The Case of the Petrified Man (14 page)

Up on stage, the song had turned into “Old Folks at Home.” The banjo player was sitting on a chair playing his banjo while the other three blackface Minstrels swayed behind him. I noticed I was swaying, too, and had to stop myself. Finally they finished and went off behind a curtain.

Belle ascended to the stage.

The piano set off all soft & tinkling, and Belle sang sweet & high. She was singing a song called “Virginia Belle.” That song started out sweet & pure. By and by, Belle made her voice lower & rougher, while the piano man played more vigorously. She began swinging her arms & stomping around & pointing out towards the empty chairs & benches.

Belle finished by putting her thumb to her nose and wiggling the four remaining fingers at the imaginary audience. Ma Evangeline always told me that “thumbing your nose”—that is, “cocking a snook”—was rude, but Belle did it with a smiling face, as if it was a salute. The four blackface minstrels had come down to watch & did not seem to be offended. They applauded loudly & so did the piano player. I clapped, too. Belle’s cheeks were pink & her eyes were glittery.

As Belle came down from the stage, four Ladies danced onto the stage from two different directions. Two had a small pretend fire engine like the one I had just seen over at the Young America Engine Company. Two had something like a big spool with a hose on it. All four dancers were wearing oversized, red flannel firemen’s shirts cinched in tight with black patent-leather belts. They wore tall leather fire
helmets with the No. 1 on them & also little black boots, but they appeared to have forgotten their skirts. Looking closer, I saw they were wearing flesh-colored tights. The minstrel singers stood to one side of the stage, playing music while the four Dancing Girls sang a song about “Putting Out Your Fire.”

Belle appeared beside me. “How was I?” she asked. Her chest was still rising and falling from the exertion.

I said, “It was very energetic.”

“But didn’t you like it?”

“I prefer that banjo music,” I said, nodding towards the stage. The blackface minstrels were playing faster and faster. They were clipping along a mile a minute with their banjo & fiddle & tambourine & clacking bones. Two of the Dancing Girls were vigorously pumping the lever on the “engine”—one on either side—while the other two pointed a hose at the blackface Minstrel Singers. The hose suddenly squirted out some blue paper streamers. I guessed the Dancing Girls were pretending to “put out” the four singers as they would a fire.

“P.K.!” said Belle Donne.

“What?” I replied, coming to my senses. I had almost got entranced.

“I asked why you came here?”

I said, “I am investigating last week’s brutal murder of Short Sally. I have come to see if my lead Suspect was here last Friday. His name is Ludwig Hamm and he is a volunteer fireman at the Young America Engine Company.”

“Ludwig?” said Belle Donne. “Sure. She knew him. Everybody
knew he was sweet on Sal. He wanted to marry her but she was too high and mighty for him.”

“Do you know if he was here that night?” I asked.

“How would I know that?” said Belle, her cheeks still flushed. “Tonight is my first time onstage. Last week I was just another girl with a crib down on D Street. Today I am a solo artiste performing along with a famous troupe: the Sagebrush Minstrels. Ain’t it bully?”

I barely heard her, for a man had just come up onstage carrying a Skull.

He was tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard!

He was dressed in black tights & big puffy bloomers & a white ruffled collar. I knew this was Shakespearian getup.

“Who is that man?” I asked Belle.

“That is Absalom Smith,” she said. “He told me he stood in for someone last week and Major Topliffe asked him to be a regular item here at the Music Hall. I am hoping the Major will invite me, too.”

I looked closer at the man in the puffy black bloomers. If Belle had not told me, I would not have recognized Mr. Absalom Smith in this new getup, even though I had imagined him sitting on a tree branch just that morning.

I often make that blunder. Sometimes I do not know a person I have met before if they are wearing something new. I moved closer & looked for a feature that might distinguish him from other tall, slim men with billy goat beards. I noticed his eyebrows were straight & dark & that they almost met above his nose.

“Watch out, P.K.!” cried Belle.

I had been looking so intently at his face that I had not noticed Mr. Absalom Smith taking an old dueling pistol out of his puffy bloomers. He cocked it & aimed it at me & pulled the trigger.

BANG!

I HIT THE FLOOR
at the same moment the gun went off.

As the loud report of the gun died away, I heard a smattering of laughter echo in the high-ceilinged room & I cautiously raised my head.

Absalom Smith was looking at his gun with a comical expression. A bunch of flowers had popped out of the barrel.

“Oh, P.K.!” laughed Belle. “You fell for that!”

She held out a hand to help me to my feet but I pushed it away.

I do not like to be touched.

“Apologies,” said Mr. Absalom Smith in a loud &
carrying voice, “to any of you I might have startled. But the sound of gunshots is so common in this place that I did not think it would alarm anyone.”

I was on my feet again & dusting myself off.

He put the thumb of his left hand on his chin & pulled down his lower eyelid with the forefinger of the same hand & tucked his chin under & looked at me from under his eyebrows.

Belle Donne said, “That gesture means he was just pranking you.”

I glared back at him. I do not like being pranked.

Mr. Absalom Smith shrugged. “Why is a Springtime Meadow even more dangerous than Virginia City?” he asked the echoing room in a loud voice. Then he answered his own question. “Because in a Springtime Meadow, the grass has blades, the flowers have pistils & the leaves shoot!”

At this, he tossed the gun aside & it went off with another
BANG!
as it hit the floor & everybody laughed but me.

“I was in the Fashion Saloon yesterday,” said Absalom Smith, “when a three-legged dog walked in. The dog limped up to the bar and announced, ‘I’m looking for the man who shot my paw.’”

Belle & the Minstrels & the piano player & the Dancing Firegirls all laughed.

“The other day,” said Mr. Absalom Smith, “a young woman fell down a mine shaft. Her brother was there but was unable to help her out. Why not? Because, you see, he could not be a brother and
assist her
, too!”

More laughter. And some groans.

“But hold!” He stopped and struck a dramatic pose. “I am a Shakespearian Ac-tor. Enough of these foolish conundrums.”

“No!” cried the four Minstrels. “We want mo!”

“I shall compromise then,” said Mr. Absalom Smith. He held out the Skull at arm’s length. “To be or not to be,” he said. “That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—” He looked out towards the audience. “Speaking of arrows,” he said, “I was shot at by Indians on the way out of Carson City. Luckily”—here he paused—“I had a narrow escape!”

Nobody laughed.

He leant forward and pulled down his eye again and repeated, “I had an
arrow
escape.”

Everybody laughed.

Absalom Smith tossed the Skull behind him & it bounced & this made folk laugh harder than ever.

A sharp tug on my coat sleeve brought my attention from the stage to Belle.

She said, “If you want to know whether or not Ludwig Hamm was here last Friday, you could always ask the Boss, Major Topliffe. He is coming our way. And he don’t look happy.”

THE OWNER OF TOPLIFFE’S THEATRE,
Major G.W. Topliffe, a sallow-faced man with gray hair over his ears & a monocle, was coming towards me with purpose and intent. He wore a military jacket & Expression No. 5: Suspicion or Anger. Or both.

“Who is this whelp, Belle? And what is he doing here? If he ain’t in the show, he should not be here.” The Major thumped his walking stick on the wooden floorboards for emphasis.

Belle took me by the shoulders & turned me
towards the exit. “He is nobody,” she said. “He is just leaving.” She gave me a little shove.

But I turned back & planted my moccasins firmly on the ground. “My name is P.K. Pinkerton, Private Eye,” I said.

He turned the eye with the monocle towards me. “You look part Indian,” he observed. “Say, can you fire an arrow with accuracy or throw a tomahawk?”

“I am a Detective,” I said. “I would like to ask you a few questions concerning the brutal Murder of Miss Sally Sampson.”

Major G.W. Topliffe’s monocle fell out & dangled from a chain. “You are a Detective?”

“Yes, sir. I have been hired to find Sally’s killer. The Coroner has no interest in seeking Justice, nor does the Deputy Marshal.” Remembering my manners, I took off my hat & said, “I have come to see if any of the suspects in the murder were here last Friday the twenty-sixth day of September. My chief suspect is Ludwig Hamm, a volunteer fireman at the Young America Engine Company. But I have some other suspects, too.”

“Ooh,” said Belle. “Let me see the suspects.” Before I could stop her, she snatched the Detective Notebook from my hand. She began to read out loud, slowly and haltingly, “Tall, slim men with fair hair and smallish beards known to have—” Then a Name must have caught her eye. She looked at me, white faced. “Isaiah is a Suspect?” she said. “He frequented Sally Sampson?”

Too late, I remembered that Miss Belle Donne and Mr.
Isaiah Coffin were engaged to be married. I snatched back my notebook.

“Dang Isaiah!” cried Belle. “Dang him to the fiery place!” She then let loose a stream of actress profanities.

“My performance cannot be that bad,” said Absalom Smith from the stage.

Belle stamped out of the room.

The Major chuckled. “I like that girl. She has spirit. I might just take her on.” He peered through his monocle at my notebook. “Those three were all here at the theater last Friday evening.”

“Who?” I asked.

Major G.W. Topliffe stabbed at my notebook with a thick forefinger. “The Frenchman, the German and the Russian,” he said. “Danged foreigners. Come to think of it, the Englishman might have been here, too.”

At first I was disappointed that he could not narrow down my list of suspects.

Then I felt a gleam of hope.

The way he had described my Suspects made me realize something about them for the first time.

One was German, one French, four of them were American, one was Russian and two were English.

It occurred to me that if Martha had heard the Killer speak, she might be able to say whether he was German, French, English, Russian or even a Confederate, from one of the Southern states. That would narrow it down a lot. But Martha was hiding in a Bear Cave in a Forest somewhere.

“Where is the nearest Forest?” I asked Major G.W. Topliffe.

“Forest?” he blustered. “There ain’t no forest within fifteen miles of here. This county is almost entirely destitute of timber. They have used up about every stick of wood within sight to build this town.”

I pondered this information. Could Martha have traveled 15 miles on bare feet? It seemed unlikely. That meant she was not hiding in a forest after all.

Up onstage, the four minstrels were back for an encore of “Camptown Races.”

Beside me, Major G.W. Topliffe chuckled and tapped his cane to the music. I looked up to see that the dancing girls had returned as pantomime horses. (I could tell it was them by their flesh-colored legs & their boots.) One of the horses had the letters
FLORA
TEMPLE
on its side. The other one was
BROWN
JIM
. These bogus horses were comically jostling the Minstrel Singers.