“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?”
“You mean behind the potted palm?” The detective had to smile. Yet he could understand how the new baron might be unnerved by the thought of tarnishing his family name so soon. He put down his knife and fork. “Why don’t you bring me up to date.”
The baron pulled his chair closer. “The Nawab’s manservant put the cufflinks away in the jewel case Wednesday night. Dressing his master for Thursday dinner, he found one missing.”
“And who was here at that time?”
“Let me see. The Nawab arrived with Major Sowerby on Tuesday, from Rome, to see our orphanage with an eye to starting something similar in Jamkhandi. Mr. Hardacre and Signor Cipriani arrived Wednesday from Milan. This will be my first chance to meet the new Vieux Gaspard representatives my father chose just before his death last year. Of the other two, Herr Gruber didn’t come until after dinner on Thursday. A pickpocket stole his wallet in Milan and lack of identification delayed him at the border. And, of course, Mr. Thorwald arrived with you this morning, bedridden in Milan with traveler’s stomach until yesterday. I am sure the cufflink was stolen late Thursday afternoon.”
When Ganelon asked why, the baron explained, “Because that was when my wife saw the Phantom Balloon.” He smiled and added, “Who else but dear Louise?”
Ganelon understood. With Paris under siege during the Franco-Prussian War, the French evacuated the gold in the national treasury in hot-air balloons of a novel design. Each carried galvanic batteries to heat the air by means of a metal probe. When the balloon flotilla encountered fierce thunderstorms over the Massif Central, one balloon developed a loose battery connection. As it lost altitude, the crew dumped the precious cargo. When that failed to stop the descent, they escaped hand over hand along the tether line to their nearest neighbor. The damaged balloon was cut free and drifted southwestward, coming to rest in the forest north of San Sebastiano, where it became a local legend, rising into the air and coming to earth again at the loose battery connection’s whim. It was said that the Phantom Balloon could pass overhead unseen until noticed by one whose heart was pure. Hence Sandor’s “Who else but dear Louise?”
“When my wife rushed in with the news, the château spilled out onto the lawn, servants and all. I think that was when the thief stole the cufflink. We never saw the balloon, by the way. The wind must have shifted.”
“I understand one of your guests left this morning.”
The baron nodded. “Poor Cipriani. Oh yes, I know how it looks. But he couldn’t have been the thief. With tears in his eyes and the carriage at the door, he begged me, for the sake of his honor, to search his person and his luggage. I reluctantly agreed. LeSage and I were thorough, I assure you. No cufflink.”
Sandor stood up. “So there we are. After luncheon tomorrow I’m going to try a little parlor game suggested by one of our guests. If it doesn’t get the cufflink back and you’re done with the heads, may I put the matter in your hands?”
Ganelon returned to his measurements. But by late afternoon he had thrown down the calipers, closed his notebook, and turned away from the plaster head of Jean-Batiste Troppmann, the Kinck-family murderer. What he was looking for just wasn’t there.
Time to turn his mind to the cufflink. Why steal a single sapphire cufflink when you could just as easily have taken both, a matched pair worth four times as much? Ganelon shook his head. You don’t build a reputation catching stupid thieves. You needed someone like the Gooseberry Fool.
Or the murderer of the pickled boys. Some ten years after the Sandor orphanage opened, the corpses of four naked boys were discovered swirling slowly around in a solemn follow-the-leader in a sewer eddy beneath the Place d’lota. Using his vast knowledge of the sewer system, the Founder calculated water flow and the modest Mediterranean tidal effect at that phase of the moon to pinpoint the exact sewer grating down which the bodies had been dropped. Brine in the victims’ lungs led him to Bonhomme Pickle’s warehouse only a hundred feet away. At first, old Gaston maintained boys from the neighboring Sandor orphanage had drowned stealing from his pickle barrels, their companions dumping the bodies into the sewer. But he could not explain the battering about the victims’ heads. Taken into custody, Gaston would later confess to the murders and be sent to Duranceville prison for life. As for Baron Justin, his son took over the business and the old man never showed his poor, dog-eared head in San Sebastiano again.