(Continuing the narrative which began here.)

Chapter 5: Which Describes a Short Visit to a Drive-Through Pierogi Parlor.

 

WE DROVE THROUGH East Hills, East Liberty, East Pittsburgh, Edgewood, Ellicott City, and Emsworth, in alphabetical order. We were nearly at Esplen when we realized we had skipped Economy, so we had to go back and do it all over again. It was very late when we finally got to Esplen, but luckily the Pierogi Palace is open all night. We pulled up to the drive-through menu.

“Yinz ready to order?” came a voice over the loudspeaker.

Mr. Higgins spoke clearly and distinctly into the head of Pierogi the Clown. “Could you perhaps suggest something?”

“We got pierogies,” said the voice. “We got pierogies stuffed with anchovies, apples, artichoke hearts, bananas, basil, beets, burdock, cardoon (which is really the same thing), caviar, cheese, cilantro, cumin, damson plums, dandelion leaves, eels, eggs, fennel, figs, garam masala, goose liver, gunpowder tea, ham, herring, hog bellies, ice cream, India rubber, jujubes, kale, lamb, London broil, mango, marshmallow, mushrooms, near beer, noodles, oranges, oregano, peaches, pears, prawns, quinces, radishes, rose hips, salmon, sole, sushi, tamarind, tarragon, tripe, turnips, umbrine, uranoscopus, veal, venison, vodka, walnuts, watermelon, wintergreen, ximenia (ha!), yak meat, yams, yogurt, zabaglione, zucchini, zwieback, or any combination. Yinz made up your minds, or yinz want to hear the list again, specially since I left out potatoes?”

I leaned over Mr. Higgins and spoke as clearly as I could into the clown head. “Actually, my friend Mr. Harding, who comes here every day, recommended this place to me. I was thinking of having his usual.”

“You mean the potato, tripe, and cheese, with extra cheese and a cup of butter on the side?” asked the clown head.

“Sure,” I answered.

“Five twenty-three at the window,” said the clown head.

“I presume,” said Mr. Higgins, “that you have some procedure in mind that does not involve consuming such a concoction.”

“Watch and learn,” I said confidently. I was in my element now.

We pulled up to the window, and a middle-aged woman opened the glass. “Five twenty-three,” she said.

I handed a ten to Mr. Higgins, who handed it to the woman in the window.

“So I’ll bet you see a lot of Mr. Harding,” I said while she was making change.

“Too much lately,” the woman responded.

“Really? You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell him. When do you expect him next?”

“Oh, he’s here now,” she replied. “In that blue car over there.” She indicated a small Korean hatchback.

“Well, that’s lucky!” Actually, I could hardly believe my luck.

“Of course, he’s dead now,” she continued, “so he probably won’t be interested in what you had to tell him. Hope it wasn’t important.”

“Dead?” Suddenly I didn’t feel so lucky.

“Yeah, he keeled over about three hours ago. Heart attack, I’d say. We’re just waiting for the cops to come and redd up the mess. Not surprising, what with him eating potato, cheese, and tripe with extra cheese and a cup of butter on the side all the time. That stuff would kill a horse. Here’s your potato, cheese, and tripe with extra cheese and a cup of butter on the side.”

Well, that was depressing. Mr. Higgins carefully handed me the order, holding it only with his fingertips. I took it and set it on my lap, which was the only place where it would fit in the Bantam.

We parked next to Harding’s car.

“Something of a disappointment,” Mr. Higgins said. “Still, if he did abscond with the case and the cash, it is very likely that the police will find them at his residence, or perhaps even in his car.”

“No.” I was pretty sure of myself. “The first thing an absconder does is find a place to stash the loot. He knows his house and his car will be searched.” I spoke from experience. Just by coincidence, my cases number 101 and number 102 had also been cases of missing cash. In each case I searched the absconder’s apartment and car first. I never did figure out where either of them stashed the loot, but I did know it wasn’t there.

“Anyway,” I continued, there’s nowhere to hide anything in that little hatchback. You can see right into the trunk, and there’s nothing there but a bunch of automatic weapons and a street map of Ottawa. Nothing interesting at all.”

“So what do you intend to do?” Mr. Higgins asked.

“I’m hungry.” I looked down at the lumpy dumplings in my lap. “You want to eat this?”

“No,” Mr. Higgins replied with an involuntary sneer. “Thank you, but no.”

“Neither do I. Let’s go to the Hagia Sophia Diner. They sell food there.”

 

Proceed to Chapter 6.

(Continuing the narrative which began here.)

Chapter 4: In Which I Am a Member of the Amanuenses’ Club

 

A VALET GREETED us in front of the club. “Good evening, Mr. Higgins,” he said as we got out of the tiny Bantam. I thought at first that he was talking to me, since my name was supposed to be Higgins now, but he seemed to be talking to the bowler man instead. The same thing happened inside: a liveried attendant met us at the door and quite clearly greeted the bowler man as “Mr. Higgins.”

As we walked through the walnut-paneled foyer, I turned to the bowler man.

“Did he say your name was Higgins?” I asked.

“Yes, he did.”

“But didn’t you say my name was supposed to be Higgins?”

“Yes, Mr. Higgins.”

“Well, why on earth did you give me your name?”

“Every member of the Amanuenses’ Club is named Higgins, Mr. Higgins. It spares us a certain amount of confusion.”

“So that fellow who met us at the door was named Higgins, too?”

“No, Mr. Higgins.”

“But I thought you said—”

“He is an employee, Mr. Higgins, not a member. Employees are not named Higgins.”

“I see. So what was his name, just out of curiosity?”

“Wiggins.”

“Wiggins?”

“Yes, Mr. Higgins. Employees are named Wiggins.” By this time we had entered a long walnut-paneled hallway, at the end of which was a tastefully elaborate door. “Now, Mr. Higgins, we are about to pass through the club reading room, and I should warn you that talking is prohibited, as indeed is noise of any sort.”

“So I shouldn’t say anything or stamp my feet too loud or anything like that?”

“You will not be able to, Mr. Higgins. The prohibition is enforced very strictly.” He opened the door and held it for me to enter. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to, but I did.

The room was just as walnutty as the rest of the building. Hundreds of newspapers in all languages hung from long dowels, and a few men in dark suits were reading some of them.

I suddenly noticed that my new shoes were making no sound at all on the walnut floor. They had been clattering as noisily as the bowler man’s in the hallway, but now I couldn’t hear a sound from either of us. I stamped my foot: still nothing. I did an improvised tap dance: not a sound. I turned to the bowler man to ask him what was going on, but I couldn’t hear my own voice, even though my mouth was forming words and I could feel vibrations in my throat. All the time, the newspaper readers kept reading, paying no attention to me at all.

Finally—and it couldn’t happen soon enough for me—we reached the end of the room and went through another door. I heard it close behind me, and I heard the very welcome clatter of my own shoes on the floor.

“Here we are, Mr. Higgins,” the bowler man announced. “Mr. Higgins has promised to meet us here. Mr. Higgins is the club vice-president, and he may be able to tell you something about Mr. Higgins, the Countess von Sturzhelm y Sombrero’s missing secretary.”

“I thought you said his name was Harding.”

“In the club his name is Higgins.”

Of course I had known that, but I must have forgotten it for a moment.

“Higgins, old man!” came a voice from the left. I turned and saw a gentleman in a dark suit entering by a side door.

The bowler man looked almost cheerful. “How are you, Mr. Higgins?” he said as the two Higginses shook hands. “Allow me to present Mr. Higgins, our newest member.”

Mr. Higgins extended his hand, and I shook it. “A great pleasure to meet you, Mr. Higgins,” he said, “and an even greater pleasure to welcome you to our club.”

“The pleasure is all mine, I assure you, Mr. Higgins.” Was that really my voice speaking those words?

“Well, I shan’t waste your time, Mr. Higgins,” said Mr. Higgins. “Mr. Higgins here tells me that you have expressed some concern over the apparent disappearance of Mr. Higgins, lately in the employ of the Countess Tatiana von Sturzhelm y Sombrero. I believe I may be able to render some slight assistance.

“Thank you, Mr. Higgins,” I replied to Mr. Higgins. “Mr. Higgins believes that Mr. Higgins may be involved in a small matter that concerns me.”

“Mr. Higgins is being too charitable, Mr. Higgins,” said Mr. Higgins. “The fact is that Mr. Higgins and I suspect that Mr. Higgins may have been involved in a crime of a particularly shameful sort.”

“That is a grave matter,” Mr. Higgins said gravely. “Perhaps the club president ought to be informed.”

“I agree,” Mr. Higgins replied. “I think Mr. Higgins ought to know.”

Mr. Higgins turned to me. “Well then, Mr. Higgins,” he said, “under these unusual circumstances, it would be appropriate that we consult the archives.” He stepped over to the wall and picked up a telephone handset. “Wiggins? Higgins here. I shall be bringing Mr. Higgins and Mr. Higgins to the archives to find some information on Mr. Higgins. Could you have Mr. Wiggins meet us there? Thank you.”

The archives were in a walnut paneled room at the end of another walnut-paneled hallway. The walls were lined with walnut file cabinets, each drawer bearing a label with the letter H on it. There must have been about a hundred H drawers in all. A small man in eighteenth-century livery was standing at attention in the center of the room, where there was a large reading desk and a pair of walnut chairs.

“Wiggins,” said Mr. Higgins, “could you please pull the file on Mr. Higgins?”

With a slight nod, Wiggins turned and marched to a drawer labeled “H.” He pulled it out about five feet, reached in near the back, and retrieved a file marked “HIGGINS.”

“Thank you, Wiggins,” said Mr. Higgins. He opened the file, and Mr. Higgins and I examined the contents.

“As you can see,” said Mr. Higgins, “we keep a considerable amount of information on each of our members. Naturally, we use this information to give all our members the comprehensive service they expect. For example, in the case of Mr. Higgins, we can see that his favorite color is red, and that he prefers his red in the burgundy range.”

We were looking at a single dark red sheet of paper on which the word “Higgins” was printed in large white letters.

“Now here,” Mr. Higgins continued, “is some information that may be of even more use to you. These are Mr. Higgins’ dietary requirements. As you can see, Mr. Higgins has a rare condition called DIS, or Dumpling Insufficiency Syndrome. His body cannot retain starch in sufficient quantities. He requires, therefore, a steady input of pierogies to survive. This requirement naturally limits his range of activity: he can survive only where pierogies are easily obtained in quantity.”

“Well, how many places are there like that?” I asked.

Here Mr. Higgins spoke up. “This club is one such place, of course: the members expect that all such needs will be met without fail. There are also certain Eastern European churches in the city well known for their pierogies, but only on certain days of the week. Aside, therefore, from this club, the only reliable sources are the drive-through pierogi parlors, and according to the file” (he indicated one sheet in particular) “Mr. Higgins’ favorite is the Pierogi Palace in Esplen.”

“That might indeed be useful information,” I said.

“At least,” said Mr. Higgins, “it gives us an approximate location for Mr. Higgins. If this information is correct (and the club archives have never been known to be wrong), then Mr. Higgins must be somewhere within a five-minute radius of Esplen.”

“Then perhaps, mr. Higgins,” Mr. Higgins said to me, “we ought to pay a visit to Esplen.”

“I agree,” I agreed. “And rather quickly, if we are to have a chance of apprehending Mr. Higgins.” Boy, there was something about this place that sure made me talk funny.

“Well, then,” said Mr. Higgins, “I am very glad to have been of service. —That will be all, Wiggins. Thank you. —Remember, Mr. Higgins, that the club archives are always at your disposal. I do hope that you and Mr. Higgins will be able to bring this unfortunate matter to a speedy conclusion.”

We thanked him, and Wiggins as well, and left to investigate the Pierogi Palace.

As we waited for Wiggins the valet to bring the Bantam, I asked Mr. Higgins a question that had been preying on my mind.

“So, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s your real name?”

“Higgins, sir,” he answered.

“No, I mean outside the club.”

“Higgins, sir.”

“You mean your real name is Higgins?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “A peculiar coincidence, sir.”

Here the Bantam arrived, and we squeezed ourselves into it and set off for Esplen.

 

Proceed to Chapter 5.

(Continuing the narrative which began here.)

Chapter 3: In Which a Little More of Dr. Boli’s Town House Reveals Itself.

 

INSTEAD OF TURNING back toward the right, we turned left at the main hall, which went on for some distance before coming to an end at a perpendicular hallway. Here we turned right, and suddenly we were in what appeared to be a late-Victorian shopping arcade. On both sides of the hall, tidy storefronts bore neatly lettered signs: “Geo. Bruce, Typefounder”; “Wm. Bartram, Travel Agent”; “J. Reynolds, Portraits & Still Lives”; “Parson Brown’s Tropical Fruits”; “Heyser Pianos & Reed Organs.”

“Dr. Boli believers in maintaining a close relationship with his tradesmen,” the bowler man explained. “As the maintenance of this house requires a considerable staff, Dr. Boli has found it more convenient to induce his favorite tradesmen and artisans to remove their establishments to his house, where the large staff alone provides them with considerable patronage, and Dr. Boli’s own orders have made a number of them comparatively wealthy.”

The hall was not quite as busy as one of the city arcades, but there was a lot of traffic in it. Even the type foundry appeared to have two or three customers. We walked past a number of shops until we came to one marked “B. Brummel, Tailor.” We went in the door and were greeted by the most ostentatiously obsequious man I’ve ever met.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said to me, “and a particularly good afternoon to you, sir” to the bowler man. “How may we be of assistance?”

I looked around, but there was only the one of him.

“Mr. Higgins is the new undersecretary,” the bowler man said, indicating me with an elegant wave of his hand. “He requires a wardrobe commensurate with his position.”

“Oh, indubitably, sir. And may we say, sir” (he turned to me) “how honored we are to be of service to a new member of the A. C.”

“Thank you,” I said distractedly. I was still looking for another person to account for the “we.”

“Now, what” (he turned back to the bowler man, and began to talk about me as if I were a piece of furniture) “would Mr. Higgins require of us?”

The bowler man gave him a list of specifications that meant nothing to me; but they must have been clear enough to the first-person-plural man, who kept nodding and saying “We understand perfectly, sir.” In an hour or two I was dressed in a dark suit with a matching bowler and umbrella.

“Oh, yes, sir,” the first-person-plural man said, addressing me for the first time since he’d begun dressing me. “A remarkable improvement, if we may say so. You look every inch the perfect gentleman’s gentleman’s gentleman.”

“Not quite every inch,” the bowler man replied. “There is still the question of Mr. Higgins’ shoes to be addressed.”

“True, sir. We had not mentioned the shoes, sir, because that—alas!—is beyond the reach of our influence. We can, however, recommend Mr. Romanov just down the way. Mr. Romanov, sir, is reliable. ‘Reliable’ is precisely the word that always springs to mind when we think of Mr. Romanov.”

A visit to Nikolai Davidovich Romanov, The Finest Shoes in the Entire Boli Mansion, ended with a pair of shoes on my feet that Prince Edward might have envied. They were exactly the same as the shoes the bowler man was wearing. I had become a bowler man myself.

“And now,” said the original bowler man, “one thing more is requisite, I believe. You must learn to make the proper use of your newly acquired appearance. The finishing touch, as it were, is deportment.”

A few doors down from Mr. Romanov’s shop was a shop whose elaborately scribbled sign read “M. Broadwood, Specialist in Deportment Education.”

“Deportment,” Mr. Broadwood told me, “is, as it were, the finishing touch.” He spoke in perfectly formed syllables, and I had the feeling you couldn’t get the man drunk enough to slur a single consonant. “We cannot learn it in a day, or in a year. A lifetime is not sufficient. We can only approach closer to the ideal, which is ever out of our reach. However, if you will give me an hour of your time, I can assure you that at the end of that hour you will no longer be so easily mistaken for a chimpanzee.”

Well, I told him, that was reassuring.

He began by showing me how to walk. All these years I thought I knew how to walk, but I was wrong. It was all in the shoulders, as Mr. Broadwood explained to me. True, some attention must be given to the feet, and to laying down the heel with quiet authority, and then rolling smoothly over the ball of the foot until finally the toe leaves the ground and the foot is brought forward for the next step. But it is the shoulders that carry the head, and it is the head that is always the focus of attention. It must not bob up and down like a cork in a typhoon, Mr. Broadwood said. It must be carried straight and level, so that if one could see only the head, one would assume that the rest of the body was on wheels rather than on legs. I practiced walking with my shoulders in the approved positions until Mr. Broadwood pronounced himself satisfied.

Then we moved on to hats. I learned when one may wear a hat, when one may not, when one raises the hat, when one touches the brim, how one holds the hat when one is not wearing it, and how to judge whether the hat was on the head at precisely the correct angle.

After hats, umbrellas; and there was certainly as much to learn about them as there was about hats. One held the umbrella, not by the handle, but just above the midpoint; one must be careful that the umbrella swings in a narrow arc as one is walking, so that one does not impale passing pedestrians; one must keep the point in front, never behind, where it might get itself into trouble.

After an hour in the care of Mr. Broadwood, I might not have been a real bowler man, but I had to admit that I felt much more comfortable in the suit.

“And now,” said the bowler man, “I believe you are ready to be introduced to the Club. Dr. Boli has kindly allowed us the use of his Ausitn, if you will follow me to the garage.”

Dr. Boli’s garage must have covered about an acre; it was filled with automobiles from every era, and a few carriages as well. Every vehicle looked new, although some of them, like the Stanley, must have been a hundred years old. We passed one luxurious car after another, until we finally came to the Austin.

It wasn’t quite what I had expected. In most respects it looked like a typical car from the early 1930s, except that the scale was all wrong. It was about half the size of an ordinary car.

“This is it?” I asked with a contemptuous wave of my umbrella.

“The Austin Bantam,” the bowler man said, “is one of Dr. Boli’s favorite automobiles. It appeals to his regard for efficiency. Dr. Boli prefers to use as little fuel as possible, except on formal occasions.”

So we crawled into the little car, with the bowler man driving. I’d like to be able to tell you that it was surprisingly roomy inside, but it wasn’t. It was just as tiny inside as it was outside.

We drove through Shaler, Sharpsburg, Sheraden, Squirrel Hill, and Stowe, in alphabetical order, until we finally came to a neighborhood I didn’t remember ever having seen before. We were on a street lined with fine buildings, and many of them bore brass plaques identifying them as clubs or associations. We passed the Lempriere Society, the Blythe Fellows’ Convivial Association, the Circle of Fifths, the Merry Steamfitters, the Grave & Sober Steamfitters, the Young Women’s Cartesian Athletic Association, and the Opium Eaters’ Temperance Union before we finally came to the Amanuenses’ Club, which was neither the grandest nor the most modest of the lot, but somewhere tastefully in the middle.

 

Proceed to Chapter 4.

(Continuing the narrative which began here.)

Chapter 2: Which Hardly Succeeds in Containing Henricus Albertus Boli, Ll.D.

THE FOYER, OR entry, or train station, or whatever you want to call it, was like some set from a Cecil B. de Mille movie, the kind of set Samson would pull down in the last reel. I was wearing my rubber soles, of course, but the bowler man’s footsteps echoed like fireworks in the huge and otherwise silent space. Everything was marble: marble floors, marble walls, marble ceilings, marble stairs, marble columns, marble furniture, marble light fixtures, marble radiators. Over in one corner a couple of marble people were reading a marble newspaper.

After a long hike, we came to a big marble door on the left.

“This is Dr. Boli’s library, sir. I must ask you to prepare yourself.”

“What does that mean?”

“Most people find their first visit to Dr. Boli’s library—disconcerting.”

So I prepared myself. I didn’t know what that meant, but I did it anyway. The door swung open, and the bowler man led me in.

The room was about as wide as two cathedrals side by side. The light was bright; most of it came from skylights about thirty feet up in the ceiling. Enormous windows lined the walls, and between the windows shelves of books went from the floor to the thirty-foot ceiling. I couldn’t see the other end of the room—as far as I could tell, it just went on forever.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something moving. I looked, and for a while I just couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Finally I managed to process it all. It was a big wooden stairway on wheels, about twenty-five feet high, and it was moving slowly between the shelves, drawn by a team of two mules. Two men sat in a sort of cabin below the stairs, one driving the mules and the other apparently giving directions. A woman was standing about halfway up the steps. As I looked farther down the room, I could see several more of these mule-drawn stairways, some moving and some stopped beside shelves.

“This way, sir.” The voice of the bowler man brought me—well, I almost said back to reality, but that doesn’t sound quite right. He was about ten yards ahead of me, which reminded me that I had stopped walking. I was a little bit embarrassed. Yes, it was true that I didn’t see mule-drawn staircases in a library every day, but there was no reason to let him know that.

After we had walked a mile or so, I noticed in the distance a man sitting in an enormous leather chair. He was probably only five minutes’ walk ahead of us by now, and we seemed to be heading in his direction.

“We shall be approaching Dr. Boli soon,” the bowler man announced, in the same sort of way that a British Airways pilot might announce that we were coming up on Heathrow. “Before we approach him, there are a number of Dr. Boli’s preferences of which you should be made aware. At his age, Dr. Boli receives few visitors, and her prefers that the few whom he chooses to receive not disturb his routine inordinately.”

“How old is the old doc?” I asked.

“Dr. Boli is at present two hundred twenty-three years old, but I should point out that he has the strength and vitality of a man half his age. Nevertheless, abiding by Dr. Boli’s preferences will make your visit much more pleasant, both for him and for you.

“The first is that the name of Polk shall not be mentioned. Dr. Boli had strong opinions on the Mexican War, and he prefers not to be reminded of that melancholy conflict.” The bowler man spoke very gravely. “It is especially important not to speak of Zachary Taylor to Dr. Boli. A few years ago, a visitor made that mistake, and the poor man did not recover for a month.”

“You mean Dr. Boli was out of commission for a month just because some guy said ‘Zachary Taylor’?”

“No, sir. You misunderstand me. It was the visitor who did not recover for a month.”

I raised an eyebrow—a trick I’d been practicing for months. “Guess I’d better watch my step. Does the old boy have any other political opinions I should know about? Don’t want to set him off.”

“Dr. Boli is registered as a Federalist,” the bowler man answered, “but, as his party has recently lost some of its wonted influence, he has not taken a keen interest in politics of late. He stopped reading the newspapers in protest against their support of the Mexican War, and since then has heard little of current affairs. Nevertheless, he does have strong opinions on some matters, and he stands by his pledge to give sanctuary to any fugitive slave who escapes across the Mason-Dixon Line.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I remarked. “We see eye to eye on that one.”

“There is one other preference of Dr. Boli’s of which you should be aware, sir. Dr. Boli is violently opposed to coconut.”

“Violently?”

“I believe that is the appropriate adverb, sir. —Here we are. Dr. Boli, this is the gentleman for whom you sent.”

The man in the huge leather chair stood slowly, though it didn’t seem to cost him much effort. He was very old and very pale, but he gripped my hand firmly when he shook it. Then he stood still for a moment, and then he sat without saying a word. He picked up the book he’d been reading and resumed reading it, leaving me standing in awkward silence. Since he held the book over his face, I had plenty of time to read the title that was stamped in gold on the spine:

Hermanni Venemosi Commentarii ad Primos Quattuor Milia Octoginta Undeviginti Psalmos

At last the bowler man broke the long silence. “Dr. Boli would like to thank you for visiting him on such short notice. When he heard that you had become involved with the Countess Tatiana von Klapphut y Sombrero, he expressed some concern for your well-being.”

“Say,” I said, “I thought you told me her name was—”

“Indeed I did, but you must understand that we were in a public place. The name of Klapphut cannot be spoken in public. The consequences would be most unpleasant.

“I see,” I said. I seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

“Dr. Boli believes that the Countess is a difficult woman, as he expresses it. He believes that caution is in order in any dealings with her.”

At this Dr. Boli looked up for a moment; then he turned a page and continued reading.

“So Dr. Boli—” I paused to see whether Dr. Boli would respond, but he still ignored both of us. “So Dr. Boli” (I began again) “believes that the Countess Crapshoot y Sonora poses some sort of danger to me?”

“The countess is a woman of considerable intellectual force, but Dr. Boli believes that her conscience is less developed than her intellect.”

“I see.” There I went again. “So—if he doesn’t mind my asking—what is Dr. Boli’s relationship with the Countess?”

Suddenly Dr. Boli slammed his book shut, flung it on the floor, and sat with his head resting on his hand like a sulking child.

The bowler man drew himself up to his full dignity. “Sir,” he declared, “the Countess Tatiana von Klapphut y Sombrero was the only woman Dr. Boli has ever loved.”

“Wrong!” announced a high and piercing tenor voice. It was a moment before I realized that the voice came from Dr. Boli himself.

The bowler man cleared his throat. “I meant to say, aside from his mother, of course.”

This answer appeared to satisfy Dr. Boli: his chin fell back into his hand and he resumed his sulking.

“You can see, then, that Dr. Boli has a more than superficial acquaintance with the Countess, and it is from his position of superior knowledge that he issues his warning. The countess is not to be trusted: this is not merely Dr. Boli’s opinion, but a demonstrated fact. She is a breaker of vows and a bearer of false witness. She rarely speaks the truth, and then only when it serves her short-term interests better than a lie would serve. She is cruel, avaricious, intemperate, and ill-natured. In short, she is a dangerous woman, and such a one as you might be better advised to avoid.”

“I see,” I said. “And that’s what Dr. Boli brought me here to tell me?

“No, sir.”

“No?” I had a pretty speech all ready about how I could take care of myself and didn’t need his help, and it would be a shame not to use it.

“No, sir. Dr. Boli is convinced that you believe you are able to take care of yourself and need no help from him. It would therefore be of no use to attempt to dissuade you from the course of action on which you have doubtless already settled.”

“Yeah, well, you’re probably right about that,” I agreed. “Because I can take care of myself, and I don’t need his help.” There. I got to use the speech.

“Dr. Boli has therefore determined to aid you in a more direct way. He understands that you have been retained to search for a certain missing case containing $35,462,817.98 in cash. Is that correct?”

“Roughly,” I admitted.

“Then Dr. Boli has certain information to impart which may be of material assistance in your search.

“And what’s that?”

“Dr. Boli does not believe the money was lost.” The bowler man glanced left and right as if to make sure no one was listening, but all the mule teams were too far away to hear anything. “Dr. Boli believes it was stolen.”

“And what leads him to that conclusion?” I was trying not to be sarcastic, but I’m not very good at not being sarcastic.

“I am embarrassed to say, sir.”

“Oh, you don’t have to be embarrassed here. We’re all friends, aren’t we?”

“I suppose so. Very true, sir. The Countess Tatiana von Klapphut y Sombrero formerly employed a personal secretary, a Mr. Harding, to attend to her business and her day-to-day affairs, nuch as I do for Dr. Boli; but without, alas, the same devoted integrity. Mr. Harding has been missing since three days ago; and that the case is also missing gives Dr. Boli grounds for the gravest suspicion.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I admitted.

“For that reason, Dr. Boli has authorized me to conduct you to the last known location of Mr. Harding.”

At this point, Dr. Boli suddenly stood up from his sulking and extended his hand toward me. I glanced over at the bowler man, but his face was the same complete blank it always was. So I shook Dr. Boli’s hand, and he resumed his sulking position.

I stood there for an awkward moment, but nothing seemed to be happening. So I turned back to the bowler man.

“Our interview with Dr. Boli is at an end,” he said. “If you will follow me, sir, I can conduct you to the Amanuenses’ Club.”

He began to lead me back through the library, and I followed. After a while I caught up with him and walked beside him.

“So does the old doc have trouble talking?” I asked.

“No, sir. Dr. Boli is perfectly capable of speaking for himself, but his immense wealth relieves him of that necessity.”

“I see. So where are we going?”

“To a certain modest club of which I am a member. It is known as the Amanuenses’ Club, and membership is restricted to persons who serve as private secretaries. For that reason, sir, it will be necessary to make a few adjustments.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “What do you mean by ‘adjustments’?”

“First, sir, you will become—merely on paper—an employee of Dr. Boli. Your name will be Higgins. You must understand that my fidelity to the charter of the club would be irreparably breached if I were to introduce you as a secretary when you did not in fact hold that position.”

“So you’re going to change my name and my occupation. Anything else?”

The bowler man cleared his throat. “One hesitates to mention it, sir, but…your wardrobe.”

“You don’t like my clothes?”

“They are not suitable, sir. That is to say, they do not meet the minimum standards as set forth in the charter.”

“Well, this is the best I’ve got. I don’t have the budget for stuff like that.”

“Certainly not, sir. Dr. Boli understands that perfectly, and he has agreed to provide the requisite vestments at his own expense.”

“I see,” I said. There didn’t seem to be much else to say, so we walked on without saying anuthing, past several mule-drawn staircases, until at last we got back to the main hall.

“This way, sir,” the bowler man said.

“By the way,” I asked, “do you have a name?”

“Yes,” the bowler man said.

Well, that settled that.

 

Proceed to Chapter 3.

A new detective novel to be serialized over the next few months.

 

Chapter 1: Which Contains Bean Sprouts and Spanakopita.

“IF A THING is lost,” I said, flicking the bean sprouts out of my hair with an easy self-confidence, “then the thing to do is to find it.”

“You agree, then?” She tossed another bowl of bean sprouts at my head, but I ducked and this one missed.

“On my usual terms,” I agreed. “Fifty per cent up front, fifty per cent after thirty days, and fifty per cent when the job is complete.”

She thought about that for a moment, and then lobbed a final bowl of bean sprouts in my direction. It missed me again. “That is acceptable,” she declared. “But remember this: the next time you serve me vegetables, I expect them to be fully grown vegetables.”

With that, she turned on her heel—which is rather a neat trick in high heels; you should try it some time—and left me.

She left me with so many questions. What did she really want from me? Why the pathological aversion to sprouts? What was her name? Where would I send the bill? I realized that I ought to have asked some of these questions before she left, but now it was too late.

Nevertheless, I had a job: that much was clear. I called my secretary to clean up the bean sprouts; but no one answered, and I recalled ruefully that I had no secretary. So I left them where they were. Perhaps they would root in the carpet and grow into beans.

Now that I had a job, the first thing to do was to make a note of it in my memorandum book, since it was after all a thing to be remembered. I pulled the tattered notebook from my pocket, arranged the tatters in order, and wrote on the first blank page:

 

Job no. 103

 

(I had begun numbering my jobs at 101.)

 

Category: General

Description: Locate missing case

Remarks: Case described as containing $35,462,817.98 in cash. Client states that case was left to her by her beloved great-uncle & thus has sentimental value.

 

Now that I had made my official memorandum, it was time to get to work.

The first thing I did was to call the Hagia Sophia Diner. I asked Ludmilla to look in the lost-and-found box, because that’s where things always seem to turn up when I lose them. But no luck: there was no case in there with $35,462,817.98 in cash in it. All she found was a large bag with two million in it, and that in negotiable bonds, not in cash. Ludmilla said I could have it if I wanted it, but I told her to put it back in the box. What good would it do me? I knew my client couldn’t be fooled that easily.

Well, that was it, then. I was out of ideas. —Not quite completely: I did have the really inspired idea of ordering a spanakopita to go while I was on the phone. But other than that, I came up blank. I sighed, put on my hat, and headed for the Hagia Sophia to pick up my spanakopita.

“You need more protein than that,” Ludmilla said when she was ringing up my order.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” I told her. “What I need and what I want are two different things.”

“Suit yourself” was her witty rejoinder. “But if I were you, I’d add one of our lamb shakes to your order, or maybe some liver spice cake for dessert.”

I thanked her for her advice, but I didn’t change my order. I’d had liver spice cake for breakfast.

While I sat on a bench in the park and ate my spanakopita, my keen eye continued to scour the landscape for clues. But it was just an ordinary day at the park. Over on the green, a few Parthians were playing cricket. Up the street a bit, a taxi stopped to let out a woman with a small wallaby on a leash. On the playground, two third-graders were trying to sell each other insurance. The only remotely unusual thing I saw was one suspicious-looking character hanging around in the park.

He was dressed in a dark suit, with a matching bowler and umbrella—rather unusual garb for an afternoon at the park in my city. But what really made me suspicious was the way he was standing five feet in front of me and saying “Excuse me, sir” over and over again in a louder and louder voice.

“Were you talking to me?” I demanded at last.

“Yes, sir,” the man said.

“Well, spill it, then. What’s on your mind?”

He cleared his throat. “Please pardon this intrusion, sir, but my employer, Dr. Henricus Albertus Boli, would like a few words with you.”

“Wouldn’t everybody?” I laughed a professional laugh that did not involve my steely eyes. “But what’s it worth to me?”

“Dr. Boli has been given to understand that you have been retained by the Countess Tatiana von Sturzhelm y Sombrero on a question involving a certain case that she seems to have misplaced.”

“What’s it to you?” Never give anything away: that’s my policy.

“If you do not mind accompanying me, sir, Dr. Boli has certain information to impart which he believes you may find material in your search.”

“What sort of information?” I asked suspiciously. It pays to be suspicious. I have that motto framed behind my desk.

“Information,” the man explained, “which Dr. Boli believes you may find material in your search.”

Well, that was more like it. “Okay, I’ll go with you, as long as you’re paying for the bus.”

“If you don’t mind, sir, it might be more expeditious to use Dr. Boli’s car, which he has sent with me for that purpose.”

“Lead the way, then.” I stood up from my bench.

“I have taken the liberty of summoning the driver already, sir.”

Just as he finished saying that, the biggest limousine I’d ever seen rolled up to the curb. It looked like someone had taken an ordinary limousine and tied the ends to two freight trains pulling in opposite directions.

“Some car the old man’s got,” I remarked with a little less indifference than I usually try to project.

“I beg your pardon?” The man in the bowler saw what I was looking at and almost smiled. “Oh, no, sir, that is not Dr. Boli’s car. Dr. Boli prefers to be more discreet.”

The light changed, and the big limousine drove on.

“Here is Dr. Boli’s car now, sir.”

I looked down the street and saw the front of a Lincoln from the late 1930s. The grille passed us, and then for a long time there was nothing but hood. At last a window came, and I could see some sort of driver inside. Then more windows, and finally there was a door in front of us just as the car rolled to a stop. The man in the bowler opened the door for me and seemed to expect me to get in.

I think the car was even bigger on the inside. The seat I sat in was really more of an easy chair, and it had a sort of built-in reading lamp behind it. Along the side wall of the car, under the windows, were rows of old books behind glass.

“This is discreet?” I asked.

“Dr. Boli generally finds that people do not notice this car unless it is pointed out to them.”

“I see,” I said. I didn’t see, but I wanted him to think I saw.

We drove through Banksville, Beechview, Bellevue, Blawnox, Bloomfield, Bon Air, and Brookline, all in alphabetical order. At last we came to what I thought must be some university campus, with great big stone buildings covered with Boston ivy.

“Here we are,” said the man with the bowler. “This is Dr. Boli’s town house.”

“Are you sure it isn’t his town?” I remarked with my trademark rapier wit.

“Quite sure,” the man in the bowler said. “Dr. Boli’s country house appears as a city on county planning maps, but his town house has no separate municipal status.”

“Oh,” I said. There didn’t seem to be much else to say.

The car stopped in front of the main building. The door of the car opened, and I was obviously expected to get out. So I did. You can’t say I don’t do what’s expected of me.

“Dr. Boli will meet us in the library,” the bowler man said, “if you would care to follow me, sir.”

I followed him up the marble steps, under a forest of columns, and through a pair of giant doors with all kinds of carvings on them. Then I had to stop and let my eyes adjust to the light inside. When I had done that, I had to stop a little more and let my brain adjust to what my eyes were seeing.

 

Proceed to Chapter 2.