As Jesper sat in his coupé, a tall
red headed man opened the door and took one long step into the half
filled coupé. When he laid eyes on Jesper he suddenly stopped,
looked at Jesper's hands, turned around, and ran out of the coupé.
He ran with high speed back to the next wagon where he met a blue
headed man. Very eagerly the red headed man said:
"I knew it. Remember I said that he use to be on this train, normally
Fridays, but he is on this train right now!"
He took up a carefully folded poster from his back pocket, unfolded it
and read:
"WANTED, DEAD or ALIVE. Wilfor-Toto. REWARD $500.000. The criminal is
characterized by a missing right tomb, and pinkie."
He pointed at the picture and said:
"That's the man I just saw! I even checked his hand and noticed that
the fingers were missing alright. I knew I've seen him!"
"Half a million in reward.....", the red headed man whispered, "Let's
get him!"
The two men, both with very atlethic bodied exept
pot bellies due to a few too many glas of beer,
walked quickly back to the coupé where Jesper sat free
of care. They opened the coupé door and walked up to Jesper,
pointed at the picture on the poster, and said:
"Is this a picture of you?"
"Yes, that's me.", Jesper answered a little embarrest.
"Well, Wilfor-Toto. Are you comming with us or do we have to use
violence?"
"I'm not Wilfor-Toto, stupid. I'm Jesper", Jesper answered surely,
surely since he was getting tired of being mistaken for his brother
once again.
"If my memory is correct, you just admitted it was you on the
picture. Can you prove that you aren't Wilfor-Toto? Do you have a
drivers licence or any other ID, that say that you are infact
Jesper?"
"No, I never passed the drivers test, and I don't have any other ID on
me at the moment."
"Nice try, or should I say not even a nice try. Chandler, look if he
is carrying any weapons."
Chandler, which was the name of the red headed man, examined Jesper's
pockets carefully.
"The only thing I found, except a bunch of amplifiers, is this",
he said and held up a diploma and
read:
"First price! Look-a-like contest US$ 5000. For looking like:
Wilfor-Toto Baldman. The motivation by the jury is as following:
The similarity between the contestent Mr. Jesper and the notorius mob
leader Wilfor-Tot is so stunning that he is our obvious choice for a winner."
"Oh!", the blue and red headed men said in corus, and walked out
of the coupé with bended necks.
In a coupé not far away from the one that Jesper sat in, the two
colorful men sat and licked their wounds:
"I can't belive it! The money was so close I could almost smell them",
Chandler complained.
"Nobody can see a difference, but still he wasn't Wilfor-Toto!"
"Nobody can see a difference...", Chandler repeated the words of his
friend, smiled an evil smile, and continued:
If we hand in his corpse to the police, no one could tell that it
isn't Wilfor-Toto, and we would get the reward. The poster said, 'Dead
or Alive', it even begun with dead like if it is the best status of the
man when he is handed over. A dead man can't claim that he isn't a
wanted man!"
"But how are we going to kill him? His coupé is filled with
witnesses. We must get rid of them first."
"I think I know how to do that. I have just read a short story called
'Three men in a boat' which is about a train trip(!). One person in
the story brings a very smelly cheese with him on the trip. At every
new station his coupé is filled, but quite soon all the persons
start to leave the coupé using different excuses much to the
surprice to the man with the cheese. Ever since I read that book, I
always bring a similar cheese that I keep in an air tight
container. Somethimes, when my hair is not enought to scear away the
people I open my box to get a coupé of my own."
"Great! But how do we prevent our victim from also leaving?
Think about that while I go and see if I can find any murther
weapon."
Jack, as the blue headed man was called, walked along the train to see
if he could find anything that inspired him to kill. When he came
between the penultimate and ultimate waggon he noticed something
strange. A long rope was tied to a projecting long screw bold. He
opened a small door that lead out, and streached after the rope. When
he examined the rope he noticed it was a rope that normally was used to
moor boats.
"Strangulation, why not?", he said as he made a roll of the rope and
hid it under his jumper.
Jack walked back to Chandler to show him the rope and to hear if
Chandler had solved his problem. When he was back as his friend he
said:
"It will be strangulation if you don't mind. Have you solved the
problem how to keep our victim in the coupé?"
"Yes, I think so. I will challenge him on a clothes-peg-on-the-nose
contest. I always bring a few clothes-pegs to survive the smell..."
"Great! Let's strangle us to a fortune then!"
The two men walked to the coupé where Jesper and three fellow
passenger were sitting. The men sat down, next to and opposite their
victim. Chandler, the one who looked the less frightening of the two,
spoke to Jesper with his smoothest voice:
"We have come to apologize for our behavior a few minutes ago."
"It's okay. You are not the first that has mistaken me for Wilfy."
"I would have guessed so! Listen, to make it up to you we are willing to
give you a chance to win $100 from us. To win the money you just have
to wear a really strong and quite painful clothes-peg on your nose
longer time than both me and Jack. If you lose you don't have to pay
us anything, so you have nothing to lose by accepting our
challange. What do you say: Do you accept our challange? I even let
you chose clotes-peg first."
"Okay, give me the green one."
Jesper, Chandler, and Jack clipped on a peg on their noses. As soon as
the pegs were on place Chandler slowly opened the box with the
extremely smelly cheese.
Only a few secounds after the smell had left its box, the only lady in
the coupé stood up, murmured something about powder her nose, and
walked out of the coupé. The next one to react was a middle age man,
who stood up as soon as the lady had closed the door behind her. With
a loud voice he announced:
"I'll go and get myself a cup of tea", then he left the coupé.
The only person left in the coupé now, except the future killers and
their victim, was a young man in his teens. He looked at the other three
men and said:
"The one of you who just farted really ought to go and see a doctor",
then he also left the coupé. Just as he was about to close the door
behind him a woman with a really big nose entered the coupé.
She looked at Jesper and smiled:
"That is not going to reduce the size of your nose. Believe me, I have
tried it."
She then sat down beside Jesper.
"Sally! What's the matter with you? Your voice sounds so weird."
"Yeah, it does, doesn't it? I have got this really awful cold, that
have made me very hoarse and my nose totally stuffed up."
"Quite a lot to stuff.", Jesper thought, but was very careful not to
let his thought to come out as words that Big-Nose-Sally could
hear. Instead he said:
"So, what has happened to you lately?"
As Jesper and Big-Nose-Sally swapped stories, Jack and Chandler
looked at each other. The looked more and more furious. Finally, after
more than one hour Jack said:
"We'll do it next week instead."
Jack and Chandler stood up. Chandler took Jesper's clothes-peg
that still was on Jesper's nose and put it in his own pocket. Then
the two men left the coupé.
Jesper was just saying:
"The next thing I remembered I was on the ground, lying in a
container filled with very soft..", when he suddenly stopped and screamed:
"Holy shit!!!"
He then rushed to the window, opened it, and leaned out gasping.
As he stood there the train slowly slowed down and finally stopped at
the station where Jesper should go off. He took a deep breath, turned
around, and ran through the coupé and out of the train without
breathing. Left behind was Sally who looked very confused.
After a ten minute walk he finally arrived at his
his pink weekend house. As soon as he was inside he
walked directly to the only clock in the house, the fantastic home
made alarm clock. It showed 11.32 PM, which meant that the
time was 2.03 am the next morning.
Luckily Jesper was aware of the two and a half hour time
difference between his clock and real time, that had occurred after
a 21 hour and 29 minute power break down five years ago. However,
he didn't understand how to change time since it didn't directly
involve amplifiers, and was therefore very hard for Jesper to grasp.
After some fairly correct calculations he realized that he had
to wake up in about four hours, and was therefore convinced that
the current alarm signal was much to weak to wake him up that soon.
He knew what he had to do; add another couple of amplifiers on
the output signal.
One unfortunate consequence of this was of course that the installations
would take a while, and the sleeping time would be further reduced,
but Jesper could see no other alternatives.
He took eight hyper advanced amplifiers from his pocket and
connected them in series on the output signal. He then smiled content
to himself. This time even he should wake up. However, before he went
to sleep, he had to write another episode in his diary. He took up his
diary and wrote:
'Dear diary. Toady I've tried to figure out was I was about to write
in you yesterday. However, I've failed. But the good new of the day is
that I'm back in my own bed and that the alarm clock is fixed one time
for all.'
He the put away the diary, shut out the light,
pressed the 'ALARM ON'
button, and lied down on the bed, unaware of that he just had adapted a
dome day machine, powerful enough to lever Wagga Wagga as
well as the main part of the continent to the ground.
The End