Last week, I delivered the Rubik’s Cube puzzle to Professor Teabing’s colleague, Sophie, the French puzzle champion. Can she solve it where Professor Teabing failed? I can only hope so, or this trip to Paris will have been in vain. Rather than sit around Sophie’s office watching her apply her incredible puzzle-solving skills to the task at hand, I have decided to put on my hat and visit the art object at the center of this entire mystery: The painting of the dogs playing poker.
Unfortunately, this painting is renowned as the Louvre’s greatest masterpiece; and so, as usual, mobbed by tourists who have come from around the world to see it. I cannot get close enough to study it in detail, and even if I could, the hubbub of people would make it impossible to perform any significant inspection of the work.
To my surprise, I have not been at the Louvre for more than twenty minutes when I hear my name being called over the loudspeakers. Going to the service desk, I am told that I have a phone call; it is Sophie, saying that she has already solved the puzzle that had baffled Professor Teabing for so many years. Astonished, I rush back to her office for a full report.
Sophie informs me that when solved, the cube revealed directions to the secret entrance to a hidden underground chamber, where the answers to all our questions might be found. Surely no one else knows about this place; but I cannot shake the feeling that we are being watched.
Once we arrive at the McDonald’s near the Arc de Triomphe, we gain access to the storeroom using subterfuge and discreet bribery of the manager. Once again Sophie’s puzzle-solving skills prove invaluable as she locates and opens the hidden trapdoor in the flagstones — and, in the meantime, revealing a secret even more shocking than the one that we are seeking to uncover.
What will we find in the dark, dank catacombs beneath the McDonald’s? It is anyone’s guess. But I have come too far to turn back now; because I am Dennis the Vizsla, and I never give up.
