The Implacable Hunter Read Online Free

given us the word ‘Barbarian’. Listening to Soxias, one received the impression that he was drinking the language scalding hot and relishing every sip of it, to the sensitive hearer’s discomfiture.
    He said again: ‘Lucius, be quiet! Compose a fresh song, or I think perhaps I will send you to Ptalep in Alexandria.’
    ‘What a name!’ Lucius giggled. ‘Like spitting out a pomegranate -seed. I’d love to meet Ptalep! Is he a poet?’
    ‘No,’ said Soxias,’ ‘a taxidermist. I will have you stuffed and mounted.’ As Lucius laughed, he went on, in an easy and confidential tone. ‘The skin comes off more easily when the subject is alive.’
    ‘Oh, but I’d love –’ Little Lucius began. Then, bold as he was, he stopped, and sat.
    Soxias was a queer man to joke with. There were uneasy little stories current about him in Tarsus. For example: Two men met in hell. One asked the other: ‘Why, Decius, what brings you here so young?’ ‘Alas, Nonus! I laughed when I thought Soxias was jesting. He was not. And you?’ ‘Alas, Decius! I did not laugh when I thought Soxias was serious. He was jesting.’
    For Soxias liked to be feared, and he knew that nothing is so frightening as the unpredictable, to all those who still cling to life and hope. So the gods are feared; and this strange, dangerous old man, having gnawed his way out of nobody knew what dark rat-holes in his unrecorded youth, and fought and bought his tortuous upward path, now sat among the gods, licked sleek if not clean and perfumed to drown the stench of a dozen drains. But the gods, as I read their histories, are nothing much more than over-indulged,bored children, hugely enlarged; and such, on the surface, was Soxias.
    When the humour was on him he would squander fortunes on such follies as labyrinths leading nowhere, or marble staircases which at the touch of a lever became smooth inclines ; and it was said of him that if a fly annoyed him he would have that fly’s life if it cost a million. He was at once grossly blatant and infinitely secretive, disguising a certain swift and tricky tortuousness under an appearance of transparency , just like a child; and, again like a child, possessed with that frantic curiosity which cannot examine without destroying, and that tedious humour which cannot jest without teasing. He loved to see people falling suddenly on their backsides. ‘The arse is the seat of all humour,’ he used to say; and went to fantastic lengths to demonstrate this.
    Yet all the time Soxias grew richer and richer, by virtue of what appeared to be nothing but brutal cunning and a child’s (or a god’s) sublime disregard for the feelings of those upon whom he trod, coupled with a kind of prescience which was said to be magical. But I know something of the value of what appears to be nothing but brutal cunning and the fact of the matter is, that Soxias had his spies in every corner of the world; paid them generously, was astute in evaluating their reports, and swift to act. So I could guess that – since his mind was running on somebody in Alexandria – Soxias had had some news from Egypt, and that next year, or the year after that, there might be a rise or a fall in the price of grain.
    Even while he was talking to Little Lucius, I caught the glint of his flat black eye as he looked sideways at me without turning his head. No doubt he was saying to himself, in whatever language he thought with: ‘Aha! The policeman’s nose twitches. Diomed has sniffed out Egypt. But Diomed knows that Soxias doesn’t drop loose words sohe will say to himself: “If Soxias hints at the east, look to the west; probably there is trouble in Britain.”’
    But No Doubt is one of Truth’s commonest enemies.
    One thing was certain, now: that Soxias was determined to be amused; therefore, someone must suffer.
    He turned to Paulus and asked: ‘What do you say? Shall I send Lucius to be stuffed?’
    With a gesture that included the great table and