Shadows in the White City by Robert W. Walker Read Free Book Online Page B

laughter.
    â€œYou know the rumor now as to the killer being a prostitute,” said Denton. “It might well be. I can tell you that with a garrote, a woman can take down that fat tub of lard, Ransom!”
    â€œIs that true?” Philo asked Ransom where they stood in the bush.
    â€œManys-a-prostitute chooses the garrote over the blade. The great equalizer, a way to overpower someone twice your size,” Alastair replied. “And manys-a-poor-bloke’s had his penis sheared off by a whore’s garrote.”
    â€œOuch! That happens? Damn, but you see some awful things.”
    â€œCan you imagine waking up to your little head being garroted?”
    â€œI can imagine…you’ve no idea how I can imagine.” He protectively crossed his legs.
    â€œYes, same weapon as Denton carries.”
    â€œBut what does Waldo get from…get out of…”
    â€œMurder? It makes Denton feel our equal, Philo—”
    â€œOur equal is it?”
    â€œâ€”you and me, and every man with a larger, ahhh, body, and a rank of some sort in Chicago.”
    The men at the cabstand got up an impromptu lottery on the question of whether the true Phantom, once caught, would prove male or female. Denton had named a name they all knew, the infamous Pekinese-faced Chicago madame, Laveeda Grimaldi. They laughed at the notion.

CHAPTER 4
    At the World’s Fair, the chaos of hundreds of thousands continued unabated as though nothing untoward had occurred in the least here, and the increased numbers of uniformed police stationed about the fair also went unnoticed, but for some the police presence was much appreciated, especially the monied men backing the fair and the merchants working it for all they might. In fact, the fair had its own private police force, partially reinforced by part-timers moonlighting from the CPD. The fair cops worked independently of city government, however, answering only to their private employers—Chicago’s elite, and this smacked of the old days when private enforcers and police ran amuck in their zeal to please private business interests and put down any strike or talk of strike as in the days of Haymarket. The sense they’d taken two steps back in police enforcement with this untrained crew stuck in Griffin Drimmer’s craw, aside from their namby-pamby uniforms.
    In fitting with the fabulous White City, this specialized army wore a light gray uniform, approximating an off-white, with fake mother-of-pearl rather than copper-toned buttons, a far cry from the traditional blues. Even so, there were never enough of the “Pearly Gate coppers,” as somecalled them, to cover the massive fairgrounds and huge pavilions, each of which looked in scale and appearance like Roman and Greek halls of learning where Euripides and Socrates might appear in heated debate at any moment amid the fountains and the boats and the columns. Each major exhibit hall looked from a distance like some giant dragon that crawled up out of Lake Michigan to curl up and go to sleep here.
    Griffin Drimmer had been assigned here, but he’d gotten lucky. He must wear his old CPD uniform as the fair force had run out of grays. On the other hand, he’d been unlucky. He missed working real detective cases. This was, to be sure, his comeuppance for having, in the end, sided with Alastair and in helping clear Philo’s good name, and for not further supporting Chief Nathan Kohler. Busted to rank of a footman is what must be on his horizon, unless…unless he himself could catch the Phantom.
    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