I asked the fellow if he meant to idle away the entire afternoon in my office while I conducted my business.
“Mr Cuff and I are never idle, sir. While you conduct your business, we will be doing the same, laying out our plans, refining our strategies, choosing our methods and the order of their use.”
“Oh, all right,” I said, “but I trust you’ll be quiet about it.”
At that moment, Mrs Rampage buzzed to say that Gilligan was before her, requesting to see me immediately, proof that bush telegraph is a more efficient means of spreading information than any newspaper. I told her to send him in, and a second later the morning Gilligan, pale of face, dark hair tousled but not as yet completely wild, came treading softly toward my desk. He pretended to be surprised that I had visitors and pantomimed an apology which incorporated the suggestion that he depart and return later. “No, no,” I said, “I am delighted to see you, for this gives me the opportunity to introduce you to our new consultants, who will be working closely with me for a time.”
Gilligan swallowed, glanced at me with the deepest suspicion, and extended his hand as I made the introductions. “I regret that I am unfamiliar with your work, gentlemen,” he said. “Might I ask the name of your firm? Is it Locust, Bleaney, Burns or Charter, Carter, Maxton, and Coltrane?”
By naming the two most prominent consultancies in our industry, Gilligan was assessing the thinness of the ice beneath his feet: LBB specialized in investments, CCM&C in estates and trusts. If my visitors worked for the former, he would suspect that a guillotine hung above his neck; if the latter, the Captain was liable for the chop. “Neither,” I said. “Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff are the directors of their own concern, which covers every aspect of the trade with such tactful professionalism that it is known to but the few for whom they will consent to work.”
“Excellent,” Gilligan whispered, gazing in some puzzlement at the map and floor plan atop my desk. “Tip-top.”
“When their findings are given to me, they shall be given to all. In the meantime. I would prefer that you say as little as possible about the matter. Though change is a law of life, we wish to avoid unnecessary alarm.”
“You know that you can depend on my silence,” said Morning Gilligan, and it was true, I did know that. I also knew that his alter ego, Afternoon Gilligan, would babble the news to everyone who had not already heard it from Mrs Rampage. By six p.m., our entire industry would be pondering the information that I had called in a consultancy team of such rarified accomplishments that they chose to remain unknown but to the very few. None of my colleagues could dare admit to an ignorance of Clubb & Cuff, and my reputation, already great, would increase exponentially.
To distract him from the floor plan of Green Chimneys and the rough map of my estate, I said, “I assume some business brought you here, Gilligan.”
“Oh! Yes - yes - of course,” he said, and with a trace of embarrassment brought to my attention the pretext for his being there, the ominous plunge in value of an overseas fund in which we had advised one of his musicians to invest. Should we recommend selling the fund before more money was lost, or was it wisest to hold on? Only a minute was required to decide that the musician should retain his share of the fund until next quarter, when we anticipated a general improvement, but both Gilligan and I were aware that this recommendation call could easily have been handled by telephone, and soon he was moving toward the door, smiling at the barnies in a pathetic display of false confidence.
The telephone rang a moment after the detectives had returned to the table. Mr Clubb said, “Your wife, sir. Remember: the utmost cordiality.” Here was false confidence, I thought, of an entirely different sort. I picked up the receiver to hear Mrs Rampage tell me that my wife was on the line.
What followed was a banal conversation of the utmost duplicity. Marguerite pretended that my sudden departure from the dinner table and my late arrival at the office had caused her to fear for my health. I pretended that all was well, apart from a slight indigestion. Had the drive up been peaceful? Yes, the highways had been surprisingly empty. How was the house? A little musty, but otherwise fine. She had never quite realized, she said, how very large Green Chimneys was until she walked around in it, knowing she was going to be there alone. Had she been out to the studio? No, but she was looking forward to getting a lot of work done over the next three or four days and thought she would be working every night, as well. (Implicit in this remark was the information that I should be unable to reach her, the studio being without a telephone.) After a moment of awkward silence, she said, “I suppose it is too early for you to have identified your traitor.” It was, I said, but the process would begin that evening. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this,” she said. “I know how painful the discovery was for you, and I can only begin to imagine how angry you must be, but I hope you will be merciful. No amount of punishment can undo the damage, and if you try to exact retribution you will only injure yourself. The man is going to lose his job and his reputation. Isn’t that punishment enough?” After a few meaningless pleasantries the conversation had clearly come to an end, although we still had yet to say good-bye. Then an odd thing happened to me. I nearly said, Lock all the doors and windows tonight and let no one in. I nearly said, You are in grave danger and must come home. With these words rising in my throat, I looked across the room at Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff, and Mr Clubb winked at me. I heard myself bidding Marguerite farewell, and then heard her hang up her telephone.
“Well done, sir,” said Mr Clubb. “To aid Mr Cuff and myself in the preparation of our inventory, can you tell us if you keep certain staples at Green Chimneys?”
“Staples?” I said, thinking he was referring to foodstuffs.
“Rope?” he asked. “Tools, especially pliers, hammers, and screwdrivers? A good saw? A variety of knives? Are there by any chance firearms?”
“No firearms,” I said. “I believe all the other items you mention can be found in the house.”
“Rope and tool chest in the basement, knives in the kitchen?”
“Yes,” I said, “precisely.” I had not ordered these barnies to murder my wife, I reminded myself; I had drawn back from that precipice. By the time I went into the executive dining room for my luncheon, I felt sufficiently restored to give Charlie-Charlie that ancient symbol of approval, the thumbs-up sign.
* * * *
III.
When I returned to my office the screen had been set in place, shielding from view the detectives in their preparations but in no way muffling the rumble of comments and laughter they brought to the task. “Gentlemen,” I said in a voice loud enough to be heard behind the screen - a most unsuitable affair decorated with a pattern of alternating ocean liners, martini glasses, champagne bottles and cigarettes - “you must modulate your voices, as I have business to conduct here as well as you.” There came a somewhat softer rumble of acquiescence. I took my seat to discover my bottom desk drawer pulled out, the folder absent. Another roar of laughter jerked me once again to my feet.
I came around the side of the screen and stopped short. The table lay concealed beneath drifts and mounds of yellow legal paper covered with lists of words and drawings of stick figures in varying stages of dismemberment. Strewn through the yellow pages were the photographs, loosely divided into those in which either Marguerite or Graham Leeson provided the principal focus. Crude genitalia had been drawn, without reference to either party’s actual gender, over and atop both of them. Aghast, I leaned over and began gathering up the defaced photographs. “I must insist ...” I said. “I really must insist, you know . . .”
Mr Clubb immobilized my wrist with one hand and extracted the photographs with the other. “We prefer to work in our time-honored fashion,” he said. “Our methods may be unusual, but they are ours. But before you take up the afternoon’s occupations, sir, can you tell us if items on the handcuff order might be found in the house?”
“No,” I said. Mr Cuff pulled a yellow page before him
and wrote handcuffs.
“Chains?” asked Mr Clubb.
“No chains,” I said, and Mr Cuff added chains to his list.
“That is all for the moment,” said Mr Clubb, and released me.
I took a step backwards and massaged my wrist, which stung as if from rope-burn. “You speak of your methods,” I said, “and I understand that you have them. But what can be the purpose of defacing my photographs in this grotesque fashion?”
“Sir,” said Mr Clubb in a stern, teacherly voice, “where you speak of defacing, we use the term enhancement. Enhancement is a tool we find vital to the method known by the name of Visualization.”
I retired defeated to my desk. At five minutes before two, Mrs Rampage informed that the Captain and his scion, a thirty-year-old inheritor of a great family fortune named Mr Chester Montfort d’M—, awaited my pleasure. Putting Mrs Rampage on hold, I called out, “Please do give me absolute quiet, now. A client is on his way in.”
First to appear was the Captain, his tall, rotund form as alert as a pointer’s in a grouse field as he led in the taller, inexpressibly languid figure of Mr Chester Montfort d’M— , a person marked in every inch of his being by great ease, humor, and stupidity. The Captain froze to gape horrified at the screen, but Montfort d’M— continued round him to shake my hand and say, “Have to tell you, I like that thingamabob over there immensely. Reminds me of a similar thingamabob at the Beeswax Club a few years ago, whole flocks of girls used to come tumbling out. Don’t suppose we’re in for any unicycles and trumpets today, eh?”
The combination of the raffish screen and our client’s unbridled memories brought a dangerous flush to the Captain’s face, and I hastened to explain the presence of top-level consultants who preferred to pitch tent on-site, as it were, hence the installation of a screen, all the above in the service of, well, service, an all-important quality we . . .
“By Kitchener’s mustache,” said the Captain. “I remember the Beeswax Club. Don’t suppose I’ll ever forget the night Little Billy Pegleg jumped up and . . .” The color darkened on his cheeks, and he closed his mouth.
From behind the screen, I heard Mr Clubb say, “Visualize this.” Mr Cuff chuckled.
The Captain recovered himself and turned his sternest glare upon me. “Superb idea, consultants. A white-glove inspection tightens up any ship.” His veiled glance toward the screen indicated that he had known of the presence of our “consultants” but, unlike Gilligan, had restrained himself from thrusting into my office until given legitimate reason. “That being the case, is it still quite proper that these people remain while we discuss Mr Montfort d’M—’s confidential affairs?”
“Quite proper, I assure you,” I said. “The consultants and I prefer to work in an atmosphere of complete cooperation. Indeed, this arrangement is a condition of their accepting our firm as their client.”
“Indeed,” said the Captain.
“Top of the tree, are they?” said Mr Montfort d’M—. “Expect no less of you fellows. Fearful competence.Terrifying competence.”
Mr Cuff’s voice could be heard saying, “Okay, visualize this.” Mr Clubb uttered a high-pitched giggle.
“Enjoy their work,” said Mr Montfort d’M—.
“Shall we?” I gestured to their chairs. As a young man whose assets equalled fifteen to twenty billion dollars (depending on the condition of the stock market, the value of real estate in half a dozen cities around the world, global warming, forest fires and the like) our client was as catnip to the ladies, three of whom he had previously married and divorced after siring a child upon each, resulting in a great interlocking complexity of trusts, agreements, and contracts, all of which had to be re-examined on the occasion of his forthcoming wedding to a fourth young woman, named like her predecessors after a semi-precious stone. Due to the perspicacity of the Captain and myself, each new nuptial altered the terms of those previous so as to maintain our client’s liability at an unvarying level. Our computers had enabled us to generate the documents well before his arrival, and all Mr Montfort d’M— had to do was listen to the revised terms and sign the papers, a task which generally induced a slumberous state except for those moments when a prized asset was in transition.
“Hold on, boys,” he said ten minutes into our explanations, “you mean Opal has to give the race horses to Garnet, and in return she gets the teak plantation from Turquoise, who turns around and gives Opal the ski resort in Aspen? Opal is crazy about those horses, and Turquoise just built a house.”
I explained that his second wife could easily afford the purchase of a new stable with the income from the plantation and his third would keep her new house. He bent to the task of scratching his signature on the form. A roar of laughter erupted behind the screen. The Captain glanced sideways in displeasure, and our client looked at me blinking. “Now to the secondary trusts,” I said. “As you will recall, three years ago . . .”
My words were cut short by the appearance of a chuckling Mr Clubb clamping an unlighted cigar in his mouth, a legal pad in his hand, as he came toward us. The Captain and Mr Montfort d’M— goggled at him, and Mr Clubb nodded. “Begging your pardon, sir, but some queries cannot wait. Pickaxe, sir? Dental floss? Awl?”
“No, yes, no,” I said, and then introduced him to the other two men. The Captain appeared stunned, Mr Montfort d’M— cheerfully puzzled.
“We would prefer the existence of an attic,” said Mr Clubb.
“An attic exists,” I said.
“I must admit my confusion,” said the Captain. “Why is a consultant asking about awls and attics? What is dental floss to a consultant?”
“For the nonce, Captain,” I said, “these gentlemen and I must communicate in a form of cipher or code, of which these are examples, but soon . . .”
“Plug your blow-hole, Captain,” broke in Mr Clubb. “At the moment you are as useful as wind in an outhouse, always hoping you will excuse my simple way of expressing myself.”
Sputtering, the Captain rose to his feet, his face rosier by far than during his involuntary reminiscence of what Little Billy Pegleg had done one night at the Beeswax Club.
“Steady on,” I said, fearful of the heights of choler to which indignation could bring my portly, white-haired, but still powerful junior.
“Not on your life,” bellowed the Captain. “I cannot brook . . . cannot tolerate ... If this ill-mannered dwarf imagines excuse is possible after . . .” He raised a fist. Mr Clubb said, “Pish tosh,” and placed a hand on the nape of the Captain’s neck. Instantly, the Captain’s eyes rolled up, the color drained from his face, and he dropped like a sack into his chair.
“Hole in one,” marvelled Mr Montfort d’M—. “World class. Old boy isn’t dead, is he?”
The Captain exhaled uncertainly and licked his lips.
“With my apologies for the unpleasantness,” said Mr Clubb, “I have only two more queries at this juncture. Might we locate bedding in the aforesaid attic, and have you an implement such a match or a lighter?”
“There are several old mattresses and bedframes in the attic,” I said, “but as to matches, surely you do not . . .”
Understanding the request better than I, Mr Montfort d’M— extended a golden lighter and applied an inch of flame to the tip of Mr Clubb’s cigar. “Didn’t think that part was code,” he said. “Rules have changed? Smoking allowed?”
“From time to time during the workday my colleague and I prefer to smoke,” said Mr Clubb, expelling a reeking miasma across the desk. I had always found tobacco nauseating in its every form, and in all parts of our building smoking had of course long been prohibited.
“Three cheers, my man, plus three more after that,” said Mr Montfort d’M—, extracting a ridged case from an inside pocket, an absurdly phallic cigar from the case. “I prefer to smoke, too, you know, especially during these deadly conferences about who gets the pincushions and who gets the snuffboxes. Believe I’ll join you in a corona.” He submitted the object to a ci
rcumcision, snick-snick, and to my horror set it alight. “Ashtray?” I dumped paper clips from a crystal oyster shell and slid it toward him. “Mr Clubb, is it? Mr Clubb, you are a fellow of wonderful accomplishments, still can’t get over that marvelous whopbopaloobop on the Captain, and I’d like to ask if we could get together some evening, cigars and cognac kind of thing.”
“We prefer to undertake one matter at a time,” said Mr Clubb. Mr Cuff appeared beside the screen. He, too, was lighting up eight or nine inches of brown rope. “However, we welcome your appreciation and would be delighted to swap tales of derring-do at a later date.”
“Very, very cool,” said Mr Montfort d’M—, “especially if you could teach me how to do the whopbopaloobop.”
“This is a world full of hidden knowledge,” Mr Clubb said. “My partner and I have chosen as our sacred task the transmission of that knowledge.”
“Amen,” said Mr Cuff.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology] Page 50