Sitting behind the moneymaking table on the door once more, Old Pete stuck his wrinkled mitt out for money. “It’s a fiver,” he said, “for the boys of Brentford.” And then he looked up at the latest arrival.

The latest arrival looked down upon Old Pete. Not that the ancient moneytaker could see the new arrival’s eyes. These were hidden, along with his face, in the shadow of the new arrival’s broad-brimmed black hat.

It was a very black hat.

It matched in blackness the blackness of the new arrival’s long black coat, which swept the ground, showing only the toes of his very black boots.

Old Pete shuddered, as one does when someone “walks over your grave”.

The figure of darkness dipped into an atramentous pocket with a nigrescently gloved hand and drew out a five-pound note. He held this towards Old Pete who viewed it with a rheumy eye. The figure made curious gurgling sounds, which might have passed for speech. Old Pete took the fiver.

It was cold and damp.

But a fiver was a fiver and Old Pete pocketed same.

“Go through, please,” he said in a tremulous, whispery tone.

“Help!” The voice of the incapacitated Pooley had a tremulous tone to it, too, but there was nothing whispery about it.

“Help!” Jim cried. “Man in trouble here. Not waving, but drowning – well, not drowning as such, but HELP!”

But his voice echoed emptily; Jim’s landlady was no longer in the house. She had dolled up and offed herself to the big event at the football ground.

“Help!” wailed Jim. “Somebody help. Something very odd and scary has happened to me.”

“There was something very odd and scary about that fellow,” said Old Pete, shuddering once more. “Oh hello, who’s this? Watchamate, Norman.”

“Watchamate, Old Pete,” said Norman.

“And who is this you have with you? Mae West, as I live and wheeze.”

“Shut your trap, you superannuated turd,” said Peg.

“I love it when you talk dirty.” Old Pete sniggered.

“Two,” said Norman, digging in his pockets for change and then recalling that he’d left his wallet behind in the bedroom. “Oh dear.”

“Oh dear?” asked Old Pete.

“I seem to have left my wallet behind.”

“You can owe me,” said Old Pete. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget. And Norman …”

“Yes?” said the suave-looking shopkeeper.

“Did you destroy all that stuff in your lock-up, like I asked you to?”

“Well,” said Norman, “now that you ask …”

Old Pete smiled upon Norman. The smile quite put the wind up the shopkeeper. “Never mind,” said Old Pete. “Did you come here in your van, by the way?”

“Actually, we did,” said Norman. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Go on through, have a good time, stay late.”

“Thank you, Old Pete,” said Norman.

“Get a move on, you,” said Peg.

“Move,” shouted John. “Move back so I can get out of the door.”

“We’re all a bit jammed,” said Tim. “Careful now, you almost spilled my pint.”

“I have to get out of here.” John pushed and shoved.

“Careful where you’re pushing, mate,” said the surprisingly tall Stevie Wonderbra. “You nearly elbowed me in the nuts.”

“We could pass you over our heads,” said Tim, “to the window and you could climb out. There’s a fire escape – I was sick on it earlier.”

“By Crom,” said John Omally.

The Count Basie Orchestra launched into a Robert E. Howard swing number. Not a lot of people are aware that as well as penning the now legendary Conan the Barbarian series, Robert E. Howard also played tenor sax with John Steinbeck’s Jumping Jazz Cats in the nineteen thirties. Something to do with authors not pulling as many women as jazz musicians in the nineteen thirties. Probably.

“I know this one,” said Councillor Doveston to Mr Rumpelstiltskin the barman. “It’s about bees.”

“It never is,” said the barman. “It’s about the silent-screen actress Theda Bara. Howard was in love with her. Her name is an anagram of Arab Death, you know.”

“The production department at Fox thought that up,” said Councillor Doveston. “And I should know, I was one of them. A Thedaoptrus barata is a kind of bee, a bit like a Klaatu Baradu Nikto, but with more stripes.”

“You live and learn,” said the barman, ignoring the many pleas that were coming at him for some service at the bar. “Which is to say that some folk live and learn. Me, I know nothing.”

“He looks to me like a man who knows nothing,” said a casual observer who had recently escaped from the “special” ward at the Brentford Cottage Hospital. “But then, what would I know? I’m psychotic, me. Anyone got a handbag I could have a poo in?”

“I’m in the poo here,” called Jim Pooley, “and growing very frightened, won’t someone help me, please?”

“Is Jim Pooley here?” Professor Slocombe asked Old Pete.

“Haven’t seen him, Professor,” replied Old Pete, “but I expect he’s inside, putting his weight to the bar counter lest it collapse unexpectedly.”

“I’ll just have a word with him, then.”

“Fiver admission,” said Old Pete. “Please, sir, if you will. Good cause and all that.”

“Good cause indeed.” Professor Slocombe drew out a medieval chain-mail purse and counted coins from it.

“I’ve no change for golden guineas,” said Old Pete.

“Then keep the change – and, Peter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Best put back the thirty-five pounds that have accidentally fallen into your waistcoat pocket.”

“Yes, sir, I will indeed.”

“And, Peter, it might prove necessary that I visit you in the near future with regards to certain herbs that you grow upon your allotment patch.”

“Ah,” said Old Pete, and a certain significant look was exchanged between the two ancients. “I am always at your service, sir.”

“That is good to know.” Professor Slocombe smiled, extended his hand and had it shaken in a significant fashion.

Professor Slocombe entered The Stripes Bar. It was very, very, very, very crowded now, but a path cleared before him.

“Has anybody seen Jim Pooley?” asked the professor.

Jim Pooley hollered some more and then took to listening. Surely that creaking sound was the hinges on the front door. And a slam. And yes, footfalls in the hall.

“Help!” Jim resumed his hollerings. “Upstairs here, me, Jim Pooley. Down but not out. But trapped in my bath. Please help me.”

“Thanks for your help,” called John Omally, gaining the fire escape and all but slipping to his death upon vomit. “Jugglers next, then Stevie Wonderbra, then the Beverleys, then The Rock Gods. Then, er, well, Tom Jones for the finale, I suppose.”

“We’re bigger than Tom Jones,” squeaked P.P. Penrose, whose face was pressed against the upper windowpane of the raised-at-the-bottom-bit window. So to speak. And very badly, too.

“Taller, maybe,” called the voice of Tim McGregor. “And less dead, perhaps.”

“And where is my opossum?” demanded P.P. Penrose.

“See you later.” John made his slippery way down the fire escape.

“Escape,” whispered Jim, as footfalls fell footsteplike upon the stairs. “In here,” he shouted. “Help me, please.”

The Count Basie Orchestra played a jazz classic about fire escapes, bath tubs and …

“Bees,” said Councillor Doveston.

“Ernest Hemingway wrote that song,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “He used to play sax with Evelyn Waugh.”

“Waugh?” said Councillor Doveston. “What was he good for? Absolutely nothing. In my opinion.”

“If I had an opinion,” said the casual observer, “it would be that the barmaid over there looks as if she’d know her way around the inside of a string vest.”