Crime doesn’t pay, but it has a pretty decent benefits package…

Happy Friday, lurkers in the nooks and crannies of Cyberspace:

  

We have returned with The Cousins Family from Toronto, where Sparky and I spent an educational and profitable weekend in the public interest removing loose clutter (such as dusty old preparatory sketches for A.Y. Jackson paintings) from dimly-lit corners of the Art Gallery of Ontario and Casa Loma. For Sparky’s part and mine, we’d just as soon have stayed there.

   You see, the renown of the recently-opened impromptu speakeasy and after-hours rumpus room at the Fortress of Funitude has spread so quickly that we are opening our doors to strangers and the curious before our regular hours of business are slated to begin. One of our recent guests was a representative of the Animal Alley chapter of The Society for the Protection of People From The Society for the Protection of People, who dropped by to inform us of the range of services his organization offered, and the consequences of not accepting them. Our would-be benefactor, The Amazing Doctor Catterhouse (neither a title nor a description—his first name is ‘The Amazing Doctor’—his mother had high hopes for him) explained that this was just a routine “how do you feel about having a sudden unexplained fire” visit—a courtesy call, if somewhat lacking in the courtesy department.

   Don’t get me wrong: I’m a connoisseur of old-school gangster-movie shakedowns, but when the gangster doing the shaking down ends each sentence with “meow, see”, he may have gotten just a little too deeply into the spirit of things. However, being nothing if not courteous ourselves, we asked T.A.D. Catterhouse if he would partake in some refreshments, and perhaps a game of skill and chance. The teetotaling T.A. Dr. Catterhouse declined the beverage, but not before Our Miss Moose had helped Milady M’Dear mix a fresh batch of her special knockout punch (fortunately, it loses its potency after 48 hours, after which it becomes an outstanding plant food for Venus flytraps and creeper vines). He was more amenable to the game of skill and chance, which involved us taking the chance that he wouldn’t notice Sparky’s skill at marking cards, or mine at dealing from whatever part of the deck seems most appropriate.

   The upshot of all of this is that Sparky, Milady M’Dear, Miss Moose and I are now co-holders of the title deed to the Ash Can Club, an intimate little hole-in-the-wall of a boîte de nuit (and often, early morning as well) in the bohemian artists’ quarter of Animal Alley. Ambivalent as I am about our new status as members of the propertied class, this particular piece of real estate is likely to serve as a useful bargaining chip. I fear we haven’t heard the last of all this.

  Something we have heard the last of, for a while at least, is “Science Boy vs. Professor Proteus”. It’ll return in just a few weeks’ time to take a final bow, but in the meantime, we’ll bridge the gap with a short series of our own, entitled Uncle Fun and Sparky’s Radio Colouring Book. Click on the blue letters just in back of this sentence to hear the first episode of this mini-magnum opus. Fret not, fans of Science Boy—he features prominently in it.

   And now, it’s time for me to check the sleeves of my good coat to make sure that all my extra aces are still where I put them, in case we get another visitor.

Uncle Fun