“That’s all very well,” said Jim Pooley.

“The next quotation comes from Jean-Francois Champollion, 1790-1832, the man who originally deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphic system. ‘Anubis stared upon the manchild that had come before him and questioned him over his possessions and the pharaoh did answer saying I bear seventeen oxen, fifteen caskets of gold and precious stones. Carvings and set tableaus of rich embellishment and the five that dwell within the sacred house where none may tread. And Anubis took fright, even he that stands guardian over the realms of the beyond was afeared and he turned back the manchild that stood before the sacred river saying never shall you cross until your weight is above the holy balance. Which never can it be for the five set the scales heavily against you.’”

Pooley reached for the sherry decanter but found to his dismay that it was empty. “This five whatever they are sound somewhat sinister,” said he, “but the threat seems also a trifle nebulous.”

The Professor looked up from his antique tome. “This book was handwritten some three centuries ago,” said he, “not by some casual dilettante of the occult but by a mage of the first order. I have given you two quotations which he sought out, neither of which seem to impress you very much. Now I shall read to you what James Murrel wrote in his own hand regarding the five beans which had at the time of his writing come by means unfathomable into his possession. ‘I am plagued this evening as I write with thoughts of the five I have here before me. Their echoes are strong and their power terrific. My ears take in strange cries that come not from an earthly throat and visions dance before my eyes whose very nature and habit appal me and fill my soul with dark horror. I know now what these may be and what, if they were to receive the touch of the dark one, they might become. It is my intention to destroy them by fire and by water and by the power of the mother church. Would that I had never set eyes upon them for no more will sleep come unto me a blessed healer.’” The Professor slammed shut the book. “The illustration of the bean is still clear in Murrel’s hand, there can be no mistake.”

Pooley was silent. The Professor’s voice had induced in him a state of semi-hypnosis. What it all meant was still unclear but that there was a distinctly unsavoury taint to the beans was certain.

“Where are the other four?” said the Professor.

“Archroy has them,” said Pooley promptly.

“I do not fully understand the implications myself,” said the Professor. “These beans, it would seem, are objects of grim omen – their appearance at various intervals in history always precede times of great ill, plague, war, famine and the like. On each occasion a dark figure to whom in some inexplicable way these five beans appear to owe some allegiance is always mentioned – what his ultimate purpose may be I shudder to think.” The Professor crossed himself.

Upon the verandah, shielded by the trellis work of honeysuckle, a tramp of hideous aspect and sorry footwear watched the Professor with eyes that glowed faintly in the late twilight. He ran a nicotine-stained finger across a cultivated rose and watched in silence as the petals withered beneath his touch. Mouthing something in a long-dead tongue he slipped away down the garden path and melted into the gathering darkness.

Jim Pooley sat upon his favourite seat before the Memorial Library, deep in thought. It was nearing midnight and growing decidedly cold. Above him a proud full moon swam amongst shredded clouds and the stars came and went, wormholes in the wooden floor of heaven. Jim turned up the collar of his tweed jacket and sat, shoulders hunched and hands lost in his bottomless trouser pockets.

All this bean business had become a little too much for him. After all, he’d only gone around to the Professor to get the damn thing identified. This was Brentford in the twentieth century, not some superstitious medieval village in the grip of witch mania. Pandora’s Box indeed! Jim searched about for his tobacco tin, and the clock struck twelve. The search proved fruitless and Pooley recalled placing the tin upon the Professor’s mantelpiece while he was asking the old man for a refill of the sherry decanter.

Jim sighed dismally. It had not been a very successful night, all things considered. His tobacco growing dry on the fireplace whilst his bean lay valueless in its glass prison. Pooley thought back over all that the Professor had said. Could the old boy be pulling a fast one? Jim had left the bean there after all, and no money had changed hands. Possibly the Professor had instantly recognized the bean as an object of great value and dragged up all this Phaseolus Satanicus stuff simply to put the wind up him. Jim scratched the stubble upon his chin.

No, that couldn’t be it, the Professor had been genuinely shocked when he saw the bean and it was most certainly the same as the illustration in the ancient book. No-one could make up stories like that on the spur of the moment could they? And he had known of the existence of the four others. All this intense thinking coupled with the intake of two pints of fine sherry was beginning to give Jim a headache. Better to forget the bean then, let the Professor do what he pleased with it.

Pooley rose and stretched his arms. Another thought suddenly crossed his mind. “If these beans are dangerous,” the thought said, “then it would be best to inform Archroy of this fact as the four he carries with him may possibly do him harm.”

Jim sat down again upon the bench.

“But if you tell him,” said another thought, “then he will ask how you know all this and you will have to confess to the abduction of the bean from Omally’s allotment.”

This thought did not please Pooley whatsoever.

“But he is your friend,” said the first thought in an angelic voice, “and you would feel very guilty should any ill befall him that you are empowered to prevent.” Pooley nodded and rose once more to his feet.

“Better not to get involved,” said the second thought. “Who is to say that the Professor’s suppositions are correct?” Pooley bit his lip. It was all a terrible dilemma. He let the angelic thought have the final word upon the matter.

“If the Professor had told you that the bean was that of a plant which bears gold doubloons upon its boughs each spring you would have believed him. You went there to take advantage of his boundless knowledge, did you not?” Pooley nodded meekly. “So if the Professor says that the beans are evil and must be destroyed you would do well to follow his advice.” Pooley seemed satisfied by this and took some steps into the direction of home. Then as if jerked to a standstill by a rope he stopped.

“But then I must somehow get those four other beans from Archroy,” he said. “And in some way that I will not implicate myself in any duplicity.” Jim Pooley wished with all his might that he had never set eyes upon any beans whatever, be they baked, curried, buttered, soya or magic to the slightest degree.

A new thought came to Pooley, one whose voice he did not recognize but one which was so sound in logic that Pooley felt very grateful that it had chosen his head to come into. “Why don’t you go around to Archroy’s now, while he is away on the night shift, gain entrance to his house and remove the four magic beans?” The angelic thought had some doubts about this but was finally cowed into submission.

“I do this deed for Archroy,” said Jim Pooley. “A noble venture for which I expect to receive no thanks, as by its very nature the perpetrator of the deed must remain anonymous.”

Jim girded up his loins and strode purposefully into the direction of Archroy’s house. It was seldom indeed that a noble thought entered his head and the entry of this one filled Jim with reckless confidence. He would climb on to Archroy’s garage and pull down the aluminium ladder, then go round and try all the upper windows, one of which must surely have been left open. Once inside, if the beans were there, he would most certainly find them.