A rope was doled out to the valley floor. Then began the job of collecting the tusks and passing them up from shoulder to shoulder to the valley rim. There they were loaded onto the sleighs of Les Amis du Saint Bonhomme-de-Neige, The Friends of Saint Snowman, French Canadian teamsters in gray homespun and bright toques and sashes who happened to be in Europe for the Tour de Suisse sleigh races. Their conveyances would take the ivory over to the recently built light railroad through the Mt. Cenis Pass and down to Italian trains for transportation to San Sebastiano.
By midmorning the work was done. Just as a sleigh sped away with the last of the ivory, the wigwag semaphore from the Sharpshooters’ lookout sprang to life. Ganelon took out his telescope. Coming over the rim on the other side of the valley he saw a strange column of people. The men came first, overweight, stoop-shouldered, pigeon-chested, with unhealthy, indoor faces, blinking in the glare off the snow. He watched as they slid and stumbled down in striped and checked trousers, narrow shoes, and tight jackets unequal to the weather: pimps, cat’s-paws, cut-purses, and pool sharks marching to the noise of their own barking coughs and phlegmatic wheezing. Next came their female counterparts beneath the Heart-of-Gold banner of the Sisterhood of the Ladies of the Night, all powdered and rouged in their soiled finery and bright, impractical parasols.
Turning his telescope back to the top of the valley, Ganelon saw Fong himself dressed in furs with one arm in a black sling, his free hand holding a riding crop, frowning down on this ragtag collection of late risers, the best he could put together at a moment’s notice to race the Right-Headed League to the elephant graveyard.
Suddenly a loud fit of coughing rose up from Fong’s men and echoed across the valley. A moment later a large shelf of snow above them broke off from the main and came crashing down, engulfing the front of the column.
The women in the rear immediately turned around and started back up to the top of the valley where Fong stood, raging and threatening them with his riding crop. But the women furled their parasols and gripped them firmly as they came within striking distance. Daunted, Fong stood aside.
Then the arch-villain looked over sharply, as if feeling the weight of the telescope’s gaze. When he saw Ganelon, his face went white with rage. To Ganelon, Fong always looked his most German when angry. But now as he watched he saw the villain’s expression turn abruptly Oriental. Ganelon knew Fong was scheming something. He wondered what.
Back in San Sebastiano, with LeGrand’s piano atelier humming again, Ganelon returned to pondering cases during long walks, “constitutionals” as the English were starting to call them. Not long afterwards he received by special messenger an ebony walking stick with a golden five-fanged dragon’s-claw pommel. The shaft of the stick concealed a two-foot sword blade of Damascus steel. In the accompanying note Ludwig Fong urged him to accept the gift. “Now that you are moving abroad again, I fear someone may succeed in an attack on your life before I can make time in my busy schedule to kill you myself.”
Smiling, Ganelon decided yes, he’d use the walking stick. It was a handsome piece. And the dragon’s claw, Fong’s emblem, would focus his mind on his rival.
One afternoon later that week, Ganelon decided to buy a newspaper and sit on a particular bench in the cliff-side Parc Belvedere above the Mediterranean, whose blue, local legends say, was so beautiful the very sky stole it for its own. In the newspaper he happened on an account of Swiss missionaries in German East Africa who were trekking to a new parish. As they passed a herd of elephants their cart hit a pothole, causing a cuckoo clock among their belongings to strike the hour. This alien sound so startled the elephants that they stampeded northward out of sight.
As he smiled at the story Ganelon noticed a bent-over man as gray as an apparition coming up the path toward him. Reaching Ganelon’s bench, the man stopped and introduced himself. “Mr. Ganelon, my name is Leander Crisp,” he said, presenting a visiting card which described him as a “Jocular Archaeologist.”
Now Ganelon placed the man. Crisp was the author of a book called Chuckling Down Memory Lane: Knee-Slapping Jokes and Riddles From Our Grandsires’ Day that had been severely handled by reviewers. For his part, Ganelon saw little point in rooting around in the slagheap of old jokes. Only the fittest of such things survive. Whatever has not come down to us, ought not come down to us.
Mr. Crisp took a seat beside him and said, “You are a solver of riddles, I believe, sir. Here is one you should enjoy: Why is the city of Rome like a candlewick?”
“Like a—”
“Like a candlewick. The city of Rome,” repeated Crisp, waiting. Then he stood up. “Perhaps you need time to consider my little riddle. Let us meet here again.”
After the man had gone, Ganelon sat there on the bench for some time, puzzling over the riddle. Then he walked home shaking his head, embarrassed that he, the great detective, didn’t know the answer.
That evening at dinner when Madame commented on his lack of appetite he told her, “Here’s a riddle for you. Why is the city of Rome like a candlewick?” She thought for a moment before starting to clear the table.
Later Ganelon played his oboe for several hours, something he only did when trying to solve a most difficult case. But he went to bed that evening and tossed and turned, the riddle unsolved.
Early the next morning Ganelon went directly to the park bench, hoping Crisp might reappear. By noon the sky turned gray and a light rain began to fall. Ganelon stayed until the rain grew brisker. He returned home sopping wet, unsure what he hated most, Crisp, the city of Rome, or candlewicks.
After another bad night, he woke feeling he was coming down with a cold. Nevertheless, he made his way back to the park bench, ready to admit that the damned puzzle had him stumped and to have Crisp tell him the answer.
Near eleven in the morning, Ganelon saw Crisp coming up the path and his heart quickened. The archaeologist of the jocular seemed pleased with himself as he approached Ganelon, who sat with his walking stick between his legs.
“All right,” said the detective. “Why is the damn city of Rome like a damn candlewick?”
Crisp beamed triumphantly. “Because it’s in the middle of grease,” he said.
Ganelon blinked. Then he understood and shouted, “But Rome isn’t in the middle of Greece. It’s in the middle of Italy!”
Crisp’s pitying look threw Ganelon into a rage. He realized all the time he’d wasted over this geographic ignoramus’s silly riddle. Suddenly he heard a click. Looking down, he saw he’d released the button on the sword cane and drawn the blade six inches out of its scabbard. In horror, he slammed the sword cane shut again.
The noise brought two plain-clothed policemen rushing out from behind some nearby trees. As they grabbed the protesting Crisp, one of them told Ganelon, “Sir, we were alerted this morning by telegram from Berlin that this man intended to murder you.”
“You were misinformed,” Ganelon replied. “He was to be the murder victim and you the witnesses. Escort him to the border and let him go.” Then, as the policemen marched Crisp away Ganelon shouted after them, “But if he tries to tell you a riddle along the way, feel free to shoot him down like a dog.”
When he was alone, Ganelon crossed the park and stood at the cliff’s edge shaking his head. A moment ago he had almost killed a man. Now he knew what his archenemy had been scheming back up there in the Alps. Fong wanted to make Ganelon a murderer, to make the two of them brothers in spirit. And he had almost succeeded.
Cursing his own frailty, his face burning with humiliation, Ganelon grabbed the sword cane by its ferrule end, swung it around, and threw it out into the air as far as he could. Then he watched as it fell into the blue water below.