The Sprouts of Wrath

19

Professor Slocombe decanted a large Scotch into a crystal tumbler and placed it between the quivering outstretched hands of John Omally. “Monsters?” he asked.

“Monster,” mumbled the Irishman as he cowered before the Professor’s roaring log fire, a blanket about his shoulders and his bare feet in a warming bowl of rose-scented water. “… just the … the one.”

“One, I think, is surely sufficient.” The elder left the decanter within John’s easy reach, returned to his study desk and reseated himself. “Might I trouble you to reiterate?”

Omally huddled nearer to the flames. “I’ve told you all I know. It was fast and it was …” he lifted a trouser bottom to survey a painful yellow bruised shin, “… hard. And it just went up, up and over us, like some great spider.”

“An insect, then?”

“Not an insect, Professor, it was as big as a man.”

“A large river bird then, or an animal, perhaps.”

“It wore clothes. Professor.” Omally finished his Scotch. He refilled his glass.

“A showman’s ape?”

Omally shook his head, his teeth rattling like castanets. “Not an ape.”

“Think carefully,” said the old man. “The thing struck you, it played with you and then it fled.”

“It ran across the ceiling.”

“Did it? You were in a state of shock when you observed this, you had received a blow to the forehead, you were confused, disorientated.”

“Yes, but…”

“The entire event occurred within a few short seconds under conditions of next to no light. If an ape had swung across the ceiling, from the light fittings perhaps?”

“No, Professor.”

The old man leant back in his chair and tapped his long fingers upon the desk top. “Upon your own admission, you had been drinking.”

“I was not drunk.”

“John, you have been in the river, you have witnessed an explosion at close quarters, you have crept across Brentford, down back alley-ways and through people’s gardens to get here. You are drinking now as we speak. What value is to be placed upon your testimony?”

“You are suggesting now that I am not in full command of my senses?”

“I am suggesting that it is reasonable to assume that, under the circumstances, your judgement might be temporarily impaired.”

“I know what I saw, I just don’t know what I saw, I mean.”

“I know what you mean.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my judgement.” Sullen and shaking, John refilled his glass.

“All right.” Professor Slocombe rose from his chair and took himself over to the cowering Celt. “Close your eyes, John.”

“For what?”

“Please, humour me.” Omally closed his eyes. “Now from memory, what am I wearing?”

“That’s easy: white shirt, pale blue cravat, silk dressing-gown, grey trousers, carpet slippers.”

“Very good,” said Professor Slocombe. “Nothing wrong with your judgement.”

Omally opened his eyes. His host was clad in a three-piece suit of green Donegal tweed, a grey shirt with a bow-tie and brown brogues. “Be damned,” said John Omally.

“Would you care for a second try?”

“Need I bother?”

Professor Slocombe inclined his old white head. “The quickness of the mind deceives the eye,” he said enigmatically. By the time the ancient had reseated himself he was clad once more in his former attire. Omally never saw how he did it. “An illusion, John. A parlour trick — nothing more. I trust the point is well taken.”

“It wasn’t an ape.”

“Well, if it perished in the explosion then we shall never know.”

“That is something, I suppose.” Omally’s hand was once more about the neck of the decanter.

“Something?” The Professor leant forward across his crowded desk and fixed Omally with a glittering eye. “I don’t think you realize the gravity of the situation, John, the enormity of what you have done in your efforts to save your miserable skin.”

“I don’t think I…”

“To destroy the evidence of your unlawful activities, you construct a bomb and walk with it through the streets of Brentford. Without care for who you might injure or what damage you might wreak upon private property, you explode same, killing at the very least some animal that will probably prove to be a showman’s exhibit or treasured pet.”

“Yes, but…”

“John, by bombing one of the sites scheduled for the Olympic construction you have committed an act of international terrorism. If this is not bad enough you have also been directly responsible for the possible manslaughter of your closest friend. Is this the ‘something’ of which you speak?” Omally hid his face from that of his accuser. “And then you come here,” the old man continued, “to take advantage of our long-standing friendship, by making me an accessory after the fact of your horrendous crimes. What have you to say for yourself before I telephone the police?”

Omally stared up bitterly, his eyes were moist and his lips quivered. “I came to you because you are the only man I could trust, the only man I respect. I told you everything, I made no secret.”

“So, what do you wish, that I wave a magic wand, absolve you of your sins, three Hail Mary’s and Our Father, perhaps?”

“I came to you for help.”

“Then this is my help. Go to the police, tell them everything.”

Omally broke into a plaintive sobbing. “Yes,” he croaked. “All right, you are right, you are always right! If I have killed Jim, then I have nothing to live for, you are right.”

The whisky decanter was suddenly upon the Professor’s desk, he refilled his glass and also another. “Well, the decision must be yours then. You can go to the police now and make a clean breast of it. Or perhaps you would prefer to wait until they drag Jim’s body from the Thames.”

“No,” said Omally, rising to his feet. “Anything but that. I know what I have done. I am damned beyond redemption.”

“No man is beyond redemption.”

“This one is. My life has been nothing but greed and selfishness. I see all that now. I know what I have done.”

“And so?”

“I will make amends, I will do the right thing, the honest thing.”

“Good, John, good.”

“I shall give myself up and serve my time,” said Omally, “and then I will enter a monastery, forswear my former existence, forswear the pleasures of the flesh. I shall be a sinner saved.”

“A sinner saved?” The Professor, who was no stranger to duplicity in any of its myriad guises, stared long and hard at the broken man standing before him. A golden aura surrounded him. “Blessed be,” said Professor Slocombe.

“The phone,” said John. “I will do it now.”

The Professor’s hand reached out towards the instrument. Suddenly he paused. “Wait,” he said, stiffening visibly. “Listen.”

“Listen? To what?”

The old man’s eyes darted towards the french windows. “Something …” From without there came a slow unearthly dragging of footsteps. A hideous squelching as of some monstrous mollusc.

“Oh no,” said Omally. “What is it?”

“By the pricking of my thumbs.” The Professor reached into the desk drawer and withdrew an amulet of powerful potency. Omally shuddered in his footbath; even sitting close to the roaring fire he felt a graveyard chill run through his bones. The footfalls drew ever nearer, ghastly, unnatural. The Professor clutched the amulet to his heart, Omally’s eyes glazed, a cold sweat formed upon his brow. “Professor …” The slow footfalls crashed in his head, closer, closer. And then it was upon them. Something dark and awesome lurched into view. An evil smell filled the air as the creature pressed forward. Thick slime hung about the discoloured visage, a dripping claw-like hand rose, a mouth opened and from the horrible maw a voice came.

“Watchamate, John,” it said.

“Jim?” gasped Omally in a cracked and broken voice. “Jim, is that you?” The apparition stepped into the room and nodded its weed-clung head. “Jim, you’re alive!” Omally toppled out of his footbath and fell to his knees before him. “You’re alive, Jim!”

“It was a close run race.”

“Then did you …? Did you?”

“Did I bloody what?”

“Did you save the betting slip?”

Professor Slocombe buried his face in his hands and groaned dismally.