World's Greatest Sleuth!

by Steve Hockensmith

  “What does any of this have to do with us?” Tousey asked.

  “Everything! Because M. Curtis was about to lose that perfect ending to his god’s goss-pell. Thanks to you, mademoiselle.”

  He was looking at Lucille Larson.

  “Me?”

  I would’ve thought the lady’s gaunt, bony face hardly had the flesh to spare for a smile, yet I spied the hint of a smirk hoisting up one corner of her thin lips. I think she was pleased to find herself handed a plum role in the insane melodrama playing out before her.

  “Your magazine, at any rate,” Valmont said. “McClure’s. Soon, it will publish Dr. John Watson’s account of his friend’s death at Reichenbach. That which has been shrouded in secrecy will be revealed for all the world to see. The myth of the god”—he brought up his hands, one high, one low, then smacked them together—“comes down to earth. For the acolyte, the disci-PELL, the believer, this prospect is both captivating and completely unaccepti-BELL.” He pulled his hands apart again. “There is a spleet.”

  “A spleet?” I said.

  “A spleet.” Valmont tapped the side of his head. “In the mind. And this brings us to the final, the greatest deduc-shawn. Remember M. Curtis’s last words to us before leaving this room. The first day of the contest was but ‘a warm-up.’ The real challenge was about to begin. Yet what did we get in the days to follow? I will tell you.”

  The Frenchman stopped and reached into his inside coat pocket. Out came one of the stiff clue cards we’d all come to know so well.

  “De la terre où les têtes couronnées une fois roulées, il sont venues à un grand jubilé,” Valmont read out. “Mais maintenant de lui goûte des larmes, et pourrait assaisonner mille bouillabaisses.” He shook his head and put the card away again. “Translation: From the land where crowned heads once rolled, it came to great celebray-shawn; but now it tastes of tears and could season a thousand bow-ELS of soup.”

  “Your second clue yesterday,” Diana said.

  “Exactement. Leading to the fac-simile Statue of Libertay in the Mines and Mining Building.” Valmont turned to the only sleuths there who didn’t make it to the Mining Building the day before—me and Gustav. “Carved from salt, you see.”

  “Clever,” I said.

  Old Red, meanwhile, gave a little jerk in his chair, as if I’d repaid him for flattening my toes.

  “Hel-lo,” I heard him mutter.

  Valmont didn’t notice, though. He was already replying to me as he went back into orbit around the table.

  “Cle-VAIR? No. I must disagree. How does this ri-DELL differ from what we were given on Monday, except that the doggerel is even more infantile and the French more execrable? Answer: It does not. Conclusion: This is not the real challenge M. Curtis was speaking of Monday night.”

  Valmont’s voice rose steadily as he looped around us, and his pace picked up, too. In fact, if he kept it up, I figured it wouldn’t be long before he was running screaming circles on the ceiling.

  “I submit, ladies and gentlemen, that Armstrong B. Curtis could not abide the thought of his god being dragged back down to earth and supplanted in the firmament by one of us. So devoted was he to Sherlock Holmes that he chose to sacrifice himself upon the great sleuth’s al-TEHR. It fits the facts, mes amis! Eliminate the impossi-BELL and whatever remains will be the truth, Holmes said. No no no! Not today! Today we must embrace the impossi-BELL, for—by design—that is where the truth lies! The man who killed M. Curtis was in this room Monday night, but he is not with us now, and that is because he … sat … there!”

  When the Frenchman stopped and pointed this time, he was facing Armstrong B. Curtis’s empty chair.

  There were exclamations from all around the table—“Ridiculous!” from Colonel Crowe, “He’s as crazy as Curtis” from Tousey, a simple “What?” from Pinkerton, etc. My brother didn’t cut loose with his usual “Feh” or “Hel-lo,” though. In fact, he barely seemed to be paying attention at all. His eyes were pointed at Valmont, but his gaze had turned inward.

  “Consider the bizarre manner of his demise,” Valmont went on, ignoring the ruckus he’d whipped up. “Consider his state of mind. Consider the outré clues unearthed by the brothers Amlingmeyer: cow dung in the dead man’s hair, a rat dressed in a tuxedo, a box full of escargot, et ainsi de suite. Does it not begin to look less like a mur-DARE and more like a joke—with all of us as the butts?”

  “Pardon me, monsieur,” Miss Larson said. She seemed as astonished as everyone else, yet her surprise looked like more of the Christmas morning “Can you believe what Santa left me on the tree?” variety. “Did you just say a rat dressed in a tuxedo and a box full of snails?”

  “Oui. Found in an alley behind the Columbian Hotel.”

  “It was a squirrel, actually,” I said, “and how’d you come to hear of it?”

  “The same way I learned of your League of Bearded Men.”

  Pinkerton twisted in his chair to throw a glare at Sergeant Ryan.

  “This is all very interesting,” Ryan said with his usual air of imperturbable cheer. “I think, though, that you just put your finger on the hole in your own theory.”

  Valmont nodded. “Indeed. The Bearded Men. They are not, however, a hole. They are the last piece of the puz-ZELL—the one that completes the picture. M. Pinkerton … if you would be so kind as to put it in place.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pinkerton said.

  “The truth about the disguise-ED men who have been adding such a delightful note of menace to this whole endeavor.”

  “Yes, I know that much. What I don’t know is why you’re asking me about them.”

  Valmont shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Come, come, monsieur. The time for charades is past. We know that you brought M. Curtis into the contest in order to embarrass your rye-VELLS. And we know that you, as head of the Pinkerton National Detective Awgency’s Chicago office, have dozens of skilled operatives at your disposal.”

  The Frenchman lurched toward the table, his arm stretched straight out before him like a knight’s lance, the index finger pointed at Pinkerton’s heart.

  “I put it to you that the Bearded Men are your agents, assigned to act as decoys and disruptions! That you have known from the beginning that M. Curtis killed himself as part of an elaborate hoax! That you intend to announce that you alone discov-AIRED Curtis’s trickery after the contest is o-VAIR, thus ensuring our humiliation! Admit it, William Pinkerton! Admit it, and bring this ugly farce to an end!”

  “I will admit nothing of the kind!” Pinkerton roared back. “Because it’s complete hogwash! Those men, whoever they are—if they even are—are not Pinkertons! And as for Armstrong Curtis putting squirrels in suits and rubbing dung in his hair and smothering himself in cheddar, I can’t even use the word that deserves with ladies present! If there’s anyone here who needs to bring an ugly farce to an end, it’s you! Now I suggest you stop pointing fingers, sit down, and shut up.”

  Valmont nodded solemnly, turned, and walked to the empty chair between Blackheath-Murray and Miss Larson.

  “I apologize to you all,” he said once he had himself seated. “In the past, I have found that these lee-TELL confrontations can shock loose new facts, new connections … even confessions. But today?” He shrugged, then pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time. “Très bon. My timing, at least, cannot be faulted. The pain au chocolat should be arriving in but two minutes.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’ve been firin’ blind the whole time? Shoutin’ at us and makin’ us squirm in the hopes someone would just fess up to the whole thing?”

  Valmont dumped a lump of sugar in his coffee and began giving it a stir. “It has worked before.”

  “Did you even believe half of what you were saying?” Miss Larson asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Valmont took a sip of his coffee. “Half would be about right.”

  Pinkerton stood up and, without a word, walked away from the
table. When he started down the stairs, Ryan and the uniformed cop went with him—though Ryan, at least, paused to offer a farewell in the form of a tipped bowler.

  “Of all the presumptuous, arrogant, capricious wastes of time,” Tousey grumbled, and he, too, stood up. “Let’s go, King.”

  “I find I’ve lost my appetite as well,” Boothby Greene said. A moment later, he and Blackheath-Murray were following Brady and Tousey out, and Smythe went slinking away at their heels.

  “I think there’s a French word for this,” I said.

  “Déjà vu?” Diana suggested.

  “That’s it. No one’s gettin’ me outta my seat before I eat this time, though.”

  My brother pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “But—”

  “We got work to do.”

  Old Red turned toward Diana and Colonel Crowe, the long look he gave them saying, All of us. Then he headed toward the stairs alone.

  “Well … thanks for the coffee,” I sighed.

  As I caught up to my brother, I was pleased to find Diana and the colonel doing the same.

  “Valmont was right, and he don’t even know it,” Gustav said.

  “Oh, please,” Colonel Crowe scoffed. “You can’t actually believe that preposterous story about Curtis killing himself.”

  “It ain’t that the man was right about. It was all that talk shakin’ something loose.”

  We’d reached the bottom of the steps now, and Old Red stopped and let us gather up together in a little circle before saying more.

  “I think I know who murdered Mr. Curtis … and I definitely know how to smoke him out.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “How?” said Diana.

  Naturally, Gustav took things ladies-first.

  “Simple,” he said. “We let him have exactly what he wants.”

  31

  THE CONTEST (FINAL ROUND)

  Or, The Last Riddle Turns Out to Be a Joke … and It’s on Us

  “How do I look?”

  I opened my mouth to answer.

  “On second thought, forget I asked,” my brother said. “I don’t want to know.”

  I closed my mouth and (for the moment) kept it closed.

  He was right. He didn’t want to know. Nor did I want to know what I looked like, though I had a pretty good idea: I looked like a color-blind fool. A red-and-white-striped one, to be more specific.

  I was once again in the leather cowboy getup I’d worn the first day of the contest, only this time I wouldn’t be making a spectacle of myself alone. Old Red had agreed to let Mr. Cohn the tailor dude him up, too. For the final round of the competition, at least, Urias Smythe would have the matching set of court jesters he’d wanted.

  So there Gustav was in white hat, white gun belt, white vest, red shirt, red trousers, red boots. Everything but the chaps. We’d both drawn the line there.

  “Mr. Cohn, Mr. Smythe, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I’d like a moment alone with my brother.”

  “Of course,” Smythe said. Despite Old Red’s reversal, he’d remained so glum he lacked even the energy to pace, let alone palpitate. We were back in the same little office in the Administration Building we’d used as an impromptu tailor shop a few days before, and he’d watched Cohn fuss over my brother from his slump-shouldered perch atop the lone desk, a stack of empty boxes to one side, a typewriter to the other. He shuffled out of the room with all the pep of a man walking to the gallows.

  Before going, Mr. Cohn leaned in to snap a loose thread off Gustav’s trousers.

  “The alterations … I don’t know. I wish I had more time for the stitching.” He straightened up and wagged a finger at Old Red. “Don’t futz with that belt, or your britches might split.”

  “Don’t worry yourself, sir,” I said as I lead him out. “I will brook no futzin’ from my brother.”

  Once I had the door closed behind the man, I turned back to Gustav. “Shall we?”

  “Now’s the time.”

  I walked over to my suit coat abandoned on the desk, reached into one of the pockets, and pulled out a smallish box. We’d done some shopping after leaving the restaurant that morning, us and the Crowes, and this had been our first purchase.

  A box of .44 caliber cartridges.

  We drew out our ivory-handled, silverplated Colts—up till now nothing more than particularly heavy decorations—and set about loading them. When they were ready, we looked at each other, nodded, then headed for the door.

  I took hold of the knob … then paused to look my brother up and down.

  “You know, it must be said—”

  “No, it mustn’t,” Old Red cut in.

  I forged on regardless.

  “—you shouldn’t have hid yourself away in them old puncher’s duds so long. Clean you up, and you actually almost look like a goddamn hero.”

  My brother replied with what he felt must be said, as he feels it needs saying so very often: “Feh.”

  When we stepped out of the building, we found the crowd out front was the biggest yet: eight or nine hundred people, maybe even a thousand, all crammed in around the bandstand at the edge of the Grand Basin. The swarm was so large, in fact, there was no room along the water for Major Bacon and His Hoosier One Hundred, and the brass band was forced to take up residence near the steps of the Machinery Building fifty yards away. They were playing “The Gladiator” as we stepped outside.

  “I wonder if … yup, there he is.” I pointed to a tall figure halfway to the gazebo. “That’s King Brady’s song.”

  “Good timin’, then,” Gustav said as cheers went up all around the Court of Honor. “Maybe nobody’ll notice us.”

  I glanced down at our eyeball-assaulting outfits. “Umm. Yeah.”

  My brother was nearly right, though. Brady might have been the only contestant other than us who had no chance of winning—the best he (or we) could hope for was a four-way tie with Greene, Valmont, and the Crowes—yet he was still the people’s favorite, and their hurrahs were so deafening they must have echoed all the way up the lake to Milwaukee.

  “You’d think he was ridin’ into Jerusalem on an ass,” I grumbled, but I don’t think Old Red even heard me. He was too busy trying to take advantage of the distraction, and indeed as we hustled along in Brady’s wake (with Smythe in ours), we only had to put up with two dozen wisecracks about our finery instead of the two hundred I’d expected. We also saw beards aplenty, of course, but none were attached to anybody who seemed to wish us any harm.

  By the time we reached the bandstand, Brady and Frank Tousey were doing us yet another favor—entertaining the reporters camped out by the steps with bold predictions of imminent victory. We managed to slip by almost unseen.

  There would’ve been no “almost” about it if Old Red hadn’t leaned out over the railing when we were halfway up the stairs.

  “Hey! You!” he called down to the reporters. “The feller in the white suit!”

  A man clad in wrinkled seersucker turned to peer up at my brother. I recognized him as the newshound from the Evening Journal—the one who’d been shouting about “the ghost of Sherlock Holmes” the day before.

  “That spook ever come back?” Gustav asked him.

  “No,” the man said sourly, obviously thinking my brother was guying him.

  “Well, just keep your eyes open today, friend,” Old Red said, and on he went to the top of the steps.

  I’ll say this for Boothby Greene and Blackheath-Murray and Eugene Valmont: They were all polite enough not to smirk or roll their eyes at our getups. (You’ll notice that Lucille Larson and William Pinkerton are conspicuously missing from that sentence. The Crowes are as well, but I couldn’t fault them for the looks on their faces. They’d been forewarned what we’d look like, yet the colonel still winced, while Diana stared despondently at Old Red like he was a kitten favoring a sore paw. Her heart obviously ached for his lost dignity—which had me wondering if
she thought I had any to lose.)

  A moment later, Brady and Tousey joined us, and it was time. Pinkerton said a few words from the podium, but I didn’t hear a one of them. He could’ve fired off a cannon and I wouldn’t have noticed, so lost in thought was I.

  If I don’t talk my way into an early grave, I might get seventy or eighty years to gallivant around this old world of ours. Yet despite all the thousands of hours I could still have ahead of me, this next one, I knew, was the most important, for every single minute to follow would bear its mark. We were being swept toward a fork in the river, my brother and me. To the one side was failure, to the other success, and the current was strong and our paddles small. We were going to have to row for all we were worth to make it downriver the right way, and what’s more—and this scared me most of all—we were going to have to get lucky. And the one and only thing you can count on with luck is that it won’t be there when you really need it.

  “Contestants, deduce!” Pinkerton bellowed, and it was only then I realized he’d already handed out all the envelopes, and one of them was in my own hands.

  I tore it open and read out the following words.

  To find the treasure

  Board a ship of the desert

  Asail where the spinning wheel looms.

  Enter ye there the pharaoh’s tomb.

  The prize you’ll find hidden

  In that black vault forbidden:

  In Death’s grip, yet free from harm,

  Safe as the babe in mummy’s arms.

  “Hardly even counts as a riddle, it’s so obvious,” I said. “They may as well have just given us a map with a big X on it.”

  “Maybe that’s the point,” Old Red said. “Ain’t the time to stand around jawin’ about it, though. Lead on.”

  It was gratifying to be the first ones on the go, for once, and the assembled multitudes put up a satisfying roar of approval as we clopped down the stairs. We didn’t get all the huzzahs to ourselves, though, for King Brady was right on our heels, and when we reached the bottom of the steps I glanced back and saw Diana and the colonel at the top.