Greenbeard (9781935259220) by Richard James Bentley Page A

or to tell me things over a distance.”
    â€œI find that very disturbing. Does it hurt?”
    â€œNo. It was agony when they were growing into my face, replacing the hairs at their roots, but they don’t hurt now. In fact, I am rather fond of them ... or It. I could not have escaped without the Beard. It talked to the library of the Glaroon’s mansion on Mars, so to speak, and I was able to learn enough about saucers to navigate my way back through space and time to Nombre Dios Bay. The sun is setting. We must go back to the barky soon enough. Ask the question which is on your lips.”
    â€œThe question on the lips of every crewman aboard the Ark de Triomphe ,” said Blue Peter, “and the one asked in the awful poem; ‘whether anybody knew where he had buried his pelf ’.”
    â€œNowhere,” said the Captain, “and yet everywhere. As the treasure came in I converted it to financial instruments - banker’s draughts, letters of credit, stocks and shares - as fast as I ever could. You may remember that many of the prize cargoes were goods anyway - flour, wine, whale oil, saltpetre, mercury in greased goatskin bags, even a cargo of porcelain plates! - Eddie Teach would have insisted on payment in gold, if he could even be bothered to take and sell such merchandise, and would have taken a discount for so doing. I traded them instead for shares in cargoes-in-transit and the like until I could get the money safely berthed in a bank, or rather in several banks in several countries. I don’t like the idea of burying a chest of gold on an island. It seems a little foolish, especially when one can get two-and-a-half percent at Coutts and the stock-market is booming. Don’t tell the Free Brotherhood of the Coasts that I said that, mind you!”
    â€œWhat are you going to do with the money?” Blue Peter said, pouring the last
of the rum into his glass.
    â€œThe influential extramundanes are a mixed bunch, much like your Colonials, I suppose, Peter. There was one, Great Cthulhu, who is the ugliest bugger I ever did see. Alike to a big scaly daemon with the head of a squid, he is. Tentacles waving about like the Medusa’s snakey hair. He was a half-decent old cove in some ways, though. Lent me a book by some mad old Arab, Abdul al something-or-other. I have a great dislike of the Glaroon, though, and a grudge, too. I was the Glaroon’s butler, which was bearable for the most part, but slave-owners are all alike, d’you see? whether they be Colonials or extramundanes. When the Glaroon had parties, he’d put me out the front to greet the guests - ‘Hello, sir! and welcome to the mansion of the Glaroon!’ - dressed in a little blue sailor suit , and I intend to have my revenge for upon him that!
    â€œI have spent much of the treasure on my plan to avenge myself, but there is plenty left. I have set up a pension fund for the crew, but don’t tell anybody yet.”
    Captain Greybagges stood up, stretched, and started packing the picnic things.
    â€œIt is in my mind to tell the crew about the money soon, at a share-out meeting. I think they will be pleased with the arrangements that I have made - if I can get the wooden-headed sods to understand what I have done for them - and will consequently be easily enthused by my plan to punish the Glaroon, about which they need to know nothing just yet, not even that there is a plan. If my plan succeeds there will be more loot, more pelf, more boodle, more treasure than even Croesus himself ever dreamed of. Enough to make Morgan’s raid on Panama seem mere apple-scrumping. I’ll have to tell Izzie and Bill something of this business, too, but I think that must be slowly, as we go, lest they become ... unsettled. I welcome your advice on that; on what, how and how much to tell them and when, but sleep on it first, it’s a lot for you to comprehend. Come on, let’s go!”
    Blue Peter was