“It is, sir, to be a long and busy night,” said Mr Clubb. “If you take my meaning.”
With a sigh I opened the humidor. They reached in, snatched a handful of cigars apiece, and deployed them into various pockets. “Details at eleven,” said Mr Clubb.
A few seconds after their departure, Mrs Rampage informed that she would be bringing through a fax communication just received.
The fax had been sent me by Chartwell, Munster and Stout, a legal firm with but a single client, Mr Arthur “This Building Is Condemned” C—. Chartwell, Munster and Stout regretted the necessity to inform me that their client wished to seek advice other than my own in his financial affairs. A sheaf of documents binding me to silence as to all matters concerning the client would arrive for my signature the following day. All records, papers, computer discs, and other data were to be referred post haste to their offices. I had forgotten to send my intended note of client-saving reassurance.
* * * *
V.
What an abyss of shame I must now describe, at every turn what humiliation. It was at most five minutes past six p.m. when I learned of the desertion of my most valuable client, a turn of events certain to lead to the loss of his cryptic fellows and some forty per cent of our annual business. Gloomily I consumed my glass of Dutch gin without noticing that I had already far exceeded my tolerance. I ventured behind the screen and succeeded in unearthing another stone flagon, poured another measure and gulped it down while attempting to demonstrate numerically that (a) the anticipated drop in annual profit could not be as severe as feared, and (b) if it were, the business could continue as before, without reductions in salary, staff and benefits. Despite ingenious feats of juggling, the numbers denied (a) and mocked (b), suggesting that I should be fortunate to retain, not lose, forty per cent of present business. I lowered my head to the desk and tried to regulate my breathing. When I heard myself rendering an off-key version of “Abide With Me,” I acknowledged that it was time to go home, got to my feet and made the unfortunate decision to exit through the general offices on the theory that a survey of my presumably empty realm might suggest the sites of pending amputations.
I tucked the flagon under my elbow, pocketed the five or six cigars remaining in the humidor, and passed through Mrs Rampage’s chamber. Hearing the abrasive music of the cleaners’ radios, I moved with exaggerated care down the corridor, darkened but for the light spilling from an open door thirty feet before me. Now and again, finding myself unable to avoid striking my shoulder against the wall, I took a medicinal swallow of genever. I drew up to the open door and realized that I had come to Gilligan’s quarters. The abrasive music emanated from his sound system. We’ll get rid of that, for starters, I said to myself, and straightened up for a dignified navigation past his doorway. At the crucial moment I glanced within to observe my jacketless junior partner sprawled, tie undone, on his sofa beside a scrawny ruffian with a quiff of lime-green hair and attired for some reason in a skin-tight costume involving zebra stripes and many chains and zippers. Disreputable creatures male and female occupied themselves in the background. Gilligan shifted his head, began to smile, and at the sight of me turned to stone.
“Calm down, Gilligan,” I said, striving for an impression of sober paternal authority. I had recalled that my junior had scheduled a late appointment with his most successful musician, a singer whose band sold millions of records year in and year out despite the absurdity of their name, the Dog Turds or the Rectal Valves, something of that sort. My calculations had indicated that Gilligan’s client, whose name I recalled as Cyril Futch, would soon become crucial to the maintenance of my firm, and as the beaky little rooster coldly took me in I thought to impress upon him the regard in which he was held by his chosen financial planning institution. “There is, I assure you, no need for alarm, no, certainly not, and in fact, Gilligan, you know, I should be honored to seize this opportunity of making the acquaintance of your guest, whom it is our pleasure to assist and advise and whatever.”
Gilligan reverted to flesh and blood during the course of this utterance, which I delivered gravely, taking care to enunciate each syllable clearly in spite of the difficulty I was having with my tongue. He noted the bottle nestled into my elbow and the lighted cigar in the fingers of my right hand, a matter of which until that moment I had been imperfectly aware. “Hey, I guess the smoking lamp is lit,” I said. “Stupid rule anyhow. How about a little drink on the boss?”
Gilligan lurched to his feet and came reeling toward me.
All that followed is a montage of discontinuous imagery. I recall Cyril Futch propping me up as I communicated our devotion to the safeguarding of his wealth, also his dogged insistence that his name was actually Simon Gulch or Sidney Much or something similar before he sent me toppling onto the sofa; I see an odd little fellow with a tattooed head and a name like Pus (there was a person named Pus in attendance, though he may not have been the one) accepting one of my cigars and eating it; I remember inhaling from smirking Gilligan’s cigarette and drinking from a bottle with a small white worm lying dead at its bottom and snuffling up a white powder recommended by a female Turd or Valve; I remember singing “The Old Rugged Cross” in a state of partial undress. I told a face brilliantly lacquered with make-up that I was “getting a feel” for “this music.” A female Turd or Valve, not the one who had recommended the powder but one in a permanent state of hilarity I found endearing, assisted me into my limousine and on the homeward journey experimented with its many buttons and controls. Atop the townhouse steps, she removed the key from my fumbling hand gleefully to insert it into the lock. The rest is welcome darkness.
* * * *
VI.
A form of consciousness returned with a slap to my face, the muffled screams of the woman beside me, a bowler-hatted head thrusting into view and growling, “The shower for you, you damned idiot.” As a second assailant whisked her away, the woman, whom I thought to be Marguerite, wailed. I struggled against the man gripping my shoulders, and he squeezed the nape of my neck.
When next I opened my eyes, I was naked and quivering beneath an onslaught of cold water within the marble confines of my shower cabinet. Charlie-Charlie Rackett leaned against the open door of the cabinet and regarded me with ill-disguised impatience. “I’m freezing, Charlie-Charlie,” I said. “Turn off the water.”
Charlie-Charlie thrust an arm into the cabinet and became Mr Clubb. “I’ll warm it up, but I want you sober,” he said. I drew myself up into a ball.
Then I was on my feet and moaning while I massaged my forehead. “Bath time all done now,” called Mr Clubb. “Turn off the wa-wa.” I did as instructed. The door opened, and a bath towel unfurled over my left shoulder.
Side by side on the bedroom sofa and dimly illuminated by the lamp, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff observed my progress toward the bed. A black leather satchel stood on the floor between them. “Gentlemen,” I said, “although I cannot presently find words to account for the condition in which you found me, I trust that your good nature will enable you to overlook ... or ignore . . . whatever it was that I must have done ... I cannot quite recall the circumstances.”
“The young woman has been sent away,” said Mr Clubb, “and you need never fear any trouble from that direction, sir.”
“The young woman?” I asked, and remembered a hyperactive figure playing with the controls in the back of the limousine. This opened up a fragmentary memory of the scene in Gilligan’s office, and I moaned aloud.
“None too clean, but pretty enough in a ragamuffin way,” said Mr Clubb. “The type denied a proper education in social graces. Rough about the edges. Intemperate in language. A stranger to discipline.”
I groaned - to have introduced such a creature to my house!
“A stranger to honesty, too, sir, if you’ll permit me,” said Mr Cuff. “It’s addiction turns them into thieves. Give them half a chance, they’ll steal the brass handles off their mothers’ coffins.”
“Addicti
on?” I said. “Addiction to what?”
“Everything, from the look of the bint,” said Mr Cuff. “Before Mr Clubb and I sent her on her way, we retrieved these items doubtless belonging to you, sir.” While walking toward me he removed from his pockets the following articles: my wristwatch, gold cufflinks, wallet, the lighter of antique design given my by Mr Montfort d’M—, likewise the cigar cutter, and the last of the cigars I had purchased that day. “I thank you most gratefully,” I said, slipping the watch on my wrist and all else save the cigar into the pockets of my robe. It was, I noted, just past four o’clock in the morning. The cigar I handed back to him with the words, “Please accept this as a token of my gratitude.”
“Gratefully accepted,” he said. Mr Cuff bit off the end, spat it onto the carpet, and set the cigar alight, producing a nauseating quantity of fumes.
“Perhaps,” I said, “we might postpone our discussion until I have had time to recover from my ill-advised behavior. Let us reconvene at...” A short period was spent pressing my hands to my eyes while rocking back and forth. “Four this afternoon?”
“Everything in its own time is a principle we hold dear,” said Mr Clubb. “And this is the time for you to down aspirin and alka-seltzer, and for your loyal assistants to relish the hearty breakfasts the thought of which sets our stomachs to growling. A man of stature and accomplishment like yourself ought to be able to overcome the effects of too much booze and attend to business, on top of the simple matter of getting his flunkies out of bed so they can whip up the bacon and eggs.”
“Because a man such as that, sir, keeps ever in mind that business faces the task at hand, no matter how lousy it may be,” said Mr Cuff.
“The old world is in flames,” said Mr Clubb, “and the new one is just being born. Pick up the phone.”
“All right,” I said, “but Mr Moncrieff is going to hate this. He worked for the Duke of Denbigh, and he’s a terrible snob.”
“All butlers are snobs,” said Mr Clubb. “Three fried eggs apiece, likewise six rashers of bacon, home-fries, toast, hot coffee, and for the sake of digestion a bottle of your best cognac.”
Mr Moncrieff picked up his telephone, listened to my orders and informed me in a small, cold voice that he would speak to the cook. “Would this repast be for the young lady and yourself, sir?” he asked.
With a wave of guilty shame which intensified my nausea, I realized that Mr Moncrieff had observed my unsuitable young companion accompanying me upstairs to the bedroom. “No, it would not,” I said. “The young lady, a client of mine, was kind enough to assist me when I was taken ill. The meal is for two male guests.” Unwelcome memory returned the spectacle of a scrawny girl pulling my ears and screeching that a useless old fart like me didn’t deserve her band’s business.
“The phone,” said Mr Clubb. Dazedly I extended the receiver.
“Moncrieff, old man,” he said, “amazing good luck, running into you again. Do you remember that trouble the Duke had with Colonel Fletcher and the diary?. . . Yes, this is Mr Clubb, and it’s delightful to hear your voice again . . . He’s here, too, couldn’t do anything without him . . . I’ll tell him . . . Much the way things went with the Duke, yes, and we’ll need the usual supplies . . . Glad to hear it. . . The dining room in half an hour.” He handed the telephone back to me and said to Mr Cuff, “He’s looking forward to the pinochle, and there’s a first-rate Petrus in the cellar he knows you’re going to enjoy.”
I had purchased six cases of 1928 Chateau Petrus at an auction some years before and was holding it while its already immense value doubled, then tripled, until perhaps a decade hence, when I would sell it for ten times its original cost.
“A good drop of wine sets a man right up,” said Mr Cuff. “Stuff was meant to be drunk, wasn’t it?”
“You know Mr Moncrieff?” I asked. “You worked for the Duke?”
“We ply our humble trade irrespective of nationality and borders,” said Mr Clubb. “Go where we are needed, is our motto. We have fond memories of the good old Duke, who showed himself to be quite a fun-loving, spirited fellow, sir, once you got past the crust, as it were. Generous, too.”
“He gave until it hurt,” said Mr Cuff. “The old gentleman cried like a baby when we left.”
“Cried a good deal before that, too,” said Mr Clubb. “In our experience, high-spirited fellows spend a deal more tears than your gloomy customers.”
“I do not suppose you shall see any tears from me,” I said. The brief look which passed between them reminded me of the complicitous glance I had once seen fly like a live spark between two of their New Covenant forbears, one gripping the hind legs of a pig, the other its front legs and a knife, in the moment before the knife opened the pig’s throat and an arc of blood threw itself high into the air. “I shall heed your advice,” I said, “and locate my analgesics.” I got on my feet and moved slowly to the bathroom. “As a matter of curiosity,” I said, “might I ask if you have classified me into the high-spirited category, or into the other?”
“You are a man of middling spirit,” said Mr Clubb. I opened my mouth to protest, and he went on, “But something may be made of you yet.”
I disappeared into the bathroom.I have endured these moonfaced yokels long enough, I told myself, hear their story, feed the bastards, then kick them out.
In a condition more nearly approaching my usual self, I brushed my teeth and splashed water on my face before returning to the bedroom. I placed myself with a reasonable degree of executive command in a wing chair, folded my pinstriped robe about me, inserted my feet into velvet slippers, and said, “Things got a bit out of hand, and I thank you for dealing with my young client, a person with whom in spite of appearances I have a professional relationship only. Now we may turn to our real business. I trust you found my wife and Leeson at Green Chimneys. Please give me an account of what followed. I await your report.”
“Things got a bit out of hand,” said Mr Clubb. “Which is a way of describing something that can happen to us all, and for which no one can be blamed. Especially Mr Cuff and myself, who are always careful to say right smack at the beginning, as we did with you, sir, what ought to be so obvious as not need saying at all, that our work brings about permanent changes which can never be undone. Especially in the cases when we specify a time to make our initial report and the client disappoints us at the said time. When we are let down by our client, we must go forward and complete the job to our highest standards with no rancor or ill-will, knowing that there are many reasonable explanations of a man’s inability to get to a telephone.”
“I don’t know what you mean by this self-serving doubletalk,” I said. “We had no arrangement of that sort, and your effrontery forces me to conclude that you failed in your task.”
Mr Clubb gave me the grimmest possible suggestion of a smile. “One of the reasons for a man’s failure to get to a telephone is a lapse of memory. You have forgotten my informing you that I would give you my initial report at eleven. At precisely eleven o’clock I called, to no avail. I waited through twenty rings, sir, before I abandoned the effort. If I had waited through a hundred, sir, the result would have been the same, on account of your decision to put yourself into a state where you would have had trouble remembering your own name.”
“That is a blatant lie,” I said, then remembered. The fellow had in fact mentioned in passing something about reporting to me at that hour, which must have been approximately the time when I was regaling the Turds or Valves with “The Old Rugged Cross.” My face grew pink. “Forgive me,” I said. “I am in error, it is just as you say.”
“A manly admission, sir, but as for forgiveness, we extended that quantity from the git-go,” said Mr Clubb. “We are your servants, and your wishes are our sacred charge.”
“That’s the whole ball of wax in a nutshell,” said Mr Cuff, giving a fond glance to the final inch of his cigar. He dropped the stub onto my carpet and ground it beneath his shoe. “Food and drink to the fibers, sir,
” he said.
“Speaking of which,” said Mr Clubb. “We will continue our report in the dining room, so as to dig into the feast ordered up by that wondrous villain, Reggie Moncrieff.”
Until that moment I believe that it had never quite occurred to me that my butler possessed, like other men, a Christian name.
* * * *
VII.
“A great design directs us,” said Mr Clubb, expelling morsels of his cud. “We poor wanderers, you and me and Mr Cuff and the milkman too, only see the little portion right in front of us. Half the time we don’t even see that in the right way. For sure we don’t have a Chinaman’s chance of understanding it. But the design is ever-present, sir, a truth I bring to your attention for the sake of the comfort in it. Toast, Mr Cuff.”
“Comfort is a matter cherished by all parts of a man,” said Mr Cuff, handing his partner the rack of toasted bread. “Most particularly that part known as his soul, which feeds upon the nutrient adversity.”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology] Page 53
