Pathos
The mystery at hand begins with imagery. Imagery that produces a sense of pathos in the reader with its vivid illustration of the most vulnerable victim possible:
“Beautiful, plump little brown rascal— eighteen months old—perfectly developed, bright-eyed, alert—and it passes out in a convulsion, and I was standing there looking on—helpless.”
Planting a Clue
The power of imagery is used to great effect to plant a clue without it seeming to be a clue. Instead, the image painted here seems to be engaged simply for the purpose of describing an emotionally overwrought father of the aforementioned baby. Only in retrospect with the full revelation of what has happened does it become an example of imagery written specifically to advance a mystery:
“The father didn’t answer. He’d gone cataleptic. He simply stood there, looking. It seemed to me he was looking rather at the packet than at the child, and if ever there was the light of madness in a man’s eyes, it was in his.”
Character Description
Physical description of character is one of the strongest points in the writing of Rudolph Fisher. He just quite simply displays a painter’s skill for vividly bringing a person’s external appearance to life through imagery which, in turn, tends to be revealing of their internal characteristics as well:
“The woman, clad in gold-figured black silk Chinese pyjamas, was well under thirty, slender, with yellow skin which retained a decided make-up even at this hour. Her boyish bob was reddish with frequent ‘frying,’ and her eyes were cold and hard.”
What Dr. Archer Knows
The title of the story refers to Dr. Archer’s curiously heightened sense of smell. That ability to detect the persistence of the slightest aromatic variations will prove to be quite useful, but from a literary perspective it is the doctor’s own self-awareness that provides the most interesting aspect of this advanced state of sensory of development. A conversation with Det. Dart provides an opportunity for him to make a case about olfactory imagery which most people have probably never even considered:
“In a language of a quarter of a million words, we haven’t a single specific direct denotation of a smell…Whatever you’re thinking of, it is an indirect and non-specific denotation, liking the odor in mind to something else. We are content with `fragrant’ and `foul’ or general terms of that character, or at best `alcoholic’ or `moldy,’ which are obviously indirect. We haven’t even such general direct terms as apply to colors—red, green, and blue. We name what we see but don’t name what we smell.”
