Free The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues by Ellen Raskin

insisted.
    Dickory drew three short, shy hatches slanting downward from left to right as they appeared on the authentic bill.
    “Having trouble?” Garson asked.
    “I’m not used to pen and ink.”
    Garson shook his head. “The trouble is that you are right-handed. A right-handed artist ordinarily hatches in the other direction, downward from right to left. Try copying the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci some day; you will have the same difficulty, for Leonardo was also left-handed.”
    “You mean the government artist, the one who drew these lines on the real money, was left-handed?” Dickory asked.
    “Not at all. Remember, this is a printed engraving, not a drawing. Look at your lines in the mirror; that’s how they were engraved. When the engraved plates are inked and printed, they appear in reverse on the paper —on the printed bill. Therefore, the government engraver was the one who is right-handed.”
    “Maybe the counterfeiter didn’t know that engravings print in reverse.”
    “My counterfeiter knew very well that a plate must be engraved in reverse,” Noserag said confidently, “otherwise the number 5’s would be backward.” Dickory understood. “The counterfeiter is left-handed.”
    “And the case is solved, Sergeant Kod. Solved!”
    “Is that you, Chief?” Inspector Noserag muttered into the telephone. “I got the real dope on the counterfeiter; all it takes is some leg work at your end.”
    “Who is this?” a baffled Quinn asked. “It sounds like a bad imitation of Humphrey Bogart.”
    Inspector Noserag cleared his throat and threw down his hat. “It’s me, Garson. Just wanted to see if you were on your toes. I thought you might want to hear an artist’s humble opinion of the face on the five-dollar bill.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “He is an engraver, a professional engraver; so I’d check out the engravers’ union, if I were you, and printing plants.”
    “Thanks a lot, Garson, we’ve already done that.”
    “Not with my description, you haven’t. Listen carefully, Quinn; show the portrait on the phony bill and say: ‘Imagine this man, perhaps older and with a bigger nose.’ Check out plastic surgeons, too. He’s a flashy dresser; he’s left-handed; and he has red thumbs with broken nails. He is a pistachio-nut freak.”
    “What?”
    “Pistachio nuts.”
    “Good-bye.” Quinn hung up abruptly.
    “Have you ever encountered a person whose face was out of drawing, Sergeant Kod?” The hats were on again. “Plastic surgery, usually. Sometimes an entire face has been redone, due to an accident or a fire; but mostly it is the result of a simple nose job. Consider, if you will, the nose in my counterfeiter’s self-portrait. That short, insignificant blob does not fit into the lines and planes of a face that had molded itself around a former nose of more interesting proportions. There is no doubt in my mind, whatever, that my vain counterfeiter has had his nose bobbed,” Inspector Noserag declared.
    “Maybe it was just wishful thinking.”
    “No. My vain engraver fudged the portrait to make himself younger, more handsome; but he was too competent an artist to give himself a nose like that. That blob is the work of a bungling plastic surgeon who gave no thought to the underlying facial structure.”
    Dickory studied the portrait and agreed, but there was still one clue she couldn’t fathom: flashy dresser.
    “Rudimentary, my dear Kod. Any man who wears a diamond stickpin in his necktie must be considered ostentatious, to say the least.”
    “I didn’t see any diamond stickpin.”
    “Neither did I, at first. What appeared to be an error in engraving, or a marred plate, was revealed as a diamond stickpin under my magnifying lens.”
    “That’s not fair,” complained Sergeant Kod.

4
     
    For the rest of the week Garson was Garson, and Dock was Dock. And the derelict snoozed and the blind man paced, back and forth, back and forth, just like her brother Donald.
    Garson, always