The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) (9 page)

‘“From the size of a Shetland pony to that of a bluebottle”?’ I quoted. ‘Whatever is
that
all about?’

‘I should have thought that to be perfectly obvious.’ Mr Rune dipped the last bit of toast into my wounded egg. ‘It was a Russian spaniel, after all.’

‘You have lost me,’ I said. ‘And leave my egg alone.’

‘The spaniel reached critical mass,’ said Rune. ‘Surely you’ve seen those sets of Russian dolls that fit inside each other? Such it is with Russian spaniels – a great big spaniel, with a lesser-sized spaniel within it and so on and so forth.’

‘Ludicrous,’ I said, drawing my breakfast plate beyond Mr Rune’s reach and beating back his hand with the morning’s
Argus.
‘And I suppose these spaniels get smaller and smaller for ever and ever.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Mr Rune. ‘You can’t divide things in half for ever.’

‘Oh, I beg to differ there,’ I said. ‘Space is infinite; you can always
multiply a distance by two and never come to the end of it. It therefore follows that you can similarly divide something in half for ever and ever and ever.’

‘You can’t,’ said Mr Rune, ‘because your diminishing object will eventually become so small that it will weigh less than the light which falls upon it, and then cease to exist in this dimension.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, I never knew that.’

‘Nor did Einstein until I put him straight on the matter.’

‘But what does it mean?’

‘It means, young Rizla, that you should not take anything for granted. I am Rune, the physical manifestation of all astral possibilities. I knew from the first that we were dealing with no ordinary spaniel.’

‘But
you
stole the spaniel!’

‘Had
it stolen. One does not own a dog and bark oneself. It is well to know your enemy, to gauge his strengths and weaknesses.’

‘The spaniel was your enemy?’

‘Not the spaniel. Tell me, Rizla, when we were there in that house at Hangleton, what observations did you make? Do you recall that I asked you to keep your eyes and ears open?’

‘I do,’ I said, as I helped myself to the very last pouring of coffee, ‘and I made quite a few observations, as it happens. For one thing, those two were not married.’

‘Very good,’ said Mr Rune. ‘And how did you reach this conclusion?’

‘“Mrs Orion” was not wearing a wedding ring, and she was a very fastidious woman, very clean, her nails beautifully manicured. And he was a right scruff, all over shabby with nasty black fingernails. I do not think a woman like that would ever marry a man like that.
And
he called her Janet, not Aimee, as was written in the letter you received.’

‘Excellent,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Anything else?’

‘I do not think there were any other dogs there,’ I said.

‘Then how do you explain the continued howling that came from the rear of the house?’

‘It was a tape recording, a loop tape – you could hear the pattern of the howling as it repeated itself.’

‘I am very impressed,’ said Mr Rune. ‘However, I would have been more impressed if you’d mentioned these details to me at the time.’

‘I drove back here in a stolen cab and then you gave me all that toot about Chronovisions and zodiacs.’

‘Well, nevertheless I am impressed. You are wrong on almost every count, but nevertheless.’

I topped my coffee up with the last of the milk and sugar. ‘So how am I wrong?’ I asked.

‘The couple are indeed married. They were married in Saint Petersburg in nineteen ten.’

‘Saint Petersburg?’ I said. ‘Nineteen ten?’ I said. ‘What are you saying?’ I said. ‘That Mister Orion really
is
Rasputin?’

I said.

‘No,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Mister Orion is in fact none other than my arch enemy, The Most Evil Man Who Ever Lived. Mister Orion is Count Otto Black.’

‘Then him shooting at us was no accident.’

‘He is a crack shot – he trained with the Eton Rifles. (Eton Rifles).
^*
Had he wished to shoot us dead, then he would have done so.’

‘But if he is your arch enemy—’

‘He was testing me out. He is unaware that I am aware of his true identity. It was a pleasure to take his money – a share of which I passed on to you at the time.’

‘An insubstantial amount,’ I said. ‘But I still do not understand about all these spaniels being inside one another.’

‘All will be explained in good time. Oh, and by the way, Rizla, the name “Orion” was something of a giveaway. It’s a stellar constellation that includes Sirius, the Dog Star. But anyhow, that isn’t the piece in the
Argus
that I wanted you to read. Read what is written beneath the Hangleton article.’

I took up the newspaper once more and studied the front page. ‘There is nothing else,’ I said, ‘apart from an advertisement.’

‘Read the advertisement aloud.’

And so I did.

‘Nutcase,’ I remarked. ‘New-Age nutcase.’

‘What?’ Mr Rune feigned outrage. ‘Danbury Collins, renowned psychic youth and masturbator?’

‘What?’ I feigned a little outrage of my own.

‘He is most entertaining. He, Sir John Rimmer and Doctor Harney have conducted numerous investigations into the paranormal – with little success, I hasten to add – but his talks are always a riot. I have crossed intellectual swords with this fellow on numerous occasions. My sword, however, has a rapier’s edge. His, alas, would not pass through butter.’

‘Speaking of butter,’ I said, ‘we have no more.’

‘Then it is time for you to do the Tesco run.’

‘Oh no.’ I shook my head fiercely. ‘Tesco does not give credit and I am not running out of there again without paying whilst you remonstrate with the checkout girl. Why do you not simply pay for something once in a while?’

Mr Rune now shook
his
head. ‘I am Rune,’ said he. ‘I offer the world my genius. All I expect in return is that the world cover my expenses.’

‘So would you care for me to see if I can somehow scrounge some free tickets for Mister Collins’s lecture?’

‘Unnecessary,’ said Mr Rune. ‘I doubt very much that he will be playing to a packed house. We’ll inveigle our way in when we get there. But for now—’ Mr Rune dabbed his napkin to his lips, ‘—let us take a stroll to Sainsbury’s.’

*

We did not stroll back from Sainsbury’s. Well, I believe that Mr Rune might well have done, but I was forced to run and this was not easy, considering the number of carrier bags making red rings upon my fingers. We lunched well, though, and suppered, too, and then at six of the evening clock took to the street and waved a taxi down.

The taxi driver’s name was Dave, a truculent fellow who supported the Brighton Seagulls ‘come rain or shine, through thick and thin and all the way to Hell and back’. And he enlivened our journey with talk of his theories that the planet Earth was in fact a great big head, swinging through space and gaining increased sentience due to human beings, which were in fact its brain cells, exchanging information.

‘When the Earth was young, it knew nothing,’ the taxi driver explained, ‘because there were only a few people/brain cells. But as the millennia passed, more and more people/brain cells appeared upon the planet. Quite soon now, when the world knows everything it needs to know, it will quit this solar system and take off on a voyage of discovery. Somewhere, out there—’ the cabbie gestured to ‘out there’ generally, taking his hands off the steering wheel and nearly having a passing cleric off his pushbike ‘—the wandering world will meet up with other wandering worlds that have similarly gained sentience due to all their people/brain cells. And it will amalgamate with them into a superorganism, which will be God, a new God who will then create a new universe. That’s what happened before, you see – that’s how this universe began. And it will happen again and again.’

Mr Rune had no comment to make during the cabbie’s metaphysical discourse; he sat passively with his eyelids drooping, playing the occasional wistful air upon his reinvented ocarina.

When we reached our destination, I made hurriedly to The Rampant Squire and so did not witness the rise and fall of Mr Rune’s stout stick.

I rather liked The Rampant Squire. It was a rough old dive filled with rowdy students from the university. I observed them as they laughed and chatted and wondered whether I was a university type myself. Probably not, I concluded, because I was too young. Too young for
drinking in pubs also, of course, but then
that
only made the drinking more enjoyable.

The walls of The Rampant Squire were decorated with dreadful contemporary paintings, the work of a local artist by the name of Matthew Humphrey. They were all squiggles and daubings and splatterings-on, and looked much the way that restaurant tablecloths looked by the time Mr Rune had reached the cheese-and-biscuits course.

I elbowed my way to the bar and found Fangio standing behind it.

‘Hello, Fange,’ said I. ‘I did not know that you worked here.’

‘A man’s got to have a hobby,’ said Fange. ‘I saw you admiring the artwork.’

‘The paintings are horrible,’ I said.

‘I know,’ said Fangio. ‘I chose them.’

‘Why?’

‘The pub is called The Rampant Squire, so the brewery asked me to order in some erotic paintings.’

‘I see,’ I said. But I did not.

‘You don’t,’ said Fangio. ‘I blame these new teeth of mine. I telephoned this Matthew Humphrey and asked him to knock up some erotic paintings. He misheard me and—’

‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘He supplied you with a series of erratic paintings instead.’

‘Oh,’ said Fangio. ‘That would be it, then. I thought he was just a really terrible artist.’

‘A pint of Esso, please. And as I have a thirst upon me, we will scrub around all the toot about what you do or do not have on the pumps, if that is all right with you.’

‘A pint of Esso it is, then. And one for Mister Rune? I see his big baldy head looming through the crowd.’

‘Make his a half,’ I said.

‘Appalling pub,’ said Mr Rune, joining me at the bar. ‘Have you ordered?’

‘I have.’

Fangio served up the drinks and Mr Rune availed himself of my pint.

‘Only a half for you?’ he said. ‘Wise move – you’ll need a clear head for what lies ahead of us this night.’

‘The lecture?’ I said, ruefully sipping my half.

‘The lecture is merely the tip of the iceberg. Before this night is through, you will have stared death in the face, and spat into its cavernous eyeholes as well.’

‘I do not like the sound of that.’

‘It’s much of a muchness,’ Mr Rune said. ‘I’ve done it on many occasions. I remember once in the nineteen thirties when I went down to the crossroads at midnight with the blues musician Robert Johnson—’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, will you please take your seats upstairs for the lecture. It begins in five minutes,’ called a personable young woman with a nimbus of orange hair and a dress that barely covered her costs.

‘Best get a couple more beers in, then,’ said Mr Rune. ‘And trust not the ways of women, “For they are like unto a fire that quencheth not even though constantly watered.” The Gospel of Rune 3: 16.’

‘Two pints of Esso then, please, Fange.’

And Fangio once more did the business.

And ‘Oh,’ said Mr Rune, ‘you’ll want to wear this.’

‘What is it?’ I asked as I took the item from him.

A badge,’ said he. And it was – a badge with a centaur upon it. ‘Pin it next to that spaniel one,’ he said.

And I did.

The upstairs room of The Rampant Squire was furnished with rows of folding chairs. A makeshift stage had been constructed from beer crates and upon this stood a blackboard resting on a precarious stand and a three-legged table called Peter. Upon this table there lay something that looked very much to be Aladdin’s lamp.

We had gained our entrance to this dismal room with little difficulty, Mr Rune flashing his library ticket and announcing us to be ‘senior members of the Society of Psychical Research, here to observe the proceedings in the interests of health and safety’.

Mr Rune then cleared three seats for us in the front row through the employment of his stout stick – one for me and two for himself.

When all that were coming in
were
in and the door was closed upon the lot of us, Danbury Collins took to the makeshift stage, introduced himself and launched uncertainly into his talk.

Now, I did not take much to Danbury Collins. He was a callow youth with sunken eyes, an acned complexion and hairs upon the palm of the hand that was not in his trouser pocket.