Skipping ahead to Chapter CCVI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance novel, Oy, Rodney, we find that Lord Jeremy Coldsore’s gunshot wound has healed–but only after a fashion, leaving him with, for all practical purposes, two left feet. This will prove a major impediment to his dancing. “Well, that happens sometimes,” says Dr. Fanabla. “Nothing you can do about it.”
But before Jeremy can even try to do anything about it, three more mysterious strangers, from the mysterious Central Asian country of Bogistan, show up in a group. It seems Lord Jeremy’s great-grandfather, Lord Jiminy Coldsore, visiting Bogistan in 1751, made off with the country’s most prized treasure, a great jewel called The Eye of Whosit.
The Bogistanis’ spokesman, speaking perfect English with a peculiar accent that makes him sound like Elmer Fudd, presents his demand: “The Eye of Whosit is ours, and we want it back. We will not leave until we get it.”
“What’s it look like?”
“It is a sparkling bit of fine-grained shale, sir, small enough to serve as the eye of a sacred statute two inches high. We like our statues small in Bogistan. We know it is concealed somewhere on the premises of Coldsore Hall.”
Jeremy sends for Constable Chumley and orders him to arrest the three strangers. The constable demurs.
“‘Tis a right forn daddaly here,” he says.
“Ne’re foth we any shirkens,” replies the spokesman, in Chumley’s own quaint rural dialect. The two of them hit it off and go off for a drink together at The Lying Tart. The remaining Bogistanis start looking under furniture, in case The Eye of Whosit might be there.
“Are you gonna let ’em search the whole house, Germy?” wonders Willis Twombley, the American adventurer. “It’ll take forever. Why don’t you let me shoot ’em?”
“It won’t do, old boy,” says Jeremy. “My great-grandfather Lord Jiminy was a bad hat, don’t you know, and these chappies are only trying to recover stolen property. Let them be.”
A valuable painting by Chico Fernandez falls with a crash as one of the Bogistanis tries to look behind it. He grins sheepishly. His resemblance to a sheep is so startling as to cause the chapter to end unexpectedly.
