World's Greatest Sleuth!

by Steve Hockensmith

  Old Red squirmed like a worm on the hook.

  Then, just like that, he stopped. His spine straightened, so he wasn’t cringing anymore, and he looked over at the lady with a gaze that stayed steady.

  “Two days ago, the most interestin’ gent around was King Brady, am I right?”

  “I followed him the first day of the contest, yes. For reasons I’m sure are quite obvious. He’s by far the most famous detective here.”

  “What’d you think of his sleuthin’?”

  Miss Larson shrugged. “I didn’t really see any. He just ran around a lot.”

  “Well, from what you could see, did it seem like the man lived up to his reputation?”

  “Not for a second. I’d say the man’s a conceited fraud.”

  “You mean like Nick Carter? Just a pipe dream?”

  “Uhhhh, Brother,” I said. “That’d be kinda hard to pull off, wouldn’t it? You know. Seein’ as the man’s right down them steps.”

  Miss Larson was shaking her head. “No, no,” she said to Gustav. “Brady’s a real detective, alright. You see stories about him in the legitimate press from time to time. News articles, I mean, not entertainments. He’s a private investigator in New York City. That’s fact. It’s just that Tousey’s built him up to be the American Sherlock Holmes when there’s nothing remotely clever about him.”

  “Or brave,” Old Red said, no doubt thinking of the way Brady went weak at the knee when we stumbled upon Curtis’s body the day before.

  A great “Hurrah!” went up from the crowd, and the band launched into Sousa’s “The Gladiator.”

  King Brady was at last headed up the stairs to join us on the bandstand. He paused every couple steps to wave or doff his hat, the cheers growing louder and wilder with each repetition.

  “Go get ’em, King!”

  “We’re behind you all the way, King!”

  “Show us what you got, King!”

  “Yeah,” Gustav muttered. “Come and show us what you got.”

  No doubt about it, King Brady was the people’s favorite.

  In a very different way, it seemed, he’d become my brother’s, too.

  25

  THE CONTEST (ROUND THREE)

  Or, My Brother’s Suspicions Come to a Head, and I Get In over Mine

  Before long, Boothby Greene, Blackheath-Murray, and Eugene Valmont followed King Brady and Frank Tousey up onto the bandstand. As soon as all us contestants were lined up, Pinkerton stepped to the podium and addressed the crowd.

  If his introductory speech Monday had been halfhearted, he was down to quarterhearted now. He re-presented the competitors with all the zeal of a schoolboy giving a report on the benefits of eating spinach, then asked for a moment of silence “for those whom tragedy has kept from being with us today.” The silence wasn’t particularly silent, though, what with the splashings of the nearby fountains and occasional cries along the lines of “We love you, King!” After all of ten seconds, it was over, and a great cheer went up as Pinkerton produced the clues, held them aloft, and turned to hand them out.

  The second our envelope was in my hand, I tore it open and read out the neatly typed message within.

  Then I asked God what He had against us.

  Foul swamp! In thy slow, oozing flow

  Of murky and muddied water,

  Black as the grave where no light goes,

  No thing can grow; so we ask how

  Leviathan can say “Meow”

  And sire there such monstrous daughters

  “Sweet Jesus. It don’t even make enough sense to be a proper riddle.”

  “It don’t matter,” Old Red said.

  “It don’t?”

  “Nope.”

  To the right of us, Valmont, Greene, and the Crowes were all still puzzling over their own clues, but—much to the delight of the masses—King Brady was on the move, marching with quick, certain purpose toward the stairs.

  “We ain’t goin’ on no wild goose chase today,” my brother whispered. “We’re just chasin’ him.”

  “You mean you wanna trail him? But what about the contest?”

  “What about it?”

  The low, growly tone of Gustav’s voice told me there was no use arguing—which usually doesn’t stop me from doing it anyway. This time we had an audience, though: Lucille Larson had been standing with Tousey and Smythe and Blackheath-Murray as Pinkerton ran through the preliminaries, but now she swooped in to lay claim to us again.

  “So?” she said, nodding at the clue card in my hands. “Cracked it already?”

  I looked at Old Red. “Oh, it’s cracked, alright.”

  “Come on,” my brother said, and he led us down the steps.

  It was easy enough staying on Brady’s trail. About fifty people seemed to have the same idea, clumping up around the man as he tried to stride away from the bandstand. He gathered up such a flock, in fact, Tousey took to the podium to urge people to let him pass.

  “Our sleuths have work to do, folks! Don’t worry—you’ll see them again soon! Just wait here in the Court of Honor, and all will be revealed!”

  Most of Brady’s followers dropped away, yet a small gaggle scurried along after him as he turned up the path leading north between the Electricity Building and the Mines and Mining Building.

  We took the turn, too.

  “Where are we going?” Miss Larson asked.

  “Won’t know till we get there,” Gustav said.

  The lady followed his gaze to King Brady’s back forty yards up.

  “Is this part of your investigation or are you just cheating?”

  “Miss,” I said, “if we was cheatin’, would he be the one we stick to?”

  “So what is it you think you’ll gain by following him?”

  “I got me a hunch,” Old Red said.

  Several strides went by in silence.

  “And your hunch is…?” Miss Larson finally prompted.

  “Oh, he never speaks ’em aloud,” I told her. “If he does, the Hunch Fairy won’t make ’em come true.”

  Miss Larson looked back and forth between me and my brother as if trying to decide which of us was, at that particular moment, the most irritating. I reckon she came to a conclusion, too, for she took her notepad and pencil from a drawstring bag and started writing even as we walked.

  Up ahead, Brady was now hustling across a bridge toward the islands in the great lagoon just north of the Grand Basin. Despite his quick pace, he still had followers (other than us)—a small flock of schoolboys skipping along at his heels. As the caravan followed the path curving along the southwestern edge of the Wooded Island, Gustav slowed to keep us just around the bend from Brady, and for a moment we lost sight of him. That moment stretched into two when the path straightened out again.

  Brady was nowhere in sight.

  “Shi-…” I caught myself just in time. “… oot.”

  “Thank you,” Miss Larson said.

  “There.”

  Old Red pointed at another bridge stretching west over the lagoon again. Brady was scurrying over it, the young pups still capering along behind.

  “Where the heck’s he goin’, anyway?” I said.

  Miss Larson made a sound that could’ve been called a chuckle, perhaps, had there been any genuine amusement to it.

  “I think I can tell you. It was the first place he went Monday, too. Today he’s just been a little more circuitous about it.”

  She nodded at a low black building on the other side of the bridge, between the Choral and Horticulture buildings.

  “And what exactly is that?” Gustav asked.

  “Oh, I’d hate to spoil the surprise.”

  The lady was right. We weren’t halfway over the bridge ourselves when we saw Brady duck into the structure she’d pointed out. The kids didn’t follow, drifting off instead looking profoundly disillusioned. I knew why when we got close enough to see the sign out front.

  “Public Comfort Building,” I read out.

&
nbsp; “Huh?” Old Red said.

  “The john,” I explained.

  “Oh.” My brother squinted at the building. “It’s nicer than most places we’ve called home.”

  Miss Larson dutifully jotted this down, much to my chagrin.

  “So this is where Brady came first thing on Monday?” Gustav said.

  Miss Larson nodded. “He was in there at least ten minutes.” She shrugged. “Nerves, perhaps.”

  Old Red shuffled his feet and tugged at the brim of his hat. “Hmm. Yeah. Maybe. And when he came out?”

  “He’d had a brainstorm. He led us straight to the New York Building, where he found his second clue. Then he came here again, and after that it was on to the Yerkes telescope. Valmont beat him to the egg by mere seconds.”

  Gustav jerked up straight, eyes agleam. “He solved both riddles while he was in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some folks do their best thinkin’ in there,” I pointed out.

  Old Red ignored me.

  “And when he came out he almost won the contest?” he asked the lady.

  “Yes.”

  “That tears it. I’m goin’ in.”

  “You’re what?” I said.

  My brother started toward the door gentlemen were filing in and out through. “Y’all wait here.”

  “Good idea,” Miss Larson said.

  Gustav disappeared into the Public Comfort Building, leaving Miss Larson and me outside in a state of most extreme discomfort. Somehow, I got the feeling loitering around public lavatories did not strike the lady as inspired Holmes-style sleuthing, and with her every little scribble in her notepad, I could feel our portrait in McClure’s grow less flattering. When she was done writing (“Why did I think these fools knew what they were doing?” no doubt), she looked over at the clue card I still clutched in my hand.

  “Doesn’t it bother you to just give up on that?” she asked. “After today, you’ll only get one more chance to score. You can’t even win. The best you could hope for is not being the only team that doesn’t score at all.”

  “I’ve been doin’ my best not to think about that.”

  The lady kept staring at the card. “May I? Just out of curiosity.”

  “Sure. Don’t expect it to mean anything, though. This one Curtis must’ve come up with by just throwin’ things at his typewriter.”

  I gave her the card.

  “Oh,” she said upon glancing at it, and she handed it right back with an air of embittered boredom. “Is that all?”

  “You mean you get it?”

  “You mean you don’t?”

  I shrugged helplessly.

  “Well, I suppose you would be at a disadvantage,” Miss Larson said. “It is a little … literary.”

  I read the clue through again myself. “ ‘Leviathan can say “Meow” ’ is literary?”

  “It’s a burlesque of a Poe poem. ‘To the River.’ ”

  I stared back at her blankly.

  “ ‘To … the … River,’ ” Miss Larson repeated. Then, growing ever more exasperated, “Leviathan was a sea monster.”

  “Well, that I actually knew alre-DAMN!”

  Miss Larson cocked an eyebrow at me. Most of the tourists around just flat-out stared.

  “I mean dang,” I said, hopping from foot to foot like I had to visit the gents’ myself. I could barely keep my legs from breaking into a sprint.

  I knew where the next clue was. We still had a shot at winning after all … only my brother was doing Lord knows what in a fancy-ass privy.

  Was he in danger? I didn’t think so.

  Did he really need me around? I couldn’t see how.

  Would he be pissed if I ran off without him? Of course.

  Did I care? That was a tougher one. So I let my legs decide.

  They started running.

  “Tell my brother where I went!” I shouted over my shoulder.

  “I’m not Western Union!” Miss Larson replied.

  Then I was around the corner of the Horticulture Building, out of range of the daggers she was staring my way. I suppose it must sting a woman’s pride some, being abandoned by not one but two men outside a WC.

  I consulted my guidebook as I ran (and, in the process, nearly bowled over a group of sightseeing nuns like so many big black tenpins). Across another bridge, back onto the Wooded Island, past the Japanese Ho-o-den, across yet another bridge, and I’d be there.

  The Fish and Fisheries Building.

  It wasn’t nearly so imposing as its dome- and statuary-studded brethren thereabouts, I saw as I dashed toward it. In fact, it looked like nothing so much as three overgrown bandstands connected by long colonnades, with some turrets thrown on here and there for show. Once I’d raced up the steps and darted through the nearest door, however, I beheld a sight that, at first, seemed not just imposing but outright impossible.

  I was in a darkened hall bracketed on either side by long pools of light-dappled water. Which wouldn’t have been so amazing, except that said pools had been mounted to the walls like living pictures, and one could walk up to them and see eye to eye with lazily swimming fish—something I wouldn’t have thought possible without sticking one’s head in a lake.

  I’d read of aquarium tanks, of course, yet it still took my mind a moment to accept the reality of those before me. As I walked up the hallway, I couldn’t help but feel like an Egyptian chasing Moses into the Red Sea … which would come crashing in on both sides any second.

  “Uhhh, y’all got any catfish in this place?” I asked the first fellow I passed who looked at all official—a chubby little cherub of a man with a ribbon pinned to his lapel reading DOCENT.

  “Have we got catfish?” he chuckled, shaking his head, and directed me to the building’s eastern wing.

  I understood his amusement a minute later, when I saw the following words posted beside a particularly popular water tank:

  ICTALURUS FURCATUS

  WORLD’S LARGEST CATFISH IN CAPTIVITY

  CAUGHT IN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER BY MR. HECTOR DeJEAN

  MARCH 16, 1893

  Lurking at the silty bottom of the tank was either Mr. DeJean’s Ictalurus furcatus or a tree trunk with fins, whiskers, and gills. One fillet from the thing would get a family of four through a long winter.

  I had no time to pause and ogle “Leviathan’s monstrous daughter,” though. It was the docent ogling me I was more interested in. He was standing to one side of the tank, a hand dipping into the pocket of his frock coat.

  “You’re one of the Amlingmeyers?” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  I stepped toward the man.

  He drew out an envelope and started to give it to me.

  A hand shot out and snatched the card away.

  I said a word I can’t repeat here.

  A dark shape whirled around and hustled up the hallway.

  The Bearded Man was back, and he was making off with my next clue.

  This was Bearded Man #1, to be precise—Urias Smythe’s pal, the one who’d done a dance on Gustav’s glasses. He only got a couple seconds’ head start before I shoved aside my astonishment and bolted after him. He peeked over his shoulder at me as I gained on him, and I caught a glimpse of dark skin and curly black hair and wide, panicky eyes.

  “Urgle!” he cried. Or something like that. It was no word I’d ever heard, yet I got the distinct impression it was cousin to the curse I’d popped off with a moment before.

  Fear spurred the man on faster, and that—combined with my collision with a burly tourist who’d blundered into my path on his way to admire the seahorses or some such—stretched out his lead again.

  “Help! Stop! Thief!” I called out.

  The Bearded Man had almost reached an exit, but before he could dart through it a pair of upstanding citizens moved to cut off his escape.

  “Urgle!” he said again, and he veered to the right and threw himself through a door marked NO ADMITTANCE.

  Seconds later, I
was ignoring the sign, too.

  The door led to a room chockablock with cabinets and crates and, in one corner, a spiral staircase of black iron the Bearded Man was busy spinning up.

  I reached the top not five steps behind him, finding myself at the end of a long, narrow metal walkway that curved in a broad circle, the end out of sight. Beneath it were huge pools of water: the building’s fish tanks as seen from above.

  The Bearded Man was racing away from me again, his footfalls on the walkway’s iron-mesh plates pounding up deafening echoes. This was my second day chasing Bearded Men, though, and I guess I was getting better with practice. I was on this one fast, and I managed to snag him by the collar of his long (new) coat, then spin him around to face me.

  “Alright, mister—the masquerade party’s over!”

  Then I did something I feel kind of bad about. Instead of just snatching the envelope back, I reached out and grabbed the man’s beard. I guess our encounter with the Unbearded Man had given me ideas.

  “A-ha!” I said, and I yanked down hard.

  The beard itself did not come off, though a few curly hairs and bits of skin did.

  The Bearded Man—the Really Truly Not-Fake Bearded Man, one could call him—screamed.

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Urgle you, cowboy!” the man bawled back, and he brought up the envelope he’d stolen from me and threw it as far as he could into the nearest tank.

  “No!”

  The pale yellow paper of the envelope darkened fast as it soaked up water. I could see it going limp, too. Starting to sink.

  I had two choices: try to hold on to my catch or go after bigger fish.

  I tried for a compromise, clipping the Bearded Man across his newly thinned chin whiskers before hurling myself into the tank below.

  I plunged deep into the dark water, catching a murky glimpse of stunned faces staring at me through the glass before I started kicking my way back to the surface. As I swam, I felt something both rough and slimy brush against my left ankle, and it only then occurred to me to wonder whose tank I was taking a dip in.

  They didn’t have sharks on display, did they? Squids? South American piranha? Eels? Alligators?