None of this would have happened if he could just keep track of all of his useless trinkets.

On the day when it did happen, professor Daly woke up eleven and a half minutes later than usual, regarded his dust-ridden, disheveled surroundings, and decided to be accidentally late to work.

At 9:16 AM, he had lost an honorable battle against the moldy stain at the bottom of his fridge. The streak of defeat continued in a not dissimilar fashion on the battleground of his bathroom, and the barren wasteland of his living room floor. Professor Daly was not home frequently.

At 10:58 he had given up entirely, and retreated to his old study - abandoned thirty years prior, two months after it was constructed - which was suffering a hideous spiderweb infestation. He began by removing about a cubic centimeter of dust from his desk, and opening the window (so as to prevent inhaling said dust). It improved matters somewhat. He then proceeded to sort out his shelves, stacked with typing machine paper and his memorabilia collection. This is when a tedious morning had suddenly turned alarming.

At 11:11 AM exactly, professor Daly had discovered that the music box was missing.

There was nothing valuable or exceptional about the music box - at least not where money was concerned. It was a small, dainty thing, decorated with brass vines and leaves, covered by something that was definitely not gold on top. It once belonged to professor’s close friend, Arthur. In fact, the music box was the only thing that remained of Arthur. The man had disappeared five years prior. Unfortunately for him, under no suspicious circumstance, which is a decent guess as to why his disappearance was never investigated.

He left behind nothing other than a faculty position to fill and a stack of academic papers tall enough to reach the top of an average sized ficus plant.

The music box was given to professor Daly not long before Arthur vanished. He instructed on how to wind it up and keep the mechanism well-oiled and running smoothly, put a hand atop professor’s hand and smiled. Arthur was known for making all sorts of machines, trinkets and curiosities, and nothing brought him more joy than gifting these things to his friends, which he had many.

To this day, the music box was a warm if bittersweet reminder of Arthur’s life… and now it was gone.

The rest of the morning to the late afternoon was spent in a frantic search of the professor’s modest apartment. Even with all the dark corners and floor tile cracks, there weren’t many places in which a whole music box could have been lost. No one to take it either; it’s been, at a rough estimate, two or so years since professor had last invited in a guest. Hence the heightened state of entropy in his dwelling.

At 3:44 PM, the exhausted, hungry, perplexed professor had ceased his third inspection of the apartment and fell backwards into an armchair. There was a faint sound of a deflated balloon which, with equal probability, could have been produced either by the professor’s lungs or the beaten down chair he had fallen into.

It couldn’t be denied any further. The music box was gone.

What on Earth might explain this, professor wondered. First, he applied the principle of Occam’s razor and, taken into account his considerable age, he postulated that his mind and memory were playing tricks on him. Perhaps he had hidden the music box away and have since forgotten its location. Second, he applied the principle of Occam’s garden hoe (which he pioneered in his quantum mechanics lectures back in 1987) and postulated that the box had fallen through the cracks between atomic nuclei and had no current whereabouts on the macroscopic level. Then he had decided that it was time for another cup of coffee.

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He postulated some more while brewing the coffee, then postulated additionally while enjoying it. And the more he postulated, the more it occurred to him that the disappearance of a box was even more mysterious than the disappearance of its maker, which, he quickly realized, gave it a slightly better chance of being investigated.

It wasn’t just a music box after all; it was his last connection to a dear friend, a physical placeholder for a whole warehouse worth of precious memories. And memories tend to become even more valuable with age. They are, presumably, the one kind of a treasure a man can hope to carry with them beyond the veil of our world and through the gates to heaven. Yes, professor nodded to himself. The mystery of the missing music box simply had to be uncovered.

There was, of course, another pressing reason for finding the trinket.

When Arthur gave it to professor Daly all those years ago, sunshine smile still lingering on his kind, wrinkled face, the one thing he had said after the safekeeping instructions was:

“…and by God, Roger, do not let this thing fall into the wrong hands.”

And professor didn’t question it back then, just as he never questioned any rest of the bizarre and puzzling things Arthur used to say, for he had no worry of the music box ever leaving his study.

Except now it was gone… and who knew what kind of wrong hands could have gotten the hold of a tiny music box that played Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers when wound.

*

At 4:55PM, Farah Black, Todd Brotzman, and Dirk Gently were about to lock up the office door for the day, and head out for a late dinner. They had spent the last hour of their “workday” arguing about an appropriate location and never arrived at a conclusion that satisfied all parties involved. The argument was the most exciting thing that has happened to them all day, or, indeed, all week.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was currently undergoing a slow streak. Well, “slow” was a rather generous description; more so, the work has came to a complete halt. One of the office walls was decorated with a large piece of glossy white paper, on which stubby lines were drawn in black sharpie. There were exactly twenty seven such lines. The paper was titled (also in black sharpie): “days since our last case”.

The paper was the blank side of a Mexican Funeral poster. The stage photo side was now facing the wall at Todd’s request because, according to Todd, he didn’t look “presentable enough” on the poster.

“Last chance to vote,” Farah announced, turning off the lights and fumbling with her belt in search of the office door key. “Pancakes or rice noodles?”

“I’ve made my opinion known,” Todd replied. “Pancakes are not dinner. There’s nothing to discuss here even.”

“Seriously, Todd?” Dirk shook his head, not angry but mildly disappointed. “A month ago we saved a talking frog from being wrongfully convicted of murder, but you draw the line at breakfast food for dinner.”

“I just want to have a normal meal with vegetables for a change.” Todd was currently checking his pockets for his phone and not finding it. “There is such a thing as too much of a good, uh, thing, you know.”

“We haven’t eaten pancakes since Wednesday!” Dirk protested.

“It’s Friday,” Farah pointed out. “Are we leaving or not?”

“Wait.” Todd stopped her. “I think I left my phone in the office.”

“Be quick please,” Dirk urged him. “The pancake place closes at six.”

Todd had ignored this apparent declaration of victory, rolled his eyes in silence and headed back into the office to retrieve his phone.

“Another week without a case, huh,” Farah said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Unlike Todd, she was aware of the pattern in Dirk’s behaviour, in which his sugar cravings were inversely correlated with his mood.

Dirk didn’t reply. Unlike Farah, he never mastered the skill of putting on a smile and brushing off his worries for the benefit of others.

“It says in our ad that the line is open 24/7,” Farah continued. “So, you know, someone might call in the middle of the night on a weekend.”

“Pff,” Dirk said.

It was all he was going to say, but couldn’t stop himself.

“No one will call,” he continued. “No one ever calls, Farah. This agency is a joke. The only way we get cases is when something falls on our heads, quite literally sometimes, turns our lives upside down and then downright endangers them, and results in no payment and barely any satisfaction. So no, they won’t call. Not on a weekend, not on a weekday, not ever.”

Precisely at that moment, just as Todd was collecting his phone from the office desk, it began to rang.

And so did Dirk’s.