The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  Romford paused, then: “Here! How did you know we found him?”

  “I sneaked an extra look in the hoppers just now.”

  “Oh, um, yes, well, Dave Knuckle was still in town for Smack My Butt, Babe so I took him along with me to help make the arrest. And he, er, got a bit carried away during the interrogation . . .”

  Ho hum. After all this time, I could read the marks of Knuckle’s knuckles like an open book, and this particular book hadn’t been in his handwriting. Romford had obviously been very angry indeed: the worst he could have charged Spongini with was conspiring to waste police time, or something – same as Zelda, same as the Family Brød. A man can do what he wants to with his own hand. But I let it pass.

  “Dukes must have loved Zelda very much indeed,” I said ruefully.

  “A lot more than she loved him,” Romford said forcefully. “He told us before he . . . um, before Knuckle got out of hand, as it were . . . told us that she’d been due back at the hotel to pick him up a couple of hours before we got there, and he was beginning to think she wasn’t coming for him after all. So we hung about another couple of hours after that, and still no sign of her. Reckon she’s scarpered – double-crossed him, got rid of both the men in her life in one swell foop—” hm, still a trace of the day’s drinking “—and then scarpered over the hills and far away. I’ve put an alert out to the ports and airports, but I think we’ve missed her. And no one’s going to issue an extradition order for what she’s done – not for that. Bloody women.”

  We said a few more things on that subject before he finally put the phone down. I noticed he hadn’t at any point said thanks to me for sorting his case out for him.

  So I didn’t feel at all guilty about not telling him the rest of it – not that I would have, anyway.

  “Is he convinced?” said Zelda behind me just as I lowered the receiver.

  “Yes. Case closed, darling. He’s satisfied – is washing his hands of the whole thing.” I turned to kiss her.

  “Poor Gerry,” she said. “Poor, foolish Gerry.”

  She’d liked Spongini well enough, but he’d been yesterday’s news for quite a while now . . . ever since I’d met her the last time The Mighty Thrombosis had been doing a gig in Cadaver-in-the-Offing, in fact, during the course of Miss Grimthorpe’s The Kat who Killed the Konjurers. I was sorry that he’d died, but – hell – he’d be as good as new again in a few days. The plan had been that Romford caught up with him, all right, then took him into custody for a couple of days until he, too, proved to be only a minor player in the game. Meanwhile, of course, Zelda wasn’t to flee the country but to come to the one place nobody in Cadaver-in-the-Offing would ever dream of looking.

  The cottage of the man they all walk around as if he were a dog turd on the pavement. We could live here together all the rest of our lives, if we wanted to, and no one would ever know. In a few years’ time, though, I reckon we’ll up sticks and go somewhere else – I mean, my job has its advantages, but I’ve always dreamed of trying out my chances in the movies . . .

  So I take Zelda in my arms. We’re free at last, and there’s a traditional way of celebrating things like this . . .

  Gigglings.

  Snoggings.

  Strokings.

  Kissings.

  Gropings.

  Fondlings.

  Fumblings.

  Pretty soon:

  Unzippings.

  “Oo, Victor,” she says. “Oo.”

  Hands quicker than the eye, that’s me.

  THE ABSOLUTE AND UTTER IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE VANISHING OF HENNING VOK (A.K.A. THE AMAZING BLITZEN) (R.N. JACK RALPH COLE)

  Jack Adrian

  I don’t know where to begin in talking about the multi-talented novelist, researcher, reviewer, editor, and collector, Jack Adrian, specialist in A.M. Burrage, E.F. Benson, Sapper, Edgar Wallace, Rafael Sabatini, and author of many crime, mystery and adventure stories and novels. So I won’t.

  The facts were these: in the bathtub, shifting gently under eighteen inches of rust-coloured water, lay the fully clothed (even down to his overcoat and Oxfords) corpse of Herman Jediah Klauss, the Moriarty of Manhattan, a large ornamental ice pick sunk in his skull. Never personable (especially in the matter of nasal hair) he now gave the impression of a dead dugong.

  That (that he was unequivocally dead) was one fact. A second fact was that his murderer was not in the bathroom with him. A third was that he ought to have been.

  There were other facts. The apartment was in a building in the low West 70s, a spit from the Park, half a spit from the Dakota. It was on the 11th floor. It was b-i-g. It had been built at a time (maybe the 1900s) when architects had grandiose dreams and clients with money to fuel them. To Commings, the bathroom looked about as spacious as a side-chapel in St Patrick’s. The bath itself was a vast boxed-in affair, fake (or maybe not) ivory with a dark mahogany trim. The toilet, next to it, could easily have doubled as a throne. You could almost certainly have bathed a Doberman in the bidet.

  Over by the door, which was at least three inches thick and might well have withstood the full blast of an RPG-7 antipersonnel rocket, Trask bellowed, “It’s impossible!”

  Which, of course, it was.

  Commings thought through the sequence of events for what seemed like the fiftieth time.

  Klauss had entered the apartment closely followed by patrolmen O’Mahoney and Schwaab (flagged down outside the building and invited in because, in Klauss’s words, “There’s a guy up there wants to ice me”). They were met by an English butler (hired for the evening, it now transpired) and a black maid (idem). They were escorted up the long hallway, past shelfloads of books (mainly mystery fiction: Carolyn Wells, H.H. Holmes, Carter Dickson, Hake Talbot, Clayton Rawson, Edward D. Hoch, Joel Townsley Rogers, a raft of others), past cabinets full of rare Golden Age comicbooks (mainly from the Quality group: Police Comics, Smash Comics, Plastic Man, The Spirit, National Comics, Doll Man, many more), and past a series of framed posters featuring a preternaturally rangy man clad in, first, evening dress (“The Amazing Blitzen: Unparalleled Feats of Legerdemain and Prestidigitation!”), second, vaguely Arabian robes (“The Sultan of Stretch, the Emir of Elongation – see the many-jointed Blitzen zip himself into a carpet-bag!”), and, third, a skin-tight black costume akin to what bathers wore two generations back (“Blitzen! Illusionist extraordinaire!”). Smaller bills showed him peering out from a cannon’s mouth (“The Shell Man!”), being lowered into a swimming-pool by a gantry with what looked to be a half-ton of ship’s cable cocooning him (“The Man With the Iron Lungs!”), and chained spread-eagle to a vast target (“Can he escape before the crossbow bolt pierces his heart?!”).

  Henning Vok (or, as his real name now seemed to be, J.R. Cole) had emerged from a doorway at the far end (“skinny as a beanpole,” as Schwaab said later, “but looking kind of flushed . . . like he’d been running”) and welcomed, in open-armed fashion, his visitor, who’d turned to the two cops and warned, “Don’t trust the sucker an inch.”

  Vok/Cole had laughed distractedly and said, “You want the cards or not, dammit?”, gesturing at the half-open door. Klauss had walked in and said, “This is a bathroom.” Vok/Cole said, “You catch on fast”, and then, reaching behind the door, had produced the ice pick, with which, to the consternation of the witnesses, he had proceeded to poleaxe Klauss, Klauss toppling into the tub (full) and sending a tidal wave of displaced water spraying over Vok/Cole, the toilet, the oxygen machine next to the bidet and the floor. Vok/Cole had then jumped for the door, slamming it shut and locking it.

  It took the two patrolmen (not having an RPG-7 launcher) twenty minutes to break down the door. When they finally entered, the room was empty. Apart, of course, from the now defunct Herman Jediah Klauss.

  “Im-poss-i-bul!” said Trask now, through clenched teeth. “And bull’s the operative word.” He clutched at a straw. “What if they were all in it?”

  Commings said, “The
butler and the maid, maybe. And could be Schwaab’s on the take. But hell, Lieutenant,” his voice rose a notch or two, “O’Mahoney?”

  “The Prize Prepuce of the Precinct House,” groaned Trask. “The only totally honest man on the roster. God!”

  This last profanity was spat out not only on account of O’Mahoney’s notorious incorruptibility, which hinted at stupidity on a serious scale, but because, at that moment, a figure of surpassing bulk, clad in a fur coat and brandishing an unsheathed swordstick in a hamhock-sized fist, came barrelling into the apartment.

  “Trask!” bawled the newcomer. “The Commissioner called me! It’s a demented dwarf, depend on it!”

  Trask shot him a look that could have split an atom.

  “Now see here . . .”

  “Don’t interrupt! Show Professor Stanislaus Befz an Impossible Crime and he’ll show you a deranged midget with an ice pick. They never alter their modus operandi, the little devils.” He surged through the hall like a resuscitated Golem, cutting a swathe through cops, photogs, morgue-men in white coats, and only coming to a halt at the bathroom door. Here he yelped triumphantly. “William Howard Taft! An ice pick! What did I say!” He jabbed the swordstick at the corpse, the blade parting Comming’s hair as the detective ducked to the floor. “You’ve already snapped the gyves on the hunchback, I take it?”

  “Professor, there is no hunchback . . .”

  “Balderdash! Out of the three thousand thirty-three Miracle Problems I’ve investigated, analysed and catalogued over the past quarter century, crazed mannikins hidden in the false humps of ersatz hunchbacks account for well over half.” He glanced down at Commings. “What are you doing down there?”

  Trask was snapping his fingers urgently as the behemothesque Befz, not waiting for a reply, strode towards the tub. Commings scrambled to his feet and handed to his chief the packet of antacid tablets kept for times like this. He wondered miserably why amateur detectives specializing in Miracle Problems were invariably fat. And loud. And . . . and eccentric.

  “Aaron Burr!” oathed the man-mountain, jowls quivering like a turkey’s wattles. “Herman Jediah Klauss, the Moriarty of Manhattan!” He spun – or, rather, lurched – round, the swordstick scattering various detectives. “So where’s the hunchie?”

  Trask was holding his stomach and wincing.

  He muttered, “Tell him.”

  Commings explained about the lack of counterfeit hunchbacks in this particular case. This took some time owing to Befz’s innumerable interruptions. Commings finished, “In any case, there were four witnesses who saw Vok, or Cole, do it.”

  “Mass hypnosis!” thundered Befz. “The oldest trick in the book! I have three hundred forty-eight cases in my records, of which probably the most illuminating was the Great Hollywood Bowl Pickpocket Scam. This Vok, or Cole, undoubtedly flapdoodled the witnesses into thinking he was skinny then flipped open his false hump and let the demoniacal pixie out to do its fell business. The man was clearly a master-mesmerist.”

  “The butler and the maid, sure,” agreed Commings. “And Schwaab, too. But,” his voice pitched up, “O’Mahoney?”

  Befz glanced at the patrolman. “You may have a point there,” he grudged. “Well, there are plenty of other Impossible Murder Methods to choose from . . .”

  “Sweet galloping Jesus!” screeched Trask. “The murder method is not in question! We know how he did it! The guy even admits to it himself!” He gulped down three or four more antacid tablets. “Show him the note, Commings.”

  The note read:

  Dear guys,

  I have decided to retire on my well-gotten gains, which over the years (due to judicious investment) have made me a millionaire many times over.

  Before I go, however, I believe I can do you a couple favours.

  Primus: Attached is a list of robberies which should feature heavily in your “Unsolved” files. Strike ’em. I plead guilty on all counts;

  Secundus: I also plead guilty to the expunging of Herman Jediah Klauss, murderer, shylock, fence (who invariably paid bottom-dollar: hence my hatred of him) extortioner, blackmailer, procurer, rabid collector and generally worthless scoundrel. Having inveigled him here on the pretence of selling him a rare set of “Woozy Winks” bubble-gum cards (circa 1948), I split his head with an ice-pick.

  I mourn the fact that I leave behind my vast collection of interesting artefacts.

  That’s a lie. Where I’m going, I have duplicate copies of everything.

  Hasta la vista!

  Henning Vok, a.k.a. The Great Blitzen

  (r.n. Jack Ralph Cole)

  P.S. There are plenty clues.

  “Hmmm,” larynxed Befz. “So the problem is how he escaped from the bathroom. That shouldn’t prove too tricky. As you probably know if you’ve read my magnum opus on the subject, there are precisely one thousand three hundred fifty-two ways of getting out of a locked room, only seven hundred eighty-six of which depend on a reel of cotton. And out of that, only one hundred thirty-five need a new pin and split paper-match. Walls?”

  “Solid brick,” Trask grated.

  “Ceiling?”

  “Same.”

  “Window?”

  “Hasn’t been opened in fifty years.”

  “Floor?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Oh.”

  Befz absently tapped the blade of his swordstick on the oxygen machine next to the bidet. It made a tanging sound. His eye was caught by the large old-fashioned air-extractor fixed into the wall, high up.

  “John Quincy Adams! The fan!”

  “To get up there,” growled Trask, “you’d need to be able to fly.”

  “Precisely!” Befz triumphantly whacked the swordstick against one of the oxygen cylinders. The blade shattered into several shards. “Damn! That’s the one hundred twenty-eighth this year. The blessed things cost a fortune too. Never mind. Vok, or Cole, inflated himself with oxygen and floated up to the fan, where . . .”

  “Where he’d slice himself up in the extractor blades, yeah. You’re losing your touch, Befz. I might just as well ask O’Mahoney if he’s got any bright ideas.”

  “Oh sure,” said O’Mahoney. “I mean, it’s transparently obvious, Lieutenant.”

  Numerous pairs of eyes focused on him. He hitched up his gun-belt self-consciously and began to walk around the room, slapping the tip of his nightstick into the open (gloved) palm of his left hand.

  “It’s an interesting problem sure enough, Professor. Uh . . . and Lieutenant. Oh, and . . .” he glanced at Commings “. . . Sergeant. But there’s really only one exit. Although, as Vok/Cole pointed out, there are plenty clues. See, I asked myself, why the bath? But we’ll get to that later. I’d like you all to follow me.”

  Numerous pairs of shoes and boots tramped after him into the hallway. He gestured at the posters.

  “It’s all there. He was a contortionist. Skinny as a rake. This is an old building. Way back, they built things bigger. Follow me.”

  They followed him. Back into the bathroom.

  “You very nearly hit it, Professor. The oxygen machine was crucial to his plan. Possibly not many of you know that in 1959 a technician in California hyperventilated on oxygen and then created a world record for remaining underwater for thirteen minutes forty-two seconds. Vok/Cole, as we know, had ‘iron lungs’, but the oxygen gave him that extra edge. As you’ll recall, my partner described him as looking flushed, as though he’d been running. Fact was, he seemed semi-hysterical. But like I said, it was the bathwater that tipped me. Way I figured it, water splashed from the tub would hide the tell-tale subsequent splashes of water from quite another source.”

  He used the nightstick as a pointer. Numerous pairs of eyes swivelled towards the mighty throne-like structure next to the tub.

  “That’s right,” said O’Mahoney. “He flushed himself down the toilet.”

  MILORD SIR SMIHT, THE ENGLISH WIZARD

  Avram Davidson

  Avram Davidson (1923�
�1993) was one of the most idiosyncratic talents to write science fiction and fantasy. He was at his best writing short stories, and some of his best have been collected as The Avram Davidson Treasury (1998). Also well worth tracking down are Peregrine: Primus (1971) and its sequel Peregrine: Secundus (1981), plus the collection of stories about a wizard detective, The Enquiries of Doctor Esterhazy (1975), from which the following story comes.

  The establishment of Brothers Swartbloi stands, or squats, as it has done for over a century and a half, in the Court of the Golden Hart. The inn, once famous, which gave its name to the court, has long since passed off the scene, but parts of it survive, here a wall, there an arch, and, by sole way of access, a flight of steps (so old had been the inn, that Bella, Imperial Capital of the Triune Monarchy, had slowly lifted the level of its streets around about it). The shops in the Court of the Golden Hart are an odd mixture. First, to the right of the worn three steps, is Florian, who purveys horse-crowns, though the sign does not say so. (All, in fact, that it says is Florian.) There is nothing on display in the window, the window being composed of small pieces of bull’s-eye glass set in lead, a very old window, with the very old-fashioned idea that the sole duty of a window is to let light in through a wall. What are horse-crowns? Has the reader never seen a funeral? Has he not noticed the crowns of ostrich plumes – black, for an ordinary adult, white for a child or maiden-woman, violet for a nobleman or prelate of the rank of monsignor or above – bobbing sedately on the horses’ heads? Those are horse-crowns, and nobody makes them like Florian’s.