The Dime Museum Murders

by Daniel Stashower

  “What?”

  I pointed to the nearest of the green baize gaming tables, where Lord Randall Wycliffe, seventh earl of Pently-on-Horlake, was enjoying a hand of cards. He had a cigar clipped between the fingers of his left hand, and a glass of whiskey within easy reach. He did not seem at all troubled by any absence of aristocratic decorum.

  “His lordship is younger than I imagined,” Harry said.

  “I know what you mean,” I agreed. “He should have white hair and mutton chop whiskers. Maybe a cavalry sword.”

  We edged closer. The game was poker—five-card Betty— and his lordship appeared to be winning, judging by the tall stacks of blue and red wooden chips in front of him. Two older players sat scowling across the table at him, and a large knot of onlookers had gathered to see the handsome young foreigner relieve them of their money.

  Harry and I stood and watched for a time. I’m no stranger to the game of poker, and it was clear that all three men were experienced players. The older men played a solid but conservative game—nursing a pair or three-of-a-kind, drawing two or three cards and hoping for the best. Lord Wycliffe, who played a riskier and more aggressive game, appeared to be toying with them. At the finish of each hand, when the bets were made, he would gaze across the table and sigh heavily, as if filled with regret over the failings of two particularly dim-witted pupils. Then he would lay down his hand to show a straight or a full house. “One has to take chances in this game,” he said more than once. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Dash,” Harry whispered, “he’s cheating.”

  “You spotted that, did you?”

  “Is it not obvious? Does no one else see what’s going on?”

  “Harry, nobody here knows what to look for.”

  “It seems perfectly obvious to me. I can hardly believe that anyone with a pair of eyes and a brain could allow himself to be taken by so craven a manipulation. One day I really must write up a book on this subject. Or a trifling monograph, at the very least.”

  “‘How to Cheat at Cards’?”

  “Something of that nature. If I may warn the unwary and deter the youth of this land from the fascinations of the green cloth, I shall feel that my efforts have not been in vain.” He turned his attention back to Lord Wycliffe. “He’s not even very good at it!” he said indignantly. “With a few simple lessons I could have improved his technique many times over.”

  “It seems good enough. He’s making a pile.”

  “The Right Way to Do Wrong.”

  “What?

  “The title of my book. The Right Way to Do Wrong.”

  “Catchy.”

  We looked on as Lord Wycliffe won another hand and swept in his chips. A murmur of appreciation rose from the onlookers. A sallow blonde in a green satin concoction had now attached herself to his lordship, squeezing his arm and sending up a delighted laugh with each win.

  “What shall we do?” Harry whispered. “We can’t very well make an open accusation! He might take offense!”

  “So?”

  “Well, he might demand satisfaction!”

  “A duel, you mean?” I turned and looked at the young Englishman, who was appraising the girl in green as though she might be a race horse. “He doesn’t strike me as the type to go in for pistols at dawn. Harry, I have an idea.”

  “Yes?”

  “You wanted to stay alert for whatever opportunity presented itself. We’ve been handed one on a platter. When I give you the signal, I want you to strip off your tailcoat and start doing those ridiculous ‘muscular expansionism’ exercises of yours. All right?”

  “My exercises? But—”

  “Just this once, Harry, follow my lead and do exactly as I say. When I give you the nod, go into the routine.”

  He continued to grumble through five more rounds of play, but I managed to ignore him. Lord Wycliffe, I noticed, was beginning to get cocky. Up to this point he had allowed himself to lose a hand occasionally, just to keep his marks hooked, but with his new blond friend at his side, he began to take every hand. At the finish of each game he would smirk and say, “Sorry, chaps,” which was a phrase I had never before encountered outside of a penny dreadful.

  After about half an hour, Lord Wycliffe’s opponents threw down their cards and declared themselves finished for the evening. “Anyone else?” asked the young Englishman, glancing at the crowd of onlookers. “The evening is young yet, surely.” Seeing that there would be no takers, he stood up and began to gather his chips.

  I seized the moment. Pushing forward as the rest of the crowd dispersed, I appeared suddenly at his elbow. “Well played, your lordship,” I said, as though he and I had met before. “May we assist you in cashing in your winnings?”

  “Kind of you,” he said.

  “Not at all.” I swept the chips into my top hat. “If you’ll just follow me?”

  “You see, I’m rather busy just now,” he said, slipping an arm around the waist of the girl in green. “May I collect them at a more convenient time?”

  “I see no difficulty,” I answered. “If you’ll just step over to the cashier’s window, I’ll give you a receipt.”

  “But—”

  “It won’t take but a moment.”

  He whispered into the ear of his young companion and slipped something into her hand. “Very well,” he said to me. “Let’s be quick about it.”

  With Harry trailing behind, I led Lord Wycliffe out of the main parlor and through a smaller room where a team of bartenders was busily mixing cocktails. “Where are we going?” Lord Wycliffe asked. “I’ve never been back this way before.”

  Neither had I, but there was no reason for him to know this. “We’ll need to open the safe,” I said. “We don’t ordinarily keep such large reserves of cash out on the main floor.”

  “But I told you I only wanted a receipt.”

  “I’ll need to verify that we have the cash on hand. Bear with us, sir.” I found a heavy Dutch door and pulled it open. Behind it lay a flight of bare wooden steps leading down into a cellar. “Follow me, sir,” I said, heading down the stairs. Harry brought up the rear.

  At the bottom of the stairs we found ourselves standing on the dirt floor of a large wine cellar. “This can’t be right,” Lord Wycliffe said. “What are we doing here?”

  I nodded at Harry. He shrugged, peeled off his tailcoat, and laid it neatly across a wooden wine bin.

  “Just a few questions, if you’d be so kind, your lordship. We must take precautions when a player enjoys such a remarkable run of luck.”

  “But what are we doing in the wine cellar?”

  “A simple precaution. To avoid any possible embarrassment.”

  Harry took two quick intakes of breath, rather in the manner of a snorting bull. Then he pressed his fists together at his chest and flexed his muscles, so that his arms and torso bulged alarmingly.

  “I don’t know just what you mean,” said Lord Wycliffe, glancing anxiously at my brother’s peculiar display. “Say, what’s he on about?”

  Harry gave two more bull-snorts and cocked his fists at shoulder level. His arm muscles pulsed and throbbed beneath the fabric of his shirt.

  “We don’t often see a player of your caliber here in New York,” I said, ignoring my brother’s posturing. “It’s fortunate that you don’t pass this way often.”

  “Yes, well.” Lord Wycliffe’s eyes shifted nervously from Harry to me. “I had a bit of luck, is all.”

  “Luck? you do yourself an injustice, sir.”

  “Look, I really don’t know what you’re suggesting. Are you going to give me a receipt, or—?”

  “Hot down here, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Hot. Stuffy. Unseasonable.”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure I—”

  “Better take off your coat, sir.”

  His eyes locked on mine. Harry, meanwhile, had dropped into an awkward squat and had his arms flexed over his head. “I think perhaps I’d best
get back upstairs,” said his lordship.

  “If we could just ask you to take off your coat, sir,” I repeated.

  “I don’t—I don’t—,” he glanced at Harry, who had begun to make a strange bovine sound, as if he might throw a calf. Lord Wycliffe looked back at me. “This is intolerable.”

  “The coat.”

  His shoulders sagged. “Oh, all right.” He began to peel off his jacket. “I don’t know how you spotted it.”

  The hold-out was a masterly construction of wood and leather webbing, with straps and buckles at the elbow and wrist. A flexible trident-style clip ran along the inner forearm and a circle of leather was cinched tightly around the chest. When the cards were held normally, with the elbow bent, the trident clip remained flush with the cuff of the jacket. Whenever the player gave a long deep breath—sighing over an opponent’s misfortune, for instance—the clip extended six inches forward, delivering one or two fresh playing cards into the player’s cupped palm. At the same time, any inconveniently low cards could be whisked away. A card worker like my brother, who could cause an entire pack to appear and disappear at his fingertips, could perform simple switches of that sort with his bare hands. For anyone who didn’t happen to be a “King of Kards,” however, a wooden hold-out was the next best thing.

  “That’s a beauty,” I told Lord Wycliffe. “Who did it? Anderson’s?”

  “A firm in London,” he answered, dejectedly.

  “How much do you owe, your lordship?”

  “You mean here? Or in toto?”

  “Just here.”

  “Quite a lot. Upwards of three hundred dollars.”

  Harry’s eyes widened, but he continued with his regimen, which had now broadened to include some very energetic leg-stretching.

  “Your winnings tonight would have just about cancelled that out.”

  “Nearly. What will happen to me now?”

  “That depends on you. The management doesn’t have to know about this unfortunate development.”

  His eyes brightened. “You’re not with the Cairo? But I thought—”

  I shook my head.

  “I—I can pay you,” he said quickly. “Let me cash in the winnings and I’ll do right by you. you have my word.”

  I shook my head again. “We’re going to ask you some questions. you will answer them truthfully.”

  He drew back, and his eyes seemed to grow hooded. “Questions? What do you mean?”

  “I understand that you are engaged to Miss Katherine Hendricks,” I said.

  “What’s that to do with anything?” he snapped.

  “Her father is very wealthy.”

  “I am aware of that,” he said stiffly.

  “How do you suppose he would react if he knew that his future son-in-law was gambling away Miss Hendricks’s dowry in a flop house?”

  “Are you threatening me? Is this to be blackmail?”

  “We’ll discuss that in a moment. As I said, we wish to ask you a few questions.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “We’ll pay a call on Mr. Hendricks.”

  “Damn it!” he cried. “Damn it all to hell!”

  “Your lordship,” said Harry, without pausing in his exertions, “I will thank you to watch your language.”

  Lord Wycliffe’s eyes moved from Harry to me and back again. “Common thugs, that’s what you are,” he said. “Look at you. With your hair tonic and your bad shoes. I don’t know what sort of dodge you’re trying to put over on me, but I’m putting a stop to it right now. Pay a call on Michael Hendricks? The pair of you? You’d never get past the door.”

  I stepped up close and held his gaze for a moment. “Mr. Hendricks was right,” I said. “You are a pompous ass.”

  He backed up half a step. “You’ve never met Michael Hendricks in your life,” he said.

  “When was it that your name was raised?” I asked myself. “When he showed me his new locomotive, the Minotaur? Or was it when Becking appeared with the humidor? Funny, I really can’t recall. Of course, we’d both had quite a bit of Walker’s by that stage.”

  Lord Wycliffe pressed his lips together. “You’re a detective of some sort, is that it? The old man hired you to check up on me.”

  I would have preferred to let the assertion go unanswered, but Harry couldn’t help himself. “Yes, Lord Wycliffe,” he said proudly. “We are amateur sleuths.”

  “Be that as it may,” I said quickly, “would you be so good as to tell us when you last saw Branford Wintour?”

  “Wintour! Is that what this is about?”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Why, I’ve never met the man! Wintour was something of a hermit, I understand. Rarely came out of that whacking great pile of his.”

  “You’re aware of the past relationship between Mr. Wintour and Miss Hendricks?”

  His eyes flared for an instant. “Water over the dam,” he said coldly.

  “Has your fiancée had any contact with Mr. Wintour since their engagement was broken?”

  “None whatever.”

  Harry opened his mouth to speak, but I held up a warning finger.

  “Can you account for your whereabouts last night?” I continued.

  “My whereabouts? See here, I’m not obliged to answer any more of these questions.” He took out a heavy gold watch and made an elaborate show of consulting the time. “I have half a mind to—”

  “Harry.”

  My brother straightened up and took a step towards his lordship. That was all it took. The young man skittered backward three steps and raised his arms as if fending off a blow. “All right!” he cried.

  “Where were you last night?” I repeated.

  He gave a resigned shrug. “I was here, actually. And I lost rather a lot, in case you might like to know.”

  “Can you produce witnesses to that effect?”

  “I should prefer not to,” he said. “I was—you see, I wasn’t gambling the entire time, if you take my meaning.”

  “But I take it you weren’t alone, either?”

  “No.”

  “For the entire evening?”

  “That is correct.”

  “And where were you before you arrived here?”

  “I was having tea with Miss Hendricks and her mother.”

  “I see.” I took a moment to study his face and found myself wanting to mash it like a turnip.

  Lord Wycliffe brushed his lapels and tugged at his cuffs. “if there’s nothing else, gentlemen?”

  I decided to play my ace. “So tell me, Lord Wycliffe, however did you acquire Le Fantôme?”

  I have to give the man credit. He barely flinched. He blinked twice, but that was about it. His upper lip remained as stiff as one could wish.

  “I think perhaps we should repair to a quieter room,” he said as a wine steward appeared on the wooden steps. “If you’ll follow me?”

  “Dash,” Harry whispered, as we followed him up the steps. “How did you know? This is extraordinary!”

  “His watch, Harry. It’s from Blois.”

  “Robert-Houdin’s home town. I see. But that did not necessarily mean that Lord Wycliffe was the owner of Le Fantôme.”

  “No, but I figured it was worth a shot.”

  “Is he the killer? Should we apprehend him?”

  “His story seems pretty solid, Harry. But let’s see what we can get out of him.”

  “Extraordinary.” Harry shook his head as we weaved through the crowded gaming parlor. “I saw, but I did not observe.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It is nothing.”

  Lord Wycliffe led us up the main staircase to the second floor of the house. We passed down a central corridor and hooked left into a narrow sitting area. He seemed to know his way around, I noticed. He knocked on a closed door and, receiving no answer, turned the handle. “This way, gentlemen,” he said. “We’ll have a bit of privacy.”

  It was a small room, papered in wide stripes of a violet
hue. A bed with a tall wooden headboard was the central feature of the room, with two chairs and a small dressing table arranged alongside. A beaded floor lamp provided the only illumination.

  Harry and I each took a chair, leaving Lord Wycliffe to perch awkwardly on the edge of the bed. He folded his hands across one knee and spent a moment with his eyes closed, chin sunk onto his chest, before speaking again.

  “I did not kill Branford Wintour,” he said at last.

  “And yet,” I said, “you’ve been at great pains to conceal the fact that you are the man trying to sell Le Fantôme, the device that the police believe to be the murder weapon.”

  “The automaton didn’t kill Wintour! The very idea is absurd!”

  “Patently absurd!” Harry blurted out. “Why, the very notion is—”

  “What we believe is not at issue,” I said.

  “I wasn’t even there last night!” Lord Wycliffe insisted.

  “No, but when you saw the newspapers this morning, you should have come forward.”

  His shoulders sagged. He pulled a gold case from his breast pocket and offered us a Turkish cigarette. They looked very inviting, but up to that point I had managed to conceal my smoking habits from my brother, so I waved them away.

  “Can you blame me for keeping silent?” he asked, lighting a cigarette for himself. “I’m in an impossible situation. It was necessary to keep the transaction silent from the beginning. I couldn’t let Michael Hendricks know about my—my financial difficulties. And I promised Katherine I wouldn’t gamble anymore. I simply—well, I thought it best if I could just sell off a few trinkets, settle my debts, and start fresh. Now, with Wintour’s death, I’m in a hell of a position. Before I was merely a scoundrel. Now I’m thrown into a murder. It’s impossible.” He gave a heavy sigh, sending a rich and inviting cloud of cigarette smoke in my direction.

  “I’m afraid we don’t understand your impossible situation,” I said. “How did you come to be in possession of Le Fantôme?”

  “My family, of course,” he said airily. “You know the sort of thing. My mother was French, and we had a good deal in the way of French watches, mantel clocks—that sort of thing. Terribly good workmanship. I rather took it all for granted when I was growing up.”

  “All from Blois?”