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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77869 ***
+
+
+
+
+                             Eau de Morgue
+
+                          by Arthur T. Harris
+
+
+  _Edgar Allan Poe was both a master of the detective story in its
+  pioneering aspects and a superb science fiction writer. Witness_ THE
+  NARRATIVE OF A. GORDON PYM. _Arthur T. Harris seems to have taken a
+  leaf from the late genius of the high, pale brow and raven locks and
+  presented us here with a science fantasy so chillingly unique that
+  he has even dared to call it_ EAU DE MORGUE, _in obvious tribute to
+  Poe’s_ THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. _Need we say more?_
+
+  =Vengeance can be very complete when it ends with a refrain to the
+  tender lyric: “All of me!”=
+
+
+
+
+Now then, where were we? Oh--we weren’t; you didn’t introduce yourself.
+To clear that up--I’m Jan Mystel. You are Detective Sergeant Kurt
+Milbach. And you’re right. I _was_ in a brawl last night!
+
+Huh? You don’t know anything about it? That isn’t what you’re here for?
+Just possibly I won’t have to call a lawyer, Sarge. My conscience is
+reasonably clear, but heaven only knows what my subconscious has been
+up to!
+
+You’re asking me, did I know the Duchess of Dunscombe? I sure did,
+Pops, and the pleasure was all hers, if any. She was the rich, decrepit
+old biddy who dug up the loot for Madame Outre’s store. I _had_ to be
+polite.
+
+You say _she’s_ disappeared too? I hope it was prolonged and painful!
+No, I don’t read the tabloids. It happened last night, eh? She just
+vanished--_pouf_! You checked her medicine chest at the Hotel Coq
+D’Or--nembutal, seconal, veronal, even a vial of methedrine. The ol’
+gal liked her kicks up and down, eh?
+
+And also a four-ounce bottle of Madame Outre’s Shangri-la Bath Salts.
+Cap off, empty, on the side of the bath tub. You made a chemical
+analysis of the residue--no dice. Still, it was the only link between
+Madame and the Duchess, if indeed it’s any clue at all.
+
+Sure, Sarge--I understand. You have got to milk every shred of evidence
+till the cow dries up. Okay. Pardon me while I shave and shower. I’ve
+got to catch an afternoon class today. Meanwhile I’ll tell you what
+little I know....
+
+About eight months ago, I finished a four-year hitch in the Air Force.
+I took my discharge pay, found this cold-water cubicle in the Village
+and moved in. Relaxed--and got to know half a dozen barkeeps. To give
+myself an objective I drifted into a little theater outfit, and signed
+up for a college course in radio-TV writing.
+
+And ran out of dough.
+
+One warm night I was coddling a beer at the Cote d’Azur. That’s just
+off Sheridan Square, you know. The fellow who runs it, Mack Carr, used
+to fly with me in Korea. Well, I’m sour and disgusted with myself, see
+... and this group of five old biddies comes trooping in.
+
+They’re dressed and they talk and they act like Ladies’ Day at the
+Vienna Opera, year eighteen ninety-three. All but one. She just smiles
+quietly, as though nursing happier memories. But it turns out she’s the
+object of the gabfest.
+
+After the initial cackling died down, I made out, from snatches of
+personal history, that the girls were interested in the damnedest
+things: the Russian philosopher Ouspenski, Yoga and yogurt, occult
+seances, strange gypsy herbs and potions.
+
+I bought another beer and moved over to the next table.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seems that the Duchess and Madame Outre had been friends in
+Budapest, before the war. Then Hitler upset the apple cart and the
+Duchess hurriedly married a British Embassy chap, name of Dunscombe.
+That gave her diplomatic immunity and when war came, she got out on a
+sealed train and wound up in London.
+
+Not so the Madame. In Budapest she’d apparently presided over her own
+private seance, which was subsidized by the Hungarian elite. It was she
+who’d advised the future Duchess to wed the English diplomat. Anyway,
+Madame Outre eventually went to a concentration camp, and was down to
+eighty-five pounds at war’s end.
+
+Somehow she outwitted the Russians and got to Paris. There she fell
+in again with the Duchess, whose husband had taken a postwar Foreign
+Office job. The Duchess became her “sponsor,” helped round up a new set
+of clients, and the old Budapest seance was revived.
+
+Well, there’s probably more to it than that. But about a year ago the
+Duke was shifted to a U.N. post here in New York, and the Duchess’s
+entourage came along for the ride.
+
+And that brings us up to date, to the Cote d’Azur, me with my warm beer
+and the old biddies gabbling away like mad and collecting a larger
+audience by the minute.
+
+It seems that back in Budapest, Madame Outre had dabbled in perfumes,
+scented bath salts, and stuff like that for special friends. Now the
+girls, the Duchess in particular, were urging her to open a little shop
+in the Village. The Duchess up and proclaimed she’d be the bankroll.
+
+You get the drift, Sarge. Here am I, half in the bag, in a boite full
+of characters, with impressionistic paintings on the walls, a “bulletin
+board” tacked up with personal notes, apartment-swap deals, little
+theater announcements, abused-car ads, old stove and refrigerator
+deals. Add to that Madison Avenue publicity boys in crewcuts and
+charcoal suits; blonde nymphs in pony hair-dos and tight, oh very
+tight, suntan slacks; stevedores just off the docks; long-haired
+ex-G.I. art students--the whole gang, and the Budapest biddies to boot!
+
+My ears must have been wagging like red flags at a rifle range when
+Madame Outre spoke up.
+
+“_C’est fini_,” she said. “We shall have a shop, _oui. Parfums_ from
+my own formulas, _oui_. And even, mayhap, a young man to assist during
+busy hours.”
+
+She lifted her martini toward me in an amiable toast. I must have
+blushed like a kid.
+
+“Me and my big ears,” I mumbled.
+
+“We are a bunch of magpies,” Madame Outre replied. “You could not help
+overhearing. Be so good as to join us, _s’il vous plait_!”
+
+So-o-o ... that’s about it, Sarge. Just as casual as that. She offered
+me a part-time job, I accepted, and a week or so later we finished
+hammering up shelves, cleaning the fixtures, and setting out the stock.
+
+We were in business.
+
+At first, and of necessity, Madame had to buy from wholesale cosmetic
+and perfume houses. But after a month or so European chemicals,
+Bulgarian perfume oils et cetera began to come in. Madame had outfitted
+a little laboratory for herself, in the back, which was strictly “off
+limits.” I typed out business correspondence, I banked checks and cash,
+and I waited on customers.
+
+But only Madame had the key to the little back room.
+
+Suspicious, Sarge? Hell’s bells, man, I’ve _told_ you the Madame
+trusted me. If she wished to dispense secret scents, and withhold
+certain trade formulas that was _her_ business!
+
+Okay, you’re just trying to do your duty. We’ll leave it at that. Pour
+me another coffee, huh? I’ll be right out of the shower.
+
+Thanks. So it goes along that way for about six months, Sarge. Until
+the Duchess of Dunscombe starts getting big ideas. It seems the Duchess
+started to drag some of her hoitiest-toitiest Continental friends down
+to the Village.
+
+They didn’t _shop_ at Madame Outre’s. They _patronized_ her, and her
+customers. You know, the Village kids who work for ad agencies, weekly
+magazines, research organizations. In the office, they’re cute. In the
+Village, they slip on dungarees and become part of the crowd.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, things began to get pretty sticky between the Duchess and Madame
+Outre. They came to a head--oh, about two weeks ago. I was in the
+storeroom, a little alcove in the rear adjoining Madame’s laboratory.
+
+Around five o’clock the Duchess came flouncing in. “My dear,” she
+boomed, like a brass cannon, “my friends and I have decided you
+must--but you simply must--move uptown. To waste your time down here
+among silly little secretaries--ridiculous! Fantastic! I won’t hear of
+it another moment!”
+
+Madame kept calm. “You forget,” she said, “that it was you who urged me
+to open up shop here. Since then I have found many new friends. I have
+become established. The Village is now part of my life.”
+
+“Nonsense!” the Duchess flared. “This is no ‘life.’ It is a humiliation
+to me and my friends! What began as a lark has turned into a travesty!
+You will move uptown, to the East Sixties, and next week. I have
+already chosen the store!”
+
+Well, Sarge, the old gasbag was making so much noise that people
+outside began to hang around for the fun. I dropped my work, picked
+up some bottles and went up front, ostensibly to fill in stock on the
+shelves.
+
+The Duchess glared at me, knowing perfectly well what I was up to. But
+she did lower her voice.
+
+“Very well, then, my dear,” she said--and so help me, Sarge, she
+didn’t speak. She hissed! “You choose to abandon me, my aid, my
+patronage, my friends. _But if certain people were to learn about your
+background--!_” And like a witch’s broom, she swept toward the door.
+
+“A moment, please,” Madame Outre said, so coolly the temperature seemed
+to drop.
+
+The Duchess halted, and half turned. Quietly, her shoulders held stiff
+and proud, Madame Outre came out from behind the counter.
+
+“We have known each other for years,” she said. “Our long association
+makes it fitting that we part, if not as friends, then assuredly not as
+enemies. As the final act in our relationship I must beg you to accept
+from me a small but adequate gift. It will be mailed to you tonight.”
+
+Challenged to keep her temper, the Duchess smiled back. But her wide
+gray eyes were cold with hate.
+
+“As you wish, my dear,” she said. “As you wish.”
+
+Satisfied, Sarge? Now look, I’m telling you. As soon as the Duchess
+took a powder, Madame Outre went to her laboratory, and was busy for
+about half an hour. Then she handed me a four-ounce jar of greenish
+bath salts--probably the same bottle you found by the Duchess’s bath
+tub. So I wrapped it carefully, weighed it, stamped it and on my way
+home deposited it in the package mailbox on the corner.
+
+Next morning--that was Saturday, about ten days ago--I found Madame’s
+check for two weeks’ pay in the mail. It didn’t sound kosher, so I
+rushed over to the store--which she’s failed to open, then or since.
+Monday I cashed the check. You traced me through her bank, eh?
+
+No, of course I didn’t go to the police! Madame wanted to do a quiet
+fadeout, and that’s her business. The trouble with this country is--too
+many amateur snoops are on the warpath.
+
+So that’s all there is, Sarge. And until you mentioned it, I never made
+any mental connection between Madame’s disappearance and the Duchess’s
+vanishing act. How could I, when you only told me a half hour ago? Come
+again. You say there’s dirty work at the crossroads?
+
+Sure, I’ll buy. I’m morally certain nobody did Madame Outre in. She
+simply up and took off. As for the Duchess, anything that old battleax
+got she deserved--provided there’s a _corpus delicti_, a body. But
+there isn’t. You said so yourself.
+
+So how in hell--
+
+_What?_ You _did_ find something? A three-carat diamond wedding ring,
+which the Duke insists she never removed from her finger--not even when
+she bathed? You found it in the bathroom, eh? Okay. So maybe, just this
+once, she took it off before she toweled herself, or whatever rich
+dames do when they want to rub clean.
+
+So she left it on the washstand. Oh--she didn’t? You mean, there was
+evidence she’d taken a bath, had finished, pulled the plug, let out the
+water, and then stood up to dry herself?
+
+Let’s get this straight. The Duchess disappeared last night. The story
+is in today’s papers. Okay. She was probably taking a bath--check. She
+used the soap in the soap dish, and there was a damp towel lying by the
+side of the tub. Plug drawn. The cops are called in, and go snooping
+for clues. They find her big diamond ring--huh? Not on the washstand,
+but wedged sideways against the metal stopper inside the open drain?
+
+Okay! So she got too much soap on her hands. The ring worked loose
+and got lost, and she failed to notice it was missing. Then she dried
+herself, got dressed and slipped out to visit some of her rich oddball
+pals....
+
+_Huh?_ You say the Duke had to call hotel help to break down the
+bathroom door? You say that he was in their living-room when he heard a
+half scream, and came running? Then a funny gurgle, as of water leaving
+the tub. And then ... _nothing?_
+
+And when the bellhops broke in, no Duchess? Only the ring, which you
+people found later? And the open, empty bottle of Madame Outre’s bath
+salts, which your chemists couldn’t analyze?
+
+You mean--Sarge, you mean you think there’s a possibility she soaked
+herself in those bath salts, pulled the plug, stood up to towel herself
+and then began to dissolve --and went down the drain?
+
+_Oh, my God!_
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note:
+
+
+ This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, June 1956 (Vol. 5,
+No. 5.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+ Obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected in this
+version.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77869 ***
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+      Eau de Morgue | Project Gutenberg
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77869 ***</div>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowe116_5625" id="cover">
+  <img class="w20" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+      Transcribed from Fantastic Universe, June 1956 (Vol. 5,
+No. 5.).
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<h1>
+Eau de Morgue
+</h1>
+
+<p class="center f15">
+  by <strong>Arthur T. Harris</strong>
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+
+<p><i>Edgar Allan Poe was both a master of the detective story in its pioneering
+aspects and a superb science fiction writer. Witness</i> <span class="allsmcap">THE NARRATIVE OF A.
+GORDON PYM</span>. <i>Arthur T. Harris seems to have taken a leaf from the late genius
+of the high, pale brow and raven locks and presented us here with a science
+fantasy so chillingly unique that he has even dared to call it</i> <span class="allsmcap">EAU DE MORGUE</span>, <i>in
+obvious tribute to Poe’s</i> <span class="allsmcap">THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE</span>. <i>Need we say more?</i></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><b>Vengeance can be very complete
+when it ends with a refrain to
+the tender lyric: “All of me!”</b></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"></div>
+<p>Now then, where were we? Oh—we weren’t; you didn’t introduce yourself.
+To clear that up—I’m Jan Mystel. You are Detective Sergeant Kurt
+Milbach. And you’re right. I <i>was</i> in a brawl last night!</p>
+
+<p>Huh? You don’t
+know anything about it? That isn’t what you’re here for? Just possibly
+I won’t have to call a lawyer, Sarge. My conscience is reasonably
+clear, but heaven only knows what my subconscious has been up to!</p>
+
+<p>You’re asking me, did I know the Duchess of Dunscombe? I sure did,
+Pops, and the pleasure was all hers, if any. She was the rich, decrepit
+old biddy who dug up the loot for Madame Outre’s store. I <i>had</i> to be
+polite.</p>
+
+<p>You say <i>she’s</i> disappeared too? I hope it was prolonged and
+painful! No, I don’t read the tabloids. It happened last night, eh?
+She just vanished—<i>pouf</i>! You checked her medicine chest at the Hotel
+Coq D’Or—nembutal, seconal, veronal, even a vial of methedrine. The
+ol’ gal liked her kicks up and down, eh?</p>
+
+<p>And also a four-ounce bottle
+of Madame Outre’s Shangri-la Bath Salts. Cap off, empty, on the side
+of the bath tub. You made a chemical analysis of the residue—no dice.
+Still, it was the only link between Madame and the Duchess, if indeed
+it’s any clue at all.</p>
+
+<p>Sure, Sarge—I understand. You have got to milk
+every shred of evidence till the cow dries up. Okay. Pardon me while I
+shave and shower. I’ve got to catch an afternoon class today. Meanwhile
+I’ll tell you what little I know....</p>
+
+<p>About eight months ago, I finished
+a four-year hitch in the Air Force. I took my discharge pay, found
+this cold-water cubicle in the Village and moved in. Relaxed—and got
+to know half a dozen barkeeps. To give myself an objective I drifted
+into a little theater outfit, and signed up for a college course in
+radio-TV writing.</p>
+
+<p>And ran out of dough.</p>
+
+<p>One warm night I was coddling
+a beer at the Cote d’Azur. That’s just off Sheridan Square, you know.
+The fellow who runs it, Mack Carr, used to fly with me in Korea. Well,
+I’m sour and disgusted with myself, see ... and this group of five old
+biddies comes trooping in.</p>
+
+<p>They’re dressed and they talk and they act
+like Ladies’ Day at the Vienna Opera, year eighteen ninety-three. All
+but one. She just smiles quietly, as though nursing happier memories.
+But it turns out she’s the object of the gabfest.</p>
+
+<p>After the initial
+cackling died down, I made out, from snatches of personal history,
+that the girls were interested in the damnedest things: the Russian
+philosopher Ouspenski, Yoga and yogurt, occult seances, strange gypsy
+herbs and potions.</p>
+
+<p>I bought another beer and moved over to the next
+table.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It seems that the Duchess and Madame Outre had been friends in
+Budapest, before the war. Then Hitler upset the apple cart and the
+Duchess hurriedly married a British Embassy chap, name of Dunscombe.
+That gave her diplomatic immunity and when war came, she got out on a
+sealed train and wound up in London.</p>
+
+<p>Not so the Madame. In Budapest
+she’d apparently presided over her own private seance, which was
+subsidized by the Hungarian elite. It was she who’d advised the future
+Duchess to wed the English diplomat. Anyway, Madame Outre eventually
+went to a concentration camp, and was down to eighty-five pounds at
+war’s end.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow she outwitted the Russians and got to Paris. There
+she fell in again with the Duchess, whose husband had taken a postwar
+Foreign Office job. The Duchess became her “sponsor,” helped round up
+a new set of clients, and the old Budapest seance was revived.</p>
+
+<p>Well,
+there’s probably more to it than that. But about a year ago the Duke
+was shifted to a U.N. post here in New York, and the Duchess’s
+entourage came along for the ride.</p>
+
+<p>And that brings us up
+to date, to the Cote d’Azur, me with my warm beer and the old biddies
+gabbling away like mad and collecting a larger audience by the minute.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that back in Budapest, Madame Outre had dabbled in perfumes,
+scented bath salts, and stuff like that for special friends. Now the
+girls, the Duchess in particular, were urging her to open a little shop
+in the Village. The Duchess up and proclaimed she’d be the bankroll.</p>
+
+<p>You get the drift, Sarge. Here am I, half in the bag, in a boite full
+of characters, with impressionistic paintings on the walls, a “bulletin
+board” tacked up with personal notes, apartment-swap deals, little
+theater announcements, abused-car ads, old stove and refrigerator
+deals. Add to that Madison Avenue publicity boys in crewcuts and
+charcoal suits; blonde nymphs in pony hair-dos and tight, oh very
+tight, suntan slacks; stevedores just off the docks; long-haired
+ex-G.I. art students—the whole gang, and the Budapest biddies to boot!</p>
+
+<p>My ears must have been wagging like red flags at a rifle range when
+Madame Outre spoke up.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>C’est fini</i>,” she said. “We shall have a shop,
+<i>oui. Parfums</i> from my own formulas, <i>oui</i>. And even, mayhap,
+a young man
+to assist during busy hours.”</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her martini toward me in an
+amiable toast. I must have blushed like a kid.</p>
+
+<p>“Me and my big ears,”
+I mumbled.</p>
+
+<p>“We are a bunch of magpies,” Madame Outre replied. “You
+could not help overhearing. Be so good as to join us, <i>s’il vous plait</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>So-o-o ... that’s about it, Sarge. Just as casual as that. She offered
+me a part-time job, I accepted, and a week or so later we finished
+hammering up shelves, cleaning the fixtures, and setting out the stock.</p>
+
+<p>We were in business.</p>
+
+<p>At first, and of necessity, Madame had to buy from
+wholesale cosmetic and perfume houses. But after a month or so European
+chemicals, Bulgarian perfume oils et cetera began to come in. Madame
+had outfitted a little laboratory for herself, in the back, which was
+strictly “off limits.” I typed out business correspondence, I banked
+checks and cash, and I waited on customers.</p>
+
+<p>But only Madame had the
+key to the little back room.</p>
+
+<p>Suspicious, Sarge? Hell’s bells, man,
+I’ve <i>told</i> you the Madame trusted me. If she wished to dispense secret
+scents, and withhold certain trade formulas that was <i>her</i> business!</p>
+
+<p>Okay, you’re just trying to do your duty. We’ll leave it at that. Pour
+me another coffee, huh? I’ll be right out of the shower.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks. So it
+goes along that way for about six months, Sarge. Until the Duchess of
+Dunscombe starts getting big ideas. It seems the Duchess
+started to drag some of her hoitiest-toitiest Continental friends down
+to the Village.</p>
+
+<p>They didn’t <i>shop</i> at Madame Outre’s. They <i>patronized</i>
+her, and her customers. You know, the Village kids who work for ad
+agencies, weekly magazines, research organizations. In the office,
+they’re cute. In the Village, they slip on dungarees and become part
+of the crowd.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Well, things began to get pretty sticky between the
+Duchess and Madame Outre. They came to a head—oh, about two weeks ago.
+I was in the storeroom, a little alcove in the rear adjoining Madame’s
+laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>Around five o’clock the Duchess came flouncing in. “My
+dear,” she boomed, like a brass cannon, “my friends and I have decided
+you must—but you simply must—move uptown. To waste your time down here
+among silly little secretaries—ridiculous! Fantastic! I won’t hear of
+it another moment!”</p>
+
+<p>Madame kept calm. “You forget,” she said, “that it
+was you who urged me to open up shop here. Since then I have found many
+new friends. I have become established. The Village is now part of my
+life.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense!” the Duchess flared. “This is no ‘life.’ It is a
+humiliation to me and my friends! What began as a lark has turned into
+a travesty! You will move uptown, to the East Sixties, and next
+week. I have already chosen the store!”</p>
+
+<p>Well, Sarge, the old gasbag
+was making so much noise that people outside began to hang around for
+the fun. I dropped my work, picked up some bottles and went up front,
+ostensibly to fill in stock on the shelves.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess glared at
+me, knowing perfectly well what I was up to. But she did lower her
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well, then, my dear,” she said—and so help me, Sarge,
+she didn’t speak. She hissed! “You choose to abandon me, my aid, my
+patronage, my friends. <i>But if certain people were to learn about your
+background—!</i>” And like a witch’s broom, she swept toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>“A moment, please,” Madame Outre said, so coolly the temperature seemed
+to drop.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess halted, and half turned. Quietly, her shoulders
+held stiff and proud, Madame Outre came out from behind the counter.</p>
+
+<p>“We have known each other for years,” she said. “Our long association
+makes it fitting that we part, if not as friends, then assuredly not as
+enemies. As the final act in our relationship I must beg you to accept
+from me a small but adequate gift. It will be mailed to you tonight.”</p>
+
+<p>Challenged to keep her temper, the Duchess smiled back. But her wide
+gray eyes were cold with hate.</p>
+
+<p>“As you wish, my dear,” she said. “As you wish.”</p>
+
+<p>Satisfied, Sarge? Now look, I’m
+telling you. As soon as the Duchess took a powder, Madame Outre went to
+her laboratory, and was busy for about half an hour. Then she handed me
+a four-ounce jar of greenish bath salts—probably the same bottle you
+found by the Duchess’s bath tub. So I wrapped it carefully, weighed it,
+stamped it and on my way home deposited it in the package mailbox on
+the corner.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning—that was Saturday, about ten days ago—I found
+Madame’s check for two weeks’ pay in the mail. It didn’t sound kosher,
+so I rushed over to the store—which she’s failed to open, then or
+since. Monday I cashed the check. You traced me through her bank, eh?</p>
+
+<p>No, of course I didn’t go to the police! Madame wanted to do a quiet
+fadeout, and that’s her business. The trouble with this country is—too
+many amateur snoops are on the warpath.</p>
+
+<p>So that’s all there is, Sarge.
+And until you mentioned it, I never made any mental connection between
+Madame’s disappearance and the Duchess’s vanishing act. How could I,
+when you only told me a half hour ago? Come again. You say there’s
+dirty work at the crossroads?</p>
+
+<p>Sure, I’ll buy. I’m morally certain
+nobody did Madame Outre in. She simply up and took off. As for the
+Duchess, anything that old battleax got she deserved—provided there’s
+a <i>corpus delicti</i>, a body. But there isn’t. You said so yourself.</p>
+
+<p>So how in hell—</p>
+
+<p><i>What?</i> You <i>did</i> find something? A three-carat diamond wedding
+ring, which the Duke insists she never removed from her finger—not even
+when she bathed? You found it in the bathroom, eh? Okay. So maybe, just
+this once, she took it off before she toweled herself, or whatever rich
+dames do when they want to rub clean.</p>
+
+<p>So she left it on the washstand.
+Oh—she didn’t? You mean, there was evidence she’d taken a bath, had
+finished, pulled the plug, let out the water, and then stood up to
+dry herself?</p>
+
+<p>Let’s get this straight. The Duchess disappeared last
+night. The story is in today’s papers. Okay. She was probably taking a
+bath—check. She used the soap in the soap dish, and there was a damp
+towel lying by the side of the tub. Plug drawn. The cops are called
+in, and go snooping for clues. They find her big diamond ring—huh? Not
+on the washstand, but wedged sideways against the metal stopper inside
+the open drain?</p>
+
+<p>Okay! So she got too much soap on her hands. The ring
+worked loose and got lost, and she failed to notice it was missing.
+Then she dried herself, got dressed and slipped out to visit some of
+her rich oddball pals....</p>
+
+<p><i>Huh?</i> You say the Duke had to call hotel help to
+break down the bathroom door? You say that he was
+in their living-room when he heard a half scream, and came running?
+Then a funny gurgle, as of water leaving the tub. And then ... <i>nothing?</i></p>
+
+<p>And when the bellhops broke in, no Duchess? Only the ring, which you
+people found later? And the open, empty bottle of Madame Outre’s bath
+salts, which your chemists couldn’t analyze?</p>
+
+<p>You mean—Sarge, you mean
+you think there’s a possibility she soaked herself in those bath salts,
+pulled the plug, stood up to towel herself and then began to dissolve
+—and went down the drain?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oh, my God!</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="transnote">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_note">
+    Transcriber’s note:
+  </h2>
+
+<p>This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, June 1956 (Vol. 5,
+No. 5.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
+U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p>
+
+<p>Obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected in this
+version.</p>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77869 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77869
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77869)