Nostradamus Ate My Hamster by Robert Rankin

card and uncrumpled it. “The Bricklayer’s Arms,” he read, “alias The Flying Swan, famous pub featuring in the novels of blah, blah, blah.”
    “It doesn’t say blah, blah, blah, does it?”
    “It might as well do.”
    “You can’t deny what’s in print.”
    “Really?” Morgan fished into the back pocket of his jeans and brought out his wallet, from this he withdrew several similar pieces of card. “Here you go,” said Morgan. “The Princess Royal, alias The Flying Swan, The New Inn, alias The Flying Swan, The Red Lion, alias The Flying Swan. Even The Shrunken Head in Horseferry Lane, they
all
claim to be The Flying Swan. Do you know how many pubs claim that Oliver Cromwell slept there?”
    “Did he sleep at The Flying Swan then?”
    “No, he bloody didn’t. Half the pubs in Brentford claim to be
the original
Flying Swan. It’s bullshit, Russell. They do it for tourists.”
    “But Neville?”
    “Slouching bloke, rotten teeth, stained shirt?”
    “That’s him.”
    “Sid Wattings, been the landlord there for years.”
    “Eh?”
    “Is that blond barmaid still there? The one who can tuck her legs behind her head?”
    Russell groaned.
    “It’s a wind-up,” said Morgan. “I’m sorry, Russ.”
    “Don’t call me Russ. I don’t like Russ.”
    “It’s a wind-up,
Russell
If you’d told me you were going to look for The Flying Swan, I would have warned you not to waste your time. This Adolf Hitler you saw, how did he look?”
    “He looked a bit rough, but he looked just like he did in the old war footage.”
    “And you don’t think that a bit strange?”
    “No,” said Russell. “That’s the whole point.”
    “It’s not the whole point. It didn’t occur to you that he might have looked a bit older? Like
fifty years
older? Like he should have been at least one hundred years old?”
    “Ah,” said Russell.
    “Exactly,
ah
. This is where Sid’s slipped up. Hitler was dying anyway at the end of the war, he had all sorts of stuff wrong with him. Yet the Hitler you saw was no older. What did he do then, drink the elixir of life? The water of life?”
    Russell let out a further groan as the image of a Perrier bottle swam into his mind, followed by certain other images of an erotic nature, some of them actually involving a Perrier bottle. “So it wasn’t really Hitler?”
    “Could it
really
have been Hitler? Ask yourself, could it
really
have been?”
    “I suppose not,” said Russell.
    “I’m sorry, Russ, er, Russell. You’ve been had.”
    Russell made a very miserable face and turned his eyes towards the floor. “I’ve made a bit of a prat of myself, haven’t I?” he said.
    “It’s not your fault. That Sid’s getting a bit sneaky. Perhaps the competition’s getting too strong. Perhaps they’ve installed a Lord Lucan in a shed behind The New Inn. It’s a good wheeze.”
    “It didn’t half look like Hitler,” said Russell. “But I suppose you must be right. It
was
a wind-up. It couldn’t really have been him.”
    “Still,” said Morgan. “Look on the bright side, Russell. You actually had a bit of an adventure. It doesn’t matter that it was all baloney. I bet it got your adrenalin rushing about.”
    “It certainly did that.”
    “So you’ve lived a little. For a brief moment you weren’t reliable old Russell, who nothing ever happens to. For a brief moment you were actually having an adventure. And it felt pretty good, didn’t it?”
    Russell raised his eyes from the floor and for a brief moment, a very brief moment, they really glared at Morgan.
    “I’m going back to the office,” he said. And back to the office he went.

6
Back to The Führer
    Of course Morgan had to be right, there was no possible way Adolf Hitler could really be in Brentford in the nineteen nineties, looking just like he did in the nineteen forties. Especially with him being dead and everything.
    No possible way.
    It’s a big statement though, “no possible way”, isn’t it?
    There’s