The Philosophical Strangler(96)

Fie on all respectable financial institutions! My bank is the bottom of a mattress. Which is safe enough when you’ve got Greyboar snoring away on top, but it’s still withering away.

But—

No use. Greyboar refused each and every job I turned up. His criteria for “philosophically acceptable” chokes got more ridiculous by the day. I tried to point out the contradiction involved between demanding an advance in entropy while simultaneously maintaining ethical standards that no genuine beatified saint could ever have matched, but—

No use. Every day, the same thing. Practice his “Languor,” study his “Torpor,” daydream about the eventual bliss of eternal “Stupor.” Except for whenever the Cat floated back around, at which point all of that philosophical nonsense went right out the window in favor of, uh, what you might call “empiricism.” As in, pleasures of the flesh. At those times, I always had to make sure I’d extracted whatever moneys we needed before Greyboar and the Cat had finished with their first clinch and gone upstairs. Never get to the mattress thereafter.





Yes, I could feel it coming. Disaster.

I started getting twitchy. Moving from one window of the townhouse to another, scrutinizing the streets below, watching for the first signs. Muttering under my breath. Eating sandwiches while on guard, instead of joining the festive little crowd at the dinner table.

Angela and Jenny were peeved with me, needless to say. Accused me of being a paranoiac. At one point, they got annoyed enough to put me on a regimen of abstinence for a week. I’ll admit that jolted me out of it, for a time. Terrible thing, abstinence. I’d always thought so, even in the good old days before I’d fallen madly in love like some fairy tale dunce.

Didn’t last, though. Soon enough, that immensely pleasant state which the upper crust likes to call “post-coital tristesse” turned into genuine distress. Staring up at the ceiling, expecting a meteor to come through any minute.

So Jenny and Angela would boot me out of the bed and I’d go wandering through the house in the dead of night. Afraid even to light a candle lest some lurking danger spot me in the darkness. A ghost before my time. A specter, I say! In my own home!

Stupid, of course, all of it. A total waste of time and effort. I should have remembered the sayings of the wise man: “Don’t bother looking for trouble. It’ll find you all on its own.” Or: “When troubles come, they come not in single spies but battalions.” (I think he stole that one; doesn’t really sound like him.)

Or, of course, the classic: “You want to relax? Drop dead.”

But, still—

The way it happened was so unfair.





“You’ve got guests,” announced Angela.

I jumped, and spun around from the peephole in the front door. “Who? Where?”

Angela was standing in the entrance to the front parlor, grinning like an imp. Jenny’s face was perched over her shoulder.

“Lots of them,” added Jenny. Grinning like an imp.

I peered at the pair suspiciously. I didn’t like the expression on their faces. Not one bit. Not at all.

Partly that was from bitter experience. Partly it was simple indignation. No girls that young and fresh and good-looking should be able to imitate denizens of the underworld.

But mostly it was because another of the wise man’s sayings was clanging in my mind: When the cat looks like it’s swallowed the canary, start chirping.

“Who?” I demanded again. “Where?” I repeated. “No one’s come near the house. I’ve been watching!”

The faces got impier. You know that look. The one where the guilty party wallows in their guilt. Basks in their sin. My stomach felt like lead. I looked down at the floor.

“Through the Railroad, of course,” chirped Angela. “How else?”

“From be . . . low . . .” quavered Jenny, in a tone of mock doom. She and Angela burst into laughter.

Not fair!





Chapter 23.

A Crazy Proposal

Angela and Jenny led me into the “salon,” as they liked to call it.

Disaster, sure enough.

Not just one calamity, either, but a whole collection. There they were:

Zulkeh, the pedant from perdition.

Shelyid, the dwarf from disaster.

Hrundig, the mercenary from—never mind. (And just what the hell was he doing in that company, anyway?)

Magrit, the proper witch. And her familiar—the salamander Wittgenstein.

Finally, of course, Gwendolyn.





Greyboar was already there, standing in one of the other doorways leading into the salon. The Cat was pushing her way past him, drifting her way into the room.

“ ’Lo, Gwendolyn,” I heard him mumble.