The Peaceful Affair: Chapter 7
A stunned silence engulfed the room. The president was aghast. The rest were ghast.
“What are you talking about?” asked Hammerhead sharply, the first to recover her rhetoric capacity.
“Women,” smiled Myx, who had been sitting in silence, affording the present company time to digest his loaded statement, “have a much better olfactory sense than men. Did you know that?” Puzzled looks reigned supreme.
“You’ve all worked closely with the president for several years. Moreover, four of you have had love affairs with him. Though olfaction works very much subconsciously — beneath our awareness so to speak — it nonetheless permeates very deeply. Please, ladies, approach the man seated here” — he pointed to the alleged president — “and smell him.”
Doe was up in no time, but one look at the three determined operatives standing by the single exit quickly removed any thoughts of escape he may have entertained. The man slumped in resignation.
A Marine never falters and so it fell to Captain Jefferson to head the sniffers. Hammerhead, Apples, and Gates quickly followed suit.
“Woof, woof,” commented Myx softly and asked, “Captain Jefferson, having done such a fine nosy job, do you recognize this man?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Miss Hammerhead? Miss Apples? Mrs. Gates?”
The three shook their heads.
Myx continued. “Of course, we can verify other small details. After all, no two identical twins are truly identical once they’ve reach adulthood. Scars, deformities, et cetera, tend to accumulate.”
“Twins?” sounded Hammerhead and Gates in live concert. Apples eyed Doe and then turned to the detective. “But this man, whoever he is, has an oblong scar on his neck — exactly like the president. The result of a fencing accident in his youth.”
“How perceptive of you, Miss Apples,” delighted Myx, and moved to stand near Doe. With one swift movement he yanked the ‘scar’, while singing horribly out of tune, “Scarry, scarry nights …”
After a moment the detective had regained his seat and sobriety amidst the tumultuous room. “Now, now, let’s all calm down. One need not get overly agitated every time one finds the President of the United States has a hitherto unknown twin.”
The tall dwarf intervened from the back. “You still haven’t told us who did it. And how. And why.”
“All in good time, my dear,” said Myx tranquilly. “All in good time.”
“What gave me away?” asked the unidentified Anonymous Doe.
“The other day, when I questioned you about the part of your head that had touched the desk as you’d been dozing, you replied, ‘my left cheek’. Unfortunately for the real president, the fencing accident had left not only an external scar on the left side of his neck, but also some muscular dysfunction. He would have been unable to turn his head sufficiently to the right so as to place it on the left cheek. You knew about the scar but not about the internal injury, hence your mistake.”
Anonymous Doe stared dangerously at Myx.
“Ah, I see those cerebral wheels of yours are contemplating some flagitious deed, perhaps intended at myself or at my associates. This I cannot allow.”
“Oh, yeah? And how do you intend to stop me?” Doe had completely dropped his jovial demeanor. “Are you forgetting that to everyone except those in this room I am the president. I can have you snuffed out so fast your left nostril would dance tango with your right one.”
“True,” said Myx evenly. “It takes two to tango. But my demise would occasion your own within a matter of days.”
“What?” cried Doe.
“Have you ever read my small monograph, 78 Rare Poisons of the Tropics? No? What a shame. Of course, you can obtain it readily both in print and electronic formats.” Myx walked over to the water dispenser and placed his left hand on it. “I’m glad to see you’ve been quenching your thirst so persistently, dear Anonymous. As you recall, before you all entered, I detained you outside the office for a minute or two, purporting to arrange the room. In point of fact, I poured into this water dispenser a few drops of a rare tropical poison, which causes death inside seven to ten days, depending on the person’s shoe size. Modern science cannot detect it, let alone counteract it, and only two people on the face of this planet have the antidote. The first is a certain African shaman, whom I had the good fortune to aid in retrieving a rhinoceros, two elephants, and a very stubborn goat; the second person is myself. Now, the shaman happens to be one of those rare people living totally outside of civilization — he cannot be found unless he wants to be. And believe me when I say: He does not want to be found. That leaves me.”
“I’ve given the antidote to a most trusted friend, who will only hand it back to me in person. And even then, first he will make sure I have not been harmed, tortured, or brainwashed. On the slightest provocation or incongruity he will destroy the antidote forthwith. So you see, Anonymous, you’ve a fairly decent motivation to keep me alive, well, and free. Your life depends on it.”
“But we all drank from the water!” cried Gates in fear.
“Quite true. I may have uncovered the whereabouts of the War Treaties, but in doing so I fear I’ve stumbled upon a far, far more villainous plan, the full details of which still elude me. And, frankly, you’re all suspect. Until I resolve this entire affair, and ascertain that the country is once again in good hands, you all shall remain my hostages, so to speak. You will ensure the smooth functioning of these United States!”
“But some of us are innocent of any crime!” vociferated Gates passionately.
“I should not make too liberal a use of the qualifier ‘any’. As for the crime in question — the stakes are simply too high to allow any narrowing of the net at this juncture. You are locked — deadlocked — in this together, until I can separate the wheat of innocence from the chaff of guilt.”
“Wait a minute — you yourself drank from the water,” remarked Apples.
“My, my, but you are so perceptive, Miss Apples. Had circumstances been slightly more favorable I might have considered offering you a job.” A grumbling sound could be heard from the direction of the tall dwarf. “And you are quite right to boot.” With that, Myx took a small vial from his right pocket, opened the lid, and — while avoiding Jefferson’s lunge toward him with surprising agility — quaffed the bluish liquid contained inside.
Serenely, he fixed his gaze on the tall dwarf in the back. “You asked who, how, and why. I believe I know the answer to the first question, which entails a trivial solution to the second: our false president here. He hid the documents in the grandfather clock. As for the ‘why’, that has now become my top order of business. And in the meantime, you” — he swept his hand across Doe and his aides — “will maintain proper governance.”
Without another word Myx and his assistants departed, leaving behind them one pseudo-president, five unnerved women, and a small empty vial of antidote.
“Where’s the president?”
“Who in that room is in cahoots with Anonymous Doe?”
“Did Jennifer Love know she had two half-brothers?”
“Why did Anonymous Doe hide the War Treaties?”
“And why did he then call us in to find them?”
Myx’s assistants had started bombarding him with questions as soon as they’d left the room. “Patience, angels, patience. Remember, life is just a brief pause in an endless stream of nonexistence.” A good non sequitur is worth its weight in mold, he’d always say.
“You two will stay here and survey whoever comes out. Stick to them like a piece of chewing gum to a basketball sneaker.” The small giant and the tall dwarf nodded in agreement. “Apoka and I are flying back to New York to meet with a certain gentleman.”
“Noro, always a pleasure to see you,” came a hearty greeting from a man who could have been the janitor’s doppelganger, but as it chanced, was not.
“How’s business, Sig?” asked Myx.
“Crazy,” replied Dr. Freud, and the two men burst into laughter. It was their habitual greeting ritual, which, for some mysterious — and perhaps divine — reason, never failed to provoke a clamorous guffaw.
“Ah,” said Myx after the moment was over, “I see Apoka has parked the car.” Lipps had surged next to the detective, who proceeded posthaste to introduce the two.
“Sig?”
“Sig?”
“Sig!” Myx raised his voice to a near shout.
“What?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“Breathe, Sig, breathe.” Myx began to second-guess his decision to bring Lipps along. In her company, he often felt like a man walking a tornado.
“Did they come here?” asked Myx, once satisfied that Dr. Freud regained the hang of inhaling and exhaling.
“Just like you said. There were three of them: a rabbi, a priest, and a minister.”
“Oh,” enthused Lipps, “I know that one. In the end, the rabbi says he throws all of the collection up in the air, and what God wants, God keeps. Am I right?”
“Hey,” said Dr. Freud, “she’s good.”
“Perfection incarnate,” Myx parlayed the doctor’s accolade. “The trinity in question, Apoka, happens to be the team of undercover agents sent by Anonymous Doe right after we left. I was expecting this move, of course, and had warned Dr. Freud well in advance to be on the lookout. Moreover, in keeping with regulation seven thousand, six hundred, and ninety-eight dash two hundred and thirty-one — A government agent shall do his or her utmost to manifest no imagination or originality whatsoever — our agents took to interpret ‘undercover’ quite literally. This rendered Dr. Freud’s job that much easier.”
“But what did they want?” asked Lipps.
“They claimed to be on a mission from God, seeking lost souls, particularly those recently arrived at our institution,” replied Dr. Freud. “As you requested, Noro, I cooperated with them fully and showed them all of our new patients here at Loony Prunes. All except for one, that is.”
Myx was pleased. “Very good news, indeed. We’re dealing with a very cunning and dangerous group, and this is but a tiny victory in a struggle only begun. Still, every little bit helps. Now, let’s go see that patient you hid.”
The small giant and the tall dwarf had been sitting in the rented cab for over two hours. Despite the early evening hour, fatigue had settled in due to the sleepless hop to Switzerland. To stay awake, they’d been conducting a lively game of verbal table tennis, playing close to the net for the past minute or so.
“Gates.”
“Love.”
“Hammerhead.”
“Jefferson.”
“Apples.”
“Doe.”
“Doh!” hollered the tall dwarf with finality, gracefully employing a word due to Homer Simpson, which had recently made it into the erudite Oxford English Dictionary’s online edition.
“Look,” called the small giant.
“No hands!” cried the tall dwarf.
“No, I mean, look over there, in the car coming out of the driveway. It’s Jennifer Love. Hit it.”
The tall dwarf started the cab’s engine, and the two proceeded to follow the nondescript car painted with the stars and stripes. The drive lasted just under half an hour, ending at the main parking lot of the University of Maryland campus. Love got out of her car and the operatives followed discretely behind at a safe distance. As usual the dynamic duo had donned a disguise to preclude any and all possibility of identification.
“Uh-oh,” said the small giant.
“What?” asked the tall dwarf.
“She’s going into the Department of Computer Science.”
“Uh-oh,” agreed the tall dwarf.
They were approaching the one place where their chosen disguises for the day would not go unnoticed. But what choice did they have?
Gingerly, the small keyboard and the tall mouse entered the solid building.
“People never notice the janitor,” Dr. Freud was explaining to Myx and Lipps, “which is why I disguised our patient as one, rather than hide him in some room, where one of the men of cloth might find him. There may be a slight problem though.”
“If they’ve hurt him,” said Myx severely, “I will be most upset.”
“No, no,” laughed Dr. Freud, “he’s perfectly okay. The problem is more in my department than in yours.”
“Are you telling me that his short sojourn in your fine institution has turned this man into a cuckoo?” asked Myx.
“Not exactly. Oh, there he is now.”
Lipps’s eyes widened as she recognized the janitor. Myx was pleased. “I’m glad you’re safe and sound.”
“I’m in your debt, Noro, totally in your debt,” said the man warmly, vigorously shaking the detective’s hand.
“Speak not another word. Saving your life was an honor.”
“Who’s talking about my life? I’m talking about setting me up in this wonderful job. I’ve finally found the career of my dreams. My vocation. My calling in life. I’m a janitor!” The man was joyously dancing with his broom.
“Sir,” started Myx somberly, “I don’t quite think you can keep this job.”
“Why not?” asked the man peevishly.
Dr. Freud gave Myx an It’s-Not-My-Fault look.
“Because,” replied Myx slowly, “you must help us save the country.”
“Must I?”
“Yes,” said Myx resolutely.
“Oh, all right then,” sighed the man, shrugging his shoulders in resignation.
“Come, Mr. President,” said Myx in an urgent voice, “we must leave at once!”
“Okay. And, please, call me John.”
On the first floor Love turned right, ultimately disappearing behind the third door on the left. The small giant and the tall dwarf approached cautiously to read the nameplate — Professor Fenestra Gates — and then retreated to a nearby book-encrusted niche where they remained unobserved.
“What business do you reckon she has with Dorothy Gates’s husband?” asked the small giant.
“Beats me,” yawned the tall dwarf expansively, accidentally swallowing a small manuscript, sadly containing the one and only proof of Goldbach’s Conjecture: Every even integer greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers. “All I can think of is sleep, sleep, sleep …”
With that, both keyboard and mouse performed system shutdown. Out cold, they did not notice the door to Gates’s office opening, nor the elderly man in his late teens who accompanied Love and the professor as they departed.
