Old Venus Read online

  Shilistrata gave no sign of having noticed his departure. Instead, her lambent eyes remained fixed on yours truly and her swaying became even more pronounced. There certainly didn’t seem to be much wrong with her backbone, assuming she had one. She would have won the first-in-class ribbon for limberness. I had an odd passing thought: Baldie had used to go one about how newts courted each other by wriggling and tail-shaking. I suppressed the query as non-germane.

  “Well, Shilistrata,” I said, “you’ve caught yourself a first-rater in our Archibald. Why, when it comes to knowledge of the ways of pond-dwellers, you couldn’t have struck more lucky. Backed a sure winner, so you have.”

  Her motions now became alarmingly fluid. There was something almost hypnotic about the side-to-siding, and it seemed as if a song was humming in my brain—and not to any toe-tapping Charleston or Black Bottom rhythm, but more on the louche and languid side of the dance floor.

  Nonetheless, there was a job to be done. “I doubt,” I pressed on, “that there’s a better newt man in all of England than Archibald Spotts-Binkle. My advice is to snap him up, and sharply, before some other newtess tosses a lasso around his angular form.”

  I paused there, expecting some kind of rejoinder. Instead, all I got was more swaying and humming. I found that my own head was moving in concert with her motions, and that the song she was humming was growing more and more entrancing. I was thinking that that was just the song I’d always wanted to hear though I hadn’t known it until now.

  And now her voice was speaking. I thought it was quite a good trick, to be able to speak and hum at the same time. It beat the pants off Flinders Bunchup’s celebrated turn at the Inertia Club Christmas saturnalia, two years back, when he sang “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball” while juggling an entire set of condiment dishes.

  “Come to me,” she was saying. “You are the one.”

  “The one what?” I managed. But now it was not just my head that was moving in a mysterious way. My whole body was in syncopation with hers.

  “Come,” she said, “it is the time. You are chosen.”

  Still bonelessly undulating, she was backing toward the dark pond. Yet somehow the distance between us had not grown. That puzzled me for a moment, until I realized that I was swaying along after her. It seemed to be exactly the right thing to do.

  I had the vaguest inkling that I was supposed to be engaged in some other task, something to do with Baldie. The word “qualities” tried to make itself known, but the humming and the swaying played trump upon trump.

  I took another step. At that moment, a blast of icy cold liquid slapped against my face, instantly sobering me.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” said Greeves. “I was bringing you a glass of refreshment and stumbled on the uneven ground.” A firm hand took my arm, as he said, “Please let me lead you to the house, where we will locate a towel and undo the damage.”

  The strong grip now drew me steadily away from the pond. The humming and speaking faded to a dwindle, then suddenly the Gloster head was once more illuminated by its customary clarity. I looked at Greeves and saw him regarding me with what I took to be a judgmental eye. I withdrew my arm from his grasp.

  “A towel, Greeves?” I said, then added, “Pshaw! The occasion requires not less but more liquid, preferably brown, well aged, and with a splash of soda.” I strode toward the house.

  “Indeed, sir,” he said, matching me step for step. “I will be pleased to prepare it for you.”

  “Do so, Greeves,” I said as we crossed the threshold, shedding my rain gear, “and be not parsimonious in the dispensing.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Moments later, in the drawing room, he handed me a beaker of the best. I quaffed half in one swallow, took a breath, then downed the rest. I extended the glass to Greeves, and said, “Another is called for, I think.”

  “Indeed, sir,” he said, gliding over to the drinks cabinet to repeat the miracle.

  “And then,” I said, “some thinking must ensue.”

  He returned with the whiskey. “Yes, sir. If I may say so, I have taken the liberty of examining the records stored in the library, and I believe I can provide grist for the mill.”

  I might have mentioned before that Greeves is a great one for the information-gathering. Little that has happened since Adam was a ball of clay has escaped his attention. “Say on, Greeves,” I told him, taking a seat and doing justice to the drink. I was surprised that Baldie should have bothered to stock a decent single malt; carrot juice was more his line of country. But Greeves soon cleared up that minor point along with some more salient issues.

  It seemed that the house in which we stood—actually, I sat while Greeves paced and recounted the fruits of his researches—had been built by none other than Hudibras Gillattely, a newt boffin. Baldie, arriving to give the professor the benefit of his views, had found it empty and simply moved in.

  “I take it that, once he was exposed to the climate, this Gillattely fellow realized that the game was not worth the candle?” I said. “He departed for sunnier climes?”

  “Apparently not, sir,” was the answer. “It seems that Professor Gillattely mysteriously disappeared while still in the midst of a research project focused on the pond outside. But he published his initial observations in the Journal of Salamandidrae Studies, of which he was the editor. Mr. Spotts-Binkle read the article and immediately wrote to the author. When his telegram was returned as undeliverable, he took umbrage and came to Venus to make his points in person.”

  A picture was beginning to emerge, though I could not quite bring it into focus. “Is there more, Greeves?” I said.

  “Indeed there is, sir.” His face took on a cast that I recognized. There was not only more, but the more was a pip. I bid him say on and braced myself for the fall of the other shoe.

  “Professor Gillattely’s notes were written in a gentlemanly hand—” he began.

  “In other words, nearly unreadable?” I offered.

  “Very nearly, sir. But I was able to decipher much of them. His work was focusing on a new species he had named veneria salamandidrae sireni, especially on the creature’s reproductive habits.”

  “I say,” I said, remembering Shilistrata’s limberness, “something saucy?”

  “No, sir. To the contrary: the species is parthenogenetic.”

  I grasped at a passing straw. “Persians?”

  “No, sir. If I may presume to correct you, the term comes from the Greek word for a maiden, parthenos, and denotes a method of reproduction in which the female plays all the necessary roles, without benefit of male participation.”

  “Oh,” I said, “not very sporting, if you ask me.”

  “Indeed, not. No sport at all, sir.”

  We seemed to have wandered down a byway. I sought to bring us back to the main thoroughfare. “What’s this got to do with Baldie?”

  “Mr. Spotts-Binkle has taken up the torch where Professor Gillattely let it fall, sir,” Greeves said. “He has continued to study reproduction among the v. salamandidrae sireni. He has been fortunate not to suffer the same fate as his predecessor.”

  “Eh?” I said. “I thought that was a mystery?”

  “It was, sir,” he said, “until I examined the evidence.”

  “Well, well done, Greeves,” I said. “They haven’t yet devised the plot you can’t fathom. That Christie woman should put you on a retainer.”

  “Very kind of you to say, sir.”

  “Not at all. Credit where credit’s due. So, what’s it all about, then?”

  “The crucial clue, sir, was in the creature’s name, specifically the sireni cognomen.”

  The term rang a faint bell. “Something to do with that Ulysses chap and beeswax?” I said.

  “Indeed, sir. Ulysses put wax in the ears of his fellow Argonauts, then had them chain him to the mast while they rowed the Argo past the Isles of the Sirens, whose irresistible song drew hapless mariners onto wave-washed rocks.”
/>   “Irresistible song, Greeves? You mean like that catchy little ditty Shilistrata was humming?”

  “Exactly like, sir.”

  The picture was becoming clear now, and a dire vista it made. “She was trying to lure me?”

  “Into the pond, sir. Where she would have, if you’ll pardon my plain speaking, immersed you in the ooze and laid her eggs in every available orifice.”

  “Oh, I say, Greeves! A fate worse than death!”

  “I’m sorry to contradict you, sir. Death would have come before the egg-laying. By drowning, as it no doubt did for Professor Gillattely.”

  “You haven’t seen any beeswax lying about, have you, Greeves?” I looked around, as if some might be conveniently to hand.

  “Again, sir, I must correct you,” Greeves said.

  “Blaze away, Greeves! The floor is yours.”

  “Wax will not serve, sir, because the creature Mr. Spotts-Binkle has named Shilistrata communicates by mental telepathy.”

  “Reads minds, you mean?”

  “I cannot vouch for the reading, sir,” he said. “Her mentation is not like ours. But certainly she broadcasts a strong signal.”

  “That humming,” I said. “Rather compelling.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  I dwelt upon the matter for a few moments while allowing more of the flavor of peat and heather to do their salutary work. Then a thought struck. “But, you, Greeves, were not affected. It was as if your mental ears were stuffed with wax.”

  “My mind was on other things, sir,” he said, “most particularly your safety.”

  “Ah,” I said, and, “well.” After a moment, I added, “Thank you, Greeves.”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  “Is there more?”

  “A little, sir. It would seem that Shilistrata, having fulfilled her biological destiny with Professor Gillattely, again came into season and began seeking a new host for her young. Mr. Spotts-Binkle presented himself and she began the process of, if I may speak bluntly, reeling him in. But then she decided, for reasons only she could know, that he was unsuitable. She decided to wait for a better prospect.”

  “Slithy Tove-Whippley wouldn’t do?” It seemed to me that there was more than a meal or two to be made of Slithy’s meaty frame.

  “The gentleman does not go near the pond,” Greeves said, “and has not been aboard the rocket ship since we landed.”

  “Probably just as well,” I said. I finished my whiskey and rubbed decisive palms together. “Well,” I said, “I suppose we’d better go break the bad news to Baldie.”

  “I’ll give you bad news,” said Baldie from the doorway. “And you can have a broken bone or two while I’m at it.”

  “Ah, Baldie. What ho,” I said.

  “Don’t you ‘what ho’ me!” he said, advancing into the room. I had an odd sense of déjà-vu, as if I’d recently heard just those words, though I couldn’t quite place where. But Spotts-Binkle’s next utterance drove the question from my mind. “You conniving hound! You treacherous cheat! You cad!”

  I raised an eyebrow, then another. “I say, Baldie, steady on!”

  “I’m steady enough,” he answered. For the first time in our long acquaintance, I saw color in Archibald Spotts-Binkle’s countenance: two bright red spots at about the height of his cheekbones, like an aging actress who has dipped once too often into the rouge pot. “Steady enough to break your eye and blacken your nose!”

  “I think you’ll find you mean—” I began, but he spoke over me, in a most un-Baldie-like way.

  “I mean to batter you into a shapeless mass, then trample you into the carpet!” he said.

  “But I’m just about to save your life!”

  “Save your own!” he said. “If you can!” He had balled his knobbly hands into fists and now he raised one as if he knew how to use it. I remembered again the short, sharp set-to with Basher Bass-Humptingdon in the junior boys’ cloakroom, and recalled that though Baldie had been deficient in the technical aspects, he had not lacked for energy. I moved to put an obstructing sofa between us.

  But he was not to be stayed by sofas. He leapt onto the cushions, still brandishing his fist, and now he did so from the advantage of greater height. Suddenly the likelihood of Baldie’s doing actual damage grew less remote.

  “I say, Spotts-Binkle,” I said, “what’s this all about?”

  “It’s about treachery and double-dealing! And a man I thought was a friend behaving like a worm!”

  Greeves, who had been standing by, quiet as a statue, now spoke. “May I inquire, sir, if it concerns the person you have named Shilistrata?”

  “He knows it does!” Baldie said, without taking his feverish eyes from mine. “He was supposed to speak to her for me! Instead, he spoke for himself!”

  “I praised you to the skies!” I protested. “I called you a winner and a first-rater among newt men. I counseled her to seize the day before some other newtess claimed you for her own!”

  He still loomed over me, but the homicidal mania had lost some of its pep. He resembled a Viking berserker who had paused to take thought. His gaze slid toward Greeves.

  “Is this true, Greeves?”

  “It is, sir.”

  “But when I went to her, just now,” Baldie said, climbing down from the cushions, “she spurned me. ‘Bring me Bartholomew’ she said. ‘I must have him.’ ”

  “Well, she’s not getting me, nor any part thereof,” I said. “One shudders to think—”

  “That’s enough of that sort of talk!” said Baldie, his color, however localized, rising again. “One does not speak thus of the woman I intend to wed!”

  “Baldie …” I said, casting about for a clear avenue of approach, “it’s not a stroll down the petal-strewn aisle she has in mind.”

  Again, the dismissive digits. “Oh, I know there are differences between us,” he said. “Know them better than most, I’d say. But with goodwill and growing affection, I’m sure they can be overcome.”

  “Baldie—”

  “I won’t hear any more against her!”

  I made a silent appeal to Greeves, via eyebrows and corners of the mouth. Baldie has always had a high regard for his acumen.

  As good souls will, Greeves filled the gap in the line. “Mr. Spotts-Binkle,” he said, “it grieves me to be the bearer of unhappy tidings, but the lady in question is not seeking a mate. Rather, she is thinking in terms of, shall we say, support for her children.”

  “I understand that, Greeves,” Baldie said, “and I’ve assured her that my resources will be at their disposal. I mean, what’s the use of having a bob or two if you don’t use it to do some good?”

  “It is not wealth, sir, that is sought,” Greeves said. “It is the candidate’s more immediate assets that the sireni has in view.”

  “Baldie,” I said, “she means to drown me and bury me in the ooze at the bottom of the pond while her grubs, or whatever they are, feast upon my rotting carcass.”

  As Greeves and I fed him the true gen, he once again defaulted to that pop-eyed, slow-blinking Baldie that is the classic model. After a pause to take it all in, he said, “I don’t believe it!”

  “She prefers Mr. Gloster,” Greeves said, “because, as with Hudibras Gillattely, who suffered the same fate, his form is more fleshy”—he turned to me—“if you will permit my saying so, sir.”

  “Not at all, Greeves. There is more on the Gloster bones than on the Spotts-Binkles. Luck of the draw in the parentage department, probably.”

  There ensued another period of Baldie’s blinking, accompanied by the up-and-down course of his Adam’s apple as he metaphorically, if that’s the word, swallowed the bitter pill of truth.

  Then he spat it out. “I don’t believe a word of it!” He dismissed me with a curl of the lip and rounded on Greeves. “For once, Greeves, you’ve misread the cues, followed the tracks up the wrong path.”

  “I am sorry, sir, that you think so. Professor Gillattely’s notes were quite
detailed.”

  “Pah! Him!”

  Greeves produced a bound notebook. “He wrote, sir, and I quote, ‘I will endeavor to ascertain the range of the creature’s mesmeric influence, placing a series of white stakes in the turf. I will begin with the distance at which I feel the first mental itch, then proceed to the point at which it becomes almost irresistible.’ ”

  Greeves offered Baldie a view of the page. “As you’ll see, sir, that was his last entry.”

  “That could mean anything, Greeves!”

  “I think you’ll find, sir, that it means the professor advanced a stake too far.”

  “By Jove, Baldie,” I said, “Greeves has cinched it again! I saw those stakes in a line down toward the water, with the last few all in a higgle and piggle! That must be the locus delecti or whatever the Latin is for the spot where she did the dirty on old Gillattely.”

  “That was my surmise, too, sir,” said Greeves.

  The two of us had clearly hung Baldie on the horns of a dilemma. Clearly, he did not want to wave in the news that his inamorata was an aquatic Nosferatu, if that’s the fellow I’m thinking of, but Greeves’s air of quiet confidence, coupled with the evidence of the stakes, was undermining his defenses.

  “If I may make a suggestion, sirs,” Greeves now said, “we should depart at the earliest opportunity. Professor Gillattely’s notes also indicate that there are several other females of the species in the vicinity, some of them considerably larger than the one we have been discussing. I fear that our presence has drawn them toward the house. Mr. Tove-Whippley went to see if he could launch the rocket and bring it to this side of the stream. The fact that he has not done so indicates that our situation grows dire.”

  Baldie, by this point, had lost the knack of taking action. He seemed to be contemplating some bleak inner vista—probably involving his inevitable homecoming conversation with Marilyn Spotts-Binkle, née Buffet—that was robbing him of whatever was needed to cause him to buck up and soldier on. It was time for a Gloster to take charge.

  “Would you see about the packing, Greeves?”

  “If I may, sir, I would advise a more precipitous departure. Night is falling, and the creatures grow more restive in the hours of darkness.”