A glimpse – a small portion of a stare, a fraction of an ogle. That was all the information Professor Breville O’Singh required in order to establish that his assailant was male, sporting the hairstyle of a small lady from the 14th Century. O’Singh was as efficient stripping information from the barest detail as a swarm of locusts paring down a caper or small pea.

The professor reacted. He backed up carefully out of the Academy office, aided in his retreat by the ousting tendencies of the heavy, wooden, spring-loaded door. Something was amiss, he sensed. Something was not right. He had come prepared to observe a certain degree of animated behaviour at the Royal Academy of Philosophy, certainly, but not this. Not assault. In fact, he had not anticipated anything demonstrably physical of philosophers beyond perhaps the occasional chin-stroke. Or, at a stretch, a lot of chin-stroking – still, though, what might be considered low-key animation.

Slowly, calmly, he swung a shoulder to reposition the canvas haversack on his back and withdrew from the office to avoid the very real possibility of an assault. Not of further assault, for here was something else O’Singh had noted. His assailant had pounced and missed. In that sense and in that case, figured O’Singh, the man who had intended to assault was no more than a ‘potential’, or ‘ham’ assailant.

‘A “recreational” assailant!’ exclaimed O’Singh, conclusively, trapping a sheet of paper between the door and his nose.

A floorboard squealed beneath the carpet under the weight of the mountainous Professor Breville O’Singh. In his pale linen suit he looked like some superannuated wrestler on safari. Alone he stood in the sparse wainscoted corridor, squeezed between the office door and the antiquated lift from which he had burst fortifying his resolve with the self-rallying call, ‘Lancaster!’ Almost inert, propping up the paper distractedly with his nose as though he were some excessively large item of stationery for attaching notices to vertical surfaces. He snatched the paper – the letter he had been clutching – down to chest level so he might recheck some detail, then scanned the door for a sign that he might have strolled into the wrong room. There were none.

O’Singh acted in a surprisingly passive way considering that he had moments before torn out of that lift behind him full of irrepressible purpose. He bowed his head, clamped his eyes tightly shut, and pressed his skull between bear-sized palms. The professor was summoning his inner resources in the same way an Olympic high-jumper psyches himself up before the run-up to straddle effectively what is a lofty stick.

The professor first opened one eye, experimentally, found himself peering out through a narrow window that was set into the wall where he was at the end of the hallway, down onto a familiar, one-way, three-lane traffic-processing street several storeys below. It appeared the same from up here as it had at pavement level when he had arrived at the Academy – certainly no different – a Bloomsbury thoroughfare. A corridor through the grid of steep, regimented terraces of Georgian London. An arterial road for 21st Century time-travellers through 18th Century streets, fancied O’Singh. He could pick out pedestrians on the street. From an elevation, people look like ants, he had heard it said. But it dawned upon the professor that the comparison might pale when we come to realise that ants are too small to be visible from significant heights.

O’Singh cocked his head. He was listening for sounds beyond the door. But he could hear not a sound, not a murmur from inside the office. He realised he was listening to silence.

The professor rocked on his heels, nodded his head, resolving something internally, and felt again for the door’s brass push panel. His lips twitched, his hand hesitated on the door. He steeled himself. And pushed.

‘A reasonably motivated squid!’ he exclaimed loudly, as that very same offensive, interestingly coiffured gentleman sailed past attempting a very similar move as before except his leap this time came from the other side of the door.

O’Singh stood rooted at the threshold. He had not a clue what was going on. He could trust only in his ability to maintain a supreme state of consciousness. ‘A reasonably motivated squid’ – his immediate reaction. At a stroke, he had pinpointed where his attacker’s pounce might sit on a scale of animal pouncing. ‘Somewhere in that very narrow range between a poorly or dispirited leopard and an upbeat sloth.’

Thus begun a most remarkable episode in all the narratives of mankind up to the present date. There he was, Professor O’Singh would later recall, like the Biblical Noah. High up, as if atop Mount Ararat in the surroundings of a similar woody décor. Perhaps at that crucial moment waiting for the exploratory dove to return with its olive branch. Not with a proper main course, regrettably, but nevertheless something bearing the kind of fruit you could serve certainly as ‘nibbles’.

The gentleman launched himself again – hands held in front of him, claw-like, in a ‘traditional’ pouncing pose – this time sideways, for he had slightly misjudged his second attempt. This was pouncing rather resembling the approach of a golfer from the tee to the hole, each attempt a little more refined, bringing him closer to the target.

Greeting by assault. This was a job interview that was not going so well. O’Singh peered down from his commanding height and realised that the much smaller man, the pouncer, was tilting at his considerable chest with as much effectiveness as a sparrow manoeuvring a piano.

The professor decided he should take a different tack to discover what was going on. He would ask a direct question.

‘Pray, is this where the interview is to be conducted?’ he enquired. O’Singh held out the letter he had brought, his invitation.

Beyond the wannabe assailant he took in the large, hushed, low-lit, room. More wainscoting. A woody sanctuary. A self-contained office at the back.

Distractedly, the small man scrunched up the letter in his hand. His paintbrush moustache twitched. Then his sharp features spasmed. A wide-eyed enlightened look surfaced beneath the gentleman’s now dishevelled, feminine, medieval thatch – a grey thatch at odds with the colour of his black ‘tache – signalling that a thought had inspired a different approach.

‘You’re fired!’ he shout-whispered up at O’Singh’s looming features, or rather he shouted as loudly as whispering will permit without it then being considered speaking.

A gurgling sound announced itself. O’Singh could make out a culpable coffee percolator atop a low table wedged into a convenient recess – an ad hoc hospitality corner.

‘Good day! You may depart!’ hissed O’Singh’s assailant, insistently, again in a kind of verbal wheeze. ‘Deparrrt’ – there was a definite Edinburgh curliness to his speech.

‘Fired? Is it possible?’ wondered O’Singh, out loud.

‘So much so that it is happening,’ confirmed the gentleman, breathlessly.

‘It just occurred… I mean is it, technically speaking, possible to be fired from a job before one has been interviewed for it?’ ventured O’Singh.

‘You did come here for the job then?’ probed the gentleman, in an ‘Aha!’ tone.

‘Professor Breville O’Singh,’ replied O’Singh, with muted alacrity – sensing the need through the overwrought gentleman, to keep his voice down – and offered a hand for shaking.

Still the gentleman barred the entrance to the reception room, nervously tugging at his pre-Renaissance fringe.

‘And you must be…?’ asked O’Singh.

‘I must be unacquainted,’ replied the gentleman, firmly. ‘The position has been filled.’

‘Ah… oh. So do I understand therefore that I was awarded the position in my absence and then fired from it also while I was absent?’ asked O’Singh, ponderously.

The pouncing gentleman sucked his teeth, considering that unusual scenario.

‘Yes, yes you did,’ he answered, experimentally.

O’Singh tried to articulate something or, failing that, utter something audible. But he could manage neither. The professor was flabbergasted. Deflated. The stuffing knocked right out of him. And he was also a little bit peckish. He had only had cheese for breakfast that morning and then only that holey Swiss variety.

‘But if I may, I really need the position... I needed to start at eleven minutes past eight,’ croaked O’Singh, at last, feeling a little ashamed at having to resort to such strong language as ‘really’. The big man’s legs gave way slightly, they buckled and he scuttled sideways towards an upholstered chair propped near the door.

The latterly-pouncing gentleman lunged for O’Singh, only O’Singh’s bulk had already decided which forces would win out.

‘This establishment offered me the last hope of a research post,’ keened O’Singh, above the creek of the chair straining under his weight. ‘The chance of discovering everything. A cure for cancer perchance. The reason we have toenails…’

O’Singh believed his lateral concepts might unlock huge swathes of knowledge, something unequalled since the Enlightenment back in the 17th and 18th centuries, when science said to superstition, you know what? What O’Singh felt he had, that was slipping through his grasp was Enlightenment 2.0. At the very least. For each idea conceived, though short of grandness relative to say The Big Bang Theory, could be one of innumerable tiny bang theories, which when added together might even amount to more than the big one. To the eventual discovery of everything.

‘This wasn’t a research post,’ responded the ex-pouncer, gleefully seizing upon O’Singh’s presumption.

‘Ab-absolutely. I understand,’ sighed O’Singh, ‘but an administrative role may have at least afforded me a foothold here at the Academy. And maybe led to, I hoped, perhaps…’

The gentleman spun round, cast an anxious look towards the back office, turned back to O’Singh. He reached out tentatively, then withdrew his hand. Finally settled for prodding the professor somewhere in the mid-region by way of offering condolence. Then repeated the action, as if fearfully poking at a whale to check if it’s dead.

He stopped. Abruptly. His eyes widened with the formulation of an idea.

‘Come, come. Please be standing,’ whispered the gentleman, groping for something inside his tweed jacket. ‘Yes, yes.’

‘I almost forgot to give you this,’ he said, whipping out an official-looking brown envelope as O’Singh struggled to his feet. The leaping gentleman made an impatient circular movement with a finger, gesturing for O’Singh to turn round before he should straighten up, then pushed the professor forward in his stooping position so he might employ his considerable back as a writing surface.

The gentleman scribbled frantically in the manner of a doctor writing a prescription. As one might for Tylenol, if for tonsillitis, for instance… to be taken three times a day after meals, or during, or before, depending on the dosage instructions... referring to one’s General Practitioner should symptoms persist.

But this was not a prescription. The professor would need to seek medical consultation elsewhere if, coincidentally, he was ailing from tonsillitis.

The gentleman darted an urgent look again towards the back office, pocketed the pen then spun O’Singh round to face him. ‘Take this,’ he said with a gargoyle grin. ‘My letter of recommendation.’

O’Singh took the letter, gratefully, and scanned the scrawl on the front of the envelope.

‘This is addressed to the IPU!’ he exclaimed. ‘Is this truly for the Investigations of the Para-Usual?’

‘Voice. Keep down,’ urged the gentleman.

Just detectable, a creak of floorboard, possibly from the back office.

‘Dear God, you have heard of the IPU?’ asked the gentleman, in a tone combining hope and contempt.

‘Yes, yes, oh yes. Ab-ab-absolutely. I just had not realised that they maintained operations,’ marvelled O’Singh, in an excited whisper, carefully secreting the envelope in a pocket of his haversack. ‘But fancy! I cannot… To think! What a turn-up – a recommendation! Could this be fate? Thank you so much!’

‘Thank me by getting that job now,’ urged the gentleman, magnanimously, pushing at O’Singh’s midriff in the direction whence he had come. ‘Go, immediately!’

‘Right now?’ asked O’Singh, dropping anchor, a little surprised at the gentleman’s urgency. ‘You mean right now? Today? This very day?’

‘You need to be there absolutely by 11,’ snapped the gentleman.

‘Today? Really, today? Gosh! I mean, thank you so much. But, oh, there is plenty of time then, really,’ said O’Singh, consulting his watch, dissipating the tension, so he thought. The time was a bit before nine.

A definite creak of floorboards and a heavy footfall sounded from inside the back office. Both men swung towards the source of the sudden noise.

‘Dear God! Ten-thirty!’ wheezed Woo. The floorboards carried on creaking long after they might reasonably be expected. ‘Orforfor-por-por-por-por-por!’ went the extended creak. O’Singh studied the gentleman staring downwards, vacantly, wide-eyed, in some trepidation as if he were waiting for something to pass.

‘Er, still probably time…’ suggested O’Singh, awkwardly. There was a strong suspicion that the floorboards weren’t the things to have farted.

‘Ten past Ten! Ten? – pffthtttttttttttttttttttttt! – ten’s very urgent… isn’t it?’ demanded the gentleman, crazily, furiously downgrading the luxury of time for O’Singh to linger. He was again shoulder down, tilting at the academic’s chest, returning to futility as a way of shifting bulk.

O’Singh realised then that time had been constricted so much now as to conspire against him. He thanked the gentleman profusely, once again, then made his expulsion efficacy considerably greater by turning heel and bidding him adieu.

A few beats later, a white-haired, learned lady emerged from the inner office into the reception room. Sat alone, she found the gentleman who had recommended O’Singh to the IPU. Sitting ‘traditionally,’ as he might say, that is upright and daintily cross-legged. For the Recommender-Pouncer, was a traditional sitter.

‘Professor Breville O’Singh!’ announced the learned lady, holding open the office door.

‘Not present,’ answered the Recommender-Pouncer, looking up with an affected air of disappointment.

‘I thought we had two candidates attending?’ said the learned lady, more to herself than to the Recommender-Pouncer.

‘Fickle,’ said the Recommender-Pouncer, rising from his seat and brushing himself down. ‘That must have been the fellow I just met. Suddenly stammered something or other then recklessly made off with himself. No explanation. If I were to write him a character reference, I would say, “Really quite discourteous”. “Discourteous and well, flighty.”’

He conjured up an expression of horrified grief and greeted the learned lady with a handshake. ‘Vladimir Woo. Glad to make your acquaintance.’

‘Mr Vladimir Woo, oh yes,’ returned the learned lady, searching his eyes. ‘Interesting. You left a message on my phone; recited a “letter of introduction”,’ she recounted.

‘Yes indeed. Pleased to have recited,’ said Woo, bowing.

‘A very impressive eulogy from your previous employers, but can you explain why you felt it necessary to read a letter of introduction addressed to the Investigations of the Para-Usual; the IPU?’

‘The IPU is a different organisation,’ proffered Woo, a little fazed by the question.

‘That merely explains that the IPU is not this organisation, does it not? For your information, you are here now at the Royal Academy of Philosophy.’

Indeed he was. Or at least for now. The learned lady was not to know that in a day or two she would be referring to the Royal Academy of Philosophy lamentably as the ‘old Royal Academy of Philosophy’.

‘Yes, that is clear,’ said Woo, finally, authoritatively even.

The learned lady was now studying Woo intensely, nodding her head and working her lips in a manner that conveyed, ‘Yes? Do you have anything more, or are we done?’

‘So, er should you perhaps have been contacting the IPU?’ she offered, finally.

‘Bwapp-Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrawh!’

‘Oh!’ exclaimed the learned lady.

‘Floorboards!’ interjected Woo, manically.

He began stamping the carpet with the fervour of a one-man bushfire fighting operation. Remarkably, a floorboard creaked almost in faithful recital of his fart. ‘Your floorboards!’ offered Woo gleefully, in diagnosis.

‘You’re right,’ said the learned lady, sniffing the air, wrinkle-nosed. ‘Perhaps a rodent crawled under them and perished.’

‘I know what it is now,’ said Woo, loudly, taking the learned lady aback. ‘That letter to the IPU I recited highlighted my talents. It was to show you what they will lose by making myself available for this appointment…’

‘You do know that we are offering a somewhat junior position here?’ resumed the learned lady, after an awkward silence.

‘Cream always rises to the top. A traditional saying, ma’am,’ chirped Woo.

‘It’s lightly administrative… You may well be better off accepting the position at the IPU.’

‘Not that backwater, ma’am.’

‘Well, yes I concede it is…’

‘It’s not even a backwater. It’s way further back than that; not really water, either. It’s a, it’s a “furtherback-mirage”, is what it is.’

‘But, it is…’

‘The department is so forgotten, people can’t even remember that they forgot about the IPU.’

‘Uh well, did you remember to bring along a copy of the letter, anyway?’

Woo thought about a reply then grasped the hand of the learned lady and shook it vigorously once again.

‘Pleased to meet you. Would I be correct in assuming that the position is for just one person?’

‘Yes...’

‘Well then, I am very well qualified, as it so happens, to represent one person. There is only one of me as you can see. Though I am in fact an un-joined conjoined twin.’

‘I see. Well perhaps Mr. Woo you might step inside,’ sighed the learned lady, propping open her office door.

As that door clicked shut, the solid oak double doors to the Academy’s entrance sprung open down below at street level to allow the departure of Professor Breville O’Singh. He stopped and stood akimbo at the top of the steps. Hope was there in his eyes, certainly a zealous glint. But hope was not enough without some cash-injection. O’Singh glanced down at his out-turned pockets. If only lint were a legitimate currency.

Next Chapter: Jungle Strut