The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint

There was another knock on the door.

Jenny got up, looking less nervous. “Well, I’d better see who it is.” She disappeared into the little vestibule which led to the front door. We heard the sound of indistinct voices for a minute. Jenny returned, looking puzzled.

“It’s three gentlemen—well, they really look more like three ruffians—well, actually, more like absolute scoundrels—who say they’re the Trio in B-Flat and they’re looking for Greyboar and Ignace. They say Leuwen the barkeep told them you might be here.”

“The Trio!” exclaimed Greyboar. “But how did they—well, let’s hear it from them. Show ’em in, Jenny, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Chapter 18.

The Trio’s Tale

A moment later the Trio filed into the room. It was them all

right, in the flesh. Erlic the Weasel, McDoul, and Geronimo Jerry—that’s what everybody called him, anyway, that or just “G.J.” He had some fancy official moniker which ran on about three sentences, full of “de” thises and “y” thats; claimed to be descended from a long line of Grenadine landholders. But nobody believed that story, not even G.J. himself.

They were looking a mite apprehensive. I could tell—the twitchy feet alone gave them away. Not to mention the sidelong glances at the door, oh, maybe eight times a second, like they were sizing up the escape route. Fat lot of good it’d do them! Well, McDoul could have probably outrun Greyboar, he could scurry faster than any hunchback I ever saw. And Erlic might have had a chance on the flat, if he could avoid tripping over his potbelly. But Geronimo Jerry couldn’t have escaped a pack of wild turtles. The man was built like a two-legged pumpkin.

And, of course, they were bowing and scraping and tugging their forelocks.

“Quite th’onor, this, y’Gripship sir,” babbled the Weasel, “bein’ admitted t’ye presence ‘n all.”

“Aye!” and “aye!” came from McDoul and G.J.

“Cut it out!” snapped Greyboar. “What am I? Some snooty count you’re fawning all over so’s you can figure out the quickest way to get to his purse?”

Erlic—he was more or less the leader of the gang, emphasis on the less—cleared his throat and said:

“N’doubt, n’doubt. Aye an’ I’ve long admired y’philosophic acumenation, y’Squeezeness—Greyboar, I mean t’say!—idna ‘at true, lads? ‘Aven’t I—th’million times at th’least!—spoke’d like th’true dev’tee of th’uncanny intelligence of y’Lord ‘o th’Larynx? ‘Aven’t I? ‘N now y’can ken for y’selfes the—”

“CUT IT OUT!” roared Greyboar.

It was a great act, really. Best thieves in the Flankn, the Trio, there was no doubt about it. The most craven lackeys in the world’s grandest throne rooms couldn’t hold a candle to them when it came to lickspittling and kowtowing. Big part of the reason for their success. There was many the fine gentleman been found in an alley, his throat cut and his purse gone, with that unmistakable look of utter astonishment on his face that told you the Trio did the job.

The Weasel cleared his throat again.

“Well, it’s like this, Greyboar. We just got out o’ th’Pile and natural we right off headed down to th’Trough fer a brew, when what’d ye know but what Leuwen explained t’us as to what ye was inquirin’ as t’our whereabouts, an’ so—” He cleared his throat again. “—an’ so we’s consulted ‘mongst ourselfes an’ decided as to what would prob’bly be best t’come see you right off, rather then wait an’ all until y’found us on y’own an’ all.” Another throat clearing. “What wit’ y’blood in y’eye.”

And then, of course, they fell to quarreling. The Weasel and McDoul swore on the graves of the mothers they never knew that it had all been Geronimo Jerry’s idea to claim Greyboar as his cousin so that the porkers in the Pile would pay back the money G.J. lent to them at his normal usurious rates. Geronimo Jerry swore on the graves of a long line of fictitious Grenadine landholders—hidalgos one and all, to hear him say it—that he’d been talked into by the other two on account of their insatiable lust for the little finer things of life what make a long stay in the dungeon tolerable and which can only be gotten from bribing guards and how are you supposed to bribe guards in the first place when you’re broke and so what better way to do it but lend them money at 200% the weekly interest—don’t ask me where they got the seed money, I couldn’t follow it—and then of course the problem is getting the great surly sadistic brutes to pay back the money and how else to do it but claim the world’s greatest strangler as your cousin what dotes on you and it was all McDoul’s idea in the first place. That was a nice little touch, that last twist, because before you knew it the lineup was shifting and now it was Erlic admitting as to how, well, yes, and it had been McDoul who’d thought it up first and Erlic and G.J. had just gone along because sure and McDoul swore as he’d talked it all over with Greyboar before they’d gotten pitched into the Pile. And then—your great chancellors and ministers haven’t got a thing on the Trio when it comes to treacherous alliances and realpolitik—the wind started veering again when McDoul demanded as to how he could have spoken to Greyboar and gotten permission ahead of time when everybody knew Greyboar had been in Prygg hiding out from the porkers and wasn’t it actually—this to Geronimo Jerry—Erlic who’d claimed he’d gotten a letter from the great strangler in Prygg graciously giving his nod to the impersonation and of course he and G.J. had taken the Weasel’s word for it since wasn’t it true that Erlic always handled the Trio’s correspondence on account of McDoul and G.J. were wretched orphans what had never learned to read and write—a bald-faced lie, that; any one of the Trio can distinguish in the blink of an eye between the denominations of every known currency in the world—being as they had been forced to work in the sweatshops since they was tots. And then—