Chapter
2 Dash and Tube at 45 Megilp Square
“No more grapefruits for him.” Tube covered the headless
corpse with a dust sheet from the billiard room. The blood from the
naked neck edges and central spine seeped through the shabby baize
in concentric circles, and another cloth from the Billiard Saloon
was summoned. Tube surveyed his handiwork with a characteristic sang
froid.
Jerome
Tube, the Dark Star of the Surete, on brief secondment to the Yard,
stroked his reveres with Gallic finesse. He gazed philosophically
out of the grimy casement. The artful play of globes struck his poetic
nature, in grapefruit and Moon.
The
carillon on Saint Megilp’s struck the hour.
His silent companion, Tom Dash of the Yard, pondered the enormity
of the scene through his steely pince nez. Each cascade of
small change in his tweeds signified a fresh avenue of thought.
Yes, dear reader, your suspicions are confirmed.
It is Dash of the Pimp’s Knuckle Scandal which rocked the last
Conservative Government in ‘96 - Dash of the Missing Moose of
Rickmansworth – Dash who saw what lay behind the Scarlet Curtain
of Kentish Town .
Yes
it was Dash here, and Dash there, his feats were legendary and known
even on the Continent of Europe. Tube broke open his encrusted nickel
cigarette case and offered Dash a slim slightly scented panatella
with a dark tip. “Mmmm, Jerome” Dash shared the glowing
mantle and , as their eyes met, they substantiated each others’
gravest fears. Unspoken was the dread.
How
alike these two, yet how dissimilar.
At once demonstrating lassitude, both could be fevered into action.
Wholly masculine the pair, yet with a feline grace when called upon.
Both were feared and loathed by the Criminal Tundra and also by those
in power seeking to entrench the old and sclerotic means of scientific
investigation.
By what strange chance had their trajectories crossed?
Tube
and Dash.
Dash
and Tube.
Was it by chance or design that they found themselves on two telephonic
receivers in the Executive Suite high over Scotland Yard, inscribing
details of the Murder, the geographical location, the litany of Clues
and False Clues that surely pointed to the one inescapable conclusion,
the conclusion so ominous and terrible that its essence was encoded
in two simple words (for their use only) and– the source of
this Cosmic Pollution (“Precipice”) , and its implications
(“Linctus”).
The one the epitome of Latin grace, the other Anglo Saxon dignity
taken to its natural conclusion. And yet, how well those similarities
veiled the complementary contrasts that made their collaboration so
deadly for Evil and its Multiferous Forces – both were hirsute
but ever in control, be it pomade or Brylcreem. Both were incisive
yet always ready for play. “Why,” said Sergeant Toby Oak,
ever at Dash’s elbow, “they were as alike as could be,
separated only by the Munch.”
