"Gene Wolfe - The Case of the Vanishing Ghost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

The Case of the Vanishing Ghost
by

Gene Wolfe
Written with the sincerest apologies to S. Holmes and none whatsoever to his ten
thousand shadows.
The characters of this mystery have become so familiar to the reader that I shall neglect
to add the last formalized touch of naming the principal ones. Instead, they shall be
referred to by the names every reader uses in his own mind. To call The Great Detective
"Philo Queen" for example, would be a needless waste of time.

Our story opens when The Poor Stooge returns from an afternoon's walk to find The Great
Detective wrapped in his old green dressing gown. (Which he himself made from a horse
blanket, and which has remained uncleaned since.)* His right hand grips a Coke in which
floats a Benzedrine inhaler. He is playing the xylophone with his toes. These symptoms, as The
Poor Stooge knows from long experience, mean that The Great Detective has a case which is
baffling police throughout the world, and has the newspapers of a continent reduced to wild
conjectures. All his cases fall into this category, of course, except for those which are so secret
and of such vital importance to the national welfare that they are brought to him by the
president or king of a foreign power, or the prime minister himself. On such occasions he is
found wearing his horse disguise, and impatiently waiting for The Poor Stooge to act as his
rear guard, the one thing that gentleman does to perfection.

After several minutes of rapt xylophone playing The Great Detective looks up at The Poor
Stooge, who has been waiting with dog-like devotion for the great man's words.

"On your walk," intones The Great Detective, "you paused to pat the head of a small boy who
was eating a lime popsycle."

"Astounding!" Gasps The Poor Stooge, "How do--"

"I noted the marks on your hand, where he bit you as small boys always do when you pat their
heads. Not that I blame them."

"But the--"

"The popsycle was an easy inference. Your right arm is covered from wrist to elbow with a
sticky green smear which could only come from such a confection. "Furthermore, you aided
some such moppet in getting a drink from the park fountain."

"Ho--" says The Poor Stooge, who by this time is reduced to gibbering incoherence despite
the fact that this has happened to him in all the other stories by the same author.

"He squirted you, and you are still dripping wet. Also, you went to the Swineherds Midtown
Bank and withdrew an amount less than six and a half crowns, five shillings, tuppence."

The Poor Stooge stands mute. He is too numb for further amazement. The reader is simply
numb.

"I deduced this from the fact that you stuck the bank's pen in your pocket and your shirt-front