thumping on the hardwood floor as he served the drinks before I made mention of the beast. His hands shook and twitched as he placed the glasses before us. I asked if any of his patrons might have made mention of seeing an unusual beast.
“A beast, you say,” Lester said, rubbing his bald head nervously. “A demon is more like it. I saw the very beast you described this very morning. The sun 'adn't even come up an' I was asleep upstairs. I heard a rustlin' out back and thought it were a robber. So I grabbed my gun and opened the door. What I saw weren't like anythin' I ever seen. It were a monster.”
Professor Grim and I sat on pins and needles as we listened to Lester's account. “What did it look like?” Grim said before taking a long steady sip of his ale.
“Well,” Lester continued, “it was mostly hard to see in the small morning hour it was, and of course, the fog. But I seen it was about the size of a boar and it had tusks, but that weren't all. It had feathers and a beak. An' I swear it had a bushy white tail. And half of its face seemed to be burned or scraped, and the whiskers were gone from one side of his face.” I looked at Professor Grim.
“And what did you do?” I asked, breathless with suspense.
“I took a shot at it,” Lester continued. “But it only scared the beast. And then the darn'dest thing happened. It flew away.”
“It flew away, you say?” Professor Grim asked.
“It flew away,” Lester said.
“Remarkable,” I said.
Grim and I finished our drinks and we asked Lester to keep watch for the beast, before leaving the tavern, stepping out into the thick yellow fog. There appeared to be nothing more for us to do. It was quite possible that we would never hear of the beast again. It might have flown south for all we knew.
The front page of the Daily Telegraph the next morning told us differently. I had arrived at Professor Grim's warehouse early, so that we might resume our search for the terrible mutated pheasant beast. Story after story in the newspaper read of various witnesses’ accounts of dangerous encounters with a strange, feathered boar-like beast. A green grocer told how a strange beast had gotten into his cabbages and Brussels sprouts before flying away. A tobacconist had the beast inside his very shop before he beat the thing out with a broom handle.
“I know the proprietor,” Professor Grim said, reading the account of the tobacconist. “We should go interview him at once and glean what we can about his encounter with the beast.”
Outside on the street, I hailed a hansom and we set out for our destination on Regent Street, not far from Piccadilly Circus. During the cab ride, I observed suspicious glances from the driver, who found the pistol in Grim's belt and the shotgun I carried, no doubt, unsettling. But we arrived at last at our destination and Professor Grim paid the driver, who looked more than grateful to be dropping us off.
Basil Bennett, the tobacconist smiled and waved when he saw us arrive. The popular tobacconist wore a gray waistcoat with a fancy brocade and a bowler hat and a thick mustache waxed into curls on both sides. He was sweeping a mess of shredded cigars and other debris out of his shop onto the pavement when we arrived.
“Professor Grim,” Basil said. “So good to see you, sir. But if you are here to buy, I am afraid you are out of luck. All of my Caribbean cigars have been destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” I asked, placing the shotgun by my side, trying to hold the weapon a bit more discreetly. “Do you mean by the beast?”
“The beast?” Basil said; “you must have been reading the Telegraph. I wish they hadn't mentioned my name in the article, for such a thing cannot possibly be good for business.”
“Tell me what happened,” Professor Grim said, as Mr. Bennett gestured with his hand that we should step inside his shop.
It was a beautiful shop with shelves of glass jars filled with loose pipe tobaccos, ornately-lidded snuff boxes, beautiful hand-carved pipes from all regions of the world and, of course, box after box of fine cigars. The little shop was very inviting, with the smell of its sweet tobacco and cedar aroma, and the beauty of its hardwood floors, shelves and marble-topped counter. I made a mental note to return here in the future. The strange thing was, the shop appeared to be in perfect order except for one section of particular Carribbean cigars, which now proved to be in shambles, completely torn apart by the wild creature.
Basil Bennett went on to tell us that the tusked pheasant beast had entered his shop shortly before closing time the previous evening. He noted that the thick yellow fog, which had appeared around much of London, had made it difficult to see anything through his window and at first he had thought the beast was a stray mutt, looking for a scrap. He was in perfect horror when he first saw the beast, from the sharp tusks, to the boar-like body, all the way to the bushy white stag's tail. What further surprised the shop owner was that the beast only appeared to be interested in one particular brand of cigar, which he voraciously consumed, leaving nothing but shredded scraps behind.
“He left everything else in the shop virtually untouched,” Basil Bennett said. “Strange, isn't it?”
“What is?” Professor Grim asked, thoughtfully stroking his half-mustache.
“That the beast would only be interested in the same brand of cigar that you smoke,” Basil said, resuming his sweeping of the mess of shredded tobacco and Spanish cedar.
“Very peculiar indeed,” Grim said.
I looked at the professor, who seemed unsettled by this latest turn of events.
“Have you any idea which way the beast might have traveled?” I asked the tobacco shop owner.
“I am afraid that I do not,” Basil said. “I grabbed my broom and began beating the beast, which snarled with the most unholy sound these ears have ever heard. It sounded like a wild boar that was screeching like a bird of prey. The sound of it was piercing, and it still haunts me. Then the beast fled through the door, into the fog. I couldn't see it after that.”
“Unsettling indeed,” said I. I paid Mr. Bennett for a packet of snuff and followed Professor Grim out onto the pavement. The two of us canvassed the neighborhood, interviewing as many of the nearby residents and business proprietors as we could in order to find out some shred of evidence as to where the terrible beast might have gotten to, but finding no clue as to its whereabouts.
Feeling defeated, Grim and I stopped at a pie shop at the edge of Hyde Park for a bit of sustenance. I ordered a jellied eel pie with whelks and Professor Grim a steaming bowl of pea soup, along with a handful of chestnuts from a vendor, which he placed in his coat pocket. We crossed the street to eat our meals at a bench in the park and to discuss our current problem.
“I feel so depressed by this dilemma,” Professor Grim said, looking down into his steaming bowl. “I am responsible for unleashing this beast on an unwitting populous. If a single person is harmed by the beast, I don't believe I could ever forgive myself.”
“Don't feel so,” I said, taking a dip of my recently purchased snuff. “It was only your intention to improve the present human condition. You might have done so much good with the serum that the potential gains would have far outweighed the potential risks.”
Grim forced a smile. “You know, my friend,” the professor said, taking his cigar case out of his coat pocket. “You really ought to give up that snuff and take up these fine Caribbean cigars,” he said, offering me one.
With thanks, I declined. “I've never been much of a smoker.” I was then stricken with the words Basil Bennett had spoken to Professor Grim. “Strange, isn't it?” the tobacconist had said. “That the beast would only be interested in the same brand of cigar that you smoke.”
“I suppose with the current destruction of supply, I should ration what I have left, lest I run out before Basil Bennett is resupplied,” Grim said with a laugh.
We finished eating and were walking amongst the long rows of plane trees in the park when the discussion turned toward the beast that was now our quarry. “The ferocious a
nimal we seek began life as a pheasant,” said I, to which Professor Grim nodded affirmation. “But the serum that you injected the fowl with was fortified with the essence of a boar, a beef, and a deer?”
Again, Grim nodded in agreement. “My intent was for the fowl to possess an unusually high value of protein, as well as all of the amino acids and minerals in each of the different animals' meats.”
“Clever indeed,” I said, taking a nip from my flask.
“The boar is a clever animal, Mr. Chumbles,” Professor Grim said, “and the beast we pursue appears to have predominantly taken the form of the swine. Did you know that the French use swine to root out their prized culinary delicacy, the truffle?”
“I must admit,” I said, “that I did not know that. Rabbit stew and shepherd's pie are sufficiently decadent as far as I am concerned. And I can root that out myself with my nose. In fact, I could probably catch the scent of a fish and chip shop from a kilometer away.”
“I have often wondered myself,” Professor Grim said, “if it were possible for a man's nose to catch scent of the truffle.” And with that, Grim fell to his knees and began rooting in the dirt like a swine. His nose and hands were positively caked with soil before I urged him to please stand up so that we could make our leave by way of a hansom cab.
At last, Professor Grim gave up the
Theophilus Grim and the Fowl of Ruin Page 3
