I actually started pounding the top of his head with my fist. Regretted it later, of course—like pounding a rock—no, a lump of solid iron.
“Well, philosophize your way out of this one! Sure, why not? I bet your guru could’ve philosophized a nice greasy little escape clause in a minute! And Zulkeh? He could conjugate dilemmas like a grammarian teaching schoolkids—find any conditional subjunctive ethical hatch he needed! So why don’t you?”
I finally fell silent, panting for breath, glaring at him like a, well, to be honest, like a maniacal mouse. Then, slowly, Greyboar’s eyes got that dreamy look I hated so much. He began stroking his chin.
“Well,” he said, “let me think a minute.” And so he did. For more than a minute.
There were times afterward—hundreds of them—when I thought I should have kept my mouth shut and gone down like an honorable mouse. Sure, I’d have been dead, and the girls with me. But it’d have been quick and clean—Greyboar could’ve snapped all three of our necks at once with two fingers, tops—and then? Oblivion, that’s what—peaceful, restful, untroubled oblivion. Not so bad, really, when you think about it. I mean, it’s not as if this world is such a great joy, is it?
Instead—an endless future of aggravation I created.
Because, naturally, Greyboar philosophized a way out. Was he proud of it? Does a peacock preen? Does a rooster strut? Did he talk about it afterward, a million times? Does a dog howl at the moon? Does a cock crow at dawn?
Did he tell me—oh, maybe twelve times a day from then on until forever—how essential philosophy is to daily life? To hourly life? To figuring out which fingernail to trim first? Did he? Did he? Does a—oh, never mind. It’s too aggravating to talk about.
So we left. But before we got more than halfway down the stairs, with me leading the way, Greyboar stopped.
“Wait a minute, Ignace,” he said. He thought for a moment, then: “It occurs to me that there’s a little matter of professional ethics still to be taken care of.” He turned and called back up the stairs.
“Jenny! Angela! Are you decent? Need to discuss one last little thing.”
Their heads peeked around the door. “We’re dressed now,” they said.
Greyboar turned back to me. “Your job, this, Ignace. You’re the agent.”
It didn’t take me any time to figure it out. I went back up into the bedroom, grinning from ear to ear.
Chapter 3.
Sans Tout But the Beast
The following night we presented ourselves at the Baron’s “modest townhouse.” Of course, we had to go through the usual routine. First the guards searched us for weapons. We didn’t have any, naturally. Why would anybody in their right mind carry around weapons when Greyboar’s got his thumbs?
Then the dogs sniffed us. They looked up at Greyboar. He gazed down at them. The great mastiffs whimpered and slunk into the corner.
Then the butler lifted his nose higher than the mountain peaks and announced we’d have to wait “for His Lordship’s pleasure.” Then we waited for His Lordship’s pleasure.
Eventually, it pleased His Lordship to allow us into his august presence. We were ushered into his “study,” as he called it. Quite a place, that “study.” Maybe six books in the whole room. The rest of it—every wall and most of the floor space—was covered with pelts, mounted heads of more animals than I even knew existed, great stuffed bears and lions and tigers roaring their eternal fury at the bold big game hunter who’d bagged ’em—not without the assistance of maybe five hundred beaters and bearers and guides, I don’t imagine.
And there he stood before us, the big game hunter himself, just as I remembered him. Nobility incarnate, from the top of his well-coiffured hair to the tips of his feet. His Lordship, the Baron de Butin. He stood by the mantel, dressed in a smoking jacket made of some kind of material would probably cause me brainstroke if I tried to guess at the price. A great fire roared in the fireplace.
“You may leave us, Jeffrey,” he instructed the butler. “I have private business with these gentlemen.”
His Lordship was in a man-of-the-people type mood. Right away, the Baron was chatting away like we were three gentlemen discussing the weather over brandy. Eventually, he came around to the point. When he heard what we had to tell him, the man-of-the-people mood went like last year’s snow. Most displeased, he was, His Lordship.
After a while, his denunciations and recriminations wound themselves up and he closed his mouth. He bestowed upon us a look of contemptuous dismissal—head back, eyes sighting in down the long aquiline nose like a hunter drawing a bead.