"The Secret of Six Horseshoes" by Vladimir Torin, summary Automatic translate

This book is a gripping steampunk detective story. Written in 2022, the story takes place in the gloomy city of Gaben. A journalist’s investigation into a series of kidnappings quickly escalates into a monster hunt. The main character leads a double life, hiding behind the guise of a ruthless avenger. The townspeople call her the Tooth Fairy.

This work is part of the author’s "…from Gabin" series. The author also added "My Post-Imago," "About Noses and Castles," "The Dead Man from Blue Trumpets Street," and "The Mystery of 12 Rue Florette." This book is the fifth installment in the series.

Disappearances in the Sakvoyazhny district

Polly Trick works as a typist at the newspaper "Gossip." She independently investigates the mysterious disappearances of five lonely people. In the apartment of Helen Hensley, a powder saleswoman, she finds disturbing clues. An iron horseshoe with six holes is hidden in the ashes of the stove. A cardboard token with a spiral pattern is hidden in her coat. The clues lead to apothecary Lemuel Lemony. Lemony confirms a strange fact. All the missing people regularly purchased rare "Tingeltangel" pills for a specific circus fever. The apothecary reveals the secret. The abducted people are former performers in Madame D. Auger’s troupe. Lemony reveals their stage names.

Dr. Barrow stands out among the pharmacy’s clients. He wrote prescriptions for all the performers. Polly dons her secret Tooth Fairy costume. The heroine enters the doctor’s office. She finds him murdered. The body has been completely drained of blood. Another horseshoe lies on the dead man’s chest. The avenger realizes a terrifying truth: the unknown criminal has moved from kidnappings to bloody massacres.

The Monster in the Attic

Junior Constable John Dilby is accidentally drawn into an investigation. The policeman heads to the crime-ridden Flea district. He breaks into an abandoned circus building. There, the constable finds the old diary of flea trainer Marietta Lacour. Suddenly, John spots a terrifying four-armed monster. It’s Martin the Amazing Jumper. The monster takes the diary, stuns the policeman with a baton, and takes him captive.

Martin holds the constable in the attic of the city train station near a huge mechanical clock. The monster has been hiding there for twenty long years. He is assisted by Letty Bracknecht, the station master’s blind granddaughter. As a child, the girl secretly fed Martin blood. Martin reads the last entry in his mother’s diary. He discovers the truth. Twenty years ago, a circus troupe betrayed them. The performers brutally murdered Marietta and the circus owner herself. Martin vows revenge on the executioners. The Tooth Fairy appears in the attic. She shoots Letty with a dart. The weapon causes intense pain. Martin rushes to save his friend and jumps out the window. The avenger frees the constable. The monster easily escapes across the rooftops.

Clown’s tricks

The dwarf Theophilus Truffo, nicknamed "The Big Guy," works for the wealthy Horace Pompeo. Pompeo has bought an old circus. Pompeo has tasked the dwarf with reassembling the former troupe. The millionaire wants to get rich by rebuilding the Flea neighborhood. Truffo hires a street gang, the Brombel Doughboys. The evil clowns are tasked with capturing the fat man Betty Gru. It was Betty who orchestrated the plot twenty years ago. The fat man easily fends off the Doughboys with mousetraps, pepper confetti, and a bag of angry cats. Soon, Betty herself takes Truffo hostage.

John Dilby and Polly Trick find the battered Flea Man lying in the ruined mansion of the Sorrowful Man on the Pipe Waste. Betty Gru has lured Martin into a stone well. The villain crushes the monster’s shell with a heavy wooden hammer. Polly feeds the beast blood from her palm. The constable urgently calls for a medical airship. Martin manages to whisper directions. The clown is heading to the circus.

Deadly show

Betty Gru stages a brutal show in the arena of an abandoned circus. Horace Pompeo and his goons are paralyzed by a special gas. A clown leads kidnapped performers into the ring. Their minds are suppressed by elixirs, completely subjugated to the maniac’s will. Strongman Babul is crushed by heavy weights falling from the ceiling. Gymnast Toffini is baked alive inside red-hot cast-iron pipes. Mimessa Clo drowns in an imaginary but deadly aquarium. A clown douses juggler Levittus with green acid and blows him up with bombs. Funambulist Vivian falls from a severed, burning rope. Dwarf Truffo is killed when a circus cannon fires directly into a brick wall.

The Tooth Fairy appears at the circus. A clown injects the avenger with a drug called "Carambola." Polly is plunged into vivid hallucinations. She sees herself as a tiny fairy with transparent wings. The fairy is relaxing in a candy garden with live performers. With an effort of will, Polly refuses to believe the illusion and attacks the villain. Betty Gru sprays an indoor flytrap with a secret liquid. The plant, Herbert, grows to gigantic proportions and attacks the heroine with toothy vines. The growth elixir quickly wears off. The flytrap shrinks back down. The Tooth Fairy pursues the clown throughout the building. They fight fiercely in the cotton candy and bubble shop. The clown throws a cuckoo clock, a rubber chicken, and a broken chair at his pursuer. Polly catches him with a harpoon and hangs him tightly on a rope just under the dome.

The mystery is revealed

The police arrest Betty Gru. Horace Pompeo takes Truffo’s mutilated body. The rich man plans to use a parasitic worm and the services of a local healer, Patchwork. Pompeo hopes to revive the dead and force them to perform in the arena.

Letty Bracknecht is hiding in Dr. Nathaniel Dow’s house. The doctor feeds his giant pet bee, Clara, sugar cubes. The blind girl asks Polly to rescue Martin from the Hospital for Strange Diseases. Eight years ago, Letty lost her sight due to a flash from the glasses of the captured villain, the Closer. Back then, the evil nurses and the head doctor tried to cut out her heart. Martin saved her friend. Now, Chief Surgeon Grayhill plans to conduct cruel experiments on the monster. He wants to place the patient in a closed ward of the Chronicles. Polly agrees to help.

She returns to the editorial office and hands over the finished article. Lead reporter Benny Trilby shamelessly takes credit for the text. He assigns the girl a cramped desk under the stairs. Meanwhile, Senior Sergeant Gobbin frantically gathers constables to guard the referee’s bridge game.

In the police cellar, the arrested Betty Gru is changing clothes. The fat man removes his makeup, glues on a red mustache, and dons a blue uniform. Sergeant Cruppert Cruchins has been hiding behind the circus mask all this time. The policeman deceives the constable on duty. He masterfully fakes Betty Gru’s escape from a locked cell. Cruchins plans to continue his crimes with impunity. Suddenly, he finds a cardboard tag with a flea drawn on it in his uniform pocket. The sergeant despairs. He understands one thing clearly: Martin Lacour has survived and will definitely come for him.