The Case of the Petrified Man (2 page)

HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED.

After vanquishing three Deadly Desperados last Monday, I used $300 of the Reward Money to buy premises for my new business.

Mr. Sol Bloomfield was in the process of amalgamating his two small Tobacco Stores into one big Emporium down on C Street. I bought the smallest of his stores, the one on South B Street. Although it is long & narrow it suits me fine because it is located next to a Photographic Studio (where I can get disguises) and the Colombo Restaurant (where I take my meals).

Mr. Bloomfield removed the last of his cigars &
snuff & pipe tobacco from that store on Tuesday evening at 5:00 p.m.

I moved in on Tuesday evening at 6:00 p.m.

I opened my door for business at 9:00 a.m. on Wed October 1.

I had put up a shingle outside my front door with the words: P.K. P
INKERTON,
P
RIVATE
EYE.
W
E
H
ARDLY
E
VER
S
LEEP
. And I had a big sign in the window of the door that told people I was
OPEN
.

I had been greatly supported by the townsfolk after vanquishing a deadly desperado a few days before, and I was confident that I would soon get many clients. My foster pa, Emmet, always used to tell me to “strike while the iron is hot.”

But all that morning not a single person came in through my door.

Maybe it was because the Washoe Zephyr had been blowing hard since the night before. I had been finishing the account of my first Case and did not notice, but now that I had nothing to do but sit and wait for clients, the powerful wind seemed to taunt me. They call it a “zephyr” but it was howling & moaning & spitting gravel at my shop front. My left arm began to throb where I had been shot two days before by a .22 caliber ball.

I began to feel very low.

By and by I felt so low that I was in danger of getting the Mulligrubs.

The “Mulligrubs” is what my foster ma, Evangeline, called a bad kind of trance that creeps up on me when I feel low. I can stay in those Bad Trances for hours. I rock & moan &
cannot easily be roused. When I come out of those trances, my brain feels thick & wooly, as if my head was stuffed full of cotton balls. Getting the Mulligrubs is another one of my Foibles.

Ma Evangeline—God rest her soul—taught me a way of staving off the Mulligrubs. If I concentrate on ordering a Collection, it distracts me & I forget to be low. When I was living with Ma Evangeline and Pa Emmet down in Temperance, they let me keep a Bug Collection & a Button Collection.

But I did not have either of those collections at my new residence in Virginia City, so I looked about me with an aim to starting a new one.

Mr. Sol Bloomfield had left all the labels on the shelves along with the tobacco crumbs & flakes that gave the place its distinctive smell.

I went back to my desk & found a pack of cigarrito papers & spread them out & copied down the names of all the different tobaccos. Then I went to the shelves and found bits of tobacco & started to put a sample of each tobacco on top of every label.

Using an out-of-date brochure that Mr. Bloomfield left behind, I catalogued over 50 Cuban Cigars, 32 Domestic Cigars, 17 types of Leaf Tobacco, 12 different Plugs & Twists and 6 varieties of Snuff.

So that made over 100 types of smoking, chewing and leaf tobacco. I decided to call it my Big Tobacco Collection so that it would begin with
B
like my other two collections: Bugs & Buttons.

Sometimes I looked up at the door that still admitted no Clients & I
felt kind of queasy in my stomach. But as soon as I returned to my new task I felt better.

In this way I staved off the Mulligrubs & fought the urge to be downcast. Sometimes I even forgot my throbbing arm & the howling wind & the memory of the terrible thing I had seen in my cabin down in Temperance.

It was a little past 5 p.m. and the sun had just dipped behind Mount Davidson when a bearded miner flung open the door to my office. I was so absorbed in ordering flecks of snuff that I almost jumped out of my skin. Some of that Zephyr whirled in and threatened to stir up my Big Tobacco Collection, so I shielded it with my arms & asked the man to shut the door.

He did so & stood there panting.

As I said, I am not good at reading people. It is my Thorn.

Ma Evangeline taught me five facial Expressions to look out for.

The eyes of the miner who had just burst into my office were open real wide.

It was definitely Expression No. 4.

He was scared.

I thought, “At last. Someone has brought me a mystery to solve.”

ARE YOU THE DETECTIVE?”
cried the bearded miner, taking a step into my narrow office.

I did not betray my excitement at receiving my first Client.

“Yes,” I said in a calm & businesslike tone. “I am P.K. Pinkerton, Private Eye. No problem too big, no case too small.”

“Come quick!” panted the miner. “It’s gone! It was thar a minute ago and now it’s gone! Come see!”

I got up & grabbed my good slouch hat from a peg by the door & flipped my
OPEN
sign to
CLOSED
& followed him outside, closing the door as
quickly as I could. Out on the blustery boardwalk, the shrieking Zephyr tried to snatch the hat from my head & the blue woolen coat from my back. Two other men were standing out there on the boardwalk. The wind was whipping up their slouch hats, beards & flannel shirts, and even the pants tucked into knee-high boots. I deduced from their flapping attire that they were miners, too.

As I locked the door behind me, they were all crying, “It’s gone! It’s gone!”

“What is gone?” I asked the miners. I had to shout to make myself heard.

“Come on,” said the first one. “We’ll show you!”

The three miners led the way: north along B Street & then left up Sutton towards A Street, their long brown beards fluttering behind them like pennants.

The wind was so strong that it made the planks of the boardwalk rattle. We had to lean into it at an angle of about 45 degrees just to make headway. That blasting Zephyr had driven most people indoors but a passing woman screamed as it lifted her hoopskirt right over her head to reveal frilly bloomers. A small dog was being pushed down the street in the opposite direction to the one it was heading. Oxen and mules kept their heads down & their eyes squinched & their teeth gritted.

In front of me, the three miners were shouting things like, “Where d’you think it went?” and “Who could of took it?”

“What is gone?” I repeated into the howling wind.

“Thar!” shouted the first miner, pointing. “It was right thar!”

I stopped and stared at the northwest corner of Sutton and A Street. I could not believe my eyes. Through a cloud of dust I could see nothing but a Vacant Lot.

“The Daily Territorial Enterprise Newspaper building,” I said. “It is gone.”

Two days previously I had been carried to the reporters’ sleeping area next to the newspaper’s printing office so that I could have a .22 caliber bullet dug out of my arm. Now the wooden building & its lean-to annex had Completely Vanished.

There remained not a single stick of wood. A tumbleweed sped across that Vacant Lot; it was going about a mile a minute.

“It was thar yesterday,” Miner No. 2 shouted above the howling wind.

“And now it’s gone,” shouted Miner No. 3.

“Who could of took it?” shouted the first miner. “You’re a Detective. You better look for clews!”

I looked around.

A woman’s parasol flew by.

“Lookee here,” shouted Miner No. 2. “There might be a clew in this morning’s paper.” He held it out.

The half-folded newspaper was flapping in the violent wind so I took it & looked where his grubby finger was stabbing & I read the following:

A GALE
. About 7 o’clock Tuesday evening a sudden blast of wind picked up a shooting gallery, two lodging houses and a drug store from their tall wooden stilts and set them
down again some ten or twelve feet back of their original location, with such a degree of roughness as to jostle their insides into a sort of chaos. There were many guests in the lodging houses at the time of the accident, but it is pleasant to reflect that they seized their carpet sacks and vacated the premises. No one hurt.

“Do you think maybe it was the Washoe Zephyr?” said the first miner above the howling wind. “Do you think this pesky breeze lifted it right up and set it down elsewheres?”

“That thar wind is a
Scriptural Wind
,” shouted another, “on account of no man knows
whence it cometh
.”

I looked down at the article & then back up to find the three miners laughing & slapping their thighs & pointing at me.

“He believed us!” cried one.

“He was looking for clews!” shouted another.

“He calls himself a ‘Detective’!” The third one laughed.

That was when I realized the Ugly Truth.

They had not brought me my first case. They were pranking me.

I clenched my fists and considered kicking the nearest miner hard in the shin. But Pa Emmet had taught me not to kick people hard in the shin. He taught me to count to ten & quote Philippians 4:5, “Let your moderation be known to all men.”

So I did not kick any of the miners hard in the shin. Nor did I draw down on them with the Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter in my pocket.

Instead I took a deep breath & bowed my head & counted to ten & quoted Philippians 4:5.

“Amen,” I said.

As I lifted my head, the wind seemed to die down a little. I saw that the miners had gone & a tall man in a flapping gray suit stood beside me. He had a round face, a dark mustache & clean-shaven chin. He was smoking a cigar. He looked familiar.

“Hello, P.K.,” he shouted above the wind. “Are you looking for the Enterprise?”

“Yes,” I shouted back. “Some miners told me this wind blew it away. I reckon they were pranking me.”

“Yes indeed,” he shouted. “We moved down to our fine new premises on C Street yesterday. I guess those Chinese firewood-peddlers have been over this place and picked it clean.” He sucked his cigar & blew out & the wind snatched away the smoke. “I came up here to see what still needed doing, but the answer is nary a thing. I could not have hired men to do such a good job.”

I pointed at the article in the fluttering newspaper. “They tried to use this article called ‘A Gale’ to convince me,” I said.

The man leant forward and looked at the article.

“Oh, that is just an attempt at humor by Mr. Sam Clemens, our new Local Reporter,” he said. “He is still finding his feet, as they say.”

Then I recognized the man who was speaking to me. He was Mr. Joe Goodman, one of the co-owners of the Territorial Enterprise Newspaper. He had promised to teach me some Latin phrases.

“You promised to teach some Latin phrases,” I said.

“So I did,” he replied. “Why don’t you come down and visit us one day? You can find us at Twenty-Seven North C Street.”

“I will.” I folded the newspaper & put it in my coat pocket & turned to go back to my office.

“Oh, P.K.?” he said, shouting against the wind.

I turned back. “Yes?”

“Do not be discouraged.
Fortes fortuna iuvat.
”

“Beg pardon?”

He took out a pencil and wrote it down on the margin of my newspaper.

“That is Latin,” he said. “It means ‘Fortune favors the brave.’”

WHEN I GOT BACK
to my office I spread the newspaper out on top of my Big Tobacco Collection & studied the article by Sam Clemens that had inspired the miners to prank me.

It was obviously a passel of lies but there it was in black & white.