World's Greatest Sleuth! (6 page)

One quick negotiation later, we were speeding away. We’d promised our young attendants an extra two bits apiece if they could get us to the Kansas Building within five minutes, and God bless them, they meant to collect. They were so eager, they didn’t even notice that neither my brother nor I had a watch.

I assume we got stares aplenty as we zoomed north through the fairgrounds: It’s not every day you see what looks like a blind man and a cowboy carved out of candle wax getting pushed around in wheelchairs. I didn’t even notice any gawping, though, for I was too busy doing it myself.

The gravel paths we followed took us along the lagoon, which stretched on and on and on to our immediate right. To our left was the long, angel-adorned facade of the Transportation Building, its bright red paint a shocking smear of crimson through the heart of the White City. Then it was back to
blanco
for the Choral Building, the Horticulture Building, the Women’s Building—a Building, it seemed, for everything under the sun but Ham and Eggs and the Piece of Lint Stuck to the Bottom of Your Sock.

“Almost … there,” my attendant rasped (oh, how his face had fallen when he’d been assigned to ferry husky me instead of my runty brother). “We’ve … reached … the…”

“Save your breath for pushin’, friend,” I said. “I see.”

We were passing another majestic dome-topped building—the men who planned that fair sure loved their domes—and this one had the word
ILLINOIS
over the doorway. Around the corner was a grand Spanish mission (
CALIFORNIA
it read across the front) and a dark, high-roofed manor house (
WISCONSIN
) and an ornate, twin-towered palace (
INDIANA
, of all things).

KANSAS
couldn’t be far off now.

State pride forbids me from discussing at length my reaction when it first came into view. Suffice it to say this: The Michigan Building it was not. Or the Washington Building or the Minnesota Building or the Nebraska Building or …

Anyway, the exterior—so boxy, so boring, so punily domed—didn’t matter. It was what we’d (hopefully) find inside that counted.

We left our huffing, puffing beasts of burden outside and went bounding up the steps toward the building. (I was able to bound now, having finally had the good sense to unstrap my chaps.)

“I was a mite preoccupied when Mr. Curtis was explainin’ the contest,” I said to Old Red. “What exactly are we lookin’ for again?”

“An egg.”

“I heard that part. But what kinda—?”

“I was a mite preoccupied myself, dammit.”

“Oh. Wonderful.”

I didn’t have to ask what had distracted my brother. It would be the same thing that had distracted
me
. Which left us both in the same boat now: the leaky kind with no paddle one usually finds adrift up Shit Creek. Fortunately, there was someone on hand to toss us a lifeline.

When we hustled into the Kansas Building, we found a dozen men and women waiting just inside. They were clustered before a photographer’s tripod, staring expectantly at the entrance.

“Gustav and Otto Amlingmeyer?” asked a muttonchopped man wearing a ceremonial sash. From the tone of his voice, it was clear he was hoping to hear a “No.”

“That’s us,” I said.

The man winced, cleared his throat, and held out his hand.

“As president of the Kansas World’s Fair Board of Managers, it is my great honor to—”

“That for us?” Gustav asked. He nodded at an envelope in the man’s other hand. It was identical to the one Curtis had given us back at the bandstand.

“Yes, it is.”

“Thanks.”

Old Red snatched the envelope away, spun on his heel, and made a beeline for the doors.

“But … but…”

“Sorry, folks—we’re in a bit of a hurry,” I said. “Need a picture for the folks back home before we go?”

I threw one arm around Mr. President, the other around the wide-eyed matron beside him.

“Fire away,” I told the photographer.

He pushed the camera button, there was a blinding flash, and then I was gone in a literal puff of smoke.

I caught up to my brother outside. He’d already ripped the envelope open and pulled out yet another small, stiff card. I took it and read out the following:

Large shrinks to small

With the right point of view

Just as small turns to large

With a lens to look through.

So for giants so tiny

You can’t see them by eye

Go to the biggest of biggerers

And look to the sky.

“Tiny giants?” Old Red fumed. “The biggest of biggerers? This is bullshit!”

“No, it’s not,” said Basil, the young fellow who’d been pushing me around. “It’s obvious.”

“Yeah,” said Al, Gustav’s wheelchair man.

They were resting in their chairs at the bottom of the steps, and as we came down to join them they looked at each other and spoke in unison.

“The Yerkes telescope.”

“The what?” Old Red asked.

“The world’s biggest telescope,” said Basil.

“Right in the middle of Columbia Avenue,” said Al.

“Over in the Liberal Arts Building,” said Basil.

“We can have you there in five minutes,” said Al.

“For two more dollars,” said Basil.

“Apiece,” said Al.

“Why, you little—” said I.

Basil jerked his chin at a man in a dark overcoat scurrying down the path toward the North Dakota Building. “Hey, you’re lucky we’re still here at all. That guy just offered us two bucks to go with
him
.”

The man peered back over his shoulder just long enough to give us a glimpse of bushy black beard.

“He tried to hire both of you?” Old Red asked. “What for?”

Al shrugged. “He didn’t say. He just wanted us to leave before you—”

“But you didn’t so thank you so let’s go!” I said, sprinting for Basil’s wheelchair.

The young men sprang to their feet, but Basil was shaking his head as he did so.

“We flipped a coin,” he told me. “You’re with Al now.”

“Well,” I said to Al as I plopped myself in his chair, “I assume that means you
won
.”

“Yeah, right,” Al groaned, and off we went.

Basil and Al took us west past more grandiose state buildings and the imposing colonnades of the Fine Arts Museum before swinging south through a whole new stretch of wonders I won’t catalog here except to impart my general impressions.

“Whoa! What in the—? Oh, my. Is that really a—? Golly. Egad!”

And so on.

Basil and Al were as good as their word, reaching the massive Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building in mere minutes. Yet it took minutes more just to get to the right entrance.

“Telescope … south … end,” poor Al gasped as we rolled along the loooooooooooooooooong eastern edge of the building.

To the southwest, near a canal-spanning footbridge back to the Court of Honor, I could see the very bandstand from which we’d started. We’d traveled in a huge loop through the White City, ending up not a hundred paces from where we’d begun.

The gazebo was deserted now, the crowd and the band and Pinkerton and Smythe and all the rest of them nowhere in sight.

“This … is … it,” Basil said, staggering to a stop.

Al just let my chair go and bent over panting as I coasted the last few feet to the doors.

“Thanks, boys! We’d have been lost without you!”

“We … noticed,” Al said.

I hopped from my chair and stuffed my hand in my pocket.

My stiff, scratchy,
empty
pocket.

“Oh, no.”

Basil and Al shot each other the same weary-eyed glower.

“Let us guess,” said Basil.

“You left your money in your other pants,” said Al.

“Well, I did!”

“Here’s all we got for now,” Old Red said, and he smacked what looked like three nickels, a penny, and some crumbs into Basil’s hand. “We’re good for the rest, though, don’t you fret.”

“Yeah!” I called over my shoulder, following my brother as he pushed through the doors. “We’ll come back and pay you soon as we’re done winnin’ in here!”

Unfortunately, the Liberal Arts and Manufactures Building isn’t just notable for its size. Its acoustics are pretty awe-inspiring, too. Or, in this case, nausea-inducing.

My last words—“soon as we’re done winnin’ in here!”—echoed out through the vast cavern of glass and steel, turning hundreds of heads our way just as the band nearby launched into the French national anthem.

Ahead of us, looming up over the crowd, was an immense spyglass atop a tower three stories tall. A spiral staircase wound its way up to it, six figures spaced out along the steps.

King Brady at the bottom.

Diana and Colonel Crowe halfway up.

Armstrong B. Curtis and William Pinkerton up a little higher.

And at the top, one hand clasped in Pinkerton’s, the other cradling a gleaming golden egg the size of a brick, was the Frenchman, Eugene Valmont.

7

MISS LARSON

Or, A Newshound Appears on Our Trail, and She Seems to Smell Blood

I
longed to creep
into a dark corner and quietly disappear, but there was no such corner to creep to. The Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building was (and remains) the largest man-made structure in the world, and the interior was vast and open, as if God had reached down from His cloud to plop a giant birdcage over an entire town. True, I could’ve darted into the art gallery to our left or the display of German clockworks to our right or any of a dozen other showrooms within quick dodging distance. Hell, I could’ve simply whirled around and bolted out the door. Gustav and I were still getting stares aplenty, though, and turning tail would only multiply our humiliation a hundredfold. So I stood my ground and applauded for Eugene Valmont, and Old Red did the same.

“Don’t worry, Brother,” I said through a glued-on grin. “We’ll have other chances to come out ahead. There’s three more days of this, remember?”

“Three more days of
this
? And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“Ummm … yeah?”

The band wrapped up “La Marseillaise,” and the crowd started to scatter in every direction.

“Round two begins tomorrow at noon in the Court of Honor!” Armstrong B. Curtis bellowed. “Don’t miss it!”

“Come on,” my brother muttered. “Let’s get outta here before—”

“Hey, Deadwood Dick!” a man called out. “Better luck tomorrow!”

“Yeah!” someone else threw in. “See if you can’t find that egg instead of just getting it all over your face!”

There was a smattering of laughs as we fled for the doors.

“Otto! Mr. Amlingmeyer! Wait!”

I looked back to find a big, black-clad blob clumping after us.

Urias Smythe.

We stopped just long enough for him to catch up. “Gimme six bucks,” I said, hoping to head off another “I’m dooooooooomed.” “We got us some expenses.”

“
You’ve
got expenses? Do you realize what all this is costing me? How much I’m paying for the honor of rack and ruin? I can’t afford to—”

“Please, Mr. Smythe,” I sighed. “Just think of it as an advance until I’m wearin’ my own britches again.”

Smythe produced his billfold and pulled out six ones with such obvious pain you’d have thought he was peeling away strips of his own skin.

“Thanks,” I said. “And just so’s you know, this is money well spent. You wouldn’t want people sayin’ your champions was deadbeats, would you?”

I stepped outside looking for Basil and Al and found them talking to the willowy, fair-haired woman King Brady had squired away from the bandstand—Miss Larson, he’d called her.

“Deadbeats,” Al was telling her.

“And none too bright,” Basil added.

“They wouldn’t have made it as far as they did without us,” Al said.

“And what’s the story with the big one’s clothes?” Basil asked.

“It looks like someone shellacked him,” Al said.

Miss Larson was encouraging them with nods and mmm-hmms while she wrote down their every word.

I walked up waving the bills in my hands like little flags. “Uhhhh, fellers?”

“Oh,” said Basil.

“Oh,” said Al.

They both looked ashamed. Which didn’t stop them from taking the money.

“Well,” said one.

“We’d better get back to work,” said the other.

And they grabbed their wheeled chairs and went whizzing away.

“As you can see,” I said to Miss Larson, “deadbeats we are not.”

I couldn’t help noticing she didn’t write that down.

Though she still looked pretty, up close I noticed she wasn’t simply slender but almost gaunt. She seemed to be but a few years older than me—somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-five, I’d have guessed—yet she looked somehow withered, desiccated, like all the juice had been baked right out of her.

“Otto Amlingmeyer,” I said with a tip of the Stetson. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“You haven’t made it yet,” the lady replied dryly. She put pencil to notepad and leaned to look past me. “Any thoughts on today’s outcome, Mr. Smythe?”

Smythe stepped up to join us, Old Red lagging a little behind, moving slow and wary. Women of a certain age—approximately fifteen to fifty—tend to spook my brother, and he looked like he wanted to give this one the kind of distance you’d usually reserve for something with a rattle at the end of its tail.

“I couldn’t be more pleased with the turnout,” Smythe said. “We had more than eight hundred spectators on hand, by my count.”

“Five hundred twenty-nine by
my
count,” Miss Larson said, “but that’s not what I was asking about. I’m wondering how it felt to see your ‘sleuths’ come in last.”

She hung those quotes around “sleuths” with just the slightest pucker of her thin lips. Other than that, her face remained utterly blank, her voice flat.

“That … well … I … uhhhh…” Smythe wiped a hankie across his sweat-beaded brow, then tried again. “It’s … uhhh … well … I…”

“What Mr. Smythe’s trying to say,” I cut in, “is that you seem to have overlooked something, miss. My brother and I did
not
come in last. Boothby Greene, I believe, has yet to put in an appearance.”