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

Ganelon got quickly to work with calipers and notebook while LeSage brought up four heads at a time in containers resembling hatboxes. After two hours of slow, careful measurements Ganelon heard the growl of iron on stone in the courtyard and went to the window. Gamekeepers were pushing a handcart heaped with dead grouse across the cobbles. Behind them came the hunters in an array of hats and buttoned gaiters.

Arriving with more hatboxes, LeSage joined Ganelon at the window. “There’s his excellency the Nawab, sir,” he said, pointing to a man with a round, café-au-lait face wearing a knickerbocker suit of the latest fashion. “And there, next to him, is Major Leland Sowerby.”

Ganelon knew of Sowerby, whom the Nawab had graciously asked to join his permanent staff after he’d been driven from the Indian Army for gambling debts.

Next came the baron, his face open and boyish, proudly pointing out an aspect of the new drains to a lanky man in an old fringed-buckskin jacket. “Vieux Gaspard’s North American representative?” guessed the detective.

“Mr. Caleb Hardacre, sir,” nodded LeSage.

“And the duelist?” A slighter man marched behind, one jacket lapel tucked in across his shirt front as if to deny an adversary a white target in the meager light of dawn.

“Herr Franz Gruber of Leipzig, sir. Our Central European representative.”

As the hunting party passed from sight, Ganelon returned to his work, which wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. The next few hours might prove or — as seemed more likely — disprove his thesis. He decided to work through luncheon, taking the meal on a tray. But in the meantime, his concentration became half-hearted. The parade of bald heads kept reminding him of Baron Justin who took “Know Thyself” as his motto and, long before Ganelon was born, had been a familiar sight walking about town thoughtfully reading the bumps on his shaven skull with his fingertips.

In the 1850s, Christian charity and phrenological inquiry led Baron Justin to establish an orphanage for the care and education of 153 street urchins (the legendary number of Scripture’s miraculous draught of fishes), keeping the boys’ heads shaven to better chart their phrenological development. Their uniform of baggy red trousers, blue short-coat, and red fez earned them the nickname the Petits Zouaves de Vieux Gaspard.

For recruitment, Baron Justin encased his servant, Gaston, in an immense green papier-mâché gherkin and sent him to the spices and condiments fair in the Place Madagascar, where he sold an excellent dill from a tray. A street urchin who let Bonhomme Pickle examine his head got a free dill and a chance at the coveted brass token, which meant entry into the orphanage.

The arrival of the young baron, now changed out of his hunting clothes, interrupted Ganelon’s musings over this story, which would end so tragically. “Welcome, Monsieur Ganelon,” said his host, smiling broadly and setting down the detective’s luncheon tray. “May I intrude on your meal?” At Ganelon’s urging the baron pulled over a chair, sat down, and beamed at the son of a national treasure of the principality. “You know, every birthday and Christmas my father gave me a Marchpane book.” Austin Marchpane wrote popular accounts of the Founder’s most famous cases.

“Until Ganelon and the Pickled Boys?”

“That did hit rather close to home.”

Ganelon imagined that it had. “My father would never let a Marchpane book in the house,” he said. The Founder denounced the many mannerisms the author concocted for him. Yet, Ganelon knew, his father had never uttered his loud accusatory “Ah-ha!” until Marchpane used it in The Bridge of Traded Dreams. And it wasn’t until Spawn of the Corsican Eagle, where Marchpane touched on his hero’s paternity, that the Founder began plastering a forelock down over his brow and posing, fingertips inside his jacket.

The baron’s thoughtful smile lingered. Then he turned grave and leaned forward. “My dear sir, I need your help. One of the Nawab’s cufflinks has been stolen.” When Ganelon cocked a disappointed eye, the Baron added urgently, “A large blue sapphire.”

“And does this sapphire have religious or dynastic significance?” wondered Ganelon. “An eye from a temple goddess, perhaps, whose desecration must be washed away with human blood? Or does the loss foretell some doom for the Nawab or his house?”

The baron blinked. “Not that he mentioned. In fact, he urges me to forget the whole incident. Easier said than done. You see, it means I have invited a thief under my roof.”

“Forgive me. I draw the line at stray cufflinks.”

Sandor appeared crestfallen. In a moment he brightened. “Then how about lurking around a bit? You know, to make the thief think you’re on the case?”