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Only two gold pieces!
‘… and while revenue and expenses have experienced week-on-week fluctuation, all falls within normative levels of standard deviation, so our operational outlook can broadly be said to be net-neutral when considering the whole as a fiscal concern.’
Grimgridge looked up from the desk’s sheaf-scattered surface. With his unbroken arm - don’t bother asking, dashed if he’ll tell me - he lowered the jam-jars and looked at me expectantly.
‘Ah, yes… all quite fascinating, what.’ I tried for myself to consider the whole as a fickle concierge, but found myself caught in two minds. I had just about pictured the door when I heard the hated words:
‘Does sir perhaps wish me to clarify any - ’
‘No, no, all is perfectly spotless,’ I said hastily. But I confess it, readers; in truth, spots were very much still a part of it. These accounts meetings were always cold casserole: so many figures, such maddeningly squiggly lines! Where is the need? This is a newspaper! Not a... a mathspaper.
‘Grimgridge,’ I said, seeking a change of subj. ‘Look here. Dashed if I don’t keep hearing the loopiest rumours, old spritz.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Quite so. It’s the rummiest thing, but everyone I talk to thinks you’re trying to kill me! What do you make of that?’
My butl- sorry, steward - smiled warmly.
‘I can assure sir that such an act is the last thing on my mind.’
‘But still on the list, is it?’
‘M- most droll, sir.’
‘Ha! Yes, I thought so. Now, explain to me this flattish-looking graph chap. And for the benefit of all creation, speak plainly, will you? Dashed if I don’t fail to surmise why you aren’t more like your benev. overl. in that reg., viz: moi.’
‘Very good, sir. Since our arrival at the Courier, its financial position has remained stable. The publication is in broadly favourable health. It is good news, sir.’
I frowned.
‘So you say. But it couldn’t be worse, as I see the thing. We’re not in the mud, and I can’t even take the cred. for the whiteness of our petticoats. How am I supposed to perform my big rescue op. if the organ beats freely of the surgeon’s intervensh?’
‘Sir?’
‘Oh, never mind, Grimgridge. That’s all for today. I need some time to think things over.’
I sloped off towards the staff room, feeling an abjectness - abjectitude? Abjectivity? - known only before to the Gendelsson soul on the occasion of missed suppers.
The thing seemed all squiffy. How could this be the most troubled newspaper in the Old World if there was nothing obviously wrong with it? And if this wasn’t the most troub. newsp. in the o. w., what hope did I have of correcting my own personal squiggly-line graph, the one titled Estimation in Eyes of Father, from a nose-dive so steep it resembled - to pluck an image entirely at random - a Dwarf falling from a high ladder?
It was in such a state of mind that I nosed over the threshold to the staff room, in which I encountered what may be the most curious spectacle I have ever seen.
The first thing I saw was Igor Enthrop sat in a chaise longue. Igor’s one of the Courier’s many colourful characters: indeed, is more colourful than most, given he’s assembled himself from the (presumably) surplus body parts of just about every race to be found the world o’er.
If you think a chap in a chair is disappointingly incurious, reader, read on: laid out across the blighter’s lap was Enthrop no. 2, i.e. Luke, a lupinoid fellow whose only obvious concession to the civilised habit of dressing, a loincloth, was currently pooled about his furry ankles. Laid to one side of Igor was a little gilded box, in which there was an assortment of fingernails, laid out by length. Lastly, a blood-stained set of, what d’y’ call-ems, pinching fellows. Pliers, that’s it.
Presently Luke looked over his shoulder and saw me. Perceptive coves, these Werewolves. He started up in a panic, making a desperate grab for the l. c., only find himself gently, but firmly, held in check.
‘Igor, my clothes!’, he cried. The poor fellow was clearly mortified. ‘Gods, it’s the editor! This is so embarrassing!’
‘Hush, Luke, there’th nothing to be ashamed of,’ his brother replied. He chuckled. ‘One way or another, it’th all jutht hair down there anyway.’
While the younger Enthrop cringed, the elder carried on with his work. He seemed to be plucking things out of the Werewolf’s coat and flicking them into the fire, a task he performed with preternatural adroitness. At the ends of his scar-ridden fingers flashed a dainty set of jet-black nails that, at my best guess, probably once belonged to a Witch Elf.
‘This isn’t what it looks like!’, said Luke. I had no idea what he thought it could look like. ‘Igor’s just getting rid of some - some mosquitoes, aren’t you, Igor? Damn mozzies’ll bite just about anyone, ha-ha!’
‘That’th right, Luke, mothquitoeth,’ said Igor. He looked up and gave me a knowing smile. He mouthed the words ‘fleas’ - ‘fleath’, more accurately - and all became immediately clear.
I had recently read in one of my favourite periodicals, Convenient Facts Quarterly, that on reaching adolescence, Werewolves begin to attract a vast number of fleas. Something to do with their hormones, apparently. It takes a lot of work to keep on top of the problem, and, teenagers being teenagers, this is of course something they are extraordinarily sensitive about.
Scarcely has a discovery been more opportune! Here was I in search of a crisis - in need of someone in need - and what should fate deal me but a locust plague in miniature! It was the work of a moment to deduce how I could best assist these stricken souls.
‘Speaking of fleas,’ I began, ‘we had a pack of hunting hounds back at the old manse in Zhufbar - not for riding mind you, ha ha! Not after what happened to poor Lambchops, anyway. Well, whenever these mutts had problems with fleas we would take them out to the brewery and soak them in the vats for an hour or two. Cast-iron way to get rid of fleas, what - or should I say cask-iron, ha ha! Pickled the dogs like kippers, of course, but it improved the beer no end!
‘So if we have a half-decent cellar here, - ’ I continued, but by this point Luke was wailing like a banshee.
‘It’s not fleas! I told you that! Gods, why does everyone treat me like I’m some kind of animal? I hate my life! I hate everything! IT’S NOT FAIR!’
‘Luke!’, cried Igor, but the bounder tore free and, bounding straight out the door, gave it a hefty slam as he went.
‘Teens, eh, Igor?’, I said, as we listened to him stomping away. But for some reason the remaining Enthropian seemed tickled not by my worldly rapport. In fact, though they may not have matched, his eyebrows rather gave the impression their owner was positively piqued.
‘Really, Alfrik!’, he said. ‘What in Nuffle’th name wath that? I don’t know if you were genuinely trying to help, or whether that wath thome kind of childish wind-up, but it wath everything I’d expect an editor not to do!
‘I just thought - ’
‘No, that’th exactly what you didn’t do! Where wath the conthideration? The tact? Your writerth are the lifeblood of thith publication, and after all we’ve been through in the latht year, we’re pretty much out of O negative, if you follow my drift!
‘I know a thing or two about the average psyche - I own a few, after all - and one thing I’ll tell you, there’th only tho much it can take. Do you even realithe the extent of the morale problem you’re thitting on, here? For Nuffle’th thake, we all live in a wreck in the middle of a ditch! We’re HOMELETH, Alfrik!
‘And Luke! He’th at that age, you know? Tho raw, tho fragile - and who’th here for him? Only me, hith brother! No-one elthe. Do you have any idea what it’th like not to know a father’th love at that age? Or a mother’th embrathe? Do you, Alfrik?’
‘A.. actually - ’
‘We need a leader who careth about uth! Our wantth! Our needth! Thomeone who can be bothered to think how we think, to feel how we feel! Not thome cavalier generalithhhimo, coming along and trampling uth all underfoot!’
The outburst halted abruptly. All I could hear in the deathly silence was Igor’s ragged breathing. Presently he undid some stitches across his chest, and, reaching into the gap, began to give one of his lungs some manual aid.
‘…Gosh, old man. I don’t know what to say.’
He looked a touch remorseful, but that might have been pain.
‘Look, Alfrik, maybe I went too far - ’
‘No! Not at all, what. Not in the slightest. Igor, your words have.. touched me to the core,’ I said, trying not to stare at the man with the hand in his ribcage. ‘How foolish I've been. How shamefully I’ve behaved. I see what must be done to make amends.’
‘Well, I'm glad you're willing to learn from thith, Alfrik. None of uth are born perfect, but if we're prepared to work at our flawth -’
I took out my wallet.
‘Why don’t you buy him one of those Hex-Boxes I've heard kids are so fond of these days? That'll make him feel loved! And get something nice for yourself while you're at it - a new set of ears, perhaps.’
Igor frowned as I jingled the bag of coins under his nose.
‘'Have you even been lithening to a word I thaid? That ithn't even remotely -’
‘Sorry, Igor!,’ I said, still jingling. ‘I can't hear you over the sound of all this money fixing everything!’
For you see, Igor had taught me something truly perspicacious. If the Courier’s in robust fiscal shape, I just need to fritter away its resources until it’s nothing but a desiccated husk. Then there’ll really be a crisis for me to save it from! Simplicity personif. Just wait ‘til Sasha hears about this!
Alfrik Gendelsson
