" have in my hands,” Professor Willobee exclaimed, clutching a sheaf of papers in his trembling fingers and pacing in circles about the carpet while I stood at the window, barely able to make out the Capitol dome through the thick, churning fog that rolled in off the Potomac, wondering to myself what matter could possibly be so urgent as to bring the distinguished historian bursting into my State Department office at the unseemly hour, "definitive proof that Abraham Lincoln was a homo!"

“That’s a terrible opening sentence, Cuthbert,” I said, placing the sheet of paper back on his desk. “Is that really how you want to start your novel?”

As always, Cuthbert’s expression was pained. “My dear Fahrquad, you understand so little. The novel is only a ruse, a red sardine.”

“Herring, you mean.”

“No, Communism is the red herring. The novel, which I have tentatively titled Confessions of a Lemur Smuggler, is a red sardine. That is, a thing that people will think is a red herring, to draw attention away from the true red herring, which is Communism.”

“But aren’t people supposed to follow the red herring? Isn’t that its purpose?”

“My dear Fahrquad, you understand so little.”

He returned to fiddling with a large box in the corner of his study. In actuality, he was fiddling with some garishly colored plastic knobs on the front of the box, which was itself a rather staid plutonium affair. How do I know it was plutonium? Let’s just say I didn’t go through the war and get this steel plate in my head for nothing. I felt a compulsion to speak, as though silence were the enemy.

“You do realize my name is Calvin Derkins, and not Fahrquad, don’t you?”

He did not answer, except to ask me for a live octopus. I did not have a live octopus, and did not hesitate to tell him so. He merely gestured, without turning around, to a large wooden cabinet on the opposite wall. Opening it, I was inundated by the thirty or so gallons of salt water that poured from the interior. A large octopus also attached itself to my lapels and stared at me in what seemed a sad and hopeless manner.

Having known Cuthbert for some years, I had little hope for the unfortunate cephalopod’s survival. With resignation, I desuckered it from my coat and handed it too him. “Many people would use the aquarium, you know.”

“Yes, well, mine is full of books. I wasn’t using the cabinet, though.” He somehow stuffed the hapless mollusk into the plutonium box -- though I hadn’t seen any openings – and I could have sworn I heard a scream from the creature.

Turning to me at last, he smiled. “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here in the middle of the night.”

I sincerely hope,” I began, nodding toward the manuscript on his desk, “that’s it’s not to talk about Abe Lincoln’s personal life.”

He seemed to ignore me completely, looking intently over my shoulder at something behind me. “Hmm…” he hmmed, and stepped around me to open yet another cabinet.

“Well?”

“Hmm? Oh, no, Fahrquad. Nothing to do with Abe Lincoln’s gayness. Not yet, anyway. I do have his head, though.”

Much like the octopus remark, this struck me as typical Cuthbert foolishness. Knowing him as I do, though, I know that “typical Cuthbert foolishness” generally ends up with something or someone in an unnatural state of being. I remembered the time, long before, when he had grafted tiny wings all over the back of my head, and I grew somewhat nervous. “What’s that?”

“His head, Fahrquad. Oh, not the original, of course. I cloned it.”

Leaving behind all questions regarding the possibility of his claims, I pressed onward. “Just the head?”

He turned to look at me, his hands suddenly holding a very large pair of hedge clippers. “That’s all I needed. You’ve got a perfectly good body, after all, and it is an experiment in head-transplantation.”

So that’s his plan, I thought. He’s going to chop off my head and replace it with the clone of Abe Lincoln’s head. I wondered then, as I had before and often have since, why in the devil I’m friends with a mad scientist at all. Especially, I mused, one who can’t even remember my name.

“So you’re going to replace my head with Lincoln’s, eh?” I struck a classic boxing pose, which I’d seen in National Geographic. He looked at me as if I’d suggested we eat his mother. Since he had, indeed, eaten his mother, or at least the beefier parts of her, while adrift after a shipwreck, I was less than reassured.

“Oh, that is a good idea! I’ll definitely try that next!” Then, more quickly than I could react, he lunged forward with the clippers.

"It's no good, Alex," she rejoined, "Even if I did love you, my father would never let me marry an alligator."

“I must say, Cuthbert, that the last line of your novel is no better than the first.”

I had read the thing over the previous two days, a mere head mounted onto Cuthbert’s head-preserving apparatus. His plan had been, in fact, to mount Lincoln’s head onto the octopus, which makes absolutely no sense unless you’re far to familiar with the way Cuthbert’s mind works. My body, of course, was used to mount the octopus head on. Why he couldn’t have put the mollusk’s head on the apparatus and left me alone to get a good night’s sleep was beyond me.

He turned, somewhat stricken. “It won’t make a good red sardine, then?” The Abe-topus raised a leathery tentacle and patted his shoulder sympathetically.

“Four score and seven years ago,” it gurbled, “was a long time ago.”

I hated to see a friend so upset, though to be honest I was preparing a rather drastic revision of my definition of “friend” as it applied to Cuthbert. This was possibly the worst thing he had done to me, with the obvious exception of forcing me to mate with that hammerhead shark in order to create a race of superhuman swimming instructors. Shark scales are just like little teeth, you know. Little teeth all over their bodies.

“There were some good bits in there, of course.”

“What bits?” He was ignoring the Abe-topus now, and walking toward me, holding something that looked like a long, twisted piece of string cheese. “Would you like some string cheese?” he asked.

“No thank you,” I replied, “but if you’ll reattach my head to my body and let the poor octopus go, I’ll tell you what I think of your book.”

Cuthbert seemed lost in thought for a moment, absently sticking the string cheese into his ear. “This isn’t just a trick, is it? You’ll really tell me what you think?”

“Absolutely. And I’ll be completely honest.”

“Okay, then.” He picked up the apparatus and carried it--and me--over to his plutonium box.. As we drew nearer, I saw that there was a slot in one side, but that it wasn’t quite wide enough for my head to fit through. This didn’t seem to bother Cuthbert, though, and it hurt terribly when he squeezed my already-brutalized head into the box.

When I next regained consciousness, I found all of my external accessories back in their proper places, with the exception of my watch, which I assumed he had stolen again. The octopus was in the giant fish tank, lazily flollopping through an unexpurgated copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

“Cuthbert?” I called. “Cuthbert, where are you? Why did you mount machine guns on the sides of your octopus?” There was no answer, and I feared the worst, which was, of course, that he was standing behind me, making faces and getting ready to pee on the back of my head. Whipping me head round quickly, I didn’t see him, but I did feel the stitches in my neck strain quite a bit.

Finally, after another few minutes of sitting and wondering, I noticed the note he’d left on the table beside the aquarium.

“My dear Fahrquad,” the note read, “I trust you’re feeling a little better. I’ve gone out to procure a multitude of frogs; I’ve decided that the book is utter dross, and that I should produce a red mullet to draw attention from the red sardine, which is drawing attention from the…ad infinitum. At any rate, a plague of frogs seems just the thing, so if I don’t see you before you leave, please be careful, and take the octopus with you when you go. Putting Abe Lincoln’s head on an octopus’ body…what was I thinking? Fortunately, I have Thomas Jefferson’s adrenal gland and a spare hog snake lying around, so I can get started immediately without decapitating you any more. Do you still wish to have lunch on Tuesday? Please call and let me know; if not, I’m planning on running a bison through the Cuisinart whole to see what happens. Yours from the really scary regions of science, Dr. J. R. “Happy Pants” Cuthbert

I still have no idea what the plutonium box was for, or how he cloned the parts of historical figures, or even what happened to the octopus. I just know I’m not going over to his house when he calls in the middle of the night anymore. And I really can’t recommend his novel; some people should just stick what they’re good at.