World's Greatest Sleuth! (12 page)

Before my brother could answer, a heavy tromping sound turned us both back toward the Agriculture Building. A gaggle of Columbian Guards was trotting inside lugging what looked like stretchers—a lot of them.

“That,” Gustav said. And off he went.

12

WALLS

Or, Pinkerton Tries to Avoid a Big Stink, and Gustav and I Go Hunting for One

Only two of the
Guardsmen were carrying a stretcher, it turned out. The rest were toting dressing screens, which they proceeded to set up in a circle around the top of the Mammoth Cheese from Canada.

“They don’t want an audience when they fish out the body,” Old Red muttered.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d seen it?” someone said, and a thin, wraith-like figure popped out from behind a display of Professor Pertwee’s Health Miracle Nut Butter.

My brother and I jumped halfway to the ceiling with a simultaneous, near-harmonious “Yahhh!”

“Miss Larson,” I said after we’d taken a moment to catch our breath and climb back into our skin, “what are you doin’ lurkin’ around here?”

“The same thing as you: keeping an eye on the cheese,” the lady reporter replied. “Now what about the body?”

“Why would you think we got a look at it?” Gustav asked.

“I talked to some of the spectators who were still milling around. They said you two were on top of the Mammoth Cheese before the Columbian Guards sealed it off. Diana Crowe and King Brady, too. Funny none of you told me that.”

“Well, you didn’t give us a chance, did you?” I said. “You went runnin’ off like a bloodhound on the scent the second you heard someone was dead. What were we to do?”

Miss Larson gave me a long, hard look that made it clear she knew I was full of crap but felt it beneath her to come right out and say it.

“It’s Curtis, isn’t it?” she said.

She brought up her notepad and pencil and held them at the ready.

“Why does it chill me to the bone every time you do that?” I asked.

“What makes you think Mr. Curtis is dead?” asked Gustav.

“Really,” Miss Larson said, “must you two answer my every question with more questions?”

I blinked her at innocently. “Oh … are we doin’ that?”

She gave me a longer, harder look that said it was beneath her to knee me in the
huevos,
too, but she was tempted to do it anyway.

“What have we here?” Old Red said, and he nodded toward yet another Guardsman hustling past. With him was a grim-faced fellow in a dark business suit. The guards at the bottom of the steps didn’t just swing aside to let the gent up. They hopped out of his way like a couple toreadors dodging a charging bull.

“Well, well,” Miss Larson said as the man went clomping up the stairs. “Talk about the big cheese.”

Gustav and I looked at each other.

He frowned. I shrugged.

“The big cheese?” I asked Miss Larson.

“Oh, no. You still haven’t answered any of
my
questions. It’s time for a little
quid pro quo
.” The lady narrowed her eyes. “That means tit for tat. A deal. An answer for an answer.”

Old Red rubbed at his mustache a moment before giving her a nod.

I brought up my right hand, spit in the palm, then held the hand out toward Miss Larson.

“Put ’er there, pardner,” I drawled.

Miss Larson stared at me with such disgust you’d have thought I was offering her a handful of moldy lard.

“We know what
quid pro quo
means,” I told her. (And it was even half true, for
I
knew.)

Point made, I reached for a hankie to clean off my hand—only realizing then I didn’t have one on me. I ended up wiping my palm on the inside of my coat pocket as surreptitiously as I could.

“I’ve had bad luck with tits for tat before,” Gustav said. “So if you don’t mind, I’ll do my askin’ first.” He jerked his head at the Mammoth Cheese. “What makes you so sure that’s Curtis?”

Miss Larson accepted my brother’s terms without a blink.

“He was missing this morning, for one thing. For another, the egg was found up there—I hear the Crowes were today’s winners—and that means he was up there, too, at some point. And the way Curtis was acting last night, it would hardly come as a surprise to learn he fell victim to some kind of accident.”

“You mean accident or”—Old Red gave the lady an exaggerated wink—“ ‘accident’?”

Miss Larson just stared at him, her lips pressed tight.

“Alright. Yeah. It was Curtis,” my brother said. “He was lyin’ inside the tub, facedown, almost like he drowned. Now … my turn again. Who was that feller who just went up the cheese?”

“Daniel Burnham, the Exposition’s director of works. And I’ll give you a little more for free. You can bet he and Pinkerton are going to do everything in their power to keep Curtis’s death under wraps, at least until the fair’s over. The Exposition Company’s got less than a week to grab as much cash as it can before going out in a blaze of glory. The directors, the vendors, the mayor—none of them will want to see these last days tainted. Now. Me again.”

Miss Larson started to turn back toward the Mammoth Cheddar, then changed her mind and squinted at Old Red’s face, instead.

“Why do you care?”

“Excuse me?” my brother said.

“Why come back here? Why ask questions?
Why care?
”

“A man’s died under mysterious circumstances,” I said. “We’re sleuths. What else we gonna do?”

“I don’t see any of the other sleuths here.”

I shrugged. “They don’t find what happened so mysterious.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question.” Miss Larson turned back to my brother. “Why do you care?”

“I liked the man,” Gustav said.

Miss Larson nodded. “Ahh, I see. Because you worshipped at the same altar. Still, you barely knew him, correct? It’s not like Armstrong B. Curtis was your friend.”

“No … but I reckon we might have us a common enemy.”

“What does that mean? You’re worried the killer’s going to come after you next? Why should he do that?”

“We don’t know why Curtis was killed, so we don’t know what the killer was after—or if he’s got it yet.”

“But by openly pursuing an investigation, wouldn’t you be provoking the killer, assuming there is one? Or is that part of your plan?”

“Hey. Yeah.” I turned on my brother. “What she said.”

Old Red shook his head. “Time for my next question. What do you know about Curtis, Miss Larson?”

The lady took in a deep breath. “He’s from California. He’s an attorney. He’s made an obsessive study of the cases of Sherlock Holmes. He’s made an obsessive study of the
rivals
of Sherlock Holmes. He’s written an exposé of Nick Carter for
Scribner’s,
and he might be planning another article along the same lines. He also might be crazy. And all of this should have been in the past tense, because he’s dead. That’s everything I know. Was there ever anything
really
wrong with your eyes?”

The way Miss Larson went sliding right into her next question caught my brother off guard. He seemed to remember at last that this was a young woman we’d been conversing with so intently, and he coughed and slouched and looked away.

Whether he could recompose himself enough to go on trading “tits for tat” proved a moot question, however, for at that moment Daniel Burnham came stomping down the steps from the cheese again—with William Pinkerton and half a dozen Columbian Guards right behind him.

Gustav and I spun around and pretended to inspect the nearest jars of Professor Pertwee’s nut butter. This was no doubt a pointless enterprise, as with our Stetsons and contrasting, big-little frames, my brother and I would be just as recognizable from the back as the front. Fortunately, someone thoughtfully provided a distraction.

“Mr. Burnham! Mr. Pinkerton!” Miss Larson darted away from us. “A moment of your time, please!”

I can’t say for certain how Mr. Burnham or Mr. Pinkerton reacted, for I went right on studying the label on Professor Pertwee’s jar. (Note to Professor Pertwee: I’d get rid of the giant smiling peanut man, if I were you. It’s danged creepy.) When I finally dared a peek around, Burnham, Pinkerton, and Miss Larson were all gone.

The two Columbian Guards who’d been stationed at the bottom of the Mammoth Cheese had apparently gone with them. In their place was a new Guardsman, one of the bunch that had brought the dressing screens up not long before.

Old Red eyed him warily.

“Think you can talk us past that feller?”

“No harm in tryin’,” I said. “Unless he pulls his sword on us.”

Gustav gave me a push toward the cheese. “Go on, then.”

I went. My brother came, too.

The guard was a ramrod-spined fellow who appeared to be striving with all his soul to live up to the overdone ornamentation of his uniform. The piping, the epaulets, the braids, the badge, the plume-tipped cap, the gold-plated scabbard for his sword—you’d have thought he was Admiral Nelson instead of a two-dollar-a-day copper, and he wore a haughty, stern expression as puffed-up as his duds.

A smile and a “Howdy!” were out of the question.

“Afternoon, Officer,” I said with the brusque, businesslike tone of a Colonel Crowe. “Mr. Amlingmeyer and I are assisting with the investigation, and we just need a moment to—”

Old Red and I skidded to a halt side by side. I’d hoped we could bluff our way up through pure momentum, but the Guardsman was purer inertia. If we hadn’t stopped, we’d have flattened ourselves against his chest like a couple snow balls splatting on the side of a barn.

“No one goes up,” he said. “Orders.”

“I understand. Orders are orders. But I’m tellin’ you, ‘no one’ means
them
.” I jerked a thumb at the tourists strolling through the exhibition hall behind us. “Not the two of us. We’re o-fficial.”

“My orders were
no one,
” the guard said. “Especially not a couple redheaded clowns wearing cowboy hats.”

“Oh. Well, what if we were to take the hats off?”

The Guardsman did not surprise me by smiling.

“Beat it,” he said.

“Come on,” Gustav grumbled, spinning around and stomping away.

“Speakin’ of orders, I’ve got one for you,” I told the guard before following. “Only there are children present, so I can’t say mine aloud.”

A moment later, I was falling into step beside my brother.

“Shit—that’s all we got to work with now,” he said. “One little here-and-gone whiff of cowpat.”

“Nothing new about that. We’ve had shit for clues plenty of times.”

My brother, like the Guardsman, did not laugh, did not smile. I was probably lucky he didn’t stop to kick me.

“Look,” I said, “if you really smelled manure—”

“I did.”

“—which, of course, you did, then it’s easy to figure what we should do next.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. We just go where the manure is.”

“And where would that be? The Bullshit Building?”

“No need to get snuffy, Brother. I’m bein’ serious. I’ve done some studyin’ on the Fair, and I’ve got me a notion. A deduction, you might even call it.”

“I can guess what
I’d
call it.”

“Well, let’s put it to the test, then.”

I steered us toward the nearest exit. When we popped outside, we were facing the imposing, ominously droning Machinery Building not far away. A narrow, enclosed walkway snaked off from it, tendril-like, toward an identical wing from the Agriculture Building, and the two joined up to form something not unlike a high-walled stockade.

“Now, why do you think they’d feel the need to have them two buildings a-touchin’ like that?” I asked Gustav.

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

I started for the spot where the Agriculture Building and the Machinery Building came together. “Oh, come on. You’ve played coy with your deducifyin’ so many times, you can’t begrudge me one little moment of my own.”

“Yes, I can,” Old Red growled. But he followed me all the same.

When we were about fifty yards from the covered hallway linking the two buildings, my brother raised his head slightly and sniffed.

When we were forty yards off, he didn’t have to bother, for the smell was swirling all around us.

When we were thirty yards off, you could hear what we were about to see.

The last twenty-something yards I can’t report on, for they flew by too fast.

Gustav had broken into a dash, and I kept up. I wasn’t going to miss the look on his face when he came out on the other side of that passageway.

In one door and out the other, and there it was: wide-eyed wonderment.

I pulled out my guidebook, flipped through the pages till I found what I wanted, and started reading.

“ ‘The Live Stock Pavilion is an oval amphitheater of diameters 280 and 440 feet, under the roof of which will be exhibited and judged the blooded stock of every description competing for the prize awards. Back of the pavilion are the tremendous live stock sheds, seventy-five in number, covering a space of forty acres. The collection of cattle contained here will be the most stupendous ever contemplated for—’ ”

“Christ,” Old Red said, taking in the tall, white, pennant-pocked pavilion. “Even the damn barns ’round here are beautiful.” He turned and gazed back at the high, long walls of the Machinery and Agriculture buildings. “Well, I’ll be. It’s a barrier. To keep the animal stink out of the White City.”

“Works pretty good, too,” I said. “I mean, to hide the smell of cattle from a man who knows it like you do.”

That reminded Gustav why we were there, and he started off around the Stock Pavilion, not stopping until he could see the pens just beyond. In some of the closest ones were heavy-jowled red-and-white cows.

I stopped beside my brother and spread my arms wide. “Herefords, just like you said. And I already see enough meadow muffins to fill the Grand Canyon. Now all we gotta do is figure out how one of ’em got on Curtis’s head.”

Old Red’s expression brightened. There was no actual smile, of course, those having been banished from his face long ago. But maybe, just maybe, you could call the little curl of the lip tucked under his mustache a smirk.