“Marcus,” Pyle said.
“Sorry.”
Marcus redoubled his efforts to set a shine on the filthy, faded cowhide, but my brother waved him off.
“I know them things are grubby and I like ’em that way so let’s stop dilly-dallyin’, huh? You boys run across any shoes from the Columbian last night that struck you as particularly smelly?”
Marcus and Randall burst out laughing.
“Boys!” Pyle snapped. Then he gave Gustav a look that made it plain he, for one, was not amused. “You’re looking for a pair of smelly shoes?”
“Not foot-smelly,” I explained. “Dung-smelly.”
Pyle waited for more explanation.
I shrugged. “Detectivin’.”
“Alright,” Pyle said. “Answer the man’s question.”
“They’re all kinda smelly,” Marcus said.
“Most of ’em have horsesh- … I mean, manure on ’em,” Randall added.
“Well, did you notice any stains that wasn’t normal, then?” Old Red asked. “Like blood, maybe? Or pomade? Or hair?”
Pyle glared at us. “Blood or pomade or hair?”
“Detectivin’,” I said with another shrug.
The boys looked at each other.
“No,” Marcus said. “There was nothing like that.”
“The weirdest thing we saw all night was clean shoes,” Randall said.
“Yeah!” Marcus laughed. “They didn’t even have any Juicy Fruit on ’em!”
“Judas Priest.” Randall rolled his eyes. “We had one old man come in here with seven pieces stuck to his soles.”
“He could barely walk.”
“And we could barely get it all off.”
“We hate that stuff.”
“But it’s been good for business, so Dad loves it!”
“We get our five dollars’ worth yet?” I asked my brother.
“You say there was a pair of shoes that was especially clean?” he said to the boys.
Randall nodded. “There wasn’t a thing on ’em. No gum. No dirt. No dung.”
“A careful stepper, huh?” I said.
“It wasn’t careful stepping,” Marcus said. “The shoes were washed off before they were put out for a shine.”
Gustav practically sprang from his seat like a Jack from his Box. “How do you know that?”
“Shoe leather stiffens up when it gets wet,” Randall explained. “And the old polish was all smeared and spotty. Like someone had been working at it with a towel.”
“Would you recognize them shoes if you saw ’em again?”
Randall and Marcus looked at each other again before shaking their heads.
“We shine a lot of shoes,” said Randall.
“Well, could you describe ’em, at least?” Old Red asked.
“I think they were brown,” said Marcus.
“Black,” said Randall. “Ankle boots.”
“Nuh-uh. Oxfords.”
“No. Ankle boots.”
“No! Oxfords!”
“Didja notice any kind of maker’s mark on ’em, at least?” my brother managed to slip in.
“Naw,” said Marcus.
“It would’ve been Italian, though,” said Randall. “Like I said—we shine a lot of shoes. For a lot of foreign tourists. And those shoes were made in Italy, for sure.” The boy frowned. “Or maybe France.”
“I’d say England,” Marcus said. “Or Germany.”
“Well, that narrows it down,” I said. “We’re lookin’ for either brown or black ankle boots or oxfords that were made in Italy or France or England or Germany. Maybe.”
“That does narrow it down,” Gustav sniped back.
Randall was rubbing his chin.
“They could have come from Spain,” he muttered.
“Or Russia!” Marcus blurted out.
“Come on,” I said to my brother. “Let’s go before they pull out an atlas.”
Before leaving, though, we made arrangements for Pyle to contact us should his sons come across the Italian/French/English/German/Spanish/Russian ankle boots/oxfords again. Those “arrangements” being giving him our room numbers at the Columbian and yet another five-dollar bill.
In Chicago, we were learning, even the clues are expensive.
“A pair of cleaned something-or-others,” I mused as we walked away. “That means what? The killer noticed the muck on his shoes once he was back at the Columbian?”
“Most likely.”
“And if the shoes ain’t American, we oughta be lookin’ at Valmont and Greene and Blackheath-Murray?”
“Not necessarily. Lots of folks with money buy foreign-made shoes. It’s just as likely to have been a swell from New York City.”
“Like King Brady or Frank Tousey, you mean.”
My brother shrugged. “Could be. Come to think of it, Smythe’s not a bad dresser either, and his bearded friend had him an accent.”
“Well, hell, it could’ve been Lucille Larson wearin’ men’s shoes.”
I was joking, of course, but my brother nodded.
“Or it might just be that some other guest at the hotel wiped off his shoes before settin’ ’em out last night,” he said.
“In which case, it has nothing to do with us, and this has been a complete waste of time.”
“That’d be the size of it.”
We were both silent for a few strides.
“You know,” I said, “I do so appreciate these little chats of ours. If not for them, I might get to feelin’ downhearted about our prospects.”
Old Red tapped the side of his head. “If you don’t wanna know everything I’m jugglin’ up here, then don’t ask me to—”
He grabbed me by the arm and jerked me toward the nearest doorway.
“What the hell?”
“I just saw Smythe crossin’ over to this side of the street,” Gustav said. “He’s headed this way, but I don’t think he spotted us.”
“Yeah? So? I wouldn’t recommend jumpin’ out to say ‘Boo.’ It’d probably kill him.”
We’d dodged into a curio shop larded with commemorative baubles and knickknacks, and my brother took cover behind a rack of Exposition postcards.
“He might be goin’ to meet up with that bearded feller,” he said.
“Ahhh, I get you. If he is, we’ll be right behind him.”
I picked up a throw pillow, held it up even with my face, and pretended to admire the embroidery (WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, it said over a needlework Ferris wheel) until Urias Smythe’s big, round form scuttled by outside. Old Red and I gave him a moment to put distance between us, then slipped out after him.
Now, we’ve all seen folks with a guilty look about them, but what Smythe had was a guilty walk. It was slow paced yet long strided, as if he was in a hurry to get somewhere but was trying to hide it. He was ever glancing this way and that, too, and at one point he looked so far back over his shoulder I thought his head was going to take to spinning like a globe.
Gustav and I stopped and turned our backs to him, and my brother stretched out an arm as if noting some point of interest in the distance.
“If you really wanted us to be inconspicuous, we’d stop wearin’ Stetsons,” I said.
To this, he chose to make no reply.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered when we took off after Smythe again. “We’re bein’ followed.”
“What?”
“A ways back there’s a gent with a thick, dark beard. When we turned around, he turned around.”
“It must be him, then. The Bearded Man.”
“Naw, this one’s burlier. Older, too.”
Smythe looked over his shoulder again.
We pivoted toward a shop window.
About forty feet back, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a big, bearded man spun to face the brick wall to his left. Perhaps he’d merely stopped to admire the poster plastered there, but I had my doubts: It was an advertisement for “Doc Healey’s Feminine Regulato
r, the Elixir for Women.”
“I see him,” I said under my breath. “But how do you know he’s trailin’ us and not Smythe?”
“I don’t know. What say we find out?”
We let Smythe move on up the sidewalk without us. He was crossing the street toward the Midway Plaisance, the mile-long strip of amusements considered too lowbrow to be part of the White City itself, when the Other Bearded Man started after him again.
“You get one arm, I’ll get the other,” Gustav whispered.
“Right.”
Once our quarry passed us, we whirled around and caught up to him fast. Old Red hooked himself to the man’s left arm. I did the same on the right.
“Hello, friend,” Gustav said. “You mind chattin’ with us a moment?”
I had only a couple seconds to register my impressions: the mass of muscles under the man’s heavy coat, the bushy gray eyebrows beneath the low brim of his slouch hat, the crow’s-feet around his dark eyes, the thick black beard that was entirely too thick and too black. Then he spoke in a raspy-rough voice—“Yes”—and after that there was one and only one thing my senses could make out.
A bone-jarring blow to the side of the head.
Oh, and then darkness.
21
THE JOSS HOUSE
Or, We Lose Our Chance for Answers by a (Clump of) Hair
For a moment, everything around me went black, as if all God’s creation had been snuffed out like a candle. A few blinks and the world returned, however, and I found myself (somewhat to my surprise) still on my feet, my brother staggering stunned beside me.
After a couple more blinks, I managed to work out what had happened: The Other Bearded Man had stopped walking, jerked his meaty arms from our grips, and clobbered us with the hardest objects at hand—each other’s heads.
He’d clapped our skulls together, and it was only our hats that had prevented him from leaving considerable dents. While we stumbled around the sidewalk blind with pain, he’d hustled away.
A cluster of curious tourists had stopped to gawp at us like we were another display at the Fair—the World’s Biggest Fools, perhaps—and Old Red snarled at them as he punched the crown of his hat back into shape with a furious jab.
“Y’all wanna watch a show, go find Buffalo Bill! He’s got a tent around here somewheres!”
Folks stopped staring and started doing their best to ignore us.
“Come on,” my brother said to me, and he jerked his chin at something up ahead. “That slippery bastard ain’t got away yet.”
I followed his gaze.
Up a stretch of sidewalk and across a busy street was the Midway Plaisance. A hulking figure crowned with a black slouch hat was mixed in with the crowd walking through the gate.
Gustav took off after the Other Bearded Man. I took off after Gustav.
When we reached the cross street, my brother didn’t just run out into it without slowing. He ran out into it without bothering to look to either side to see what might flatten him if he didn’t stop. Perhaps this was the only way he could get himself to dash across the avenue at all, like a horse that can’t get past a fire without a saddle blanket over its head.
Whatever the reason, it worked. Drivers yanked hard on reins, hansoms swerved, a streetcar operator hurled curses, yet Old Red just shot past like they weren’t there, alighting on the opposite side of the street with neither a scratch nor a glance back. I stayed on his heels the whole time and, by some miracle, managed to survive the crossing as well.
“He knows we’re after him,” Gustav said as we jogged past the gates the Other Bearded Man had scuttled through not a quarter minute before. “Only question is which way he’s gonna duck.”
Indeed, our quarry hardly lacked for hiding places. Imagine all the nations and wonders of the earth shuffled like a deck of cards and dealt out again willy-nilly. That would be the Midway Plaisance.
Within easy sprinting distance was an Irish castle, an African village, a Moorish palace, an ostrich farm, an Old Country hamlet of the type our dearly departed Mutter and Vater grew up around, a series of ramps and chutes upon which screaming youngsters were whizzing around in what looked like bobsleds, and, towering over it all, the mighty Ferris wheel.
Not that my brother noticed any of it. He still had his gaze glued to that bearded fellow—right up to the moment the man ducked behind a pair of passing camels (and the tourists who’d apparently paid for the privilege of riding them) and disappeared.
“Dammit!” my brother spat.
He tore around the camels and spun in a quick circle.
“There!” he declared when he stopped his twirl, and he pointed at the nearest attraction. Two ornate towers loomed up over the entrance, each featuring curling roofs and five or six gaily painted widow walks festooned with hanging bells. CHINESE THEATRE & TEMPLE OF WORSHIP, a sign nearby said.
This was the place the guidebooks called the Joss House. Though we’d never laid eyes on it before, we knew it well, for we ourselves played a role in destroying some of the ancient treasures it once displayed. (Note to those planning on sending a train full-steam into a ravine: You might want to detach the baggage car first.)
If Gustav recognized the building for what it was, he didn’t let on. He simply charged inside, ignoring the indignant Chinaman shouting “Hey! Twenty-five cents!” as he whipped past.
“Sorry about my friend there,” I said. “He just gets a trifle overexcited by Chinese theater. If I may ask, did a big, bearded man come hurryin’ in here right before us?”
“Yes.” The Chinaman held out his hand. “And he didn’t forget to pay.”
“Right, right.” I forked over four bits. “One more question. Is there any other way out of here? A back door or some such?”
“Not for customers, no.”
“Ha! Did you hear that, Brother? We got him!”
Old Red was scurrying around the ornately decorated lobby, the centerpiece of which was a statue of what looked like an elongated dog with the skin of a lizard and the head of a goldfish.
“I heard,” my brother said. “You stay here in case he tries to slip back out. I’ll see if I can’t corner him.”
“That feller just walloped the two of us together, and you wanna go at him alone?”
“This time, I’ll be ready.”
There were three halls leading off from the lobby, and Gustav picked one and bolted off into it. The echoes of his footfalls faded quickly, and though I kept listening intently for shouts or the sounds of a scuffle, all I heard was distant music I can only liken to “Camptown Races” as played backward by two out-of-tune fiddles and a musical saw. (In the interest of fairness, I hereby encourage my no doubt multitudinous Chinese readers to track me down and give me their unvarnished opinion of “Camptown Races” played forward.)
After a couple minutes standing vigil, I looked over at the gent working the door.
“Say, as long as I’m not actually going in…”
The Chinaman was an older fellow outfitted in traditional silken robes and pillbox hat, yet he spoke with no hint of an accent, and his next words demonstrated his mastery of both the English language and American business practices.
“No refunds.”
I went back to waiting. Yet though there was a steady flow of folks out of the building, I never saw the Other Bearded Man.
Eventually, Gustav shuffled out looking disgusted. In his hands was a big black bundle—a rolled-up coat, I saw once he got up close.
“I thought you were manhuntin’, not clothes shoppin’,” I said.
Old Red unrolled the coat. Wrapped up in it were a slouch hat, crushed flat, and a U-shaped patch of black hair with an oval hole dead center.
“That ain’t what I think it is, is it?”
My brother nodded glumly. “I found these stuffed under a seat in the theater.”
“Sweet Jesus … a fake beard. I thought them things only existed in Nick Carter stories.”
“And King Bra
dy stories,” Gustav said. “And Boothby Greene stories, too, should anyone ever write any.”
“Yeah, maybe. Only that feller wasn’t Brady or Greene, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. He was older. Bigger.”
“I know. And he could be anywhere, by now. I figure he walked out right past us not long after we got here.”
“Well, at least we got another new coat out of it. Why is it these bearded SOBs feel such a need to build up our wardrobe? Speakin’ of which…”
I reached for the coat, but Old Red just shook his head.
“I already checked. The tailor’s tag’s been removed. Same for the hat. The pockets are empty, too.”
“Damn. This feller thinks of everything.”
“Yup. Knows how to fight dirty, too. That little trick he pulled when we put the pinch on him? That surely wasn’t the first time he’s done that.”
“So we’re up against another professional, you’re sayin’?”
Gustav looked out at the Midway, slowly moving his gaze over the dozens of sightseers strolling this way and that through the gloomy gray of oncoming evening. Any twenty or thirty of them could have been the man we were looking for.
“Oh, yeah. He’s a professional, alright,” Old Red said. “The question is … what kind?”
22
CONSPIRACY
Or, Three Birds of a Feather Flock Together and Find They Have a New Tail
Though we’d lost the (we now knew) Unbearded Man and had no way to find him again, we weren’t finished yet. It was Urias Smythe we’d been following in the first place, and it sure looked like he was headed for the Midway Plaisance when we got sidetracked. So we decided to make a sweep for him.
The Midway was not an easy place to sweep, however. Night was coming on, for one thing, and even with electric lights flaring to life all around us, there was still more than enough shadow to hide a hundred men, let alone one. For another thing, a search thereabouts could prove an expensive prospect. The Midway was a purely for-profit, pay-as-you-go enterprise, and if we wanted to hunt through the Ottoman Hippodrome or the Hawaiian cyclorama or Hagenbeck’s Animal Show or the Turkish, Javan, Laplander, or Dahomey villages, we’d have to shell out two bits a go just like everyone else.
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