Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet did not tarry in the corridor outside that literary and onanistic salon, but straightaway betook himself to another room in the suite, which had been set aside for the convenience of Mrs Arabella Perroquet. In this room, there was to be found a bureau, in which, as Miss Isolde Perroquet had on one or two occasions intimated, there were sequestered certain official documents, although that maiden was at some pains to stress that she never had glimpsed their contents. —
Isolde Acridotheres, Hawksmoor Perroquet, Arabella Melopsittaca
The bureau was quite a flimsy affair, some open cubby-holes and a lid which hinged crookedly over a couple of drawers - a thing of sawdust and glue, with a veneer which held the ensemble together much after the fashion of an exoskeleton. Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet found the drawers locked, withal, upon his searching out some coat hanger wire, eminently pickable. And so, with little ceremony, the two drawers slid open. —
The bureau
Within the top drawer there lay, in a neat pile, a set of photographs, and a document bearing the imprimature of Cerebellum Towers, the Clifton Zoological Gardens, and a rather recondite-sounding ornithological research establishment, which appeared to have tentacles in many countries. Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet selected the topmost photograph, and with his claw held it up to the light, whereupon it revealed itself to be of an avian creature of, as the Mayor recognised, the species of Acridotheres, upon which cognisance Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet took himself to be looking upon the countenance of Mr Tristram of that ilk, under whose protection his spouse and child had dwelt during that Babylonish time of their separation from himself. —
Cerebellum Towers, Mr Tristram Acridotheres, Clifton Zoological Gardens
Rummaging now quite feverishly in the lower drawer, he came upon two further documents and another photograph, which he now examined. The first document purported to be the certification of the marriage, under Lex Matrimonia Avum, between Mr Tristram Acridotheres and Mrs Arabella Melopsittaca, as she then had been. The other document was, inevitably, a report of the unique successful outcome of the research which had been undertaken by Cerebellum Towers and the Clifton Zoological Gardens and the recondite-sounding ornithological research establishment with tentacles in many countries - viz. the survival of a hybrid mynah-budgerigar hatchling. Sensing that there was missing only one piece in the jigsaw puzzle of his humiliation, he gazed with a ghastly finality at the remaining photograph. This, inevitably, was a group portrait, depicting a family of birds - Mr Tristram Acridotheres, looking very handsome, Mrs Arabella Melopsittaca, and, between these two, a smaller creature in whom the Mayor recognised the lineaments of the maidenly young hen who had taken his own name. —
Lex Matrimonia Avum
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