The Dime Museum Murders

by Daniel Stashower

  The carriage pulled up beside us and I helped her inside. As I pulled the door closed she rapped on the roof with her parasol. The driver flicked the reins and we set off down Fifth Avenue.

  “As to these letters,” she continued, resuming the conversation where it had left off, “I am being courted by a gentleman from England just now.”

  “Lord Randall Wycliffe,” I said.

  She looked at me in surprise. “You seem to know a great deal about me, Mr. Hardeen. Did my father mention Randall to you?”

  I shook my head. “My brother isn’t the only clever one in the family,” I said.

  “I see. And do you know Lord Wycliffe?”

  “No.”

  “He comes from a stuffy old family with a big castle somewhere. A mansion, I suppose, not a castle. In any case it’s very old and it seems that his ancestors all fought in the War of the Roses or some such thing, and his family cares a great deal about appearances and propriety. When Randall began calling on me, my previous engagement to Mr. Wintour was considered a black mark against me. By his family, I should say. They would have preferred that I had spent my life to this point in a boarding school. Of course, Randall isn’t like that at all. He doesn’t care a hoot about my past. ‘What’s done is done,’ he says.”

  “Very wise,” I remarked.

  “Oh, yes. He has very modern views.”

  “I’m not sure I see your difficulty, then.”

  “His family has grave reservations about my suitability, Mr. Hardeen. And I’m afraid that when I became aware of these objections, I behaved foolishly. I wrote to Mr. Wintour to seek his advice. Several times.”

  “And Lord Wycliffe objected?”

  “He does not know.”

  “But surely if he is everything you say—”

  “I said some rather indiscreet things in these letters, Mr. Hardeen.”

  “Oh?”

  “Very indiscreet.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. So you see, Mr. Hardeen, when I heard that Mr. Wintour was dead—murdered, of all things—it placed me in a very uncomfortable position.” She began worrying at the fingers of one of her gloves. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”

  “A cigarette?”

  “Don’t look so shocked, Mr. Hardeen. you men seem to think that just because—”

  “Miss Hendricks,” I said, interrupting what promised to be a lengthy peroration, “a woman of my acquaintance not only smokes cigars but also dines on the stubs for the amusement of paying customers. The prospect of a young lady with a cigarette holds no terror for me.” I took out my little tin of Shearson’s and rolled a cigarette for each of us. She accepted a light and leaned back against the leather seat of the carriage, inhaling with evident satisfaction.

  “To return to the matter of the letters—” she began.

  “You are afraid that these letters will be discovered among Mr. Wintour’s effects.”

  “Just so.”

  “And if they were to be discovered?”

  “My engagement to Lord Wycliffe would surely be called off.”

  “That would be regrettable, of course,” I said. “But I’m not entirely certain how I can be of assistance in the matter.”

  “I want you to recover the letters for me, Mr. Hardeen.”

  I glanced at my reflection in the glass window at the side of the carriage. I did not appear to be a lunatic, but she had apparently mistaken me for one. “Well,” I began slowly, “that might present something of a problem. How do you propose I might go about it without rousing the suspicions of the police?”

  “I’m sure you and your brother could slip into Mr. Wintour’s study somehow. There must be a way. Whoever killed Mr. Wintour found a way. Your brother proved as much last night.”

  “Yes, but we don’t know how it was done.”

  She laid her hand on mine. “I’m sure you could manage it, Mr. Hardeen. I have such confidence in you.”

  I looked deep into her extraordinary blue-gray eyes and I saw only connivance. I knew that she was attempting to take advantage of me. I knew that she regarded me as a social inferior, and perhaps a witless dupe. I knew all of this and more, and yet I could not bring myself to turn away. She thought me capable of great cunning and bravery, and I did not wish to disabuse her of the notion. “How is it that the police did not find these letters the other night, Miss Hendricks?” I asked cautiously.

  She pulled her hand away. “Mr. Wintour always kept my letters in a special place. Pressed in the pages of a volume of poetry I once gave to him. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The sonnets. Do you know them, Mr. Hardeen?”

  “No,” I said, “but I’m well up on limericks involving commercial travelers.”

  She favored me with a winning smile. “I’m not sure if Mrs. Browning’s talents ran in that direction, but I invite you to judge for yourself. Mr. Wintour kept the volume on the lower shelf of the case nearest the fire. The binding is stamped in gold.”

  “Surely it is safe enough there? Mr. Wintour had thousands of books in his study. I find it unlikely that your letters will be discovered any time soon, if ever.”

  “I could not stand the uncertainty, Mr. Hardeen. I must know that the letters have been recovered and destroyed. It is the only way of putting my... my indiscretions behind me.”

  “Miss Hendricks, I really don’t know that I can—”

  “I’ll pay you, of course. Anything you like. Only you must not fail me.”

  “It is not a question of payment, I assure you. It is a matter of—”

  “If you fail me, Mr. Hardeen, my engagement to Lord Wycliffe will surely be broken. I doubt if my reputation would stand this a second time. Father would be crushed. Could you really stand by and allow this to happen?”

  I looked again into those expressive eyes. I should have liked to say many things. I might have told her, for instance, that I would have rejoiced to hear that her engagement to Lord Wycliffe had been broken. I might also have revealed that I planned one day to be a wealthy man, and headline an act that would tour all the major capitals of Europe. And I might even have added that I shared her fondness for the poems of Mrs. Browning, especially the one that began “How do I love thee?”

  I told her none of these things. Instead, I simply folded my arms and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  6

  THE KING OF KARDS

  “THAT WOMAN KILLED BRANFORD WINTOUR,” MY BROTHER SAID. “There can be no doubt.”

  “How do you figure that, Harry?” I asked.

  “Because she’s trying to get a gullible, love-struck young swain to cover her tracks,” he answered. “That would be you, Dash. She’s playing you for a fool.”

  “That thought had occurred to me, Harry,” I said. “But it doesn’t necessarily follow that she killed Mr. Wintour.”

  We were crowded behind the scenery flats at Huber’s Museum, where Harry and Bess still had two more rotations of the ten-in-one ahead of them. In between shows I filled Harry in on the Wintour funeral and my visit to the Hendricks mansion. My brother listened with keen attention, though the details of my encounter with Miss Katherine left him indignant.

  “Certainly she killed him,” Harry insisted. “What other explanation can there be?”

  “I can think of several,” I said, “including the one she gave.”

  “You believe that?” Harry scoffed. “She wrote this man an indiscreet letter in a moment of weakness and she needs us to recover it? Absurd! She wrote to arrange a secret meeting. Wintour gladly assented, hoping to renew their illicit acquaintance. Once inside the study, unobserved by anyone in the house, she killed him. Simple as that.”

  “How did she get out again? The room was locked from the inside, as you’ll recall.”

  Harry leaned in toward the mirror of his makeshift dressing table, dabbing at his eyebrows with a heavy pencil. “I haven’t worked that out yet,” he admitted. “But I will. Women are not to be trusted, not even the bes
t of them.”

  “What a perfectly horrible thing to say!” cried Bess, who had been listening intently while she repaired a hole in one of her ballet slippers.

  Harry turned to her and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry, my dear. It was a remark of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Mr. Holmes never married, I take it?”

  “Regrettably, no.” He turned away from the mirror as Miss Missy, the Armless Wonder, appeared nudging her little tea trolley before her. Of necessity, Missy supplemented her meager salary from Huber’s by selling tea and cakes outside the theater after each show. She never failed to attract a long line of customers, most of them drawn by the sheer novelty of a tea lady who gripped the dainty china handles of the pot and cups with her feet. When her customers had gone, Missy made the rounds of the other performers. With her cheery disposition and pleasing smile, Missy was one of the most winning women I’ve ever known. She also happened to brew the worst tea in New York, but she needed the extra pennies so badly that no one ever had the heart to refuse a cup.

  “I have a little trouble picturing Miss Hendricks as the murderer,” I said, watching as Missy poured out three cups of tea. “In the first place—yes, Missy, I’ll take milk. Lots of it. In the first place, I’m hard pressed to see a motive for such a thing.” I reached over for my cup. “Furthermore, if she did kill him, she would have been perfectly able to remove the incriminating letters herself. Yes, Missy. Delicious, as always.”

  “Perhaps she was interrupted before she had a chance to recover the letters,” Harry said.

  “It’s possible,” I admitted, “but it hardly seems likely.”

  “I think that we should speak with this Lord Randall Wycliffe,” Harry said. “Perhaps Miss Hendricks is trying to shield him. Perhaps he’s a jealous type, and Miss Hendricks had written to warn Mr. Wintour. That would incriminate him if the letters were discovered. Lord Wycliffe could well be the true murderer.”

  “Harry, according to you, half of New York is under suspicion.”

  “I still think we should speak with him.”

  “What’s the point? After tonight, you and I are no longer in the detective business. Remember our agreement? We’ll go to the Toy Emporium this evening to see if Mr. Harrington appears. After that, we’re done.”

  “But until then, you have agreed to help me gather information, have you not?”

  “I agreed to see Biggs,” I said. “I even checked out the lay of the land with Hendricks and his daughter. But I’m not about to—”

  “Only until this evening,” he said, cutting me off. “After the last show, we shall call on the young aristocrat.” He stood up and started off toward the performance platform. “But first, my public awaits.”

  “Tell me again how we’re going to get into the Cairo Club, Harry?”

  “It is a gambling club, and I am the King of Kards. What could be simpler?”

  “I see. Wouldn’t it be easier to call on Lord Wycliffe at his hotel? I believe he’s taken a suite at the Belgrave.”

  “No, we must not put him on his guard. That is why I asked young Jack Hawkins to shadow his movements. A messenger boy attracts very little attention, but he sees a great deal. Jack tells me that Lord Wycliffe departed for the Cairo less than an hour ago. We have the opportunity to observe him going about his business, unaware that he has come under the watchful eye of the Great Houdini.”

  “But we’re not members of the Cairo. It’s rather exclusive.”

  “Something will present itself. We must be prepared to seize our opportunity when it comes.”

  “Harry—”

  “Trust me, Dash. As you say, it will all be over after this evening.”

  We were standing in the kitchen of the apartment on Sixty-ninth Street, and we were wearing nothing but our undergarments. After the last show, Harry and I had taken Bess back home and wolfed down a couple of bowls of borscht with brown bread. Then Harry led me into the back room where our old costume trunk was stored. After a fair bit of rummaging, he located the old tailcoats we used to wear as the Brothers Houdini. We would need our evening clothes, he explained, in order to present ourselves as a pair of young gadabouts seeking diversion in one of the swankier gambling establishments. I looked at our wrinkled old costumes, with their worn knees and shiny elbows, and doubted that anyone would mistake us for young gadabouts. My impressions were confirmed by our mother, who refused to let us out of the house in such shabby-looking garments. She insisted on touching up the old costumes with a hot iron, which left us standing in front of the kitchen fire in our linen, waiting for her to finish her ministrations.

  “Uh, Harry,” I said, “have you ever been to the Cairo?”

  “Of course not. It is a club where men go to smoke and gamble. I do neither. Why should I go there?”

  “Actually, Harry, it’s a place where men do many other things in addition to smoking and gambling, and I just sort of thought it might not be the ideal setting for an encounter with young Lord Wycliffe.”

  “Ah! I see what you mean!” He tapped his forehead with an index finger. “There is drinking, as well! That might possibly work to our advantage!”

  “That’s not precisely what I meant, Harry. Some of the men who go to the Cairo are looking for—” I broke off as Bess wandered into the kitchen. “Er, Bess, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind—?”

  “Come, now, Dash,” she laughed. “I’ve seen a man in his underthings before.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “For goodness sakes, Dash. Harry thinks nothing of stripping down to a loin cloth when he does a bridge leap—”

  “It is a swimming costume,” Harry interjected, quietly.

  “—but you’re embarrassed to be seen in your long-drawers. Sometimes I wonder how the two of you came to be in the same family.”

  “But I was only—”

  She put her finger to my lips to silence me. “Harry,” she said, “I think what Dash is trying to tell you is that the Cairo caters to a certain class of young men who are not quite as virtuous as you are.”

  “So I hear!” he said excitedly. “They drink and smoke and gamble!” He gave a knowing wink.

  “Well, Harry,” Bess said carefully, “it is possible that there may also—,” she caught herself as Mother appeared with our trousers.

  “Mama,” said Harry, “we are going to an illicit nightclub! Can you imagine?”

  “That’s nice, Ehrich,” Mother said.

  Bess leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Keep an eye on him, will you, Dash?”

  “I always do,” I answered.

  “Besides,” Harry continued, “we are not due at Mr. Graff’s shop for another three hours. If I don’t keep you on your feet, you’ll fall asleep in front of the fire.”

  “Which sounds like a very attractive notion to me,” I answered. “What possible reason could this Mr. Harrington have had for insisting on such a late meeting?”

  “Mr. Graff assured us that this was not so unusual. Possibly Mr. Harrington is on the run from the law. The automaton may have been stolen from its rightful owner.”

  “Perhaps,” said Bess, “but if Le Fantôme was stolen, Lieutenant Murray would have known of it.”

  “Not necessarily. It would almost certainly have come from a collection in Europe. That would surely fall outside of Lieutenant Murray’s jurisdiction.”

  “At least Lieutenant Murray has a jurisdiction, Harry,” I said. “We’re just busy-bodies.”

  “No imagination, Dash. It is your greatest failing.” He turned away and pulled on his trousers.

  Moments later, the Brothers Houdini descended to street level. Resplendent in our rabbit-scented tailcoats and top hats, we headed toward the night club district on foot to conserve what little cash we had between us. As Harry had promised, an opportunity to get inside the Cairo presented itself almost immediately. We arrived just as two carriages drew up at the entrance, disgorging a large group of high-spirited young men. Seizing our chance,
we darted between the two carriages and mixed in with the herd, so that we were swept along into the main parlor of the club without anyone taking note of our shabby clothes or empty wallets.

  Inside, Harry and I took up a position beside an enormous potted palm. Before us stretched a vast billiards room with a row of four green baize gaming tables beyond. Young women circulated with trays of clear effervescent liquid which I knew to be champagne, although I had never seen this exotic wine before. The ladies who carried these trays, I could not help but notice, were dressed in an arresting form of dishabille. After a moment, one of these fascinating creatures made her way towards us.

  “May I offer you gentlemen a beverage?” she asked.

  “Thank you, no,” said Harry, frantically averting his eyes. “Alcohol is detrimental to the careful balance of the bodily humors.”

  “He means he doesn’t drink,” I said, trying to be helpful.

  “What about a cigar, then?” she asked.

  “Tobacco is also forbidden if one wishes to preserve the vital forces,” Harry told the potted palm.

  “You?” she said to me. “Worried about your vital forces?”

  I tugged at the lining of my pockets to signal that I had no money.

  “Call me if you change your minds,” she said, turning away.

  “My God, Dash!” Harry cried. “These women are barely dressed!”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I said.

  “What sort of place is this?” he asked, genuinely confused.

  “It’s the sort of place where men go when they desire the society of ladies. I tried to tell you this earlier.”

  “The society of ladies? Would it not be better to remain at home? When I desire the society of—oh.” His mouth contracted into a tight, open circle as the realization hit. “Oh,” he said again.

  “Harry, take a breath. Your face is bright red.”

  “We should leave this place.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “After all, it is hardly the sort of place where one is likely to find an English lord!”

  “He’s right over there.”