“The man on all fours with his head close to the ground looks to me like ancient Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who went mad and ate grass. By him is the banana (Banane) tree. Collapse those two words into one, à la Lewis Carroll and his portmanteau words, and you have nebanan (next to).”
“This Scarletin is crazy,” Strasse said.
“If he is, he has a utilitarian madness,” Ralph said.
“You’re out of your mind, too!” Strasse said triumphantly. “Look!” And he pointed at a name painted on the wall. Neb Bannons.
Ralph was silent for a few seconds while Strasse laughed, and then he said, quietly, “Well, I was wrong in the particular but right in the principle. Ach! Here we are! Maintain the same speed driver! The rest of you, look straight ahead, don’t gawk! Someone may be watching from the house, but they won’t think it suspicious if they see a dog looking out of the window!”
I did as he said, but I strained out of the corners of my eyes to see both sides of the road. On my right were some fields of barley. On my left I caught a glimpse of a gateway with a name over it in large white-painted letters: Schindeler. We went past that and by a field on my left in which two stallions stood by the fence looking at us. On my right was a sign against a stone wall which said: Bergmann.
Ralph said delightedly, “That’s it!”
I felt even more stupid.
“Don’t stop until we get around the curve ahead and out of sight of the Schindeler house,” Ralph said.
A moment later, we were parked beyond the curve and pointed west. The car which had been trailing us by several kilometers reported by radio that it had stopped near the Graustock farm.
“All right!” Strasse said fiercely. “Things seem to have worked out! But before I move in, I want to make sure I’m not arresting the wrong people. Just how did you figure this one out?”
“Button your lip and flap your ears, sweetheart,” Ralph said. “Take the balloon with O.Z. on it. That continues the yellow brick road motif. You noticed the name Bergmann (miner)? A Bergmann is a man who digs, right? Well, for those of you who may have forgotten, the natal or Nebraskan name of the Wizard of Oz was Diggs.”
Strasse looked as if he were going to have an apoplectic fit. “And what about those ancient Teutonic warriors and those naked blue men in chariots across the road from the balloon?” he shouted.
“Those Teutonic warriors were Anglo-Saxons, and they were invading ancient Britain. The Britons were tattooed blue and often went into battle naked. As all educated persons know,” he added, grinning. “As for the two leaders of the Anglo-Saxons, traditionally they were named Hengist and Horsa. Both names meant horse. In fact, as you know, Hengst is a German word for stallion, and Ross also means horse. Ross is cognate with the Old English hrossa, meaning horse.”
“God preserve me from any case like this one in the future!” Strasse said. “Very well, we won’t pause in this madness! What does this pre-Civil War house with the Southern belle before it and the tavern by it mean? How do you know that it means that Scarletin is prisoner there?”
“The tableau suggests, among other things, the book and the movie Gone With the Wind,” Ralph said. “You probably haven’t read the book, Strasse, but you surely must have seen the movie. The heroine’s name is Scarlett O’Hara, right, pal? And a tavern in English is also an inn. Scarlett-inn, get it?”
A few minutes later Ralph said, “If you don’t control yourself, my dear Strasse, your men will have to put you in a straitjacket.”
The policeman ceased his bellowing but not his trembling, took a few deep breaths, followed by a deep draught from a bottle in the glove compartment, breathed schnapps all over us, and said, “So! Life is not easy! And duty calls! Let us proceed to make the raid upon the farmhouse as agreed upon!”
7
NO EMERALD CITY FOR ME
An hour after dusk, policemen burst into the front and rear doors of the Schindeler house. By then it had been ascertained that the house had been rented by a man giving the name of Albert Habicht. This was Hilda Speck’s brother, Albert Speck, the Hippopotamus. His companion was a Wilhelm Erlesohn, a tall skinny man nicknamed die Giraffe. A fine zoological pair, both now behind bars.
Hilda Speck was also convicted but managed to escape a year later. But we were to cross her path again. (The Case of the Seeing Eye Man.)
Alfred Scarletin was painting another canvas with the same message but different symbols when we collared his kidnapers. He threw down his brush and took his lovely wife into his arms, and my heart went into a decaying orbit around my hopes. Apparently, despite his infidelity, she still loved him.
Most of this case was explained, but there was still an important question to be answered. How had Scarletin known where he was?
“The kidnaping took place in daylight in the midst of a large crowd,” Scarletin said. “Erlesohn jammed a gun which he had in his coat pocket against my back. I did as he said and got into the back of a delivery van double-parked nearby. Erlesohn then rendered me unconscious with a drug injected by a hypodermic syringe. When I woke up, I was in this house. I have been confined to this room ever since, which, as you see, is large and has a southern exposure and a heavily barred skylight and large heavily barred windows. I was told that I would be held until I had painted twelve paintings. These would be sufficient for the two men to become quite wealthy through sales to rich but unscrupulous collectors. Then I would be released.
“I did not believe them of course. After the twelve paintings were done, they would kill me and bury me somewhere in the woods. I listened often at the door late at night and overheard the two men, who drank much, talking loudly. That is how I found out their names. I also discovered that Hilda was in on the plot, though I’d suspected that all along. You see, I had quit her only a few days before I was kidnaped, and she was desperate because she no longer had an income.
“As for how I knew where I was, that is not so remarkable. I have a photographic memory, and I have tramped up and down Germany painting in my youth and early middle age. I have been along this road a number of times on foot when I was a teenager. In fact, I once painted the Graustock farmhouse. It is true that I had forgotten this, but after a while the memory came back. After all, I looked out the window every day and saw the Graustock farm.
“And now, tell me, who is the man responsible for reading my message? He must be an extraordinary man.”
“No man,” I said, feeling like Ulysses in Polyphemus’ cave.
“Ach, then, it was you, Lisa?” he cried.
“It’s yours truly, sweetheart,” the voice of Humphrey Bogart said.
Scarletin is a very composed man, but he has fainted at least once in his life.
8
THE CONCLUSION
It was deep in winter with the fuel shortage most critical. We were sitting in our apartment trying to keep warm by the radiations from the TV set. The Scotch helped, and I was trying to forget our discomfort by glancing over my notes and listening to the records of our cases since the Scarletin case. Had Ralph and I, in that relatively short span of time, really experienced the affair of the aluminum crèche, the adventures of the human camel and the Old-School Thai, and the distressing business with the terrible Venetian, Granelli? The latter, by the way, is being written up under the title: The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight.
At last, I put the notes and records to one side and picked up a book. Too many memories were making me uncomfortable. A long silence followed, broken when Ralph said, “You may not have lost her after all, my dear Weisstein.”
I started, and I said, “How did you know I was thinking of her?”
Ralph grinned (at least, I think he was grinning). He said, “Even the lead-brained Strasse would know that you cannot forget her big brown eyes, her smiles, her deep rich tones, her figure, and her et cetera. What else these many months would evoke those sighs, those moping stares, those frequent attacks of insomnia and absentmindedness? It is evident at this moment that
you are not at all as deep in one of C. S. Forester’s fine sea stories as you pretend.
“But cheer up! The fair Lisa may yet have good cause to divorce her artistic but philandering spouse. Or she may become a widow.”
“What makes you say that?” I cried.
“I’ve been thinking that it might not be just a coincidence that old Lausitz died after he purchased Scarletin’s painting. I’ve been sniffing around the painting—literally and figuratively—and I think there’s one Hamburger that’s gone rotten.”
“You suspect Scarletin of murder!” I said. “But how could he have killed Lausitz?”
“I don’t know yet, pal,” he said. “But I will. You can bet your booties I will. Old murders are like old bones—I dig them up.”
And he was right, but that adventure was not to happen for another six months.
THE DOGE WHOSE BARQUE WAS WORSE THAN HIS BIGHT
BY JONATHAN SWIFT SOMERS III
EDITED BY PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER
In his Wold Newton biography Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Philip José Farmer himself sets up this next installment from the case files of Ralph von Wau Wau:
“Cordwainer Bird [is] a mainstream novelist and a militant foe of evil. Though he is nowhere as tall as his ancestors and relatives, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Rudolf Rassendyll, the Shadow, and Doc Savage, et al., he has their heroic spirit and their dedication to fighting wickedness. But unlike these heroes of an earlier age, who fought to preserve The Establishment, he fights to destroy The Establishment. One of The Establishments, anyway.
“Harlan Ellison, in ‘The New York Review of Bird’ (see Weird Heroes #2: A New American Pulp, Byron Preiss, editor, Pyramid, 1975), writes of Bird’s first campaign in this war...
“Bird, after his conquest of the secret rulers of New York, fell in with Ralph von Wau Wau... And while in Venice... Ralph and Bird became good friends...”
EDITORIAL PREFACE
‘A Scarletin Study,” the first of the Ralph von Wau Wau series, appeared in the March 1975 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Those interested in biographical details about the author may refer to Kilgore Trout’s Venus on the Half-Shell (December 1974, and January 1975 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; Dell Publications, February 1975).3 Since then, your inquisitive editor has unearthed some information unprovided by Trout. Somers was born in Petersburg, Illinois, on January 26, 1910. His grandfather was a judge; his father, an aspiring but unpublished poet. Their epitaphs and a fragment of Somers Ill’s blank verse epic can be found in Edgar Lee Masters’ The Spoon River Anthology. Somers III was partially paralyzed by polio at the age of ten. Though he has never been out of his native town, he often soars from his wheelchair to freewheel via the exploits of his fictional heroes. The two most popular are John Clayter, spaceman extraordinaire, and Ralph von Wau Wau, unique private eye. Ralph, it’s true, hasn’t exactly stepped into Sherlock Holmes’ or Sam Spade’s shoes. He isn’t built for it. But he is unmatchable at sniffing out evil. And how many male detectives, totally unclothed, can enter a ladies’ restroom without causing an uproar?
* * *
3 Venus on the Half-Shell is available from Titan Books in the Grandmaster Series, published under Philip José Farmer’s byline.
1
It was on a bitterly cold night and frosty morning toward the end of the winter of ’79 that I was awakened by a long wet tongue licking my face. It was Ralph von Wau Wau. The streetlight under which our Volkswagen was parked shone upon his eager face and told me that something was amiss. Rather, I’d missed a miss.
“Come, Weisstein, come!” he cried. “The dame is afoot!”
He spoke in English, for some reason preferring its use when we were alone.
“Good heavens!” I said. “Surely, you can’t mean Fraulein Saugpumpe?”
He chuckled and then switched from Basil Rathbone’s voice to the one he preferred when he was especially sarcastic. You would swear that you were hearing Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon.
“Who else have we been watching for five straight days and nights, sweetheart?” he said. “Pippi Longstocking? She just went around the corner. Get on the stick, Doc, and step on the gas. Or would you prefer to keep on dreaming of Frau Scarletin?”
He pressed the specially installed button on the dashboard. The door swung shut. He can open and close the door by bending his paw at right angles to his leg and pulling the handle out. But he usually uses the mechanism actuated by the dashboard and a toggle switch under the fender. Those familiar with our adventures will remember that we fitted the Volkswagen with this device during the rather horrendous events of The Hind of the Baskerbergs.
I started the motor and put the gear into first. As we drove away from the curb, headlights suddenly struck us and a loud deep horn blared. I slammed on the brakes, and Ralph bounced into the dashboard and fell on the floor. The huge diesel truck roared by, missing our left fender by an inch.
“Are you hurt?” I said as Ralph climbed back to the seat.
“No, but you’re going to be, pal. Unless you take your mind off that skirt and get with it.”
“I really prefer that you not refer to Frau Scarletin in that manner,” I said stiffly.
“My apologies, my dear fellow,” he said, reverting to his favorite alternate voice. “I had no intention of insulting one who, for you, will always be The Woman. But please do concentrate on the business at hand. Our quarry is a slippery one, a real fox, no pun intended.”
I had by then driven the car around the corner. No sooner done than I pulled over to the curb and stopped.
“She’s getting into a taxi,” I said.
“I’m not blind,” Ralph said. “Undoubtedly, she’s heading for the airport.”
“However could you know that?” I cried.
“To anyone else, she would merely be going to the opera. She’s dressed for it, she has no luggage, only a small purse, and in forty minutes Fidelio begins. But it is not the magnificent Beethoven she is interested in.
“I was in the alley a half a block away when she came out of the door of her apartment building. Fortunately, the wind was in my favor. I was able to obtain an excellent olfactory profile of her. She’d been drinking heavily. Now, we know from the Polizei psychological profile of her that when she is relaxed she drinks California brandy. Though she’d also been smoking heavily, I was able to detect through the odor of American cigarettes—Camels, I believe—the telltale molecules of four-year-old California brandy stored in re-used white oak barrels.
“Without fear of contradiction I can state that the emitted fumes were of a brandy of 84 proof: pH, 4.48; total acid, 14.3; aldehydes, 5.9; esters, 1.6; fusel oil, 45.5; furfural, 0.18...”
I pulled the car from the curb to follow the taxi, crying at the same time, “Spare me the details, Ralph! I know your nose is an ambulatory chemical-analysis laboratory!”
He chuckled. “If you had memorized the profile as I have, my dear Weisstein, you would recall that she is terrified of flying. Only in extreme emergencies will she travel otherwise than by car or train. She can only overcome her neurosis by imbibing considerable amounts of alcohol. When she entered the building six hours ago, she looked contented and she had been drinking moderate quantities of Armagnac. It’s apparent that she’s received a phone call necessitating an airplane flight. You do follow my line of reasoning, my good fellow?”
He paused, grinning, his tongue hanging out, a triumphant light in his big brown eyes.
“And I suppose you know where that is?” I said somewhat testily. I was, I admit, in a bad mood.
I had been interrupted almost at the climax, if I may use the word, of a most pleasant dream. It would be indiscreet to go into its details.
“Its citizens are a race apart, comparable only to themselves,” he said.
“Venice!” I cried, recognizing Goethe’s phrase. “But how... ?”
I shot the VW into a parking space near Dammtorstra
sse 28. Saugpumpe’s taxi had stopped before the Staatsoper and she was getting out.
“Ha!” I said. “For once, you have erred, Ralph! She is attending the opera!”
“Really?” he said. “Have you also forgotten that the police report stated that she is tone deaf?”
“Whenever did that keep people from going to the opera?” I replied. “Perhaps she is meeting a gentleman inside, enduring what is to her a meaningless gibberish for the sake of male companionship.”
He switched to Bogart. (From now on, I will refrain from identifying his differing voices except when necessary. I trust the reader can distinguish from the style of speech whether he is speaking in the persona of the Great Detective or the hard-boiled dick of San Francisco.)
“Bushwa, pal. She’s shaking her tail, I mean, ducking her shadow. She still thinks she’s the meat in a Hamburger police bun. She doesn’t know the shami—that’s the plural of shamus, sweetheart—were pulled off five days ago.”
I groaned. Perhaps Ralph preferred English because only in that language can one make appropriate—or inappropriate—puns preserving the peculiar flavor of those two immortal mythics. Personally, I prefer Dr. Thorndyke.
A few minutes later, we were standing by the entrance to the opera house. We were in Guise No. 3, I with dark glasses and a cane, holding a leash attached to Ralph’s harness. We stood there twelve minutes, the only interruption being a doorman who asked if he could do anything for us. I told him that we were waiting for my wife.
Presently a man in evening clothes came out, passing us with only a glance. The doorman whistled a taxi for him, and he was carried off.
“He looked mad,” I said. “Perhaps his date stood him up.”
“That was Saugpumpe, you simp! Get the lead out! Hump it! We’ll lose her!” And he dragged me along willy-nilly behind him. Ralph weighs one hundred and sixty pounds, about seventy pounds more than the average German shepherd dog. Besides, his father was half Canadian timber wolf.