World's Greatest Sleuth! (2 page)

“Say … you’re one of them dee-tective brothers, ain’t you?”

I nodded. “The devilishly handsome, irresistible to women one, yeah. But I’m sure you figured that out already.”

The postmaster wasn’t quite awake enough to follow me, and after a moment watching him blink at me slack-jawed, I prodded him with an “And…?”

“Got a message for you. The Western Union boy come ’round lookin’ for you the other day. Said you should run over to their office first thing.”

I thanked the man, wished him sweet dreams (which got me another gawk, it being eleven in the
A.M.
), and left.

The Western Union office was but a couple blocks away, near the railroad depot, and the clerk there was a much more wide-awake sort of fellow—a slender man with slicked-back hair and garters on the sleeves of his immaculate white shirt. He recognized me on sight, perhaps thanks to the less than flattering descriptions (“doughy-faced,” indeed!) that had appeared in the local paper. (One can’t go around blowing things up—homes and their occupants, in particular—without attracting a certain amount of attention, even in Texas.)

Before I could say so much as “Hello,” the clerk whirled around to a row of cubbyholes, whipped out a small sheet of paper, and offered it to me. The second I had the note in hand, the man opened his money drawer and started counting out tens.

“Uhhhh,” I said, hypnotized by the sight of those bills stacking up ever higher.

“Read the telegram, sir,” the clerk said without looking up.

When a gent’s counting out cash for me, I tend to do as he asks. This is what I read.

OTTO AMLINGMEYER
SAN MARCOS TEX

BRING BROTHER EXPOSITION IMMEDIATELY STOP SEND DETAILS ARRIVAL COLUMBIAN HOTEL HOPE AVENUE CHICAGO STOP ALL EXPLAINED LATEST MCCLURES MAGAZINE STOP NOT HERE NOON MONDAY 23 ALL LOST STOP FOR GODS SAKE HURRY FULL STOP

URIAS SMYTHE
557PM
OCT 18

I looked back up at the clerk. He was now standing behind two tidy piles of greenbacks.

So many questions were bouncing around my skull they knocked the tongue right out of my mouth.

“Uhhhh,” I said, staring at the money again.

“Two hundred dollars,” the clerk said. “Via money order. For you.”

“Uhhhh,” I said, scanning the office wall for a calendar.

“It’s the twentieth,” the clerk told me. “You have three days to reach Chicago.”

“Uhhhh,” I said, stepping back to throw a panicked glance at the train station.

“Exposition specials leave from Houston daily,” the clerk said. “If you catch the 3:50 this afternoon, you might just make it.”

“Uhhhh,” I said, whirling in a circle looking for the nearest newsstand or sundries store.

“Page twelve,” the clerk said.

He pulled something out from under the counter and slid it over to me—a slick-looking magazine I’d never laid eyes on before.
McClure’s
.

I flipped to page twelve and found the following words screaming up at me.

I read the announcement through once, skimmed it again, triple-checked certain key phrases—“Smythe & Associates” and “The prize: $10,000” chief among them—then found my voice again at last. Lady Luck was finally offering me and my brother a helping hand rather than an upraised finger, and there was only one thing to say about it.

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit!”

And I danced a little jig right there in the Western Union office.

“Uhhhh,” the clerk said.

2

CHICAGO

Or, Old Red Reluctantly Faces the Future … and It Spits in His Eye

My jig was a
tad premature.

After I rode back to the ranch at a gallop, threw myself from the saddle, dragged Gustav out of the shearing shed, and blurted out the good news, I was a bit taken aback when my brother just frowned and said, “A Holmesin’ contest? How the hell’s that gonna work?”

I told him that wasn’t our worry—all we had to do was show up and make the most of it.

“But I ain’t exactly at my best, and Lord knows we can’t count on
you
to do the sleuthin’,” Old Red said.

I told him win or lose, we’d still come out ahead, as we’d never have a better chance to make a name for ourselves.

“Seems disrespectful to Mr. Holmes, don’t it?” Old Red said. “Playin’ games when he’s dead?”

I told him I couldn’t imagine a greater tribute to the late Mr. H than a mystery-cracking competition in his honor.

“Well, what do we know about this
McClure’s Magazine
? Could be some kind of prank,” Old Red said.

I told him he was a mule-headed SOB who was about to bury the biggest lucky break we ever had under a bunch of bullshit excuses.

Almost.

I counted to ten, let my temper settle, then pulled out my hole card.

I told him to think of our friend and comrade Diana Corvus.

“What about her?” Old Red said. There was a pause first, though—a pause that told me I had him.

“Last we heard from the lady,” I said, “she was still tryin’ to wrangle us detectivin’ jobs, right? Well, we come off good in this
McClure’s Magazine
—and it looks every bit as respectable as
Harper’s
—that’s gonna make her case for her, ain’t it? So if this pans out, there we’d be: working with Diana again. Detectin’ side by side. Shoulder to shoulder. Arm in arm. Hand in—”

“Alright, alright! You made your point!” my brother snapped. “We’ll give it a go. I reckon we ain’t got nothing left to lose.”

I nodded happily. “Nothing but our dignity … and we ain’t been usin’ that for much anyhow!”

It was hard to be certain, but it sure looked like Gustav rolled his eyes behind his glasses. Frantic packing and hurried good-byes followed immediately thereafter, and within hours we were on a northbound train.

Now, as you might have noticed, I’m a fellow who doesn’t mind flapping his gums. When Old Red and I travel modern-like, though, it’s not a matter of habit—it’s strict necessity. My brother can neither read nor stomach rail travel, you see, and the one thing that’ll keep him from retching and kecking is a steady stream of detective tales orated by yours truly.

And only one detective will do. We’d sampled Nick Carter, King Brady, Old Sleuth, and every other dick with a dime novel to his name, but none had ever won my brother over. “Defectives,” Gustav called them. “They don’t solve mysteries. They beat them into submission.” So it was all Holmes Holmes Holmes as we chugged toward Chicago.

With a little Diana Diana Diana on the side, perhaps. The first story Old Red asked to hear was “A Scandal in Bohemia”—a yarn he often turns to when trying to make sense of our pretty detective friend.

I’m not the great sleuth of the two of us, but this much I’d long ago deduced: My brother was half in love with the lady. And if he wasn’t, he was crazy, for I myself was
completely
in love with her and couldn’t understand how any other man wouldn’t be. She was as clever as Gustav, as silver-tongued as me, as brave as either of us, and more attractive than the both of us put together (my brother being a bit of a minus to my plus).

She was kindhearted to boot, for she’d been trying to talk her boss into hiring us on for his new detective agency. This was proving a challenge, however, for the boss in question was one Col. C. Kermit Crowe, late of the Southern Pacific Railroad Police—“late” because he’d been unwise enough to hire
us
just before we ran an S.P. locomotive off a cliff. Believe it or not, some folks will hold a grudge when you do them like that.

So as I saw it—and suspected Old Red saw it, too—the
McClure’s
contest wasn’t just the best shot we’d ever get at fame and fortune. It was maybe the
only
way we could hope to get close to Diana Corvus again.

Of course, my brother never came right out and said any of this. He makes it a habit not to come out and say anything, if he can help it. But the mere fact that he didn’t jump off that train at the first opportunity sure said
something
.

We were due to arrive late Monday morning, and I awoke at dawn that day, heart pounding with excitement. Most of our fellow passengers were up early, too, and by eight o’clock there was hardly a one not kitted out in their finest frock coat or day gown, as if we were headed not to a World’s Fair but a Sunday service. The Exposition may have been created to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of Chris Columbus’s voyage to America, but everyone knew it wasn’t really about the past. With its treasures and scientific wonders gathered from all around an ever-shrinking earth, “the White City” was where you went to greet the future. It was a more perfect world we were supposedly moving toward, and folks meant to get there looking picture-perfect themselves.

In this same spirit, I shaved, pomaded my hair, and put on my best suit. When Old Red returned from his morning toilet, however, he was still wearing the wrinkled work duds he’d slept in.

“Tell me you ain’t gonna get off the train lookin’ like that,” I said as he plopped down beside me.

“What am I supposed to look like? Diamond Jim Brady?”

“No. But I’d rather you didn’t look like a hungover dirt farmer, neither. Can’t you at least put on a tie?” I reached under our seat for my carpetbag. “Good thing I’ve got style enough for two. Now whadaya prefer: neck tie or bow?”

“I prefer not to strangle myself with
any
d- … d- … damn…”

I peeped up to see what was gumming my brother’s mouth, and there it was out the window, miles away yet already coming into view as we rounded a bend in the tracks.

Chicago.

Clustered towers of dark steel jutted up into grimy-gray clouds. Huge smokestacks belched black from beside factories and vast stockyards. And stretching out and around us like the giant web of some frightful spider: electrical wires, telephone lines, tracks, streets, gutters.

“Christ almighty,” Gustav muttered. “I almost wish I was still blind.”

For the next half hour, we cut through the slaughterhouses, manufacturing plants, tenements, and all-around ugliness that ringed the city. There was much murmuring and shaking of heads among the other passengers, and the air of anticipation with which they’d begun the day gave way to something approaching disgust.

If this was the future, God help us all.

Eventually, however, a little shriek of excitement went up somewhere behind us: “I see the lake!” Sure enough, there out the window, visible in sapphire stripes flashing between the muddled brown of the buildings, was Lake Michigan. It stretched all the way to the horizon—seemed to merge with the azure sky, in fact, so that there was hardly any horizon at all. Just a wall of blue so big you’d hardly believe the world could contain it.

Then another cry went up, and suddenly everyone was pressing against the windows so hard it’s a wonder the train didn’t tip over.

“The fairgrounds!”

“The Exposition!”

“The White City!”

Domes, that was all I could see. Huge orbs, four or five of them, jutting up as rounded and gleaming as giant eggs. The buildings beneath were blocked from view by the massive terminal we were pulling up to and the dozen other trains already lined up on the long row of tracks before it.

We eased to a stop amidst such a furious tumult of activity as to make a beehive look like a mortuary. Passengers pouring from the neighboring trains pushed toward the station through the still-swirling engine steam, while porters piled luggage onto pushcarts and bellowing news butchers hawked guidebooks and maps.

“You ready for this?” I asked my brother.

It’s not just trains he doesn’t care for. Crowds he’s not overfond of, either, and cities he can’t stand.

So far, the Exposition looked like his definition of hell on earth.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Old Red grumbled. “By which I mean
no
.”

Yet he snatched up his gripsack and got to his feet.

Soon we were flotsam in the swirling deluge of humanity on the platform. As we were jostled this way and that, I tried to stay on tippy-toe so as to spy or be spied by our backer, Urias Smythe.

I’d wired ahead to tell him our arrival was imminent and all he had to do was meet us at the station for his prayers to be answered. I knew the man only from his letters and (God bless him) money orders, though, so I couldn’t so much search for him as try to look conspicuous and hope for the best.

I didn’t have to try hard. With our matching red hair and mismatched builds—mine strapping, my brother’s slight—Gustav and I couldn’t pull off
in
conspicuous on our best day. And this, it would turn out, was far from our best day.

I spotted a big, jowly, bald-headed fellow squirming against the current of the crowd, and when he noticed me watching him, his eyes narrowed … and then, upon falling on Old Red, popped wide.

“Mr. Smythe?” I called to him with a tentative wave.

He answered my question by throwing out his own in a tremulous, squeaky-high voice.

“Otto Amlingmeyer?”

I nodded, and ever so slowly Smythe turned toward us and started our way. A moment later, I thrust out a hand as the man who’d plucked us from obscurity and destitution stood before me for the first time.