The Peaceful Affair: Chapter 39
Following Theo’s third encore the applause had finally petered out, and the elated elephant descended the stage, taking his seat amongst the audience. It was time for the detective’s show.
Slowly, an aura of revelation about him, a tuxedo-clad Myx strode onto the stage, and cast a penetrating gaze at the spectators: they were all there — and they were all suspect. In a quiet somber voice, the detective began.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I see you have come here numerous. Not to worry — before long I shall whittle down your numbers.” He paused for a moment to let the nebulous statement take effect. “Let me commence with that which is known. Eleven nights ago the War Treaties had seemingly been stolen from the Triangular Office. Called in by the president I quickly uncovered the missing documents, which had not gone missing at all, as it turned out, but had been hidden by Anonymous Doe — the newly revealed mock president — inside the famous grandfather clock. You were probably awed by the sheer display of logic that led to the documents’ detection.” A few grumbling sounds could be heard from the spectators.
“Well, you needn’t have,” continued Myx. “It was far less arduous a task than it seemed. You see, I had concealed the documents myself.”
The audience was in a state of uproar. “But Anonymous practically confessed!” cried Xena Hammerhead.
Myx looked sharply at her and said, “Why, if it isn’t the lovely Miss Hammerhead. Shall we talk about you, perhaps?” The detective turned toward the woman sitting next to the lawyer. “Or perhaps about you, Miss Apples? Or perhaps about both of you?”
“What are you getting at?” asked Apples anxiously.
“During the course of my investigation I had made a number of interesting discoveries. One of them concerns you two. Or rather, you one.” The tense silence in the air could be cut with a chopstick. “When Indiana Apples — Edgar to his doctors — former husband of Eve Apples, had fallen madly in love with Jennifer Love, ultimately developing Raven Syndrome and ending up in Loony Prunes, Miss Apples had suffered a blow, too. She’d developed a hallucination of a tough independent lawyer; a hallucination she’d named Xena Hammerhead. Things had gone nicely for a while, until Apples’s delusion had taken a life of its own and run amok. The dream had detached itself from the dreamer.”
Hammerhead was on her feat, shouting, “How dare you! How dare you!” Apples was quietly sobbing. Undaunted, Myx descended the stage and pricked the shouting lawyer with a small safety pin he’d extracted from a shy yet resourceful pocket. The pinned lady burst like a soap bubble, spraying everyone with tiny wet particles.
The detective put a paternal hand on Apples’s shoulder, and spoke softly. “I’m sorry, Eve, but sometimes one just has to let go of one’s dreams.” She nodded in agreement, her lips forming a mute “Thank you.”
“How dare you pin this on her!” cried Ibrahim McGregor from his seat.
“Ah,” smiled the detective, “my dear Mr. McGregor, the gallant British agent.” Myx pointed to McGregor’s neighbor. “And there’s another gallant agent, sitting right beside him: the illustrious Secret Agent.” Agent tipped his hat.
Myx turned toward the seated academic. “Professor Gates, might you be so kind as to provide the mathematical definition of a complex number?”
Gates stood up, cleared his throat, and addressed the class. “A complex number is a number of the form a plus b times the square root of minus one. The coefficient ‘a’ is known as the real part and the coefficient ‘b’ is known as the imaginary part. Complex numbers are highly useful in various domains, including physics, electronics, and so on. They can be viewed as points in a two-dimensional — ”
“Thank you, professor,” Myx stopped the deluge in midair.
“This will all be on the final exam!” cried Gates and regained his seat.
“A few days ago my lovely operatives” — he motioned to the small giant and the tall dwarf — “photographed McGregor and Agent inside Lilliput’s Tavern. I showed the photo to my good friend Dr. Freud over at Loony Prunes, and he recognized the two gentlemen at once.” Ignoring protests from the agents under consideration, Myx continued. “McGregor and Agent are in fact a single being: an acute form of complexophrenia. McGregor is the real part, while Agent is the imaginary part, or is it vice versa, detectives Adam Versa and Eve Vice?”
They spectators were gazing at the complexophrenic gentleman — whose eyes were blinking wildly — all asking themselves the same question.
“You’re all asking yourselves the same question,” revealed Myx. “How could we have mistaken the one for the two? Well, as Dr. Freud is wont to say: Complexophrenics are complex.”
Myx pushed onward. “As I promised, our numbers are slowly dwindling. I think I shall continue this trend by eliminating a president or two.”
Ears pricked up all over. “A few moments ago I confessed to having hidden the War Treaties myself, whereupon Eve Apples’s former hallucination reminded us of Anonymous Doe’s professed guilt. To use a dichotomous cliché she was both wrong and wrong.”
Everyone leaned in so as not to miss a syllable. “Anonymous does not exist,” concluded Myx with a narrow smile.
The audience was in a state of pandemonium, shouts emanating from all directions at once. Myx raised his hands maternally. “Now, now, if you get so excited upon losing a mock president, I shudder to think what will transpire when I annul the real president.” As if on cue, John Doe mounted the stage from behind the scenes.
“But there’s John,” shouted Jennifer Love, pointing to the president.
“Not John,” averred Myx, lifting his head toward the stage. “Jane, you can come down now.” The woman descended, and came to stand beside Myx. “Jane had invented John years ago, when she’d discovered men were quite handy in politics.”
“How … How …” Dorothy Gates managed to utter.
“Makeup is a dyeing art,” said Myx evenly.
Gates refused to give in easily. “But we smelled him — ehr, I mean her — during your exposé in the Triangular Office a week ago. It was a totally different odor than that of the president’s. There must be at least two people involved.”
“Not necessarily,” stated Myx. “You see, the olfactory sense is quite easy to fool.”
Apples, who had reclaimed some of her composure, mumbled quietly, “But … John … I mean, Jane … We all had … love affairs …”
Myx raised his left eyebrow questioningly.
To his side, Jane burst into laughter. “Not love affairs. You see, I’m allergic to politicians, which often brings about nose congestion and slurring of speech. It wasn’t ‘love affair’ — it was ‘love of air’. I just love to walk in the open air.”
“There, that explains it,” said Myx decisively, and motioned Jane Doe to take a seat. Several of the female spectators were evincing glassy looks.
“What’s going on here?” asked General General impatiently. “No John. No Anonymous. And — you hid the War Treaties yourself. Why?”
“To answer that,” replied Myx calmly, “I must go back a couple of years to the Belgian-Dutch affair, wherein the War Treaty between Belgium and Holland had been stolen and its contents leaked to the world.”
“What has that to do with anything?” called General.
Unfazed, Myx continued. “Patience in the hand is worth two in the bush, my dear general. Although the affair had eventually been diplomatically resolved, neither the perpetrators nor the original document had ever been found. After things had calmed down, the secretary-general of the United Nations — here present — asked me to look into the case, to uncover the perpetrators and assure that such a thing would not recur. The investigation has proven to be long and arduous. But — I am happy to inform you — successful.” The secretary-general smiled warmly at him.
“The mystery dates back not a couple of years, but in fact several dozen years: 1925, to be more precise. And we must skip continents as well: from Europe to Africa; specifically, the desert near the city of Cairo.” Both tensions and attentions ran high. “While digging at the site of Egypt’s famed dimaryps, two Swedish archeologists, Sydlig Henrikson and Armageddon Baggins, uncovered an extraordinary tablet. They named it the Rose Eta stone”
Lord Dogsworth and Young Man Coronet began shifting restlessly.
“Quite a lovely stone,” continued Myx and called, “Edgar, do bring it in, please.” At that, a familiar gentleman appeared from behind the scenes, carrying a stone tablet, which he stood on the stage. Myx turned to him and recited, “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou, I said, art sure no craven.”
The man responded softly with, “Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend,” and quietly disappeared backstage.
Myx smiled and said, “Raven Syndrome or not, Edgar has an uncanny knack for archeology.” The sound of Lord Dogsworth’s gritted teeth could be heard all the way up to Selma Rosenschein’s apartment. The detective pointed to the slab and continued. “The tablet bears an inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphics with a translation into ancient Swedish. Baggins and Henrikson had taken much time to make sense of it. Thanks to Theo here, I was eventually able to decipher the Rose Eta stone.” The elephant bowed humbly and sang,
He thought he saw a Burly Swede
Upon Rose Eta’s stone.
He looked again, and found it was
A Very Hungry Loan.
“It seems I must,” he faintly said,
“Feed her my best bone!”
“That tablet belongs to my father,” said Annabelle Doe sharply.
“It belongs in a museum, madam,” replied Myx sternly. “Or better yet, in view of the harm it has caused, it belongs in a crusher.”
“Harm?” asked Annabelle uncomprehendingly.
“I take it you knew nothing of this stone until now?” asked Myx.
“No,” admitted Doe.
“But your daughter did. She most definitely did,” the detective asserted firmly.
“I assure you, Noro, I knew nothing of this tablet,” said Jane Doe indignantly.
“Nor did I,” admitted Jennifer Love decisively.
“I do not doubt the mother and her two daughters; indeed, they knew nothing of the Rose Eta stone,” proclaimed Myx. “Sometimes knowledge skips a generation, along with a daughter or two on the way. But,” he cast a penetrating eye at Annabelle Doe, “your third daughter knew.”
“What?” jumped Jane Doe.
“What?” jumped Jennifer Love.
“Noro, please — ” began Annabelle, only to be stopped by Myx. “I’m sorry, madam, but the stakes are too high. Close to forty years ago Annabelle Doe had an affair with contractor Jesus Cohen. As you all know, the affair had produced a daughter: Jennifer Love. What you do not know is that it had produced another daughter two years later: Love’s younger twin, and Sydlig Henrikson’s granddaughter. I’m happy to say the baby is here with us today.” Myx pointed to the small giant and exclaimed, “Please welcome May Day Henrikson!”
The woman rose, turned to Annabelle, and slapped herself on the forehead. “Now I remember. You’re my mother. So nice to finally be rid of my materamnesia. Thanks for telling me, Noro.”
“You’re welcome,” said Myx. “And while we’re dealing with grandchildren, let’s welcome Neiklot Baggins, granddaughter of Armageddon Baggins.” The audience applauded politely.
“My investigation into the Belgian-Dutch affair had quickly led me onto the tracks of these two ladies,” continued Myx. “That’s when I’d sent them both anonymous tips and hired them as my operatives.” He eyed the two calmly. “Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your pizza closest.”
“I knew it!” cried Baggins, and turned to her friend. “I told you we should have been more careful.”
“Silence!” cried Myx, and resumed his discourse. “It was Henrikson and Baggins who had stolen the Belgian-Dutch War Treaty.”
“How can you be so sure?” questioned the secretary-general.
“Apoka and I followed these two ladies to the ducks a few days ago, where they left the precious document with Nancy. My ducky friend was kind enough to show it to me: the original treaty in the flesh.” He turned to Baggins and Henrikson. “You should have stuck with the drakes.”
“But why did they steal it?” cried the secretary-general.
“An excellent question,” replied Myx. “Motive. To understand the granddaughters’ motive we must go back to the grandfathers and their tablet. As I said, with Theo’s aid I was able to translate the Rose Eta stone.” He mounted the stage, paused dramatically for a few seconds, and then — in one fell swoop — turned the stone around. Attached to its backside was a large white sheet with printed text. “There’s your translation,” announced Myx forcefully.
Everyone leaned in to read:
Man Wants More
More Wants War
War Wants Death
Death Wants Man
