Sonny Elmquist

Sonny Elmquist is a thin, nocturnal tenant whose ordinary circumstances become entangled with the mystery surrounding Fenton Prentice and the Carpathian Hound. Known to Prentice as Cedric, he is presented both as a young man seen moving through the building and as a possible astral wanderer: Bob Andrews reports that Sonny has appeared in Prentice’s apartment while Sonny was known to be asleep elsewhere. His dream of a glass dog being put into water supplies a striking clue, but the evidence leaves unresolved how much his visions reveal about his own movements or the burglar’s identity.

Identity and Circumstances

When Sonny first appears, he has come from the apartment beyond the pool. Jupiter Jones notices his lank, dark hair, which does not look recently washed, and his extreme thinness; Sonny is hardly taller than Pete Crenshaw. He wears a dark sweater and light tan trousers, with sneakers shoved onto his bare feet. The details make his arrival conspicuous to Jupiter, who prides himself on close observation, while Sonny himself immediately identifies the police search as a search for a burglar.

Prentice later supplies the practical facts of Sonny’s life. He works from midnight until morning at a market on Vermont, which helps explain why he may be at home at unusual hours. He lives in the building’s smallest apartment, next door to Gwen Chalmers. Prentice says he supposes Sonny does not make much money, but presents this as an assumption rather than confirmed knowledge. His description of Sonny as strange, and his remark that there is something pathetic about a grown man called Sonny, also reveal the landlord’s judgment of his tenant more clearly than they establish Sonny’s character. The real name Prentice gives is Cedric; the narrative otherwise identifies him as Sonny Elmquist.

An Unsettling Presence in Prentice’s Apartment

Sonny’s importance grows through a discrepancy reported by Bob Andrews: Sonny has appeared in Prentice’s apartment at times when Bob knew, as certainly as anyone could know, that Sonny was asleep in his own apartment. Professor Eugenia Lantine recognizes the pattern as that of a wanderer. She explains that, if Sonny is a true wanderer, he leaves his body while asleep and walks around. The account proposes a possible explanation for his appearances without turning the explanation into a settled, independently demonstrated fact.

This uncertainty makes Sonny’s relation to Prentice unlike a straightforward encounter between two tenants. From Prentice’s perspective, Sonny’s presence in the apartment is disturbing; to Professor Eugenia Lantine, the same reported contradiction is intriguing evidence of astral wandering. Bob’s confirmation gives the claim a witness, but the mechanism remains something the investigators are trying to understand. Sonny is therefore at once a person with a specific routine and the focus of a question about what can happen to a sleeping body.

The Pool and Sonny’s Dream

After the Carpathian Hound is recovered from the pool, Jupiter explains how it was concealed. The burglar lowered the sculpture by a length of gold cord until it touched the bottom, then released it; against the pool’s irregular blue-and-gold tiles, the cord was difficult to see. This is the physical method of concealment, not proof that Sonny carried it out. The distinction matters because Sonny’s later account concerns a dream, not an admitted action or a witnessed journey.

Jupiter goes to Sonny’s door and calls for him to open it, threatening to summon the police. Sonny appears wrapped in a bathrobe, with his bare feet and legs visible. When Jupiter switches on the light, Sonny’s black hair is plastered wetly against his head. Under questioning, Sonny says he had been asleep and asks what he can do if he dreams things. He describes dreaming of a dog made of glass and of someone entering in the dark late at night and putting the dog into water. He cannot see who the person is. His image corresponds closely to the Carpathian Hound’s hidden location, but it does not identify the person who lowered it or establish that Sonny himself did so.

Narrative Role and Significance

Sonny connects two puzzles that might otherwise remain separate: the reported nocturnal appearances in Prentice’s apartment and the submerged sculpture in the pool. The story sets his ordinary night-work schedule beside the possibility of movement during sleep, then gives him a dream whose central image matches a concrete feature of the investigation. The effect is suggestive rather than conclusive. His account can be read as a clue to the Hound’s concealment, while its uncertainty preserves the distinction between dreaming of an act and performing it.

That ambiguity also shapes how the other characters interpret him. Prentice views Sonny through the narrow particulars of his name, work, and small apartment; Professor Eugenia Lantine sees a possible wanderer; Jupiter presses him for what he dreamed. Sonny offers no explanation of the strange appearances and cannot name the figure in his dream. He consequently remains less a solved culprit than a hinge in the mystery: an apparently unassuming tenant whose sleep, reported movements, and vision bring the investigators close to the truth without, in the evidence presented, making him the burglar.