Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

The Blue Bread of Happiness by James Powell

As the adventures of Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock enter their twenty-fifth year, the daring spirit of the bungling mountie is undiminished. To Bullock, who can find excitement guarding the flowerbeds in front of the Parliament Buildings, an encounter with the legendary Athanatos and his submarine The Sea Monoceros is all in a day’s work...

“Actually, it’s more slate grey than blue. And more like pound cake than bread,” explained the old woman, fingering the clasp of the purse that lay across her knees. “Pound cake’s leap to glory, some call it.” As she spoke, her sad brown eyes turned from the man in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Recreation Association windbreaker sitting across from her to wander over the ample, well-lit lobby of Ottawa’s National Archives Building. “I’m telling you this now so you won’t be surprised when you see it.”

Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock ran a knuckle across his neatly trimmed moustache to mask any hint of a smile: “Thanks for being up front with me, Miss Bright.”

“Nor, as I said, does it give you happiness,” she insisted. “Unless you’re cockeyed enough to think being young means happiness. Oh yes, small amounts do reverse the aging process. And yes, when you reach your desired age regular maintenance doses will keep you there. That’s all we claim.” She touched her cheek. “I use the preparation myself.”

“I’d never have guessed you were over a hundred and fifty years old,” said Bullock.

“Thank you,” she said, lowering her eyes modestly. “But it is expensive. Which is how I got into the selling end.” She gave him a quick look. “That isn’t illegal, you know. Youth isn’t a controlled substance. At least, not yet.” She paused and said, “Well, shall we get down to business? Did you bring the money?”

Bullock produced the thick roll of bank notes with a forced casualness. He hadn’t been able to go to Mountie Bunco for marked bills, not after last year’s little snafu involving the Stoner ransom money and a howling snowstorm. (Blast all cheap locks on cheap suitcases everywhere! And blast the newspapers for reporting the story!) Fortunately good old Mavis, his wife, had come into a small inheritance, one earmarked for paying off the mortgage. This was the money Bullock now handed over, confident he’d get it back into their account before it was missed. Then, mustering his most gullible smile, he asked, “Run it by me again, Miss Bright. This twenty thousand gets me a half share in your upcoming purchase of the stuff with a street value of...?”

“...a hundred thousand dollars,” said Miss Bright, wearily. “You’ve got me in a bind. Dr. Athanatos only deals in fifty-thousand-dollar lots. All I’ve got is thirty.” She drew an envelope from her purse, and ran her thumb across the bills inside before adding Bullock’s money to them. “Some of my fixed-income customers have had to increase their doses. They say Athanatos is watering the stuff.” She sealed the envelope with her tongue and stuffed it back into her purse, adding, “Maybe he is. Anyway, I’ve had to extend them credit. What else could I do, considering the consequences? Oh, not just the heartburn. That’s only the first danger sign.” The woman looked at Bullock gravely. “Deprived of their usual dosage they’d start ageing faster and faster until they burst into flame. Poof, just like that. From the friction, you see.”

“Ah,” said Bullock.

Miss Bright nodded. “Spontaneous combustion. Dickens is full of the stuff, which means, I suppose, that Athanatos was around in those days, too.” Gathering up the paper shopping bag at her feet, Miss Bright rose. “I have to run,” she said, buttoning her green raincoat. She turned to go, then stopped. “Stupid me,” she said, taking the envelope from her purse again. “I forgot we agreed you’d hold the money as a token of good faith.”

Bullock took the envelope she offered him, making no sign he knew it only contained cut up paper.

“Until tomorrow morning at eight, then, at Fenians’ Bend,” said Miss Bright. “My niece Stella and I will be there. I know you’ll come. If a body can’t trust a Mountie who...?” Here Miss Bright frowned and tapped her chest with a most ladylike fist, as though experiencing discomfort. Then she hurried away.

Bullock watched her go solemnly. But inside he was agloat from ear to ear. He made no move until she reached the street. She mustn’t know she was being followed.

Outside, the morning was brisk and grey. He hung back as she hurried across the broad expanse of Wellington Street. When she turned southward, he stepped out after her. He’d spotted her as a con artist right off the bat when she’d approached him yesterday among the flowerbeds on Parliament Hill. He’d strung her along hoping she’d lead him to the sophisticated gang of Gypsy cons known to be working the old pigeon-drop scam in the area. It’d be a much-needed feather in his hat to nab the lot of them single-handed.

Still, Bullock had to admire the detail Miss Bright brought to her cock-and-bull story, even working in Dr. Athanatos, the legendary Canadian health-tonic manufacturer whose Peacock Island Brand Soup of Youth had made him millions. Bullock had first come across Athanatos in one of those wonderful turn-of-the-century adventure tales for boys featuring Canada’s aviation pioneer Buzz Haycock who, in a single Niagara afternoon, became the first man to fly over the Canadian Falls and go over the American Falls in an airplane. And none of those books had been more gripping than Buzz Haycock and the Behemoth Queen, recounting the daredevil pilot’s flight to the top of the world, drawn by rumors of a German staging area for an armada of stealthy isinglass dirigibles. Instead Haycock discovered a honeycomb of island caverns, the haunt of giant Ice Worms. And he encountered Athanatos and his futuristic submarine The Sea Monoceros, come to hunt the terrible translucent creatures with an electric harpoon rifle of his own invention. In spite of the man’s somewhat shady reputation, Haycock had come to enjoy those dinners in the craft’s glass-walled conning tower while the violent Arctic weather swirled outside and his host’s slavish crew doubled as a baroque music ensemble. However far those discussions over brandy and cigars ranged, they always returned to the age-old question: does happiness make men good or does goodness make them happy. (By godfrey, thought Bullock, they don’t write books for boys like that anymore.)

Up ahead, Bullock saw Miss Bright turn into a drugstore. He followed after her, humming casually, and locating her head above the display counters in the far corner, he drifted toward the humorous greeting cards, meaning to wait for her over a chuckle or two. But he’d scarcely begun to browse when there was a flash of light from Miss Bright’s direction. Bullock looked up to find a few wisps of smoke where her head had been. Bullock shouldered his way through the customers stampeding for the door and reached her aisle. It was empty. But on the floor in front of the antacid section he found a small cone of smoking ashes and the charred remains of a green raincoat. He poked through the ashes with his pencil, uncovering part of a brown shopping-bag handle and what looked like the metal clasp of Miss Bright’s purse. Bullock scratched his head. Then he shook it. No, by godfrey, he couldn’t buy spontaneous combustion. It was a trick to throw him off her track. Bullock ran out onto the street. But Miss Bright was long gone. With good old Mavis’s money. Bullock took out the envelope and ripped it open, meaning to curse the worthless contents. But the envelope was filled with bank notes, his twenty thousand and Miss Bright’s thirty! He blinked and rushed back to the pile of smoking ashes. Good godfrey, was this really the poor woman’s earthly remains? Had she really been as old as she’d said? Did the Blue Bread of Happiness really work?

By identifying himself, Bullock got the worried young woman at the register to give him a broom, dust pan, and a large paper bag. Then he swept what was left of Miss Bright into the bag. Any official report he made on this right now would get him laughed off the force. He was lucky there was a technician at Forensics who owed him a favor.

When he left Forensics, Bullock continued on out of town to the Mountie retirement home. Horseman’s End stood in a quiet pine forest, a collection of peeled log buildings on whose broad verandas, snow or shine, the old-timers rocked, argued loudly, and swapped exaggerations about the bygone days. Bullock parked and hurried inside the community house. From the first-floor auditorium the bingo caller announced a number and, immediately, a quavering voice that once might have cowed a whole camp of rioting miners shouted the name of the game. Shaking his head, Bullock took the stairs up to the library.

Sergeant Wesley Noonan, called the Sage of Horseman’s End, had spent twenty-five years at Cape Despondency, the most godforsaken outpost in Mountie jurisdiction, with nothing between himself and stark madness but an old ten-volume encyclopedia in the bookcase by the wood stove. He had read the set from cover to cover many times before reaching retirement. He returned home so happy to fill in the gaps in his relatives’ knowledge of the days before television that they were soon wondering out loud during the commercial breaks if he might not be more at home at Horseman’s End.

Bullock found Noonan, spare and pale, clear-eyed, beard like driven snow, sitting at the library checkout desk with stamp and stamp pad at the ready, his back to one of those roll-down oilcloth maps of the world Bullock remembered from grade school, with the British Empire in red and assorted Neilson’s chocolate bars floating like flat tops in the corner seas.

“Spontaneous combustion,” said Bullock.

Noonan’s eyelids dipped. He raised the ball of his thumb to his lips and used it to page the air. When he stopped, his lips began to move as though reading. After a moment, he looked at Bullock. “Dickens speaks of it, of course,” he said. “Dombey and Son. His English contemporaries claimed it came from overeating Tansy Brand Potted Prunes Jubilee. But the Continent believed fat people got it by drinking brandy near open fires. Leibig thought otherwise, and with him I once again concur.” Noonan fingered his beard as wise men do. “It so happened that the phenomenon figured in my last case here in Ottawa before my Cape Despondency assignment. Yes, sir, people were disappearing in droves that winter. Nothing left but smoking galoshes in the snow. Some said ‘polar bears,’ recalling those rumors the Tories spread during the winter by-election in eighteen ninety to keep the voters away from the polls. But that didn’t explain the smoke. I saw at once that we were dealing with the old fire-insurance scam. Yes, believe it or not, back in those days you could still find insurance companies offering double indemnity for spontaneous combustion. All a man had to do was take out a policy on himself naming a phony beneficiary. Then he torches his galoshes, slaps on a wig, and waltzes down to the insurance company to claim double indemnity.

“I was writing my report when a Professor Biggins showed up in a loud green-and-purple tie, claiming people were bursting into flame as an aftereffect of eating Dr. Athanatos’s Loaf of Longevity. Athanatos the Eternal as he was known locally.”

Bullock’s ears perked up. It was the second reference to Athanatos today. But it seemed impossible it could be the same man. Athanatos had perished in the Arctic when the giant Queen of the Ice Worms, enraged by the slaughter of her young, had burst from beneath the waves to catch The Sea Monoceros in her terrible coils and, with the submarine’s hull creaking like a boot in agony, had plunged back into the icy depths, leaving an astonished Buzz Haycock suddenly alone beside the Arctic Sea. But that had been at the turn of the century. Bullock asked, “What are we talking, time-frame-wise?”

“The smoking galoshes were nineteen forty-six,” replied Noonan. He waited for a moment to see if Bullock was going to interrupt him again. Then he continued his story. “This Biggins guy claimed turtle glands could slow the rush toward old age that triggers the spontaneous combustion. But he said Athanatos had found out about his research and was threatening him. Well, I explained about the insurance scam and I sent the good professor on his way. But just to be on the safe side, I gave Athanatos the once-over. Well sure, his neighbors told of a small face at the attic windows and lights up there till all hours. But you always get stories like that. As I said in my report, the guy was a legitimate health-food manufacturer. The next thing I knew I was transferred to Cape Despondency.

“But the day I left to go up north I thought I saw Professor Biggins’s purple and green tie walking down the street around the neck of a guy with a full head of hair who was the spitting image of Biggins, only looking twenty-five years younger.”

“You mean?”

Noonan nodded. “He’d gone and done the old fire-insurance scam. I blame myself for putting him onto it.”

Bullock thought for a moment. Athanatos made the Blue Bread of Happiness, the Loaf of Longevity, and Peacock Island Brand Soup of Youth. But what about the Potted Prunes Jubilee? “Who’s this guy Tansy?” he asked.

“It’s an herb,” said Noonan, the ball of his thumb paging again. “Tansy,” he read. “The name comes from the Greek word...” He stopped and looked at Bullock. “...the Greek word Athanasia meaning ‘immortal.’ ”

From the bingo game beneath them they heard another old voice claim tame victory.

Bullock left Horseman’s End in a puzzle. Would Miss Bright set up so elaborate a deception just for a fire-insurance policy? And why leave behind the envelope with the money? But the situation clarified when he arrived back at headquarters and found a note on his locker door. It said: “Maynard, Sally at the desk said Carl from Forensics called. The ashes belong to a human female. One hundred and sixty years old. Did I get that right? Leo.” I’ll say you did, Leo, thought Bullock. By godfrey, there was no doubt about it now. The Blue Bread of Happiness worked!

Fenians’ Bend, another of those odd turnings of the Rideau Canal that have earned Ottawa the nickname The Venice of the Pre-Cambrian Shield, was the site of the last of the Fenian Raids, when Irish veterans of the American Civil War tried to conquer Canada, meaning to trade it back to the British for their beloved Emerald Isle. In the winter of 1880 they launched a surprise attack on Ottawa itself. But Canadian intelligence had an informer in their midst. (In the movie he was played by Barry Fitzgerald.) Bullock could never visit the place without hearing Victor Kornflower’s thundering score for the famous battle on the ice or seeing, in his mind’s eye, the rank on rank of Fenians all canted forward into the wind, skating up the middle of the frozen canal, dragging an arsenal of Gatling guns and small field pieces mounted on bobsleds behind them. There among the trees the local Canadian militia, though desperately few in number, waited with drawn sabers and muffled harness, ready, as a poet of the day put it, “to smite the sledded Fenians on the ice.” They were under the command of C. Aubrey Smith with snow in his mighty eyebrows and a worried face. Where, you could see him wonder, were the French Canadian reinforcements, the veteran zouaves du pape? Was their delay misadventure or deliberate betrayal?

The only sounds were the hum of the falling snow and the whisk-whisk of the invaders’ skates. Here where the canal bent eastward exposing the attackers’ left flank the cavalry struck. Saber thrusts, gunshots, Canadian battle cries, Irish tenor oaths, cracking ice, and neighing horses filled the moonlit night. Just as the militia began to give way, Charles Boyer’s zouaves, delayed by Ontario’s English signposts, galloped up to turn the tide.

Bullock came out of the trees in full uniform and crossed the morning grass to the jogging path that bordered the canal. A thick, unseasonable fog lay across the water where a small, purposeful group of middle-aged people waited, men of the failed salesmen persuasion, suits worn but pressed, shoes buffed but down-at-the-heels, women with the harried air of Tupperware-party organizers. Athanatos’s preparation certainly hadn’t enriched them. Standing off from the group was a smartly dressed young woman whose skin seemed to glow from youth and the weather. When she smiled at him, he knew he’d found Miss Bright’s niece Stella.

When Bullock told her the bad news about her aunt, sudden tears stood in her large blue eyes. While she recovered herself, they paced together along the edge of the canal. “I blame Athanatos for this,” said Stella. “And for all the misery he’s causing, poultry virus or not.”

“Say again?”

“Peacocks,” she answered. “It’s all in the promotional literature. Athanatos’s formula is mostly peacock giblet broth, okay? Thousands of years ago, this Tarshishman with a cargo of apes, peacocks, and ivory-handled mirrors shipwrecked in the Mediterranean. The crew perished. The apes escaped on a raft and reached Gibraltar. As for the peacocks, when Athanatos found them they’d been strutting around this island for generations, admiring themselves in the mirrors and multiplying. Boil them down and you get a broth so thick with vanity that one sip makes your flesh get too damn proud to age. But now they say a virus has decimated the flock and Athanatos is watering the stuff. So people like Aunt Sybil are going ‘poof all over the place.”

“But what about turtle glands?” said Bullock.

Stella shook her head. “Turtle glands slow things down, all right. You kind of smolder to death over a week. No, Aunt Sybil was right. What we need is a Mountie to scare the hell out of Athanatos.”

Bullock said nothing. He was there for a different, a higher purpose. Buzz Haycock always drew a moral in his books. As the flying daredevil watched the bubbling oil slick on the Arctic water, the final grave of The Sea Monoceros, he had, as he often did, addressed his young readers directly. “Chaps,” he had observed, “who knows but that behind Dr. Athanatos’s cynical mask of merciless greed and lust for absolute power over his fellow men there lurked a spark of decency and fair play which someone, had he but found the right words; might have fanned into a flame of passionate humanity.” It was Bullock’s earnest dream to be that man and find those words.

“Strange, that localized fog,” he said.

“Aunt Sybil and the others have a saying that The Sea Monoceros brings its own fog.”

Bullock gave her a melancholy smile and started to tell her about the tragic end of The Sea Monoceros, when it occurred to him that if Athanatos had escaped the Ice Worm Queen, why not his submarine?

“Did you bring the money?” asked Stella as the sound of oarlocks came to them across the water.

“Hold on there,” protested Bullock. “You don’t mean you’re still going to make the buy.”

“I promised to take care of Aunt Sybil’s clients if anything ever happened to her. Somebody has to.”

Bullock had forgotten about all those old men and women faced with imminent death by spontaneous combustion. Still, it was hard to give up the money a second time.

“Don’t worry,” said Stella. “I know about your deal with my aunt. You’ll more than double your money by noon.”

Bullock handed over the envelope, explaining that profit was the farthest thing from his mind. But just then a ship’s longboat emerged from the fog. The middle-aged, balding, and paunchy crew wore crisp white uniforms and red pompoms on their caps. Shipping oars, they jumped ashore as smartly as old bones would allow and set up a folding table and chair. A sailor with a stripe on his sleeve sat down behind a large strongbox, flanked by mates whose palsied old hands caressed modern automatic weapons. The crowd knew the drill and lined up in front of him. He counted their money, placed it in the strongbox, and gave them small packages done up in brown paper and string.

The last in line, Stella handed over the envelope with good old Mavis’s nest egg in it and received her portion of the Blue Bread of Happiness. Then the armed sailors hoisted the strongbox and headed back to the boat.

“I want to see Athanatos,” Bullock told the man with the stripe.

The sailor eyed him up and down. “The doctor doesn’t see people,” he said.

“He sees Mounties,” growled Bullock, in his best cut-the-guff manner. The sailor chewed on his lip. Unslinging a walkie-talkie, he whispered into it, listening for a moment, and gestured Bullock into the boat.

Since there was no place for him to sit, Bullock stood in the bow. As they pushed off he gave Stella a reassuring wave then turned forward and struck a pose, imagining one more diorama in the Mountie Hall of Fame’s Memorable-Moments-in-the-Early-Career-of-Commissioner-Maynard-Bullock series: “Bullock Enters the Mysterious Fog Bank Where Lurks The Sea Monoceros.” By godfrey, he thought, adventure hones the senses. He was alive again, tasting the chill morning air, feeling the curl of fog against his cheek, sensing a presence at his back, smelling the chloroform. Chloro...?

Bullock came to with a gag in his mouth and two sailors strapping him onto a gurney. He knew at once that this cramped little room with concave metal walls was the belly of The Sea Monoceros! And the craft was under way. Now the sailor with the stripe came into view, pushing a wheeled table bearing a large hypodermic. The man wore the crooked smile of a waiter delivering a cart of suspect pastries.

Suddenly all three sailors snapped to attention. Bullock lifted his head as a slightly built seventeen- or eighteen-year-old in an ill-fitting navy uniform and a hat thick with gold braid stepped in through the open bulkhead. Bullock heard whimpers of desire from the crewmen when they saw the vial of bright blue liquid he carried. Setting the vial alongside the hypodermic, the young man rubbed his palms until they squeaked. “A real Mountie at last!” he said triumphantly. “Soon I, Dr. Athanatos, will rule Canada. Then it will be the world. After that, it’s the solar system and...” He looked up at the ceiling. The three sailors followed his eyes. “...space, the final frontier.”

Bullock roared muffled defiance into his gag, shouting not just on behalf of Canada but for the very universe. Amused, Athanatos filled the hypodermic from the vial and said, “Hey, you were expecting an old geezer, right? Undiluted, my formula’s real gangbusters. I went a little overboard last dose.” He offered himself for inspection. “What do you think? Want to be twenty-five years younger?” He paused before adding, “Knowing what you know now.”

By godfrey, knowing what I know now? thought Bullock.

“Sure,” said Athanatos, clairvoyantly, “I’m talking a second crack at life over a course you’d run before. You’d know when to zig and when to zag. You’d be RCMP Commissioner in no time. My commissioner.” Athanatos poised the hypodermic for the thrust. “Yes, one shot in the pituitary and you’re my slave. Without the maintenance doses, you go ‘Poof!’ ” Smiling, Athanatos leaned forward. Bullock gritted his teeth. But the man pulled back playfully, promising, “Oh, it won’t hurt. Just a jab and a troubled kind of sleep, a dreamy rush back over years of failure and humiliation. But backwards or not, they’ll still hurt like hell. That’s why the gag. Who wants to listen to a big stoop moaning and groaning in his sleep, right?”

Athanatos raised the needle again. The three sailors leaned forward. But a sudden, jarring klaxon sounded from a wall speaker. “Prepare to dive! Prepare to dive!” it crackled.

“To your stations,” commanded Athanatos. The sailors rushed from the compartment. As the bulkhead door slammed shut, the young man’s stem mask collapsed. Exhaling deeply, he rested his elbow on Bullock’s chest and smiled. “Boy, that was close. I couldn’t stall much longer.” Undoing Bullock’s gag, he added, “Hell, I don’t even know where the pituitary gland is.”

“I’ll never tell,” said Bullock, eyeing the needle warily. “Now what the hell’s going on around here?”

“I’m Billy Athanatos,” said the young man. “Doc was my dad. Spontaneous combustion got him.”

“Dive! Dive! Dive!” commanded the loudspeaker. Bullock felt his body slide forward on the gurney as the submarine made its descent. When the craft had leveled out again Billy said, “First he started buying turtle soup by the case. Next thing I knew, he was reeking of smoke. So I said, ‘Hey, Dad, I hope you’re not back on cigarettes?’ Well, he swore he wasn’t and I believed him. But a couple of days ago I was vacuuming the living room— Did I tell you I had to take over the housework when Dad fired our last housekeeper for snooping around? Dad had a thing about snoops. He was always hiding behind the living-room drapes trying to catch them. Anyway, there were the tips of his shoes sticking out from under the drapes. ‘Lift ’em, Dad,’ I said when I got to where he was standing. But he wasn’t there, just these shoes, the pair he always said pinched so much, and the smell of smoke.”

“Spontaneous combustion,” said Bullock.

Billy nodded. “I buried the vacuum bag in the yard and here I am, Athanatos the Eternal the Second. You see, nobody even knew I existed. Dad kept me in the attic like I was a spare or something. I sure watched a lot of television.” He gave Bullock a respectful look. “Hearts of Scarlet is my favorite show,” he said, naming the popular dramatization of Mountie exploits which was Bullock’s favorite, too. “Well,” continued Billy, “I’m sure taking over at a bad time. The formula’s finally run out. That was ink in the hypodermic. And in the pound cake, too.”

“You can’t just whip up another batch?”

“The formula went down with The Sea Monoceros in the Arctic years ago. That’s why I need you. Dad made a deal with Lady Chin-Chin who owns Cathay Salvage to raise it. With what we collected today I’ve got the five million up-front money she demanded. She’s on site waiting for it right now, barges, diving bell, and all.”

As Bullock wondered whether Lady Chin-Chin got her name because she was convivial or because she was overweight, something occurred to him. Gesturing around with his chin he asked, “If The Sea Monoceros sank, what’s this?”

“A plywood mock-up,” laughed Billy. “Dad built it here inside his RV to intimidate his friends in high places when he got them here for a little pituitary work. That dive back there was part of the drill. It’s where the road goes under the railway tracks.” As if on cue, The Sea Monoceros made a sharp turn and came to a stop. “We’re home,” he said. “Quick, pretend you’re asleep. And moan a bit. The crew could turn mean if they learn the formula’s run out. Dad promised them twenty-five years’ worth for serving him for ten. That ten years runs out at midnight.”

“Now take the fog-making machine back to the rental place,” ordered Billy as the sailors set Bullock and the gurney down on the cellar floor. “We’ll meet back here tonight for your payoff.” The crew pounded back up the steps to the outside.

“We’d better get these straps off me,” ordered Bullock.

Billy pulled the string on an overhead bulb, sending a ball of light bouncing around the cellar. “First the grand tour,” he said, reaching down to release a lock so he could turn the top of the gurney any way he wished. “Here’s where Dad tried to reconstruct the formula.” He pointed Bullock toward the workbench with its flasks, coils, and test tubes. “The peacock broth was easy. It was the seventeen rare herbs and spices he never got right again.”

Billy turned the gurney again. “And over there in the corner’s the old coal bin. Listen. Hear that noise? We’ve got rats. But more about them later. Notice the thick stone walls. You could scream your lungs out and never be heard.” The effect of Billy’s evil laughter was weakened somewhat when his voice broke and trailed off reedily. “Hey,” he shouted, spinning the gurney hard, “great idea for a Canadian game show. Spin the Mountie.”

Bullock closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Was that it? Did Billy mean to transport him like this to some tundra outpost and use him as a rallying point for Northern malcontents, Anglophone and Francophone extremists, members of the dreaded Front Populate Sociopathique, hopheads from United Empire Loyalist assassin squads? Was he to be some hellish Wheel of Fortune with a beautiful Indian maiden in lavish wampum posting letters of the alphabet up on a board until they spelled out slogans like “Don’t Trust Anyone Below the Tree Line” guaranteed to send the crowd off on some holy war, a jihad against civilized Canada?

When the gurney stopped spinning, Bullock opened his eyes again. Billy was up on a chair, taking bundles of bank notes from a hiding place among the rafters and stuffing them into a duffel bag.

“I’ll give it to you straight,” he said. “Lady Chin-Chin’s people scare the hell out of me. Dad had them over to the house once with me watching through the banister up to the second floor. Talk about your tough customers. We had your refugees from the slums of Glasgow, your China Sea mutineers, even a father-son team of renegade Inuits exiled from their people for cannibal leanings. That crew did a real job on the beer and pizza, let me tell you.

“Hey, sure, I’ve got Dad’s evil laugh down pretty good. But sometimes, like you just heard, my voice goes squeaky on me. Try facing down a slew of China Sea mutineers with a laugh like that. But a Mountie could ramrod the whole outfit real easy. We’ll do thirdsies on the profits from the formula, you, me, and Lady Chin-Chin. My Dad’s thing was a big power trip. When he said jump, he wanted the whole world to jump. Me? Hey, I’m just a kid. All I want is whatever I want, whenever I want it. A thirdsy’s plenty for me.” Billy jumped down from the chair. “Is it a deal?”

“What if I say no?” asked Bullock.

“Then you get left down here with a brick of sharp cheddar up your tunic and rats for playmates. Like I said, scream all you want. As for Billy Athanatos, he’ll just take this five million and walk. Maybe he’ll take a world cruise on The Love Boat.”

For just a moment Bullock imagined himself a renegade Mountie whipping the salvage crew into shape with his bare fists, master of the ice-caked deck of the salvage barge, the brim of his Stetson warped every which way and his tunic in tatters, his chest bare to the arctic air as he traded curse for curse, blow for blow, with a dozen China Sea pirates, while the young Inuit cannibal chewed on his left biceps, the oldster tried to gum his ear off, and Lady Chin-Chin — the convivial one — toasted him with champagne through her stateroom porthole.

Afterwards, to make amends, he’d use his thirdsy to reward do-gooders. “Dear Mr. Jones, I read in the Banff Bugle of your recent rescue of a child from a burning building. Enclosed find some Blue Bread of Happiness. Enjoy. Keep up the good work. There’s plenty more where that came from. Yours truly, a Secret Benefactor.”

“Well, what’s it going to be?” demanded Billy. “Dad keeps a seaplane in a secret hangar across the river in Hull. Say the word and we’re on our way.”

Suddenly, out of the coal-bin darkness, an old woman’s voice said, “Hands up and back against the wall, Billy. Or I’ll blow a hole in you big enough for Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians to march through, flags flying.”

Billy raised his hands and peered into the darkness. “It’s Miss Bright, our old housekeeper,” he whispered. Bullock lifted his astonished head, for he had recognized her voice, too.

But it was Stella who stepped out of the coal bin with a silver revolver in her fist. Smiling at their confusion, she said, “Sybil Bright was all smoke and mirrors. And makeup, tinted contact lenses, and a major in dramatic arts. But she got me the housekeeper’s job and a chance to hunt for the money. Though I never found anything except the fact that Billy here was living in the attic. Until now, that is. Thanks to you, Bullock.”

“But the ashes,” protested Bullock.

“My gluttonous great-grandmother who, the story goes, died of overeating something called Prunes Jubilee. Her urn sat on the mantel there for years.”

Blast, thought Bullock, imagining how a woman’s hundred-and-fifty-year-old ashes had been garbled into the ashes of a hundred-and-fifty-year-old woman as the message trudged from Forensics to headquarters to his locker door.

“I figured spontaneous combustion might hold your interest in case the Blue Bread of Happiness scam didn’t,” said Stella with a smile.

“Hey, the stuff’s no scam,” shouted Billy. “And spontaneous combustion’s no joke. It killed Dad.”

“Dream on, kid,” said Stella. “One night I sneaked back here to make another try for the money and found your dad behind the drapes. He came out in his stocking feet, smoking like a chimney. When I threatened to kill him unless he gave me the money, he coughed and reached out, you know, like he was trying to take the gun out of my hand. I hate it when men do that. Okay, maybe he was only going for an ashtray. Anyway, I buried him in the yard. Afterwards I decided Billy here would spook easy and go for the stash if I brought in a Mountie. Like the one I read about who loses ransoms in snowstorms.” She wagged the pistol. “And speaking of stash, hand it over.”

Billy tossed the duffel bag at Stella’s feet. But when she reached down he spun the gurney. It struck her arm. The pistol popped up into the air, dropped down onto Bullock’s chest, and slid toward the floor. Although his wrists were strapped to his sides, Bullock made a lucky grab and hooked the weapon in his astonished fingers. Suddenly he heard glass break and, as Stella lunged for the weapon, he felt a shard of glass against his jugular.

“Stop or he’ll shoot,” ordered Billy, adjusting the gurney to keep Stella in the line of fire.

Stella stopped. “A Mountie’d never shoot a defenseless woman,” she said, halfheartedly.

“A Mountie better,” said Billy, pressing down on the glass.

“Steady on here,” ordered Bullock with gruff authority.

But Stella ripped the gurney out of Billy’s one-handed grasp and spun it. Now he was the one looking down the business end of the pistol. When Billy started forward, Stella grabbed her shoe and tapped Bullock on the temple with the heel. “Stop,” she ordered. “Or he’ll shoot you down like the filthy little teenager you are.” Now they were deadlocked in a struggle for the gurney, grunting and puffing with effort.

“You’d better both come along quietly,” suggested Bullock.

“The Blue Bread of Happiness works,” insisted Billy through gritted teeth.

“Get real, kid,” said Stella. “My mother peddled the stuff for years. She knew what was going on. You’re from a long line of con men, going all the way back to Sieur Athanate de la Perpétuite, who came over with Champlain in sixteen-oh-eight. The family always kept a kid in the attic. It’d be bad for business for Athanatos the Eternal to die.”

Stella butted the stunned young man with the gurney, knocking him to the floor. Then she hopped around to maneuver Bullock into place. Tap, tap went the heel against his temple. “Stay down there or he’ll shoot,” she warned.

“Can’t shoot what you can’t see,” said Billy, jumping up with a small fire extinguisher he’d found under the workbench. The foam hit Bullock full in the face and blinded him. Stella, her forearm across Bullock’s chest, tried to keep control of the gurney, while with her free hand she scooped the foam out of his eyes.

“Dad said we never die,” panted Billy. “Every so often we just retire to Peacock Island and the next generation takes over.”

“Dream on,” said Stella, clearing the last of the foam from Bullock’s eyes.

“Yeah?” answered Billy loudly. “Yeah? Did you actually see a cigarette in Dad’s hand?”

Stella stopped. “Come to think of it, I didn’t,” she admitted. “He was kind of smoldering all over like he’d stuffed cigarettes in his pockets.”

“As for spontaneous combustion,” said Bullock, trying to get control of the situation, “I find that I concur with Leibig on the matter.”

Suddenly Billy changed tactics, jumped up on the gurney and clambered wildly toward the service revolver in Bullock’s holster. But when he drew it out, Stella grabbed the lanyard that was attached to the gun butt and yanked hard. The weapon flew from his hand, slammed against the wall, and discharged, striking a laboratory propane tank. The explosion hurled the gurney against the far wall.

Bullock regained consciousness in a cellar aflame. The force of the explosion had torn him free from all the straps except the one on his left ankle. Stella lay nearby against the wall, the back of her head wet with blood. Bullock couldn’t find a pulse. He crawled toward the stairs to the outside, dragging the gurney. On the way he found Billy Athanatos crying with pain and trying to save money from the burning duffel bag. Half pulling, half shoving, Bullock got the protesting young man up the stairs, the gurney bumping along behind him.

Billy sat on the curb with his seared hands between his knees, sobbing. Bullock glumly worked to undo the strap binding him to the gurney, wondering if it wouldn’t be better, when he was done, to walk right back into the fire and burn up like good old Mavis’s nest egg. Maybe the “Killed-in-the-Line-of-Duty” pension would make up for things. Bullock looked at the flames and sighed. Around him the neighbors were starting to gather. In the distance he heard a fire engine.

“Boy,” said Billy through his tears, “talk about rotten luck. No formula. No five million. No house. What have I got?” With tender hands he reached inside his coat, pulled out a wad of money, and counted. “A measly sixty seventy thou.”

Bullock grabbed the money. “Threatening a Mountie with cheese and rats is a federal offense, Billy,” he said, as he counted out twenty thousand dollars. “But I’m going to let that pass.” He handed back the rest of the money. “Got to go, Billy,” he said. “If I wait around, they’ll put me on traffic control. Tell them about Stella and everything. Tell them they can get in touch with me at headquarters. I’ve got to get to the bank before it closes.” He stood up and walked away.

“You’re not off the hook, you know,” shouted Billy. “When I don’t show up with the five million, Lady Chin-Chin will start diving on her own. She’ll find the formula and she and that crew of hers will rule the world.”

Sure, sure, Billy, said Bullock to himself, rubbing his ear thoughtfully. By godfrey, maybe it was his responsibility to go up to the Arctic after them. On the other hand, if the Blue Bread of Happiness worked and The Sea Monoceros really existed, then the giant Ice Worms existed, too. Why not just leave Lady Chin-Chin and the salvage crew to the terrible mercies of the Ice Worm Queen?