World's Greatest Sleuth!

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Clear a path for our sleuths!” Frank Tousey called out to the crowd. “And don’t follow them, please! If you wait just a few minutes, I assure you, you’ll have front-row seats for the thrilling climax of our competition!”

  Miraculously, the sea of spectators parted, and we were able to cut east with no shoving needed. Our stiff new clothes slowed us, though, and before we even had the crowd fully behind us, Brady and the Crowes had swept ahead. By the time we rounded the Mines and Mining Building on our way out of the Court of Honor, Greene and Valmont had passed us as well. We were one minute into the final round of the contest, and already we were dead last again.

  “God damn these crazy drawers,” Gustav panted. “It’s like tryin’ to run with your legs in splints.”

  “You’re the one who wanted us wearin’ ’em.”

  “I was just givin’ us an excuse to strap on our irons. If I’d known it was gonna be like this, I’d have … say.”

  Old Red was eyeing a gaggle of young men lollygagging nearby in their wheeled chairs. FEAST YOUR EYES, SPARE YOUR FEET, the sign hanging over them read. SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS AN HOUR.

  “I’m way ahead of you, Brother,” I said. “I didn’t leave my money in my other suit this time, neither.”

  I wrestled a wad of crumpled greenbacks from my pocket.

  “Cash on the barrelhead, boys!” I said as we hobbled up. “Ten bucks to whoever gets us where we’re goin’ fast!”

  I would have added “Basil and Al need not apply,” but our sharp-tongued young guides from the first day of the contest weren’t there. Half a minute later, I knew why. As we went careening up the path between the Mines and Transportation buildings, I could see the two of them up ahead, jogging along behind their chairs—in which were sitting Greene and Valmont. Farther up, another pair of chair-pushers was steering the Crowes northward. In fact, the only contestant who didn’t hire himself some wheels and extra legs was Brady: I spotted him dashing across the footbridge to the Wooded Island as we carried on north after the others.

  Soon after, all our chariots were clumped up together beside the same gates. The wheelchairs weren’t allowed out of the White City, it turned out, and our destinations lay just beyond, in the Midway Plaisance.

  Valmont peeled off into Hagenbeck’s Animal Show. Diana and the colonel darted into the Japanese Bazaar. Greene disappeared into the Moorish Palace. For us, it was back down the Street in Cairo, past the theater home of Urias Smythe’s “soothing” dancers, past the shops and mosques and cafés and camels, to an imposing stone edifice bracketed by towering, rune-riddled obelisks.

  This my guidebook had called “the Temple of Luxor,” and inside we would supposedly find “the mummy of Ramses II, oppressor of the Israelites.” We would also, hopefully, find our final clue in the contest—and our last chance to catch Curtis’s killer, if Old Red’s hunch was right. Before heading inside, however, we both paused to glance back up the narrow street we were leaving. We saw bearded men, but no one we recognized as a Bearded Man.

  A mustachioed Mohammedan with pince-nez and red fez stood behind the ticket window, and when he saw us come up he smiled and waved us on.

  “Mr. Pinkerton made all the arrangements this morning,” he said. “I wish you luck.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I wish it, too.”

  From there, a narrow, gloomy passageway wound down to a series of low-ceilinged chambers packed with display cases and educational placards. The floor was sandy, the air musty and dusty, and nearly every inch of wall was covered with colorful “hieroglyphs,” which seemed to translate to something along the lines of “bird man eye squiggle woman cat sun squiggle snake dagger duck.” Propped up in some of the corners were sarcophagi adorned with human faces and crossed hands, and a feeling of profound eeriness hung over everything—and that was before we even saw the bodies.

  We found them in what was by far the biggest chamber in the place: a cavern-like space just beyond a pair of heavy wooden doors upon which hung a sign reading CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. (This last, we figured, was merely one of the “arrangements” Pinkerton had been seeing to.) In the middle of the room were half a dozen gilded coffins. Open.

  Now, there’s one thing about a corpse a man can usually rely on: It’s dead and it’s going to stay that way. Which might sound as obvious as obvious gets until you’ve laid eyes on one that seems to have half a mind to hop up and offer you a how-do, heartbeat be damned. As is the case, I quickly discovered, with those rag-wrapped bundles of bleached bone and beef jerky popularly known as “mummies.” The first one I found myself face to shrivel-twisted face with looked to have all the heft left of your average piñata, sans candy. Yet staring into the black pits of its dead eyes, I could swear I saw a little flutter, a flicker, a glimmer of unholy life.

  Of course, it was just a trick of the crypt’s dim, shimmery light. Yet even I, devout scoffer at hexes and hoodoo and spook-talk of all kinds, couldn’t help but go goose-bumpy.

  I glanced back at my brother, who was busy giving the once-over to a mummy of his own.

  “Nothing tucked in here but one fay-row and a whole lotta old linens,” I said, “but I’m tellin’ ya, this is the place. Ain’t nowhere else that clue could point to.”

  Old Red just said, “Nothing here, either,” and moved on to the next carcass.

  I was still giving my second stiff an uneasy eyeballing when Gustav let loose with a “Hel-lo!” I turned to find him pushing his face so close to one of the mummies it looked like he meant to whisper sweet nothings in its ear—which would’ve been hard, seeing as said ear had apparently fallen off some centuries before.

  Slowly, gingerly, he snaked a hand into the casket. When he eased it out again, it was holding a small envelope of the sort we’d come to know so well. I hustled to Old Red’s side as he tore it open. Inside, as always, was a small card. My brother handed it to me without even glancing at its contents.

  The message was short and not especially sweet.

  “ ‘Ha ha,’ ” I said.

  “I don’t need no commentary,” Gustav growled. “Just tell me what it says.”

  I flicked the hard-edged black type. “That is what it says. ‘Ha ha.’ ”

  Old Red squinted at the card, for all the good that’d do. I suppose he knows what an H and an A are, but put them together and they could spell “sauerkraut” for all he’d know.

  “ ‘Ha ha’?” he said. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  He got an answer right quick.

  There was the crackling smash of shattering glass behind us, the whoosh of quick-fanning flame, and we whirled around to find a wide strip of the crypt—the section between us and the heavy chamber doors—ablaze.

  Oh, and those doors? The only way out of the burial chamber?

  They were thudding shut.

  Ha ha, indeed.

  Only my brother and I weren’t laughing.

  32

  THE CONTEST (FINAL ROUND, PART TWO)

  Or, The Last Riddle Is for the Birds, Yet the Feather Goes in Someone Else’s Cap

  The fire wasn’t huge … yet. A good leap might still get us across to the doors. The flames burned with an unnatural ferocity, though, putting off billows of black smoke and a heat so intense I felt like a pig on the spit from a dozen feet away. Whoever was out to get us, they hadn’t just tossed in a lit match. This was turpentine or wood alcohol or gasoline at work.

  I moved closer and tried kicking sand over the nearest finger of flame, but there wasn’t much to kick. The sand on the floor turned out to be but an inch thick. Beneath it were plain, old-fashioned, flammable wood planks. We were better off leaving the sand where it was.

  I reached up for my lapels, thinking to shrug off my suit coat and use it to beat at the blaze. Unfortunately, my fingers found not heavy, flame-smothering wool but the stiff, useless leather of my red vest. For not the first time (though perhaps the last), I cursed Urias Smythe and his idea of proper Wild West attire. I briefly cons
idered snatching up one of the mummies and using it on the fire instead—they were so withered I couldn’t imagine one would weigh any more than my coat. All that cloth wrapped around them would probably light up like a rag dipped in pitch, however, and I’d just end up holding the world’s oldest torch.

  I was out of ideas.

  I turned to Gustav and found him with his back to the fire, examining first the high, steepled ceiling filling with smoke above us, then the far walls.

  “See another way out?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “A way to put out the fire?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, sweet Jesus, what do we do, then?”

  “Only one thing left we can do.” Old Red faced the doors again and put his hands around his mouth. “Help! Fire! Heeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllp!”

  It lacked the stamp of genius, perhaps, but just then wasn’t the time to point it out. I simply joined in. And I must say, there are times genius is overrated anyway, for we could’ve lost many a precious second cooking up a brilliant scheme for escape when those cries for help might—and, in fact, did—produce a banging on the other side of the doors within seconds.

  Why our would-be rescuers couldn’t simply throw the doors open was clear a moment later. The doors finally started to part, but through the smoke I could see two dark lines cutting across the space between them at about waist height. Our would-be barbecuer had tied or chained the doors together.

  At last, whatever was trussing them up gave way, and the doors flew open—and the two men who’d been putting their shoulders to them nearly stumbled forward into the flames. Fortunately for all concerned, they stopped just short of charbroiling themselves, and a moment later one was smacking at the blaze with his coat while the other dashed off to fetch buckets of sand. They were eventually joined by the fez-topped fellow from the ticket booth (who exclaimed what I can only assume was the Arabian version of “Holy shit!” upon discovering his temple turned into a hickory smokehouse). Between the three of them and a dozen buckets of sand and a few final stomps from me and my brother, the second Great Chicago Fire was snuffed out before it could really begin.

  With no more flames to worry about, I finally managed a longish look at our saviors. Of the two first on the scene, one was bearded, the other not, yet both seemed vaguely familiar. It was hard to see clearly through eyes still teared-up from all the smoke, though, and the third gent proved a distraction, what with his spluttered, near-hysterical questions of the “How did—? What could—? Did you—?” school.

  “Perhaps you’d better go and fetch along an officer of the law,” the bearded man said, and the sound of his soft, lilting brogue told me we had an officer of the law among us already. Gustav waited till the befezzed fellow had hurried away to address him by name.

  “Good thing you were tailin’ us today, Sergeant Ryan,” he said, holding out his hand. “I assume that was you followin’ the Crowes yesterday.”

  Ryan took my brother’s hand and gave it a shake. “I’ve been keeping an eye on things, in my own quiet way.”

  I peered at the policeman’s beard, which suddenly seemed so obvious in its falseness it wouldn’t pass muster in a kindergarten pageant about the life of Lincoln.

  “So the sergeant here’s the Other Other Bearded Man?” I said to Old Red.

  He nodded, then turned to the man beside Ryan—a tall, lanky fellow with sunken eyes and swarthy skin—and offered him his hand as well.

  “We owe you our thanks, too, Mr. Agajanian. I’m sure glad you had a change of heart about us.”

  The man huffed out a bitter grunt, but he shook my brother’s hand all the same.

  “I am angry. I am not crazy,” he said. “I could not stand by and see you die.”

  I squinted at the man’s eyes and nose and found I knew them well. This unbearded man was the Bearded Man: Emile “Billy Steele” Agajanian.

  “You shaved since yesterday,” I said to him.

  Agajanian slapped his hands to his lean, freshly smoothed cheeks. “Oh, such a deduction! I can see why Smythe prefers you two to the likes of me!” He dropped his hands and rolled his eyes. “Of course, I shaved. You pulled out half my chin whiskers yesterday! What’s more, you had seen me up close twice. With my beard, I wouldn’t get within thirty feet of you without being recognized. Without it, I almost got close enough to lock you in this room. Imagine my surprise when someone else did it first.”

  “Yeah. About that someone else…,” Gustav said.

  “I don’t think you’ll like it,” Ryan said.

  “Oh?”

  “He had a beard,” Agajanian said. “Black. Very thick.”

  “A big man?” I asked. “Burly?”

  Agajanian shook his head. “Not especially.”

  “That all you got?” Old Red said. “A thick black beard on a not so burly feller?”

  “I think he was wearing a brown coat.” Agajanian shrugged. “He was in and out very fast.”

  Ryan jerked his head at Agajanian. “And I was watching him.”

  I hung my head and groaned. “Oh, Lord, no.”

  “Yup. Looks like we got us Another Other Other Bearded Man.” Gustav dismissed this newest mystery with a wave of the hand. “We ain’t got time to sit around paintin’ pictures of him, though—and what’s more, there ain’t no need to. If we get to that egg quick, we’ll find our answers. If we don’t, we ain’t gonna have nothin’ but questions till kingdom come.”

  “What makes you say that?” Ryan asked.

  My brother ignored him, turning instead to me. “We gotta get back to the Court of Honor. My guess is right, the egg’s gotta be around there somewhere.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked. “Mr. Another-Other-Other up and stole our clue.”

  “We don’t need no clue to get within spittin’ distance of the finish line. Every day so far, the egg’s been tucked away in a building in direct line of sight of that bandstand we start from. They can’t go any further off and expect an audience to tag along. Now, the egg hunt’s taken us to the Agriculture Building, the Mines Building and the big long one with the name to match.”

  “The Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building,” I said.

  “Right. So that leaves what else in the Court of Honor?”

  “The Administration Building—”

  “Closed to the public,” Ryan threw in.

  “—and the Electricity and Machinery buildings.”

  Old Red nodded. “It’s one of them last two then, if the pattern holds. Only choice now is to hightail it thataway, duck into them buildings, and hope we hear Major Bacon and his boys. If they’re kickin’ up their usual racket, that’ll lead us in the right direction.”

  Agajanian shook his head with grim-faced admiration. “I owe you an apology. You are good.”

  “Save the pats on the back for later … if we get our man. Right now, we gotta skedaddle.”

  “Just a moment, Mr. Amlingmeyer,” Ryan said. “A serious crime has been committed here. Innocent people could have been killed, and I’m not talking about you and your brother. What makes you think I’m going to let you go stir up more trouble?”

  “You ain’t gonna let us. We’re just gonna do it. Come on, Brother.”

  Gustav stomped off toward the doorway—which was suddenly blocked by the Egyptian ticket taker and two blue-coated, potbellied Chicago bulls.

  “Those two! They must have started it!” our fezzy friend cried. “They were trying to destroy my temple!”

  “You there. Wild Bill,” one of the coppers said to Old Red. “What’s this all about?”

  I turned to Sergeant Ryan again. “Alright, so we’re back to askin’. But come on—you must’ve known all along we had us some skullduggery here, though you couldn’t say so. Otherwise, why would you be runnin’ around with someone else’s hair stuck to your face? The Exposition’s a big deal, with big-deal backers, I understand that. Your hands were tied. But that don’t mean you gotta tie ours,
too. Let us go, before it’s too late.”

  The sergeant looked at me, saying nothing, the usual twinkle in his eyes as dead as the fire we’d just put out.

  “Well?” the uniformed cop prompted. “Is anyone going to tell me what the hell’s going on here?”

  “I can do that, Officer … Haas, isn’t it?” Ryan reached up to his ears and pulled a rubber band out from around each, and just like that his bushy beard popped free. “Detective Sergeant Ryan from Central Station. I happened to be here attending to a spot of police work when the trouble began. I’ll explain everything. In the meantime”—he nodded at me and Gustav—“these two gentlemen are free to go.”

  “What about me?” Agajanian asked.

  “You are not,” Ryan said simply. Then he shooed me and my brother away. “Go on … and happy hunting.”

  “Thanks, Mo!” I called over my shoulder as we darted off.

  “You won’t regret it, Sergeant Ryan!” my brother added.

  “I’m going to hold you to that, Mr. Amlingmeyer.”

  “But those men nearly burned the place down!” the Egyptian wailed as we scooted around him. “And just look what they did to my mummies! They’re black as coal!”

  “Oh, I assure you it wasn’t their fault,” Ryan replied. “As for your ‘mummies,’ you’ll find there’s more than enough gauze and papier-mâché in Chicago to make more.”

  The last thing I heard from the crypt was Agajanian shouting after us.

  “I want my coat back!”

  When we reached the gates to the White City again, we found but two wheeled chairs still waiting on the other side. Ours. Valmont, Greene, and the Crowes were all ahead of us somewhere.

  “Did King Brady ever come thisaway?” Gustav asked our charioteers. “Good-lookin’ young feller with dark hair? Natty dresser? In a hurry?”

  “Sure, we saw him. Went out to the Midway not long after you, then came tearing back through a couple minutes ago.”

  Old Red gave himself all of two seconds to muse on that before throwing himself into his chair. “The Electricity Building! Go!”

  I settled into my own seat, but before the poor soul tasked with pushing me could get to it, he handed me a small envelope.