The Barker Street Regulars

be a gentlemanly effort to distract a member of the fair sex from the distressing circumstances in which she found herself. By then, I had withdrawn to the alcove and was sitting in one of the rattan chairs. On a loose lead, Rowdy eyed the potted palms. Watching him, I reflected that it didn’t take an animal psychic to read his mind. At the moment, he was reminding himself that the greenery, being indoors, was off-limits for leg lifting. He was also contemplating the prospect of taking a swift, satisfying bite of palm leaf.
    Seating himself opposite me in the other rattan chair, Robert said, in tones suitable for making small talk at a dull party, “Well, have you solved Hugh’s little puzzle yet?”
    “What puzzle?” I asked.
    Robert looked offended. “While visiting you,” he reminded me, “we observed the one-volume Doubleday edition.”
    “Yes.”
    “And Hugh issued a challenge.”
    “He challenged you,” I replied. “I’m no expert. It would be a waste of time to ask me about Holmes trivia.”
    “Now, now,” Robert said soothingly. “You underrate yourself.”
    “I can’t even remember what the puzzle was.”
    “As Hugh was close enough to see, and I was not, the volume was open to...?”
    I searched my memory. “It was open to The Valley of Fear. ”
    “Excellent!” Robert cried.
    “Elementary,” I responded.
    Robert was overjoyed. “Open to a certain work that makes a singular yet cryptic allusion to your own profession,” he informed me. “And contains a doubly allusive line. Quote the line! That was the challenge.”
    “Well, I’m afraid I’m not up to meeting it. You were supposed to be able to answer it. It didn’t have anything to do with me.”
    “It certainly did,” Robert replied. “ Your profession?”
    “Dog writing? Dog training? I don’t think there’s even a dog in the story.”
    “Ah, but the allusion is cryptic .”
    “Well, it’s too cryptic for me.”
    “Consider the tools of your trade,” Robert hinted. “Pens? Paper? A computer? There aren’t any... Well, in the story, there’s that business about the dumbbell, but it’s a different kind of dumbbell. It’s the kind people use for exercise. It isn’t the kind that dogs retrieve.”
    “Cryptic,” Robert said, well, cryptically.
    “Okay, so a dumbbell is an allusion to my profession,” I admitted. “Sort of.”
    “And singular? A singular allusion?”
    “There’s one dumbbell, isn’t there? The other one is missing. Oh, I remember. It turns out that the missing dumbbell was in the moat. It was used as a weight to sink something in the moat.”
    “Excellent! The case hangs upon the missing dumbbell. One dumbbell. The singular allusion. And the doubly allusive line?”
    “Robert, I’m sorry, but I have no idea.”
    Robert tried to prompt me by quoting the beginning of the line. “ This is what we are after ...”
    “This is what we are after,” I repeated. “And I don’t have a clue what comes next.”
    Hugh suddenly appeared. “Ah hah! The doubly allusive line!” With a look of triumph, he added, “This is what we are after, Mr. Barker—this sodden bundle, weighted with a dumbbell, that we have lifted from the mud of the moat. ”
    “No, no!” Robert almost shouted. “Your own challenge, and you’ve botched it! This is what we are after, Mr. Barker—this bundle, weighted with a dumbbell, which you have just raised from the bottom of the moat.”
    “Mr. Barker,” I said to Hugh. “And dumbbell. Doubly allusive. My profession. Very clever.” Then I remembered the other line that Robert had just quoted: The case hangs upon the missing dumbbell. In a certain sense, this case did, too. It hung not on a dumbbell, but on a heavy object used to weight something that was to be submerged in water. I had to get home. Abruptly excusing myself, I cornered one of the detectives and demanded to be allowed to phone Kevin.
    “Or call him yourself,” I went on. “He’s my next-door neighbor. Call him at home. If he isn’t there, talk to his mother. She’ll tell you that it’s perfectly all right to let me go.”
    The detective rolled his eyes.
    “Okay, I can see that you might not want to take his mother’s word,” I conceded. “But would you at least try to reach him? I swear that I’ll answer any questions anytime you want. Just not now! Would you please call Kevin Dennehy?”
    I won. As it turned out, the detective knew Kevin, whose idea of speaking up for me was to