Free World's Greatest Sleuth! by Steve Hockensmith Page B

dine, I’m glad I’m riffraff.”
    Smythe mumbled a reply that may or may not have been “I’m not.”
    Old Red tried to draw the man out with questions about Tousey and Pinkerton and the little innuendos Curtis had been tossing around. Yet all my brother got for his efforts were moans along the lines of “What does it matter now?” and “I don’t know anything anymore!” At last, as our cab skirted the long Midway Plaisance that jutted west out of the White City like a knife in the back, Smythe could take no more.
    “Driver! Stop!” he cried. “I’m getting out!”
    He threw himself from the hansom before it even came to a full halt.
    “You alright, Mr. Smythe?” I asked.
    “I need air! A walk! To clear my head! Oh, my poor nerves!”
    He scurried off toward the electric glow and chattering crowds and strange, gay music of the Midway.
    I looked over at my brother. “Should we go after him?”
    Gustav was eyeing the lights spinning slowly in the dark night-time sky. The Midway’s famous Ferris wheel was still turning, despite the late hour, and hovering high above us one could see hundreds of faces peering out the windows of its huge, illuminated cars. It would be hard to imagine a mechanized contrivance better designed to turn my brother’s stomach, and he gaped at it with something akin to horror upon his face.
    “Smythe’ll be alright,” he said. “Though I don’t see how goin’ anywhere near that could soothe a man’s nerves.”
    “Oh, I don’t know. It might be real relaxin’, swoopin’ up into the clouds with the birds and the angels. In fact, I ain’t leavin’ Chicago till I’ve given it a whirl myself … and talked you into comin’ with me.”
    “Feh,” Old Red said.
    I nodded. “Yeah. Feh.”
    Soon afterward, we were back at the Columbian Hotel, the ramshackle rattrap where all the contestants were staying. In the neighborhood around it were enough rooming houses to lodge every man, woman, and child on the planet, with beds left over should the population of another decide to take in the fair as well. On our one block alone was the White City Inn, the World’s Fair Hotel, Keene’s Exposition Lodge, and half a dozen others. In Chicago that year, making a mint in the hostelry business seemed as easy as painting a sign and hanging it over your front door.
    Which was exactly what the owner of the Columbian seemed to have done. It was no more than a dreary office building hastily made over into an even drearier fleabag. The carpeting was poorly fitted and threadbare, the wallpaper peeling to reveal crack-veined plaster, the lighting so stingy and cave-like I almost expected to see bats hanging from the low ceiling, the “lobby” no more than a random scattering of mangy settees seemingly salvaged from the back of a junkman’s wagon, etc., etc. Strangest of all was the front desk, which was, unlike any other front desk I’ve ever encountered, literally a desk parked in the front of the lobby.
    And parked behind it when we came in: a wide-eyed, high-haired, middle-aged woman beaming so much sunshine you could tan your skin by her. This was Mrs. Jasinska, the Columbian’s owner and, she claimed, general manager. I say “claimed” because nothing much seemed to get managed around the place, either generally or specifically.
    “Why, if it isn’t Mr. and Mr. Amnee[mutter]!” she cried upon spying us. (Like half the folks who aren’t Amlingmeyers themselves, she could never get the hang of our name.) “Welcome back! Did you bump into your admirer?”
    “Our admirer?” I turned to my brother. “See how this is workin’ out? Now we got two!”
    “What admirer?” Old Red asked Mrs. Jasinska.
    “The bearded gentleman. You couldn’t have missed him. He left not twenty seconds ago.”
    We had indeed passed a man on our way into the hotel, but he’d just hustled by us with the collar of his dark coat turned up.
    “He wanted to know if you were staying here with the other