World's Greatest Sleuth!

by Steve Hockensmith

  I caught up to Old Red in the hallway with my speech all ready in my head. It was about Our Big Chance and How Far We’d Come and Not Giving Up … and Diana Corvus. I think it would’ve proved quite inspiring, if I’d only had the chance to give it.

  “Don’t bother,” Gustav said before I even opened my mouth. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  “Oh?” I pointed down at our feet. “Then why are they still movin’?”

  Old Red looked over his shoulder. When he was satisfied Smythe wasn’t stealing a peek out of the office, he stopped.

  “I ain’t some bootlicker that big milksop can push around,” he said. “Hopefully, he knows that now.”

  “Trust me: No one’s gonna mistake you for a bootlicker. A madman, maybe, but not a bootlicker. Anyway, you’ve made your point, so now you can come on back and do as Smythe asks with your precious pride intact.”

  “What? Let the man play dress-up with me like I was a damn paper doll?”

  My brother looked down as if he meant to spit, but the sight of the gleaming clean marble floor stopped him.

  “Feh,” he said instead.

  “Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll smooth things over without any help from you. Like always. You just be here when it’s time for … whatever the hell comes next.”

  As I turned to go, I noticed a short, chubby-cheeked fellow eyeing us from farther down the hallway. He was dressed with grand formality, in black frock coat and top hat and spats, and he kept his gaze glued to me so firmly I felt the need to tip my bowler to him before striding back into Smythe’s impromptu tailor shop.

  “Everything’s alright,” I informed a huffing, puffing, pacing Smythe. “I talked some sense into him.”

  “So he’s coming back to put on his costume?”

  “Oh, I think it’d be best if he outfitted himself today.”

  And before Smythe could get to gnashing his teeth again, I bit the bullet. Chomped down hard on a cannonball, really.

  I swiped the red Stetson off the desk and plopped it atop my head.

  Unfortunately, it fit.

  “Unlike my brother,” I said, reaching for a pair of white trousers, “I ain’t too big for my britches.”

  Smythe kept on fretting and fuming at first, but the more I got myself looking like a candy cane, the more he calmed down. I even managed to get the lay of the land from him at last.

  The competition was to kick off at noon with a ceremony in the White City’s much ballyhooed Court of Honor. All the contenders would be present, and the contest judge—William Pinkerton, eldest of Allan Pinkerton’s heirs and head of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency’s Chicago office—would preside.

  “Pinkerton ain’t gonna compete himself?” I managed to ask as I buckled on my chaps.

  “No,” Smythe said.

  “But he’ll have a man in the ring for him, right?”

  “No.”

  “You mean you’re havin’ a World’s Greatest Sleuth competition without a contestant from the world’s biggest detective agency?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm,” I said, inviting elucidation.

  Which Smythe did not provide.

  So I tried again.

  “Hmmmmmmm.”

  “It couldn’t be helped!” Smythe cried. “Pinkerton wanted to keep his precious agency ‘above the fray.’ He was willing to act as judge, however, and he oversaw the creation of the contest rules.”

  “Oh ho! I’ve been wonderin’ about that. What are the rules, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. Pinkerton wouldn’t tell us. Real detectives don’t get a rulebook to play by, he says.”

  “Sounds like Mr. Pinkerton don’t think the rest of us are real detectives.”

  Smythe said nothing.

  I’d used up my daily allotment of “Hmmmmms”—not to mention all our time—so I let the matter drop.

  The first step toward the door was the hardest. I don’t just mean that metaphorical-like, either. My boots, chaps, holster, and vest were new-leather stiff, and I couldn’t so much walk as waddle. It chafed something fierce, too, and before I was even in the hallway I was already aching in the places a man least likes to ache.

  “Who is that your brother’s talking to?” Smythe asked.

  I pivoted stiffly on one heel to square myself the way he was facing. Old Red was far off down the hall, in what looked to be a broad, open lobby. With him was the little round-faced gent I’d seen staring at us earlier.

  I tried to shrug, but my vest was hard as armor and my shoulders wouldn’t budge.

  “I got no idea,” I said.

  I began wobble-walking toward Gustav, the leather of my costume squeaking so loud it sounded like I was crushing a mouse with every footfall. My brother and his new pal turned to watch me approach with pop-eyed stares that did not bode well for my impending debut before the public at large. As I drew up close, however, the squat stranger’s expression changed, his disbelief displaced by a grin so wide it would’ve looked right at home on a jack-o’-lantern.

  “Otto Amlingmeyer!” he blared with an enthusiasm usually reserved for cries of “Land ho!” or “Gold!” “I am a great admirer of yours, young man!”

  “You don’t say. I didn’t know I had any, other than me.”

  The man laughed so hard I worried he might rupture something.

  “Priceless! You and your brother—you’re exactly like in your stories!” He looked me up and down and cocked an eyebrow. “Well, maybe not exactly.”

  “You’ve read my stories?” I marveled. Though Smythe had purchased several yarns from me, I’d only seen two in print—and one of them little more than five minutes before. I could hardly believe anyone else had ever laid eyes on the things. Yet the little fellow nodded with such vigor his top hat nearly flew off.

  “Read them and loved them! The stories themselves, anyway. The magazines they appeared in, on the other hand…”

  Smythe had followed behind me, and the little man glared at him, his delight giving way to disdain.

  “Really, sir,” he said. “You finally have some material of integrity and quality, and what do you do with it? I mean, egad—‘Buckaroo Sleuths of Rustler’s Ranch’? It’s like something dreamed up by a six-year-old. I can’t imagine that was the original title.”

  He glanced at me for confirmation.

  He was right, of course: I’d titled the tale “Holmes on the Range.” Not worthy of Shakespeare, maybe, but hopefully a notch above what a six-year-old could manage.

  Still, I played it safe and just shrugged.

  “And those covers!” the man went on, railing at Smythe again. “They make these fine young men look like something from under Barnum & Bailey’s big top.”

  “Publishing, sir, is not the stuff of literary salons and poetry journals,” Smythe harrumphed back. “Capturing the fancy of the reading public requires boldness and verve and…” He stopped himself and straightened up to his full height. “Who the devil are you, anyway?”

  “We already know each other, actually.” The stranger offered Smythe his hand. “Armstrong B. Curtis, Esquire.”

  Smythe actually gasped, then tried to turn it into an innocent cough.

  The handshake was over fast.

  “What brings you to Chicago, Mr. Curtis?” Smythe asked stiffly.

  Curtis gave him a coy shrug. “Just wrapping up some unfinished business. Speaking of which, I really should be going. Big Red.” He took his leave of me with a friendly nod, then turned toward my brother. “Old Red. May I say what a pleasure it was chatting with you. Best of luck.”

  “Thank you, sir. I enjoyed our little talk, too,” Gustav said. “I hope we’ll be seein’ more of you.”

  Curtis’s smile went so wide I could hardly believe one face could contain it. When he turned to go, I almost expected him to leave it hovering in the air behind him like Mr. Carroll’s Cheshire cat.

  Gustav and I both turned to Smythe, our quizzical stares saying in unison, “Well…?”r />
  “The man’s a fanatic,” Smythe told us, voice atremble. “I just hope he’s not here to disrupt the contest somehow.”

  “Why would he do that?” I asked.

  “Cuz of how he feels about Mr. Holmes,” my brother said. “That’s what you meant when you called him a fanatic, am I right?”

  Smythe nodded. “He’s turned Sherlock Holmes into a sort of god. In his eyes, every other magazine detective’s a fraud. A false idol for him to tear down. And the little crank doesn’t keep his opinions to himself.”

  “Sounds like someone else I know,” I said.

  Old Red scowled at me.

  “What did Curtis want with you?” Smythe asked him.

  “Just to talk. He asked if I was me, shook my hand, then started in about the Man. Really knew his stuff, too. Quoted Holmes, talked about the Method, compared my brother’s stories to John Watson’s. Every now and then he’d go all forgetful, though. Need me to remind him of this or that. Almost like he was testin’ me.”

  Down at the end of the hallway, Curtis passed another Guardsman and pushed through more ornate glass doors. The blast of a brass band echoed in from somewhere just outside.

  “I’m sure he was testing you,” Smythe said. “He wrote the Nick Carter exposé.”

  “The Nick Carter what, now?” Gustav asked, his face puckering up as it would whenever Carter came up. To him, the man’s always been “Blockhead Numero Uno”—undoubtedly the most famous magazine detective, aside from Holmes, but (according to my brother) the dimmest as well.

  “The article about him,” Smythe said. “In Scribner’s Magazine. The one that caused all the uproar.”

  “We ain’t heard about no uproar.”

  Smythe gaped at my brother, then at me. “You mean you really don’t know? I can’t believe you haven’t read of it. I mean … why do you think I wanted you here today?”

  I peeked down at my new duds. “You have a sick sense of humor?”

  “Nick Carter doesn’t exist!” Smythe said. “Curtis proved it!”

  “Doesn’t exist? So there ain’t really no Nick Carter?”

  “That’s generally what ‘doesn’t exist’ means,” Gustav sniped. Somehow, he seemed utterly unsurprised to learn that Blockhead Numero Uno was, in truth, nada. “Curtis proved it how?” he asked Smythe.

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter now.”

  Smythe pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time. From the look of profound gloom that came over his face, you’d have thought it was the Hour of Judgment. And in a way, I guess it was.

  “The important thing is you’re going to walk outside with me and prove to all the world how real you are.”

  Smythe snapped his watch shut and started for the doors Curtis had just passed through. Gustav and I reluctantly followed.

  “You ready to be famous?”

  “I am ready,” my brother said, “to smack you upside the head for gettin’ us into this.”

  “Just grit your teeth and think of Miss Corvus and you’ll be fine. We get through this, she’ll have us on Colonel Crowe’s payroll for sure.”

  “I’d rather just give you that smack.”

  It was nerves talking, I knew, so I didn’t sass Old Red back. Even if we’d fallen into our usual bickering, though, it couldn’t have lasted long: Once we walked out into the Court of Honor, neither of us had the breath left for anything but gasps.

  Stretching out before us was a long lagoon, so large you might’ve called it a lake if it hadn’t been dwarfed by the infinite blue of Lake Michigan beyond it. Huge statues jutted up out of the water—naked women, flute-playing children, men riding rearing fish-horses, an entire life-sized barge—while fountains shot foamy-white arcs high into the sky.

  To the right of the lagoon was a long, stately, bepillared building as big as anything we’d yet seen. You had to pity it, though, grand as it was, for to the left was a structure so vast it could swallow the other whole and a half dozen like it. It stretched on so far you couldn’t see the end of it. You couldn’t even be sure there was an end to it.

  There was much more I didn’t have the presence of mind to note beyond hazy impressions: What are all those columns down there and how do the boats in that big pond move so fast with no one rowing and is that actually a statue of a cow over yonder? I couldn’t pause to think any of it through, not with a uniformed band nearby hammering away at “The Liberty Bell March” for a throng hundreds strong—a good portion of it staring at us.

  Old Red grabbed hold of my arm and muttered something I couldn’t quite hear.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said, ‘Holy shit!’ ” my brother bellowed just as the band went pianissimo for a piccolo solo.

  I can’t say the entire crowd turned to stare at us. It sure felt like it, though.

  “Look!” a man shouted, pointing at me. “It’s Buffalo Bill Cody!”

  “Naw, that ain’t him!” someone hollered back.

  “Yes, it is!”

  “No, it isn’t!” another man joined in. “That’s Annie Oakley!”

  At last, there was agreement.

  Everyone laughed.

  “Come come come!” Smythe prodded us, head slick with sweat. He waved at a gazebo bandstand about fifty yards away, and when I looked at it I saw a cluster of frock-coated dignitary-types up there looking back at us. “They’re waiting!”

  Gustav was still clutching on to my arm as we started for the bandstand, and I heard a woman nearby hiss-whisper, “Oh, my … the little one’s blind.”

  “Must’ve stared too long at the big one’s clothes,” some wag replied, and there was more laughter.

  Old Red let go of me and marched on with as much dignity as he could muster. I tried to follow suit, but mustering dignity’s not easy when walking in chaps so starchy-stiff you can’t bend at the knee, and I ended up lumbering along with all the easy grace of the town drunk on Saturday night.

  When we reached the stairs up to the bandstand, a pair of Columbian Guards parted to let us pass. A big, bluff, bushy-mustached man met us at the top of the steps.

  “So, Smythe,” he said, looking me and my brother over like we were something even the most indiscriminating cat wouldn’t have bothered dragging in, “your new champions made it.”

  “Yes, yes. Here they are, Mr. Pinkerton. Otto and Gustav—”

  “Amlingmeyer” turned into a strangled wheeze halfway out of Smythe’s mouth.

  Mr. Pinkerton—Mr. William Pinkerton of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency—hadn’t waited for Smythe to finish.

  “Alright,” he said, turning away, obviously addressing himself to someone else. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Just beyond the man, till then hidden behind his bulk, was a toothy grin so big it seemed to just float there in the air. It was pointed our way … and standing behind it was Armstrong B. Curtis.

  “Awwww, hell,” Old Red said.

  He wasn’t even looking at Curtis, though. He was eyeing the folks clustered up at the back of the bandstand—our competition, I presumed. Among them was a dark-haired beauty cut from the same lovely cloth as Diana Corvus, and beside her was a little gent who looked for all the world like her employer, Col. C. Kermit Crowe. It took but a blink for me to realize why the resemblances were so striking.

  It was them.

  5

  PALPITATIONS

  Or, The Contest Kicks Off with Another Kick in the Pants

  “I think I’m palpitating … I think I’m palpitating,” Smythe puffed, pressing both hands to his heaving chest as he gaped at Armstrong B. Curtis.

  “You have got to be kiddin’,” said I, widening my eyes to a size approximate to a pair of dinner plates as I gawped at Diana and Colonel Crowe.

  This left it to my brother to provide calming comfort, which he did in his usual gentle, compassionate fashion.

  “Get a move on, ya idjits,” he snapped, grabbing both me and Smythe by the arm and jerking us away. “This is bad enough witho
ut you two just standin’ around starin’ like a couple heifers chewin’ cud.”

  As Old Red dragged us toward the clump of ladies and gents huddled at the back of the gazebo, a slick-dressed, fiftyish fellow separated himself from the pack and sidled up to Smythe.

  “It was a shock to me, too,” he said, voice low. “Curtis. Up here. With Pinkerton. I don’t know what they’re up to, Urias, but I can tell you this much: We’ve been stabbed in the back.”

  Smythe was whimpering when the man slithered away again.

  Though Curtis was too far away to have overheard the conversation, it was obvious he knew what it was about—and found it rather amusing. Smythe he flashed his cheek-distending grin. Me and Gustav he offered an apologetic shrug. Then, at a whispered word from Pinkerton, he turned and stepped up to the podium at the front of the bandstand. The brass band by the edge of the lagoon wrapped up “The Thunderer,” and the final, rushed bah-bum-bum! was still echoing out toward the lake as the little man addressed himself to the crowd.

  Just about everything he said after “Good afternoon!” I missed, however, for I was deep in conversation with Diana. Not that either of us was actually saying anything. When I leaned out to stare in wonderment at the lady, though, I found her looking our way, and the following passed between us.

  My slack jaw: What are you doing here?

  Her sorrowful frown: Competing against you, obviously.

  The way I raised my hands, the palms up: Well, how could you let that happen?

  Her elegantly arched eyebrow, pointed first at me, then at my brother and his shaded cheaters: I’d say you have some explaining to do as well.

  My blush as I remembered what I was wearing: Shit.

  Then Colonel Crowe stepped in to join the conversation. There wasn’t much of him—he was short enough to make even Curtis look like Goliath—yet he could prove a formidable obstacle when he set his mind to it.

  His malicious glare: What are you looking at, you EXPURGATED UNPRINTABLE?

  I busied myself looking elsewhere.

  My gaze fell first upon my brother—who was giving me a dose of “EXPURGATED UNPRINTABLE” himself. For once, I couldn’t begrudge him his truculence. Here we were supposedly winning the colonel’s favor, and instead we end up squared off against him. If the man didn’t hate us already for costing him his job with the Southern Pacific, beating him out of $10,000 prize money would surely do the trick. Yet if we didn’t win the contest, why should he bother hiring us?