World's Greatest Sleuth!

by Steve Hockensmith

  “You know about that already?”

  Mrs. Jasinska gave my brother a cheerful nod. “That lovely Miss Crowe told me all about it.”

  “She did?” It took Old Red a moment to stow away his surprise. “Well … it must have been a terrible shock to you, losing a guest like that.”

  Mrs. Jasinska nodded again—and, without realizing it, confirmed my brother’s guess. Before that, we hadn’t known whether Curtis was staying at the Columbian or not.

  “Oh, yes. It truly is upsetting.” Mrs. Jasinska leaned over her desk and dropped her voice, though there was no one else in sight. “You don’t think he was murdered, do you?”

  Gustav bent down and took to whispering as well. “Frankly, ma’am, I have my suspicions, which is why my brother and I have been doin’ some pokin’ around. And you know who could be the greatest help to us with that?”

  “Who?” Mrs. Jasinska asked breathlessly.

  “You. Cuz you’re the only one who could get us a look at—”

  The lady was shaking her head before my brother even finished.

  “Miss Crowe asked that, too, and I had to give the same answer. I can’t let you into Mr. Curtis’s room. There was a Canadian gentleman who hung himself in two-twenty the first week of the Fair, and the police were ever so irritated with me just because I let some of the other guests in to have a peek. Dear me—the language those officers used! No, I’m afraid that’s out of the question. But I’m sure I can be of service in other ways. Miss Crowe certainly seemed to think so. She asked me oh so many questions. You know, at first I wasn’t sure how I felt about a young lady taking part in your little tournament, but she’s won me over completely. Such a pretty, clever little thing, don’t you think?”

  Old Red cleared his throat and looked down to make sure his toes were still attached.

  Yes. He did think.

  “Would you mind tellin’ us what you told her?” he said.

  “Well, as I explained to Miss Crowe, I’m honor-bound to protect my guests’ privacy. But…”

  Mrs. Jasinska glanced over her shoulder. A stooped figure had begun shuffling over the sun-bleached lobby carpet. It was Jerzy, the Columbian’s withered, weary-looking bell coot. (It had been many a year since you could have called him a bell boy.) He’d emerged from some shadowy corner, where I suspect his employer kept him propped up like a disused broom, and was now trudging toward us with all the speed and spritely vigor of a sleepwalking tortoise. At his current speed, he wouldn’t reach the front desk until around June of 1902.

  We were, for all intents and purposes, alone.

  “Alright, you talked me into it,” Mrs. Jasinska said. “Actually, it’s rather exciting helping you sleuths with a real case. Do you think that wonderful Mr. Brady will want to question me, too?”

  “Feh,” Gustav growled. “I don’t know any wonderful Mr. Brady. The only Brady I’ve seen hereabouts is about as wonderful as a dose of—”

  I clapped my brother on the back with a forced laugh. “Always joshin’ the competition, this one! ‘Old Funnybone,’ they call him. But all japes aside, ma’am, what is it Miss Crowe wanted to know?”

  “Well, mostly she was curious about everyone’s comings and goings last night. I told her the first coming and going were both Mr. Curtis: I saw him stagger up to his room in a shocking state around eight thirty, then stagger out again almost immediately.”

  “Was—?”

  “William Pinkerton with him?” Mrs. Jasinska cut in before Old Red could get out another word. “No. He was alone.”

  “And when he went out, did it look like he was—?”

  “Carrying something? Miss Crowe asked that as well. And the answer is yes, he was. He had a large brown valise with him. There must have been something quite heavy in it: He walked out at a tilt. Not that he was all that straight when he came in.”

  “The egg,” I said to my brother.

  He nodded, then turned back to Mrs. Jasinska. “What happened after Curtis left?”

  “Why, you yourselves came in, actually. With Mr. Smythe. That was no more than five minutes after Mr. Curtis went out. I didn’t see you two the rest of the evening, of course, but Mr. Smythe went out again a little before nine.”

  Gustav opened his mouth, but Diana apparently beat him to the next question yet again: This time, Mrs. Jasinska was answering before he could say a thing.

  “To buy cigars, he claimed. I told him we have a variety of smooth-smoking coronas and robustos at far better prices than he’d find at any tobacconist’s. Right here in my desk. But he didn’t even want to look at them.” Mrs. Jasinska opened her eyes wide and tilted her head to the side. “Suspicious, hmm?”

  “Maybe the man’s particular about his brands,” I said. If the lady’s coronas and robustos were as high-quality as her hotel, they’d be about as smooth-smoking as a rolled-up doormat.

  “So when did Smythe—?”

  “Return? Around ten thirty.” Mrs. Jasinska waggled her eyebrows at Old Red. “Quite a ramble just to pick up some cigars.”

  My brother mused on that a moment, then bucked the thought off with a shake of the head. “Howzabout everyone else? When’d they get back?”

  “By eleven thirty, when I lock the front door and retire, all our guests had returned but Mr. Curtis.”

  “Who was the last of us in?”

  “That would be Mr. Brady.”

  “And how’d he look?”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Jasinska sighed, “magnificent.”

  “I mean,” Gustav grated out, “did he seem distressed? Nervous? Was he mussed up? Were his shoes dirty?”

  Mrs. Jasinska chortled. “I wasn’t looking at his shoes, Old Funnybone.”

  My brother looked like he’d finally reached the tipping point where mere irritation spills over into the urge to kill.

  “I was asleep not long after that … and such dreams I had!” Mrs. Jasinska went on, unaware how precariously her life hung in the balance. “And yes, before you ask, there was one more incident that night. As you know, I have a room just off the lobby, so as to be available if any of my guests need assistance. And sometime very late—I have no idea when—I was awakened by a thump in the rear.”

  “A thump in the rear?” Old Red repeated warily.

  The lady nodded. “A muffled crash at the back of the hotel. It sounded like it was outside, in the alley. It might have been nothing—a cat knocking over a garbage can—and I went right back to sleep afterward. But I thought I should mention it. After that, it was a typically calm, quiet Columbian Hotel night. In the morning, however, who should come stomping in but Mr. William Pinkerton himself? Mr. Curtis had missed an appointment with him for breakfast, it seemed, and he was not happy to have been kept waiting. We went up to Mr. Curtis’s room together and, after we’d knocked and waited for a respectable period, I let Mr. Pinkerton in.”

  “You let him go into Curtis’s room, but not us?” I shook my head and did my best to look cut to the quick. “Really, Mrs. Jasinska…”

  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t know Mr. Curtis was dead at the time, did I? I assumed he was simply indisposed. Plus, it was William Pinkerton asking. How could I refuse? He’s not just a magazine sleuth. He’s practically a real policeman.”

  “He’s pigheaded enough to be one, that’s for sure,” Gustav grumbled. “Anyhow, so in he goes, and then what?”

  “He didn’t stay long. I think he was as surprised as I to find the bed empty. He just walked around the room once, picked up a bundle of papers Mr. Curtis had left atop his dresser, then left.”

  “You let him take something out of a guest’s room?” I asked.

  “He said he needed it.” Mrs. Jasinska shrugged. “And it was William Pinkerton.”

  “I think I’d like to try bein’ William Pinkerton one of these days,” I said.

  “And after that?” Old Red said to Mrs. Jasinska.

  “Nothing—until Miss Crowe returned from the fairgrounds with the bad news.”

&nb
sp; Gustav nodded slowly and rubbed his mustache, brow beetled. Mrs. Jasinska and I watched him a moment, waiting for more questions that didn’t come.

  “Miss Crowe stopped there, too,” the lady said to me.

  “Oh, I ain’t done just yet,” Old Red said. “I got three questions I know Miss Crowe wouldn’t have thrown at you, cuz they all have to do with that ‘admirer’ who came in lookin’ for us last night. The bearded feller.”

  “Yes? What about him?”

  “Well, number one, you said he wanted to know if we was stayin’ here with the other folks from the contest … which makes me wonder how he knew they was here in the first place. He say anything that’d explain that?”

  “No, now that you mention it, he didn’t.”

  “Alright. Number two, did he have an accent?”

  “Yes, I believe he did. Not one I recognized, though.”

  “Fair enough. And number three.” Gustav turned toward me. “Is that his coat my brother’s wearin’?”

  “His coat?” Mrs. Jasinska peered at the long, dark overcoat I’d claimed for myself that afternoon. “I don’t know. It could be.”

  “So that feller who jumped us today…?” I began.

  “Was trailin’ us last night,” Old Red said. “Yesterday afternoon, too, I reckon.”

  “That’s right. The bearded man who tried to hire away our wheelchairs. That must’ve been him.”

  “Yup.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser. Kinda muddies the waters, don’t it? I mean, if the bearded man’s hooked into this…”

  My brother let that one just float out there, which was probably for the best. Mrs. Jasinska surely wouldn’t have been pleased if either of us finished that particular thought.

  Maybe the killer’s not another guest at the Columbian like we figured.

  “Is it my turn yet?”

  Gustav and I turned toward the source of the phlegmy, heavily accented voice.

  Jerzy had completed his voyage across the lobby at last.

  “You talk so long, I know what you talk about,” he said. “And I know you will want to talk about it with me just like the young lady did.”

  “Miss Crowe already spoke to you?” I said.

  The old man nodded.

  “I won’t waste your time with questions, then,” Gustav said. “Just tell me what you told her.”

  Jerzy slowly hoisted his bony shoulders up into a shrug. “About the night, I tell her nothing because I notice nothing. The ears, anymore? Not so good. And at any rate, this one”—he jerked his head at Mrs. Jasinska—“she gives me a closet for my cot, and in there I may as well be in my coffin, for all I can hear. You’d think with half the hotel empty, I would not have to sleep with mops and buckets, but no. That’s not how we do things here at the Waldorf.”

  “Oh, Jerzy.”

  Mrs. Jasinska reached out to give the man a playful swat. Or maybe not so playful.

  “So I hear not a thing,” he went on. “In the morning, though? I see.” Jerzy opened his rheumy eyes wide, milking the moment for all its melodrama. “Stolec.”

  “Stolec?” I said.

  “The young lady asked about stains,” Mrs. Jasinska explained with an uncomfortable squirm. “Brown stains. Perhaps with a certain odor.”

  “Oh!” I said. “Stolec!”

  Jerzy nodded. “I cleaned it up, of course. You would not think I would bother, with what I am paid. I could have left it to the maids. But what can I say? I am devoted to my work.”

  “Where?” Old Red asked.

  “Come. I will show you.”

  Considering the speed (or lack of same) with which the bellhop moved, we could have asked Mrs. Jasinska a lot more questions—gotten in a couple games of chess, even—before bothering to follow him toward the stairs. Yet we wished the lady a good afternoon and toddled along with Jerzy all the same.

  “The ‘stow-leck’ was on the second floor?” my brother asked him.

  Jerzy grunted.

  “Where everyone from the contest’s stayin’?”

  Jerzy shrugged.

  “Was it in front of a particular door?”

  Jerzy grunted and shrugged.

  “Just be patient,” I said to my brother. “You’ll get your answers soon enough.”

  “That I will. All of ’em, maybe. Cuz if those stains lead us to a specific room—”

  “Then the feller we’re huntin’ is a guest here … and we’ll know which one.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “So,” Jerzy wheezed when we finally reached the second floor, “about the stains…”

  He paused to catch his breath.

  “Yeah?” my brother prodded him.

  “There are no stains.”

  Old Red narrowed his eyes. “Cuz you wiped ’em up.”

  Jerzy shook his head. “Because there never were any stains. I just needed to get you away from that one.”

  The old man nodded back down the stairs, presumably at his employer.

  Gustav groaned, shoulders slumping. “No stains…”

  “But I can offer you something else,” Jerzy said. “The girl wanted to know which room the dead man was staying in. You do, as well?”

  Old Red snapped straight again. “That’s right.”

  Jerzy raised a palsied claw of a hand, the wrinkle-etched palm pointing up.

  “Pay the man,” my brother sighed.

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out a couple quarters, and started to hand them over.

  Jerzy shook his head. “Don’t even.”

  So I covered his palm with a greenback instead.

  “The girl gave me five,” Jerzy said.

  “Then the girl is a spendthrift.”

  Jerzy just kept his hand out, saying no more.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, give him what he wants,” Gustav snapped. “I swear, you are the worst briber I ever saw.”

  “I’ll give you ten bucks to shut up.”

  “Feh.”

  “Two-twelve,” Jerzy said once he’d pocketed his fee. And with that he shambled off toward the stairs again, perhaps headed to his closet for a celebratory nap.

  “Hey,” Old Red called after him. “One more thing—on the house this time, if you please. Who does your shoe shinin’?”

  “For the guests?” Jerzy said. “We send the shoes out to a bootblack. At Kenwood and Sixty-first. Pyle, his name is.”

  “You still sniffin’ after that cow flop?” I asked as the old-timer scuffle-stepped away.

  “I ain’t forgettin’ about it, anyway. Right now, though, we got other business to attend to.”

  “Business in two-twelve?”

  Old Red nodded. “I got me a hunch.”

  “Care to share it?”

  “Nope.”

  “You know what? I think you’re just bullshittin’ when you do that. ‘I got me a hunch,’ you say, and then anything we find out later, you can claim you was thinkin’ all along.”

  “Now you’re catchin’ on,” my brother said in a tone you could almost call jocular. Something seemed to be putting him in an uncommonly good mood all of a sudden. “Come on.”

  A moment later, we were at the end of the hall, before room 212. I expected Gustav to fish out the little length of wire he’s taken to toting around ever since learning (courtesy of the nonexistent Nick Carter) how to pick locks. So imagine my surprise when he just knocked on the door instead.

  “Uhhhh, Brother,” I said. “In case you forgot, Mr. Curtis ain’t around to answer.”

  “I ain’t forgot.”

  And then I heard the footsteps, and the door swung open.

  “Finally,” Diana Crowe said. “What took you so long?”

  15

  WILD CARDS

  Or, Diana Reveals (Almost) All, and a New Clue Points to an Old Acquaintance

  Diana rushed us inside and closed the door, and I was relieved to see the colonel hadn’t been waiting with her.

  I then envisioned what the ma
n would do if he caught us alone in a hotel room with his daughter, and my relief turned to alarm.

  “Where’s your father?” I asked.

  “He’s not in the next room loading his shotgun, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Diana said. “He’s still at the fairgrounds. I told him I needed to lie down and collect myself after this afternoon’s excitement.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at that, and when I glanced at Gustav I found him with an identical look of skepticism on his face. Diana wasn’t the swooning type.

  “He believed that, did he?” my brother asked.

  “Probably not. He’s determined to see as much of the White City as he can in preparation for tomorrow’s competition, though, and he knew I’d be bad company if I didn’t want to be there.”

  “Ain’t he worried the contest’s gonna be canceled?” I said.

  “Certainly. Yet he wants to be ready, all the same. He’s a military man. He plans for all contingencies.”

  “I see,” I said.

  Gustav cut loose with a “Hmmm.”

  The silence that then descended was so uncomfortable, if it were a shirt it would have been made from sandpaper and baling wire. Here we were at last with the woman who, from a certain point of view, had brought us to Chicago in the first place. Yet I found myself unable to even look into her beautiful brown eyes.

  So I took in the room instead. There was so little to take, though—a scratch-gouged floor, a dresser, a bed little bigger than a bassinet, a window affording a breathtaking view of dingy brick across a trash-strewn alley. Soon I found myself simply looking off at nothing.

  “So,” Diana said.

  “So,” I said.

  “He’s your father,” said Old Red.

  “Not quite,” the lady replied.

  My brother squinted at her. “Not quite?”

  “Oh, God,” I groaned before I could stop myself. “You ain’t married to him, are you?”

  Diana looked at me as though I’d just asked her to change my diaper. “What?”

  “Well, I mean, I’d noticed … both of us had … it’s hard not to notice, really … that you and your dad … the colonel, I mean … that you two ain’t exactly peas in a pod, looks-wise.”