The Philosophical Strangler(18)

“I say she pinched me,” he announced, trying for some dignity. “And by the Old Geister, that’s an invitation in anybody’s book!”

He glared around the table. “And what’s she doing here anyway, if she’s not looking for a handsome lad like me?” He stood up and sucked in his gut. At least three geometric axioms were refuted.

“She’s here to meet Greyboar,” I announced. “He should come—there he is now.”

Sure enough, Greyboar was already halfway across the room, headed for the Cat’s table. Good thing nobody was in his way, he’d have trampled them. Not on purpose, of course! Greyboar was normally as polite as you could ask. But does a bull moose in heat pay attention to the odd field mouse in his way?

O’Neal was like a statue, white as marble. Slowly, slowly, that certain smile inched across his face. “Coprophagic,” the scholars call it.

“Gee.” A mouse squeaks louder. He cleared his throat.

“No need to mention this to Greyboar, is there, Ignace old buddy? I was just kidding anyway. Ha. Ha. Ha. Buy you a drink?”

“Oh, siddown,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare ten years off your life. Why would I tell Greyboar? And even if I did, so what? He’s the phlegmatic type, he is. Not the kind to get all worked up into a jealous rage, don’t you know?”

“True, true,” opined Angus. “Nice easygoing lad, Greyboar. Still and all, everybody’s got their off days. Fat lot of good it’d do O’Neal here, his neck like a tapeworm, being the exception to the rule.”

Anyway, that was the Cat. Weird, like I said, but did I care? Long as she was around, Greyboar wasn’t wallowing in that damned philosophy.

Yessir. Things were looking up!





Chapter 2.

A Choking Dilemma

Or so I thought. Mind you, I’d always known life wasn’t fair— first thing I ever learned. My pop used to whup me for no reason, just to drive the lesson home. But the way things were going! Unfair is one thing. Being singled out by Fate for merciless persecution is another.

The next day I landed a simple, straightforward job. Easy money, put us right back in the pink, no complications. Ha!

Naturally, Greyboar started grousing as soon as I explained the job to him.

“I hate these jealous-lover jobs,” he growled. “First of all, they’re boring—never any professional challenge to ’em. Second, they’re stupid. I mean, what is it with people and jealousy, anyway? I figured it out when I was twelve: the only rational philosophy when it comes to this fidelity business is solipsism. If you didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. And don’t go looking for it, if you don’t want to see it, because then it won’t have happened. Sensible, right? Logical, right? But no! And finally, it’s always disgusting. I suppose this client of ours wants me to wave his ex-girlfriend’s new lover’s dead tongue in front of her face, like usual?”

I nodded.

“Never fails! Sadistic bunch, ex-lovers.” He glared at me. “And then there’s the fee! Five hundred quid? Our going rate’s been a thousand for the last three years!”

My voice got shrill. Unreasonable lug! “That’s because rumors are flying all over that we might have had something to do with that business in Prygg that brought in the Ozarine troops!”

Greyboar shrugged. “Which we did.”

“I know it! I’m still mad about the whole thing. We wouldn’t have even been in Prygg if it hadn’t been for you and your damned philosophy!”

I bestowed on him my best glare. (And it’s a hell of a glare, too, if I say so myself. Though I’ll admit it was a bit like a minnow glaring at a shark.)

“Scares off customers, don’t you know, us maybe being mixed up in politics? Not to mention heresy—Joe business, no less! Especially with things the way they are in New Sfinctr—you know Queen Belladonna’s tight with the Ozarines. She always has been, and since this Prygg business—how many times do I have to tell you, you big gorilla?—politics! Sure, and it’s good for the trade, but you’ve got to know how to finesse the thing! But no! Not the great philosopher Greyboar! No! He’s got to—”

“All right, all right, I’ll do the job!” He waved his hands. “Anything to shut you up! But I trust that you explained to this—what’s his name? Baron de Butin?—that I won’t choke the girl. It’s one of my rules, you know that. I don’t choke girls.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I grumbled. “I told him. Cost us, too—as usual.”

The Baron had offered to double the fee if Greyboar’d burke the girl along with the Baron’s “rival,” as he put it. But once I explained Greyboar’s rules he finally agreed to settle for having my client wave “the rival’s” pop-eyes and purple tongue in front of the girl’s face. They’re really a cruddy lot, your “jilted suitors,” Greyboar was right about that. Still and all, fine for him to wax philosophical, I was the agent. I was the poor slob who had to go out there and get his hands dirty rounding up the business—while he lounged around worrying about philosophy, mind you! And the fact is there was a lot of business in your aristocracy’s “alienated affections.” Steady, steady, steady work. I think they must be inbred or something, all the trouble they seem to have.