Judge, 1926-01-09 · page 12 of 36
Judge — January 9, 1926 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "A Clump of the Bumps Yarn" - Judge Magazine Satire This is a parody of detective fiction, specifically mocking the pseudoscientific craze of **phrenology**—the belief that personality and mental abilities could be determined by bumps on the skull. The story centers on "Glumph of the Bumps," a famous detective whose three prominent forehead bumps supposedly represent "Inductive," "Deductive," and "Ratioccinative" reasoning. The satire works by treating these bumps as literally magical sources of detective powers: the narrator physically stimulates them to activate Glumph's deductive abilities. The murder mystery itself is absurdly simple (stabbed with a stiletto, no butler), yet Glumph solves it through bumps rather than actual logic. Judge ridicules both detective fiction conventions and the widespread pseudoscience of phrenology that American audiences took seriously. The joke is that Glumph's "genius" derives from anatomical nonsense, not real investigative work.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
wnicHT! In China, antipodal, age-old China, noon—spar- kling, careless noon—but in New Jersey, midnight and mystery! Round the deserted mansion tensed a cordon of grim blue. Within the deserted mansion itself, deserted save for a finger-print expert, a rifle-bore expert, a blood-stain ex- pert, a toxicologist of note, a micro- graph photographer, a score of plain clothes men and Inspector Mc- Grouch—summoned hurriedly from his evening game of lotto, stood the Great Glumph, monosyllabic, hawk- like, impenetrable. Looking upon him for the first time, one did not think of a detective. One thought rather of a pawn shop. An edifice with three balls signifi- cantly displayed. For upon Glumph’s massive forehead bulged the three nodular eminences which had given him his name: Glumph of the Bumps—le bossu, as the grateful and admiring Suréé of Paris loved to refer to him, with that Gallic combination of Egalité and Paternité which makes their frogs so edible. Not that Glumph minded. After all, those bumps—the Inductive, the Deductive and the Ratiocin- ative, which by mere digital contact gave him unstintingly of the several logical processes for which they stood—were of incomparable as- sistance to him in his métier of crim- inal investigation. Like cranial Par- cae, they appeared—those Dread Sisters of Ancient Greece, the Eternal Fates, a grouped Nemesis; but more like bumps. For bumps, after all, they were. Without a word, the Great Man passed me his hat, his light Alpine stock, and his cocaine. With a word, he turned to Inspector Mc- Grouch. “Murder?” “Murder,” replied the Inspector grimly. “And no butler! We are completely at sea.” “In short,” riposted Glumph, “once again the upholders of our laws are proved to be a total laws themselves!” And with this charac- teristic sally he parted the crimson hangings, stepped composedly into the huge candle-lit room before him, and approached the grotesquely sprawled form at the far end. Silently, with bowed heads, we looked down upon that huddled heap of what had once been a human being, to all appearances, a man. For, though the presence of whiskers alone might not be conclusive, felt that the further presence of a coat, vest and trousers made all reasonable doubt impossible. It was aman. And from that portion of the breast immediately above the heart, protruded the point of a stiletto! The man had been stabbed from within! Slowly, lugubrously, the ornate dust-shrouded clock behind us ticked off the minutes. Suddenly it “cuckooed,” once; and with the realization that an hour had passed, I stole a glance at the Great Man. The Great Man slept! Swiftly I slipped a shot of cocaine beneath his twitching, hawk-like nose, placed my finger firmly upon the first, or Inductive, Bump, and waited. “The windows?’ —_ demanded Glumph suddenly. “All insecurely fastened,” replied the Inspector triumphantly. “An inside job,” summed up th Dich Qeenen, reach to the ground! Great Man. “And no butler, you ‘And no butler,” grunted Mc- Grouch. “Now, if there’d only been a butler—” Hurriedly I removed my finger to the Bump of Deduction. Inch by inch, atom by atom, my friend surveyed the inert form at his feet. “Stabbed from within,” he mur- mured. “An inside job indeed! And note the graying whiskers. How old was the victim, Inspector? You have counted the teeth of course?” “Sixteen,” replied MeGrouch sue- cinctly. He knew his business. “Sixteen!” mused the Great Man, suddenly alert. ‘‘Sixteen—no more? Then it must be—” Stooping swiftly, he yanked the sere whiskers triumphantly from their base of operations. With a startled cry, McGrouch leaned for- ward. “By all that’s holy!” he gasped. “A woman!” And what a woman! Teeth, lips —everything! The peer of her sex! For a moment I was stunned; then reverently I lifted my finger from the Bump of Deduction. Enough had been accomplished for the nonce! “No man,” explained the Great Glumph generously, taking pity upon the spectacle of our awe, “would so conceal his true age. None but a member of the gentler sex,” and here (Continued on page 22) t Guost—Why is Erna Erstwhile carrying on so? onD Guost—She cut her skirts short to be stylish and now she ~ end — comicbooks.com