The Brentford Triangle by Robert Rankin Read Free Book Online Page B

possibility Omally gave that suggestion the old thumbs down. “All right, I give up, what is it?”
    “There you have me, but I will show you an interesting thing.” Omally picked up Pooley’s spade, which was standing close at hand, raised it high above his head and drove it edgeways on towards the copper symbol with a murderous force. There was a sharp metallic clang as the spade’s head glanced against the image, cleared Pooley’s terrified face by the merest of inches and whistled off to land safely several plots away.
    “Sorry,” said John, examining the stump of spade handle, “but you no doubt get my drift.”
    “You mean you cannot dig it out?” Omally shook his head. “Right then.” Pooley spat on his palms and rubbed them briskly together.
    “Before you start,” said Omally, “be advised by me that it cannot be either erased, defaced or removed.”
    Pooley, who had by now removed his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves, paused a moment and cocked his head on one side. “It has a familiar look to it,” he said.
    John nodded. “I thought that myself, the thing strikes a chord somewhere along the line.”
    Pooley, who needed only a small excuse to avoid physical labour, slipped his jacket back on. He took out a biro and The
Now Official Handbook of Allotment Golf
.
    “Best mark it out of bounds,” said Omally.
    Pooley shook his head and handed him the book. “You’re good with your hands, John,” he said, “make a sketch of it on the back. If such a symbol has ever existed, or even does so now, there is one man in Brentford who is bound to know what it is.”
    “Ah yes.” Omally smiled broadly and took both book and Biro. “And that good man is, if I recall, never to be found without a decanter of five-year-old scotch very far from his elbow.”
    “Quite so,” said Jim Pooley. “And as we walk we will speak of many things, of sporting debts and broken spades.”
    “And cabbages and camels,” said John Omally.

8
    Professor Slocombe sat at his study desk, surrounded by the ever-present clutter of dusty tomes. Behind him twin shafts of sunlight entered the tall French windows and glittered upon his mane of pure white hair, casting a gaunt shadow across the mountain of books on to the exquisite Persian carpet which pelted the floor with clusters of golden roses.
    The Professor peered through his ivory-rimmed pince-nez and painstakingly annotated the crackling yellow pages of an ancient book, the Count of St Germaine’s treatise upon the transmutation of base metals and the improvement of diamonds. The similarities between his marginal jottings and the hand-inscribed text of the now legendary Count were such as would raise the eyebrows of many a seasoned graphologist.
    Had it not been for the fact that the Count of St Germaine had cast his exaggerated shadow in the fashionable places of some three hundred years past, one would have been tempted to assume that both inscriptions were the product of a single hand, the Count’s text appearing only the work of a younger and more sprightly individual. But even to suggest such a thing would be to trespass dangerously upon the shores of unreason, although it must be said that Old Pete, one of the Borough’s most notable octogenarians, was wont to recall that when he was naught but a tousle-haired sprog, with ringworm and rickets, the Professor was already a gentleman of great age.
    Around and about the study, the musty showcases were crowded with a profusion of extraordinary objects, the tall bookshelves bulged with rare volumes and the carved tables stood heavily burdened with brass oraries and silver astrolabes. All these wonders hovered in the half-light, exhibits of a private museum born to the Professor’s esoteric taste. Golden, dusty motes hung in the sunlight shafts, and the room held a silence which was all its own. Beyond the French windows, the wonderful garden bloomed throughout every season with a luxuriant display of exotic