Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

A policeman with dandruff on his cape guarded the agency’s doorway. One had for years now, since the Founder’s faculty of ratiocination was declared a treasure of the principality. Acknowledging his salute, Ganelon went to stand at the curb. He could almost hear the policeman ask himself why a Ganelon was leaving town during Gooseberry Fool alert. Was San Sebastiano to go the way of Paris, protecting itself from the assassin by following its prefect of police on vacation for the month of August, leaving the city to waiters and American tourists?

But the Gooseberry Fool had not yet dared kill in San Sebastiano. Ganelon, who did not want to remain forever in his father’s shadow, wished he would try. In any event, Ganelon was not going far. Young Baron Charles Sandor lived only a few miles away across the Porpentine, the river which until twenty-five years ago marked the eastern boundary of San Sebastiano just as the Tortue marked its western limits (a fact which explains why the supporters of San Sebastiano’s busy coat of arms are that marriage made in heaven, the turtle and the porcupine).

The Sandor money came from Vieux Gaspard’s Ointment, a preparation named after a local of the previous century legendary for his age and limberness of joints. The current baron’s grandfather, Baron Justin, an avid phrenologist (some said he possessed an immense bump of credulity), had assembled for study a collection of plaster heads of murderers.

Ganelon had written some months ago for permission to examine Baron Justin’s collection. Though impressed by the recent anthropometric work of the phrenologist Bertillon, Ganelon considered the man’s fourteen identification measurements clumsy. He hoped to find his own cluster of three or four unique to each individual on the skull near the sphenoid bone.

Having the patience of plaster, the baron’s heads would be far easier to measure than Ganelon’s restless friends. He was beginning to believe the Sandors still bore an ancient grudge against the Ganelons because the Founder brought one of their servants to book for murder. Then yesterday evening he received a hand-delivered invitation to spend the weekend studying the heads and to meet the Hereditary Nawab of Jamkhandi and some of Sandor’s business associates, all come for the hunting.

The Nawab was renowned in his own land as a builder of hospitals, temples, and schools, and famous abroad as a student of the human conscience, eager to promote whatever might increase mankind’s desire to do good and avoid evil.

The Sandor carriage arrived punctually, the crest on the door bearing the same figure of the lean old man leaping in air to kick his heels which graced each bottle of Vieux Gaspard’s Ointment. Ganelon expected it would have first met the early train from Milan and was not surprised to find a passenger inside. His traveling companion looked up from a gilt-edged prayer book; his long, pale face was made longer and paler still by a flourish of black sideburns. The vehicle reeked of lavender cologne.

Ganelon introduced himself. The man closed the book on his finger, ready to flee back into it should the new arrival prove unedifying. “Lars Thorwald of Christiania,” he replied, adding, “The great detective? I expected a much older man.”

“You’re thinking of my father,” said Ganelon, as he had so many times before.

Thorwald bowed, then sniffed the air. “I must explain I do not use a scent. Signor Antonio Cipriani, who left aboard the same train which brought me here, spilled the contents of his atomizer onto the carriage floor while fortifying his handkerchief against the journey. The coachman promises to air things out when we’re in the country and he can whip up the horses.”

Thorwald looked grave. “Several days ago, in Milan, Cipriani and I toured Vieux Gaspard’s new bottling works together. Though his cheeks were as hare as those cherubs which infest Italian art and his straw-colored vest dared to match his gloves and his spats, I judged him a superior type of individual. For a Neapolitan.”

For many, Africa began at Naples. Englishmen swore by Calais. Ganelon understood some Scandinavians said at Lübeck.

The carriage started off. Thorwald gripped his bowler as if it were self-satisfaction itself. Was it the prospect of meeting the Nawab of Jamkhandi which made Ganelon think of the Solemn Order of Snarks? This secret terrorist brotherhood worshipped the fabulous Snark in its third incarnation:

“The third is its slowness in taking a jest.
Should you happen to venture on one,
It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:
And it always looks grave at a pun.”