9,000 Petals of Insanity

Chapter 23: Sheer Lunacy

"He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four

That stood beside his bed:

He looked again, and found it was

A Bear without a Head.

'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing!

It's waiting to be fed!'"

Lewis Carroll, "The Mad Gardener's Song"

Dusang's method for tracking the killer was rather unorthodox, to say the least.

Glancing at us slowly, Dusang drew on his pipe and said:

"Since I wanted to verify whether or not Armageddon was supernatural, I devised an experiment. I slipped a small capsule of trimethylamine oxide in Mrs. Arcania's coat. In the event that she falls, the capsule, which has a hook at the top, would shatter, and if Armageddon were a person of normal flesh and blood, he or she would be coated in trimethylamine oxide. We would be able to detect him in this way."

"But how?" said I. "The murderer could easily smell the scent upon his person. He would immediately take chances to get rid of the smell."

"Yes, I have foreseen that," said Dusang. "Of course, you can clean yourself so that you would mask another smell, and thus fool our senses, but that is not the case when it comes to animals. For, you see, many animals have more acute senses of smell than we do."

Right on cue, Sir Jhabberwocky strode into the tower, and to my surprise he was leading, by a leash, a magnificent ant bear, no doubt the very same ant bear which I had seen earlier in Dusang's house. Dusang nodded appreciatively.

"I was told," said Sir Jhabberwocky, "that you required this."

Before long Sir Droghuln-Czarski followed behind, his eyes widened in shock. "Good God, Mr. Dusang," said he, "what do you need that creature for?"

"I require him," said Dusang, "for catching our killer."

"Catching the killer!" cried Sir Droghuln-Czarski. Both Galsworthy and I stared at Dusang in incredulity. I would have expected him to employ a hound to track the scent, but instead he was using his ant bear! Dusang nodded.

"You see, Rocambole, and the other members of his species, possesses a sense of smell which is equally as acute as that of a canine. This is due to the fact that the ant bear possesses a very bad eyesight; but let us not dwell upon that for now."

He walked over and took the leash from Sir Jhabberwocky. Slowly he guided the magnificent creature into the room. The creature snorted slightly as it walked, and with a high-pitched whistle from Dusang it placed its snout down beside Mrs. Arcania's body, sniffed it, and then straightened up. Then it began its progress across to the stairs. Dusang waved his free hand in a sign for us to follow him. Quickly we trailed after him. I shall not recount to the reader the entire course of the route taken by Rocambole, because by doing that I would have to waste the reader's precious time. Having followed Rocambole out of the pyramid, and into the Arcania mansion, it suddenly stopped before a moderately proportioned room on the second floor, where it turned its snout about rather pointlessly. It was, however, enough to tell us that this was the exact location where Rocambole had tracked the smell. I do not know if it was merely my imagination, but I could have sworn that I detected a faint whisper of trimethylamine oxide in the room. Dusang gave a cry of satisfaction, then turned about to face Sir Droghuln-Czarski. "May I ask whose room this is?"

Droghuln-Czarski's eyes had widened, and at length he said, feverishly:

"That belongs to Undoktrac Dretyforing."