Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Read Online Free PDF Page B

her.
    She looked at him as if he were mad.
    ‘Well, here it is,’ said her father, plonking the thing down on the table.  ‘Just a pot, as you see.  She’s only six,’ he added with a grim smile, ‘aren’t you, dear?’
    ‘Seven,’ said Sarah.
    The pot was quite small, about five inches high and four inches across at its widest point.  The body was almost spherical, with a very narrow neck extending about an inch above the body.  The neck and about half of the surface area were encrusted with hard-caked earth, but the parts of the pot that could be seen were of a rough, ruddy texture.
    Sarah took it and thrust it into the hands of the don sitting on her right.
    ‘You look clever,’ she said.  ‘Tell me what you think.’
    The don took it, and turned it over with a slightly supercilious air.  ‘I’m sure if you scraped away the mud from the bottom,’ he remarked wittily, ‘it would probably say “Made in Birmingham”.’
    ‘That old, eh?’ said Sarah’s father with a forced laugh.  ‘Long time since anything was made there.’
    ‘Anyway,’ said the don, ‘not my field, I’m a molecular biologist.  Anyone else want to have a look?’
    This question was not greeted with wild yelps of enthusiasm, but nevertheless the pot was passed from hand to hand around the far end of the table in a desultory fashion.  It was goggled at through pebble glasses, peered at through horn-rims, gazed at over half-moons, and squinted at by someone who had left his glasses in his other suit, which he very much feared had now gone to the cleaner’s.  No one seemed to know how old it was, or to care very much.  The young girl’s face began to grow downhearted again.
    ‘Sour lot,’ said Reg to Richard.  He picked up a silver salt cellar again and held it up.
    ‘Young lady,’ he said, leaning forward to address her.
    ‘Oh, not again, you old fool,’ muttered the aged archaeologist Cawley, sitting back and putting his hands over his ears.
    ‘Young lady,’ repeated Reg, ‘regard this simple silver salt cellar.  Regard this simple hat.’
    ‘You haven’t got a hat,’ said the girl sulkily.
    ‘Oh,’ said Reg, ‘a moment please,’ and he went and fetched his woolly red one.
    ‘Regard,’ he said again, ‘this simple silver salt cellar.  Regard this simple woolly hat.  I put the salt cellar in the hat, thus, and I pass the hat to you.  The next part of the trick, dear lady... is up to you.’
    He handed the hat to her, past their two intervening neighbours, Cawley and Watkin.  She took the hat and looked inside it.
    ‘Where’s it gone?’ she asked, staring into the hat.
    ‘It’s wherever you put it,’ said Reg.
    ‘Oh,’ said Sarah, ‘I see.  Well... that wasn’t very good.’
    Reg shrugged.  ‘A humble trick, but it gives me pleasure,’ he said, and turned back to Richard.  ‘Now, what were we talking about?’
    Richard looked at him with a slight sense of shock.  He knew that the Professor had always been prone to sudden and erratic mood swings, but it was as if all the warmth had drained out of him in an instant.  He now wore the same distracted expression Richard had seen on his face when first he had arrived at his door that evening, apparently completely unexpected.  Reg seemed then to sense that Richard was taken aback and quickly reassembled a smile.
    ‘My dear chap!’ he said.  ‘My dear chap!  My dear, dear chap!  What was I saying?’
    ‘Er, you were saying “My dear chap”.’
    ‘Yes, but I feel sure it was a prelude to something.  A sort of short toccata on the theme of what a splendid fellow you are prior to introducing the main subject of my discourse, the nature of which I currently forget.  You have no idea what I was about to say?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Oh.  Well, I suppose I should be pleased.  If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?  Now, how’s our young guest’s pot doing?’
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