Rankin, Robert - Brentford 05 - The Brentford Chainstore Mas

VIP免费
2024-12-22 0 0 889.22KB 158 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Brentford Chainstore Massacre
Book 5 of the now legendary Brentford Trilogy
Robert Rankin
SHAGGY DOG STORY
What a wonderful lurcher you have there, Mrs Bryant, I haven't seen as fine a one since long before the war. Can
you make it roll about, play dead, or beg a biscuit? Nod its head or shake your hand by sticking out its paw?
'Actually,' said the lovely Mrs Bryant, whose dresses tended to terminate a mere six inches below her
waist, 'it's a Dane, not a lurcher.'
'Come off it,' I said. 'That's a lurcher. My dad used to keep them back in the nineteen fifties.'
'It's a Dane,' said Mrs Bryant. 'A Dane, that's what it is.'
I shook my head and hailed a passer-by. 'Is this dog a lurcher or a Dane?' I asked him.
The passer-by stroked his bearded chin. 'Looks more like an Irish wolfhound to me,' he said. 'This
woman is wearing a very short dress,' he continued.
I dismissed the hirsute passer-by and addressed the dog directly. 'Are you Dane or lurcher?' I asked it.
'Dane,' said one of the dog's heads.
'Lurcher,' said the other.
GHOST STORY
The gambler was old and frail. The shoulders of his tired tuxedo hung like wounded wings, the cuffs were
frayed and lacked their gilded buttons. Once he had worn a silk cravat, secured by a diamond pin, but now
about his neck hung an old school tie.
With a trembling hand he laid his final chip upon the gaming board. Twelve black,' he said. 'It's all or
nothing.'
The croupier called out something which sounded like 'Noo-rem-va-ma-ploo', and spun the roulette
wheel. The silver ball danced round and round and finally came to rest.
'Thirteen red,' said the croupier.
'Ruination,' said the gambler.
With dragging feet he left the casino, stepped onto the terrace, drew his ancient service revolver from his
pocket, put it to his temple and took 'the gentleman's way out'.
The casino too now lies in ruins. Fifty years have passed. But they do say that should you dare to visit here
upon this very night, upon the anniversary of
11
the tragedy, you can watch the whole sad scene re-enacted by its ghostly players.
The three ghost-hunters watched the needles on their sensitive equipment dip and flutter. Professor
Rawl made torch-lit notes on his clipboard, then studied the faces of his two companions, lit eerily by
the moonlight. 'Did anybody see anything?' he asked.
Indigo Tombs shook his head. 'Not a thing,' he
whispered. 'But I thought I heard-'
What did you hear?'
'A whirling sound.'
'A roulette wheel,' said Dr Norman. 'I heard it too.'
'And then-'
'A gunshot,' said Professor Rawl. We all heard that, I'm sure.'
We did,' the two agreed.
Professor Rawl tucked his pen into his pocket. 'The readings are inconclusive. We may have heard
something, or nothing. It can't be proved either way.'
The three ghost-hunters dismantled their equipment and carried it back to the Land Rover. Professor
Rawl keyed the ignition and they drove away into the night.
A tramp called Tony watched the tail-lights dim into the darkness. 'There you go, Tom,' he said to his
chum. 'I told you it was true, and now you've seen them for yourself. Three scientists they were, or so
12
the old story goes, died of fright or something, they did, many years ago.'
His chum Tom coughed and spat into the night. 'You're drunk,' said he. 'I never saw a thing. Now come
inside, it's turning cold.'
13
FAIRY STORY
Once upon a time there were two men. An Irishman called John Omally, who was young and tall and dark
and handsome, and an elder called Old Pete, who was none of these things.
And it being lunchtime, these two stood at the bar counter of an alehouse discussing the ways of the world.
The ways of the world have long been a subject for discussion. Ever since there have been any ways of the
world, in fact. And an alehouse has always been a good place to discuss them.
'The ways of the world leave me oft-times perplexed,' said Old Pete, sipping rum.
John Omally nodded. 'Which ones in particular?' he asked.
"Well, you know that Mrs Bryant, who lives next door to me?'
'The one with the two-headed dog?'
'That's her.'
'And the very short dresses?'
That's her as well.'
'I know of her,' said Omally.
Well, last night her husband came home early
15
from his shift at the windscreen wiper works to find an alien in bed with her.'
'An illegal alien?'
'No, a space alien, although I suppose they must be illegal also.'
'Sounds a bit of a tall one,' said Omally.
"Yes, he described him as tall, and young and dark and handsome.'
'Ahem,' said Omally. 'Doesn't sound that much like a space alien to me.'
'That's what I thought,' said Old Pete. 'Sounded more like an incubus in my opinion.'
'A what?
'An incubus. It's a sort of demon that takes on human form, creeps into the bedrooms of sleeping
women and does the old business.'
'The old business?'
'The old jigger-jig. My wife, God rest her soul, suffered from them something terrible while I was away
at the war. They used to appear in the shape of American servicemen back in those days.'
'Really?' said Omally. 'So you think Mrs Bryant was had by one of those?'
'I think it's more likely than a space alien. Don't you?'
Omally nodded. He could think of an even more likely explanation, one he could personally vouch for.
'So she told her husband that this bedroom intruder was a space alien, did she?'
'As soon as he regained consciousness. The bedroom intruder, as you put it, walloped him with a
bedpan, and then took flight.'
16
'In a spaceship?'
'According to Mrs Bryant, yes.'
'Makes you think,' said John Omally.
'Makes you think what?'
'No, just makes you think. It's a figure of speech.'
Well, I think there should be a law against it,' said Old Pete. 'If a woman can't lie safely in her bed without
some incubus claiming to be a space alien taking advantage of her. Where's it all going to end?'
'Search me,' said Omally.
Why?' asked Old Pete.
'No, it's another figure of speech.'
'But you do think there should be a law against it?'
'Absolutely,' said John Omally. 'There should be an Act of Parliament.'
'Then you actually believe all that old rubbish, do you, Omally?'
'Pardon me?'
'About space aliens and incubi. You actually believe all that's true and there should be an Act of
Parliament?'
'I do, as it happens, yes.'
'I see.' Old Pete finished his rum and placed the empty glass upon the bar counter. 'Then what if I were
to tell you that I personally witnessed the "incubus" making his getaway down the drainpipe? In fact I even
recognized him.'
Omally's self-composure was a marvel to behold. 'I wouldn't be at all surprised,' said he.
You wouldn't?'
'Not at all, and if you were to tell me that this shape-shifting incubus had taken on the appearance
17
of, well. . .' Omally glanced about the alehouse, as if in search of a suitable candidate. Well, let's say myself,
for example. It wouldn't surprise me one little bit.'
Old Pete ground his dentures. This was not the way he had planned things at all. The wind-up, followed
by the sting, was the way he'd planned things. Good for at least a bottle of rum.
Would you care for another drink?' asked Omally. 'Perhaps a double this time? You look a bit shaky.
Encounters with the supernatural can have that effect on people.'
Omally ordered the drinks.
Old Pete accepted his with a surly grunt. Omally pressed a five-pound note into his hand. Why not get
yourself a half-bottle for later on?' said he. 'For medicinal purposes.'
You're a gentleman,' said Old Pete.
'I'm a scoundrel,' said Omally, 'and so are you.'
The two men raised glasses and drank each other's health.
'But I'll tell you this,' said Omally. 'Back in the old country we don't make light of incubi and faerie folk
and things of that nature.'
'Don't you, though?' said Old Pete.
We do not. There's a strong belief in such things in Holy Ireland.'
'Is there?' said Old Pete.
'There is, and shall I tell you for why?'
'Please do,' said Old Pete.
'Souls,' said Omally. 'The souls of the dead.'
'Go on.'
18
'It is popularly believed', said Omally, 'that the faerie folk are the souls of the dead, the soul being an
exact facsimile of the human form, though far smaller and subject to an entirely different set of laws and
principles. Now, fairies are notoriously mischievous, are they not?'
'So I've heard it said.' Old Pete swallowed rum.
'And this is because they are the earthbound souls of folk who were neither good enough to go to heaven
nor bad enough to go to the other place.' Omally crossed himself. 'The mirthmakers, the folk who could
never take life seriously.'
'Folk such as yourself,' Old Pete suggested.
Omally ignored him. "Why do you think it is', he asked, 'that only certain folk are able to see the fairies?'
'Several answers spring immediately to mind,' said Old Pete. 'It might be that there aren't too many fairies
about. Or that they employ an advanced form of camouflage. Or that they are for the most part invisible. Or,
most likely, that those who claim to see them are in fact mentally disturbed.'
Omally shook his head. 'It's down to susceptibility,' he said. 'Psychically speaking, of course.'
'Oh, of course.' Old Pete rolled his eyes.
'To perceive the faerie folk requires a certain type of mentality.'
'I think I gave that as one of my answers.'
'Hence the Irish.'
'Hence the Irish what? Or was that another figure of speech?'
'The greatest proliferation of faerie lore and belief
19
in the entire world, Ireland. And you will admit that the Irish mentality differs somewhat from the
accepted norm.'
Willingly,' said Old Pete. 'Of course, your theory might gain greater credibility were you able to offer me
some convincing account of an encounter you yourself have personally had with the faerie folk.'
Omally grinned. Well, I couldn't do that now, could I?'
'Could you not? Well, that is a surprise.'
'Because', said John, 'the kind of mentality required to understand the whys and wherefores of the faerie
folk is not the kind suited to their actual observation. I am too sophisticated, more's the pity. A simple mind
is required. A child-like mind.'
'Hm,' said Old Pete, regarding his now empty glass.
'So tell me, Pete,' said Omally, 'have you ever seen a fairy?'
Old Pete peered over his glass at Omally's tweedy form. Throughout the conversation he had watched
the ring of hobgoblins that encircled the Irishman's head, the bogles and boggarts that skipped to and fro
around his feet singing songs about shoemending, the fat elf that sat upon his shoulder and the unruly
pixie that nestled in his turn-up.
'Leave it out,' said Old Pete. There ain't no such things as fairies.'
And they all lived happily ever after.
20
1
If you ever had to describe Dr Steven Malone to someone who'd never met him, all you'd have to say was,
'He's the bloke who looks like Sherlock Holmes in the Sidney Paget drawings.' Of course, there will
always be some people who will immediately say Sidney who? And there may even be a few who will say
Sherlock who? And you can bet your life that there's a whole lot of others who will say Doctor Who. But
to them you need only say Doctor Steven Malone. (Eh?)
It wasn't a curse to look like a Sidney Paget drawing of Sherlock Holmes, even if it did mean you were
only in black and white and spent most of your life in profile, pointing at something off the page. It had
never proved to be a big bird-puller, but it had served Dr Steven well at school for plays and suchlike, and
it did mean that he looked dignified. Which very few people ever do, when you come to think about it.
He looked dignified now, as he stood upon the rostrum in the lecture theatre of the Royal College of
Physicians at Henley-upon-Thames. And he was
21
dignified. He had carriage, he had deportment, and he had a really splendid grey with white check
Boleskine tweed three-piece suit. It had the double-breasted flat-bottomed waistcoat with the flap on the
watch pocket and everything. Tinker used to wear one in Lovejoy, but his had been in the traditional green
with the yellow check.
Dr Steven looked the business. And he was the business. Top of the tree in the field of biochemistry.
The icing on the cake of DNA transfer symbiotics. And the ivory mouthpiece on the chromium-plated
megaphone of destiny when it came to genetic engineering. He was also very good to his dear little white-
haired old mother, a 33° Grand Master in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Sprout and a piercing
enthusiast who boasted not only a Prince Albert but a double ampallang and apadravya.
Dr Steven sipped from a glass of liquid ether and gazed at the ranks of students with his cool grey eyes.
'And so,' he said. "What do we learn from these three short stories?'
The students gazed back at him, none, it seemed, inclined to offer comment.
'Come on, someone.' Dr Steven made an encouraging face in profile. By the law of averages, some of the
students must have been listening. Some might even have been interested. One might even have got the
point.
'Someone? Anyone?' Dr Steven eyed his audience once more. His gaze fell upon a young man with a
beard. His name was Paul Mason and he was a
22
first-year student of genetics. Dr Steven pointed. 'Mason, what of you?'
The lad's eyes focused upon his tutor. 'Me, sir? Pardon?'
"What do we learn from these three short stories?'
'Not to believe the evidence of our own eyes?'
Dr Steven raised his grey eyebrows and lowered his off-white ears (a trick he had learned in Tibet).
Mason's eyes went blink, blink, blink. Tm very impressed,' said the doctor. Would you care to enlarge?'
Mason shook his hirsute head. 'I think I'll get out when I'm winning. If you don't mind.'
'All right. But just before you do, tell me this: were they true stories?'
Well, certainly the first one. Because I was the bearded passer-by in that.'
'And the other two?'
'I really couldn't say.'
Dr Steven lowered his eyebrows and raised his ears once more. 'Anybody else? Pushkin, what of you?'
Larry Pushkin, back for yet another year at the taxpayer's expense and a chap who had as much chance
of becoming the next Doctor Who as he had of becoming a medical doctor, was rooting about in his left
nostril with a biro. 'I'd rather not comment at this time, sir,' he said, in a Dalekian tone. 'I think a cockroach
has laid its eggs in my nose.'
'Anybody? Anybody at all?'
Those who could be bothered shook their heads. Most just stared on blankly. But then, somewhere
23
near the back of the auditorium, a little hand went up.
'Who's that back there?' asked Dr Steven.
'It's me, sir. Molekemp, Harry Molekemp.'
'Why, Molekemp, this is an honour. You are out of your cosy bed somewhat early.'
Wednesday, sir. The landlady always vacuums my room on a Wednesday.'
'Rotten luck. And so, do you have some erudite comment to make?'
Yes I do, sir. I don't believe Mason. You told the shaggy dog story in the first person. If Mason had
been the bearded passer-by, you would have known.'
'Very good. Well, at least you were listening.'
Yeah, but I wasn't very interested.'
'But you were listening.'
'Oh yeah, I was listening. But only in the hope that there might be some mention of genetic engineering.
As that is what this course of lectures is supposed to be about.'
A rumble of mumbles signified that Molekemp was not all alone in this hope.
Touche,' said the monochrome doctor. 'But the stories did have a purpose. What do we really know about
our own genetic makeup?'
'We don't really know much at all, sir. We were hoping that you might enlighten us.'
'And that I was endeavouring to do. Let me briefly summarize. Firstly, the shaggy dog story. Here we
have a mythic archetype. Cerberus, several-headed canine guardian of the Underworld. Ancient belief,
24
brought fleetingly into a modern day setting. Of course, Mason was lying. The story was not true. It was a
shaggy dog story with a twist in its tail. But think archetype, if you will. Think of old gods and old belief
systems. Think of THE BIG IDEA, which existed in the beginning and from which all ideas come. I will return
to this.
'Secondly we have the ghost story. The present-day scientists are studying the ghosts of the past. They
can't actually see them, but they think perhaps they might be able to hear them, to sense them. But then
we discover that the scientists themselves are not of the present day. That they too are ghosts, mere
shades and shadows. And the story could continue endlessly. The tramps turn out to be ghosts, witnessed
by others who turn out to be ghosts and so on and so forth.
'So think here, the march of science, half-truth superseding half-truth superseding half-truth, on and on
and on, towards what? Ultimate discovery? Ultimate revelation? Are you following any of this,
Molekemp?'
'I suppose so, sir.'
'Jolly good. Third story. The fairy tale. The Old Pete character knows of the existence of fairies, he can
see them with his own two eyes. But he cannot admit this to his friend who has just told him that only
people with child-like minds can see fairies. Tricky dichotomy there, and one that cannot be resolved. The
Old Pete character's observation of the fairies is purely subjective. He may be a dullard, or he may be a
visionary. And we all know how the
25
scientific fraternity loves to mock the visionary. Science demands a provable hypothesis, repeatable
experiments, double-blind testing and the seal of approval by those in authority. How well would fairies
fare?'
Molekemp's hand was once more in the air. 'Surely this is all somewhat circuitous, sir,' he said.
'Fascinating though it is, or, as far as I'm concerned, is not.'
Dr Steven shook his head. 'I felt that the stories had a certain elegance,' he said, 'and this too I wished to
touch upon. Science holds elegance to be something worthy of veneration. The poetry of mathematics,
always in stanzas rather than blank verse. The beauty of the models science creates to convey what can
never truly be understood. The pigeon-holing of reason. The belief that one thing should actually balance
another.'
Tm lost again,' said Molekemp.
'Then you are a twat,' said Dr Steven, 'and I shall waste no more time upon philosophical concepts.' He
turned to the blackboard and chalked up the letters DNA. 'So,' said he, 'DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid, the
main constituent of the chromosomes from which we are composed. The DNA molecule consists of two
polynucleotide chains, in the form of a double helix, which contain-'
Somewhere in the distance a bell rang, and as if in silent tribute to Pavlov (whose lectures were
apparently a howl a minute) the students gathered together their belongings and left the auditorium.
Dr Steven Malone stood alone before his black-
26
board. Top of the tree, icing on the cake and ivory mouthpiece he might have been, but communicator of
wisdom to the young and impressionable he was not. He was a visionary and he had glimpsed THE BIG IDEA,
but getting this across to his students was proving tricky.
He had been leading up to his conviction that present-day scientists in the field of genetics (that field
with the big tree in the middle on which perched Dr Steven Malone) went about things in all the wrong
ways. They were obsessed with the study of present-day man's DNA, in order to discover its secrets.
But the secrets did not lie in the DNA of present-day man. Present-day man was a genetic mutation, an
evolutionary development. In order to learn the secrets of DNA you had to study it in its original form -
the form that had existed in the very beginning. You would have to study the DNA of Adam and Eve. Or
even go one better than that. God created man in his own image, so the DNA prototype was to be found in
God himself.
But how could anyone study the DNA of God?
And what might you find if you did?
These were the thoughts that obsessed Dr Steven Malone, that had driven him into the field of genetics
in the first place, and would drive him to his inevitable and devastating downfall.
But his downfall was still some months away.
Some years away, in fact, or even centuries, depending on just where you happened to be in time. So be
it only said that Dr Steven had a plan. It
27
was a brave plan and a bold one. It was daring; it was dire. And had it not already been given away on the
cover of this book, it would have come as one hell of a surprise to the reader.
But such is the way of it, and so we must leave Dr Steven Malone for the present. A noble figure, all in
black and white, still bearing an uncanny resemblance to Mr Sidney Paget's renderings of Sherlock
Holmes.
Dr Steven stands in profile and points to something off the page.
28
2
And a great wind came out of the East, as it were a burning cloud consuming all before it. And the sons
of Man did weep and wail and rend their garments, crying surely this is the breath of Pooley.
'Surely this is the breath of Pooley?' Jim Pooley reread the computer print-out. 'How can this be?'
The obese genealogist leaned back in his creaking leather chair and clasped his plump fingers over an
expanse of tweedy waistcoat. 'How it can, I do not know,' said he. 'But there you have it, for what it's
worth.'
Jim, now breathing into his cupped hands and sniffing mightily, said, 'I might well have the twang of
the brewer's craft about the gums myself. But as to a burning cloud consuming all before it, that's a little
strong.'
'Hence all the weeping and wailing, I suppose.' The genealogist grinned.
'Are you sure it isn't a misinterpretation or something? These ancient scribes were subject to the
29
occasional slip-up, you know. A transposed P here, a wayward ey round the corner.'
Mr Compton-Cummings shook his bulbous head. Tm sorry, Jim,' he said. 'But it looks as though your
forebears were notable only for their extreme halitosis. They put the poo in Pooley, as it were.'
Pooley groaned. 'And this vile smear upon my ancestors you propose to publish in your book, Brentford:
A Study of its People and History?'
'It would be folly to leave it out.'
Jim rose from his chair, leaned across the paper-crowded desk, knotted a fist and displayed it beneath the
snubby nose of Mr Compton-Cummings. 'It would be a far greater folly to leave it in,' he suggested.
Mr Compton-Cummings put a thin smile upon his fat face. He was a Kent Compton-Cummings and
could trace his own ancestry back to the Battle of Agincourt. 'I would strongly advise against a course of
violence, Mr Pooley,' he said softly. 'For it is my duty to warn you that I am an exponent of Dimac, the
deadliest form of martial art known to mankind. With a single finger I could disfigure and disable you.'
Jim's fist hovered in the air. A shaft of sunlight angling down through the Georgian casement of the
genealogist's elegant office made it momentarily a thing of fragile beauty. Almost porcelain, it seemed.
Hardly a weapon of terror.
Jim chewed upon his bottom lip. 'Sir, you wind me up,' said he.
'I never do,' the other replied. 'Schooled by no
30
less a man than the now legendary Count Dante himself, inventor of the Poison Hand technique. Perhaps
you know of it.'
Jim did. 'I don't,' he said.
'To maim and mutilate with little more than a fingertip's pressure. It is banned now under the Geneva
Convention, I believe.'
Jim's fist unfurled.
'Good man.' The fat one winked. 'Reseat yourself. I'll call for tea and crumpets.'
Jim sat down. 'It's just not fair,' he said.
We cannot choose our parents, nor they theirs. Such is the way of the world.' Mr Compton-Cummings
strained to rise from his chair and made good upon the third attempt. To the sound of considerable
wheezing and the creak of floorboards, he manoeuvred his ponderous bulk to the door and coughed out a
request for tea to a secretary who sat beyond, painting her toenails with Tipp-Ex.
Pooley's unfurled hand strayed towards a heavy onyx ashbowl. A single blow to the back of the head and
a sworn testimony on his own part that the fat man had merely tripped and fallen were all that would be
required. But the obscene thought passed on at the moment of its birth. Jim was not a man of violence, and
certainly not a murderer. He was just plain old Jim Pooley, bachelor of the parish of Brentford, man of the
turf and lounger at the bar counter of the Flying Swan.
He had hoped so much that he might have been more. That perhaps somewhere, way back down the
ancestral trail, there might have been one noble
31
Pooley, who had achieved great ends, performed mighty deeds, written the poetry of passion . . .
Or left an unclaimed legacy!
But no.
Jim had been shafted again.
Not, as was usually the case, by the quirks of cruel fate, or the calumny of strangers, but by one of his own
tribe, and a long-dead one to boot. It really wasn't fair.
Mr Compton-Cummings ladled himself back into his reinforced chair and smiled once more upon Jim, who
leaned forward.
'Listen,' he said. 'What if, for a small remuneration, you were to change the name in the manuscript?'
'Change the name?' The genealogist puffed out his cheeks.
Jim nodded enthusiastically. 'To, say . . .' He plucked, as if from the air, the name of his closest friend.
'John Omally,' he said.
'John Omally?'
'Certainly. I've often heard John complain about how dull his forebears were. This kind of notoriety
would be right up his street.'
Mr Compton-Cummings raised an eyebrow. 'But that would be to hoodwink and deceive the common
man.'
'It is the lot of the common man to be hoodwinked and deceived,' said Jim. 'Believe me, I speak, from long
experience.'
'Out of the question. I have my reputation to think of.'
32
'And I mine, such as it is. Listen, if this gets out I will be the laughing stock of the borough.'
'I sympathize, of course. But it is my bounden duty as scholar, researcher, writer and gentleman to do
all within my power to ensure absolute accuracy in the book I am compiling. Such is the standard I have
set for myself - a standard which, were you to view it from a more objective viewpoint, you would find
admirable and worthy of emulation.'
'I doubt that,' said Jim, making a grumpy face.
Mr Compton-Cummings turned up his pink palms.
What more can I say? After all, it was you who answered my advertisement in the Brentford Mercury for
local people, who felt that they might have had ancestors who played a part in the making of this fine
town, to come forward and have their ancestry traced, for free. You who plied me with talk of blue blood
coursing through your veins. You who swore upon your mother's life that it was a Pooley who had won
the land upon which Brentford now stands in an I-spy-with-my-little-eye competition with Richard the
Lionheart. You-'
'Enough,' cried Jim, waving his hands. 'My motives were entirely altruistic.'
'Then we are kindred spirits.'
Jim once more took up the computer print-out and perused its dismal details. Back they went, an
unbroken chain of Pooleys, marching through time. Well, hardly marching, slouching was more like it,
with their heads down, probably to mask their evil
33
breath. Peons and peasants, sanitary engineers and shovellers of sh-
'Ah, here's the tea,' said Mr Compton-Cummings.
The secretary held Jim's towards him at arm's length. Her face was turned away.
'Thanks very much,' said Jim.
'Look on the bright side,' smiled the genealogist, sipping at his Earl Grey. 'My book will be a very
expensive affair, pandering to an elite minority. The scholastic fraternity, Fellows of the Royal Society, the
intelligentsia. Hardly the class of folk to be found flinging darts in the saloon bar of the Flying Swan. The
摘要:

BrentfordChainstoreMassacreBook5ofthenowlegendaryBrentfordTrilogyRobertRankinSHAGGYDOGSTORYWhatawonderfullurcheryouhavethere,MrsBryant,Ihaven'tseenasfineaonesincelongbeforethewar.Canyoumakeitrollabout,playdead,orbegabiscuit?Noditsheadorshakeyourhandbystickingoutitspaw?'Actually,'saidthelovelyMrsBrya...

展开>> 收起<<
Rankin, Robert - Brentford 05 - The Brentford Chainstore Mas.pdf

共158页,预览32页

还剩页未读, 继续阅读

声明:本站为文档C2C交易模式,即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载,本站只是中间服务平台,本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间,仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理,对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私,请立即通知玖贝云文库,我们立即给予删除!
分类:外语学习 价格:5.9玖币 属性:158 页 大小:889.22KB 格式:PDF 时间:2024-12-22

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务
/ 158
客服
关注