Free The Liar by Stephen Fry Page B

to madness and pleasure, the other to sanity and success. Which way do I turn?’
    ‘You tell me, matey.’
    ‘Let me put it this way. Do you want to pay off all your debt in one, plus the five hundred for wooden panelling? I’ve got a job for you.’
    ‘Okay.’
    ‘That’s my boy.’
    *
    Trefusis approached the counter of the reading-room. The young librarian looked at him in surprise.
    ‘Professor Trefusis!’
    ‘Good morning! How wags the world with you today?’
    ‘I’m very fit thank you, sir.’
    ‘I wonder if you can help me?’
    ‘That’s what I’m here for, Professor.’
    Trefusis leant forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially, not an easy task for him. Among his many gifts he had never been able to count speaking in hushed tones.
    ‘Oblige the whim of a man old and mad before his time,’ he said, quietly enough for only the first twelve rows of desks behind him to catch every word, ‘and tell me if there is any reason why I shouldn’t have come in here an hour ago?’
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘Why should I not have come into this room an hour ago? Was something afoot?’
    The librarian stared. A man who services academics is used to all forms of mental derangement and behavioural aberration. Trefusis had always struck him as blithely and refreshingly free from nervous disorder. But, as the saying had it, old professors never die, they merely lose their faculties.
    ‘Well apart from the fact that an hour ago you couldn’t have been here …’ he said.
    ‘I couldn’t?’
    ‘Well not while you were at St Matthew’s talking to Mr Leyland on the telephone.’
    ‘I was talking to Mr Leyland on the telephone?’ said Trefusis. ‘Of course I was! Dear me, my memory … Leyland rang me up, didn’t he? On the telephone, as I recall. That’s right, it was the telephone, I remember distinctly, because I spoke to him through it. He rang me up, on the telephone, to talk to me about … about … what was it now?’
    ‘To check your authorisation for that undergraduate to read those … those Reserved Publications.’
    ‘Mr Healey that would have been?’
    ‘Yes. It was all right, wasn’t it? I mean, you did confirm …’
    ‘Oh yes. Quite all right, quite all right. I was merely … humour me once more and let me have a copy of the titles Mr Healey wanted to see, would you, dear boy?’
    VI
    ‘Bust me, Sir!’ said Mr Polterneck. ‘Bust me if I haven’t just the little warmint for your most partic’lar requirements just now a-curling up in innocent slumber in the back room. You can bounce me from here to Cheapside if that ain’t the truest truth that ever a man gave utterance of. Mrs Polterneck knows it to be so, my Uncle Polterneck knows it to be so and any man as is acquainted with me could never be conwinced to the contrary of it, not if you boiled him and baked him and twisted him on the rack for another opinion.’
    ‘I am assured of your good faith in this matter?’ asked Peter.
    ‘Lord, Mr Flowerbuck. I’m in the way of weeping that you might have doubt of it! My good faith in this matter is the one sure fact you may most particular be assured of! My good faith is a flag, Mr Flowerbuck. It is a tower, Sir, a Monument. My good faith is not made of air, Mr Flowerbuck, it is an object such as you might touch and look upwards on with wonder and may you whip me until I bleed if that ain’t so.’
    ‘Then I suppose we might do business?’
    ‘Now then, Sir,’ said Mr Polterneck, producing a most preposterous handkerchief of bright vermilion silk with which he mopped his brow. ‘He’s a most especial warmint, is Joe Cotton. Most particular especial. To a gentleman like yourself as I can tell is most discerning in the nature of young warmints, he is a nonparelly. I could sonnet you sonnets, Mr Flowerbuck, about the gold of his tresses and the fair smoothness of his young skin. I could ballad you ballads, Sir, on the theme of the fair round softness of his rump and the garden of