World's Greatest Sleuth! (26 page)

“About time somebody around here did.”

We were on the Midway now, a Javanese settlement to the right, an encampment of Samoans to the left. Smythe passed them by without slowing.

“Well, at least now we know the Bearded Man ain’t from Samoa,” I said. “But if Smythe’s comin’ here to meet him, don’t that mean he spends his days in one of these here villages or castles or what-have-you? I mean, Smythe didn’t have time to send word he wanted a parley. He’d have to just know the man would be here.”

“Hmm,” Gustav grunted.

Translated from Gustavese, this means “Good point.”

The natatorium, the panorama of the Alps, the diorama of Pompeii, the Turkish and German villages—all quickly fell behind us as the Ferris wheel loomed ever larger.

“Looks like he’s goin’ for a spin on the wheel,” I said. “I told you I’d get you on that thing before we left Chicago!”

My brother said nothing, though I thought I caught a little twitch of his lips. Maybe he was praying. If so, his prayers were answered, for once: Smythe turned right, into “A Street in Cairo.”

“That there’s the perfect place to meet someone on the sly,” Old Red said. “All them alleyways and cafés and quiet corners and—”

Smythe veered off into the theater where the hoochie-coochie girls plied their trade.

“That is not a quiet corner,” I said.

“Hrm,” Gustav grunted.

Translated from Gustavese, this means “Shut up.”

“You know,” I went on, “if you’d have just let me look for him in there yesterday like I wanted to, we—”

“Shut up.”

I shut up. When my brother goes to the trouble of saying it in English, I generally listen.

We paid our way into the theater, ignoring both the disapproving scowls of the passing ladies and the up-and-down sneer the ticket taker gave my still-soggy suit. The entrance hall led to a high-ceilinged lobby lined with elaborate scrollwork and murals depicting veiled women in diaphanous pantaloons dancing for hookah-sucking sheiks. In the center of the room was a plush round couch upon which sat two stout gentlemen speaking in low tones. Neither one was Urias Smythe.

The sound of shrill, high-pitched pipes squeaking out a repetitive yet strangely compelling melody drew us through the room like the song of a laryngitical siren. On the far side of the lobby was a set of double doors, and pushing through them we finally found ourselves in the theater proper.

Or the theater improper, I should perhaps say, for what was transpiring on the stage looked, at first, like a whorehouse hit by an earthquake. Gyrating wildly this way and that were girls in outfits so thin and skimpy all the material put together wouldn’t make a nightgown for a midget. Their exposed bellies they sucked in and pushed out and swiveled and shimmied in time to raucous music played by fez-wearing men seated on pillows to one side of the stage.

Their audience—two hundred strong and male, every one—filled the room both with their bulk and the noxious smells of their cigars and sweat. Most were attempting to maintain some sense of decorum, looking upon the pulchritude wiggling and jiggling before them with studious expressions of mild, polite interest, as though they were missionaries forced to endure some heathen ritual they’d have sooner skipped if not for fear of offending the natives. The rest dispensed with such pretense, stamping their feet and clapping their hands and hooting with an unbridled delight the others no doubt envied.

“There,” Old Red said, and he nodded at a familiar figure working his way toward the stage.

We sidled into a shadowy corner from which to watch Smythe make his rendezvous. He didn’t seem to be searching for a particular face in the crowd, though: His gaze remained glued to the dancing girls.

“Funny,” I said, squinting at the dark-haired, wide-hipped gal who seemed to be monopolizing Smythe’s attention. “That don’t
look
like the Bearded Man.”

“Just wait. And watch.”

Of course, I couldn’t imagine a place I’d rather do some waiting and watching, though it proved a challenge to keep my eyes on Smythe. Every time I did manage to glance at the man, he looked more happy and relaxed than I’d ever seen him. If he was up to some kind of skullduggery, he sure was cheerful about it.

Much as I hated to bring our surveillance to an end, after thirty minutes or so even I couldn’t deny we wouldn’t be surveilling anything useful.

“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” I finally said.

Usually, my brother hates to admit that he’d stoop so low as to share a thought with me (or that I had thoughts anyone could share), but there was no avoiding the obvious.

“Yeah,” Old Red said, starting toward Smythe. “Might as well stop wastin’ our time and come at the man straight.”

Smythe didn’t notice us as we approached. He wouldn’t have noticed the approach of a herd of buffalo, in fact, so enraptured was he by the oscillations onstage. I think Gustav had to tap him on the shoulder four times before he finally turned around.

“Oh, my!” he said when he saw us. His eyes popped wide and his spine snapped straight and his wattles quivered and swayed.

“We need to talk,” Old Red said. “Outside.”

“But … but … but … of course.”

A minute later, we were back on the Midway, all of us squinting and blinking even in the dimming light of the early evening sun. A passing matron shot us a haughty glare as we left the theater. Her husband gave us a wink.

“Now what’s this all about?” Smythe asked. He tugged down on his vest and smoothed back the nonexistent hair atop his head in a vain effort to regain his poise.

“That was a clumsy lie you told Mrs. Jasinska Monday night,” Gustav said. “About wantin’ cigars you don’t even smoke.”

Smythe shot me a resentful look. “Yes, well. Force of habit, I suppose. It’s what I tell my wife when I want to get out of the house and … you know … whenever I need a little privacy. She knows I don’t smoke, of course, but she understands.”

“And it was here you was comin’ to for your ‘privacy’?” Old Red asked. “That night and yesterday afternoon, too?”

“Yes. I find it calms me in times of anxiety.”

I jerked a thumb at the theater. “That
calms
you?”

“It distracts me from my woes.” Smythe put on his wounded puppy face. “I have so many.”

“Well, I reckon we got another for you,” Gustav said. “That bearded feller we told Pinkerton about? The one who was so anxious to see us lose? Well, we got a letter offa him when we tangled yesterday. And it was from you.”

Smythe looked genuinely surprised. “From me?”

I did my best to recite from memory. “Enclosed you will find the money order I sent your father. Have him take you to the train station at once. He knows how to find me. Don’t delay, my little friend! We face many challenges, but glory lies ahead. Your pal, Urias Smythe.”

“Ohhhhhhhh, nnnnnnnnnoooooo…”

Smythe clapped his hands to his head and held them there as if trying to keep his skull from exploding.

“You wanna tell us why your friend’s been tryin’ to trip us up in the contest?” Old Red asked.

“He’s no friend of mine. At least, not anymore. Not now that I know who he really is.”

“And that would be…?” I prompted.

“Billy Steele, Boy Detective.”

My brother and I looked at each other. We knew Billy Steele well. He’d brought us to Chicago, in a way, for the magazine devoted to his adventures was so gloriously, stupendously awful I’d felt encouraged to approach the publisher with my own humble tales.
If they’ll commit this BS to print
, I’d thought,
the folks at Smythe & Associates Publishing are gonna think I’m the next Mark Twain
.

“I hate to tell you this, Mr. Smythe,” I said, “but your boy detective has a beard and doesn’t seem to have been a boy since the Civil War.”

“Yes, I know that
now
! But I didn’t last week. He’d always represented his stories to me as true, just like you do.”

“Hold on a tick,” Gustav said. “I just remembered one of Miss Larson’s cracks about us the first day of the contest. She said something about you replacin’ a boy detective with a blind one. I never got a chance to ask about it in all the brouhaha, and now I guess I don’t have to.”

I saw where he was headed and finished for him. “We weren’t your first choice for the competition. Billy Steele was.”

“No, alas. Dan Slick, the Dude Dick was my first choice. Then I found out he doesn’t exist.”

“So you turned to Billy Steele,” I said.

“No. I turned to Lady X, Society Sleuth.”

“Let me guess,” Gustav said. “Doesn’t exist.”

“Precisely. So I sent for the boy … only he turned out to be a forty-year-old Armenian named Emile Agajanian!”

“
Then
you called for me and my brother,” I said.

“Yes. Much to my relief, you both actually existed … though to be honest, I was almost hoping your stories would prove as exaggerated as Agajanian’s. I needed someone who’d go along with the costumes and props—who’d be the Holmes of the Range of my covers. And to discover that your brother isn’t just as physically unimpressive as you’ve described him but every bit as disagreeable as well…?”

Smythe sighed and shook his head sadly.

Old Red, to my surprise, did not remove said head from Smythe’s shoulders.

“What I don’t understand,” he grumbled, “is why this Agajanian would come to Chicago if you thought he was a kid. Didn’t he know it would be a problem, him bein’ him?”

“No. He actually thought it shouldn’t matter. When I told him he couldn’t be in the contest, he flew into a rage. It was a frightful thing to see. It left me positively discombobulated for days!”

“So on top of bein’ a fraud—” Gustav began.

“The Bearded Man’s crazy,” I said. “I guess that shouldn’t come as a shock, given how he’s been actin’.”

“Just how deep does his crazy run, though, and in which direction?”

“I don’t follow you.”

My brother turned back to Smythe. “You think Agajanian’s mad enough to try to mess with the contest, somehow?”

“Well, yes. Obviously, from the things he’s done to you.”

“I ain’t talkin’ about us. I’m talkin’ about the contest.”

Smythe’s face turned the color of buttermilk. “You mean would he…? Could he have…?
Curtis?
That never even occurred to me. I don’t know.”

“You got any idea where he’s stayin’?”

“No. Not anymore. He was going to check into the Columbian Hotel, of course, but after our quarrel, I don’t know where he went.”

“That’s how he knew to look for us there,” I said to Old Red. “Maybe how he knew where Curtis was stayin’, too.”

Gustav nodded vacantly, staring off at nothing. Then his gaze locked on Smythe again, eyes narrowed to slits.

“There’s something else we ain’t let you in on yet. That other feller my brother told Pinkerton about? The
Un
bearded Man? The one tied in with King Brady? When we first crossed paths with him, he was followin’
you
.”

Smythe’s complexion went from buttermilk yellow to moldy cheese green. “Following
me
? You’re sure?”

“Yup. He was but twenty steps behind you when you came walkin’ thisaway yesterday. You got any idea why that might be?”

“No, really, I … wait just a minute.”

I hoped this was the sort of “wait just a minute” that precedes a till-then-forgotten memory that cracks a mystery wide open. You know the kind: “Hang on … now that I think of it, I saw the butler walk out of Mrs. Moonbeam’s room with a bloody axe just before she was found decapitated in bed. Do you think that might be significant, somehow?”

Sadly, it was not to be.

“That means
you
were following me, too,” Smythe said. “Just like today. You didn’t simply stumble upon me back there. You’ve been watching me. Spying on me!”

“Just lookin’ out for you,” I lied. “There’ve been some mighty shady goings-on, and naturally we were concerned about—”

“Flapdoodle!” Smythe barked. “You’ve been sneaking around behind my back prying into my private affairs. After all I’ve done for you! You wreck my nerves, you squander my money, you put me in dutch with William Pinkerton, and now what? You suspect me of murder? I’ve had it! We’re done. We’re through. I want nothing to do with you from now on!”

He whirled like a great flabby top and started stomping away. After he’d gone but a few steps, though, he stopped and faced us again.

“Unless you get to the egg first tomorrow. Then perhaps we’ll talk.”

He flashed us a fleeting, tight-lipped smile, then went on into the theater. He had troubles to forget, and he was the lucky man who knew just how to go about it.

Me, I didn’t feel so lucky.

28

THE CHOPHOUSE

Or, A New “Friend” Treats Us to a Meal, but It Ends Up Going to the Dogs

Heartbreak never hits you
where you want it to. The shoulder you want to cry on, the booze you want to guzzle, the sheets you want to pull up over your head—they’re not around when you need them most, nor do they come running when you call. No, you’ve got to make the Trudge. I’m sure you’re no stranger to it yourself, dear reader: that long, dejected slog to consolation when your mind has nothing to do but dwell on your failures and your heart has nothing to do but break a little more.

I’ve undertaken the Trudge several times in my life. Few were more discouraging than the one I took there in Chicago, though. After months trying to sell my stories and
years
scrambling not to starve, my first publisher, my one backer, my much prayed-for patron had just told me to go to hell—and now I had to walk eight blocks to my hotel in a suit that felt like someone had tried to wash it with me still in it.

I was not, in short, in high spirits.

“For a feller who’s so tight-lipped, you sure managed to get a lot of foot up in your mouth back there,” I said to my brother.

“I’m sorry things went that way,” Gustav said. I was about to let loose a hosanna in the highest in thanks for this miracle—two actual apologies in as many days!—but then he added, “The question had to be asked, though.”