Torchy's Double Triumph

Johnny Hines’s rubber-limbed urbanite Torchy, a whirligig of flapping shoelaces and sardonic eyebrows, is dispatched to a cedar-scented manor where the cocktails fizz louder than the jazz on the gramophone; masquerading as a house painter who can’t tell cerulean from cornflower, he slips inside a weekend soirée already curdling with larceny. Two faux-mystics—she draped in dime-store bangles, he sporting a turban the color of bruised plums—circulate the guests, palming diamonds between tarot spreads. When the host announces a moonlit costume fête, the grifters pivot from parlor tricks to grand heist, slipping into smocks identical to Torchy’s. A misdelivered satchel of emeralds lands in our hero’s paint pot; chaos pirouettes. Constable Culpepper, equal parts bloodhound and blunderbuss, pins the crime on the nearest brush-wielding body. Torchy, now human scarecrow, stuffs himself with straw, outwits foxhounds, somersaults across hayrick moonlight, and finally trusses the swindlers with their own crystal-ball cable. Jewels restored, reputation burnished, he saunters back to the city, pockets rattling with lacquered laughter.