Free World's Greatest Sleuth! by Steve Hockensmith

incomprehensible.
    He coughed and tugged at his collar and tried again.
    “I couldn’t agree with you more, sir,” he said. “I may still be an amateur, as you figure it, but I take detectivin’ as serious as anyone at this table. I been makin’ a study on it for some time now—and been through one calamity after another for my trouble. This much I’ve learned, though: You can’t boil sleuthin’ down to a simple set of rules and homilies and expect that to get you to the truth or justice or whatever you wanna call it.”
    “I’m surprised to hear that from you, Old Red,” Curtis said. “Don’t tell me you’ve lost your faith in Mr. Holmes.”
    “Not in the Man, exactly. But I’ve come to have my doubts about followin’ in his footsteps. I ain’t so sure anymore another feller could do what he done. Outside of a magazine, anyhow.”
    Curtis aimed one of his big sickle-blade grins at King Brady and Frank Tousey. “On that much, at least, we’re entirely in agreement.”
    “I, on the other hand, beg to differ,” someone said from across the table, and when I glanced that way I was surprised to see it was one of the waiters.
    He was an olive-skinned fellow with a thick black beard—a Greek or Turk by the look of him—and after sliding a mixture of greens, cheese, and what seemed like sagebrush in front of Pinkerton, he shocked us all by sliding himself into the empty seat to the man’s right.
    “I’m sorry to hear your faith has been shaken, Mr. Amlingmeyer,” he said. “Let me assure you, however: Sherlock Holmes’s spirit remains very much alive. His intellect. His love of a challenge.”
    The waiter scratched at his beard high up near his left ear. A little strip of skin and hair seemed to come loose, and the man pinched at the dangling flap and peeled it away.
    “His flair for theatrics…”
    In a moment, the waiter’s whole beard was gone, and with a few swipes of a napkin most of his swarthy darkness had smeared away as well.
    What remained was Boothby Greene.
    There were gasps and stunned laughs, and Curtis even applauded.
    “You been servin’ us the whole time?” asked Old Red, looking so awestruck you’d have thought Holmes himself had just materialized before us like Jesus appearing to the apostles.
    Greene gave him a nod. “Soup to nuts—or escargot to salade de chèvre chaud, at any rate. I do hope you’ll all forgive my childishness. I have a weakness for the dramatic, and I put on such a poor showing this afternoon I couldn’t resist a little prank to even the score.” He offered Curtis a small bow. “Unofficially, of course.”
    Curtis bowed back. “Too bad I won’t be awarding bonuses for clever charades, Mr. Greene. You wouldn’t be the only one to pick up a few extra points.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Frank Tousey said.
    He’d never stopped glowering down the table at Curtis, and even Greene’s little floor show hadn’t wiped the frown from his face. The man was a wick soaked in alcohol, and now it took but the slightest spark to light him up.
    “You’ll find out,” Curtis said.
    Tousey swung himself toward Pinkerton before finally exploding.
    “What’s this all about? We came to you because we wanted this thing to have some kind of integrity, and what do you do? Hand us over to the very loon who’d like nothing better than to show us all up as frauds!”
    “If you want to convince people your ‘sleuths’ are real,” Pinkerton grated out, “who better to test them than the man who proved Nick Carter doesn’t—?”
    “Oh, please!” Tousey howled. “A stupid schoolboy scavenger hunt for a golden egg ? That was no test. It was horseshit, pardon my French.”
    “Sir! There are ladies present!” Colonel Crowe protested.
    “Can I quote you on that?” Miss Larson asked Tousey.
    “Actually, en français it would be merde de cheval ,” Valmont said.
    Tousey ignored them all.
    “If your little friend there doesn’t stop his insane