World's Greatest Sleuth! (18 page)

“Alright,” said Pinkerton, striding over to stand beside Ryan, “that’s enough.”

Something about the way he said it made it so. The lobby went quiet.

“We’re going to talk this through quickly and professionally, with no more outbursts,” Pinkerton said. “Understood?”

There were a few sullen nods, then Pinkerton went on, addressing himself first to Old Red and me, then Valmont and Greene.

“Armstrong Curtis’s death is being investigated by the proper authorities … and
only
the proper authorities. It’s too early to come to any conclusions—”

“But here one comes anyhow,” my brother said under his breath.

“—but every indication points to a sad accident, and we will move on knowing that we now honor not just Sherlock Holmes, but his greatest admirer as well. The contest will continue.” Pinkerton switched his attention to Tousey and the colonel, staring hard. “As planned.”

“Pardon my askin’,” Gustav said, “but how else
would
it continue?”

Pinkerton did not pardon his asking. In fact, it looked like Pinkerton wanted to squash him into a ball and take him bowling.

“It could continue,” Tousey sneered, “as something other than a farce.”

“The matter’s been settled,” Blackheath-Murray said. “Let it lie, sir.”

Boothby Greene’s publisher had struck me as a mild-mannered fellow up till then, gentlemanly and affable, but there was steel beneath his soft, genteel appearance—you could see it glittering in his eyes.

King Brady’s publisher had plenty of steel himself, though. Or brass balls, anyway.

“I will
not
let it lie!” Tousey thundered. “Not when we’ve been handed the chance to fix this crazy thing before Pinkerton makes laughingstocks of us all!”

“Hear, hear!” King Brady threw in, swinging a fist into the air. I think he was expecting more folks to join in with him—more than the nobody he got, at least—and his cheeks took on a touch of pink as his hand dropped back to his side.

“What are you proposing?” Greene asked Tousey. “That we toss out all the clues Mr. Curtis prepared and create entirely new ones?”

“Exactly. Pinkerton was supposed to come up with the contest in the first place. Let him do it now.”

“I got another question,” Gustav said.

Everyone ignored him.

“I already said no,” Pinkerton snapped at Tousey.

“But
why
?” Tousey shot back. “Curtis was trying to make us look like fools—he told us as much last night. We should let him get away with it even after he’s
dead
? No!”

Pinkerton was a big, bluff man, and all he had to do was lean forward and it felt like his shadow was falling over the whole room.

“Now, look here, you—”

Old Red poked a finger up into the air. “I got another question.”

“I think Tousey’s making good sense,” Colonel Crowe announced. “Those silly puzzles … they’re embarrassing. Why not come up with something worthy of
real
detectives?”

“Hear, hear!” Brady cheered, pumping his fist again.

“I will grant,” Blackheath-Murray said, addressing himself to Tousey, “that Mr. Curtis’s approach wasn’t perfect. Still, to toss out everything he prepared is to invite chaos.”

“I agree,” Greene said.

“Invite chaos?” Smythe whined. He had a love seat all to himself, and it looked like he was going to collapse back on it in a dead faint. “What do you call this?”

Then the chaos
really
kicked in.

Blackheath-Murray was fussing at Smythe.

Brady was fussing at Blackheath-Murray.

Greene was fussing at Brady.

Tousey was fussing at Pinkerton.

Pinkerton was fussing right back at Tousey.

Colonel Crowe was fussing at everybody.

Smythe was fussing at God. (“What did I do to deserve this?”)

Valmont … well, I couldn’t tell who he was fussing at, his accent grew so thick.

Diana took it all in with the look of someone who’d rather be somewhere else—the South Pole, a Bolivian prison, the middle of a volcano,
anywhere
.

Ryan, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying the show, while Miss Larson was scribbling so fast it was a wonder her notebook didn’t light up like kindling.

And my brother … what
was
he doing, anyway?

I watched in helpless horror as he calmly rose to his feet, climbed atop his chair, cleared his throat, and hollered at the top of his lungs.

“Put … it … to … a … vote!”

Then he stepped down, reseated himself, and folded his arms across his chest.

The shouting was over. Now everyone was
staring
.

Pinkerton found his voice again first. “This isn’t a Grange meeting. I’m in charge, and I’ve made my decision.”

“Well, it looks to me like you got a mutiny brewin’,” Old Red replied. “If you wanna stamp it out, a vote’s the way to go. Cuz if it swings your way, Tousey there ain’t got a leg to stand on, and this argument is over.”

Diana raised a hand. “I second the motion,” she said. “You might be in charge, Mr. Pinkerton, but it’s our money at stake, not to mention our reputations. We should have a say in how we proceed from here.”

“I third the motion,” I said.

“I fourth it,” said Valmont.

Colonel Crowe swiveled around to glower at Diana, but she kept her eyes on William Pinkerton. Unlike my brother, he wasn’t one of those people you can
see
thinking. For all the turning the wheels may have been doing in his head, his jowly face remained stock-still for a long, long time.

“Alright,” he finally said. “All those who think we should discard Curtis’s clues and start from scratch, raise your hand.”

Tousey’s and Brady’s hands were up first, of course, followed by Smythe’s and Crowe’s. The colonel’s glare finally got through to Diana, and she reluctantly voted with her father.

I started to put my hand up again as well, but Gustav gave me a quick shake of the head.

“But you hate riddles,” I whispered.

“I surely do,” my brother said. “Now get that hand down.”

I did as he said.

“That’s five, then,” Pinkerton said. “Now, all those who think we should see this through with the contest as it stands?”

Blackheath-Murray and Greene had their hands up first, followed by Valmont and, finally, Old Red.

“Come on, come on,” my brother prompted me.

“Boy, this is a Chicago election, alright.” I raised an arm. “You gonna cast a vote for Mr. Holmes, too?”

“Five. A tie,” Pinkerton said. “And as judge, I can—”

“One party ain’t been heard from,” Gustav said.

He turned toward Miss Larson.

“Me?” The lady finally gave her pencil a rest. “I’m just an impartial observer.”

“You’re here representin’
McClure’s Magazine,
” Old Red reminded her. “Your bosses have as much ridin’ on this as anybody. You need to weigh in.”

The lady eyed him a moment, and though her face remained the same expressionless mask of ice, I could somehow sense the shift inside her as she reappraised the peculiar little fellow with the grubby clothes and the rough ways.

“Alright,” she said. “I side with you and Mr. Pinkerton. It would be a shame to let Mr. Curtis’s hard work go to waste. Let us honor him by carrying on as he intended.”

“That’s six to five, then,” Pinkerton said. “We will move forward with the contest as is. Those who wish to withdraw—and forfeit their stake—are free to do so. Otherwise, the matter is
closed
.”

Momentous words, those were. Funny thing, though: Nobody was looking at Pinkerton as he spoke them. All eyes were on Old Red.

Half the folks there looked like they were trying to figure out what he was thinking.

The other half? It looked like they were trying to figure out how to get his face into a chunk of cheddar.

19

THE OFFICE

Or, I Smoke Out a Lie While Gustav Burns Our Bridges

“Well, now … if you’ve
concluded your business, I hope I might have a word.”

Slowly, all the stares and glares directed at Gustav swung toward Sergeant Ryan. He was a mousy-looking man—lean and tidy and generally nondescript—yet there was a sparkle in his eyes that suggested unflappable amusement. My brother took in all around him with a perpetual glower, as if bitterly disappointed to find himself stranded on such a sorry world as this one, but Ryan was just the opposite. Everything that put a frown on Old Red’s face slipped a wry little smile onto his.

“For those of you who don’t know,” he said, “my name is Moses Ryan, and I’m a detective sergeant with the Chicago Police Department. I’m handling the inquiry into Mr. Curtis’s unfortunate demise, and it would be a great service to me if I could speak with each of you separately. Mr. Pinkerton has arranged for the use of the hotel office just behind me, so that we might have some privacy. If you could wait here while I call you in one at a time, I promise you we’ll be finished by—”

“I’ll go first.” My brother hopped off his seat and stalked toward the office. “I got questions for you, too, and I’d rather ask ’em away from all the rowdydow out here.”

“Thank you. That would be fine,” Ryan said softly, unfazed, smile still in place. “Mr. Pinkerton, would you care to join us?”

“I’d love to,” Pinkerton muttered, and he fairly sprinted toward the office door.

Away from us.

He was wise to make his escape. Within seconds, Frank Tousey was grousing at Eugene Valmont for voting to keep Curtis’s clues, which drew Blackheath-Murray in to defend the Frenchman, which drew King Brady in to back up his publisher, which drew Boothby Greene in to back up
his
publisher, which drew the colonel in to tell
everybody
they were fools, which drew from Urias Smythe a pathetic appeal to heaven for deliverance from all the uproar, which did
not
seem to draw in God at all, as the bedlam carried on unabated.

The ladies kept out of it, and I tried to follow their lead. I did slip in one small bit of detecting, though, just to cover my rump should my brother want to know how I’d made myself useful while he’d been off interrogating Sergeant Ryan.

“Got a match?” I said, sliding in beside Smythe.

I slipped a hand into my coat and began fishing around as if for a pouch of tobacco.

“I’m sorry,” Smythe mumbled, too benumbed by all the hubbub to even look at me. “I don’t smoke.”

I’d meant to bum a stogie off him under the pretext of forgetting my rolling papers. If he’d really been out buying cigars the night before, as he’d told Mrs. Jasinska, perhaps the brand would have offered some clue. This was far, far better, however. I’d been digging for potatoes and struck gold.

“Oh, that’s alright,” I said, drawing a small white-and-green-striped packet from my pocket. “Neither do I.”

I tore the wrapping off the pack and slid out a brittle stick of chaw wax—a new brand they’d been handing out free at the Fair. “Juicy Fruit,” they called it (though, as I popped it in my mouth, I quickly discovered that it was neither juicy nor tasted of any fruit I’ve ever sampled, unless cardboard grows on trees).

Smythe eyed me, bewildered. Then he sucked in his breath as if he hoped to suck his words back in, too.

“I mean … I always keep some cigars on hand for … uhhh … you know. But I left them in my room.”

“Sure. I understand. That’s why I wanted a match, actually.” I grinned around the sticky, tasteless lump in my mouth. “For the you know.”

“Heh heh … yes … heh heh…,” Smythe said. And before I could ask him about the mysterious friend he’d summoned to Chicago—the glasses-smashing Bearded Man—he turned away and lobbed a random “Nonsense!” into the still-raging debate. This brought upon him a torrent of abuse from both the colonel and Blackheath-Murray, which Smythe seemed to prefer to any further conversation with me.

Soon after, the office door swung open and my brother tromped out throwing the words “And the same goes for you!” over his shoulder. Obviously, he’d been dealing with the local authorities with his usual deference and charm—which meant it was only a matter of time before we were both thrown in the pokey.

I hopped up and scampered after him as he stomped across the lobby toward the hotel’s front doors.

“What happened in—?”

“Amlingmeyer the Younger,” a gentle voice trilled behind me. “You’re next.”

I looked back to find Sergeant Ryan watching us. He pivoted and swept his arms to one side, gesturing for me to come into the office with him.

“If you please.”

Now how can you say no to a policeman who actually says “please”?

“Where you gonna be when I’m done?” I asked Old Red under my breath.

“The alley,” he whispered back quick. Then he swept past Mrs. Jasinska’s desk, pushed through the doors, and was gone.

A moment later, I was stepping into the hotel office. It was a small, poorly lit affair cluttered with overflowing file cabinets and a battered rolltop desk. A telephone jutted from one wall, and there were brooms and buckets shoved in a corner.

William Pinkerton had claimed one of the room’s two chairs. Ryan offered the other to me.

“Sorry about Gustav,” I said as I sat. “He can be a tad … well …
that
.”

“There’s no need for apologies,” the sergeant said. “Your brother’s a man of deep passions, that’s plain—and in the service of justice, no vice.”

He leaned against the desk and smiled his serene little smile. If he felt a deep passion for justice, he was doing a good job keeping it deep—so deep I couldn’t see it, at least.

“What got him so riled, if you don’t mind my askin’?”

“Ohhhhh, I don’t mind at all,” Ryan replied. “Now could you tell me your whereabouts last night between eight thirty and midnight?”

It took me a few seconds to realize the sergeant didn’t mind my asking because he had no intention of answering.

“My whereabouts was here. At the hotel. After that dinner ‘party’ I’m sure you’ve heard about, Gustav and I came back and called it a night.”

“But the White City would be open for hours still. You didn’t want to take another turn around the grounds? Prepare for the next day’s competition?”