“I think we’re on a loser here,” said Jack. “And I hate to say this, Eddie, but have you ever considered anger-management counselling?”

The colourful door of the count’s caravan slammed shut.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Jack.

“No,” said Eddie. “We have to know what happened. The count is the only man who can help us.”

“Man?” said Jack. “Not meathead?”

“He’s a bit special, the count.”

Jack raised eyebrows. Two of them. Both at the same time. And both high.

“Stop doing that,” said Eddie. “You’re only doing it because I can’t.”

“I’m impressed,” said Jack, “you showing respect for a meathead.”

“I’m not prejudiced,” said Eddie.

“Well, we’re stuffed here,” said Jack. “Let’s get back in the car.”

“No,” said Eddie. “We must do this. You must do this. Leave this to me.”

Jack dusted imaginary dirt from his trenchcoat shoulders. “Go on, then,” he said.

Eddie called out to Count Otto Black. “Count Otto,” called Eddie, “this is very important. You are the one man who can help us.”

The colourful door of the colourful caravan remained colourfully shut.

“The fate of Toy City depends on you,” called Eddie.

The door, colourful as it was, did not at all colourfully budge.

“It’s about your monkeys,” called Eddie.

A moment passed and then the door opened a smidgen.

“Your clockwork cymbal-playing monkeys,” called Eddie. “Jack and I are on the case. Jack is a special investigator. I’m …” Eddie paused.

The door didn’t move.

Eddie took a deep breath. “I’m his comedy sidekick,” called Eddie.

The door opened wide.

“Say that again,” said Count Otto Black.

“Jack is a special investigator,” said Eddie, “investigating the monkey case. He needs your help.”

“No,” said Count Otto. “Say the last bit again.”

“I’m …” said Eddie.

“Again,” said the Count. “And loudly.”

“I’m his comedy sidekick,” said Eddie.

The colourful interior of Count Otto Black’s colourful carnival caravan was very much the way that such interiors are in movies. Although not those of the Toy City P.P.P.s persuasion. Those circus movies, with handsome juvenile leads who are trapeze artistes and up-and-coming starlets who ride white horses side-saddle around the circus ring, but seem to do little else. And there are elephants, of course, and a bloke who gets shot out of a cannon. And those clowns that no one actually really likes. And a fat lady and a stilt-walker, and high-wire walkers and even fire-walkers sometimes. And a head without a body that was dug from the bowels of the Earth. But none of these are particularly relevant to the appearance of the interior of the count’s colourful carnival caravan. The relevant point about the interior that gave verisimilitude to those featured in movies was that it was so much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.

Phew.

“Why are they bigger on the inside than the outside?” Jack asked Eddie.

“That’s obvious,” said Eddie. “So you can get a camera crew in, of course.”

“Be seated,” said Count Otto Black, taking to a big old colourful chair of his own and indicating a lesser. Jack sat down on this lesser chair. Eddie sat down on the floor.

“I feel that you could have seated yourself in a somewhat more comical manner than that,” said Count Otto Black.

Eddie sighed. Rose. Toppled backwards. Lay with his legs in the air.

Jack winced and chewed upon his bottom lip.

“Funny enough for you?” Eddie asked.

“I’d like to see it again,” said the count.

Eddie obliged. “Are you satisfied now?”

“Very much so,” said Count Otto Black. And he extended a long hand to Jack. “So you are a special investigator,” he said.

Jack took the count’s hand and shook it. It was a very cold hand indeed. Very cold and clammy.

The count took back his hand and Jack said, “Yes, I am a special investigator and I believe that you can help me in my investigations.”

“Into the death of my monkeys.”

“They were all your monkeys?”

“Each and every one worked for me. There are not too many openings for cymbal-playing monkeys nowadays.”

“No,” said Jack, “I suppose not. I never really thought about it.”

“They are a great loss to my circus.”

“I suppose they would be.”

“In what way?” asked the count.

“Eh?” said Jack.

“Shouldn’t that be ‘pardon’?” asked the count.

“Pardon?” said Jack.

“In what way do you suppose they would be a great loss to my circus?”

Jack glanced at Eddie. It was a “hopeless” glance. Sometimes a single glance can say so very much. Without actually saying anything at all. So to speak.

“Please don’t do it to him, Count,” said Eddie, making a rather pathetic face towards Count Otto Black. “Jack, my … employer, is a very special investigator, very good at his job, but he’s not up to matching wits with you.”

“I’m up to matching wits with anyone,” said Jack. “Show me a wit and I’ll match it.”

“Time is of the essence,” said Eddie. “Please, Count.”

“Quite so,” said Count Otto Black. “So I suppose you have come here to examine the murder scene. Five of my monkeys gone to dust in their dressing room.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Jack. “I assume that the laughing policemen have already visited the crime scene.”

“And stomped it into oblivion. What, then?”

“Well,” said Jack, “it’s like this.”

And Jack explained to Count Otto Black exactly what it was like. He spoke at length and in detail.

The count listened and then the count nodded. And then the count finally said, “And so you wish me to hypnotise you, regress you to the point when you were engulfed by the very bright light and draw out your repressed memory of what happened next.”

“Exactly,” said Jack.

Count Otto Black nodded thoughtfully.

“No, I won’t do it,” he said.

10

“No?” said Jack. “No?”

“No,” said Count Otto Black. And he said it firmly. Definitely. Without reservation or regret.

“No?” said Jack once more.

“Absolutely no.” The count stretched out his great long arms, brushing his fingertips against the opposite walls of the caravan. “And I will tell you for why: because it would be dangerous, very dangerous, to you, to your mental health. You have to understand this. Your memory was not artificially erased by some piece of advanced space-alien technology. You did it yourself. Your own brain did it.” And Count Otto stretched out a hand to Jack and tapped him lightly on the forehead. “Whatever happened to you was so appalling, so utterly terrifying, that it was too much for you to take in and retain. Your mind rejected it, spat it out, closed itself to these horrors. The door within closed. It would be folly to reopen it.”

“No,” said Jack, and he shook his head. “I don’t believe that. I’ve seen horrors enough. Nothing could be that bad.”

“Really?” said the count. “And yet I feel that I could whisper words into your ear that you would wish until the end of your days that you had never heard me utter.”

“That I consider most unlikely,” said Jack.

“Really?” said the count, and he leaned in Jack’s direction.

“Don’t let him do it, Jack,” cried Eddie, leaping up. “I saw him do it once to a clown. It wiped the smile right off his face.”

“Big deal,” said Jack.

“A smile painted on a tin-plate head,” said Eddie. “Wiped it right off. The smile fell to the ground and a crow swooped down and carried it off to his nest.”

“Eh?” said Jack.

“Trust me,” said Eddie. “Don’t let him do it.”

“All right, all right, but we have to know what happened, Eddie, and if hypnosis is the only way, then hypnosis it has to be.”

“I won’t be persuaded,” said Count Otto Black.