Sentence The Threehundredandsixtyfirst 

 

And in his Chambers in Edinburgh, hard by the Court of Session and St Giles, with their black-robed officiates, the first, no less than the banksters, serving Mammon in the name of The Law, and the second, God; Martin Elginbrod was becoming drunk and depressed – he still hadn't traced Doubleday, his Police Scotland informants were unable to earn their money on that; George Gill had also vanished from the face of the Earth, and so had Pherson Dalwhinnie, after speaking with the celebrated auteur, Allan Massie, in Melrose – gone into thin air, the only trace of him being an inexplicable shadow on the step of a shop; “who's next?” Elginbrod muttered to himself and slurping some of his 25-year-old malt down the front of his cravat and waistcoat, “what the fuck's going on?” and he felt a chill beginning at his toes and slowly spreading up his legs: this wasn't really a misper, he knew that! this was something sinister, which had begun with the disappearance of his two pets from their pads, that had been the start of it, and something in his brain made a connection: “the O'Hooligan Twins are involved all right,” the one who'd left Town in a dudgeon a few years ago had returned and she and her sister had been seen in a pub, looking very cosy and chatty and re-united; Elginbrod didn't know what had caused the rift between them, a rift which had fractured that damned Dumbiedykes/Lyttleton Clan with all it's tentacles spreading throughout the City into every branch of the Capital's life and society – Thank God we've none of their blood, that was the only thing that had cheered him recently, having his office to a thorough investigation into his Family Tree, one of those 'Who Do You Think You Are?' jobs at which he was so efficiently effective; he'd had them do another for all the descendants of Griselda of Longformacus and the other Edinburgh Wives impregnated by his illustrious ancestor, Sir Parlane MacFarlane and was satisfied having checked and cross-checked, that there had been no mingling of the genes, producing like cabbeling, a kind of ersatz race that would sink to the bottom – oh no, the line of descent was pure and true, pursued by each successive generation of The Ring over something like 800 years, Hah! the stupid Nazis with their dream of a Thousand Year Reich; no way, Jose! This is the Real Deal, filtered drop by drop, distilled and guaranteed 100% Proof; he raised his glass again, yet again, just one more and it would be time to

sleep – No! not tonight, he had another little pet those fucking O'Hooligans didn't know about; he unzipped his trousers and took out his cock, held it in his hands, tried to estimate it's weight when fully aroused and inflamed, couldn't get his whisky-befuddled brain to deal with ounces and grams, started to rub it, imagining a young mouth open before him, then stopped; the clock had stopped ticking, it had

never stopped before, it was from the 15^th Century and he knew it was the oldest spring-driven clock in the world, wound every morning by his Chief Clerk, but today it stood silent at ten to three, and he wondered, is there honey still for tea?