Life is filled with bodings and portents. When I encountered my old acquaintance Smythe in the High Street I sensed that my own life was about to take some strange new turning ... specifically, into the King's Head lounge bar, where with old-fashioned courtesy the renowned specialist in the uncanny reminded me that it was my shout.
"Cheers," I said a minute later, as we sat and sipped our bitter.
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," he responded eruditely; these occultists know many unfamiliar toasts. "I have just been picking up my new business cards--here, allow me to present you with one."
I studied the ornately engraved slip of pasteboard. Dagon Smythe, Psychic Investigator. "I can only admire the Seal of Solomon hologram ... but, Dagon Smythe?"
"It is often advantageous, in this hazardous line of work, to have been prudent in one's choice of godparents. But stay! As a trained observer, I see that you have torn the sleeve of your jacket, probably on a protruding nail. I am reminded..."
"Is that the time?" I cried with the spontaneity that comes of long practice. "Well, I really must--"
"I am reminded," said Smythe inexorably, placing a gentle but firm hand on my forearm, "of a certain rather curious investigation in which nails played an interesting role. Nails, and old gods, and the end of the world."
"Why, yes! I remember that case well. One of your finest. The crooked occult-supplies house that used scanning tunnelling microscope technology to dismantle a nail from the True Cross into its individual atoms, enabling them to flood the market with countless billions of genuine if very tiny talismans and..."
"A different case, my friend, and a different kind of nail. This was some years ago in the small old town of F--, which lies close to D--in the county of B--. It was there that I investigated a weird reign of nightly terror. You must imagine the town's twisty streets swirling with late autumn fogs, so that every passer-by appeared as an eerie, phantasmal silhouette. And any one of those shadows in the night might be the creature that had earned the nickname ... Jack the Clipper."
"Ripper?" I enquired.
"Clipper. For, time and again, the men (never the women) of that accursed town would report dim memories of a particularly strange shape that loomed through icy fog. A shape with a hint of flickering flame about it, no sooner perceived than lost in a mysterious tumble into unconsciousness. Then, seconds or minutes afterwards, the victim would find himself sprawled on the chilly stone of the pavement, his shoes and socks mysteriously removed in that interlude of missing time, and--sinister and eldritch beyond all imagining--his toenails neatly clipped."
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Dagon Smythe, Psychic Investigator, unmasks a serial toenail thief. The implications are unexpectedly cosmic.
