'Was there anybody there?' called Susan.
'No, no one,' said Richard.
'That's happened a couple of times,' said Susan. 'I think it's a sort of minimalist heavy breather.' She resumed playing.
Richard went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. He was less of a health-conscious eater than Susan and was therefore less than thrilled by what he found there, but he managed to put some roll-mop herrings, some yoghurt, some rice and some oranges on a tray without difficulty and tried not to think that a couple of fat hamburgers and fries would round it off nicely.
He found a bottle of white wine and carried it all through to the small dining table.
After a minute or two Susan joined him there. She was at her most calm and composed, and after a few mouthsful she asked him about the canal.
Richard shook his head in bemusement and tried to explain about it, and about Dirk.
'What did you say his name was?' said Susan with a frown when he had come, rather lamely, to a conclusion.
'It's, er, Dirk Gently,' said Richard, 'in a way.'
'In a way?'
'Er, yes,' said Richard with a difficult sigh. He reflected that just about anything you could say about Dirk was subject to these kind of vague and shifty qualifications. There was even, on his letter heading, a string of vague and shifty-looking qualifications after his name. He pulled out the piece of paper on which he had vainly been trying to organise his thoughts earlier in the day.
'I…' he started, but the doorbell rang. They looked at each other.
'If it's the police,' said Richard, 'I'd better see them. Let's get it over with.'
Susan pushed back her chair, went to the front door and picked up the Entryphone.
'Hello?' she said.
'Who?' she said after a moment. She frowned as she listened then swung round and frowned at Richard.
'You'd better come up,' she said in a less than friendly tone of voice and then pressed the button. She came back and sat down.
'Your friend,' she said evenly, 'Mr Gently.'
The Electric Monk's day was going tremendously well and he broke into an excited gallop. That is to say that, excitedly, he spurred his horse to a gallop and, unexcitedly, his horse broke into it.
This world, the Monk thought, was a good one. He loved it. He didn't know whose it was or where it had come from, but it was certainly a deeply fulfilling place for someone with his unique and extraordinary gifts.
He was appreciated. All day he had gone up to people, fallen into conversation with them, listened to their troubles, and then quietly uttered those three magic words, 'I believe you.'
The effect had invariably been electrifying. It wasn't that people on this world didn't occasionally say it to each other, but they rarely, it seemed, managed to achieve that deep timbre of sincerity which the Monk had been so superbly programmed to reproduce.
On his own world, after all, he was taken for granted. People would just expect him to get on and believe things for them without bothering them. Someone would come to the door with some great new idea or proposal or even a new religion, and the answer would be 'Oh, go and tell that to the Monk.' And the Monk would sit and listen and patiently believe it all, but no one would take any further interest.
Only one problem seemed to arise on this otherwise excellent world.
Often, after he had uttered the magic words, the subject would rapidly change to that of money, and the Monk of course didn't have any - a shortcoming that had quickly blighted a number of otherwise very promising encounters.
Perhaps he should acquire some - but where?
He reined his horse in for a moment, and the horse jerked gratefully to a halt and started in on the grass on the roadside verge. The horse had no idea what all this galloping up and down was in aid of, and didn't care. All it did care about was that it was being made to gallop up and down past a seemingly perpetual roadside buffet. It made the best of its moment while it had it.
The Monk peered keenly up and down the road. It seemed vaguely familiar. He trotted a little further up it for another look. The horse resumed its meal a few yards further along.
Yes. The Monk had been here last night.
He remembered it clearly, well, sort of clearly. He believed that he remembered it clearly, and that, after all, was the main thing. Here was where he had walked to in a more than usually confused state of mind, and just around the very next corner, if he was not very much mistaken, again, lay the small roadside establishment at which he had jumped into the back of that nice man's car - the nice man who had subsequently reacted so oddly to being shot at.
Perhaps they would have some money there and would let him have it.
He wondered. Well, he would find out. He yanked the horse from its feast once again and galloped towards it.
As he approached the petrol station he noticed a car parked there at an arrogant angle. The angle made it quite clear that the car was not there for anything so mundane as to have petrol put into it, and was much too important to park itself neatly out of the way. Any other car that arrived for petrol would just have to manoeuvre around it as best it could. The car was white with stripes and badges and important looking lights.
Arriving at the forecourt the Monk dismounted and tethered his horse to a pump. He walked towards the small shop building and saw that inside it there was a man with his back to him wearing a dark blue uniform and a peaked cap. The man was dancing up and down and twisting his fingers in his ears, and this was clearly making a deep impression on the man behind the till.
The Monk watched in transfixed awe. The man, he believed with an instant effortlessness which would have impressed even a Scientologist, must be a God of some kind to arouse such fervour. He waited with bated breath to worship him. In a moment the man turned around and walked out of the shop, saw the Monk and stopped dead.
The Monk realised that the God must be waiting for him to make an act of worship, so he reverently danced up and down twisting his fingers in his ears.
His God stared at him for a moment, caught hold of him, twisted him round, slammed him forward spreadeagled over the car and frisked him for weapons.
Dirk burst into the flat like a small podgy tornado.
'Miss Way,' he said, grasping her slightly unwilling hand and doffing his absurd hat, 'it is the most inexpressible pleasure to meet you, but also the matter of the deepest regret that the occasion of our meeting should be one of such great sorrow and one which bids me extend to you my most profound sympathy and commiseration. I ask you to believe me that I would not intrude upon your private grief for all the world if it were not on a matter of the gravest moment and magnitude.
Richard - I have solved the problem of the conjuring trick and it's extraordinary.'
He swept through the room and deposited himself on a spare chair at the small dining table, on which he put his hat.
'You will have to excuse us, Dirk -' said Richard, coldly.
'No, I am afraid you will have to excuse me,' returned Dirk. 'The puzzle is solved, and the solution is so astounding that it took a seven-year-old child on the street to give it to me. But it is undoubtedly the correct one, absolutely undoubtedly. 'What, then, is the solution?' you ask me, or rather would ask me if you could get a word in edgeways, which you can't, so I will save you the bother and ask the question for you, and answer it as well by saying that I will not tell you, because you won't believe me. I shall instead show you, this very afternoon.
'Rest assured, however, that it explains everything. It explains the trick. It explains the note you found - that should have made it perfectly clear to me but I was a fool. And it explains what the missing third question was, or rather - and this is the significant point - it explains what the missing first question was!'
'What missing question?' exclaimed Richard, confused by the sudden pause, and leaping in with the first phrase he could grab.
Dirk blinked as if at an idiot. 'The missing question that George III asked, of course,' he said.
