“Well, as much as it pains me to accuse somebody not present to defend himself,” said the Colonel, “my money’s on this C’thulu chap.”
III.
A slight rustling could be heard immediately to their left. Was it that foul deity which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Nether-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable sign? No, it was only Archie Boggleton, the Lord’s spendthrift youngest son, down from Cambridge and irritating everyone with a power beyond his years.
He bounded into the group, apparently insensible to the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind time and space.
“Ripping day, what?” The activity at the lake then caught his attention. “Pardon me, but who the deuce are all those chaps? Is that the cook?” Archie tried to cast himself as a paragon of decorum. “That’s not very proper, is it? Dancing naked and bloody and what?” Lord Boggleton, unconvinced by the performance, fixed Archie with a gimlet eye. Something was fishy, but whether it was another of Archie’s money-making schemes, or horrifying blasphemies from an elder star, he couldn’t say.
Suddenly, from the middle of the cursed, non-Euclidean city, an immense rune-covered door of carved rock split open. The blackness that oozed forth dissipated slowly into a gibbous sky. Then, amid wild applause from Peeves and his cronies, something horrible emerged. A pulpy, octopus-like head, its face a mass of feelers, squeezed through the portal, followed by a scaly, rubbery-looking, winged body. Soon three hundred feet of elder demon stood revealed in the unblinking sun.
“It’s those blasted RSPCA!†Lord Boggleton immediately went mad, which, after all, wasn’t that far a distance to go. The foul creature scooped him up and consumed him. A cheer issued from his ex-employees.
Summoning up the courage shown by his forebears at Crecy and Agincourt, Bill, the newly-minted Lord Boggleton, ran like hell. He was swept up by a massive scaly hand and disappeared into that tentacle-fringed mouth. Monica, catatonic with fright, followed.
Colonel Brabazon pulled out a small revolver, a momento of the Sudan, and began to fire. It was completely ineffectual.
As Archie was being hoisted up to the unholy god’s all-consuming maw, a diamond necklace slipped from his pocket and fell to the ground. Mrs. Tramway made no response; her gaze was fixed on the great beast, a look of benign puzzlement on her face.
The claw swept down. “Wait, let me ask you,” she said calmly. “You’re not one of the Pittsburgh C’thulus, are you?”
(Mr. Wodehouse, Meet Mr. Lovecraft continues…)
