World's Greatest Sleuth! (3 page)

Smythe didn’t seem to see my hand even as he looked me and my brother over head to foot and back again.

Old Red’s shabby clothes and shaded cheaters got the longest look of all.

“This is Gustav?” Smythe asked.

“Indeed it is, and pleased as punch we both are to be here.” I stuck my hand out so far now it just about poked the man’s belly button. “We want to thank you for this opportunity, sir. I promise you, you won’t regret puttin’ your faith in us.”

It was too late for that particular promise, though. Rather than give me a shake, Smythe put his hands to his face.

“Oh, my God,” he blubbered. “I’m ruined!”

3

PINS AND NEEDLES

Or, Smythe Frets About Losing His Shirt While Gustav Comes Apart at the Seams

When faced with displays
of emotional distress, my brother typically employs the response preferred by most cowboys. He coughs awkwardly, looks away, and waits for the moment to pass. So my publisher got no tender words of comfort from Old Red, though it sure looked like he could use a few. With his hairless head and round, red-cheeked face, Smythe resembled nothing so much as a huge, bawling baby diapered in a black business suit.

I might have jumped in quicker to soothe him myself but for one thing: It was obviously the sight of me and Gustav that had primed the pump for his tears. I’d be the first to admit we didn’t exactly look like Sir Galahad and Lancelot charging in on white steeds, but surely we weren’t that uninspiring.

Well, surely
I
wasn’t, anyway.

After a long moment trying to decide how insulted I should feel, I pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to the man.

“Thank you.” Smythe took the hankie, blew an immense, snorking noseful into it, then handed it back. “I do hope you’ll forgive me. These have been trying times. Trying times, indeed!” He sucked in a deep breath, and the crimson flush on his face faded to a more presentable pink. “There’s no time to dwell on that now, though.”

He turned aside to flag down a porter.

“We ain’t got no trunks, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.” I gave my carpetbag a little waggle. “Me and my brother travel light.”

“Of course. So you always say in your stories, and so far they’ve proved quite accurate. For the most part.” Smythe stole another quick, quiver-lipped peek at Gustav, then leaned toward me and dropped his voice. “Your brother … he’s not
blind
, is he?”

“Not anymore,” I whispered back.

This did not seem to put Smythe at ease.

“I ain’t deaf, neither,” Old Red snapped.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Smythe spluttered. “But it wouldn’t have surprised me if you were deaf, dumb, and blind after what I’ve been through the past few days.” He grimaced and fluttered his hands in the air. “I’m just all higgledy piggledy!”

“Now, now. Everything’s gonna be fine,” I said soothingly. If I’d had a lollipop, I’d have given it to him. “Why don’t you explain the situation, and we’ll—”

Smythe gave me an emphatic, wattles-flapping shake of the head. “Explanations can wait. Follow me!”

He spun on his heel and hustled off toward the terminal building.

Gustav looked at me.

I shrugged.

We followed.

The milling crowd was thick as ever inside the station, but Smythe’s gut cut through it like the prow of some mighty ship. “One side! Official business!” he’d blare when the multitudes didn’t part quick enough to suit him. So busy was I apologizing on his behalf, I couldn’t even grab a good look at the building till we were nearly out of it again. All I got was a quick glimpse of glistening marble and beveled glass and long-lined ticket windows, and suddenly we were pushing through turnstiles while Smythe waved a blue ribbon at the attendants nearby.

“Official business!”

Then we were outside again … and we were
in
the White City.

Smythe kept charging on ahead. My brother and I stopped dead in our tracks.

To our left was what looked like a vast castle bedecked with dozens of flapping banners—the largest single thing we’d ever seen spring from the hands of man. When we turned to the right, we saw something even
bigger
. It was the castle times two with the White House and the Vatican thrown in for good measure.

“Gentlemen,
please
!”

The voice seemed to drift to us from an almost otherworldly distance, as when someone speaks to you while you’re still half-asleep in a dream. I blinked and looked ahead and found Smythe fifty feet beyond us, waving frantically for us to follow. Behind him was yet another marvel: a stately, statuary-studded structure adorned with pillars, huge arching windows, and, up top, a towering gilded dome aglint in the sunshine. It looked like heaven’s own county courthouse, and it was apparently our destination.

Gustav and I set off for it with slow, stumbling steps. As we walked, my brother swung his gaze this way and that, still trying to take in the enormity all around us. It was a good thing he was wearing his tinted specs, for so far the White City was living up to its name. Nearly everything was blinding-bright pristine white.

“How your eyes doin’?” I asked.

Old Red shook his head. “I ain’t sure. I don’t know whether to believe ’em or not.”

“You can gawk later!” Smythe fussed, urging us on with a paddlewheel-spin of the hands. “We’re running out of time!”

“But your telegram said everything’d be fine so long as we were here by noon,” I pointed out.

“Yes! And it’s ten till, you big—!”

Smythe caught himself just in time.

“Red,” he said. “Now
please
stop dawdling. There’s not a second to spare!”

He turned and set off for that huge bedomed building again, and soon we were pushing through the doors. Inside, we were stopped by a fellow wearing a blue uniform with a brass star and a short, scabbarded sword—obviously a member of the Columbian Guard, the Exposition’s famous army of private police.

“Sorry, gentlemen. The Administration Building’s not open to—”

Smythe waved his blue ribbon. “Official business!”

The guard stepped back and let us pass.

“The contest’s gonna be in here?” I asked as we continued down a broad, marble-tiled hall.

“No, no, no! The Exposition’s loaned us an office for the week, that’s all.”

Smythe threw open a door and shooed us into a small room. A typewriter-topped desk had been shoved into one corner, but beyond that and a few lights along the wall—electric bulbs, I noted, not gas jets—the little room was free of any other furniture or fixture.

Two tall stacks of boxes bookended the typewriter on the desk.

“Alright,” Smythe said. “Time to get into your costumes.”

“Our
what
?” Old Red blurted out before I could.

Smythe turned to the desk, opened one of the bigger boxes, and pulled out a ten-gallon hat so high-peaked and pure white, seen from a distance you’d think it was the Swiss Alps. This he handed to my brother. Then he reached into another box and produced a round-topped Boss of the Plains that was, amazingly, even larger—and bright red. This, to my horror, he handed to me.

“They go on your heads!” Smythe snapped when we didn’t immediately slap the hats on.

“It’s awful nice of you to give us these,” I said. “But … well … a
red
Stetson? Black, white, or brown, that’s all a real cowboy’d ever—”

“What’s ‘real’ got to do with it? I’ve already made”—here Smythe’s voice went warbly—“a substantial investment in this undertaking. Even if it can’t be recouped, I don’t mean to see it wasted entirely. We have an opportunity to paint a public portrait of you that suits our purposes, and we’re going to make the most of it.”

Smythe turned back to the packages. As he sorted through them, a magazine tucked between two boxes fell fluttering to the floor. It landed cover up.

Smythe’s Frontier Detective,
it was called. I’d never heard of it. Which was ironic, since it had heard of me.

“OLD RED,” THE HOLMES OF THE RANGE,

IN: “BUCKAROO SLEUTHS OF RUSTLER’S RANCH!”

BY “BIG RED,” THE COWBOY WATSON

Below all that was a picture of “Big Red” himself, large as life and blazing with color. He and “Old Red” stood back to back, Peacemakers drawn, a gang of desperadoes circling them on horseback.

How did I know which one was Big Red? Well, he was the big one, obviously. The red Stetson was a bit of a clue, too. Not to mention the red chaps, red holster, and red vest worn over trousers and shirt of purest white, with white boots, no less.

Old Red was his opposite—white hat, chaps, holster, and vest, but red shirt, trousers, and boots.

They looked ridiculous, ludicrous, laughable … and that was exactly what Smythe had in mind for me and Gustav. He began pulling out outfits that were identical to the ones on the cover. That magazine had been his tailor’s pattern book.

Smythe moved toward Old Red with a crimson gun belt.

Old Red hopped back like the man was coming after him with a pitchfork.

“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head.

“Oh, yes,” Smythe said, nodding.

“Oh,
no,
” my brother said, shaking his head harder.

“Oh,
yes,
” Smythe said, nodding just as hard.

“Oh. No!” Shake shake shake.

“Oh. Yes!” Nod nod nod.

If it kept up much longer, one or the other was going to break his neck.

“Look, Brother…,” I began.

“I
am
lookin’!” Gustav raged. “At duds so ugly only a blind fool would wear ’em! And I may be half-blind, but I’m no fool! I ain’t gonna dress up like a blasted barber pole and I ain’t gonna let some snuffy flibbertigibbet boss me around and come to think of it I ain’t gonna play any dumb-ass detectivin’ games, neither!”

With that, he stomped to the door, threw it open, and started marching back toward the train station.

4

ARMSTRONG B. CURTIS, ESQUIRE

Or, Old Red Draws a Line in the Sand and Meets a Snake in the Grass

“I’ll be right back,”
I told Smythe as I hustled after my brother. I would’ve preferred saying “
We’ll
be right back,” but I didn’t want to make a promise I might not be able to keep.

I caught up to Old Red in the hallway with my speech all ready in my head. It was about Our Big Chance and How Far We’d Come and Not Giving Up … and Diana Corvus. I think it would’ve proved quite inspiring, if I’d only had the chance to give it.

“Don’t bother,” Gustav said before I even opened my mouth. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“Oh?” I pointed down at our feet. “Then why are they still movin’?”

Old Red looked over his shoulder. When he was satisfied Smythe wasn’t stealing a peek out of the office, he stopped.

“I ain’t some bootlicker that big milksop can push around,” he said. “Hopefully, he knows that now.”

“Trust me: No one’s gonna mistake you for a bootlicker. A madman, maybe, but not a bootlicker. Anyway, you’ve made your point, so now you can come on back and do as Smythe asks with your precious pride intact.”

“What? Let the man play dress-up with me like I was a damn paper doll?”

My brother looked down as if he meant to spit, but the sight of the gleaming clean marble floor stopped him.

“Feh,” he said instead.

“Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll smooth things over without any help from you. Like always. You just be here when it’s time for … whatever the hell comes next.”

As I turned to go, I noticed a short, chubby-cheeked fellow eyeing us from farther down the hallway. He was dressed with grand formality, in black frock coat and top hat and spats, and he kept his gaze glued to me so firmly I felt the need to tip my bowler to him before striding back into Smythe’s impromptu tailor shop.

“Everything’s alright,” I informed a huffing, puffing, pacing Smythe. “I talked some sense into him.”

“So he’s coming back to put on his costume?”

“Oh, I think it’d be best if he outfitted himself today.”

And before Smythe could get to gnashing his teeth again, I bit the bullet. Chomped down hard on a cannonball, really.

I swiped the red Stetson off the desk and plopped it atop my head.

Unfortunately, it fit.

“Unlike my brother,” I said, reaching for a pair of white trousers, “I ain’t too big for my britches.”

Smythe kept on fretting and fuming at first, but the more I got myself looking like a candy cane, the more he calmed down. I even managed to get the lay of the land from him at last.

The competition was to kick off at noon with a ceremony in the White City’s much ballyhooed Court of Honor. All the contenders would be present, and the contest judge—William Pinkerton, eldest of Allan Pinkerton’s heirs and head of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency’s Chicago office—would preside.

“Pinkerton ain’t gonna compete himself?” I managed to ask as I buckled on my chaps.

“No,” Smythe said.

“But he’ll have a man in the ring for him, right?”

“No.”

“You mean you’re havin’ a World’s Greatest Sleuth competition without a contestant from the world’s biggest detective agency?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” I said, inviting elucidation.

Which Smythe did not provide.

So I tried again.

“Hmmmmmmm.”

“It couldn’t be helped!” Smythe cried. “Pinkerton wanted to keep his precious agency ‘above the fray.’ He was willing to act as judge, however, and he oversaw the creation of the contest rules.”

“Oh ho! I’ve been wonderin’ about that. What are the rules, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Pinkerton wouldn’t tell us.
Real
detectives don’t get a rulebook to play by, he says.”

“Sounds like Mr. Pinkerton don’t think the rest of us
are
real detectives.”

Smythe said nothing.

I’d used up my daily allotment of “Hmmmmms”—not to mention all our time—so I let the matter drop.

The first step toward the door was the hardest. I don’t just mean that metaphorical-like, either. My boots, chaps, holster, and vest were new-leather stiff, and I couldn’t so much walk as waddle. It chafed something fierce, too, and before I was even in the hallway I was already aching in the places a man least likes to ache.