The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues Read Online Free PDF Page A

squirming out of his grasp, and climbed the stairs in time to his muttered profanities. Mallomar had squashed her sandwiches, but he had also stained his white suit with pickle juice.
    Garson was still deep in thought when Dickory slapped the soggy lunch bag on the kitchen counter. “All right!” he exclaimed, aloud but to himself. He clapped his hands on the arms of his chair and stood up. He had made a decision. “Let’s fix up this place and get ready for the eyewitnesses. Detectives must be well-organized for detecting and deducting.” With a hammer he banged against the radiator under the front window, setting up ear-shattering and floor-shaking reverberations. Then he listened. Stunned, Dickory removed her hands from her ears and listened, too.
    Mallomar shouted up some ugliness, then heavy thuds climbed the stairs.
    “Isaac can feel the vibrations in his basement room,” he explained to his cringing apprentice as the one-eyed mute lumbered into the studio. Garson wrote the lawyer’s name in large block letters on a sheet of paper, handed it to Isaac, and pointed to the portrait. Isaac left with the large canvas tucked under one arm.
    “Can he read?” Dickory asked hoarsely, still trembling.
    “A bit. He engraves my name and the sitter’s name on a gold plaque after he finishes the frame.”
    “He makes your frames?”
    Garson nodded. When he spoke again, his voice was touched with sadness. “No one knows anything about that poor lost soul—who he was or what he did before some terrible accident tore apart his face and mangled his brain. Isaac, himself, remembers nothing, but his fingers have not forgotten their craft.”
    “Then how do you know his name is Isaac Bickerstaffe?” Dickory persisted.
    “Questions, questions,” Garson replied sharply. “No more questions, please remember that.”
    Dickory shrugged.
    Garson sighed. “Haunted Dickory. I’ll tell you what—I’ll answer your question if you promise it will be your last.”
    Too proud to promise anything, Dickory stared at him blankly. Garson turned and busied himself in the studio, arranging three straight-backed chairs between the empty easel and the draped easel. Then he started up the open stairway but stopped in midflight, having decided to answer her question. “I named him myself,” he said, leaning over the banister. “I named him Isaac Bickerstaffe after an obscure nineteenth-century poet, who wrote:
“I care for nobody, no, not I,
If nobody cares for me.
     
    “I thought that sentiment suited the expression on his battered face. Now, no more questions. Get out a pen and a notebook; I’ll be right down.”
     
    A different Garson came down the stairs. Although still unsmiling, this one seemed more sprightly, almost playful. He was carrying a paint-smeared smock, an artist’s beret, and two other hats.
    “Hats?” asked Dickory, notebook in hand. Realizing it was a question, she changed her tone. “Hats,” she said affirmatively.
    “Right you are, Sergeant Kod. These are hats.”
    “And I am Sergeant Kod,” Dickory guessed.
    “Right again.” Garson placed a bobby’s helmet on her head, a deerstalker hat on his.
    “And you are Sherlock Holmes.”
    “Wrong,” he replied. “I am Inspector Noserag.”
    “Noserag?!” That was funnier than Dickory Dock.
    “Simple, actch-ly,” Garson said in near-British accents. “Noserag is Garson spelled backward, almost. And Kod is Dock spelled backward, almost.”
    “And we are almost detectives,” said Dickory.
    “We ARE detectives, Sergeant Kod. I am the greatest sleuth in the universe, and you are my trusted assistant.”
    Pacing the floor, the greatest sleuth in the universe dictated a list of art supplies to his trusted assistant, who wrote out an accurate list in spite of the difficulties she had understanding Noserag’s accent, which alternated between British and Humphrey Bogart: a new easel, taboret, life-sized manikin, brushes, paints.
    “Acrylics,” he said,