Crippled Detectives

or
The War of the Red Romer

by Lee Tandy Schwartzman, age 7, Seattle, Washington

The Village Voice published an article about Crippled Detectives
on May 17, 2005

Lee Tandy Schwartzman wrote and illustrated this story when she was 7 years old. We first published it in 1978 as the November/December issue of Stone Soup. Crippled Detectives is the fabulously funny story of four sisters and a brother — Lee, Sylvia, Anne, Ben and Lisette, aged 15, 15, 5, 4 and 3 — who take it upon themselves to save the world from an evil villain, the Red Romer, and his gang.

As soon as we read the first sentence of the 100-page manuscript we recognized its brilliance. There was only one trouble. It was almost impossible to read! There was no punctuation and words were spelled with considerable imagination. After a huge effort we managed to type the manuscript, standardizing punctuation and spelling. Beyond that we made no changes. What you see here is the story as Lee wrote it.

We are very proud to have published Crippled Detectives and are very happy that, through the World Wide Web, we can easily make it available to you. Print it out! Share the story with children and friends! Enjoy!

Chapter One
A Sad Trial

“Oh!” said Sylvia suddenly. “What?” said Lee alarmed. “Oh I have to go out with you to get firewood,” replied Sylvia. “Oh now I remember,” said Lee, and into the house went the two girls to get Lisette and Ben and the things they would need to chop down trees for wood craft and firewood. The sister and brother came out. “Where’s Anne?” said Lee in a worried tone of voice. “I don’t know,” said Sylvia, turning around slowly to see if she could see Anne from the distance. “Where are we going?” asked Ben and Lisette together. “To get kindling wood if we find Anne,” answered Sylvia. “Here I am,” called a happy voice. “Are we going to get wood again?” said Anne. “I found a place where the trees are thick.” “Oh Anne!” said Lee. “Well, are we going?” asked Anne. “Yep,” said Sylvia.

When they got to the spot Ben and Lisette cut down the tree while Lee, Sylvia, and Anne stood in a patch of ivy. Suddenly a wind sprung up and made the tree fall in the direction of Anne, Lee, and Sylvia. “Run!” screamed Lisette. They ran but they tripped on the vines of ivy. Before they could get up, smack! and blood flowed out. The tree had fallen on their middles where they had had serious operations. Lisette and Ben pulled off the tree and carried them home. Off to the hospital they went and were crippled.

When the others went visiting in the children’s ward, the patients of the family were glad to see them. “Boy,” said Lee, “that was a big eastern wind.” “Yep, it sure was,” said Anne. “It occurs to me,” said Ben, “that that wind was phony and that someone caused it . . .” “Because,” said Lisette, “there are never strong eastern winds in South Dakota where we are now . . .” “And,” said Ben, “we never ever get eastern winds nowadays.” Just then the alarm bell rang and the news machine reported that in Africa a robber had his hand chopped off and was sent here because there were not enough doctors in Africa. “The robber has escaped-aped-aped-aped-aped-aped,” went the machine. The parents wrapped up their sick children in quilts and went to the door. “It’s locked!” screamed Lisette. Ben made a rope out of sheets and pillowcases, fastened it to the beds, and threw the other end out the window. The family got down safely. Some of the nurses and doctors had been shot. Others were hiding. A nurse explained that the robber of Africa was fierce and had stored money from the hospital. “His name is the Red Romer, and he has enough electricity and money to make a strong wind as you say what happened. Run!” said the nurse. So they ran ran ran ran.

Chapter Two
More Badness

After that they went away. They went to France because they had better doctors there. One day Lee used crutches to find Ben and Lisette stranded on the beach with bare feet and a poisonous jellyfish dead on the beach. So Lee said, “Don’t move or the poison will spread. Don’t wink, blink, or talk or walk, don’t do anything except breathe.” Lee put a blanket of seaweed on them and gathered the shells that had points and threw them down into the ocean and got a ambulance to rescue them. Afterwards they were crippled and brought back crutches to use. “But there are no poisonous jellyfish in France,” said all the people, “except the rare moneoe who live in the west not in the east of Paris.”

"Anne, where are you?" said Sylvia. They found Anne dead with a bullet in her forehead, lying on the floor dying with red fingerprints on the gun and a note which read:

A foolish girl who called the police first sight of me and if you want to live keep the police out of this or you will soon have a blown up Europe and 9,000,000,000,000 dead people including you.

Signed,
Red Romer

Their parents cried, Lisette screamed, Lee shuddered, and Sylvia gasped and the nurse fainted, but it seemed Anne was laughing. She opened her eyes and stood up. “Good trick I played on that Red Romer,” she said, and all saw her taking a piece of plastic off her forehead. Then everybody started laughing. The nurse woke up and rubbed her eyes and laughed too and went to do research.

Lisette and Ben used crutches and could both run and walk. They ate more and slept better. One day the 9,000,000,000 people of Europe were robbed, 601 were killed, 700 houses were ruined or burned down. Then a phony storm came up — wind, clouds, rain, thunder, mist, lightning, snow, frost, and hail — and they went in it so they had to stay there for a while.

Go on to Chapter Three