A Pretty Mouth Read Online Free PDF

species, one not yet named by the Academy.”
    “I should be even keener to see it then, Miss Prideaux.”
    “Would you? Would you also swear to secrecy regarding its existence?”
    “Of course, Miss Prideaux.”
    “Come, then, Mr. Jeeves.”
    In silence, Miss Prideaux took me through the hotel, down through the kitchens, into one of the root cellars, and then, just as described by the Lord Calipash, kicked open a drainage grate and descended into an abyssal pit. I followed with not a little trepidation, but, perhaps sensing this, she called up to me that it was quite all right.
    “Are you a nervous man, Mr. Jeeves?” she asked, as we walked down the stone-walled tunnel. “I know the Lady Alethea said she was; I believe she found the remedy produced by my little friend … helpful.”
    “She reported the experience was most beneficial to her spirits,” said I. “But I confess I am not nervous by nature; merely curious about the natural world.”
    “A pity. Many of our wealthier clientele have come to treat this hotel as a … sanatorium, perhaps, and stay here for extended periods of time when they feel stressed or anxious. My pet helps them forget their cares, drift for a time in pleasantness.”
    “An admirable service. Are all of your guests aware of this available remedy?”
    “Surely not, only the wealthier ones. The ones who can afford the fee.”
    “ Fee , Miss Prideaux?”
    “I look upon this hotel as something more than just an establishment where holidaying ladies and gentlemen may enjoy themselves in peace. I see it as a … zoological park, a valuable menagerie. A collection, for posterity. Did you know, Mr. Jeeves, that the recent advances in refrigeration have increased the demands on sea-fishermen to the point that they are allying themselves with one another and forming companies to supply inland diners? But often this leads to overfishing … in ten, twenty, seventy years, what will the oceans look like, Mr. Jeeves? Will they still be troves of nigh-unlimited species diversity? Or barren wastelands, wet deserts if you will?” She sighed, and as we walked, I began to perceive that faint glow I had been told of. “I hope to keep safe the fishes of the world, and if I take in extra funds by providing a unique service to the very wealthy, why should I not?”
    “I cannot see a reason, except, I wonder …”
    “What?”
    “Have you had any men or women with medical training look at whatever it is that is produced by your octopus? Are you aware of what exactly it does to the human body? For example, is it … addictive?”
    “If it is, then so much the better, Mr. Jeeves. If they keep coming back for more, well, more money in the till.”
    We had come at last to the octopus—or at least, what the Lord Calipash and Lady Alethea thought was an octopus. Looking at the tentacled creature, I myself was not so sure it was a member of the family octopoda, though I am not, as I presented myself to Miss Prideaux, actually a scholar of malacology.
    The animal had only six sucker-covered arms, and was covered in bright blue spots. Its eyes—all three of them—looked distinctly human, with blue irises much like Miss Prideaux’s. It—I hesitate to write this, though if you, my fellow valets, have believed me thus far, I suppose you will continue to do so—was playing at something like marbles, using the small stones at the bottom of its open-sea cage at the bars that comprised the open-sea grate at the rear of its cage. I say something like, as it had, perhaps owing to the wave action’s effect on sand, created a circle of larger stones and was tossing smaller stones at the circle, trying to get them inside the ring. I have heard, of course, that octopuses are quite intelligent, but it was playing this game not with its more tentacle-like arms, but with two nauseatingly human hands that emanated from where, in a usual specimen, the creature’s ‘beak’ should be. The appendages had four fingers