World's Greatest Sleuth! (24 page)

“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.

“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
dis
comfort. 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?

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.