Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets Read Free Page A

gypsy.
    “Problem, Sanford?”
    This shook him from his reverie.
    “Crash,” he chided.
    Then he was up, gathering all the pieces of Madame Yvonde from the floor. “This is a conversation for the back yard. Dear Adele. Mr. Dandy”—he thrust the bundle of rags into my chest—“follow me, if you please.”
    He proceeded to lurch through a tent flap hidden behind a map of the human skull. I followed, watching as he once again unfolded that beanpole frame. I drew in a breath of clean, fresh air. The night was cool and breezy: a welcome change from the musky tent.
    Stretching out those long legs of his, Sanford took off at a brisk walk, leading us through a maze of tents, ropes and canvas stalls. Soon, the music and hustle of the carnival fell away to background noise and I found myself in a small shantytown. Trucks, wagons, tractors, even a couple of repurposed box cars. Few people lingered here, but those who did were obviously carnies. Here a woman in a sequined costume shared a cigarette with a dwarf. There, a man broad as an elephant scraped the last of his dinner from a tin plate.
    Haus brushed off the occasional call of, “Hey, Crash!” without acknowledgement. As we passed a chuck wagon, Sanford piped up, “Mrs. Hudson!”
    A dwarf with wild copper hair and an ample bottom raised her head. “What’ll it be, boss?”
    “Three coffees as black as my soul, if you please.”
    “Don’t know that I’ve got anything that dark, Crash, but I’ll see what I can rustle up. And will there be anything for your guests?” she joked.
    Sanford gave Mrs. Hudson a wry grin. “Where’s Arty?”
    “Last I saw he was tagging along with a couple of bally broads and a butcher. He should be at the kiddie show by now, though.”
    “If you’d be so kind as to send Mars on over to the kiddie show, then. I need to have a word with Arty tout suite .”
    “Aye, Crash,” Mrs. Hudson said as she waddled away from her cart.
    Sanford hadn’t broken stride. I struggled to keep up, my prosthetic leg wobbling and chafing.
    With a leap, he took three stairs up to the door at the back of a gypsy wagon. The thing had been cobbled together with various pieces of other things. I recognized the eaves of a farmhouse, a wall built of aluminum, a couple of railroad ties. The door had come from some apartment or other. The numbers 221 clung to the peeling paint, as defiant as Sanford ‘Crash’ Haus himself.
    He pulled a key from a chain around his neck and unlocked the door. “Good sir, gentle lady, I welcome you to my home.” With a wide, sweeping gesture, he indicated we should enter.
    As the door shut behind us, I dropped Madame Yvonde to the floor and hobbled to the nearest chair. The ache in my leg had become a tight vice, a hot brand of pain settling around the joint where my knee had once been. If the bone-deep throbbing was any indication, we might get rain soon.
    Sanford rooted around and produced a cigar box. Opening it, he offered it to me. “Would you like some?”
    I blinked at the papers and mossy green herb therein. “I’m sorry?”
    “For the pain, obviously. If you’ve need of something stronger I can provide that as well.”
    I waved him off. “No, thank you. Not while I’m working.”
    He snapped the box closed. “Talk to me, Adele. What do you know?”
    “The vagrant was Enoch Drebber. Before the Crash, he was an accountant in Salt Lake City. He and his family lost quite a lot, though. They became Lizzie tramps, traveling, looking for work. Then the family car busted and they took up with a Hooverville outside of Omaha, just in time for that mammoth dust storm to plow through this month.”
    Two quick knocks on the door interrupted Agent Trenet’s story. Haus opened the door where Mrs. Hudson stood with three tin cups on a wooden platter. She gave a bow and exaggerated flourish. “Your service, dear sir!”
    Haus moved lithely through the cramped space of his wagon, fetching the cups and doling them out to