I think I can trust you by now, Sir Mumphrey,” the reverend’s daughter
admitted. She picked herself up, grabbed a machete and looked at him. “Well
then. Let’s be off.”
“Yes,” panted the exhausted Englishman. “Be careful. It probably
leads to a lion or something. I still say that according to old Hakenfakir’s
instructions we should be heading further east.”
“There’s something else we
have to do first,” Miss Canterbury insisted. “We can’t be far off now. Ah, there
it is!”
Mumphrey pushed through the undergrowth to see a scorched clearing
with a silver saucer-shaped vessel in the centre. “What on Earth…?” he began.
Then he noticed the red and black emblem on the reflective hull: the
swastika.
Then he heard the sound of a revolver being cocked at the back of
his head. “Don’t move, Sir Mumphrey,” Miss Canterbury warned him. “I would be
very upset to have to shoot you now.”
“What? What are you doing, Miss
Canterbury?”
“I’m betraying you,” the young woman answered. “I left word in
Baghdad about where Vesalia was, where we were travelling, and I was instructed
to guide you to this ambush spot. So here we are.”
Mumphrey felt as if he
had been hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer. “You… you’re working for
them?”
“She is working for me,” the Expediter announced, appearing out of the
jungle flanked by SS soldiers. “Well done, my pawn.”
Mumph was flabbergasted.
“But… why? He killed your father?”
“I had no choice,” Miss Canterbury
replied, tears running down her face.
“I believe Miss Canterbury is referring
to the fact that I encountered her in Hong Kong,” the sinister American known
only as the Expediter explained. “After relieving her of the original Blanchford
diary I placed certain hypnotic commands upon her and left her for you to find.
Did you never wonder why we did not simply abscond with the girl when we found
her undefended there? It was because I knew you had a better chance of locating
a translator for the text than we did, so I arranged to have a spy in your camp,
so to speak.”
“I’m sorry,” Miss Canterbury told him. “I didn’t have any
choice. Literally.”
“It’s a knack I have,” the American mercenary
smirked.
“You unspeakable bounder,” Mumphrey thundered at the Expediter. He
moved to leap forward but Miss Canterbury cocked the pistol at his
head..
There was another disturbance in the undergrowth and Herr Wertham
appeared with more Nazi troopers and his sinister mute giant henchman. They
dragged a large netted ape with them. “No sign of the hidden city,” the Axis
agent reported, “but we found another of these trained guard-monkeys. Carrying
this, if you’d credit it.” He held out a strange crude firearm not unlike an
arquebus. “I kept this gorilla or whatever it is alive this time, as you
requested.”
“Excellent,” the Expediter smiled. “Well, we have important
things to do now, Sir Mumphrey, but I’m afraid you’re not included. The lady is
coming with us, for when I get bored. As for you…” He raised his pistol at his
prisoner’s chest then paused. “How does he accomplish those time effects, Miss
Canterbury?” he enquired.
“With… with his pocketwatch,” the lady answered
with a sob.
“Kindly remove the instrument, Miss Canterbury. Thank you. No,
don’t give it to me. I suspect there might be nasty little booby traps if it is
handled by the unwary, but Sir Mumphrey is too much of a gentleman to allow them
to affect you. Am I right, Sir Mumphrey?”
“Go to hell,” the eccentric
Englishman spat at him.
“I think you will find that you will be preparing a
place for me there first,” the Expediter promised. Then he short Mumphrey three
times in the stomach. “Die slowly,” he bade his enemy and spun on his heels.
“Let’s be off,” he told Wertham. “Bring the ape and my newfound
slave-toy.”
The soldiers dragged the netted gorilla to its feet. It struggled
futilely against the overpowering enemy that had already hobbled and handcuffed
it. Losing its temper it pulled back its lips and snarled at the Nazis. “Get
your paws off me, you damned filthy humans!”
Who's Who in
the Parodyverse
Where's
Where in the Parodyverse