I
was organizing my papers back in my room when all of a sudden the door opened. As I turned around I saw my friend, Sheerluck Nipp-Nock, the private detective enter.
He
quietly looked at the folding-screen behind me while his staring eyes
lingered on me, then burst into laughter through his molar.
“Well!
And again, well!” he said sitting down.
Cold
sweat ran along my spine but I controlled myself and addressed him
with an old sort of kind of friendliness.
“Where
were you?” I asked him, but knew immediately that I was not
truthful. Sheerluck suddenly looked at me sideways then in a
seemingly indifferent tone took a newspaper out of his pocket. I
listened. This extraordinary person attached a tiny rubber-ball to
his teeth and licked the margins of the paper.
“No
results,” he grumbled. “No results.”
He
sniffed at the letters and gave me a sad smile. I was becoming
curious.
“What
is it?” I asked. He looked at me silently giving no answer then
started to speak in a monotonous cold tone.
“Your
right shoe-sole is as black as your little finger on your left hand.
You were at 79 Steam-engine Street today, weren't you, with a civil
servant from the railway?”
I
almost fainted from surprise.
“No,
I wasn't there” I responded astonished, “how do you know that I
wasn't there?”
He
tossed my reply aside with a tired smile.
“Oh,
please, it is quite simple. It's nothing, just a little observation,
nothing extraordinary.”
All
the same . . . it is unbelievable!” I cried out. “How did you
know that I was not in that very building of 79?”
“You
yourself will be surprised to learn how simple it was. When I
arrived, you see, I met an old woman on the stairs surrounded by her
pupils. Her husband works in a gas factory and the street is paved
with stones. Yesterday was Thursday, the seventeenth, and the
horse-races are usually on Thursdays . . . The connection, I think,
is clear now . . .”
“No,”
I murmured timidly.
“Then
I won't even continue.”
And
he looked at the ceiling fingers drumming, legs crossed. You had to
admire him.
“And
what's in the paper?” I restarted the conversation.
“Here,
read it,” and he tossed it to me.
“Well,
interesting case, well.”
The
following item on page five under the column “Miscellaneous”
caught my attention:
Unusual
murder on Rombach Street. The police are investigating an
unusual murder in utmost secrecy. Two and a half corpses were found
in the basement of 90 Rombach Street. One of them was still alive.
The missing half of the other corpse that was baked and put in a box
lined with mayonnaise was mailed by unknown criminals to the address
of L.L. Leopold Goldberger via Pomaz Express. The corpse was found in
the basement, it had no trace of violence: no wounds or strangulation
marks, it was of an average built person with perfect lungs, normal
pulse, good eyes, tauglich ohne Gebrech. The corpse suggests a forty
or forty-five-years old person who used to speak both English and
German. An empty glass and a floating cork with two pins lying across
it were found near the head on the floor. Before committing the
murder, the criminals shaved the soles of the victim and painted two
question marks on them with watercolour. There were also three nails
on the basement wall; a silk cord was wrapped around one of them, the
end of the cord was glued with wax to one of the nostrils. The
janitor says that he had not heard anything, but it seemed to him as
if someone played Chopin's Nocturne: the Träumerische Stunden on the
violin in the basement at one o'clock in the morning, about
the same time the murder was believed to have taken
place. Besides, someone blew his nose twice on the third floor at
three o'clock in the afternoon but the police didn't believe that it
was related to the murder in any way. The police are working on this
mysterious case in full force. No further details are released at
this time.
“Well?”
I asked my friend, Sheerluck, excitedly.
“Well,”
he said while putting his hand quietly into my pockets. “Well, the
police blundered. I find only one notable fact.”
“And
that is?”
“And
that is”, said Sheerluck as he turned to my ears, “that is, that
the Träumerische Stunden wasn't composed by Chopin at all.”
He
suddenly got up and took a hundred meters long rope, an entire
disguise of a tenor singer, two toothpicks, four or five Browning
rifles, a repeating fox terrier, a repeating lantern and a repeating
elementary school student out of his pocket, looked at them
thoughtfully and put them away.
“Well, and now, let's visit the
basement.”
We
walked along a narrow corridor that has nothing to do with this part
of our story at all. Moisture was dripping from the walls through
ghostly green light, like cold, damp candle-wax.
My
friend, Sheerluck Noch Nicht was walking stiffly with me, whistling
indifferently, fingering the ceiling with one hand and touching the
floor with the other as we passed along. He suddenly stopped and
pulling me back imitated with striking resemblance the peculiar
twittering of a Nilotic crocodile while repeating the word ‘well’
three times.
“It
is Bleyweiss, the Napoleon of crimes,” he whispered, and the next
moment a pair of powerful binoculars protruded from the hollow of his
eyes fixed at a specific target.
“This
was Bleyweiss I just mislead successfully. He almost recognized me,
but fortunately, I remembered this trick and outwitted the shrewd
fellow. I was able to make him believe that I was only a crocodile.”
I
looked at this extraordinary man with admiration and amazement.
“Look!”
he said, I will push a button and soon we are going to be outside on
the street.”
I
waited with bated breath. Sheerluck Noch Nicht quietly pushed a
button on his trousers, the trousers he always fastened to his
waistcoat out of an eccentric habit, three times. He firmly grabbed
my arm and up we ran the 15 flights of stairs. One more narrow
corridor, then we ascended one more flight of stairs, reached the
grate of the cellar, hammered for the janitor to open the door and
then, lo and behold, in two minutes we got outside to Radish Square,
where the house gate opened to.
Sheerluck
quietly buttoned up his trousers and coldly turned to me as if
nothing had happened.
“We
are out of danger at the moment,” he said. “If we are going to
smell cheese at the next corner, I will be at ease: we got even, this
time, with Bleyweiss, that scoundrel. And now, we are going to the
police in the matter of the murder on Tobacco Street.”
Chapter Two
In the vestibule of the police station excited running
around blocked even the tiniest corner. Sheerluck and I entered
through the trapdoor and immediately stepped into the chief
inspector's office.
“We can't disclose any information,” the chief
inspector frostily said.
Sheerluck furtively glanced at me. His look told me that
the chief inspector had been an old enemy of his since 1903. During
an investigation in which the chief inspector played a large but an
unsuccessful role, Sheerluck himself found within minutes such a
solution that the murderer confessed, in addition to the crime in
question, to two and a half incests, several occasions of
strangulation and a breach of promise.
“All the same,” Sheerluck pressed the chief inspector
further, “how did you start the investigation?”
“Well,” came the answer from the angry chief
inspector, there is no need to be sarcastic because this time our
investigation is going to succeed. First of all, we expect the killer
to return where he left the corpses just out of curiosity. We sent
two detectives to the crime scene in order to arrest him immediately.
We also inserted an advertisement in the newspaper for the killer to
appear on Elisabeth square at six o'clock wearing a red carnation
and, as a trick, we added that a millionaire brunette lady who loves
him is going to wait for him there. Then we asked the military
recruiting team on the phone to check closely the arriving new
recruits. We are certain that the killer’s remorse has deeply
picked his conscience the last two days and the military doctor would
immediately recognize him from the deep mark this left on him. So, if
the killer is among the recruits we can immediately arrest him. And
finally it appears in all the papers that I MYSELF am leading the
investigation. This will make the killer so conceited that while
happily singing the folk song “Whoopee, Whoopee, Free Is the
Birdie” and dancing on one leg through Andrássy Road he will give
himself away. We think that this is sufficient for the time being. If
the killer is not going to give himself up after all these, it will
just prove that we are dealing with such an evil person whom the dear
God will punish and that, as far as we are concerned, will close the
case.
The chief inspector then kissed his own hand, his eyes
moist with tears and after having caressed lovingly his
well-developed tumor, pushed it back into his spine.
“Excellent,” said Sheerluck, after the chief
inspector was rolled away in his wheelchair, “send a cavalry unit
to the house on Rombach Street at four o'clock this afternoon.”
Chapter Three
After all these, Sheerluck Nack Neck, this amazing
detective, repeated the pretty word ‘well’ twice which means in
Hungarian: ‘each notebook costs thirty pence, please ask for a
sample.’
“And now the game's afoot,” he said with arms
crossed, and continued to whistle nonchalantly ‘Yankee Doodle’
the popular march.
My kidneys became petrified in my bones.
“Just go to that house,” he told me, “and wait for
me, I am going to change my appearance a little bit. At the entrance,
you are going to see stairs going up: put alternately forward your
right foot, then the left with no fear. If two schoolboys, joined at
their back, are absent on the left corner, well, well, then go into
the vestibule and if the rogue resists, shoot him; tell him that I
told you to do so. Then crawl unnoticed under the wardrobe,
straighten up and think of the water-priest until I arrive.”
Sheerluck then suddenly pushed a button and disappeared
out of my sight through a first-class leather trap. I started to go
to the house with mixed feelings when all of a sudden caught sight of
a baby past the corner as he tried to sneak through the fence.
I turned around and saw Sheerluck's old mother,
supposedly dead for twenty years, approaching in haste from the other
side. We started to speak about old times when all of a sudden I
noticed the infant walking with heavy steps up and down across from
us blinking incessantly in our direction. By the way, his behaviour
was suspicious because he came closer and closer, and, I also found
it striking that he had two revolvers in each hand and was shooting
at us. After the fifteenth bullet landing in my stomach, I warned the
old lady.
“Just stay,” whispered Sheerluck (because, you see,
he turned out to be the old lady, as I later found out). “This is
Bleyweiss, that old fox! But, well, he can't mislead me with his
tricky disguise. Wait here for a minute, watch that man but at the
same time do as if you walked away. I will return and, at last, the
rascal will get into my clutches!”
The great detective then disappeared through the canal
with the heavy steps of an old woman selling kohlrabi to passers-by
along his way.
Sheerluck was barely gone when a bull with quiet and
cunning steps was coming on the street. I recognized him immediately:
it was Sheerluck. I cried out!
Bleyweiss turned immediately towards him and shouted
from afar:
“Sheerluck, you old swindler, do you think that you
can deceive me with these tricks? What about my bill?”
I watched with excitement as my friend threw himself at
the cunning criminal who finally got into his clutches. However, to
my greatest surprise, Sheerluck suddenly turned around and taking his
legs with a hasty movement between his two necks, started to run with
cold tranquility in the opposite direction. His perfect imitation
reflected a scared person crazily running away from his tailor.
I
understood immediately his intentions. Knowing that Bleyweiss, the cunning vocabulary of the
city park's prairies may attempt to run away, Sheerluck didn't
immediately dashed after him. First he walked around the city, then, when Bleyweiss
didn't expect it, attacked him from behind. My kidneys and my brain froze.
What happened next, I learned later from Sheerluck.
He ran for about half an hour when he deliberately stumbled over an apple core that was earlier placed there. However, a trap underneath opened a moment later and he fell into
it. The
situation was immediately clear. He was trapped by Bleyweiss'
accomplices.
Two of them grabbed him by his arms, twisted them several times around
his neck; his arms were fastened in several knots
behind his back. His ears were sewn together over his head, and his heels wired, and, two pillows, a quilt, a sheet, a striped shirt
and two nightgowns with buttons on them were stuffed into his mouth.
His head was then plunged into a washbasin full of water, symbolic
poems soaking on the bottom.
“Just try to outwit us like this again,” grumbled a
sarcastically sneering voice. “At last, we are finished with you
and with your damned antics. We are leaving now but the boiling water
here that is fueled by spirits from beneath is operated by clockwork and in
twenty and a half minutes two twelve horsepower engines will pump
modern poems into your stomach. Moreover, another machine will squirt
lime into your blood-vessels that will cause blood-sclerosis that, as
you know, kills slowly but surely.”
The accomplices then roaring violently with laughter
departed. Sheerluck was left alone and now, we can assure our readers
that there wasn't any chance for escape, so help us God. Sheerluck
indifferently put his hands in his pocket and found to his
satisfaction his composure still there, hidden in a leather briefcase.
He waited for death with cold apathy, hoping to learn more new
details. This is the end. So, one minute passed, two minutes, five
and a half minutes, seven and three-quarters of minutes, eight ...
minutes, ni . . . nine minutes . . . eleven and a half . . . mi . . .
mi . . . mm . . . ele . . . ele . . . ve . . . (Now! Aufpassen my
respected readers!) . . . Fifteen minutes!!! . . . -?-?-- (Please,
count calmly to twenty then faint quietly from excitement because
this is the end of the chapter.)
Chapter Four
Bloody Skeleton in the Gas-Pipe
In the middle of all these events we arrived at the
house on Rombach Street with Bleyweiss where a large crowd was
waiting for news from the second floor.
We walked up to apartment 12 and using my famous friend
Sheerluck's method, I sniffed the door and checked over the maid who
was standing by the door a lead pipe in her hand, then sniffed her as
well. I didn't find anything suspicious. We rang the bell. A tall,
slightly pale fellow opened the door.
“Is this apartment 12?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“We are from the police on behalf of Sheerluck, in the
matter of the murder case on Rombach Street.”
“What can I do for you?”
“We would like to see the corpse.”
“My pleasure,” the young fellow responded with a
polite bow, “you are looking at it.”
I looked at him with a slightly stupid expression, then
looked at Bleyweiss. I was racking my brain how Sheerluck would act
in a similar situation but nothing came to mind, so I followed the
young corpse who politely let me ahead of him and showed me in.
“The murder happened two days ago,” he explained
kindly. “My autopsy was yesterday but nothing was found. So I
couldn't help it but pack up and start to decompose.”
And rolling up his sleeve, he pointed at the flesh on
his elbow that started to turn green.
“My lungs are still keeping up, ha-ha,” he laughed
merrily and after tearing one of his thumbs off, that already started
to shrivel, he threw it in the garbage. “My lungs are still keeping
up but my joints are full of water and the microbes are starting to
tickle my larynx,” he said scratching himself with a nice smile on
his face.
I felt that something was wrong but wasn't able to
recall what Sheerluck would do in a similar situation. Bleyweiss
watched the scene eagerly then kindly said:
“Perhaps you could go outside.”
“Of course, quite right, at least I will get some
fresh air,” the young corpse said jumping up.
A lonely gas-lamp was flickering at the corner of the
narrow and dark street.
Bleyweiss suddenly pulled me aside and whispered with
excitement:
“This whole thing is very suspicious to me. This
gentleman cannot be the corpse.”
I looked at him but didn't know what he meant.
“Well,” he continued with ardent vigor, “I made a
very interesting observation. This man walks and talks. Now, listen
please to the logic of my brain that arrives at the following
conclusion: a corpse cannot walk and talk!”
“Of cooourse!” I shouted hitting my head as
everything cleared up at once. I thought so right away!”
I headed toward the fake corpse that was standing under
the nearby gas-lamp counting some money. I darted at him but he
wanted to run away. Then, a quite interesting thing happened. The
gas-lamp quivered, bent down and grabbed the neck of the impostor.
Sheerluck was the gas-lamp...
After that, a long argument started between Sheerluck
and the young fake corpse and only the piercing exclamations of
“well” could clearly be heard from the famous detective. The
young corpse shrugged angrily, his shoulders squeezed by Sheerluck's
massive hands. A police officer appeared at last and Sheerluck handed
the young corpse over to him.
“Take this man to the laboratory,” said the
incredible detective, “and tell the men there to put him into
nitric manganese. Examine the developing moisture with litmus paper.
If the paper turns blue, this man is a dangerous criminal who has
already been sentenced for burglary and conjugal fraud several
times.”
The officer took the shouting and kicking young fellow
by his neck while this protested for being mistaken for someone else
since he was already dead. He also screamed that at least they
shouldn't tickle him because it makes him laugh. Sheerluck came
calmly over and the three of us shook hands.
“Well,” I asked
him excitedly, “how did you escape from mortal danger, your life
hanging by a single crossing hair?”
“What mortal danger?” he asked astonished.
“Well, the one from the previous chapter . . . Oh, I
see,” I added reproachfully, “again, you didn't buy the last
issue... the publisher is going to be angry again...“
Loud and disturbing shouts reached us from behind. The
former police officer was still standing at the corner and was
looking terrified at the gesticulating man in his hand, who suddenly
started to pulverize, then fell to pieces. His flesh rolled off like
brown sand specks and stayed that way: a skeleton. He angrily waved
his skeletal arms in the air before they also shrank, then
disappeared and only the old waistcoat was left behind in the
officer's hand. He threw this furiously to the ground and attacked
Sheerluck.
“The gentleman should make a fool of his dear old
daddy!” he shouted. “This man was quite honestly dead. What did
you want from him?”
People started to circle around us curiously waiting for new developments. Many of them began to laugh.
“Hooray, Sheerluck!” came an unexpected sound from above. We looked up and
saw a
slender monoplane. It hovered grinning
above us and then madly darted away.
“Follow it!” Sheerluck roared with a cool smile.
“Follow it! This is Bleyweiss, the villainous accomplice.”
Sheerluck ran to a monoplane station beyond the corner. One of the monoplanes was empty: the chauffeur
peacefully slept on the coach-box. Sheerluck shook him and we
promised him double pay if he caught up with Bleyweiss. The monoplane
took off with a jolt. It took at least ten more minutes to reach
Egypt. At last, we recognized Bleyweiss' machine over the pyramid of
Cheops.
“Turn right, to Sahara!” screamed Sheerluck to the
chauffeur.
Five minutes later Bleyweiss' machine stumbled over the
top of Cachinchinga and was only able to limp further on. The
distance became shorter and shorter; Bleyweiss was hardly a hundred
meters ahead above the Pacific Ocean. We galloped through China and
then lucky chance made the detective's job easier. Bleyweiss' plane bogged down and neighing and snorting
it stopped in the Baltic Strait. Bleyweiss only had enough time to jump into the Black Sea. Sheerluck
quickly paid the chauffeur and jumped after the fleeing accomplice.
They were sinking fast. Bleyweiss then suddenly turned around at a
coral island and fell on the great detective.
“Well,” he said, “now we can have a chat. What
about my bill?”
“Look, Mr. Bleyweiss,” explained the great
detective, “we won't argue here, will we. Come on, let's have a
coffee somewhere.”
They already reached the bottom, went into a lit up café
of shells and at two cups of black sea water settled this wretched
story.
“Look, Mr. Bleyweiss,” said Sheerluck, “try to
understand my position. My reputation is at stake. I don't have that
money. I have ten crowns. I give you six and pay for your coffee if
you let me catch you.”
Bleyweiss took a notebook out of his pocket and after
some lengthy calculations looked with a long face at the prominent
detective.
“Well, what shall I do? This business though is not
finished. You have to get the killer on Rombach Street.”
“Let Kozarek get him. You or I will be the killer of
Rombach Street. I am going to prove that no murder took place.
Anyway, I made up the whole story.”
They were at the point of leaving arm in arm when all Bleyweiss stopped suddenly and struck his own head.
“Oops! What about the lung-cones then?”
“What lung-cones?”
“Have you forgotten the title of you own story?”
“What title?”
“'The Sawn-off Lung-cones!'”
“'The Sawn-off Lung-cones?!' What an idea!”
exclaimed Sheerluck and shook his head in dismay. “How can you saw
someone's lung-cones off? This can only be the idea of crazy authors of rubbish who write these nasty detective stories.”
