The Eight of Swords

got hold of the girl by the back hair and was trying to pull it out, making most unepiscopal threats. That's all Standish told me; and he was excited, anyhow. I gather the Bishop thought the poor girl was wearing a wig. In any event, he made Standish promises to 'phone me and arrange an interview for him with one of our people.'

'He's coming here, sir?'

'Yes. Do me a favor, will you, Hadley, and see him? That will probably pacify His Reverence. I want to oblige Standish, and it never does any harm to keep on the good side of the clergy. By the way, Standish is the silent partner in that publishing firm you're writing your memoirs for; did you know it?'

Hadley tapped the mouthpiece thoughtfully. 'Urn' he said. 'No. No, I didn't know that. Burke is the only one I've met. Well—'

'Good man,' said Bellchester approvingly. 'You see him, then. Good luck.'

He rang off. Hadley folded his hands with a patient and gloomy air. He muttered 'Poltergeist!'.several times, and indulged in some reflections on the evil days which had befallen the Metropolitan Police when the Chief Inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department was required to listen to the maunderings of every loony bishop who went about sliding down bannisters, attacking housemaids, and firing ink-bottles at vicars.

Presendy his sense of humor struggled into being again. A grin appeared under his clipped gray moustache, and he fell to whistling as he sorted out his morning's mail. He also reflected, in as sentimental a fashion as his nature would permit, on his thirty-five years in the Force; on all the villainy and nonsense he had seen in this little bare room, with its brown distempered walls and windows that overlooked the sedate Embankment. Each morning he placidly shaved himself in East Croydon, kissed his wife, cast a troubled eye over the newspaper (which always hinted at sinister things, either from Germany or the climate) as the train bore him to Victoria; and took up afresh his duties in murders or lost dogs. Around him was the ordered hum of this clearing-house for both. Around him —.

'Come in,' he said, in reply to a knock at the door.

A constable, obviously perturbed, coughed.

There's a gentleman here, sir,' he observed, rather in the manner of one making a deduction. There's a gentleman here.' He laid a card on Hadley's desk.

'Urn' said the Chief Inspector, who was reading a report. 'What's he want?'

'I think you had better see him, sir.'

Hadley glanced at the card, which said:

Dr. Sigismund Von Hornswoggle Vienna

'I think you'd better see him' the other insisted. 'He's making a row, sir, and psychoanalyzing everybody he can lay hold of. Sergeant Betts has hidden himself in the record room, and swears he won't come out until somebody takes the gentleman away.'

'Look here,' said the exasperated Hadley, and creaked round in his swivel-chair. 'Is everybody trying to play a game on me this morning? What the hell do you mean, making a row? Why don't you chuck him out?'

'Well, sir, the fact is,' said the other, 'that — well, I think we know him. You see…'

The constable was not a small man, but he was shoved aside by a much larger one; certainly one of five times his girth. The doorway was filled by an enormously stout figure in a black cape and glistening top hat. But the chief inspector's first impression of him was concerned with whiskers. He wore, almost to his cheekbones, the most luxuriant set of black whiskers Hadley had ever seen. His eyebrows were also of the same variety, and seemed to take up half his forehead. Small eyes twinkled behind eyeglasses on a broad black ribbon. His red face beamed, and he swept off his hat in a great bow.

'Goot morning!' he thundered in a rumbling voice, and beamed again. 'Haf I der honor of speaking to das chief inspector, yah? Du bist der hauptmann, meinherr, nicht wahr? Yah, yah, yah. So.'

He came over at his rolling gait and set out a chair with great nicety, propping his cane against its side.

'I vill myself sit down,' he announced. 'So.'

He sat down, beamed, folded his hands, and inquired: 'Vot do you dream about?'

Then Hadley got his breath. 'Fell—' he said. 'Gideon Fell… What in the name of God,' continued Hadley, slapping the desk at each word, 'do you mean by putting on that crazy get-up and coming into my office in it? I thought you were in America. Did anybody see you come in?'

'Eh? My goot friend—!' protested the other in an injured tone, 'surely you haf yourself mistaken, yah? I am Herr Doktor Sigismund von Hornswoggle… '

Take it off? said Hadley firmly.

'Oh, well,' said the other, dropping his accent in a voice of resignation. 'So you penetrated my disguise, did you? The chap in New York told me I was perfect in the art. I had a sovereign bet that I could deceive you. Well, aren't you going to shake hands, Hadley? Here I am back, after three months in America—'

There's a lavatory at the end of the hall,' said the chief inspector inexorably. 'Go out and take off those whiskers or I’ll have you locked up. What do you want to do: make a guy of me in my last month of office?'

'Oh, well,' grunted Dr. Fell.

He reappeared in a few minutes, his old self again, with his double chins, his bandit's moustache, and his great mop of gray-streaked hair. His face had grown even redder with the friction of washing off spirit gum. Chuckling, he propped his hands on his stick and beamed at Hadley over his eyeglasses. His headgear had changed to the usual shovel hat.

'Still,' he observed, 'I flatter myself that I deceived your subordinates. It takes time, of course, to become perfect. And I have my diploma from the William J. Pinkerton School of Disguise. It's what they call a mail-order course. Heh-heh-heh. You pay five dollars down, and they send you your first lesson; and so on. Heh-heh-heh.'

'You're a hopeless old sinner,' said Hadley, relenting, 'but, all the same, I'm devilish glad to see you back. Did you enjoy yourself in America?'

Dr. Fell sighed with reminiscent pleasure, blinking at a corner of the ceiling. Then he rumbled and hammered the ferrule of his cane on the floor.

'He pasted the old apple!' murmured Dr. Fell ecstatically. 'II a fiappi l’ oignon! Ha, woof! — kill the umpire! I say, Hadley, how would you construe into Latin the following text: 'He poled the tomato into the left-field bleachers for a circuit clout?' I've been debating it all the way across the ocean. 'Poled' and 'tomato' I can manage, but how Virgil would have said left-field bleachers' rather stumps me.'

'What's all that?'

'It would appear,' said Dr. Fell, 'to be the dialect of a province called Brooklyn. My friends from the publishing house took me there, thank God, when we were supposed to be attending literary teas. You can't imagine,' said the doctor, with unholy glee, 'how many literary teas we contrived to miss, or, better still, how many literary people I avoided meeting. Heh-heh. Let me show you my scrap-book.'

From beside his chair he took up a brief-case, and produced a volume of cuttings which he spread out proudly on the chief inspector's desk.

'I may mention, to explain some of these headlines,' he pursued, 'that I was known to the newspapers as ‘Gid''

'Gid?' said Hadley, blankly.

'It is short, snappy, and fits into a headline,' explained Dr. Fell, with the air of one who quotes. 'Look at these examples, now.'

He opened the book at random. Hadley's eye was caught by the announcement: 'Gid Judges Beauty Contest at Long Beach.' The accompanying photograph showed Dr. Fell, with cloak, shovel hat, and a beam like a burnished apple on his face, towering among a group of amorous young ladies in almost nonexistent bathing costumes. 'Gid Opens New Fire-Station in Bronx; Created Honorary Fire Chief' proclaimed another. This cutting was decorated with two snapshots. One showed Dr. Fell wearing a complicated headgear on which was printed the word Chief, and holding up an axe as though he were going to brain somebody. The other pictured him in the act of sliding down a silver-plated pole from the second floor of the fire station; a very impressive sight. It bore the caption: 'Did He Fell Or Was He Pushed?' Hadley was aghast.

'Do you mean to say you actually did all these things?' he demanded.

'Certainly. I told you I had a good time' the other reminded him complacently. 'Here is an account of my speech to the convention of the Loyal and Benevolent Order of Mountain Goats. I seem to have spoken very well, though my recollection is hazy. I was also made an Honorary Something of the Order; but I am not sure what my tide is, because it was late in the evening and the President couldn't pronounce it with any degree of certainty.