“Steady, sir,” I admonished. “Have you conferred with your landlord or the janitor?”
“Landlord and janitor live off the premises, unavailable for immediate conference,” he said. “Besides, I’ve known both many years, and neither of them could be responsible for those crude, vulgar, evil-eyed birds. So I’ve decided on an out-of-sight and out-of-mind counterattack, and if you’ll just help me paint the wall—”
“Just one more question, please,” I interrupted. “I presume you saw the birds, screeched, and bolted out of your apartment?”
“I didn’t screech,” Mr. Plotkin retorted. “But I did make a rather hasty exit. Partly because I had heart palpitations and felt the need of fresh air. Furthermore, I don’t see why you should address me in such an unkind manner.”
“I was only trying to point out,” I explained patiently, “the possibility of the Phantom Painter leaving an explanatory note somewhere in your apartment.”
He stared at me, glassy-eyed behind his glasses. “Good Lord, Halper, I haven’t thought of that. An explanatory note, hey? Yes, of course. Yet how could anyone explain such a mad act of vandalism?”
“That, sir,” I told him, “is what we’re going to try to ferret put. Forthwith.”
And forthwith it was, old Plotkin and I taking off from the bench. On the double. As we hurried along, Mr. Plotkin babbling breathless inanities, I retrieved from the back of my mind something I sure as heck hadn’t forgotten: to wit, the extraordinary interchange with Grandpa.
It seemed apparent now that the old gentleman must be a Mentalist like Dunninger. Retired professionally, but still in possession of his mind-reading faculties. He observes a man staring at a paint brush. Idly concentrates on what said brush-starer might be thinking about. And is astonished to get the return message of twelve painted toucans terrifying old Plotkin. Possibly a Holmesian scholar, Grandpa then concludes, quite correctly, that it was, indeed, precisely the sort of problem that would have intrigued Holmes. Any other explanation, despite my loyalty to the Baker Street Irregulars, bordered on madness.
Thus I felt a mounting excitement as Mr. Plotkin led me through the ground-floor entrance of a small, neat brick apartment building. I trailed him up a flight of stairs, where he paused before a door marked 2B. He unlocked the door, pushed it inward, and said in a dramatic whisper as he waved me inside, “Brace yourself for a bit of a shock, Halper. You’ll see the creatures on your left as you enter, above the sofa.”
I walked on in. Yes, a bit of a shock, all right. There was the overstuffed old-timer of a sofa. Above it, on an otherwise pristine wall, were three Courier & Ives prints. No birds. And my promising Case of the Phantom Painter abruptly degenerated into the Case of the Batty Bookkeeper.
I whirled as I heard a thud behind me. Mr. Plotkin had dropped the paper bag containing the brush and can of paint.
“Don’t say it, Halper,” he moaned. “I know! Had a cousin on my mother’s side who died in an insane asylum. Now the tainted blood has come out in me.”
He staggered to a chair, collapsed in it. I was alone with a self-confessed lunatic — poor old Plotkin, cowering in the chair there, destined for incarceration in some Snake Pit.
“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” I asked.
He removed his hat, exposing a balding, dampish dome. “Well, your mother might be pleased by my African violets. Take as many as you can carry. I like to think they’ll have a good home when I’m gone. I also want you, personally, to have another cherished possession of mine — a Samurai sword an office colleague brought back from the South Pacific. I’ll get it for you.”
I said quickly, “No, thank you, I already have a Samurai sword. No point having two of them, is there? And please try to compose yourself, Mr. Plotkin. While I’m no qualified expert, it surely seems to me that a single hallucination cannot be conclusive of madness.”
“Hah, but I’m already having another,” he announced miserably. “Please note the three prints above the sofa. In the eighteen peaceful years that I have enjoyed this apartment, those prints have always — always, Halper — hung in the following order: the Clipper Ship ‘Dreadnought,’ the Sleigh Scene, and the View of New York Harbor From Brooklyn Heights in 1849. Now I’m imagining that the Dreadnaught and the Sleigh Scene have reversed positions on the wall.”
I did a sudden double-take and said, “But it isn’t a hallucination, Mr. Plotkin. I also see the prints in the order — or out of order — you just described. The two people in the sleigh; then the sailing ship, then the harbor scene.”
“Halper, you’re not merely trying to humor a maniac?”
“Absolutely not,” I affirmed. “If the first two prints are in reversed positions, then human error must be responsible for it. Do you happen to employ a cleaning woman?”
“Why, yes, Mrs. Yurka was due here this morning,” he replied. “But I mailed her a post card yesterday, saying I had decided to return to New York today, and would rather she came in next Thursday, when I’d be back at the office.”
“Evidently,” I pointed out, “she didn’t receive your post card. Came in this morning. Noted that the glass protecting the prints needed cleaning. Took the prints off the wall. And later accidentally replaced them in the wrong order. So if you were wrong about that supposed hallucination, there’s probably also some simple explanation for the birds.”
Mr. Plotkin sat stone-still a little while, then leaned forward and squeaked, “Halper, you can earn my undying gratitude — and a fast ten-dollar bill — if you could suggest just one even remotely possible explanation why a sane human being could enter his apartment and imagine seeing hideous birds painted on the wall.”
I accepted the challenge — my first opportunity to utilize professionally, so to speak, the science of analytical deduction which Holmes had so often propounded in the Sacred Writings.
Don’t be misled, I thought, by the bizarre aspects of it. Holmes never was. Weigh and consider, with cool detachment, only the evidence on hand. Mrs. Yurka, the cleaning woman, accidentally reverses the positions of the prints above the sofa. That’s what distracts old Plotkin when he enters the apartment. But at the time he’s aware only that something’s wrong.
All right, he keeps staring at the wall. Still can’t figure out what’s wrong. Progressively gets more and more uneasy. Then his staring eyes proceed to tire, blur, water. Possibly he’d been terrified, when a little kid, by a screeching toucan in the Bird House of some zoo. Memory of it emerges from burial in his subconscious. Zing I the tired, blurred, watery eyes conjure up twelve painted toucans on the wall.
“Mr. Plotkin,” I asked, “when have you last had your eyes examined? It’s common knowledge that eye strain can induce weird optical illusions.”
I was about to expound on my theory when Plotkin practically exploded in the chair as he yelped, “By God, that must be it! Yes, of course!” He squirmed around to produce a wallet, extracted some folding money therefrom, slapped same down on an end table near his chair. “Twenty dollars, Halper. Yours with my blessings and a tribute to a remarkable intellect.”