David Nixon,
Chief of Police,
Morton City.
Dear Chief Nixon:
No doubt, by this time, you and your boys are a pretty bewildered lot.
You have all probably lost weight wondering what has been going on in
Morton City; where all the gangsters went, and why the underworld has
vanished like a bucket of soap bubbles.
Not being acquainted with my uncle, Peter Nicholas, with Bag Ears
Mulligan, with the gorgeous Joy Nicholas, my bride of scarcely
twenty-four hours, or with me, Homer Nicholas, you have of course been
out of touch with a series of swiftly moving events just culminated.
You, above all others, are entitled to know what has been happening in
our fair city. Hence this letter. When you receive it, Joy and I will be
on the way to Europe in pursuit of a most elusive honeymoon. Uncle Peter
will be headed for Tibet in order to interview certain very important
people you and your department never heard of. Bag Ears will probably be
off somewhere searching for his bells, and I suggest you let him keep
right on searching, because Bag Ears isn't one to answer questions with
very much intelligence.
So, because of the fact that a great deal of good has been done at no
cost whatever to the taxpayers, I suggest you read this letter and then
forget about the whole thing.
It all started when Joy and I finally got an audience with Uncle Peter
in his laboratory yesterday morning. Possibly you will think it strange
that I should have difficulty in contacting my own close relative. But
you don't know Uncle Peter.
He is a strange mixture of the doer and the dreamer--the genius and the
child. Parts of his brain never passed third grade while other parts
could sit down and tie Einstein in knots during a discussion of nuclear
physics, advanced mathematics or what have you. He lives in a small
bungalow at the edge of town, in the basement of which is his
laboratory. A steel door bars the public from this laboratory and it was
upon this door that Joy and I pounded futilely for three days. Finally
the door opened and Uncle Peter greeted us.
"Homer--my dear boy! Have you been knocking long?"
"Quite a while, Uncle Peter--off and on that is. I have some news for
you. I am going to get married."
My uncle became visibly disturbed. "My boy! That's wonderful--truly
wonderful. But I'm certainly surprised at you. Tsk-tsk-tsk!"
"What do you mean by tsk-tsk-tsk?"
"Your moral training has been badly neglected. You plan marriage even
while traveling about in the company of this woman you have with you."
Joy is a lady of the finest breeding, but she can be caught off-guard at
times. This was one of the times. She said, "Listen here, you
bald-headed jerk. Nobody calls me a woman--"