The Manticore

MYSELF: And what do I get out of that?

DR. VON HALLER: That depends on you. For one thing, you will probably learn to recognize a Spock when you see one, and keep trolls in good order. And you will recover all these projections which you have visited on other people like a magic lantern projecting a slide on a screen. When you stop doing that you are stronger, more independent. You have more mental energy. Think about it. And now go on about the genealogist

12

I didn't pay much attention to him, because as I told Dr. von Haller, I was greatly taken up with my final year of law studies. Pargetter expected me to get a First, and I wanted it even more than he. The notes kept arriving with reports of nothing achieved in spite of impressive activity. I had written to Father that I had a good man on the job, and had his permission to advance money as it was needed. Pledger-Brown's accounts were a source of great delight to me; I felt like Diogenes, humbled in the presence of an honest man. Sometimes in the vacations he went off hunting Stauntons and sent me bills detailing third-class tickets, sixpe

What finally bound us into the kind of friendship that does not fade was complicity in a secret.

Early in the spring term of my third year, when I was deep in work for my Final Schools, a message arrived: "I have found Henry Staunton. A.P-B." I had a mountain of reading to do and had pla

"I was just about to offer you a non-grandfather," said he; "there was a co

"What kind of Staunton is he?" I asked.

"He's an extraordinarily rum Staunton," said PledgerBrown, "but that's the best of it. You get not only a grandfather but a good story as well. You know, so many of these forbears that people ferret out are nothing at all; I mean, perfectly good and reputable, but no personal history of any interest. But Albert Henry is a conversation-piece. Now listen.

"Staunton is a hamlet about ten miles north-west of Gloucester, bearing over toward Herefordshire. In the middle of the last century it had only one public house, called the Angel, and by rights it ought to have been near a church named for the A

"A barmaid?" I asked, wondering how Father was going to take to the idea of a barmaid.

"No, no," said Adrian; "barmaids are a bee in the American bo

"Now, the cream of the story is this. Maria A

"It caused a scandal, of course. But Maria A

We were eating in one of those Oxford restaurants that spring up and sink down again because they are run by amateurs, and we had arrived at the stage of eating a charlotte russe made of stale cake, tired jelly, and chemicals; I can still remember its taste because it is associated with my bleak wonder as to what I was going to report to Father. I explained to Pledger-Brown.

"But my dear Davey, you're missing the marvel of it," he said; "what a story! Think of Maria A