The Boy Detective Fails (22 page)
What happens then is that the bandits attempt to discover the whereabouts of a reported diamond necklace worth several thousand quid. It belongs to a rich old dame who, impressed by the first séance, decides to hold another. During the course of the séance, the diamond necklace is stolen and one of the attendees of the spiritualist get-together, a millionaire named Mrs. Dabny, is somehow murdered. The Modern Police Cadet makes short work of the case, revealing the miniature tape recorder beneath the table, which, set by a timer, issues its strange hissing; also, the nearly hidden wires that are used to help the table levitate; and finally, the ghostly footprints, which of course are nothing more than flour from the bakery.
What is truly brilliant about the episode is that after the ruse has been exposed and the murder solved, the Modern Police Cadet discovers that one of the guests at the séance, a thin blond girl who sat beside her haughty-looking aunt, has been dead for at least ten years. The episode finishes with the Modern Police Cadet catching sight of the girl in one of the ornate mirrors in the mansion’s hallway. The sight of the small waif in her dress, walking alone down the hall, is enough to make Billy quite terrified. When he looks up from the small television screen, he notices he is holding Lupe’s hand very tightly. He apologizes and hurries directly back to his desk.
After midnight, when the cleaning lady has gone and most of the world is, at that moment, happily dreaming, Billy, his head resting on his folded arms, is quietly muttering to himself in his sleep. The office is empty and very dark. Suddenly someone whispers back. Billy lifts his head and looks out into the shadows. He feels a thousand eyes staring in return. He glances over his shoulder, imagining who might be standing in the dark beside him. It is then that he hears the strange whisper from down the aisle again, perhaps rising from one of the offices. The voice is very high and weird, its warbly words hanging in the air for a moment and then disappearing. Billy stands and realizes he is holding a dead phone in his hand. He places the phone on its receiver and, as quietly as he can, creeps toward the sound, holding his breath, wondering what in the world it might be.
Along the aisle and down the hallway, Billy finally pauses outside a vacant office. He presses his ear against the wooden door and hears the voice one more time, a few of its unfamiliar words slowly making sense. He closes his eyes and makes out a single word—a small gathering of letters—which escape from behind the closed door:
Hello,
the mysterious voice says.
“Hello?” Billy mumbles.
Hello …
Billy runs from the office and presses the elevator button again and again and again.
Out on the street, at the newsstands, are the morning newspapers, which Billy reads, waiting for the bus to arrive, standing in place, stamping his feet. All of the newspapers seem to mention the same things: Two more office buildings have disappeared overnight and the girl named Parker Lane is still missing. The boy detective studies the girl’s black-and-white picture and wonders if, like Effie claimed, the girl is already dead.
The boy detective is walking up the hallway of Shady Glens that very morning. The giant, Mr. Pluto, in his blue hospital gown, is standing guard in the middle of the hall, and refuses to let Billy pass. Billy tries and tries, taking a quick step to one side, a dash to the left, but Mr. Pluto is simply too big and will not let him through. Billy shakes his head, takes a step back, and smiles. He quickly digs into his briefcase and returns with a long black sample wig, handing the hairy prize to Mr. Pluto. Mr. Pluto stares at the tag which reads
Modern Empress: For Sales Use Only, Sample
, and claps happily, moving down the hall toward his own room and a mirror, finally allowing Billy to pass.
Hurrying past Mr. Lunt’s shabby green room, Billy sees Professor Von Golum in white pajamas, standing over a prostrate Mr. Lunt, severely choking him. Billy shakes his head and stares, folding his arms over his chest disapprovingly. Professor Von Golum looks up, sees he is being watched, and stops, embarrassed, immediately trying to lie to Billy.
“The poor old fellow was choking … Isn’t that true, my friend?”
“Yes,
you
were choking me.”
Professor Von Golum snarls and runs out, dashing past Billy, slamming the door to his own room.
The boy detective is in bed later that day. Someone knocks at the door. He does not recognize the knock. Billy sits up, concerned, then calls out: “Yes? Who is it?”
Mr. Lunt enters, old and sad, his long beard a puff of whiteness above his brown robe. He grimaces as he approaches on two wood canes.
“I come here to thank you for your kindness with those heathens. I’m not a very polite sort of man, so it took me some time thinking before I realized I ought to thank you properly,” he says.
“OK,” Billy replies.
“I’m not the kind of fellah to go on and on with a lot of fancy words. I never had much use for talking. I can tell you’re the same way.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I come to find out I got no one, no one at all. And there’s this business of my treasure. Seeing as I’ve come to find there’s no one I can leave it to, I’ve decided I’d give you a chance with it. You’ve been kind to me and I want to pass it on, but not for nothing. You’ll have to work for it the way I did.”
“OK.”
“So what it is, is a riddle.”
“All right.”
“I’ll recite it, and if you’re smart, you’ll be able to figure out where the treasure is buried. That’s the only help you’ll get with it.”
“All right.”
“So here it goes, then: ‘At the beginning of a silver line and the end of another made of twine, if you have old lungs, the treasure you will find.’ That’s it. You take some time to think on it.”
“OK. Well … thanks?”
Mr. Lunt nods once more and then turns, ambling with some struggle down the dim hallway. Billy lies back in bed. Then he sits up and stares across the wall at a clipping of Caroline.
The boy detective thinks:
I wouldn’t have anyone to leave anything to either, I’m afraid. But if it’s his wish for me to find it, I will.
He begins scribbling down the riddle on some paper with a pencil, scribbling and scratching it out. Finally, Billy takes two Clomipramine and sighs, closing his eyes, soon falling asleep.
The boy detective, in a dream again, descends into the cavern, past the now-familiar signs. Holding a flashlight, he climbs deeper and deeper, listening to someone crying. At the bottom of the cave, through the dark, Billy can see a girl in tears, but it is not his sister this time. It is Daisy Hollis, the missing kidnapping victim, a lovely blond teen in a dirtied white ball gown. Her hands are tied and she looks roughed-up. She has a white sweater on with a monogram,
DH
, etched in gold cursive.
“Help me, please, anyone! Please, help me!”
“Where’s Caroline? You’re not her. Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Please, please help me.”
Billy begins to untie Daisy’s hands. She is still crying. A horrible growl like a jaguar echoes through the cave. Billy looks up, terrified.
“What? What was that?”
“It’s … it’s what brought me here …”
“Here, we have to hurry.”
“No, it’s too late,” Daisy cries. “It’s too late for me.”
The horrible ram-horned, claw-fingered demon leaps out from the darkness, howling.
The boy detective awakes with a shout. He is covered in sweat. He pulls himself out of bed and inches across the room to the dresser, opens the bottom drawer, and pulls out the detective kit. The corners are all worn, all bent, all oddly angled. He notices his heart is still pounding. The cartoon boy looks sad and unfamiliar. Billy closes his eyes and feels the cardboard with the tips of his fingers, listening to his pulse pounding loudly somewhere within his ears. There is dust along the lid, and something else. Something like an invisible magnetic field, the childhood implements echoing in far-off whispers. Billy opens his eyes and decides not to open the kit. He puts it back in the drawer and turns on the light. He opens another drawer, finds Caroline’s diary and fingerprint set, and climbs back into bed.
Billy stares at Caroline’s last entry in her diary:
how can anyone in the world believe in good anymore?
On the fingerprint set is a label which has been perfectly typed and reads,
Property of Billy Argo
, but the Billy is crossed out and has been replaced by
Caroline
in a handwritten cursive.
“What happened?” Billy whispers out loud. “What happened to you, Caroline? Why? Why did you go and do it?”
He looks closely at the diary once again and makes a strange discovery: There is a small white torn corner, bound just behind the last page, evidence of a missing entry. He frowns, running his finger along the tear.
It is then that Billy hears a ruckus in the hallway. He opens the door and sees two paramedics wheeling poor Mr. Lunt out. It is obvious: The old man is dead. His face is very calm and very happy. Across the hallway, Professor Von Golum in his white robe and Mr. Pluto in his blue gown watch as the old man is wheeled away.
“Look at him, the fiend,” the Professor mumbles. “There is the look of the dead, all right. Quite happy to take his secrets with him, happy to have thwarted his fellow man. Lousy old fool! Now nobody will know the truth of it!”
Mr. Pluto nods, hanging his gigantic head low.
“In the end, it seems we have only been bested by that one adversary slightly more cunning than Man, the one no mortal has ever dared to truly comprehend: our dear, lifelong companion, Death.”
Billy closes his door and lays in bed. As the dark arrives, his hands make strange shadows above his bed.
He makes a bunny.
He makes a dog.
He makes a horse.
He makes a crocodile.
He makes a ghost.
At school, Gus Mumford is the only child in class. From his seat directly in front of Miss Gale’s desk, Gus turns around and sees for himself the classroom is entirely empty. A bit of dust blows about the corner of the room. As the clock strikes and the final bell rings, Gus places his hands on his desk and stares questioningly at Miss Gale’s taut white face.
“It seems it will only be you and me today, Gus,” she whispers. “All of your other classmates have come down with a strange rash, which circulated at Missy Blackworth’s birthday party, to which, I conclude, you were not invited.”
Gus Mumford sadly shakes his head.
“We will, however, continue on with the lesson as planned.”
Gus Mumford nods, and in that moment something wonderful dawns on him: There are no other students present, no one else to raise their hands, no one else who could possibly attempt to answer any of Miss Gale’s unintelligent questions. The boy sits at his desk grinning, his eyes wide with delight. Cracking his knuckles, he then flexes and relaxes his fingers, readying his hand to be raised and—finally—seen. So happy is the child that if we were to listen close, perhaps we would be able to hear him giggling to himself.
Miss Gale stares down at her geography book seriously and then begins the day’s geography lesson.
“Now, class, who can tell me where the Capital of the United States is located?”
Gus Mumford decides the woman at the front of the classroom has been defeated. There is no one else she can call upon, and so the small bully decides he can take his time. He glances around the room, yawns, stretches his arm, and then slowly, languorously raises his large-knuckled hand.
“No guesses, class?”
Grinning, Gus Mumford flicks his fingers right before Miss Gale’s face, tapping his other hand on his desk.
“No guesses? The answer is Washington, D.C.”
Gus Mumford’s hand comes crashing down like a meteorite.
“Now who can tell me who Washington, D.C. is named after?”
Gus Mumford decides not to stall this time. Immediately, he raises his hand and lunges forward, nearly leaving his seat.
“No guesses? He was the first president of our country. He said, ‘I cannot tell a lie.’ Do you remember who that was, class?” Gus Mumford, snarling, whips his arm back and forth.
“Class, the answer is George Washington. Do we all remember him?”
Gus Mumford drops his arm. He stares at his hand, wondering if it is somehow not real.
“Now, class, who can tell me what river did George Washington cross on his way to victory over the British?”
Gus closes his eyes and places his face in the crook of his arm, too angry to begin crying.
On the school bus, hidden back in the very rear seat, Gus Mumford raises both arms in the air and starts howling. The happy noise of after-school conversations soon dies, as all the other children turn and stare at the boy who will not, cannot, stop shouting. The sound, in their minds, reminds them of their frequent nightmares: the depiction of a deadly fall off a very dangerous cliff.
* * *
It is the very same day that Gus Mumford makes another terrible discovery: Secreted beneath the front porch, the boy finds that all but one of the proud inhabitants of Ant City have mysteriously died. The remaining fellow, a bright red and spunky arthropod, busily shuffles the corpses of his unmoving citizens, carefully constructing grave after grave after grave. Gus Mumford stares at the carnage and begins howling once again.
At work, the boy detective and the cleaning lady, sitting in the dark on the plush carpeting of the office, silently watch a television show about unsolved cases.
On the show, an older B-grade actor in a black suit and tie speaks directly to the camera, smoking a cigarette and looking back over his shoulder at the city of New Orleans. The actor, the host of the show, says: “One of the most bizarre unsolved crimes concerns a killer known as the Axeman of New Orleans. From newspapers at the time, similar killings were described early in the year of 1919. The victims, as the murderer’s name suggests, were always assaulted with an axe. The front doors to some of the victims’ homes were also sometimes split open with the same weapon. The Axeman of New Orleans was never caught, though his crimes ended as strangely as they began. To this very day, the killer’s true identity is still a mystery.”