The Dime Museum Murders Read Online Free PDF

stories many times over. Our late father could jab a
pin into a random passage of the family Talmud and call out each word
it had pierced on the subsequent pages. Harry could
do the same with The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
    "Harry,"
I said, starting again, "this is a police investigation. You
can't barge in there and expect to lead them around by their noses.
There's no Inspector Lestrade in the New York Police Department."
    "I
will merely give them the benefit of my acknowledged expertise."
    I
muttered something under my breath.
    "Pardon
me?" Harry said. "Would you please repeat that?"
    "I
didn't say anything."
    "No
one will be dropping me over
a waterfall anytime soon, Dash," he said. "And anyway, it
was the Rei-chenbach Falls, not Rickenstoff."
    I
folded my arms and fell silent until we pulled up to the Wintour
mansion.
    Branford
Wintour's home had always been something of an architectural
curiosity. I remember that when they had built the place a few years
earlier there were jokes about whether Manhattan would sink under its
weight. It took up a good chunk of land and was lousy with gables and
mansards and spires and all sorts of other features that you don't
see much on Fifth Avenue these days, including a three-story aviary.
Wintour had chosen a spot directly across the avenue from the
Vanderbilt pile, and for a time it seemed as if he might put his
neighbor in the shade.
    Harry
and I scrambled out of the calash and faced a brilliant white expanse
of marble that might have given Nansen and Peary some uneasy moments.
We crossed the vast forecourt and had just finished climbing the
steps when the front door swung open. I had expected a
butler but instead we found a uniformed patrolman in a blue greatcoat
and leather helmet.
    "Which
one of you is this Houdini character?" he asked.
    "I
am Houdini," my brother answered, puffing himself up to an
impressive five-foot-four.
    "The
lieutenant wants you to wait here."
    We
followed him into a vaulted two-story entry hall. "Harry,"
I whispered. "This room is bigger than the last theater I
worked." Sad to say, I wasn't joking.
    A
pair of mahogany double doors opened and a big, beefy man in a
rumpled brown suit stepped toward us. "Name's Patrick Murray,"
he said in a voice not long out of Dublin. "I'm the detective in
charge of this case. Appreciate your answering my wire."
    "Hmm,"
said Harry, stepping back to appraise our new acquaintance. "Patrick
Murray. You are Irish, I perceive."
    Strange
to say, Harry wasn't kidding either. Murray looked at me and raised
his eyebrows. I shrugged. "I can see you're going to be a big
help to us, Mr. Houdini," he said.
    "I
shall certainly do my best to assist in whatever way possible,"
said my brother, who was a bit tone deaf when it came to irony. "Now,
perhaps it would help if you showed me to the murder scene. I trust
your men haven't been tramping about in their muddy boots, obscuring
clues, damaging valuable—"
    "My
men are doing their jobs as instructed," Murray said firmly.
"And I believe we'll be able to manage the murder investigation
on our own. We've asked you here because there's an aspect of the
crime that seems to fall under your area of expertise."
    "Oh?"
    "The
murder weapon."
    "The
murder weapon? That is most gratifying. In what way does the murder
weapon fall under my area of expertise?"
    Murray
sighed. "Branford Wintour seems to have been murdered by a magic
trick."
    Harry
glanced at me with shining eyes, struggling to conceal his pleasure
at this news. "Please continue," he said.
    Lieutenant
Murray motioned to a very tall, somewhat stooped elderly gentleman
who had been standing quietly by the mahogany doors. "This is
Phillips, Mr. Win-tour's butler," Murray said as the old man
stepped forward. "I wonder if I might ask you to repeat what
you've just told me for these gentlemen?"
    "Of
course, sir," the butler said, clearing his throat. He turned to
us and began to speak in a flat, toneless manner, as though
instructing a new