The Case of the Vanishing Ghost

by

Gene Wolfe

Written with the sincerest apologies to S. Holmes and none whatsoever to his ten thousand shadows.

The characters of this mystery have become so familiar to the reader that I shall neglect to add the last formalized touch of naming the principal ones. Instead, they shall be referred to by the names every reader uses in his own mind. To call The Great Detective

"Philo Queen" for example, would be a needless waste of time.

Our story opens when The Poor Stooge returns from an afternoon's walk to find The Great Detective wrapped in his old green dressing gown. (Which he himself made from a horse blanket, and which has remained uncleaned since.)* His right hand grips a Coke in which floats a Benzedrine inhaler. He is playing the xylophone with his toes. These symptoms, as The Poor Stooge knows from long experience, mean that The Great Detective has a case which is baffling police throughout the world, and has the newspapers of a continent reduced to wild conjectures. All his cases fall into this category, of course, except for those which are so secret and of such vital importance to the national welfare that they are brought to him by the president or king of a foreign power, or the prime minister himself. On such occasions he is found wearing his horse disguise, and impatiently waiting for The Poor Stooge to act as his rear guard, the one thing that gentleman does to perfection.

After several minutes of rapt xylophone playing The Great Detective looks up at The Poor Stooge, who has been waiting with dog-like devotion for the great man's words.

"On your walk," intones The Great Detective, "you paused to pat the head of a small boy who was eating a lime popsycle."

"Astounding!" Gasps The Poor Stooge, "How do--"

"I noted the marks on your hand, where he bit you as small boys always do when you pat their heads. Not that I blame them."

"But the--"

"The popsycle was an easy inference. Your right arm is covered from wrist to elbow with a sticky green smear which could only come from such a confection. "Furthermore, you aided some such moppet in getting a drink from the park fountain."

"Ho--" says The Poor Stooge, who by this time is reduced to gibbering incoherence despite the fact that this has happened to him in all the other stories by the same author.

"He squirted you, and you are still dripping wet. Also, you went to the Swineherds Midtown Bank and withdrew an amount less than six and a half crowns, five shillings, tuppence."

The Poor Stooge stands mute. He is too numb for further amazement. The reader is simply numb.

"I deduced this from the fact that you stuck the bank's pen in your pocket and your shirt-front is saturated with the vile black ink peculiar to the Swineherds. Had the amount exceeded that sum you would have been more thoroughly disturbed and would have put the pen in your mouth so that your lips, rather than your haberdashery, would have been black. But enough of this idle chitchat, I have just received a missive concerning a case which promises to be of some interest."

The Great Detective's statement is followed instantly by the entry of an old apple-woman.

"Greetings, Sir Humphrey Blassington-Smyth of Little Slopshire on the Gimlet," drawls The Great Detective.

"Gad, sir!" exclaims Sir Humphrey. (For, as the reader may have guessed, it was really he.) "I believed my disguise to be impenetrable. After I was expelled from the grounds of Blassington hall by my own butler and bitten by my own dog, Black Herbert of Slopshire XVII, whose ancestors served with mine at the battle of Hastings, I would never have believed that a perfect stranger would recognize me. How did you manage it?"

"Your disguise, Sir Humphrey, is that of a brilliant amateur, and suffers from the common defect of its kind. While painstaking in some respects -- I did not fail to notice the genuine lice bites on your wrist--"

"It was nothing, I simply put my arm around the cook for a few minutes," mumbles the peer modestly.

"As I was saying, like most amateurs you overlooked one major point. As you entered I perceived that the apples in your basket were not actually apples, but cannon balls, door knobs, and a few darning eggs, painted scarlet. Once I was assured of your fraudulency, identification was not difficult. Your picture, you may recall, appeared on the third page of The Times a fortnight ago come Martinsmas in connection with a charity foxhunt. By the way, what was the result of that hunt?"

"Little blighter got away."

"My question, sir, was in reference to the proceeds of the hunt. Did the Hurbut Gelding Fund For the Prosecution of Immorality fatten its purse as expected?"

"Dash it all! I thought it was for The Unwed Mothers Home."

"I believe not. But what was this matter on which you wished to consult me?"

"As a man with your knowledge of London affairs is no doubt aware, my family, while one of the oldest in England, was up to a few years ago, totally impoverished."

"This was due to the attempts of your grandfather, a felineophobiac, to construct a clockwork mouse which would rid England of cats, was it not?"

"Yes. The family fortune could have stood it were it not for his passion for jeweled bearings; those bearings beat us. Are you also familiar with the way in which those fortunes he spent have been regained?"

"No." (The Great Detective was always inclined to be a little rude when he was unable to answer a question.)

"I recall it as though it were yesterday," says Blassington-Smyth. "The family was gathered about the fire in old Castle Blassington, the last habitable building left to us. Upon the fire we bad just thrown the last piece of good furniture left in the castle, a Louis XIV commode. Then came a knock at the door."

"Who was it?" gasps The Poor Stooge, grabbing The Great Detective's hand for assurance.

____________________________

* This is one of many eccentricities intended to establish him so firmly in the reader's mind that he cannot be disturbed by the onrushing battalions of similar characters.

Next

"As a matter of fact, it was a rather pretty young man with curly blond hair, pink cheeks, very red lips, and beautiful blue eyes. He spoke with an American accent which was almost smothered by a pronounced lisp, as I recall."

"How was he dressed?" inquires The Great Detective.

"Strange that you should ask that, for he was oddly dressed indeed. He wore a bright orange sweater, an orange bow tie with white polka-dots, and pink knickers. There were letters of some sort on his sweater -- UT I believe. From a few polite questions we learned that he was an American college student vacationing in England. He had been cycling to Slopshire when darkness overtook him and he had tumbled into the moat, having mistaken our garden path for the Slopshire-Digby highway. Fortunately for our self respect, china is uninflammable and we still had a pinch of orange pekoe left, so that we were able to offer him a cup of tea. When he lifted it to his lips a remarkable thing happened. He took on a sip, screamed a few words, and dropped dead."

"What did he say?"

"I can still hear that agonized shriek. He said, 'They make it better than we do at Shu Fli Pi!'

Then he fell. It was terrible."

"Go on," urges The Great Detective.

"Well, it was only a few days later that we learned that this strange incident had been the salvation of the family. Castle Blassington, which had been barren for eight hundred years, was haunted!"

"You opened it to the public at once, no doubt."

"Dashed right we did. We charged two shillings, sixpence a head and got it too. Imagine, gentlemen, the only haunted castle in England with an American ghost. We couldn't keep those tourists away."

"It must have been a gold mine, but now--?"

"Gentlemen, the ghost vanished two days ago!"

"I see," muses The Great Detective.

"It was always regular as clockwork before. Morning, noon and night it might be seen from the battlements to the dungeon, sometimes screaming, sometimes giggling, sometimes shrieking imprecations in Greek, but always there. Now it is there no longer."

"Sir Humphrey, is it not correct that your closest neighbor at the castle is a Mr. G. Ruesom?"

"It is."

"And is it not also correct that Mr. Ruesom is an expert on supernatural matters?"

"He is, but I consulted him, and he declares himself helpless."

"Is it not also true that Mr. Ruesom did not take part in the foxhunt?"

"Right-ho."

"Then, Sir Humphrey, I will undertake to aid you in regaining your ghost for 5,000 pounds sterling."

"Done, and God bless you!"

"Your ghost, Sir Humphrey, was lured from the castle by means of some bait, probably a package of Parliament cigarettes or a bottle of creme de menth, by Ruesom who wished to study it at closer quarters than those provided by the castle.

"If you will wait here a moment--"

The Great Detective leaves the room for a few moments and returns carrying a package wrapped in brown paper.

"If you will be so good as to throw this through Ruesom's window some night, I feel sure your ghost will be frightened into returning to your castle where he has found safety for so many years."

Sir Humphrey left without a word but with a smile of thanks on his face.

"But--but what is in package?" asks The Poor Stooge.

"A military shoulder patch, a pair of boots, the severed horn of a steer, and--"

"And what, for God's sake!"

"And a copy of a magazine called The Commentator," replies The Great Detective with a mysterious smile.