Hunting for Silence

10. The Ifrit and the Banshee

It wasn't difficult to find out where the trouble was happening. All we had to do was follow the ear-piercing screams. And they were screams this time, Mr Ambrose assured me, not high notes in a Mozart aria. Personally, I couldn't tell the difference, but then, I was an expert on opera the same way a squid was an expert on mountain climbing.

'Over there!'

Mr Ambrose pointed down a corridor, at the end of which a banshee seemed to be getting strangled. We started to sprint forward, and the farther we got, the more people joined us. It's interesting how people always run away from danger when they're being chased, but run towards it if they aren't. One of the many proofs for the essential blockheadedness of humankind.

Finally, we reached a door with a name plaque on it that I didn't bother to try and pronounce. To judge by the women crowding around the entrance and the shrill screams still issuing from inside, it was easy enough to deduce that there was a lady in there, but other than that, I had no idea what was going on. The women were blocking the way.

'Stand aside!' I ordered.

They ignored me.

I glanced sideways at Mr Ambrose. 'Maybe they don't speak English?'

He gave me a look.

'Stand aside!' he commanded. Instantly, the crowd parted for him, and the ladies curtsied as he passed. I followed, grumbling something not very flattering about arrogant, chauvinistic men. I hated them even more now that I'd been one of them for a while.

Inside the dressing room, a voluminously voluptuous lady stood plastered against one wall, screaming with the stamina possessed only by professional singers and crazy demagogues on Speaker's Corner. And on the other side, nestled into the chaise longue...

'Holy Moly!'

Mr Ambrose cocked his head. 'Indeed.'

There on the chaise longue, bold as brass, as if it were perfectly at home here and a well-known native to Paris, lay a coiled snake, its colourful scales shining in a poisonous pattern. As if feeling the attention, the reptile raised its head and hissed. Screams erupted all around in a high-pitched cacophony that was loud enough to ring my skull like a bell.

I gave a derisive snort.

God! And these ninnies called themselves women? The snake wasn't even doing anything! It was just sitting there and hissing.

'Calm down, will you?' I called, cutting through the kerfuffle.

'Calm down?' the prima donna squashed against the wall exclaimed. ''ow should I calm down? Sere is a snake in my room! A great, big poisonous snake, c'est vrais!'

'No, no.' I waved her concerns away. 'I know this snake. I've seen it before in South America. It isn't poisonous.'

'It isn't?'

'No.' I patted her hand. 'It just wraps arounds its victims and squeezes them to death.'

Maybe, I realised as renewed shrieks threatened to rip apart my eardrums, I shouldn't have said that last part out loud.

'Well, Mr Linton?' Cocking his head, Mr Ambrose gave me a look.

'What are you looking at me for?'

'You got them screaming again. You get them to stop.'

'And how am I to do that?' I demanded.

'It might help if you removed the snake.'

'Fine, fine!' I sighed, pulled out my revolver and shot the snake through the head. And you know what? Those ninnies still didn't stop screaming! If anything, the din got louder!