I thrashed back toward the walkway with an “Urgle!” of my own. Just as I got my hands on iron and tried to hoist myself out, something big bumped up against my upper thigh.
Now, I’m rather partial to my thighs, and the image of one going in chunks down the gullet of some ravenous sea creature did, I’m afraid, no small damage to my dignity.
Meaning I started kicking and screaming.
A fierce pressure locked on to me, and I was dragged away.
And, more importantly, up. By the wrists.
I was being fished out by a pair of Columbian Guards. Unfortunately, they were alone on the walkway. My punch hadn’t been enough to hold the Bearded Man. He was gone.
“Thanks, boys,” I panted. “Guess I let myself get a little unnerved there for a second.”
“You alright now?” one of the Guardsmen asked, moving his hand to my shoulder.
I nodded. “Just need a minute to catch my breath.”
“Fine.” The Guardsman’s fingers tightened till it hurt. “When you’re ready, we’ll take you over to the Security Department. You’re under arrest.”
26
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENTS
Or, I Find a Familiar Face in the Pokey, and a Familiar Beard Reappears as Well
The witnesses who saw me chasing a thief didn’t help. My being in an official Exposition-approved contest didn’t help. My begging didn’t help.
“Sorry, son,” one of the Guardsmen said as I was marched, sopping wet, out of the Fisheries Building. “If Jesus H. Christ Himself jumped in with the fish, we’d have to arrest Him.”
“Oh, well,” I sighed. “Least I’m in good company.”
That held true when I was locked up in the Columbian Guard’s little holding cell as well, for my brother was there already.
“What’re you doin’ here?” I asked as I plopped down next to him on the cell’s lone bunk.
He grimaced miserably. “You first.”
I spun out the tale.
“You get back that clue card, at least?” Old Red asked when I was done.
I shook my head. “Damned thing turned to mush out there in the water. So … why are you in the hoosegow?”
My brother threw me a warning glare. “Don’t laugh.”
“Why would I laugh?”
“I’m serious. You laugh, we’re gonna tussle.”
I put on a lugubriously long face. “Do I look like I’m about to laugh?”
“Alright.” Gustav sucked in a deep, weary, wary breath. “I was arrested for peekin’ at folks in the privy.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus.” I put my head in my hands. “You should’ve warned me not to cry.”
“Brady wasn’t out in sight, but there were gents in all the stalls, so I had to … well, I had to crouch down and do me some lookin’. And wouldn’t you know it, one of them Guardsmen chose that very moment to come in and water the flowers.”
“What did you think you was gonna catch Brady up to?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what I did catch him at.”
Given where Gustav had done the catching, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Still, I looked up and gave him a “What?”
“Just sittin’ there, drawers up … with the fellow we caught tailin’ Smythe yesterday doin’ the same the next stall over.”
“The Unbearded Man was there?”
“Yup.”
“Were they talkin’?”
“I wasn’t there long enough to tell.”
“Be quite a coincidence if they weren’t.”
“So it would.”
“Well. Well well well.”
I was still letting this sink in when Gustav spoke up again.
“Brother?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you mind movin’? You’re gettin’ the bunk all soppy.”
And here I thought he was going to thank me for not laughing.
As I stood and shuffled toward the cell door, a man apparently dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte marched in to inspect us. His uniform was similar to that worn by the Columbian Guard, only it was even more flamboyant, with enough gold braid and piping to trim ninety-nine of Major Bacon’s Hoosier One Hundred. From the look the man gave us, if we’d been soldiers under his command, a firing squad would’ve been summoned immediately. The gents who followed him in—William Pinkerton and Urias Smythe—looked no more pleased to see us.
The military man introduced himself as Col. Edmund Rice, commandant of the Columbian Guard, and he proceeded to lecture us at length on the error of our ways. We were disrupting the Exposition. We were embarrassing our nation before all the world. We were (or, to be more precise, I was) responsible for the death by blunt trauma of two innocent softmouth trout. We were lucky we weren’t bound for a real jail. We were rubes and imbeciles and generally unfit to live.
And we were free to go.
“Don’t let me lay eyes on either of you ever again,” Rice barked as a Guardsman scuttled in to unlock the cell door. He left with stomps heavy enough to drive penny nails through solid steel.
“If we could have a moment,” Pinkerton said to the Guardsman, and the man nodded and followed Rice out. “Alright, let’s hear it. What’s your excuse?”
“Don’t you mean our explanation?” Old Red asked.
“That depends on what you have to say.” Pinkerton turned his glare on me. “Well?”
So I rolled it all out: the Bearded Man, the Unbearded Man (leaving out that we’d first come across him tailing Smythe), Brady’s suspicious behavior. When I was done, Pinkerton kept staring at me a moment, expressionless, before pronouncing judgment.
“You’re out of the competition.”
I’ve never heard the death rattle of a dying walrus, but I’m guessing the sound that came out of Smythe was pretty close.
“I’ll try to get your money back,” Pinkerton said to him.
Smythe instantly brightened. “Really?”
“I doubt Tousey and the others will agree to it, of course. But I’ll try.”
The walrus died another horrible death.
“You can’t kick us out of the contest,” I said. “We ain’t broken no rules.”
“This contest has rules?” Gustav snorted.
“Exactly!”
“You’re right,” Pinkerton said to me. “There’s no rule against jumping into fish tanks or making a scene in a men’s washroom. But the directors of the World’s Columbian Exposition Company allowed this competition to proceed only upon my guarantee that it would not disrupt the Fair. Your behavior today violated that agreement and put the entire contest in jeopardy.”
“Oh, the contest ain’t in no jeopardy,” Old Red said with a dismissive swipe of the hand. “You can’t tell me a carcass in the Canadian cheese ain’t enough to put an end to things, but a man fallin’ into some water is. Naw, you ain’t gonna give us the boot.”
“I’m not?” Pinkerton said. He didn’t sound convinced.
“Nope. Cuz if you went and did that, what switch would you have to lick us with should we go to the papers with all this? You saw them newsmen buzzin’ around today. They ain’t talkin’ murder yet—maybe cuz they’re tryin’ to protect their fair city and their fair fair, just like you. But we can surely persuade one of them to see things as we do: that there was a murder in the White City … and right under William Pinkerton’s nose, to boot.”
“Are you trying to blackmail me?”
“Yup.”
Given how Pinkerton was looking at us, I was tempted to close the cell door again. I would’ve felt safer.
“You know I could have you thrown in the Cook County Jail with one word,” he said.
“Sure. And if you do, Mr. Smythe’ll just go tell the newspapers where we are.”
“Well, now!” Smythe cried, horrified to find himself dragged into this. “I don’t know if … I mean, you shouldn’t assume that … well, I suppose I might … oh!”
“If he did that, I’d have him thrown in jail,” Pinkerto
n said.
Smythe gasped.
Old Red shook his head. “You’re playin’ a weak hand out too long, Mr. Pinkerton. Time to fold.”
Pinkerton and my brother stood there looking each other in the eye so long I started to think I could just leave, maybe go get something to eat, then come back and find them still at it.
“Get out of here,” Pinkerton finally said.
“You mean get out of here and don’t stir up a stink in the papers and then come back tomorrow at noon for the next round of the contest?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Will do, sir! Come on, come on, come on, let’s go.”
I herded my brother out of the cell and through the door. Smythe fled before us down the hall, scurrying like his britches were on fire and he was looking for a trough to sit in. We found him waiting for us on the building’s front steps when we came outside.
“Oh, why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?” he moaned.
“Don’t you read them stories he sends you?” Gustav shot back with a jerk of the head my way. “I ain’t the kind to let a thing like this go.”
“Why not try it for once? Just to see how it feels? After all, Curtis was no friend of yours.”
“He certainly wasn’t any friend of yours.”
“No, he wasn’t, but … say! What’s that supposed to mean?”
Gustav carried on down the steps. There weren’t many: The Columbian Guard was headquartered in the Service Building, one of the least ostentatious structures in all the White City. Slap it in the middle of Kansas, and it would have served admirably as a county courthouse, but here it seemed puny and plain.
“We’ve lost enough time dilly-dallyin’,” Old Red said. “There’s another new trail for us to follow, and I want to pick it up while it’s fresh. And if it leads to another privy or another fish tank, that don’t matter to me. We’ll keep on doin’ what we gotta do, damn the consequences!”
I started after him, then stopped and turned back to Smythe. “Hey, who won today, anyway?”
“Boothby Greene,” Smythe said glumly. He was watching Gustav march away like he was toting his very soul off to a bonfire.
“It’s neck and neck, then. Valmont, the Crowes, and Greene all got one point each. So if we get to the egg first tomorrow, it’s a four-way tie … and at least no one can say we lost.”
Smythe didn’t even look at me. “Oh. Joy.”
I took off after my brother, catching up to him just as he rounded the southwest corner of the Service Building.
“So what’s this new trail you’re so anxious to pick up?” I asked.
“Ain’t that obvious?”
Old Red whirled around the way we’d just come, then whipped off his Boss of the Plains and stole a wary look back at the front steps of the building. I took off my own hat—Stetsons not allowing for much stealth when peeking around corners—and leaned in for a peep myself.
Smythe was headed north, feet moving fast, fingers twitching.
“You know what’s up thataway, don’t you?” Gustav said.
“Oh, only the Horticulture Building, the Women’s Building, the Palace of Fine Arts, and forty-something state buildings. But I assume you’re talkin’ about the Midway Plaisance.”
“Yup. Right where we lost him yesterday.”
“You think he’s off to the same spot again?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. I only know there ain’t no man, bearded or unbearded, who’s gonna keep me from seein’ where that feller’s headed this time.”
He gave Smythe another moment to put more distance between us, then stepped out onto his trail.
27
WOES
Or, We Lift the Veil on Smythe’s Secrets, and He Brings Down the Curtain on Us
We kept well back as we followed Urias Smythe north. One glance over his shoulder, and my brother’s little ruse would be in vain. I resisted the urge to needle Gustav again about the big sore thumbs we had atop our heads and the need to switch to more discreet bowlers or boaters, for it wasn’t just our Stetsons that were conspicuous this time. I was without a doubt the only gentleman thereabouts whose suit was soaked through to the skin, and I had to walk at an awkward waddle lest my sodden, clinging underthings get to chafing me in spots still tender from the leather clown suit I’d been forced to wear two days before.
Gustav also wanted us back a ways so as to spot anyone new who took to doing what we were, but the Unbearded Man didn’t end up tagging along that day … so far as we could tell. Fortunately, it was easy to keep an eye on Smythe from quite a distance thanks to his broad, hunched back and half-bald pate and bustling, ungainly pace.
Just as he reached the end of the long west-facing facade of the Horticulture Building, with the Women’s Building and all the state buildings still ahead to the north, Smythe cut left and hustled out of the White City. Which cinched it right there: He was indeed returning to the Midway Plaisance.
“What do you think keeps drawin’ him back here?” I asked Old Red.
“I reckon it’s where he comes when his feathers get ruffled. The first time he disappeared—when he went off to get cigars he don’t smoke—was right after that crazy dinner party. Yesterday, he came here again after he got a grillin’ from Pinkerton and Ryan. Now here he is fresh from seein’ us behind bars.”
“You think he comes to consult with somebody? The Bearded Man, maybe?”
“Could be. That letter we found certainly made out like they was up to something together.”
“But the Bearded Man’s been tryin’ to wreck our chances in the contest. Why would Smythe want him to do that?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t you notice, though? When Pinkerton said he was bootin’ us outta the competition?”
I nodded ruefully. “Yeah. Smythe was actually relieved—so long as he thought he could get his ante back.”
“And if the contest had been canceled yesterday, after Curtis turned up dead, he would’ve. Everyone would’ve. After all, no contest, no winner. No winner, no prize.”
“Are you suggestin’ that we are so entirely uninspirin’ as champions that Smythe would kill a man just to get out of backin’ us?”
My brother shrugged. “Gotta ask yourself: ‘Who is it who profits by it?’ ”
I smiled despite the sudden gust of wind off the lake that cut through my damp clothes like a Bowie knife through wet paper. The quote was a new addition to Old Red’s inventory, coming as it did from the latest (and apparently last) Holmes story to appear in Harper’s Weekly, “The Naval Treaty.”
“Seems like forever since I heard you spout off like that,” I said. “Good to hear you talkin’ like the Man again.”
“About time somebody around here did.”
We were on the Midway now, a Javanese settlement to the right, an encampment of Samoans to the left. Smythe passed them by without slowing.
“Well, at least now we know the Bearded Man ain’t from Samoa,” I said. “But if Smythe’s comin’ here to meet him, don’t that mean he spends his days in one of these here villages or castles or what-have-you? I mean, Smythe didn’t have time to send word he wanted a parley. He’d have to just know the man would be here.”
“Hmm,” Gustav grunted.
Translated from Gustavese, this means “Good point.”
The natatorium, the panorama of the Alps, the diorama of Pompeii, the Turkish and German villages—all quickly fell behind us as the Ferris wheel loomed ever larger.
“Looks like he’s goin’ for a spin on the wheel,” I said. “I told you I’d get you on that thing before we left Chicago!”
My brother said nothing, though I thought I caught a little twitch of his lips. Maybe he was praying. If so, his prayers were answered, for once: Smythe turned right, into “A Street in Cairo.”
“That there’s the perfect place to meet someone on the sly,” Old Red said. “All them alleyways and cafés and quiet corners and—”
Smythe veered off into the theater where t
he hoochie-coochie girls plied their trade.
“That is not a quiet corner,” I said.
“Hrm,” Gustav grunted.
Translated from Gustavese, this means “Shut up.”
“You know,” I went on, “if you’d have just let me look for him in there yesterday like I wanted to, we—”
“Shut up.”
I shut up. When my brother goes to the trouble of saying it in English, I generally listen.
We paid our way into the theater, ignoring both the disapproving scowls of the passing ladies and the up-and-down sneer the ticket taker gave my still-soggy suit. The entrance hall led to a high-ceilinged lobby lined with elaborate scrollwork and murals depicting veiled women in diaphanous pantaloons dancing for hookah-sucking sheiks. In the center of the room was a plush round couch upon which sat two stout gentlemen speaking in low tones. Neither one was Urias Smythe.
The sound of shrill, high-pitched pipes squeaking out a repetitive yet strangely compelling melody drew us through the room like the song of a laryngitical siren. On the far side of the lobby was a set of double doors, and pushing through them we finally found ourselves in the theater proper.
Or the theater improper, I should perhaps say, for what was transpiring on the stage looked, at first, like a whorehouse hit by an earthquake. Gyrating wildly this way and that were girls in outfits so thin and skimpy all the material put together wouldn’t make a nightgown for a midget. Their exposed bellies they sucked in and pushed out and swiveled and shimmied in time to raucous music played by fez-wearing men seated on pillows to one side of the stage.
Their audience—two hundred strong and male, every one—filled the room both with their bulk and the noxious smells of their cigars and sweat. Most were attempting to maintain some sense of decorum, looking upon the pulchritude wiggling and jiggling before them with studious expressions of mild, polite interest, as though they were missionaries forced to endure some heathen ritual they’d have sooner skipped if not for fear of offending the natives. The rest dispensed with such pretense, stamping their feet and clapping their hands and hooting with an unbridled delight the others no doubt envied.
World's Greatest Sleuth! Page 20
