The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues Read Online Free PDF

now British. “Indeed, I surmise acrylic paints would be preferable, more synonymous with the precision of modern detection.” The inspector inspected Dickory’s notes, criticized her handwriting, and suggested she take a course in calligraphy. “An artist must strive for beauty in all things, Sergeant, even in constabulary affairs.” He strode to the kitchen, shoulders slouched.
    “Egad, what’s this?” Holding the dripping paper bag between the tips of two fingers, Inspector Noserag dropped the squashed sandwiches into the garbage pail. “Remove your hat, Sergeant Kod; I am taking you to lunch.”
    Dickory stored the sleuths’ hats on a closet shelf and followed Garson out of the house. Had she now been sent for sandwiches, she would have ordered him a ham and cheese.
    Garson ordered a hamburger with everything on it and a Coke. An unusual choice, Dickory thought, for a slick society portrait painter, or the greatest detective in the universe who had yet to solve a case. Or the brooding employer who now sat opposite her. They ate in silence and walked back in silence. As they turned the bend into their narrow street, a man in dark glasses approached them. At first glance Dickory thought Manny Mallomar had another visitor, but then she noticed the tin cup, the tapping white cane, the German shepherd on a short lead.
    Garson smiled at him! He smiled and bowed a sweeping bow and tossed a pebble into the blind man’s cup.
    Dickory frowned. The dog growled.
    “Bless you,” said the blind man.
    Digging in her purse for change, Dickory wondered how Garson could be so kind to a hideous deaf-mute yet so callous toward a blind man. She dropped a quarter into his cup.
    “We have company,” Garson said flatly, pointing ahead.
    Cobble Lane was a sea of staring faces. From the chief’s car parked on the curb, the policeman-chauffeur stared at the derelict on the stoop. The derelict stared at the three women in the back seat. The three women, blonde, redhead, and brunette, stared at Shrimps Marinara, who was peering through the bedroom window at the policeman-chauffeur. From the basement window Isaac Bickerstaffe stared, just stared, and between the blinds on the second floor Chief Quinn’s cigar bobbed up and down.
    Manny Mallomar, who had let the chief of detectives into the house, leaned out of his door as they entered the hallway. Narrowing his bulging eyes, he shook a fat fist at Garson. In reply, Garson and Dickory bounded up the stairs with more noise than usual.
“Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck two,
And up he flew,
Just like Hickory Dickory Dock.
     
    “I just made that up,” Chief Quinn said, pleased with himself.
    “Sorry I’m late,” Garson replied. “Let’s get down to business.”

2
     
    “The Case of the Horrible Hairdresser,” the chief announced dramatically after sitting down in the most comfortable chair and relighting the stub of his cigar. “The perpetrator works out of beauty parlors just long enough to get into some widow’s confidence.”
    “Aha, the old confidence game,” Garson exclaimed.
    “May I continue?” the chief asked. Garson waved his permission. “The perpetrator sets the widow’s hair a few times, then tells her he can make her ravishingly beautiful with a special formula he has invented. But—his formula is a secret, and he can’t use it in someone else’s shop. So, the widow makes a private appointment, and the next week she goes to the hairdresser’s hotel room (always a different hotel) and gets the works.”
    “The works?” Dickory asked, alarmed.
    “The works: shampoo, set, manicure, whatever a hairdresser does.”
    Dickory eased back into her chair.
    “The widow looks into the mirror,” Quinn continued. “She is ravishingly beautiful, or so she thinks. And now the con begins. The hairdresser can’t use his fabulous formula again, he says, not until he pays ten thousand dollars to some chemist or other. Meanwhile, he