World's Greatest Sleuth! (29 page)

I tried to divert myself with further studies of the White City, propping myself against the wall with my guidebook in my lap. The sheer scope of the Exposition soon overwhelmed me, though. Every page was so packed with the Biggest This and the Greatest That and the Most Expensive the Other, I started wondering what mankind was trying to prove. We seemed like little more than children waving our broomstick horses at heaven shouting, “Look at us, Pa! Look what we made!”

One tidbit did make an impression, however. I finally found an explanation for the curious thingamajig we’d been hunting all week: “the Egg of Columbus.” The copper egg, it turned out, had been borrowed from an exhibit created by Edison’s famous rival Nikola Tesla. Through the means of modern scientific hoop-di-doo and alakazam, Mr. Tesla could make the egg whirl in circles. Having never seen a spinning metal egg, I had to take the guidebook’s word for it that this was akin to an eighth wonder of the world.

If you’re asking yourself why, then, this was “the Egg of Columbus” and not “the Egg of Tesla,” you’re not alone. I was wondering the same thing, and I found the guidebook’s explanation so interesting I spoke aloud for the first time in an hour even though I had no idea if Gustav was awake or not.

“I ain’t talkin’ here,” I said. “Just readin’.”

From there I spooled out a tale that went more or less like this.

One day after returning from his voyages, Christopher Columbus was at some kind of wing-ding with a bunch of Spanish bigwigs. Before long one of these nabobs saunters up to him and says, “You know, Chris, what you did wasn’t such a big deal. Why, if you hadn’t bumped into America, some other son-of-a-gun would have.” And instead of just telling this wisenheimer to kiss his Columbian behind, our hero picks up an egg (the Spanish gentry always keeping uncooked eggs on hand for unforeseen contingencies) and says, “I can make this thing stand up on end. Can you?”

After some scratching of their pointy heads, the hoity-toities pop off with the Spanish equivalent of “Bullshit!” So Columbus smiles, taps the egg on a table till the peak of the oval cracks a mite, then leaves it balanced there, standing on end.

Now, the moral of this story, it would seem to me, is not to engage in bar bets, because there’s always some stupid gag that’ll let a fellow get the better of you. But this was not the point that Columbus or Tesla—or Armstrong B. Curtis, I assumed—had meant to put across.

Just what the point was, I couldn’t quite say … though I did briefly try.

“So the feller who knows the best party tricks always comes out on top?”

Old Red said nothing, and I went back to reading silently to myself. A few hours later, he sat up and swung his feet off the bed, and he and I swapped places without a word. Sleep didn’t come easily to me, but it came. It didn’t go again till some hours later, when my brother ushered it out by leaning in over the bed and speaking.

“The point is, everything seems obvious in hindsight, and it’s only a few folks who can see that the impossible is possible goin’ ahead, not just lookin’ back. The grand thing is to be able to reason
forward
—and then follow through on it.”

“And good morning to you,” I said through a yawn.

I sat up and found Gustav holding a powder blue card under my nose.

“What the heck is that?”

“You tell me. Someone slipped it under the door a minute ago.”

I took the card. Written on it in a swoopy, swirling, curlicued hand were these words:

M. Gustav Amlingmeyer & M. Otto Amlingmeyer

The plaisure of your company is requisted at Rector’s Restaurant this morning. Breakfast will be provided. So, also, will answers. I know who killed Armstrong B. Curtis. Coffee will be served at 9.

Your humble servant,
Eugene Valmont

“Free breakfast, huh?” I said. “Think we oughta go?”

This was, of course, a joke (though you wouldn’t have known that from the stony silence that followed it). Not long after, we were stepping into the selfsame banquet room in Rector’s in which Boothby Greene and Blackheath-Murray had hosted their disastrous dinner party three days before. Indeed, the Englishmen were back in place at the head of the table, and before them sat their former guests, all of them positioned just as they’d been Monday night. The only absences, excepting ourselves, were William Pinkerton and (for obvious reasons) Armstrong B. Curtis.

“So good of you to come,
mes amis
!” Valmont said as we came in, and he hopped up to usher us to our old chairs. As we followed him, we exchanged strained greetings with our fellow contestants. Diana, the colonel, King Brady, Greene—they were all stiff and distant, obviously on edge. Frank Tousey glowered at us. Urias Smythe avoided our eyes. Only Lucille Larson looked like she was enjoying herself, though she didn’t bother with any pleasantries for our benefit. She just sipped cheerfully at her coffee and kept her gaze moving up and down the table, as if anxious to see who was going to pull a gun on M. Valmont first.

“The tableau is almost complete,” Valmont said. “Now we need only wait for … a-ha! And here we are! With noninvited guests, I see. So much the beh-TAIR!”

William Pinkerton had appeared at the top of the stairs we’d just mounted, his invitation in his hand. With him were Sergeant Ryan and a uniformed policeman.

“What’s this all about, Valmont?” Pinkerton said, giving the invite a wave.

“A nefarious plot. A mad scheme. An ingenious ruse. All this, it is about.” Valmont stepped behind Pinkerton’s empty chair and pulled it away from the table. “If you would be so good as to sit, I will explain.”

Pinkerton obliged, though he didn’t look like he saw anything good about doing so.

“And where would you put me and Officer Kurtz, then?” Ryan asked. “I assume you’d rather have us to the side lest we spoil your ‘tableau.’ ”

“Just so,” Valmont said. “There at the top of the stairs would be perfection.
Merci
.”

Ryan bowed slightly and smiled even slighter. Valmont wasn’t just leaving him by the stairs. He and his fellow copper were now blocking the only way out.

The Frenchman returned Ryan’s bow, then began pacing slowly around the table.

“I have asked you all to join me here,” he said, “so that once more we may see all the pieces of the puz-ZELL laid out before us. Or, if you prefer, all the pawns and queens and kings in their proper place upon the board. In this way, we can best identify the roles they have played in the diaboli-KELL game of death in which we find ourselves.”

“I hope you’ll pardon my interruptin’,” my brother said, “but the last time we talked about Curtis’s death, you didn’t see nothing diaboli-KELL about it.”

Valmont nodded, looking chagrined, as he kept circling the table. “Yes. I have changed my mind upon this subject, and I have your bru-THERE to thank. Yesterday, Sergeant Ryan questioned me about certain men who may or may not have taken an unwholefulsome interest in the competi-shawn. Men with thick black beards. I knew nothing of this, and I pressed the sergeant for details, but, like a good sleuth, he remained tit-lipped. However, this morning, I read in one of your Chicago newspeepers an account of a chase through the Fisheries Building—a chase involving Otto Amlingmeyer and a mysterious bearded man who disappeared soon after M. Amlingmeyer jumped into a tank of man-eating sharks. I am pleased to see, monsieur, that you escaped intact.”

“Oh, God,” Smythe groaned.

“Just for the record, I didn’t go swimmin’ with any sharks,” I said. “Though I don’t doubt that makes for wishful thinkin’ for some.”

“But there was a bearded man?” Valmont asked. “He did interfere with the contest?”

“Sure, but we know UMM.”

That I said “UMM” and not “YOW!” was something of a miracle, considering how hard my brother brought his heel down on my toe. This was his gentle way of suggesting I not reveal what we’d learned of Emile Agajanian, Embittered Bearded Fully Grown-Up Detective. Smythe could be counted on to hold his tongue as well, for surely he wouldn’t be anxious to admit how badly his Billy Steele debacle had come back to bite us.

“We know there’s at least two other bearded fellers lurkin’ about,” I said, “but neither of them was in the Fisheries Building.”

“This is ridiculous,” Tousey growled. “Just what are you suggesting? That the competition’s being sabotaged by a secret League of Bearded Men?”

“We’ve seen one of them ourselves,” Colonel Crowe said. “He was following us yesterday during the contest.”

“Poppycock. You’re just letting your imagination run away with you.”

“The man M. Amlingmeyer encountered yesterday was no fiction of imagination,” Valmont said. He hadn’t stopped pacing the whole time. “There were dozens of witnesses to the chase. So. We have at least one Bearded Man we know without doubt to be real. Or, I should perhaps say, we have at least one Man we know without doubt to be real. The beard, on the other hand…?”

He stopped walking directly behind Diana, then whirled toward Boothby Greene and jabbed a finger at him.

“
You,
M. Greene, we know to possess both a false beard and the skill to wear it undetec-TED. For is it not true that you fooled us all with just such a subterfuge in this very room the night of M. Curtis’s death?”

“How can I deny it?” Greene replied coolly. The pointing finger of suspicion seemed not to unsettle him in the slightest. “I would point out, however, that I could hardly have been wrestling with Mr. Amlingmeyer in the Fisheries Building when I was busy
winning the contest
in the Mining Building on the other side of the lagoon. I would also remind you, monsieur, that half the people at this table are skilled inquiry agents. I would think we’ve all had some experience wearing false beards.” He looked at Diana and smiled. “With one exception, of course.”

“You might be surprised,” the lady said.

Valmont started circling again.

“You make a valid point, M. Greene. In fact, there is one of us at this tay-BELL who is often descri-BED as a ‘master of dess-guise.’
You,
M. Brady!”

Once more, the Frenchman twirled around pointing a finger.

“Me?” Brady said. “Well, yes, alright, certainly. But why should I run around in a beard? Half the point of being here is being seen. We
want
people to see King Brady. To go home talking about it, tell their neighbors, pick up the magazine and say, ‘That’s the guy! He signed my guidebook!’ ” Brady waved a hand under his face and forced his lips into an unconvincing grin. “I mean, who’d want to hide this?”

“Indeed.” Valmont went back to pacing. “But do we not all have parts of ourselves we choose to conceal? Masks we put on, for whatever reason?”

He stopped across the table from us, and I knew enough of his ways now to suspect it was Smythe he was going to bark at next.

“
You
, M. Amlingmeyer!” he said, and to my shock it was Gustav looking down the barrel of Valmont’s pointed finger. “On the first day of the contest, you looked and acted like a man who can barely see. You had the slow, uncertain shuf-FELL, the bru-THERE who had to read for you and lead you. You even had the dark spectacles of a blind man. Yet then—
voilà
! On the second day, all is changed, without explication. I put it to you, monsieur, that you yourself were attempting a deception, only it was disrup-TED in some way by the death of M. Curtis!”

“Yup,” my brother said.

Valmont blinked at him. “Yip?”

“
Yes
. I was tryin’ to fool folks. I wanted them to see me as hobbled. I’ve been doin’ it for quite a while now, actually, in a lot of different ways.”

“And what is the porpoise of this pretext?”

Old Red shrugged. “It can come in right handy, bein’ underestimated.”

“Ahhh.
Naturellement.
It all begins to fall into place.”

Valmont puts his hands behind his back and started wearing a groove in the carpet again.

I leaned in close to my brother. “You alright?”

I figured he’d be upset, finding himself forced to admit in public something he’d just barely been able to say in private just to me. The only emotion on his face, though, was slow-simmering exasperation, and it was pointed at Eugene Valmont.

“I’m startin’ to think this whole thing’s just a trip to the fishin’ hole,” he muttered.

“We must turn our attentions now to the one who is
not
with us,” Valmont said. He spun on his heel so he was facing Pinkerton, but the scowl on the man’s face seemed to convince him a poking finger would be a bad idea. “You, M. Pinkerton … so far as we know, you were the last of us to see M. Curtis alive.”

“What of it?”

“How would you describe his mood?”

Pinkerton shrugged. “We all saw it. He was keyed up, a little drunk, reckless, I guess one could say obsessed.”

“Ah! ‘Obsessed’!
Mais oui!
There we have the crux of the ma-TEHR, for to explain all that has happened we need to delve into the deep, dark waters of the psychologi-KELL.”

To my disappointment, he started walking around the table again. Watching him was starting to make my neck hurt almost as much as listening to him hurt my brain.

“Why was Armstrong B. Curtis here? This we know, because he told us. He intended to humiliate us. To show us up as frauds unworthy of the throne vaca-TED by his fallen hero. More than his hero. His idol. His god. And where has his god gone? Two and one half years ago, he simply”—Valmont fluttered his fingers and flapped his hands—“disappeared. Oh, we have all heard the rue-mares. The attempts on his life in London, the sudden flight to Switzerland, the last, mysterious sighting near the falls at Reichenbach. Yet we know almost nothing, and when M. Sherlock Holmes left this world, he did it as would a divini-tay. He left behind no body, no blood, no untidy mortal mess. He may as well have ascended into the clouds in the arms of awngels … to return one day with a blast of trumpets, the more fanati-KELL might even say.”

I stole a peek at my brother, for he had a fanati-KELL streak himself: More than once, he’d told me he was skeptical about the whole Holmes-over-the-waterfall story. All he did now, though, was frown.