World's Greatest Sleuth! (10 page)

I took a step toward him.

Old Red grabbed me by the arm.

“Clock’s tickin’,” he said.

“Right.” I started to wad up the stranger’s coat to throw at him, then changed my mind and slipped it on instead. “We’ll call it an even trade: one overcoat for one pair of spectacles.”

“Cowards!” the man hollered as we retreated across the bridge. “Come back here and fight!”

“I see you again, you’ll get your wish!” I called back.

“Oh, you’ll see me again, alright … when I want you to!”

And he cut loose with what my fellow dime novel scribes would probably call “maniacal laughter.”

“What in God’s name was that all about?” I said to Old Red.

“One puzzle at a time.” We burst through the doors into the Agriculture Building. “Now … what are we lookin’ for, anyhow?”

“Come on, and I’ll show you!”

Arrayed before us was what could’ve been four state fairs under one roof. Within easy spitting distance were displays for farm implements, pesticides, wheats and grains, cigarettes, agricultural colleges, even ostriches. But not what I was looking for.

I dashed up to a jug-eared fellow standing before a wall of olive-tinted jars.

“The big cheese! Where is it?”

“The cheese! The cheese! Everybody wants to see the cheese today!” The man swept out an arm toward something green and slimy off to his right. “What about our map?”

I turned and beheld a huge, beautifully detailed rendering of the United States of America—made entirely from pickles.

“Yeah, hey, whooee, that’s really something. The cheese, please?”

“Oh, alright. Right at the tower of chocolate, left at the statue of Columbus made from gum paste.”

“Thanks.”

I turned and darted off again, Old Red at my side.

“ ‘Curdle,’ ‘milk,’ ‘cowed,’ ” my brother panted as we ran. “The riddle’s about cheese, I see that. But what’s ‘the
big
cheese’?”

“You really need me to explain it?”

Gustav gazed at the dark pillar jutting up toward the rafters about fifty feet ahead. Melt it down and you’d have a pool of chocolate to rival the Great Lake outside.

“No,” my brother said. “I suppose not.”

After that, we just ran.

Half a minute later, we had the big cheese in sight. Or the vast iron vat that held it, anyway. It was on a wheeled platform not unlike a flatbed train car, and a set of stairs wound around it to the top.

THE MAMMOTH CHEESE FROM CANADA
, it said on the side of the tank.
WEIGHT 22,000 POUNDS.

Even if we hadn’t seen the Mammoth Cheese—which would’ve been quite a feat, given that it was just a shade smaller than the moon—it would have been obvious we were in the right place. Clogging our nostrils was the overwhelming smell of cheddar, while clogging the hall before us was our audience from the Court of Honor.

William Pinkerton was waiting beside the cheese vat, Urias Smythe, Frank Tousey, and Blackheath-Murray clustered up beside him. Nearby, a pair of Columbian Guards stood stationed at the bottom of the stairs to the top of the tank, and upon a nod from Pinkerton they each took a step away.

“One side! Gangway! Sleuths comin’ through!” I called out.

Unfortunately, Old Red and I weren’t the only sleuths on the move: As a path cleared through the crowd, I could see King Brady at the far end of it, making for the cheese same as me.

“Oh, no you don’t!”

We barreled toward each other like a couple trains on the same track, colliding at the foot of the stairs. After that, we collided again and again and again—on purpose—as we fought to be first to the top of the steps. Halfway up, we both went down on our faces.

“Excuse me,” a woman said, and it wasn’t until she was walking along my back that I realized hers was the voice I’d been so longing to hear the past day.

Diana Crowe was about to beat us all.

“Feh,” my brother spat as he pounded up after her (and
over
me).

After that, I was done playing doormat, and I hopped to my feet just in time to hear the lady speak again.

“I’m sorry, Old Red. I’m afraid you’re too late to … oh!”

A heartbeat later, I was at the top of the stairs with King Brady jostling up behind me.

“Is that what I think it is?” Diana was saying to Gustav. She nodded at a circle cut into the vat to allow for viewing of the cheese.

My brother stretched out on his belly and hung himself half in, half out of the tank.

“Yes, miss. It is,” he said wearily. “So long as you think it’s a dead feller facedown in cheddar. Hard to tell from up here, but it seems to me he’s wearin’ a tuxedo, too.”

“Armstrong Curtis?” I said.

“I reckon so.” My brother wriggled up out of the hole. In one hand he was holding a gleaming-gold orb. “Looks like he’s given us at least one puzzle today he didn’t aim to.”

10

A MAMMOTH MYSTERY

Or, Gustav Eggs Diana On While King Brady Turns Chicken

“Curtis? Dead? In there?”

Behind me, King Brady burst out laughing.

“You’re joking!”

His laughter stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

“Aren’t you?”

Diana and Gustav ignored him.

“What’s going on up there?” someone shouted.

“Yeah! Who won?”

More such cries echoed up from the audience packed in around the Mammoth Cheese.

“Pinkerton’ll be up here any second lookin’ for the winner,” Old Red said. “And you know what he’ll do when he finds out about our friend here.”

Diana nodded. “We don’t count as real detectives. He’ll get rid of us as soon as he can.”

“That’s right. So if either of us is gonna do any clue-huntin’, this is our chance … provided there’s a distraction.”

He held the golden egg out toward Diana.

She took it.

“I can’t give you more than a couple of minutes,” she said. “Make the most of it.”

Gustav popped his head and shoulders back down into the tub. “I plan to.”

Diana rose to go, and Brady and I stepped aside to let her pass.

“I’m glad you’re talkin’ to us again, miss,” I said as she walked by.

The lady lingered to look at me, and though she didn’t smile, I could tell a part of her wanted to.

“I am as well,” she said. “I’m just sorry it took something like this to give me the opportunity.”

When our audience caught sight of her at the top of the steps with the egg in her hand, a cheer went up, and Major Bacon and His Hoosier One Hundred launched into “American Patrol.” The ruckus drew Diana’s gaze away, and I could see that unsmiled smile wilt inside her.

Colonel Crowe was at the bottom of the staircase. Watching us.

“Don’t worry, Otto,” Diana said. “Now that we’ve started again, I’m going to see to it we don’t stop.”

She did smile, then—a big, blinding grin she slapped on for the benefit of her admirers. She was waving to them as she headed down the stairs.

Brady started to follow her with slow, stumbling steps.

“Whoa,” I said, swinging in to block him. “Why don’t you stay up here with us?”

Brady peered past me, down into the crowd, his eyes wide. There was a dusty splotch on the front of his coat and a smashed carnation in his buttonhole—the work of my own shoe in the midst of our tussle—yet he seemed too dazed to hold any grudges.

“But someone’s got to tell … someone,” he muttered.

“About the body? Oh, there’s no rush. Mr. Curtis ain’t goin’ nowhere. And while the lady buys us a little time, we can do some investigatin’. Why don’t you show me how the monarch of the New York detectives would go about it?”

“Yes, of course…”

Brady moved away from the stairs, but he only made it a few steps before his knees went wobbly and he had to stumble back and grab for the railing.

“Steady there, friend,” I said, moving in to catch him should he swoon. “You alright?”

Brady nodded, though his face had gone as green as George Washington’s on the one-dollar bill.

“It’s the cheese vapors,” he wheezed. “They’re making me sick.”

“Sure. It is pretty ripe up here, ain’t it? Tell you what—why don’t you just breathe easy and strike a heroic pose. My brother can handle the detectin’.”

Brady nodded again and puffed out his chest as best he could. The band had stopped playing by now, and I could hear Pinkerton making some kind of pronouncement about the Crowes.

I walked over to Old Red’s upturned keister and proceeded to have a conversation with it.

“So what happened to the man?”

“Looks like he got himself smothered.”

“In cheese?”

“It ain’t tapioca down here.”

My brother had left his Stetson near the lip of the viewhole, and I considered placing it atop his rump and observing that his appearance had actually improved.

“Well, how’d he manage that?” I said instead.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be hangin’ down here like a bat in a damned … hel-lo.”

“You spot something?”

“I
smell
something.”

“Other than cheddar?”

“Very other.”

One of Gustav’s hands snaked up to pull a small box from his coat pocket, and a moment later the inside of the vat lit up with the flash and flicker of a fresh-struck match. My brother’s dangling body blocked my view, though, and I saw nothing of Armstrong B. Curtis save a little glimmer off his patent leather shoes.

“Careful with that lucifer, Brother. You’ll melt all the evidence,” I said. “Say … don’t the flare off that thing hurt your eyes?”

“Now ain’t the time for that.”

Major Bacon chose that moment to fire up his Hoosiers again, and along with the blast of “The Washington Post,” I heard the telltale mumble-buzz of a crowd dispersing. I moved back to the edge of the tank and peeped over the railing.

Down below, Diana was leaning in close to William Pinkerton, speaking into his ear.

“Five,” I said.

Pinkerton snapped up straight and spun around to gawp up at me.

“Four.”

He turned and waved over the nearest Columbian Guard.

“Three.”

He sent the Guardsman flying away with a few whispered words, then hustled toward the staircase.

“Two.”

He charged up the steps with more Guardsmen in tow.

“One.”

“What do you think you’re doing?”
Pinkerton thundered.

“I,” Gustav said, “am accumulatin’ data.”

He didn’t bother coming out of the viewhole, so Pinkerton bothered for him.

“Get him out of there,” he growled at the Guardsmen, and they proceeded to grab Old Red by the legs and lift him up like they were pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

When my brother’s top half appeared, both his face and his match were smoldering.

“I ain’t finished.”

“Yes, you are,” Pinkerton said. “Put him over there.”

“Don’t drop him on his head, boys,” I said. “Our mama did the same thing when he was a baby, and—”

“This is
not
funny,” Gustav snapped as the guards lowered him down and let him go.

“Yes, it—”

“A man’s been murdered.”

I shut up.

Pinkerton crouched down and squinted into the tank. “You didn’t disturb anything, did you?”

“Oh, not much.” Old Red snatched up his hat and jammed it atop his head. “I just borrowed the monogrammed hankie the killer left behind and used it to wipe up the message Curtis wrote in his own blood.
Of course I didn’t disturb nothing!
But I did notice a thing or two. Or three or four.”

“Get them out of here,” Pinkerton said, jerking his head at the steps.

The Guardsmen gave Gustav a push toward the staircase.

“Don’t you even wanna hear what I got to say?”

Pinkerton kept staring down into the vat. “Leave this to the professionals.”

“You mean you and your tin soldiers here?” I said. “The ones who didn’t even notice the body till the
amateurs
told ’em about it?”

That got
me
a shove from one of the Guardsmen.

“And see to it they don’t come back up,” Pinkerton said.

Brady got swept up with me and my brother as we were brushed away.

“Oh,” Pinkerton said when we reached the top of the stairs. “If any of you breathes a word of this to the newspapers, you’re out of the contest. And if you use the word ‘murder,’ I’ll see to it you’re in jail. Do you understand?”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Pinkerton,” Brady said, voice cracking. “You can count on my discretion.”

I just nodded.

Old Red said nothing until we were headed down the steps.

“Monarch of the New York ass-kissers is more like it,” he grumbled.

If Brady heard him, he didn’t let on. He just affixed a phony grin to his handsome face, doled out a few hurried handshakes to the well-wishers waiting at the bottom of the staircase, then darted away the first chance he got. He seemed to be making a beeline for a burly, bearded fellow watching us from beside a replica of the Liberty Bell made entirely from oats, but Frank Tousey intercepted him and steered him away. What any of them did next, I couldn’t say, for our legions of adoring fans were falling upon us.

“Better luck next time,” a plump, gray-haired matron said even as she went up on her tiptoes to strain for another glimpse of Brady.

“We’re pulling for you,” added her mousy, mustachioed husband. “Other than King and the Crowes, you’re our favorites.”

And with that, they drifted off in search of the map of pickles.

Just about everyone still lingering about was shoving in to congratulate Diana and the colonel. The exceptions being Old Red, who’d turned to gaze with bitter longing up the steps to the top of the cheese, and the Columbian Guards who’d pointedly positioned themselves in his path.

“Well, I do hope you got a rope on some decent clues,” I said. “Cuz we sure ain’t gettin’ another crack at the scene of the crime.”

Gustav pushed back his Stetson and sighed. “I don’t know
what
I got a rope on. But at least for once we’ll have us some expert help untanglin’ all the knots.”

“That’s right.”

I looked over at the Crowes again. Just beyond the cluster of back-slappers around them I could see Boothby Greene talking to his publisher, Blackheath-Murray, and though Eugene Valmont had yet to put in an appearance, the Frenchman was bound to come scurrying along any second.