World's Greatest Sleuth! (7 page)

Miss Larson conceded my point with a little tilt of the head.

“So,” she said to Smythe, “how did it feel seeing your ‘sleuths’ come in
second
to last?” She swung her dead-eyed gaze back my way. “Better?”

“Much.”

“Actually, miss, I got questions for
you
,” Old Red said. He’d been half-hiding behind Smythe, but now he stepped out and managed to drag his gaze up from his own toes. “Like, for one, are you from
McClure’s Magazine
?”

The lady nodded. “I’m Lucille Larson,
McClure’s
special correspondent. However did you guess?”

Gustav looked irked by the suggestion that he’d stoop to guessing when a thing might be deduced.

“You’re obviously a reporter,” he said, “and it only seemed natural
McClure’s
would want someone here to write up their contest for ’em. Which leads me to my next question: How’d
you
feel findin’ out Mr. Curtis was runnin’ things? It don’t seem like him makin’ up the rules was in the plan anyone agreed to, and as I understand it he’s been known to write for another magazine.”

“How did I feel?” The lady shrugged in a listless way that suggested she rarely felt much of anything. “Curious, mostly. I am a journalist. That’s my nature. For instance, I keep wondering: Did something happen to your eyes or are those spectacles just an affectation?”

Old Red’s fingers—slightly atremble, I noticed—brushed over the rims of his shaded cheaters.

“Yeah, something happened. But I get by.”

“What a relief.” Miss Larson turned back to Smythe, pencil hovering over paper again. “So you didn’t have to replace a boy detective with a blind one, then?”

Smythe twitched as if his plush bottom had been pricked with a pin. “Yes, well, I, ummmm … ah!”

Something off to the north, in the shadow of the vast building behind us, slapped a smile of relief onto the man’s blubbery face.

“So you’ve joined us at last!” he crowed.

The rest of us turned to find Sherlock Holmes strolling up to join us. More or less. (The latter, Armstrong B. Curtis probably would’ve said, if he could but prove it.)

It was the Englishman, Boothby Greene.

“I get the uneasy feeling,” he said, “that you’re
not
waiting here to congratulate me on my imminent victory.”

“I’m afraid not,” Smythe chuckled. “You’ll have to do better tomorrow if you want to make good on your publisher’s investment.”

“As much as I appreciate Mr. Blackheath-Murray’s patronage, it’s not him I’m worried about. It’s what will happen to me back in England if I let a Frenchman win. I hope you’re not about to tell me that it was M. Valmont who—?”

Smythe nodded, grinning.

“Ah, well,” Greene sighed. “I can but hope tomorrow’s challenge proves a better showcase for my humble talents. Riddles and trivia don’t often come into play in real detective work. Observation and ratiocination—those are the province of a true sleuth.”

“Hear, hear!” I cheered. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Miss Larson said.

I looked over at my brother, wondering why he didn’t weigh in: He was passing up the chance to both pontificate on detecting
and
rag on my big mouth, which seemed mighty unlike him.

Old Red hadn’t even been listening, though. He was staring at Diana Crowe.

She and her father (and I’ll pause here for a final
father
!?!) had just left the Liberal Arts Building and were headed for the footbridge to the Court of Honor. If they’d noticed us, they hadn’t let on.

A hand planted itself on my back and began pushing me the same direction as the Crowes.

“Well, I’m sure you have some questions for Mr. Greene here,” Smythe said to Miss Larson. He put his other hand on my brother’s back, but Gustav’s glare had him snatching it away so fast you’d have thought he’d touched a hot griddle. “We need to be toddling along. There’s that … man we need to see about that … thing. Remember?”

“Yeah, right,” I dutifully replied. “Can’t keep the man with the thing waitin’.”

“I understand entirely,” Miss Larson said. From the way her pinched face seemed, for just a moment, on the verge of a smirk, I believed she did.

“Oh,” Greene said as we started walking away, “I don’t think any of you were on hand for the formal invitation this morning. Blackheath-Murray is hosting a dinner to celebrate the commencement of the contest. At Rector’s Restaurant, I believe it’s called. Seven o’clock. All the other contestants and sponsors will be there.”

He stole a glance back at the bridge. Diana and the colonel were now halfway across.

“Including your friends the Crowes,” Greene said with just the slightest arch of an eyebrow. Apparently, the man didn’t just look like Holmes: He could see like him, too. “I hope you’ll join us.”

Smythe never stopped moving toward the bridge. “Well, it’s been such a busy day…”

“I’m looking forward to observing a dinner party with so many notable detectives,” Miss Larson said. “If the Amlingmeyers weren’t to come, it would be such a
conspicuous
omission, don’t you think?”

“As if we’d pass up an invitation to Rector’s!” Smythe said, still back-stepping away. “Until tonight, then!”

He finally whirled around and scurried off. I scurried along beside him while Old Red fell behind, unwilling to commit himself to more than a trudge.

“You wasn’t worried we’d embarrass you, were you?” I asked Smythe.

He let that slide by without reply.

“Blast it all,” he muttered instead. “I’ll have to get Cohn back again.”

“Who’s Cohn?”

“Your tailor.”

“He ain’t
my
tailor,” Gustav said.

“Oh, so you’ll be wearing your own tuxedo, then?” Smythe threw over his shoulder. “Because you’re not getting into Rector’s without one.”

“Well, then it’s high time we were tuxed,” I answered for Old Red. “Right, Brother?”

“Feh.”

“Feh?” Smythe turned to me for a translation. “What does that mean, anyway?”

“It means ‘Anything you say, boss,’ ” I replied.

“It means ‘
Feh
,’ ” Gustav said.

He was still staring ahead, at the Crowes. They were on the other side of the canal now. The colonel had his arm wrapped around his daughter’s again, and he didn’t seem to be escorting her so much as chaining her to his side.

“Looks like Pa Crowe’s keepin’ a tight rein on his daughter,” I said. “Don’t expect we’ll get many chances to socialize. Be a shame to pass one up when we had it.”

Behind me, Old Red grumbled something I couldn’t quite catch.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I said,” my brother growled back, “anything you say, boss.”

8

PRÉLUDES

Or, Our First Brush with Haute Cuisine Ends with Several Low Blows

Take your average badger
on a bad day, poke him in the eye, step on his toes, and wrap him in swaddling clothes, tight. Then put chipped ice down his back. I guarantee you, he’ll look happier than my brother in a tuxedo.

Yet though Old Red snapped and snarled as much as that badger might while our tailor Mr. Cohn got him gussied up, he stood still for it. Maybe it was the fact that Cohn—a hunchbacked old fellow ever muttering around a mouthful of pins—had to spend so much time poking needles into his “inseam” to get the fit just right. Or maybe he just wasn’t awake enough to kick up a fuss: Two straight days of the collywobbles on the train had left him weary and worn, and he’d spent the afternoon catching up on his sleep in the dingy hotel that was serving as contest HQ.

Once he was betuxed, Gustav just stood in the corner of our little room as stiff as his own starched collar while Cohn moved on to me. When Cohn was done, Smythe begrudgingly paid him, begrudgingly ushered us out of the hotel, begrudgingly hailed a hansom, and—once he’d begrudgingly packed himself into the cab with us—seemed to begrudge us every breath of air we stole from his lungs.

“You don’t seem very enthused for a feller on his way to a free dinner,” I said as we clip-clopped north.

We were jammed into that cab like three peas in a two-pea pod, and Smythe had to do some writhing just to look at me.

“Why should I be enthused? You heard the questions that wretched Larson woman was asking this afternoon. It’s sure to be more of the same tonight. And if Armstrong Curtis is there as well?”

Smythe shivered.

“Have some faith, friend,” I said. “Me’n’my brother might make a better impression than you think. And ain’t it in the lady’s interest to make us look good? Wouldn’t reflect well on the contest if we was just a couple yokels, and it’s her bosses sponsorin’ the thing.”

“
Co
-sponsoring,” Smythe corrected. “Everyone but Eugene Valmont had to pay their way into the competition. Three thousand dollars each—and now the damned Frenchman’s winning!”

“Oh, that’s just for today. Tomorrow I betcha we’ll—”

“Why didn’t Valmont ante up?” Old Red cut in.

Up to then, he’d just been watching the city streets slide past with a sour glower upon his face. Now he turned away from the elevated trains and overloaded drays and clogged sidewalks and gray buildings and leaned forward to look past me at Smythe.

“We wanted contestants from abroad. Professionals. Policemen,” Smythe explained. “To legitimize the competition. We couldn’t very well ask them to come all this way
and
give us money they probably don’t have.”

“Was it the same with Pinkerton?” Gustav asked. “You needed him to ‘legitimilize’ things?”

Smythe nodded glumly. “We thought it would shore up our credibility. Detectives don’t get much more real than the Pinkertons. And it’s not like they couldn’t use our help, what with all the anti-Pinkerton rabble-rousing in the yellow press these days. That’s why it was such a shock to see Armstrong Curtis in charge of the contest. You’d almost think Pinkerton wanted to turn the whole thing into—”

“A trap,” my brother said.

“I was going to say ‘circus,’ but … oh, God. You’re right. It
does
feel like a trap, doesn’t it? If Pinkerton wanted to crush us for good, he couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity!”

“Oh, come now,” I chided. “Why would William Pinkerton want to—?”

I didn’t even get to finish. Smythe buried his face in his hands and started sobbing.

“I’m dooooooooooomed!”

“Hmm” was all Old Red had to say to that. His work done, he turned back to the window and said no more for the rest of the ride. Which left it to me to hand our patron a hankie and pat him on the back and generally behave like a human being until he could pull himself together.

Smythe had only just snuffed his last sniffle when we came to a stop before Rector’s Restaurant. Even from outside, it was obvious this was a far cry from the gristle-and-beans lunch counters my brother and I were used to. A long red carpet stretched out from doors held open by greatcoated valets, and candlelight shimmered softly in the lattice-glass windows. Inside, I could see, all the ladies were in evening gowns and all the men in tuxedos or black tails … even the busboys.

Gustav followed me and Smythe in with slow, hesitant steps, as if we were leading him into a snake pit rather than the city’s swankiest eatery. Yet though he was still wearing his tinted spectacles—he never took the things off, no matter how dim the light—I knew it wasn’t just poor eyesight that was slowing him. I couldn’t help but think the same thing he was: that it must be obvious how little we belonged there. Any second, I reckoned, some freshly stuffed plutocrat would wave us over to clear his dishes.

After a few words with the maître d’ (and it soothed me somewhat that I knew what a maître d’ was), we were led through the restaurant and up a set of stairs to a private room on the second floor. Here we found the dinner party already under way.

Or the dinner, at any rate. “Party” would suggest gaiety and laughter, and the gathering we walked in on was about as festive as a Baptist wake.

Everyone was gathered around a long table set with a dizzying array of plates, bowls, goblets, glasses, and so much elaborate silverware I wouldn’t have been surprised had George Hearst clawed his way from the grave to stake a claim to it. One didn’t just see all these beautiful settings, either—one
heard
them, for every clink of metal or glass against china seemed to crack like thunder in the awkward silence hanging over most of the room.

Of all those present (and I saw nearly everyone who’d been up on the bandstand that afternoon), only King Brady was talking. The handsome young “monarch of the New York detectives” had my preferred seat—the one next to Diana Crowe—and he was blathering away at the lady about the time he fought off a gang of bank robbers with his feet tied together, a blindfold over his eyes, and an orphan tucked under each arm. Or something like that. I was gratified to see the look of dubious boredom on Diana’s lovely face—and even more gratified when she spotted me and Gustav and smiled. It was a small smile, though, and one she tucked away fast with a glance at her father.

“Ahhhh, so glad you could join us,” said our host—Boothby Greene’s publisher, Blackheath-Murray. At least I assumed it was Blackheath-Murray. I’d noticed the fleshy, middle-aged, mustache-sporting gent standing next to Greene in the gazebo that afternoon, and he was at the head of the table now. Beside him was an empty seat, and the only contestant I didn’t see in the room was Greene himself. “I hope you’ll forgive us for beginning the
préludes
without you.”

“Of course, of course,” Smythe mumbled as he claimed the free spot next to the man.

That left three chairs for Old Red and me to choose from, and it was obvious why Smythe hadn’t wanted any of them for himself. They were at the opposite end of the table, clustered around William Pinkerton and Armstrong B. Curtis.

Once we had ourselves seated—Gustav next to Curtis, me between my brother and a sullen Colonel Crowe—there was a quick round of introductions. Most everyone we’d already encountered in one way or another, including the French sleuth Valmont and lady journalist Lucille Larson. So that left only one person I didn’t already know to put a name to: the flashy-dressed swell who’d whispered to Smythe about being “stabbed in the back” by Pinkerton that afternoon. He, it turned out, was one Frank Tousey, publisher of
New York Detective Library
, King Brady’s magazine. His neck had to be stuck out as far as Smythe’s, money-wise, and though he was doing no blubbering about it you could see the strain. The fellow was throwing down champagne like he was trying to douse a fire in his belly.