The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) Read Free Page A

Rune, returning to his chair and waving me away. ‘Put a card up on their help-wanted board:
“Required, brave youth, to earn glory and wealth”,
or something similar.’
    ‘I
am
brave,’ I protested. ‘I know that I am brave.’
    ‘Not brave enough to be my assistant, I’m thinking. Not brave enough to be my
partner
in the fight against crime.’
    ‘Crime?’ I said. ‘What do you mean by this?’
    ‘Oh, didn’t I mention it?’ Mr Rune made a breezy gesture, the breeze of which wafted across the room towards me and right up my bed sheet, too. ‘I am a detective,’ said he, drawing himself to hisfeet. ‘In fact, I am
the
detective. I solve the inexplicable conundrums that baffle the so-called experts at Scotland Yard.’
    ‘You are a policeman?’
    ‘Heavens, no. I am a private individual. I am the world’s foremost metaphysical detective.’
    ‘Like Sherlock Holmes?’
    ‘On the contrary. He was a mere
consulting
detective and he would have been nothing without me.’
    I raised an eyebrow of my own. A hairy one.
    ‘Go,’ said Mr Rune. ‘I tire of your conversation.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I am
not
timid. I
am
brave. And I am
not
going.’
    ‘You wish then that I should employ you?’
    I chewed upon my bottom lip. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
    ‘Timid
and
indecisive,’ said Mr Rune.
    ‘Count me in,’ I said.
    ‘You will be required to sign a contract.’
    ‘Count me in.’
    ‘In
blood.’
    ‘Count me
out.’

The Hound of the Hangletons
     

     
    The Hangleton Hound
     
    PART I
     
    I did sign Mr Rune’s contract,
and
I signed it in blood.
    I don’t know exactly why I did it; somehow it just seemed to be the right thing to do at the time. Ludicrous, I agree; absurd, I also agree; and dangerous, too, I agree once again. And perhaps that was it – the danger.
    I did not know who I was.
    I did not know who Mr Rune was.
    And even now, some one hundred years later as I set pen to paper and relate the experiences and adventures that I had with Hugo Rune, I cannot truly say that I ever actually knew
whom
or, indeed,
what
he
really
was.
    Although—
    But that
although
is for later.
    For the now, from that day before yesterday to which I had been returned from the dead, I inhabited rooms at forty-nine Grand Parade, Brighton, in the employ of Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune, Mumbo Gumshoe, Hokus Bloke, Cosmic Dick, Lad Himself and the Reinventor of the Ocarina.
    And he and I were bored.
    Perhaps the life of ease and idleness had never appealed to me. Perhaps I had never experienced it before and therefore did not know how to appreciate it properly.
    Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
    On the day that I had signed Mr Rune’s contract, with blood drawn from my left thumb, he had taken me off to the tailoring outlets of Brighton and had me fitted with several suits of clothes. I recall that no money exchanged hands during these transactions and that there was much talk from Mr Rune about ‘putting things on his account’. And much protestation from the managers of the tailoring outlets. But somehow we gained possession of said suits of clothes and I became decently clad and most stylishly clad, also. Which Mr Rune explained was just as one should look when one engaged in regular dining out.
    Dining out was evidently one of Mr Rune’s favourite occupations. The man consumed food with the kind of gusto with which a
Blue Peter
presenter might consume cocaine. * Mr Rune really knew how to put the tucker away. And he did it, as he did everything else, with considerable style. Although, sadly, he enjoyed the most rotten luck when it came to restaurants. No matter where we dined, and I recall that we never dined in the same restaurant twice for reasons that I will now explain, the outcome of each meal was inevitably the same.Mr Rune would fill himself to veritable excess, consuming the costliest viands upon the menu, along with the most expensive wines on offer, and would sing the praises of