MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

FIRST DAY JUDGE: Franz Kafka, you are accused of playing dead in order to steal all the gold watches from the city of Prague. How do you plead: guilty or innocent? KAFKA: Innocent, your Honor. JUDGE: Well, in that case, you can leave. PROSECUTOR: I object! JUDGE: It's okay. Stay. But tell me, how did you come up with that insane plan? KAFKA: I just wanted to know the time, your Honor. JUDGE: So you didn’t steal gold watches because of their economic value? KAFKA: Oh no, your Honor! Why would I want a watch if it wasn’t to know the time? JUDGE: But we are not talking about a single watch. We talk about all the watches in the city. Moreover, all the gold watches. KAFKA: I wanted to check the time of all the watches because I needed to know the exact time. And the most reliable watches are the gold ones. JUDGE: Why did you need to know the exact time? KAFKA: It was a matter of life or death. I can’t give more details. PROSECUTOR: I object! He's

THE OTHER "OTHER BOOK" THE OTHER BOOK THE BOOK

At the end of 1936, Bela Lugosi was in New York promoting a film in which he played the role of Count Dracula yet again. Universal Pictures had rented for him the same suite in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the famous animated cartoon character, occupied every time he came to the city to promote one of his cartoons. Mr. Lugosi had played the Transylvanian Count so many times that he had ended up identifying with the character to the point of affirming in his interviews: "I am Dracula". Lugosi had become the character and Dracula the actor who played Lugosi from time to time. At night he used to be seen strolling along Park Avenue characterized as Dracula, with his long cape, his hair slicked with gel and his penetrating eyes, causing more of a faint of terror when passing. There was even a man who tried to pierce his heart with a stake, but Mr. Lugosi was faster and bit him wildly in the neck sucking almost a liter of blood from his aggressor. Michae

The first news that Michael and Jacob had of the dragon of Chinatown was provided by an acquaintance of them called Clive. Clive frequented Chinatown because of a bad addiction he had: he was an opium smoker. That addiction would end up driving him crazy and leading him to be enslaved by an ant colony from Prospect Park. However, in 1937, he was still not crazy, so when he told Michael and Jacob about the dragon, they believed him. According to Clive, the dragon was hidden in the basement of an opium den called “Yinglong”. Clive said he had heard its grunts and grinding of teeth, and sometimes he saw tongues of fire escape under the door that gave access to the basement. Once, he was smoking next to the basement door when the Chinese in charge opened it, and then he could see it: a huge bug-eyed dragon with horrible jaws and more than eight yards long. When he asked the Chinese, he was told that there was nothing to worry about and, laughing, they added that it was the den’s pet. Mic

In February of 1936, the American archaeologist Mrs. Martha Cunningham, began in Alexandria a long journey by ship to transfer to America the mortal remains of her husband. She was so attached to him that at no time wanted to separate from his coffin and it was said that in the transatlantic that was driving them back home, they were seen walking both of them on the first class cabins’ deck. Naturally, the coffin did not walk by its own means but was pushed in a cart by a baggage handler. In the New York harbor, a vehicle awaited them that took them both to their residence of Park Avenue. Before embarking on their trip to Egypt a year before, all the servants had been dismissed, but Mrs. Cunningham was in no hurry to replace them. Naturally, her family and friends knew that in that coffin did not travel her husband for the very simple reason that she was not married and, in fact, she was proud of her spinsterhood which gave her the freedom she wanted. Many members of the New York upper

In 1937, Joe Louis won the title of Heavyweight champion. But few people know of an incident that occurred to this legendary boxer when he was still an amateur. Here is the scoop… Joe Louis had 69 professional fights with only three losses, And the balance of his previous career as an amateur was even more spectacular: he had lost only one fight, and most surprising of all is that he did it in front of a blind fighter. Do you understand now why the incident was silenced when Louis reached the stardom? However, it must be said that the fault was not Louis's or the merit of the blind boxer. I’ll tell you what happened. It turns out that in 1935 ENIGMA CONSULTANTS S.L. received a commission from the coach of Louis, a certain Harold "Bux" Clinton. Mr. Clinton was sure that someone had given his promising pupil the evil eye. Louis had been in an hospital for a week then. He had several broken ribs, a broken nose, purple eyes and bruises all over his body. Two weeks earlier, M

Ernest Jennings never studied hypnosis techniques. He was just a born hypnotist. He didn’t need to use any technique, he just stared at you with that stupid face he had, and he got you under his control. However, he was not aware of his power until the day he went to ask for an autograph to Rita Hayworth after seeing her in the film “Charlie Chan in Egypt” and immediately she was signing not only the autograph but the marriage certificate by which both they became husband and wife. Naturally, she asked for a divorce immediately after the judge declared them as such, that is, as soon as the hypnotic effects wore off. She alleged mental coercion and the forensic psychologist ruled that, indeed, Jennings had a hypnotic power that he was unaware of until that moment. That also explained why when he went to ask for a job as maintenance worker at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., he was designated chief executive officer. Of course, when the Lehman brothers realized that the new CEO had difficu

Michael and Jacob held one of their periodic discussions about the convenience of carrying a weapon with them. On that occasion Michael was especially angry because his friend had bought a gun without consulting him before. While Jacob’s attention was briefly distracted, Michael confiscated the weapon arguing the danger posed by that gun in his hands because, when Jacob stared at something, he tended to become cross-eyed and also his pulse trembled and once, in a shooting cabin of Coney Island, the manager had to hide under the counter in view of the erratic movements of his shooting hand. But the discussion was suddenly interrupted when someone knocked on the office’s door. Such was the elegant way of dressing and distinguished bearing of their new client that Michael and Jacob thought they were in the presence of an English lord, or of a direct descendant of an English lord, or of an English descendant of a Chinese lord, or maybe of a squirrel in a tux. -Good morning, my name is Ri

One day ENIGMA CONSULTANTS S.L. received a call from the mayor urging Michael and Jacob to investigate a strange phenomenon that many neighbors of Washington Heights had communicated to the City Hall. Mayor LaGuardia was too busy to go into further details, he just urged them to go to that neighborhood and see what the hell was going on there. So that's what they did. After spending all morning walking around the neighborhood, Michael was the first to detect an anomaly (a certain Grace Faydworth was the second, a child name Rob the third and Jacob was the last one). What was this anomaly?, you’ll ask. I tell you: a certain number of guys they passed on the street had a strange attitude that caused a chill. Those guys walked with a rigidity of robots, had no expression in the face and their glance was empty: they just wandered the streets absorbed as if they were zombies. Michael noticed it because he had the reference of his uncle Jeremiah, who was a zombie since he traveled to Hai

In the thirties, due to the economic depression, paradoxically the show business moved higher. People needed to get away from their everyday worries. The less privileged went to the movie theaters. Wealthy people filled Broadway shows. The lights of Broadway at dusk were already a spectacle in itself. But in 1937 it was scheduled a show titled "I’ve got a stain in my pants" that drove the agency ENIGMA CONSULTANTS S. L. nuts. George Firstein, the show’s producer, contacted Michael and Jacob because of a strange phenomenon that happened at the end of each performance. It turned out that while the audience was leaving the theater, Wagner's “Ride of the Valkyries” sounded. And what was so strange about this?, someone might ask. Plainly and simply, the strangeness lay in the fact that the orchestra had already stopped playing. The pit was empty and yet not only did the music sound but it sounded so loud that many spectators threw themselves to the ground thinking that the naz