8c714d56aa
Fifteen cases, all playable, all lint clean, all verified end-to-end. This one came in at 100/100 on the first verification pass, same as The Liaison. John asked for the Clouseau crossover — Drebin dragged into an Interpol team-up chasing a jewel thief to the UK. The archetype that was the wrong shape for the 1958 era is the exact right shape for Nielsen's Drebin: two detectives on one case, one oblivious-competent, one confident-catastrophic, each convinced the other is a genius. Done as always by archetype, never import: Inspecteur Gustave Fouchard of the Surete, twenty years on one thief, introduced disguised as a chalk outline he drew around himself from inside; an accent the parser's literalism keeps faithfully transcribing and correcting for units; Hugo the driver with standing instructions to attack him at irregular intervals, who crosses the Atlantic in an overhead bin (asking to join the programme is a death); and the Heron, a gentleman thief who leaves an engraved card with nothing on it, because he is not telling you who he is, he is telling you he has a stationer. The thief is R. Fanshawe-Root — cousin of the Quartet's Professor. The family that plans versus the family that does. The scheme launders the stolen Rose through the auction house's own catalogue via a paste copy consigned before the stone ever left Antwerp; Fouchard's destruction of the plinth (a structural event, per the insurance filings) is what exposes the paste, because his catastrophes are always accidentally probative. The catch is the most Drebin thing in the campaign: no signal, no weapon, mid-bidding on the next lot — routine inspection, sir, would you mind turning out your pockets. And he does, because in twenty years and forty-one operations involving a submarine and a trained cormorant, nobody has ever simply asked. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
59 lines
6.5 KiB
JSON
59 lines
6.5 KiB
JSON
{
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"name": "Harrogate's — The Evening Sale",
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"enter_text": "White tie, a chandelier, and two hundred people who all know each other's net worth to the pound. Lot 44 is next.",
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"music": 5,
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"strokes": [
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 160, "h": 168, "color": 6, "meaning": "Floor" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 160, "h": 56, "color": 4, "meaning": "Wall" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 10, "w": 160, "h": 3, "color": 14, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 54, "w": 160, "h": 3, "color": 14, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 57, "w": 160, "h": 111, "color": 6, "meaning": "Floor" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 20, "y": 60, "w": 120, "h": 100, "color": 4, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 24, "y": 64, "w": 112, "h": 2, "color": 14, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 164, "w": 160, "h": 4, "color": 0, "meaning": "Wall" } }
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],
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"spawn": [20, 148],
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"exits": [null, null, null, 3],
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"objects": [
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{
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"name": "chandelier",
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"sprite": "chandelier",
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"x": 78,
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"y": 72,
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"look": "The chandelier. Two hundred years old, four hundred candles' worth of electric light, and directly beneath it, the inspector, who has been looking up at it for some time with an expression you have learned to act on immediately.",
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"synonyms": "crystal lights ceiling fixture",
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"use_text": "You ask the inspector to move out from under the chandelier. He does, with dignity, remarking that in twenty years of zis work he has been struck by only four chandeliers, and that on each occasion ze room was improved by ze extra light being lower down. Ninety seconds later the chandelier holds. It is the first structure to survive his proximity all week, and he glances up at it, once, with something close to disappointment."
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},
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{
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"name": "armour",
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"sprite": "armour",
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"x": 30,
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"y": 108,
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"look": "A suit of seventeenth-century plate armour flanks the saleroom door. House records state it is empty. It is standing slightly differently than it was an hour ago, and its halberd is being held correctly, which no display armour ever does.",
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"synonyms": "plate suit halberd knight metal",
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"use_text": "You address the armour: 'Good evening, Inspector.' A pause. The armour, muffled, with dignity: 'Ze Heron has seen my face for twenty years, mon ami. Tonight he sees only ze fifteenth century.' You note for the record that the armour is seventeenth-century. The armour, after a longer pause: 'Zen he is DOUBLY deceived.'"
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},
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{
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"name": "hugo",
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"sprite": "hugo",
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"x": 132,
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"y": 96,
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"look": "Hugo, in the gallery above the saleroom, in a waiter's jacket over his chauffeur's uniform, poised on the balustrade like a man who has read about falcons. His standing instructions do not pause for auctions. Nobody has told him which of the two hundred guests is off-limits, because it has never once occurred to the inspector that this information would be needed.",
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"synonyms": "chauffeur driver valet balustrade waiter",
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"use_text": "You catch Hugo's eye and indicate the suit of armour by the door. Hugo nods slowly, professionally, gratefully — a man being handed the finest readiness-maintenance opportunity of his career. What happens at the moment of the arrest is therefore, formally, your doing, and it goes in your report, and the report is nine pages, and four of those pages are about the armour."
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},
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{
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"name": "fanshawe",
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"sprite": "fanshawe",
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"x": 96,
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"y": 130,
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"look": "Paddle 61. Silver temples, white tie, and the stillness of a man who has stood in two hundred rooms like this one and owned something in most of them. The catalogue lists him as R. FANSHAWE-ROOT — which is a name you have seen once before, in a 1958 file your father closed, attached to a man whose plans were magnificent and never once worked. This one's work, evidently, works. He has not looked at Lot 44 all evening. He is the only person in the room not looking at it, which is how you know.",
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"synonyms": "paddle gentleman heron cousin silver",
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"requires_flag": "found_paste",
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"wins": true,
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"points": 25,
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"use_text": "Lot 44 opens at two million. Paddle 61 does not move. The switch, when it comes, is beautiful — a porter's tray, a catalogue passed back for signature, eleven seconds in which the paste goes into the house's hands and the true Rose crosses the room in a gentleman's breast pocket, and not one camera in the building sees it. You saw it. You have been watching the only man not watching, all evening, which your father would have called the whole job. You do not signal the armour. You do not draw. You walk across the saleroom during the bidding on Lot 45, and you say, quietly, with your badge open: 'Routine inspection, sir. Would you mind turning out your pockets.' And he does. Because in twenty years, across eleven countries, through forty-one operations involving helicopters, cofferdams, a submarine and, on one occasion in Monte Carlo, a trained cormorant — nobody has ever simply asked. The Sazerac Rose comes out onto his white glove and sits there, pink as a strawberry, flawed at its heart in the shape of absolutely nothing. Fanshawe-Root: 'Twenty years. Interpol built three task forces. Two governments fell — not because of me, but I was THERE. And it ends with a man with a notebook, asking nicely.' He looks at you with genuine professional warmth. Fanshawe-Root: 'My cousin Cecil wrote to me about your city once, Inspector. He said the plans there never work. I see now what he meant.' At the door, the armour starts forward to make the arrest, and Hugo, in fulfilment of standing instructions and your specific nod, meets it mid-saleroom. The two hundred guests will describe what follows in two hundred slightly different ways, all of them correct. Fouchard emerges from the wreckage holding the halberd and one of his own shoes, and formally arrests the Heron on behalf of eleven countries, and weeps, and embraces him, and then embraces you, and then, briefly and by error, the auctioneer. The Rose goes back to Antwerp. Hugo is promoted to a rank the Sûreté has to invent. And on the flight home you write it all up — the outline that breathed, the joules, the wetness, the fifteenth century — every word of it true, and Captain Hocken signs it without reading it, and everybody freezes, smiling, holding it — except the telex, which is still going, and which has begun, very slowly, to eat the commendation. (+25)"
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}
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]
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}
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