Time - Ministry of Excuses
South London. We pounded up flights of stairs of the tall Victorian structure. Each floor had two offices in it. On the top level there was one door leading to Madame Dunne's French Language School, and another door with a messy cardboard sign that read ‘Crisis Management Agency'.
The Prof pointed to the sign and said, “That is our cover, better not to have MI.E. on the door. Anyway we do take a small amount of private work too,” he grinned. “Eases the burden on the tax-payer.”
The office was drab and bare, the Professor was sitting at an old wooden desk thumping a pencil on the woodwork. He said that one of his clients, Miss Rowbottom, needed an urgent excuse fabricated. She was a swindling accountant who had been caught embezzling funds meant for her employer, ‘Rattling and Ropers Ltd', into her own bank account.
Our conversation was interrupted as the phone rang sending a series of vibrating shrills through the air. The Prof picked up the receiver and started speaking in a high-pitched voice trying to sound like a woman.
“The Professor’s secretary, can I help you?” Prof squeaked. I shrugged, thinking now for certain, that this was strange!
“Putting you through,” Prof squawked, sounding like a strangled parrot.
The Professor then spoke in his normal voice, “Hello? Oh hello Miss Rowbottom. Yes, here’s the plan. Develop a phobic obsession with the letter R. Go round wearing Red Rubber gloves, Ruby Rings, buy some Rabbits, anything you can think of.”
He explained she should act like an unfortunate compulsive, with a paranoid obsession about things beginning with the letter R.
“We will claim you only paid the cheques written out to Rattling and Ropers into your own bank account as a short term measure while you were seeking treatment for your disorder. How could you be expected to get better if you had to work on ‘Rattling and Ropers' own bank statements? – all those R's would have driven you crazy! In fact, with a surname like yours, it won’t be difficult to convince the jury that childhood bullying left you having a problem with R's!”
When the Professor finally finished the call, I looked at him with bewilderment and asked, “Is all you do? Invent stories to help crooked and dishonest people wriggle out of trouble?”
The Professor looked hurt and with a wounded expression said, “It's a cruel world out there, and sometimes a few white lies are necessary. You are welcome to leave right now if you are not able to handle that? I will give you a days pay and you are free to go?”
I said, “Goodbye” and he handed me a brown Manila envelope. I opened it while walking out the door, and in doing so bumped into Madame Dunne, principal of the French Language School at the end of the corridor. She was smoking on the landing. After a brief chat I ascertained that she and the Professor were not on the best of terms. Mme Dunne said I had done the right thing in leaving, and even doubted the validity of the Prof's qualifications.
“He is probably one of those jokers who say they graduated from the so called University-of-Life!” she mocked.
So I was not surprised to see there was no money in the envelope, just a betting slip with a one Pound bet on. The slip had odds of thirty to one, for a midday race. Well it was already past lunchtime so I went into the betting shop in Clapham Common, where the bet had been placed.
To my surprise the horse had won just minutes earlier! I collected my thirty pounds win and enquired what time the bet had been placed.
“At 9 a.m. this morning sir,” the assistant replied, “the date and time is stamped on the slip,” he said, pointing to a line of computerised numbers.
How did he predict that winner, was it just luck? Yet again something made me go back to the Crisis Management Agency.
The Professor was not surprised to see me arrive back the next morning. He was moaning about 'Puff' the French teacher Madame Dunne. The nickname Puff had stuck because she had the personality of a dragon and was a chain smoker, often to be found in the corridor with a high tar cigarette. Puff had demanded he pay half the money to have the stairs and landing redecorated because it was in the legal agreements to share those costs, while the Professor maintained it was only because of her smoking that the nicotine stained walls needed repainting.
Mme Dunne was pacing up and down outside, with a decorating estimate in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was muttering in French, and then shouted in English that the Prof was a selfish man with intolerable behaviour. It was the first moment I had sympathy for his situation.
“What subject are you a Professor of?” I asked him.
“Everything, but today my speciality is Physics,” he replied then joked, “just been feeding the cat some nuclear waste ... it now has nine half-lives!”
I forced a momentary smile, but continued with a serious face to ask what the day's agenda was.
The Professor explained that business for the Crisis Management Agency had been better than ever. So many people were approaching him for help since he had managed to come up with beautiful solutions to a wide variety of problems. Word was getting around of his skill in rescuing people from the most hopeless situations.
“Problem is,” said the Prof scratching his head, “we have some rather tricky Government work coming in. A Member of Parliament, Alan Green, in all sorts of bother, implicated in a huge scandal and the newspaper reporters are swarming. He wants me to get him out of the awful publicity that will ensue, now the newspapers have found out that he has been involved in illegal and corrupt activities.”
I listened intently as Prof described the story so far of Minister Green’s alleged history of accepting bribes, sabotaging Government records, selling national secrets, and profiting from deals in surplus army weapons. Prof said that Mr Green had become embroiled in this mess because he was being blackmailed to pay off debts he had accrued through casino gambling. Alan Green had assured him that he wanted to put things right, but the newspapers had already gathered too much hard evidence of his dealings and would not let go of the story.
Wanting to help I had an urge to say, ‘Leave this to me, I will solve this one,' but thankfully managed to hold back those words, because what I really felt like saying was, ‘rather you than me!'
The Prof said that he had originally promised to help Mr Green, but had since changed his mind, as was beginning to believe the case was a hopeless cause. The Professor had concluded that even his genius would be outstretched by this task, and had instead made plans to disappear for a few days and visit his brother who lived on the coast in Brighton.
“Look after the office while I'm gone, and think of something to say when the M.P. phones,” said Prof as he dragged his brown suitcase, sliding on its two squeaky caster wheels, out the door.
“Just leave this all to me!” I said, kicking myself shortly after!
Now alone, I surveyed the office for the Crisis Management Agency. There was a large brown desk in the middle of the room, a white angle-lamp that could be twisted into all sorts of odd positions and an out-dated computer. Scattered in the top draw of the desk were piles of betting slips. On closer inspection it seemed that the Professor had put a dozen bets on various horses that other morning at 9 o'clock. So that was how he gave me a winning slip! I realised he had bet on every outcome, and had probably searched the result on the Internet before giving me the winner.
Interestingly there were seven slips for yesterday’s Manchester United versus Liverpool game, all separate one pound bets covering each of the following results 0-0, 1-0, 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, 2-0, 0-2. Only 1-1 was missing, which was the actual result. Clearly he was trying this ruse on somebody else, but who?
There were also various letters from the ‘Institute of High Energy Physics' addressed to The Professor, Senior Nuclear Physicist! I started to wonder again what was going on, as it appeared the Prof was now masquerading as a top expert in Radioactivity! This was strange and disturbing, He had little knowledge of Physics, if asked ‘What is a Transistor?' he would probably reply, ‘A nun with a sex change!'
As my old science teache
r once said, ‘Those who falsely pretend to be Physicists, should be sent straight to Prism!'
In the room there was a bookcase and a large dark wooden shelf. Sitting on the shelf was an old 1980's cassette player that spent its whole existence playing just one album. The Professor only had one tape, Queen's Greatest Hits, and it had been played thousands of times. The cassette had been worn, chewed and mangled by the tape machine over the years. Each time the player had assaulted his treasured music, the Professor had carefully spun a pencil through one of the reels, and wound the creased extruded tape back into the cassette.
There was one section in the song We are the Champions that had been irreparably damaged. The tape at the word Champions was still so mangled that each time the player came to it the music would slur and virtually grind to a halt! The aged motor would try to force its way past the sticking point of the crumpled tape and slur, ‘We are the champiooonnnsss' before regaining full speed again for, 'of the world!'
I had suggested earlier that week that the tape was rubbish and should be thrown away. Prof said no, explaining in his experience that if you throw anything away which appears useless, it is guaranteed that soon after you will need that exact item for a vital use! I could not see how that old tape could ever be of any use to anyone! I decided to