That was a body blow if you know what I mean. I says, “Butch, I thought your wife was dead.”
“Only the first one, Pete. I got married again.”
“Oh. Congratulations.”
“You can keep the change. Pete, I’ll give you some good advice: don’t never marry one of them dizzy blonds.”
Then Butch goes off, shaking his head and swearing to himself, and Annabell, the redhead, just sits there and grins because she is not a blond but I deduct maybe she used to be a blond before she decided to go redheaded.
She gives me a push. “Don’t take it to heart, Pete. Just keep on deducting and you will be right some time. Look, what do you make out of this fellow?”
Well, I took a good look at the guy who was a total stranger hoping he was John Doe, the pastry-cook, but I could see he wasn’t. “Annabell,” I says, “with a single glance the trained detective can tell that man is a slaughterhouse employee who does his own sewing and plays the violin on the side.”
She kind of gives a gasp and says, “Pete, say it again slow.”
Well, I did, and she says, “My God, Pete, how could you deduct that?”
“It is easy for the trained detective who will let ninety-nine men pass but will snap his handcuffs on the one hundredth. It says in the long quotation from Dr. Wm. E. Presbrey who combed Europe and America for facts regarding the influence of occupations on the body that slaughterhouse employees have bad teeth due to contact with animal hides which carry foot and mouth disease, and tailor’s lips are thick and swollen, their right forefingers thick and calloused from snapping off the thread, and the violinist has a red groove on the underside of his jaw.”
“Can you see all that from where you are sitting?”
“At a single glance. Am I right?”
“I don’t know. I never saw the guy before.”
She is flirting with him like nobody’s business, and he comes slouching up to the car. She says, “Hello, mister. We want to ask you some questions. Was you ever a slaughterhouse employee?”
He says, “Yep.”
“Do you do your own sewing?”
He says, “Yep.”
“Do you play the violin?”
He says, “Yep.”
“That’s all we wanted to know,” She jerks her thumb at me. “Pete here, who’s chauffeur down at the McRae’s, could deduct all of them things about you when you was twenty foot off because he’s a trained detective. He’s taking a correspondence course in detecting.”
He comes right up close and I can see the bad teeth and the thick lips and the red groove under his jaw plainer than ever, and he says, “Yep?”
Annabell says, “Yep. Well, good by, mister. I certainly enjoyed your conversation.”
I figured that was a good time to step on the gas, having put Annabell in her place, and she cuddled up under my arm friendly like and did not let out another chirp all the way home. Then she gives a big sigh, and says, “What a man! What a man!” and she wasn’t talking about the slaughterhouse employee, you can bet.
P.S. I could not find gorjous in the dictionery so you are right but everybody knows that word and why should I stop using it just because the man who wrote the dictionery is a back number? Where’s he been living, that is what I would like to know, and what would he do if he saw a gorjous blond and deducted maybe she used to be a redhead once but she sat in the sun and it bleached her hair?
From: Chief Inspector, Acme International Detective Correspondence School, South Kingston, New York.
To: Operative P. Moran, c/o Mr. R. B. McRae, Surrey, Conn.
I can only mark you 30 % on your lesson, which is bad. It does not require a trained detective to “deduct Mr. Heasey, the fishman, is a fish-man,” or “Tom Saunders, the tinsmith, is a tinsmith.” Read the lesson again and then see if you cannot find another tinsmith you do not know already or another fishman you do not know already, and confirm your deduction by supplementary observations.
Your deduction that the stranger was a slaughterhouse employee who plays the violin is ridiculous. Slaughterhouse employees do not play violins as supplementary observations would have told you.
“Morter” is spelled “mortar.”
J. J. O’B.
From: Operative P, Moran, c/o Mr. R. B. McRae, Surrey, Conn.
To: Chief Inspector, Acme International Detective Correspondence School, South Kingston, N. Y.
What’s the difference if it is “morter” or “mortar?” It was egg, like I wrote.
Well, I cannot find another tinsmith in Surrey because this is a little village and if there were two tinsmiths one of them would starve to death and I cannot find another fishman here for the same reason unless he ate his own fish. And on Thursday evening I saw Jim Estabrook, the plumber, sitting in the garden back of his house and he had a book of poetry in his lap which he was reading to his little daughter Minerva even though Lesson Five says plumbers do not read poetry or something is wrong somewhere, and I kept my distance from the churches on the way home because it Says in the same lesson clergymen will not be studying the racetrack results and I didn’t want to catch any of them at it. But I observed the slaughterhouse employee again and this is how it happened:
We are still working hard getting ready for that big dance Sunday night which is the night after tomorrow night and it seems like every five minutes we run out of something like miniature electric lights for the green and yellow lanterns in the garden or coat hangers for the cloak room where Annabell is going to check coats or more wax for the floor which I waxed until you can see your face in it or music stands for the Amenia Concert Orchestra though I told the missus there is not one of them that can read notes and they just make up the music as they go along. Friday afternoon, which was today, Mrs. McRae says, “Peter, drive to Lakeville quick and get that dress I left to be dry cleaned and if it isn’t ready stand over the man until he gives it to you, goodness gracious I expect to wear it Sunday night.”
I says, “Excuse me, Mrs. McRae, is that sensual driving?”
She says, “No, I guess it isn’t, but you can stop in at the drug store and buy me a dozen aspirin tablets and then everything will be all right just like the people who are coming to the dance will stop in at the post-office to get their mail first even though it is Sunday and they know the post-office will not be open.”
So I says, “Yes, Mrs. McRae,” and I picked up that redhead Annabell who sneaked out the back door when I gave her the high sign and we went in the coop.
Well, the dress was ready and buying the aspirins didn’t take a minute, but Annabell says, “Pete, why should we hurry back? The moment we get there the missus will think of more things for us to do and my back aches, so let’s take our time and tell her we had to wait.”
I said, “That sounds like a practical idea, Annabell, and there are some excellent parking places which I would like to show you.”
She said, “Parking places do not interest me in broad daylight because they are so public, and what else have you got?”
“There’s the Green Lantern where we could have a couple of beers.”
She said, “No, the missus would smell it on my breath.”
“I can’t think of anything else.”
“Think, Peter. Do we have to go back the same way we came?”
“No, there are side roads which go to the parking places.”
“But if we keep on going past the parking places?”
“Well, one of the side roads goes to Ore Hill.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Another one goes to Lime Rock.”
“Let it go. Say Pete, isn’t there a road that goes to Sludge Pond?”