From Aught to Sixty

Upon one of my very first days in this large and unfamiliar city, I arose early, according to my fashion, and resolved to venture out of my well-searched rooms to explore and begin collecting the data needed to practise my trade.

I stepped out of my home into the surprisingly bright and terribly warm sun. No, this was in no way London.

Beneath my windows, heretofore my primary vantage point to the world, shrubs hedged the wall from meeting the grass lawn that stretched bravely toward a central area of what I could now perceive to be a grouping of several smaller buildings into a neighborhood of sorts. It appeared I'd been placed in a rather posh and intricately designed locale with various stairwells crossing here and there up to a fifth floor of rooms.

As I walked along the cement path, I noted only the recent presence of--judging by the single visible shoeprint size, depth, and stride--what must be a small yet heavy gardener.

I exited by the front gate expecting to find a hansom or four-wheeler for hire, but found none.

No, I saw none of the expected signs of life

No newsboys.

No constable on patrol.

No one.

What I saw were wheeled ovoids and boxes all along the road. How very odd, I thought.

I gazed far to my right and saw one of these same boxes in motion toward me. A-ha! These are carriages! I must admit that I chuckled quietly to myself with some pleasure at having realized it so very quickly.

I step into the road and attempt to signal the coachman to a stop, but the cab passed by and emits the most unnerving and bothered sound at me.

As does the next.

And the next, as well. What a rude township I have found myself inhabiting.

Finally, a carriage stops and allows me to enter.

“Where to, Mac?” asked the driver.

“Good day, sir. Despite any features you perceive, I am, however, neither Scot nor Irish.”

“Whatever, Pal.” He replies, “Where you headed?”

“To your city’s greatest library at once! Spare not the horses, for time is of the essence!

“Library, it is. Hang on.”

He allowed me to disembark at the building branded in bold and simple letters, LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY. The building is comprised of a long rectangle and central tower, all decorated with the styling of the Egyptians. There are set-in columns of an obelisk fashion and sphinxes, snakes and suns represented on the pyramid atop the tower. And, lo! Torches to signify the light of learning is afire!

I learned there, among other things, that carriages of the sort I rode that morning (commonly referred to as “cars,” after the Latin carrus or Gallic karros) were entering common use not so long after our time in London.

I saw that day, as on the one I’ve already described, that I had a great many things to learn and places to visit before I could do justice to my profession of consulting detective, solving the crimes and problems others cannot.

And I shall need to make small use of cars in this—like my prior—great city. And for a reason described by my return coachman as “testosterone,” I hope to travel in cars of as many varied shapes, sizes, and speeds as possible.

This shall all be a bit of sport!

The 15-Proof Solution

’Twas an uncharacteristically cool and foggy December morning in Los Angeles and I, taking an early constitutional on the beach, was reminded of the gravelly back roads and cold, heavy fog of London town.

I walked rather briskly along the beachhead where the sand is moist and thick but is of least impedance to one’s step until I came upon a clot of loiterers raising no small amount of rabble at one of many light blue shacks stationed on the waterfront. These “Life Guard Stations,” as I’ve since learned that they are called, are so named after the noble men and women who seat themselves therein to protect the ocean’s bathers. This band of ne’er-do-wells were clearly of not nearly so dignified a calling.

The largest and perhaps quietest of the fray stepped forward to stop my passage and began making mockery of my gentleman’s garb, drawing forth cacophonous howling from his boisterous lot.

You will learn about me, reader, that, perhaps to my detriment, I am a man without fear of physical altercation and am well versed in the noble language of boxing. As such I stood proud my ground before this dark-skinned giant of a man, whom some of his gang—the correct term, I was told later—referred to as Heh-ne- rawl Verr-gah, a name of rich meaning, I’m sure.

“What do you think you are doing on our beach, ese?” he asked in a dark drawl of a savage Latin tongue.

I glanced at him casually through my heavy-lidded eyes and suppressed my smirk of amusement.

“I perceive about you, Heh-neh-rawl, that you are a man of great and recently received wealth who has within the month returned from a long mining expedition in China.” Said I, awaiting the usual shocked silence that ordinarily follows my elementary observations.

I was instead greeted by a wave of laughter whose strength rivaled that of the lapping ocean to my left.

Alarmed, I steadied my stance and raised my cane for violence.

This elicited even more raucous uproar from this cache of irregulars.

Thankfully, at my display of preparedness, Heh-neh-rawl’s stance loosed and he, too, began to laugh.

“Ese, we were going to fuck you up for being on our turf. But, FUCK it, less party!!”

I learned from that tense confrontation and day of leisurely relaxation that followed, two things.

The first lesson is in regard to my deductions. They are, I am afraid, in some areas out of date. Thick canvas pants are worn by many more than miners. All-black clothing is not purely the vogue of the rice field Chinaman. Prisoners in this age or on this continent are made to work in the sun robed in excessively collared clothes, giving them the pale necks I spied beneath the many gold chains around their “General’s,” as ‘twas translated for me, neck.

The second lesson is that there is a hearty grog of early Britain to which I was ashamedly unaware. Olde English 800, it is called, and it put even me and my cast iron stomach upon my drunken backside.