World's Greatest Sleuth! (27 page)

“Not like that, it didn’t. I know you can muster a light touch when you want to, but no. You just went and dropped the Unbearded Man on Smythe like an anvil off the roof. Couldn’t you have finessed how we first run across him? Smoothed it out a little? You know. Lied?”

“Sure, I could’ve, but…” Old Red sighed and looked over and up into my eyes. “Alright. I should’ve.”

I gave him a clap on the back of the brotherly/manly kind that says “Apology accepted—what’s done is done.”

“Aww, it probably don’t matter, anyhow,” I said. “I get the feelin’ Smythe wasn’t gonna be our bosom chum by the end of the week, no matter how things played out. And there’s other publishers than him. Maybe I oughta run some of my stories under Blackheath-Murray’s nose.”

“Why not Frank Tousey?”

“Ha! First you admit you were wrong, then you crack a joke! You are in rare form today, Brother. I don’t know what to expect from you next. A belly dance?”

Gustav did not, of course, bust out with some hoochie-coochie, nor did he look in the slightest amused, and I began to wonder if he’d been joking at all. I couldn’t imagine Tousey desiring any dealings with us, though, excepting the dirty kind that would keep us from asking further questions about King Brady.

Imagine my surprise, then, when we walked into the Columbian Hotel only to have Tousey himself cheerfully halloo us from the lobby.

“Just the gentleman I was hoping to see,” he said, bustling up to me. “There’s something I’d like to discuss with you. Your brother as well, of course. Would you care to do it over dinner? On me?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Tousey,” I said. “Arsenic doesn’t agree with me.”

It wasn’t much of a quip, I admit, yet the way Tousey roared you’d have thought I was Oscar Wilde.

“I don’t blame you for being suspicious after the way I spoke to you yesterday,” he said once he caught his breath. “Please. Let me make amends for my rudeness.”

“That’s mighty nice of you, sir,” Old Red said. “It’d be ungracious of us not to give you the chance.”

“I hoped you’d see it that way!”

“Do y’all mind if I at least run up and put on something dry first?” I said. “Feels like I been walkin’ around with tadpoles in my pockets.”

Tousey laughed again. It was a little unnerving, actually, having someone guffaw at my every funny. I was more used to silence or, at most, “Feh.”

“Tell you what,” Gustav said, “is the place you got in mind close by, Mr. Tousey?”

“Sure. It’s just over on Sheridan. The American. It’s a chophouse.”

“Fine. Why don’t you run up and get changed, Otto? We’ll head over to the American and put in an order for you. By the time you get there, you’ll probably have a steak waitin’.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Before bounding up the stairs to our room, I was treated to the bewildering sight of Old Red and Tousey chatting amiably as they strolled away. It was like seeing two rattlesnakes sit down to take tea together. I couldn’t imagine it’d be long before the fangs came into play.

I washed up and threw on a new suit quick as I could, then scurried over to the American no more than a quarter hour behind the others. When I joined them at a table in the middle of the restaurant, they were still gabbing at each other in a pleasant, relaxed way I found remarkable. My brother had taken my earlier admonishment about finesse and smooth talking to heart, it seemed, for going fifteen whole minutes without grievously insulting someone ran contrary to his very nature.

“Mr. Tousey was just tellin’ me how this here contest got started,” Gustav said as I sat down. “It’s quite a story.”

From the way he said it, I knew it was a story he’d be passing along soon, too—with some deductions mixed in with the telling.

“We were talking about you as well, Otto,” Tousey said.

“Oh? Comparing notes on your admiration and envy, I trust.”

“Something like that,” Tousey chuckled.

“Mr. Tousey’s been readin’ your tales,” Old Red said. “He’s a big admirer. Maybe as big as Mr. Curtis was.”

Tousey was reaching for a glass of red wine and, for just a second, he froze solid.

“I certainly liked what I saw.” He took a quick sip that couldn’t have done more than moisten his lips, then put the glass down again. “I did have a few thoughts, though.”

I felt my upper arms and shoulders tingle and tighten, as if someone had ever-so-lightly swiped an icicle over the skin.

“ ‘Thoughts’ as in criticisms?”

Tousey smiled. He was a dapper man, with gold cufflinks and rings on his pinkies and a diamond-studded stickpin through his silver satin cravat, and somehow the smile seemed like just one more little bauble he affixed to himself so as to make the right impression.

“As in suggestions, Otto,” he said soothingly. “To make your stories more palatable to the masses. Sand some of the edges off.”

“I didn’t know my stories were edgy.”

“They could just be a little smoother, that’s all. Simpler. Pithier.”

“Not so danged gabby,” Gustav said.

I glared at him.

He seemed to enjoy it.

“Shorter would be good, yes,” Tousey said, “and you’ve got some trimmings I think should be trimmed, to be frank. Those chapter headings of yours, for instance. Are they really necessary?”

“I don’t know about necessary, but I like ’em.”

Tousey shook his head. “They’re old-fashioned and they slow the reader down. Cut them. And those prologues you always put at the beginning? The ‘preludes,’ I think you call them. What are those for?”

“That’s just me trying to start things off with something exciting. To grab folks’ attention.”

“But then you have to circle back later to explain it. It’s confusing. Anyway, who’s going to remember by chapter nine what happened in the prologue? You don’t
want
anyone to remember. You just want them to keep turning pages, pushing ahead, not looking back.”

“Well, maybe, but—”

“I know what I’m talking about,” Tousey cut in. “I put out dozens of dime novels every year. And when I look at you, do you know what I see? Raw clay just waiting to be molded by the right hands. A good publisher could turn you into the next John Watson. But with the wrong publisher, you’re going to keep making the same mistakes, and that’ll get you nowhere. Tell me, Otto—what’s Urias paying you per word?”

“Per word? I don’t rightly know. He gives me two hundred bucks for the long stuff, twenty for the short.”

Tousey rolled his eyes. “As usual, Urias doesn’t know what he’s got. Otto, you shouldn’t accept anything less than four hundred dollars for your next novel … and I want you to accept it from
me
.”

I had to put my hands flat on the table to steady myself. When I was a kid, I once took a roll down a hill in an empty flour barrel, and when I stumbled out I hadn’t felt half as dizzy and disoriented as I did now. Things had gone too fast in a direction I hadn’t expected.

“I truly appreciate the offer, sir. In fact, you wouldn’t believe how fortuitous your timing—”

“Of course, we’d hate to betray Mr. Smythe like that,” my brother said. “Especially now, with everything that’s been goin’ on.”

Tousey nodded. “I understand. It’s only natural that you’d have some reservations. Take your time. Think about it.”

He picked up his wine and took another sip—a longer, deeper one this time that left a little crimson crescent on his lips.

“Don’t take
too
long, though,” he said. “In fact, I think you should probably make up your minds before dessert.”

That grounded me fast. I once again knew exactly where I stood. It wasn’t a good place, but there’s a comfort in the knowing.

“Long as we’re all bein’ so friendly,” I said, “do you mind if we ask you a question or two?”

“That depends on how friendly the questions are.”

Tousey chuckled again, as if this had been some joke. The coldness of his eyes, though, made it plain it wasn’t.

“Well, we won’t be askin’ ’em out of spite,” I said, and I turned to my brother and gave him a look that said,
Got your anvils ready?

“We saw a man followin’ Mr. Smythe yesterday,” Old Red said. “Tall feller wearin’ a fake beard. Today I saw him again—meetin’ with your man Brady. Who is he?”

“A mysterious stranger with a fake beard?” Tousey scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I can be,” Gustav said. “I am. And it makes me wonder: Would you still be our friend if we keep tryin’ to figure out who that man is?”

I could have sworn someone opened a door and let in a cold wind off the lake. The temperature around our table seemed to drop ten degrees.

“No,” Tousey said.

“And you would be our friend if we stopped?”

“Yes.”

“I just wanted us to be clear on that.”

“Let’s
be
clear, then,” Tousey said.

Old Red shrugged. “We ain’t friends.”

Tousey didn’t waste another second looking at him.

“Hutchings,” he said, turning away and putting up a finger.

Tousey must have been a regular customer there, and a healthy tipper to boot, for the maître d’ heard him on the first call and came scurrying over quick.

“Yes, Mr. Tousey?”

“Do you own a dog, Hutchings?”

“It just so happens, I do, sir,” the man said without blinking an eye. I got the feeling Tousey could’ve asked “Do you have two heads and purple skin?” and he would’ve replied “No, sir, I don’t believe I do” with equal aplomb.

“What’s his name?”

“There are two of them, actually, Mr. Tousey. Copperfield and Nickleby.”

“Ah. So much the better. I have a treat for Copperfield and Nickleby, Hutchings.” He pointed across the table at me and Gustav without taking his eyes off the maître d’. “Please take these gentlemen’s steaks home with you tonight and give them to your dogs.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Also, if the gentlemen are still sitting at this table in two minutes, summon a policeman.”

“Absolutely, sir. I hope you’re not being annoyed.”

“I am, but it’s no fault of yours. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“Think nothing of it, Mr. Tousey.”

Hutchings bowed ever so slightly before hustling away. I found the smug satisfaction on his face puzzling until I realized the size of the gratuity he had to look forward to—not to mention the steaks.

“No need to get the law mixed up in this,” Old Red said, pushing back his chair. “We’ll go.”

I got to my feet, too. “We got work to do, anyhow. Ain’t that right, Brother?”

“It sure is.”

Tousey went right on ignoring us, focusing himself instead on draining his wineglass and admiring the paintings of (ironically enough) cowboys and cattle drives that lined the wall.

We left.

Halfway back to the Columbian, Gustav started to steer us into another, lower-rail chophouse, but I wouldn’t follow him inside.

“Thought you’d wanna talk it all through over some food,” my brother said.

I just shook my head. It had taken me a couple months to lose my first publisher, and a couple minutes to lose my second.

For once, I wasn’t hungry.

29

TROUT IN THE MILK

Or, We Angle for More Facts and End Up Hearing Something Fishy

As my brother and
I carried on back to the Columbian, a funny thing happened. It was my second Trudge of the day, and I didn’t feel up to filling the silence between us with gab—yet Old Red, of all people, did.

“Got some good data outta Tousey ’fore he tried to buy us off,” he said. “Turns out the contest was his idea. Or so he tells it. Said he saw
McClure’s
was gonna publish Doc Watson’s last Holmes story and set out to find an ‘angle’ for makin’ hay off that. Cooked up the competition, roped Smythe in, then the two of ’em took it to
McClure’s
together. It was Smythe’s notion to do it in Chicago and get Pinkerton involved. You know who recruited Curtis. The Crowes bought their way in after that notice ran in
McClure’s
last month. But with just them and King Brady and Dan Slick, the Dude Dick, lined up, the
McClure’s
crowd didn’t think the contest was ‘international’ enough. So they signed up two sleuths from Europe on their own.”

Gustav gave me a long, wide-eyed look that obviously prompted me to name names. I went ahead and did it before he could barrel straight into a streetlamp.

“Eugene Valmont and Boothby Greene.”

My brother shook his head. “Eugene Valmont and Gareth Lestrade.”

“Lestrade! As in Inspector Lestrade? Scotland Yard Lestrade? Holmes’s…?”

Neither “friend” nor “foil” seemed to suit the man perfectly, so after a little thought I had to go with the admittedly awkward “acquaintance Lestrade?”

Old Red, to my relief, finally looked where he was going just in time to avoid a head-on collision with a family of six. He weaved his way through them, ignoring their “Hey!”s and “Well, I never!”s as he answered me.

“The very one. Agreed to come over and compete—for the widows and orphans fund, of course—but had to bow out at the last minute. Some kinda fracas on the job, apparently. Got thrashed so good, he’ll be laid up for weeks. By then, Blackheath-Murray had heard of the contest, though, so
McClure’s
still got themselves an Englishman. That was as far as we got before Tousey launched into his eyewash about you.”

“You don’t need to remind me what happened after that.”

“Yeah, well, still…,” my brother began, but whatever he’d been about to say got hacked away by a cough, and he started up again with a whole new thought. “Tousey played it pretty cool, but he’s gotta be spooked to try something so obvious.”

“I just wonder what he’ll try next.”

“You and me both, Brother.”

Up ahead, I saw a sure sign my Trudge was almost over: Jerzy, the Columbian’s cadaverous old bellhop, was standing beside a hansom as it was loaded with trunks. The cabdriver and what I assumed was a soon-to-be-former hotel guest were doing all the work while Jerzy waited to do his part: lightening the tourist’s pockets of whatever spare coins they might contain.

Inside, we found Mrs. Jasinska beaming her usual sunshiny smile from behind her desk, and I planned to bask in it no more than the second or two it might take to sweep past her and head for the stairs. There was a pillow in our room with my name on it—either to sleep upon or smother myself with, I hadn’t decided which.