benjAmin beRg 

The door of the haberdasher's burst open & a wily wiry man dressed in paisley scampered out. He held a hat firmly in both hands, and his eyes only strayed from it occasionally to get glimpses of which direction to run. He was followed directly by the haberdasher himself, who screamed, "Come back! Thief! Police! Thief!" &c. as he ran, quickly for one so old. Sure enough, there happened to be a few bobbies nearby, who began to close in on the nimble criminal.

The paisley-decked man stopped, and held his new hat aloft. "You fools! Do you think you can take me? Do you know what this is? This is the derby Christ wore at the last supper! With its power, I am invincible!" With that, he donned the derby. Then he snapped his fingers, and the police & haberdasher immediately fell to the ground, dead. That's when the man who the papers dubbed "The Derby God" began his first crime wave.

Immediately the City called Dr. Harvey Uptenstalk, world-renowned paranormalist who was then living in town, & asked him for assistance. No one who knows much about the man would be surprised that he accepted at once, and paused only don his coat & top hat before rushing to the scene.

Once downtown, Dr. Uptenstalk met up with Inspector Spencer Dietrich & Low Officer John Worthing, who led him to the scene of a robbery in progress. The three men stood in the door or the jeweler's as they watched the Derby God at work.

"Why can he do that?" asked Dietrich meekly as the man in paisley walked through the vault wall carrying a large bag of gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, &c. "How is it possible? We absolutely must get that derby away from him, but it would be impossible. He's too mighty."

Dr. Uptenstalk responded promptly. "We need not get the hat away from him. We can simply make it stop working."

"How?" asked Dietrich, but too late. Dr. Uptenstalk had already walked away. The paranormalist strolled leisurely up to the thief, who was enthralled in his looting, and said, "Excuse me?" The Derby God turned to the Doctor and sneered.

"Yes, I'm Dr. Harvey Uptenstalk, & I felt that I should talk to you regarding the origins of your headwear. I'm afraid that it is not the derby that Christ wore at the last supper, for he did not wear a derby during that famous breaking of bread."

After a pause, the thief shouted, "Of course it is! Look at the power it has! Maybe he didn't wear it at the last supper, but he did sometime that day at least!" To demonstrate the derby's power he snapped his fingers and all four men were suddenly outside, in the middle of the street.

"No, I'm sorry to say that derbies did not come into fashion until more than a millennium after Christ died. Also, I fear the derby in question happens to be brand new."

The thief paused, motionless, for at least 30 seconds before yelling "I'll still kill you!" and pointing his hand at the Doctor. Apparently he expected Dr. Uptenstalk to die, for after several seconds he began gesturing very frantically in the direction of the paranormalist.

"Dammit!" the thief swore as he gave up, grabbing the hat from his head & throwing it to the ground. Dietrich & Worthing ran up & arrested the man, then the other police who had been present outside rushed in to escort him away.

"How did you do that?" Dietrich asked in awe. Already newspaper reporters and other curious onlookers had begun to gather around the famous Doctor.

"I knew immediately after seeing him in action that the hat only worked because he believed it did. It is a rare luxury of madness: such intensity of belief that it manifests in reality. I simply had to add an element of doubt into his mind, and he was undone."

After that the good Doctor was swarmed with autograph-seekers and reporters desperate for more quotes. Dietrich & Worthing were virtually ignored by the crowd, and left for headquarters before much longer. The dethroned Derby God was deemed mentally unfit for trial and was sent to the High Grove Asylum, where he remained for 12 years before escaping after convincing himself that he'd found John the Baptist's copy of King Lear.