Act Three, Part One

"Welcome to my humble home, Mr Gordon," said Jerome as the pair of them hauled the pixilated Villar into the front room of the small house. "There's a sofa over here," he added, and shortly they tumbled the ventriloquist onto the shabby bit of furniture.

"You, ah… call him Frank?" asked Artie as Jerome settled his inebriated guest more comfortably on the sofa, tucking a cushion under his head, then spreading a blanket over him.

"Hmm? Oh yes. Yes, when he gave up the act with Julio, he wanted a new name, so I suggested Frank. I also took Julio off his hands for him, since he reminded him so much of the bad old days. I keep him over there." Jerome nodded toward the far corner of the room where, sure enough, Artie spotted the creepy little doll flopped in a chair.

He shuddered. "I'm surprised Villar — ah, Frank, I mean — didn't chop ol' Julio up and use him for firewood!"

"To tell you the truth, Mr Gordon…"

"Artemus."

"Artemus? All right, to tell you the truth, Artemus, I'm a bit surprised at that myself."

"Finally!" Artie muttered under his breath. "Someone who listens!"

Jerome, not noticing the side remark, went on with, "Frank was very angry back in those days, as you might guess. Roseanne — my wife, that is," and now he nodded toward the mantelpiece, upon which Artie spotted a faded photograph. He took up the frame and found himself looking at a woman sticking out her tongue with her eyes squinted into two narrow slits and her hair frizzing out in wilder profusion even than Jerome's.

"Er…" Artie ventured, "if you don't mind me asking, why would a blind man keep a photograph on his mantel?"

"Oh, that's easy!" his host replied. "It's so other people can see what an absolute treasure I found to marry!" He beamed, and Artie found himself glad that Jerome couldn't see the look of perplexity that washed over his face at the word treasure being applied to the woman in the photo!

As Artie gaped in consternation at the portrait, Jerome continued with his story, all the while moving around the room tidying up a bit, "Anyway, Roseanne overheard the poor fellow pleading for a job at the theater where we were appearing…"

"Theater?" That grabbed Artie's attention. He set aside the photo. "You're actors?"

"Oh, that was long ago, back before my lovely Roseanne passed away. We had a comedy act back in the day, and before that, I was a solo, playing the violin." He waved a hand at a beautiful old violin sitting on a small shelf on the wall opposite the door. "Now, the curious part about me and Roseanne is when we started out, she was the straight man setting things up for me to deliver the punch lines, only pretty soon we found that the audiences were laughing at her straight lines while my punch lines were garnering nothing but the chirping of crickets! Well, as the old saying goes, Mama didn't raise no fool, so I switched roles with Roseanne and never looked back." He chuckled in reminiscence. "Why, it got to the point where I would walk out on the stage with her, ask her, 'So, Rosie, how's your brother?' and for the rest of the act, I didn't need to say another word. How the houses roared!"

"Wait!" cried Artie. "You mean you're, ah… oh, what's the name…?" He snapped his fingers. "Ah! Jerry and Rosie! That's right, isn't it? I've heard of you!"

Jerome smiled and nodded. "Oh yes! That was us. That was us indeed." His smile faded and he sighed. "The worse day of my life was the day I lost my darling Roseanne. Worse even than the day a couple of years later when I lost my sight. Still… it's a poorly recognized fact of life that one runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed. And another poorly recognized fact is that it is only with the heart that one can see clearly, for what is essential is invisible to the eye…" He paused, standing there with a pile of stray clothes draped over his arms, a top hat the exact same shade of light brown as his hair perched on his head at an odd angle. At length he sighed and dropped off his burdens atop the uncaring Julio, then skimmed the hat across the room to land with uncanny accuracy on the hat-rack. "At any rate," he added, "nowadays instead of delivering lines, whether they be straight or punch, all I deliver are candies."

He patted the slumbering Villar on the shoulder, then crossed into the kitchen with an inquisitive Artie trailing right behind him. "Candies?"

"Mm-hmm. I make 'em. Chocolates, toffees, taffies, brittles. You name it, I make it. I may be the smallest candy operation in San Francisco, but none of the other candy makers have got a thing on Jerome Fox! Make 'em right here, deliver 'em myself…"

"That reminds me," said Artie thoughtfully, "and no offense intended, but I never would have believed a blind man could drive a delivery wagon. I suppose the horses…?"

Jerome was nodding. "Right, right. The horses know the route, so I let them do the navigating. And when I say 'home,' they bring me home — as you no doubt noticed tonight. Oh, and by the way, thanks for helping me get them rubbed down and settled into the stable."

"My pleasure. Oh!" Artie snapped his fingers again. "I nearly forgot! I had to take a bullet out of Vill… ah, Frank's leg earlier tonight, and I still need to stitch up the wound for him. If you'll excuse me?" He stepped out of the kitchen, heading back to his patient on the sofa.

"Fine, fine," said Jerome. "And while you do that, I'll get some of my special top secret hangover remedy ready. One shot of that, and Frank will be stone sober in mere seconds!"

"Ok, you do that, and… What?" Artie appeared in the kitchen door again. "Sober in seconds! But that's nonsense! Not even coffee sobers you up that fast!"

Grinning like a mad hatter, Jerome sang:

"A little nonsense now and then
Is relished by the wisest men."

Then, with a wink and a nod to his astonished guest, he started pulling out bowls, bottles, baskets, buckets, barrels, bags, and bins. With a merry "Ha-cha-cha-cha!" he rubbed his hands together, then shooed Artie from the kitchen to give himself plenty of room to concoct his uncanny brew.

…

"You do realize, Count," said Jim to his captor, "that Mr Gordon and I saw through your flimsy disguise as Prof McWilliams as soon as we got our first look at you — in fact, as soon as we first heard you speaking."

Manzeppi chuckled, busily whisking a pair of magenta gloves out of thin air, and after donning them, from the same source he manifested a ruby ring big enough to choke a horse which he promptly slid onto his right middle finger. "Ah, much better!" he proclaimed. "I've come to regard myself as being in something of a state of déshabillé without these, ah…" He waggled his eyebrows. "…handy accoutrements, you understand." He puffed on his cigar, looked around for suitable seating, and finding nothing in his ward's boudoir that might reliably bear up under his considerable bulk, he frowned and growled out, "Melville! Go at once and fetch me my chairs!"

The toad twisted his neck in a vain attempt to look up at his boss' face. "Like this? When I can't even stand up straight?"

The great man glared down at the unsightly creature, and with a snort of "Oh, very well!" he gave a wave of his hand. To the accompaniment of a musical zhing! Melville found himself to be instantly transformed from toad back to toady. Bowing and scraping all the way, he bounded from the room to go and do his master's bidding.

With a puff on his cigar, the unveiled magician added, "Now, as you were saying, Mr West?"

"I'm saying you never fooled us for a moment with your Prof McWilliams masquerade, Count."

His captor broke out into a gloating grin. "Ah, but that is where you are wrong, my good sir! You have obviously surmised that Manzeppi is the verity and McWilliams the illusion, when in actuality it is quite the reverse! I have always been Elroy McWilliams, and it is only in these latter years that I have assumed the persona of Count Carlos Maria Vincenzo Robespierre Manzeppi," and with a bow he added, "your servant. Which illuminates the information you received from Washington, no doubt, confirming that one Elroy McWilliams, PhD, is an authentic professor at Yale University, hmm?"

Jim, hiding his astonishment, gave a brief nod. "That does shed a little light on things, yes."

"No doubt! In fact, my father was himself an academic, and my mother self-taught in a broad range of the scholarly disciplines. It was their fondest wish that I, their only scion, should follow in their footsteps — and for the most part, I did. But then one day as I was perambulating about campus and passed close by the walls of the library, it happened by chance that someone sitting in an open window of an upper floor perusing Machiavelli's The Prince lost his grip upon that weighty tome, which plummeted down like the fall of Satan to cosh me upon the pate! And when I recovered my senses…"

The count cocked an eyebrow, and with a Mephistophelean leer upon his face, he wagged the hand holding his cigar at his prisoner. "Ah, noble adversary, at that moment was I reborn! No longer content to be a mere lecturer and molder of young minds, a cog of Academe spending my life in an endless hurly-burly of publishing or perishing! No, from then on I cast my eyes upon a higher calling." He smirked. "Or lower, depending upon one's point of view, that is. I had long been interested in the arts of legerdemain, having trained myself from my youth upwards as a conjurer at children's parties and the like. Now I set forth to become more — much more! From lowly illusionist I would pass on to the reality; from a mere mummer to a master of magic! And I would do this in order to become what my impecunious parents could never even dream of achieving: I would become wealthy! I had the wit, the cunning, the native intelligence. And added to all these, the blow to my head had unlocked within me a ruthlessness never before hinted at in my character. I was a new man, and one without the crippling influences of pity or piety."

"Not to mention, brevity," put in Jim.

Manzeppi chuckled. "Indeed, but concision has never been among my attributes, Mr West! I continued with my professorial career as a veil of propriety, indulging my new true self during sabbaticals and the like. I collected to myself minions to aid me in my goals, dubbing ourselves the Eccentrics, taking on occasional commissions at high premiums, all in the interest of becoming all that I could be: depraved, immoral, iniquitous."

Jim nodded. "And above all, rich."

"Precisely!" Manzeppi smirked. "Only to have you and your esteemed partner show up to meddle in our affairs." He shook his head. "Deplorable! Utterly deplorable."

"It's a living," said Jim. "And somehow between your public scholastic career and your private life of crime, you wound up with a pair of wards."

Manzeppi smiled. "Ah yes, the treasure of my heart, are they not? Would you, ah, like to hear more about them?"

Jim shrugged, spreading his hands within the confines of the birdcage. "It's not like I have anything else to do at the moment."

Manzeppi chuckled. "No, it isn't, is it?" Raising his voice, he bellowed out, "Melville!"

At that moment the minion appeared in the doorway lugging one of the count's chairs from the dining room. "Here you go, Professor!" He wrestled the chair into the middle of the boudoir, then turned it to face the cage, puffing from effort but beaming with pride.

His accomplishment was met with an arch of the brow from his employer. "And the second chair, Melville?"

The minion's face fell. "Oh. Yeah. Right, second chair. You just gotta have two chairs, 'steada one like a normal person!" Mumbling under his breath, Melville went off to fetch the other chair as well.

"Now," said Manzeppi, resting a forearm upon the back of his first chair, "if you're quite comfortable, Mr West, I shall unfold to you the tale of Ariadne and Pearl."