 There was jello in the fingerprints, Detective Dulllight discovered. It proved to be the most important finding in the case, and where as Detectives Slocks and Slovits slobbered over smutty photographs, Dulllight had a better lead to follow. He followed the ringing to the telephone where a voice asked, "Excuse me, aren't you so-and-so? Oh, so-and-so, since you left I have been eating only sweets because they remind me of you." He felt this surely was a clue. So he climbed into the tub wearing his underwear and overcoat, jumped aboard the model boat and followed the water down the drain. In his brain there are file cabinets and secretaries filing their nails downstairs (But I don't want to talk about that room downstairs). At this moment Detective Slocks and Slovits realize that since they had reported on the crime scene this morning each of them has aged over fifty years. Two butterflies land on their shoulders and harmonize softly in their ears, "Where did all the time go? Did you think that you'd stay young forever? But at least you're still together . . ." The two detectives held hands in the moonlight. The butterflies flew away which prompted Slovits to say,"l miss them already." Slocks removed a fountain pen from his breast pocket, drove it deep into Slovit's throat and began screeching "DEATH TO THE PARCHMENT WHALE, THE ROBOT IAM LASAILE!" While in prison, Slocks wrote one of the most revered exercises in free verse titled "The Cause of Gauze": "Oh, the cause of gauze. The Manuels have fondled many memories from my lap though each memory has its own lap and swimmers swim laps. Even swimmers have laps, however, and while in that condition many require a delicate gauze. I desire only this in my decrepitude, that I will have one more opportunity to serve as a gauze to my fellow man and that in that state of gauze can somehow disturb the world less often with my prickly fingers." When Detective Dulllight, returning from the catacombs, first heard the news of the Slocks and Slovits stabbing and subsequent poetry enterprise he immediately fell to the floor and began plucking peaches from his cheeks. This eventually became a tiresome activity so he evaporated into the cream, a float, a child's bedtime coco.
|
Switch to Russian 
