Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

Although he strolled amid the throngs of fairgoers, revisiting known areas where the killer had struck, he came up empty. Nothing doing.

He decided to make inquiries to determine where everyone had got off to. What was Ransom doing right this moment? Keane? Dr. Tewes? He located the same call box he and Ransom had used the night they were so cocksure they had Denton by the shorthairs. He called in to inquire if there’d been any calls for him at the station he worked out of. It took an interminably long time to get a reply. When he did, there was a message for him to call Dr. James Phineas Tewes.

He had additional difficulty getting the blasted dispatcher to make connections to Dr. Tewes’s residence. Something made possible only recently. Still Griffin had to threaten the man with his job as the last dispatcher who caused Inspector Drimmer problems had been fired. He was finally put through.

The good doctor came on to static, a note of concern in his high-pitched voice. “Your friend and colleague is barely capable of remaining on his feet another hour, yet he’s on a stake-outting at Lincoln Park.”

“Do you mean stakeout, Doctor?”

“Whatever! Can you please get over there and relieve him? Please?”

“God, the whining doctor sounded like a woman in his concern for Alastair. “I’m on my way, Doctor, but whereabouts in Lincoln Park is he, and what is he staking out there? The lake?”

“The cabstand. He’s shadowing Denton.”

“ Ahhh …of course. I hadn’t seen Denton about the fair all day.”

“He’s removed himself from the fair traffic in an attempt to get clear of Ransom, and Ransom, fool that he is, has taken no sleep or rest for two days.”

“Damn…look, I’ll try to get him home.”

“He’ll only do so if you take over for him, Griff… ahhh , Inspector.”

“I understand.”

He rushed from the call box past the stone steps of the newly erected building exhibiting the sciences and industries that had carried America to the forefront of global production of food and manufactured goods. The exhibits here recognized the importance of such inventions as the Cotton Gin, the McCormick Reaper, and other marvels of modern farming, and the wonders of lighting a city, and the telephone, and the phonograph-all among other amazing new instruments, and the newly created machines housed inside the museum. The giant steam engines that powered a huge platform that descended and returned up a mock coal mine-shaft. The massive displays of ocean liners of the White Star and Cunard class, to mighty generators like those used at Cook County in the event of an electrical shut down, to the mighty train engines of America. All the marvels of mechanical science under one enormous roof.

There is only one problem. When does a working cop find the time? Where does he find the money it would take to spend a day at the fair? Lucinda kept demanding Griff give more time to her and their children.

The grotesque headless corpse of the beautiful Miss Mandor found burning in a boat here on the lagoon had dissuaded no one from attending the Chicago World’s Fair. Odd as that seemed, Griffin imagined it went right along with human nature. A cynical Alastair would have plenty to say.

He pulled out a pipe like the one Alastair used, and as he found a cab to take him to Lincoln Park, he tamped in some tobacco and worked on lighting up. He looked closely at the cab driver of the dram he climbed into to be sure it was neither Denton nor the madman who’d opened up his horses at full gallop with Griff and Ransom on the cushions, bouncing about that night they’d busted into the Tewes’s residence to ostensibly save Miss Jane Francis and Gabby Tewes from the clutches of the maniac that Alastair had identified as Waldo Denton.

Griff thought he’d die in a hansom cab accident that night long before arriving at the Tewes home. He now called out an address he knew a block off the park where Ransom must be. He’d disembark a block early; to go unnoticed.

Along with the rhythm of the cab ride, a flitting thought of a future victim struck him as an inevitability. He imagined some poor defenseless woman, her throat cut by the garrote, her body set aflame. When and where would it happen?

Then he gave a good deal more thought to why the killer liked fire. Then he thought of Ransom’s history with fire, the awful rumors, the awful truth no doubt embedded there, and he wondered if this killer who seemed to have a penchant for Ransom’s circle of friends, if he did not have a quite personal reason for terrorizing Ransom’s life and city.

Then he wondered if Waldo Denton might not have an alias. Then he wondered if Waldo Denton were an alias. He had the cab stop at another call box, and he got Luther Noble, an able man, to run Denton’s name as an alias. It was not found. Then try Campaneua. If anyone by the name of Campaneua has been arrested at any time in the city in the last say three years.

“That’ll take time.”

“Then take time. I’ll call you back later.”

“It is already later. I am headed out the door. But there is tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, then, and thanks.”

“Oh hell, look…I will turn it over to our new intern.”

“And does he have a name?”

“She…she has a name.”

“She? A woman on the force?”

“Not yet. She has as yet to go through boot camp.”

“Gotcha, so what do I call her when I call back?”

“Gabby.”

“Gabrielle Tewes?”

“ Ahhh …then you know her? A friend of yours, Detective?”

“I’d have never guessed her to be interested in police work.”

“Wants to learn it all, she says.”

“Damn surprise is all.”

“Keep an open mind, Inspector.”

“Is she good at it?”

“A natural.”

Junior Inspector Griffin Drimmer stared across from his position behind a tree at Philo Keane and Ransom, disbelieving. “Ransom,” he whispered, “what are you doing here?”

“More to the point, Griff, what’re you doing here? Are you converted to my cause?”

“A call came in that you were about to make a public nuisance of yourself at this location.”

“Really? And who made the call-prophetic as it was?”

“An anonymous caller,” Griff lied.

“Denton, no doubt. One cheeky bastard.”

“The complaint came from a woman. At least it sounded like a woman.”

“Jane…Jane Francis?”

“Like I said, it came as an anonymous call.”

“She’s trying to protect you from yourself,” suggested Philo.

“So I’m to thank her?”

“We are all worried about you, Rance,” added Griffin.

“I should give her a piece of my mind.”

“All right! It wasn’t Miss Francis,” said Griff.

“Then who?”

“Dr. Tewes. He’s also concerned about you, though I can’t understand why.”

“Tewes and Jane, both concerned.” Both Philo and Griffin had as yet to discover that Dr. James Tewes and Jane Francis were one and the same.

“And Gabby,” added Griff.

“And everyone who cares about your hide,” put in Philo.

“I’ve already given everyone a piece of my mind!” retaliated Ransom.

“All they want, you fool,” said Philo, “is your mean heart. Go see Jane and smooth it over.” Philo pulled at him.

“Leave off. Let go.”

“Have you read a paper in the past week, Ransom?” Griffin sternly asked. “They’re saying you’re spirit possessed, that you fingered Waldo Denton through some sort of drunken occult spiritualism. Séances, they’re saying! Even your old friend Carmichael has-”

“Bastard son of a bitch is on Kohler’s bribe list?”

Philo and Griff exchanged a look of concern. Philo said, “You are beginning to sound like a raving lunatic, Ransom, and you don’t even hear it.”