Thud!

the original picture? It drove Rascal quite mad, poor fellow. It took him sixteen years to complete!”
    “That’s nothing,” said Nobby cheerfully. “Fred here hasn’t finished painting his kitchen yet, and he started twenty years ago!”
    “Thank you for that, Nobby,” said Colon coldly. He took the book from the curator. The title was The Koom Valley Codex . “Mad how?” he said.
    “hWell, he neglected his other hwork, you see. He hwas constantly moving his lodgings, because he couldn’t pay the rent and he had to drag that huge canvas with him. Imagine! He had to beg for paints in the street, hwhich took up a lot of his time, since not many people have a tube of burnt umber on them. He said it talked to him, too. You’ll find it all in there. Rather dramatized, I fear.”
    “The painting talked to him?”
    Sir Reynold made a face. “hWe believe that’s hwhat he meant. hWe don’t really know. He did not have any friends. He hwas convinced that if he hwent to sleep at night he hwould turn into a chicken. He’d leave little notes for himself saying ‘You are not a chicken,’ although sometimes he thought he hwas lying. The general belief is that he concentrated so much on the painting that it gave him some kind of brain fever. Toward the end he hwas sure he hwas losing his mind. He said he could hearh the battle.”
    “How do you know that, sir?” said Fred Colon. “You said he didn’t have any friends.”
    “Ah, the incisive intellect of the policeman!” said Sir Reynold, smiling. “He left notes to himself, Sergeant. All the time. hWhen his last landlady entered his room, she found many hundreds of them, stuffed in old chicken-feed sacks. Fortunately, she couldn’t read, and since she’d fixed in her mind the idea that the lodger hwas some sort of genius and therefore might have something she could sell, she called in a neighbor, a Miss Adelina Happily, hwho painted hwatercolors, and Miss Happily called in a friend hwho framed pictures, hwho hurriedly summoned Ephraim Dowster, the noted landscape artist. Scholars have puzzled over the notes ever since, seeking some insight into the poor man’s tortured mind. They are not in order, you see. Some are very…odd.”
    “Odder than ‘You are not a chicken’?” said Fred.
    “Yes,” said Sir Reynold. “Oh, there is stuff about voices, omens, ghosts…he also hwrote his journal on random pieces of paper, you know, and never gave any indication as to the date or hwhere he hwas staying, in case the Chicken found him. And he used very guarded language, because he didn’t hwant the Chicken to find out.”
    “Sorry, I thought you said he thought he was the chic—” Colon began.
    “hWho can fathom the thought processes of the sadleah disturbed, Sergeant,” said Sir Reynold wearily.
    “Er…and does the painting talk?” said Nobby Nobbs. “Stranger things have happened, right?”
    “Ahah, no,” said Sir Reynold. “At least, not in my time. Ever since that book hwas reprinted, there’s been a guard in here during visiting hours, and he says it has never uttered a hword. Certainlyeah it has always fascinated people and there have always been stories about hidden treasure there. That is hwhy the book has been republished. People love a mystereah, don’t they?”
    “Not us,” said Fred Colon.
    “I don’t even know what a Mister Rear is,” said Nobby, leafing through the Codex . “Here, I heard about this book. My friend Dave who runs the stamp shop says there’s this story about a dwarf, right, who turned up in this town near Koom Valley more’n two weeks after the battle, an’ he was all injured ’cos he’d been ambushed by trolls, an’ starvin,’ right, an’ no one knew much dwarfish, but it was like he wanted them to follow him, and he kept sayin’ this word over and over again, which turned out, right, to be dwarfish for ‘treasure,’ right, only when they followed him back to the valley, right, he died on the way, an’ they never found nothin,’ an’ then this artist bloke found some…thing in Koom Valley and hid the place where he’s found it in this painting, but it drove him bananas. Like it was haunted, Dave said. He said the government hushed it up.”
    “Yeah, but your mate Dave says the government always hushes things up, Nobby,” said Fred.
    “Well, they do.”
    “Except he always gets to hear about ’em, and he never gets hushed up,” said Fred.
    “I know you like to point the finger of