The Ring of Fire

It is the 20th April 2021. Tom Hanks, for it is he, is sitting at his typewriter composing a Pulitzer Prize winning treatise on the meaning of symbols on typewriter keyboards. The stack of completed pages sits on his fine wooden desk, taller only than his bouffant hair which has not been cut in two months due to social distancing measures. Suddenly the telephone on Tom Hanks’ desk rings ominously. He lifts the receiver with the feeling that this call will be anything but ordinary, and is greeted by a mysterious voice in an accent that he cannot quite place. ‘Is this... Tom Hanks,’ the voice asks, seeming both near and far away at the same time. “Mister Hanks - Do you know of Dante’s ‘Ring of Fire’?”

Tom Hanks, for it is he, recognises instantly the title of a mysterious and little-known text referenced in his previous Nobel-Prize winning book on the Symbology of Minor Symbols. ‘But, how did....’ he starts to ask, before being interrupted by a rapid and urgent knocking at his front door. ‘Hold on one second...’ he says to the caller, rushing to the front door of his luxurious apartment on the Upper West Side of New York. ‘Package for Mr Hanks!’ says the uniformed delivery man, dashing the fragile-looking parcel to the ground at his feet. Picking up the battered parcel, Tom Hanks slams the heavy wooden door in the delivery-man’s face and rushes back to the telephone. ‘Hello? Hello?’ he says urgently, but the line clicks and goes dead... Tom glances in puzzled amazement at the receiver before returning it slowly to the cradle, when his eye is caught by the ‘6’ key on his Smith Corona Galaxie typewriter (mint condition, powder blue with a white keyboard and original travel case).

‘That’s strange,’ he says, ‘I never saw that symbol on the ‘6’ key before!’ Slipping on a fashionable pair of half-moon spectacles he looks more closely at the ‘6’ key. Instead of the usual caret he sees a circle with a small dot in the middle of it and an arrow coming out of the top.

‘Mmmm...’ says Tom, retrieving a tome from his shelf - ‘Symbology for Symbologists’ by Tom Hanks. Leafing quickly through the well-worn pages of the book that won him the Legion d’Honneur, he finds the symbol quickly. ‘Uranus!’ he exclaims in surprise, ‘Now why in ‘darnation would I find Uranus on a typewriter?’

Returning the book to the shelf, Tom turns his attention to the package, now sitting on the blotter on his fine mahogany desk. Wrapped up in brown paper and tied with string it looks old, but the address label looks fresh - typed, in a face that looks familiar to Tom but which he just can’t place. After turning the parcel over and examining it closely Tom unties the string and carefully extracts the contents - a finely inlaid wooden box with a uniquely shaped keyhole. ‘Good grief’ he exclaims, ‘that keyhole, it’s in the shape of... of... Uranus!’

Deciding that he needs the assistance of an internationally renowned expert on Planetary Symbology, Tom decides that he must immediately visit his friend and mentor, Professor Emile Hafenhaf, at the library of the University of New York in New York, New York. Glancing at the fine Swiss clock on the marble mantle-piece over the roaring fire in his well-appointed study, he sees that it is already past 7pm.

‘I’m sure that old book-hound will still be there,’ mutters Tom to himself, grabbing his keys and dashing from the apartment.

Twenty minutes later and after a breathless rush across mid-town Manhattan, Tom Hanks, for it is he, arrives at the imposing brick and stone ‘Hanx Library’ building at the University of New York in New York, New York. Pushing through the fine wooden doors to the grand marble lobby beyond he is surprised to find the building dark and deserted. ‘That’s strange,’ he says, recalling that the term papers he had set for Professor Hafenhaf’s class would be due soon, and that the building would usually be full of students researching the symbological meaning of symbol-like symboligisms.

Brushing aside his concern over the quiet hall, Tom rushes up the wide marble staircase and along the corridor to Professor Hafenhaf’s office. Seeing a reassuring glow of lamp-light through the reeded glass of the Professor’s fine wooden office door he pushes through with the words of greeting and apology beginning to form. But, the words freeze on his lips as the door opens and the scene inside the Professor’s office reveals itself to his startled but intensely blue eyes.

Professor Hafenhaf is seated at his fine wooden desk, papers and books scattered around much as Tom has been used to seeing on past visits. A stack of unmarked papers sits to his left, on his right the mint-condition IBM Model D Executive typewriter that he uses to set term papers and write his internationally recognised articles on the symbology of non-symbol-like markings in prehistoric astrological texts. But, Tom Hanks is not focusing on the term papers, or recalling their arguments on why the Professor refuses to upgrade to an IBM Selectric; his attention is focused on the fact that the Professor is very obviously dead.

Recovering from the initial shock of finding his friend and mentor dead, Tom approaches the body slowly and cautiously. Almost immediately his attention is drawn to a mark on the Professor’s hand. Impressed on the rear of his bruised right hand there is the dark mark of... Uranus! In the dim light of the Professor’s office it almost looks... branded into the flesh of his dead hand. Reaching out, Tom touches the mark on the Professor’s hand. ‘His skin is still warm...’ says Tom, concluding in a flash that the Professor is not long dead - the killer surely not far away.

As that thought flashes across Tom’s mind, that the killer is maybe nearby, he is startled by a sharp intake of breath behind him. Wheeling in startlement from the Professor’s dead body to face the door of the office he sees a beautiful and mysterious girl standing in the doorway. Wavy blonde hair frames her perfectly proportioned, almond-shaped face; her piercing hazel eyes now looking at Tom Hanks with a mixture of fear and surprise. ‘I’m sorry, but...’ Tom is just starting to say when the beautiful mysterious girl looks past him to the scene in the Professor’s office. ‘Father!’ she gasps, rushing past Tom to kneel at the side of the Professor’s slumped body. Looking up at Tom, tears gathering in the corners of her beautiful hazel eyes, she hesitates briefly – ‘You... killed him!’

Tom Hanks, for it is he, recoils slightly from the fiery accusation. ‘He was my friend - I’d never have hurt him. I’m Tom Hanks, for Pete’s sake!’ The beautiful, and mysterious, girl looks at him coldly, ‘I know who you are, Mister Hanks. My father called me an hour ago and said that you would be visiting him, and that I should come as quickly as I could. It seems I’m too late.’ Standing suddenly, she reaches for the telephone on the Professor’s desk, ‘I’m calling the police!’ Seizing the receiver from the cradle she quickly dials a succession of numbers, all the while staring at Tom. ‘I didn’t kill him; he was my friend,’ says Tom, in a quiet voice. The phone rings briefly and a voice at the far end asks “Emergency? What service please?

‘What service please?’ The beautiful and mysterious girl looks at Tom Hanks (for it is he) for a long moment and then places the receiver back into its cradle. ‘I believe you, I think,’ she says hesitantly.

‘Please forgive me,’ Tom says hesitantly, ‘But I didn’t know the Professor had any children, and he... he never mentioned you... I’m sorry...’ A look of old pain flashes across the girl’s beautiful face, quickly masked except to Tom’s perceptive eyes. ‘I’m not surprised’ she says, ‘we hadn’t spoken in some time, until his call earlier this evening in fact. I’m Olympia,’ she says, meeting Tom’s eyes with a clear and direct look that makes him feel curiously seen. ‘Strange,’ his inner voice starts to say, ‘I’ve not felt so seen since...’.

But, feeling the tug of painful memory, he tears his thoughts away from the past to the present. ‘Is there any reason why someone would want to murder your father?’, asks Tom, hoping that Olympia will somehow be able to explain the evening’s strange and disturbing events. Her bewildered expression gives him his answer before her pained words have a chance. ‘There were many people who didn’t like him or his theories, but I can’t imagine why any of them would want to kill him,’ she replies sadly.

‘There’s something here we’re not seeing,’ thinks Tom inwardly. ‘It can’t be a coincidence that we’re here, in his office, on the night he’s murdered.’ He looks around, hoping to find some clue, but sees nothing obvious. ‘It has to be here,’ he thinks, ‘this is where it started, I’m sure of it’.

‘Is there anything strange in the office Olympia,’ Tom asks gently. ‘Something moved or something missing, something that shouldn’t be here?’ Looking around distractedly, Olympia’s hazel eyes scan the shelves and bookcases. Just as it seems that nothing is out of place, her head turning back towards Tom, she freezes in place, staring at a spot over his left shoulder. He turns on his heel to see what has captured her rapt attention. For a moment it eludes him, and then he sees it! An empty spot, high on the shelf of curious artefacts that the Professor had kept there for as long as Tom had known him and begun visiting.

With a look at Olympia, Tom quickly moves the antique wooden library steps across to the shelf and athletically climbs to the empty spot. As he looks at the clear space on the dusty shelf he realises that he knows what object had stood there for many years, and only been recently removed. The box! The box delivered so unexpectedly to him earlier that evening. It seems hours ago to Tom now, though a scant thirty minutes have passed since that unexpected knock at the door of his home.

‘Olympia! There was a box delivered to me earlier, and I think it sat here on this shelf for a long time until a few days ago. Do you know anything about it?’ Olympia’s face creases in concentration for a long second, but she shakes her head slowly. ‘No, I remember it being there but my father never spoke about it.’ His mind now whirling furiously, Tom remembers Olympia’s earlier comment. ‘You said that your father mentioned I would be here?’ She nods briefly. ‘So, he must have sent me the box himself,’ Tom says, ‘He must have known that it would have brought me here immediately’. Olympia watches as Tom paces the length of her father’s office - deep in concentration. ’The box,’ he says eventually, ‘The box or its contents are the only clue we really have!’

‘We have to see what’s inside the box’ Olympia says. ‘Did you bring it with you’. Tom curses himself inwardly, ‘No, it’s sitting on the desk in my study. I thought the professor and I would go back there to look at it and the strange key on my typewriter together’. Reacting to the mention of the typewriter, Olympia reaches into the bag over her shoulder and after a brief search retrieves a tattered envelope with an old stamp on its stained surface. ‘Look at this’ she tells Tom, ‘It’s the last letter that my mother wrote to my father before she was killed. There are strange symbols in it, strange type-written symbols, that I never understood.’

Feeling the familiar sense of an impending rabbit-hole Tom carefully extracts a neatly folded letter from inside the old envelope and reads it swiftly.

to be continued...

Image credits:

"Smith Corona" by justmakeit is licensed with CC BY-NC 2.0

"Dome-Top Box with Straw Marquetry" by Unidentified is marked under CC0 1.0

"The John Rylands Library Study Area" by michael_d_beckwith is marked under CC0 1.0

"Envelope addressed to Paula Baldwin from James Baldwin" by James Baldwin, American, 1924 - 1987 is marked under CC0 1.0