The Philosophical Strangler(42)

Greyboar started to say something, but I silenced him with a gesture. “Certainly, Henry. Greyboar and I would be delighted to come. Eight o’clock—we shall be prompt.”

As soon as Henry left and I’d closed the door, Greyboar started right in.

“What are you doing, you little squirt? You know we can’t take another job from old Avare now!” He glowered fiercely. “There’s a matter of professional ethics involved here!”

“Who said anything about doing a job for him?” I demanded. “Was there any mention of a job? Did Henry say anything about a job? Did we agree to do a job? Did any money change hands? Was the crude subject of money even mentioned? No! We were simply invited over to the old miser’s mansion for brandy. What better way to get in to see him? Without having to fight our way through an army of guards and watchdogs? We just waltz into the mansion, and then, as soon as Henry’s poured the brandy and left the room, like he always does, you do the choke. Then we leave. By the time anybody figures out something’s wrong, we’ll be long gone.”

Greyboar was frowning ferociously. Before he could say anything, I continued:

“Sure, and it’ll be obvious we did the choke, but so what? We’ll have to hide out for a bit, while the porkers make a show of looking for us. But we won’t even have to leave the Flankn. And you know the porkers won’t try all that hard to find us. The truth is, Avare’s made himself plenty of enemies in this town—especially among the upper crust, half of whom owe him a fortune. There’ll be counts and barons and earls and who knows what greasing the porkers’ palms to let the whole thing slide.”

He sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I know it’ll work. But I don’t like it. Your scheme bends professional ethics into a pretzel.”

“And so what?” I couldn’t pass up the opening. “You’re a philosopher, aren’t you? What else is philosophy good for if not splitting the hair between bending and breaking?”

Here I did my imitation of the wizard Zulkeh:

“ ’Tis a truth known to babes in swaddling clothes, the epistemological distinction ’twixt bending and breaking! Did not the great sophist Euthydemus Srondrati-Piccolomini himself, in his ground-breaking A Loop Is But A Hole, argue that—”

Greyboar, the sourpuss, was not amused. But he gave up whining about professional ethics. Still and all, he made the rest of the afternoon miserable, muttering about “unforeseen entropic consequences” and such-like nonsense.

When the time came to leave, I was right glad of it. We hired a carriage. Bit too far to walk, and besides, wouldn’t be proper showing up at Avare’s mansion without suitably snooty transport. As much money as we were making for the job, I wasn’t about to quibble over a few shillings. The more so since it was midwinter. New Sfinctr’s winters are fairly mild—it’s about the only saving grace the city has, business opportunities aside. But a mild winter’s still not summer.

My misery wasn’t over, though, because Greyboar started whining all over again after I explained the details of the plan. It was the part about the brandy that upset him.

“And why shouldn’t we wait until after we’ve had the brandy?” I demanded. “Avare’s brandy is the best in town, you know that.”

“I don’t care,” grumbled the strangler. “You can twist professional ethics all you want, you miserable little lawyer, but I still think it’s going too far to drink a man’s brandy when you’re planning to put the big choke on him.”

“What’s the difference? He’s a chokee no matter how you look at it. And enough about professional ethics! He won’t start talking business until after the brandy, you know it as well as I do. So we finish the brandy—the best in the world, that brandy is—and then, when he starts in about a job, we just politely decline. If you want to be an absolute stickler about it, you can explain to him that we have a prior engagement which prevents us from accepting his commission—professional ethics, don’t you know? Then you give him the squeeze.”

He hemmed and hawed, but he came around eventually. I knew he would. He loved good brandy, Greyboar did, but he was too cheap to buy any for himself. Well, actually, it’d probably be more accurate to say that I was too cheap to let him.

At eight o’clock sharp, we presented ourselves at the front gate of the mansion. Henry himself came out to let us in. He ushered us through the grounds—waving off the dogs and their keepers—and into the mansion itself. He took off our overcoats and hung them in the vestibule. Then he led us up the main staircase onto the second floor, and from there it was but a short distance to the study.