The Sun of India

by M. L. Klein

The Sun of India, discovered in the mines of Jaipur, was the largest yellow diamond ever unearthed. It transcended the existing standard of perfection and would have no equal once cut. There it rested in the safe of the Empress Hotel on the island of Vancouver, en route to England and a team of giddy gemologists. The proud courier of this soon to be emblematic national treasure was an Indian diplomat and a household aide enlisted for security from his usual duties as Keeper of the Peacocks. It happened that in Victoria B.C. The Sun of India was at the most vulnerable point of its journey. Indeed, it was as if the very stars themselves conspired to thwart this pretended rival’s ascent.
Few yet knew of the important jewel’s existence much less its whereabouts. Certainly not one Duncan Derry, a dabbler in petty larcenies and waiter in the tea room of the hotel. As dumb luck will happen, the combination to the hotel safe was his for the simple taking one happy day.
It would get happier. He and Prahah Pahrump, a camp-follower of the great gem, found each other.
“Never in the life of any thief has an opportunity for riches been given such as this!”, Pahrump exclaimed to Duncan in a Calcuttan accent very close to intelligible.
Although something of dim bulb, according to his lights now, Duncan had not played the smart card in trading the safe’s combination for an unconsidered sum. The cash & carry transaction was revoked right there at the Tea Room table in a heated volley of words soon continued behind a potted palm when guests began pausing their forks half-way to mouth. While the sale was up in the air, the goods of barter were left tabletop in the very great distraction of their debate. Then, a prank of fate stepped in, or rather stumbled through, in the person of a busboy.
Everyone gasped, as guests in a hushed tea room do, at the terrific crash and clatter of a fallen busboy, now sprawled on the floor amidst the ruins of broken china, puddles of tea and the leavings of little cakes & buttered breads.
Everyone except Lady Thispwhistle, that is, who had already withdrawn her elegant walking stick from the precise spot the young man had lost his stride, shall we say.
It was only moments before that she had tilted a thoughtful look upward from her luncheon to consider what she may be enjoying. She ruminated how like canned pet food it appeared except for the perky parsley sprig. Indeed, Duncan’s present desertion of duties was the cause of more mix-ups than his own. Her chicken liver pate was wheeling its way to Room 840 where two lucky pugs awaited their master’s return but were just as excited to greet room service instead.

Her gaze had wandered towards a busboy and she watched idly as he made tidy the table of the excitable little guest now preoccupied elsewhere. She noticed how the boy grasped a linen napkin in a manner that implied contents and push it into his pocket. Were it not for his uneasy glances, Lady Thispwhistle would not have thought to take matters in hand. The ensuing chaos now about her was not unlike the current state of her manse and gardens under a siege of renovation and flat-footed workmen. Removing herself for a time to the comforts and quiet of the Empress Hotel, the grand old dowager of Victoria, British Columbia, seemed the sensible thing but there you are.
The busboy, understandably bewildered by his abrupt change of course and all the earnest questions regarding his welfare, was coaxed to stand but all he could manage for the moment was to sit upright on a broken platter of chocolate eclairs, as it happened, which did little to restore his sense orientation. Lady Thispwhistle leaned solicitously over him with other nearby patrons.
“Allow me to dab that knick on your chin”, she offered, which was not a knick at all but raspberry glaze. Withdrawing the linen napkin from the boy’s apron-pocket as a swab, a flurry of large bills fluttered forth.
Her Ladyship, drawing herself up to a stature acquired only by the well-corseted, awaited the approaching Maitre D’, somewhat detained by the exercise of his duty to conjure rectitude, perhaps over-zealously, by the snapping of fingers in all directions with such command that a few still seated gentlemen half-arose from their chairs before realizing the summons to action was not theirs to take.
The Maitre D’s pursed countenance puckered tighter still when presented the pinch. He took custody of the bundle. Her Ladyship made no comment but only arched a brow. The Maitre D’ arched both. Duncan Derry was not late in claiming the grand gratuity as his own. At the sight of the sure loot now up for anyone’s grab, he abandoned Pahrump’s reckless rummage for every last Ruppee tucked in his loin cloth. Duncan could no more restrain himself than a hungry raptor eyeing easy game. He swooped to the uproar across the room but his declaration was met with a silence that promised further questions. Any dim view of the matter was not shared by his fellow waiters swept into service as floor cleaners. Minds whirled to recall which patron may have been the source of such a dizzying windfall. Things were rather looking up. At the same time things were looking down for Pahrump. He had gone to his hands and knees looking for where the combination of the safe may have landed in the surprising turn of events. It was no where to be found nor his cash. His attention was diverted to Duncan and his dilemma. To challenge him might redeem his savings but to the everlasting loss of the combination.

So, Prahah introduced himself and his standing in the matter to the Maitre ‘D and made boast of how a wealthy American-Indian industrialist like himself could well afford any amount of largess to his waiter and more still.

The duo-citizenship was one too many careless fictions. His unraveled appearance did not support him and never mind the lack of a feathered head-dress.

The Maitre ‘D saw it was a matter for the proper authorities.
The busboy was assisted by two staff, one under each arm. It was not so much to help him onto his feet but to dispatch him to the street curb by the nearest undignified exit. Her Ladyship waved a heartfelt good riddance to him with the napkin. The heads of Prahah and Duncan swiveled in her direction. Their brows narrowed.
At the door of her hotel suite, Lady Thispwhistle realized, at the brief search for her room key, that she still had the culprit’s linen napkin in hand. It was only then she noticed a code-like scribble on it…a series of numbers, dashes and the letters R and L. She imagined it to do with schemes greater than those of a blundering busboy. Lady Thispwhistle’s gift was her infallible sense of portending events, flawed by a talent for getting their significance unerringly wrong.
Friar Guido, of the Benedictine Brothers of The Brandy Barrel & Spirits Winery had been attending a conference at the hotel hosted by The Vintners Association of Saskatchewan. He was tall, wide as any barrel in their cellars and had a devotion to brandy that exceedeth all understanding. There was no assigning blame to his height when he regularly knocked himself out cold on the low archways of the abbey. There was general, if charitable, consensus amongst his confreres that Friar Guido may have mistaken his vocation for another calling.
Prahah Pahrump had the same impression when he first met Friar Guido late that afternoon in the hotel’s Bengal Lounge. It was there they ordered the same bar specialty called ‘For King & For Country’. The custom was to shout “CHARGE!” before downing the empire-sized elixir in one swallow. The two allied as one that their drinks ought be put on a tab. Friar Guido was more not himself than usual, being usually not himself quite a bit. In fact, he was becoming confused about where he was and why he was and practically jumped at the suggestion by Pahrump that they go tiger hunting. What his little friend really had in mind for the evening was, while less illegal, every bit as sinister.
A knock on Lady Thispwhistle’s door startled her although she could not think quite why. She went to see who it might be. There stood the small-fry Indian with a plump friar on the side. A slight sulfuric wafting, as if from a recently fired hand-gun, lingered in the doorway although explanations less improbable occurred to her.
Thinking how very real they both appeared, she hazarded an inquiry; “You’re nothing I’ve conjured as a consequence of the questionable quality of cuisine here, now are you?”
The friar’s attempt to focus on the meaning of this question only resulted in his eyes rolling about in odd directions. Abandoning the search for clarity, he withdrew a revolver out of the folds of his monk’s sleeve. Lady Thispwhistle would have, under more civil circumstances, advised him that his firearm was pointed backwards.
The little Indian, turbaned so tightly his eyes seemed closer together than they already were and with a beard so outstanding it preceded him by a foot, said in a sweet sing-song cadence, “ Please to oblige our insistence that lady step back or it shall be necessary to use harmful bullet gun against her.”
A piercing scream shattered the air after this conversation-stopping remark. It came from down the hall and was the kind of protracted, high pitch scream, followed by hysterical shrieks for help that immediately suggested to everyone within earshot that blood was involved.
The friar and the Indian scrambled away like frightened vermin in the opposite direction and disappeared down a stairway exit, clearly marked DO NOT ENTER and FIRE DOOR EXIT. The fire-alarms, triggered by their hasty retreat and deplorable disregard of posted warnings, brought hotel guests to their doors, carrying half closed luggage and in various states of undress.
Lady Thispwhistle impatiently and repeatedly clicked the receiver of her room phone. When the concierge at last answered it was only to hear him announce that there exists no fire and to assure the prompt restoration of order and tranquility that no guest found convincing when being directed to evacuate in the next breath. All this was shouted expansively, over the din of the alarms, as if addressing many people at once, which was actually the case.
“I say, it’s Lady Thispwhistle here and there’s a spot of trouble on the eighth floor. I believe someone’s been hurt and there are scoundrels about. Do send help.” The concierge’s utter state of distraction was evident by his response to this news. “Your kind attention ladies and gentlemen! Will the owner of two Chinese Pug dogs please report to the front desk?”
Just then she could hear sirens approach, quite enough to end the conversation about pets at large in the lobby. She swifted down the hall to the source of the distress call where others of her floor had gathered, aghast at the scene that lay before them. It was Duncan Derry, tea room waiter, slumped in a pool of his own Bloody Marys. The cause of his gastric upset and piteous condition had little to do with a brandished revolver recently discharged in his direction. It had a lot to do with the contest he held with himself to see who could drink the most, a practice not unknown to profit-minded pubs and why bar stools invariably face mirrored walls.
He had collapsed half-way out of the elevator. That the doors kept opening and closing on him did little to assure the on-lookers that he was still alive. Suddenly, the lights went out. It could be rightfully concluded that repairmen, in their ambition to shut off the riotous clanging of fire alarms, shut off the electricity in the bargain.
Audible now were the groans of the victim who was less dead than relieved that the maniacal attack on his ribcage had stopped. Treading through the darkness to the spot where the waiter lay, several gentlemen guests assisted him to a nearby settee. All but unnoticed was the slight metallic clink of a falling object as they did so. Lady Thispwhistle stepped cannily towards the source of that sound and recovered a maid’s key dropped from the waiter’s hand. In the faint light of the hall window, she saw that the room number on the key was her own. She was beginning to get ideas.
Fire engines and an emergency vehicle were wheeling in, their wailing sirens having peaked and pitched upon arrival. It was just a matter of minutes before a team of medics would have the waiter chap atop a stretcher, on his way and, quite honestly, off their hands…or so they thought.
What no one on the eighth floor could have known was that the ambulance had been called for the corpulent and now unconscious friar. Moreover, no police had been summoned at all.
He was found splayed flat at the bottom of the first floor stairwell. Pahrump and Friar Guido had just passed the landing of the fifth floor the moment the lights went out. At that particular split-second Friar Guido was mid-air in a flying leap to navigate a two bound descent to the fourth floor. This was the point people in the lobby were aware of his approach but naturally mistook it for some other calamity befalling the building such as a piano crashing downward through several ceilings.
Pahrump had scurried onward to subterranean regions of the building in a neat escape and wondering if his quest to acquire The Sun of India would come to naught. He was not a man of unlimited resources, nor ideas for that matter, so the welder’s torch he stumbled over, there in the basement, seemed as if fortune was smiling on him again.
It was freezing down there. Pahrump could see tiny, high windows glazed over with ice when the lights flickered back on. He found what comfort he could in a laundry bin. When an avalanche of bed linens collapsed from a shaft directly overhead, he was content to stay as he lay, warm at last, and undercover to say the least. Twice more he heard the whine of more sirens approach. He daren’t take action too soon although time was running out. The Sun of India would be moving East in the morning.
It was quite the middle of the night when Pahrump felt safe to slither out of the wickered bin and, with the stealth of a cobra after prey, make his way to the purser’s office where the hotel safe stood solitary vigil over the Sun of India. There was no guard because Pahrump himself, Keeper of the Peacocks and trusted aide-de-camp, was that very person.
He went right to work on the safe. The welder’s torch fired great sparkling flames and did the job it was designed to do; it welded the safe’s lock into a single molten blob of metal.
Taxed beyond endurance, Pahrump let loose with one last huge and futile blast of the torch. This accomplished two things. It set his beard on fire and triggered the hotel’s sprinkler system. This again, accomplished two things as if some inscrutable design was at work. His beard was extinguished and the sudden icy water on the molten-hot safe spontaneously cracked open its door.
At a loss to express near-hysterical joy, all he could cry out was, “Oh, Jiminy!, Oh, Jiminy!”, as he beheld the great golden Sun of India. Even the violated safe’s rattling alarm gladdened the moment like the flourish of triumphant (if tinny) trumpets, so great was his glee. Clutching it to his breast he all but danced out the door.
In the lobby, chaos had returned and, for that matter, the pug dogs. Dour-faced and scarily-silent guests under umbrellas were massing like storm clouds. Fire trucks were on their way, yet again. The concierge, in a dripping wet bathrobe sporting playful pussycats, flipped frantically through a manual titled, Management Handbook For All Occasions. One of the many occasions it did not cover was a tireless repairman paging his assistant overhead…“Hank, where are ya? Report to the lobby, pronto. We gotta a safe door hangin’ by a hinge”.
The Indian diplomat lost consciousness at this announcement.
Moments later the sprinkler system was turned off but at the sacrifice, again, of the building’s electricity.
Pahrump could hardly believe his good luck. Making an escape through the crowds in the darkened lobby was a sure bet, that is, until he bumped straight into Lady Thispwhistle. Hitting a high note that would startle a soprano, she shrieked, “STOP THIEF!”…two words seldom known to produce sudden reform in thieves. Escape to the outside he did, flying right into the path of another obstacle, though less formidable than a screaming woman, the on-coming fire brigade. Behind him was a posse of guests waving wildly at the trucks and gesturing to the little man, darting about in confusion as to which way to run. The firemen, understandably, concluded it had something to due with his badly singed beard and blackened turban. A quick-thinker saw to calling the police.
There was but one escape route, Pahrump decided. It was up a sheer hillside road that no vehicle was likely to negotiate over sheet ice.
And up that steep hill he did go…several times over. It was at the bottom of the hill police watched Pahrump attempt his icy ascent to the summit. Handicapped by his grip on the great yellow diamond, each time he scaled the near heights of the hill, it was only to slide half way down again upon its slippery slope. Undaunted, he continued to repeat this struggle upwards over and over again, without success. Pahrump understood the much improved chances of escape if he just let go of the weighty gem. He chose not to.
The police watched in dumb amazement at his dogged tenacity in the face of certain failure. And, since there was no reason to think this was going to be over very quickly, someone sent out for hot coffee and breakfast pastry. As to make good use of idle time in the line of duty, the law officers busied themselves with booking bets as to the the exact date & time of their fugitive’s final descent. Never have so many owed so much to so few when Pahrump finally surrendered to the hill. He slid down, without resistance, like a dead otter. It was with a frozen tear, he relinquished his treasure and his liberty to the British Columbia Police.
Lady Thispwhistle, a material witness and possessor of evidence in the day’s skullduggery, wearied detectives at length with conspiracy theories that involved, among other innocent parties, the two Chinese Pug dogs.
Friar Guido, after his release from the hospital, was sentenced to a stay at a sanatorium for the criminally inane due to his barrister’s plea of acute asininity. It was a newly coined mental disorder but the judge bought it. Upon return to his legal custodians at the abbey, he was bound under obedience to a life of reparation and self-sacrifice. Not a drop more than a keg of lager a day was permitted him.
Duncan Derry, was never indicted for anything. After recovering from delayed medical attention to make right what was left of his ribs, he moved to Las Vegas, NV which promised more opportunity and less mounted police than Victoria B.C. There he found gainful employment as an operator of a roulette table. His uncanny skills with its machinations pleased the hotel management to no end and they were not ungrateful.
As for Prahah Pahrump, what he lost in life was found in legend. Never was a Calcutta inmate so revered as he. For what prisoner could boast that he once held captive the untouchable Sun of India?

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Fowl Play

The Adventures of Dirk Demiwitt, Private Eye

by M. L. Klein

It was a night like every other night in Los Angeles…dull & gray under streetlights that pointed their jaundiced fingers every way except home….a night as dull & gray as my crumpled trench coat with the bullet holes from all them gumshoe jobs gone wrong. I shoulda went home. But, like every night in Los Angeles, I found myself at Sarge’s Diner waiting for Lucille. Lucille. The dame that got away. Sure, she might come back like she said. And the Yanks might take the series this year. It was almost midnight. I was staring at my last cup of Joe wishing Sarge’s Saturday Night Special and that chunk of banana cream pie was just a crazy dream. But something else stopped me from getting up & walking out the door. There was a buzz in my brain and it wasn’t the static from the old man’s radio telling us the Red Sox lost in the sixth with the bases loaded. It was the buzz of the street. Something big was coming my way. All I had to do was wait and it would find me.Then, the phone rang, the one in the booth in the back with Lucille’s number on the wall. It shattered the air like a machine-gun shot off by some scum-bag punks that don’t knows their worthless lives is gonna end on the wrong side of a gun barrel, especiallys if I tip off Big Eddie that theys been skimming cream off his take of the action. I answered the phone. It was Midge. Midge always knows where to find me. She always knows how to get to me, too. She’s nuts about me and I’d marry the dame but then I’d have to find another secretary who works for nothing. Hi, doll face, I says…trouble changing my flat?
She wasn’t listening. Her words sounded jumbled like the coins I fiddled in my pocket.
“Trouble over on Mariposa del Dolorosa east of Torregosa. Better hurry up and now. The police are already there”. Detective Polawski was there, alright, the big dumb flatfoot. He tries to get tough with me for crossing the yellow tape, yeah, tries to put the squeeze on me with that trouble I had downtown but he knew I had my rights being there. It was always the same. Decent home, sweet old lady and the Kid. I’d seen it more times than the bottom of an empty beer bottle. Good home, bad kitty. He was babbling, making no sense but he was smart, see, and knew all the angles. Behind that baby-face mug was a hip cat. The feathers was from a pillow fight, he says, seeings how they was just playing around, hims and the bird, and he don’t knows what happened after that.
But, I do…that’s one canary who won’t be singing at no trial. Polawkski was wise, too. We’d never find the body. It was gone permanent like last week’s Chili-Dog at Sarge’s. Case closed. I walked my way home.
It was 3am and drizzle dripped down my face like the tears no one was crying for that bird.
The neon sign blinking “Eats” outside my walk-up made my stomach turn.
I went to the kitchen & got out my old friend, Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup.
I drank straight from the bottle…to all the tweetie-birds who showed up missing.

Dirk Demiwitt, Private Eye

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The Uninvited Guest

by M. L. Klein

This is the story of a wayward opossum’s venture into the world of domestic life. Looking back, I fancy the decision to invite herself into my household was inspired by some occasion of culinary cachet that required parted doorways for smoke dispersion. One pork roast, wreathed with scorched rosemary and tiny blackened vegetables comes to mind. Whatever the cause, the little creature never questioned the hospitality of strangers. At the same time, she was quite artful in avoiding, for a goodly length, the subject of over-staying her supposed welcome.
I became aware her presence late one evening as I blinked towards the source of an unfamiliar sound near a dim nightlight. There I saw “Opal”, the opossum. It was soon discovered Opal had discreetly taken up sleeping quarters beneath the couch during the day and would waddle with soft, silent paws to the kitty bowls at night.
Opal waited keenly, every night, for lights to be turned off and the sure sounds of my going to bed and, wasting not a minute afterwards, padded off to the generous leavings of a picky Puss’ supper plate. It wasn’t long before Opal happened across certain conveniences such as an open box of clay particles in the bathroom.
After night rounds, Opal returned, directly, to underneath the couch. Some rag-rugs stashed there were the objects of much scratching, fluffing and making right as one would with a lumpy pillow. But, as all wise animals know, exertions on full tummies ought to be limited ones or avoided altogether. I would hear, at last, a weary flop and a sigh upon the collapse of efforts to become perfectly comfortable.
While it did not occur to Opal that her extended stay could pose a possible inconvenience, there were compensatory etiquettes such as a certain tidiness about her person, not prying into the private affairs of her hostess and snoring only lightly and on rare occasions, at that. After a time, Opal became confident that she was in the best of all opossum worlds or of house-guests, for that matter; at liberty with the larder and politely left to one’s own amusements. It came to her sitting in the big kitchen window by the potted ivy, alone with her thoughts, in hours of broad daylight.
What would the neighbors think? Would she be mistaken, understandably, for a monstrous rat or a wretchedly misbegotten cat?
I could imagine the inquiries and, no less, the injurious remarks.
One bright Saturday morning, Opal was lured into a kitty carrier by the promise of Prince Olaf Sardines positively glistening with oily goodness and quite the sumptuous treat. It was with fleeting regret on my part and no little resistance from Opal that the uninvited guest was returned to the garden life but not left entirely, I must confess, to her own resources.