"Before He Could Rise, I Whirled, Seized a Heavy Rustic Chair and Whanged Him Over the Head with It. That Did It."

"Oh Gargie!"

By Ray Cummings (1887-1957; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and the SFE HERE).

First appearance: Crack Detective Stories, April 1947.

Short short story (7 pages).

Online at Fadedpage (HERE).

   "A stack of dishes on the lunch counter crashed; an iron saucepan on the stove was drilled so that it let out a clang like a bell."

IT doesn't happen often, but once in a long while somebody comes along to save the day who had no intention of saving anything . . .

Main characters:

~ Alan Trimble, Mary Trimble, Pete and Sandy, Johnny Peters, the burly thug, and Gargie.

References (all from Wikipedia):

- "he ain't exactly Gargantua, is he?":

  Before it became the name of a famous circus animal, which our author probably has in mind (HERE), "Gargantua" was an outsized character in the works of François Rabelais (HERE and HERE).

- "a rhesus monkey":

  "The rhesus macaque is well known to science. Due to its relatively easy upkeep in captivity, wide availability, and closeness to humans anatomically and physiologically, it has been used extensively in medical and biological research on human and animal health-related topics. It has given its name to the Rh factor, one of the elements of a person's blood group, by the discoverers of the factor, Karl Landsteiner and Alexander Wiener." (HERE).

Resource:

- Our latest regular appointment with Raymond King Cummings's fiction was "Death Trail" (HERE).

The bottom line:

The three wise monkeys over the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō, Japan

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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