The Philosophical Strangler

  I was still against the whole idea, but nobody was paying the slightest attention to me. Greyboar and Jenny and Angela plotted it out while they were working on the dresses. I contributed the voice of sanity, but nobody was listening to my protests. I especially started protesting when I got roped into the scheme.

  Angela's doing, that was. After they'd finished the dresses, her face fell, and she started shaking her head vigorously.

  "It'll never work," she said. "It'll never work, just me and Jenny. You never see two young noble ladies out by themselves. They're always with a chaperone. We need a chaperone."

  At first, I was smiling like the sunshine. She was right, bless the little darling! And Greyboar and I didn't know any sour-faced old women; at least, not any who'd go in on this scheme!

  Greyboar said as much. And that's that, I said to myself.

  "But it doesn't have to be an old woman chaperone," said Jenny. "Lots of times it's an old man, a tutor like, a little tiny guy all shriveled up, looking like he's worn out and worried about everything."

  All eyes turned to me. I was outraged.

  My first sentences, expressing my total disagreement with the idea, were possibly not coherent. But I was soon able to demolish the scheme.

  "It's impossible!" I sprang to my feet, spread my arms wide. "Look at me! I'm the picture of health! Straight as an arrow! Vigorous! Handsome! Look at my face! Cheerful! Debonair! Look at the rakish goatee—the suave mustachioes!"

  "He's right," said Angela. And the two hoydens from hell got out the scissors and started cutting. Greyboar held me down.

  "It's really a great idea!" squealed Angela. "He's so tiny already he won't even have to stoop! Just put him in a big coat and everybody'll think he's worn out by a lifetime of teaching stupid little girls!"

  I made several remarks concerning stupid little girls. Jenny chucked me under the chin and cooed: "We don't care if you're a shrimp, Iggy. We think you're cute."

  Then, after I'd been shorn of my hair and bundled into a greatcoat, I tried again: "It still won't work! I just don't have the right air about me! I ask you—do I look worn out? Exhausted by life's cares? Ridiculous!"

  All three of them stared at me. Then Jenny and Angela looked at Greyboar and smiled sweetly.

  "Greyboar, why don't you come back tomorrow morning?" suggested Jenny.

  "Not too early," added Angela.

  Chapter 17.

  The Cat in a Box

  When Greyboar showed up the next morning, the girls

  brought me out, all bundled up. I've got to admit, the costume they designed was perfect. And I could hardly stand up.

  "There's still the one big problem," said Angela, frowning.

  "That stupid grin he's got plastered all over his face," complained Jenny. "It just doesn't go with the image we're looking for."

  "No problem," rumbled Greyboar. "I'll take care of that."

  Not more than ten minutes later, the girls and I were on our way to the courthouse in a carriage Greyboar had hired. By now, I had to admit, the plan just might work. I was dressed the part, I probably did look like I was exhausted to the point of death, and I certainly bore on my face the look of a man worried about everything. Of course, I wasn't worried about everything. I was worried about just one thing. The Thumbs of Eternity. Greyboar had been most explicit.

  "You choke, I choke. So don't blow your lines."

  Believe it or not, it worked like a charm. Angela and Jenny were perfect. They looked like the sunshine to begin with, and dressed in their finery—I mean, who could possibly have taken them for lowlifes bent on undoing the Royal Justice?

  And me? Well. Ahem. Ahem. Ignace the Great Thespian, at your service!

  Actually, it was easy. On the way over to the courthouse, I figured it all out. All I had to do was act like a complete pedant. And hadn't I—not so long before, either!—spent days and days in the company of Zulkeh of Goimr, physician? Sure and he was probably the greatest sorcerer in the world, but there was no question at all that he was the world's pedant par excellence.

  And so it was we breezed right through the guards into the courtroom.

  "Blessed beyond measure are you, unworthy children!" I lectured Jenny and Angela in a loud voice, wagging my finger, as we walked down the corridor. "Thus to have the privilege of observing in person the great Judge Rancor Jeffreys! In full regalia—like unto the jurists of old! Why, did not the great Solon Laebmauntsforscynneweëld himself, in his classic Justice Begins With the Rope, compare Judge Jeffreys to the legendary—though, I admit, 'tis true that Hammurabi Sfondrati-Piccolomini has, in a recent monograph in the Journal of Avant-Garde Torture, advanced the argument that Jeffreys lacks—well! No need to wallow in Hammurabi's pathetic reasoning. Nay, fie upon such witless notions! The man has absolutely no grasp of the dialectic. And his epistemology! Scandalous, scandalous, there's no other word for it! Unless, perhaps, the word be disreputable, or infamous, or contemptible, or ignominious, or execrable, or peccant, or oppobrious, or—"

  Well, you get the idea.

  Before you knew it, we were ushered into the galleries reserved for the aristocracy. Only challenged once, by an officious usher. But he fled before the torrent of my polysyllabic indignation.

  Quite interesting, actually, the whole experience. Not, of course, the first time I'd been in the Royal Courtroom with Judge Rancor Jeffreys on the bench. But on all previous occasions I'd been seated down below. In the docks for the accused, to be precise.

  And here came Judge Rancor Jeffreys, seating himself at the bench. Just as I remembered him. He was really a difficult man to forget, don't you know. It wasn't so much the stony face, the gleaming eyes, the lips like a vise, the nose like a hatchet, the chin like a spade, the jaws like the very crunch of fate. No, it was the way he dressed. Not the gloomy black robes, of course—you expect that on a judge. No, it was the great necklace of finger bones, the earrings made of babes' skulls, the hangman's noose for a necktie, the scalps woven into his wig, the tattoo of an Iron Maiden on his forehead, the gavel in the form of a miniature headsman's axe. A disheartening sight he was, to the defendant in the dock. The cup of blood from which he refreshed himself throughout a trial didn't help much, either.

  Then they brought the Cat out and hauled her into the dock.

  I won't bore you with a recital of the charges. They were long, long, long. And mostly silly, although I liked the one about "interfering with a cleric in his pursuit of the Lord's work." And I thought "altering the voice of piety" was a very nice touch.

  Best part was when the Cat was allowed to speak. This was usually the point where the accused threw themselves on the mercy of the Court. Never did any good, of course, but pleading innocence was always worse. Infuriated Judge Jeffreys, pleas of innocence did.

  But the Cat wasn't having any of it. A strange, strange woman. But she had a will of iron, and she just didn't give a damn.

  She started off by peering at Jeffreys through her bottle-bottom spectacles, inspecting him like he was a side of wormy meat.

  "Boy, do you look like a side of wormy meat," she said. "Why don't you wash those scalps once in a while? They're collecting flies. But it probably wouldn't do any good—I'm sure you stink like the pits of hell all by yourself."

  She had a great, loud, piercing voice, the Cat, on the rare occasions when she wasn't speaking softly. That day she wasn't speaking softly. Oh no, not at all.

  Jeffreys started to bellow with rage, but the Cat's voice cut right through it like a foghorn.

  "You have got to be the sorriest slob I ever saw," she continued. "Why don't you do the world a favor and tighten your necktie? And where did you get those babes' skulls hanging from your ears, anyway? Did you fight off the mongrels in the garbage pit for 'em? No, can't be that—you couldn't scare off a puppy. Of course! I know! Must have been your own tots—died laughing at your dick when you waved it in their faces. And what's with the blood-drinking business, anyway? I know! You need it to—"

/>   That was as far as she got, before the guards chained her and gagged her. I'm glad Greyboar wasn't there. Cool as he usually was, he would have lost it then. I'll grant you, he would have taken plenty of guards with him, but he'd still never have made it to the front of the courtroom. Not even Greyboar could have fought his way through all the troops they had in the place.

  Jeffreys was in a rare humor, let me tell you! Fact is, he was so apoplectic that he couldn't think of a suitable sentence. The Church came to the rescue. Luigi Carnale, Cardinal Fornacaese, asked leave to address the bench. Jeffreys garbled something the Cardinal took for an assent, and he said:

  "May I recommend to the Royal Justice that the defendant—whose horrid crimes have now been compounded by contempt of court—deserves nothing less than the ancient sentence of immuration, so sadly unused in these excessively liberal modern times."

  Oh boy, I thought to myself, that was about the worst thing I could think of to do to the Cat. The woman absolutely hated being confined. And this—immuration.

  Naturally, Jeffreys was ecstatic.

  "Of course! Of course! Perfect!" And so he pounded his gavel—actually, he only pounded it once because he swung so hard the little axe got stuck in the bench, but never mind—and sentenced the accused to immuration. The guards started to haul the Cat away—quick, your Royal Justice in Sfinctria—but the Cardinal stopped them.

  "A moment, Your Honor! I believe—well, I'm afraid the Church must insist—that the felon should be immured in that portion of the Durance Pile set aside for offenders against God. Is not her crime equivalent to heresy? What greater scorn could she have shown for the Lord Above than to have so foully disfigured His beloved servant?"

  Well, Jeffreys wasn't going to argue the point, so the Cat was sentenced to immuration in the heretics' quarter of the Pile, and that was that. She was hauled off, and we slid out of there with the crowd.

  * * *

  "Immuration," groaned Greyboar. "You know how the Cat hates being cooped up, it'll kill her."

  "Well, yes," I said, "that's the whole idea. You wall up the condemned in a sealed room, buried under a pile of rock, and leave them there to die. Not too quick, of course—there'll be a separate room full of dried food, enough to keep you going for years if you ration it proper. And a water supply, just a trickle, but enough to keep you alive forever. And that's it. There you are, alone in a room dark as death, forgotten by the world. Eventually you die, but no one will ever know when. It's an old sentence, immuration, hasn't been used hardly in centuries. There's people in rooms in the Durance Pile were immured a thousand years ago. Nobody's ever opened their crypts."

  "But at least she'll be alive for a while," said Jenny. "And they haven't really hurt her or nothing."

  "So we've got time to figure out how to rescue her!" piped up Angela.

  I glared at her. "What's this 'we' business?" I demanded. "I mean, you've been a great help, even if I didn't like the idea and still don't, but that's it. From here on you girls are out of it."

  Jenny and Angela glared right back.

  "You can go jump in a lake!" said Jenny.

  "That was a lot of fun, what we did," added Angela. "Never done anything like that before, we haven't. Felt good, sticking it to the high and mighty, instead of the other way around like it's always been for us."

  I would've continued the argument, but Greyboar cut me off.

  "This is all counting chickens before they're hatched. First we've got to figure out a way to rescue the Cat. Then we can argue about who's in on it and who isn't." The strangler gave me one of his patented stares. Chill a volcano, that stare. "And if the plan needs two girls what've got more spunk in 'em than any ten average cutthroats," he added, "then they're in."

  Jenny and Angela squealed with delight. "Let's come up with a plan!" they cried in unison.

  Greyboar was scratching his chin. "First thing we've got to do is find out everything we can about the Durance Pile," he said. "Ignace and I have been in it ourselves a few times, but they always keep us in a special cell, so we don't really know much about the whole layout." He looked over to me.

  "Who knows the most about the Pile?" he asked.

  "The Trio in B-Flat, who else? They've held the record for incarceration for—what is it now?—yeah, four years running. Don't even have any real contenders, any more. Hook Harvey made a pretty good run at the title two years ago, but then—you remember, that heist went bad?—he—"

  "Yeah, yeah, I remember," interrupted the strangler. "All right, so we'll have to bring the Trio in on it. They owe me a favor anyway," he added, flexing his hands, "seeing as how I let 'em live after using my name like they did to cozzen the guards."

  A great guy in his own way, Greyboar, don't get me wrong. But for somebody who claimed to be a philosophy student, he had the thickest skull in creation. I tried to break it to him gently.

  "You stupid jackass," I snarled, "the Trio are in the slammer their own selves! How are they going to help? What are we supposed to do, march up to the warden and tell him pretty please we've got to talk to the Trio so's we can figure out how to spring your star inmate? Overmuscled moron. What was it the wizard called you? Oh yeah—the mentally retarded mesomorph!"

  Greyboar didn't even scowl. I hate to admit it, but my attempts at constructive criticism never did have much impact on the big loon. The big loony, I should say, because naturally he added:

  "So first we'll have to spring the Trio."

  I threw up my hands in despair. "That's great! That's great! In order to spring the Cat we've got to first spring the Trio! And in order to do that—what's your plan? No, tell me—it's great to watch a genius at work! Don't hide your light under a bushel! Who have we got to spring in order to figure out how to spring the Trio, so's we can spring the Cat. And who do—"

  I was interrupted by a knock on the door. Jenny and Angela jumped in their chairs.

  "Who could that be?" asked Jenny. "We haven't actually opened our shop yet."

  "Nobody comes here except you guys," added Angela. There was a trace of apprehension in her voice. "You don't think it could be some—well, you know, another assassin like you were supposed to be?"

  Greyboar chuckled. "I really doubt it, girls. The Baron's in no position to hire any more assassins. And just in case there might be some friend or relative who gets ideas, I had Ignace pass the word around that I would take it hard if any harm should come to you. Real, real hard." He looked at me. "You did pass the word around, Ignace?"

  I laughed. "Sure! I started with Reilly—he's the top specialist in wayward girl jobs, you know? Explained to him that even though you've always been a stickler about doing a proper choke, anything happened to Jenny and Angela you'd like as not lose your professional aplomb and revert back like an animal to your days in the slaughterhouse. Described in detail, I did, how you used to debone steers with your bare hands on account of you'd get impatient with all that slow knifework. When I got to how hard it'd be for him, bellying up to the bar to order a pot of ale, what with no spine and all, he started puking."

  There was another knock on the door.

  Jenny got up, looking less nervous. "Well, I'd better see who it is." She disappeared into the little vestibule which led to the front door. We heard the sound of indistinct voices for a minute. Jenny returned, looking puzzled.

  "It's three gentlemen—well, they really look more like three ruffians—well, actually, more like absolute scoundrels—who say they're the Trio in B-Flat and they're looking for Greyboar and Ignace. They say Leuwen the barkeep told them you might be here."

  "The Trio!" exclaimed Greyboar. "But how did they—well, let's hear it from them. Show 'em in, Jenny, if you wouldn't mind."

  Chapter 18.

  The Trio's Tale

  A moment later the Trio filed into the room. It was them all

  right, in the flesh. Erlic the Weasel, McDoul, and Geronimo Jerry—that's what everybody called him, anyway, that or just "G.J." He had some fancy
official moniker which ran on about three sentences, full of "de" thises and "y" thats; claimed to be descended from a long line of Grenadine landholders. But nobody believed that story, not even G.J. himself.

  They were looking a mite apprehensive. I could tell—the twitchy feet alone gave them away. Not to mention the sidelong glances at the door, oh, maybe eight times a second, like they were sizing up the escape route. Fat lot of good it'd do them! Well, McDoul could have probably outrun Greyboar, he could scurry faster than any hunchback I ever saw. And Erlic might have had a chance on the flat, if he could avoid tripping over his potbelly. But Geronimo Jerry couldn't have escaped a pack of wild turtles. The man was built like a two-legged pumpkin.

  And, of course, they were bowing and scraping and tugging their forelocks.

  "Quite th'onor, this, y'Gripship sir," babbled the Weasel, "bein' admitted t'ye presence 'n all."

  "Aye!" and "aye!" came from McDoul and G.J.

  "Cut it out!" snapped Greyboar. "What am I? Some snooty count you're fawning all over so's you can figure out the quickest way to get to his purse?"

  Erlic—he was more or less the leader of the gang, emphasis on the less—cleared his throat and said:

  "N'doubt, n'doubt. Aye an' I've long admired y'philosophic acumenation, y'Squeezeness—Greyboar, I mean t'say!—idna 'at true, lads? 'Aven't I—th'million times at th'least!—spoke'd like th'true dev'tee of th'uncanny intelligence of y'Lord 'o th'Larynx? 'Aven't I? 'N now y'can ken for y'selfes the—"

  "CUT IT OUT!" roared Greyboar.

  It was a great act, really. Best thieves in the Flankn, the Trio, there was no doubt about it. The most craven lackeys in the world's grandest throne rooms couldn't hold a candle to them when it came to lickspittling and kowtowing. Big part of the reason for their success. There was many the fine gentleman been found in an alley, his throat cut and his purse gone, with that unmistakable look of utter astonishment on his face that told you the Trio did the job.