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Authors: David Thomas Moore (ed)
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business, the other Mr. Lowe may find himself the recipient of some investment for his time shares. But the twenty thousand dollars changes everything.”
T HUS WE FOUND ourselves on the red-eye to Vegas. Lowe and Holmes chose seats in the smoking section, which was, to be honest, trying, even to someone with my iron constitution. “All the latest medical research indicates that smoking is hazardous to your health,” I told Holmes as he puffed away. But he waved aside my objections, choosing to spend the flight quizzing Kevin Lowe about his techniques for modelling from life in wax.
Recalling Holmes’s experiments in this very art, in the adventure of the Abandoned Condominium, I occupied myself with talking to the very pretty stewardess, regaling her with anecdotes of my time in service, until the plane touched down at McCarran Airport.
It was too late that evening to do much more than a cursory inspection of the basement of the Starlight Casino, which had until recently housed Lowe’s House of Stars. Holmes examined the doors and their stout padlock, and the alleyway leading up the side of the building, which was indeed dingy and ill-lit. Inside the museum, all that remained was some furniture which presumably the waxworks had been posed upon, and the forlorn figure of the dog Toto, lying on his side by the wall.
“We won’t get much more tonight,” declared Holmes, straightening from his scrutiny of a footmark that was invisible to the rest of us. “Mr. Lowe, tomorrow we may pursue our own methods. Stay by a phone; we will call you as soon as we have any news.
“Mr. Lowe is a true artist,” he said to me, when we were in the elevator ascending to our rooms in the Starlight Hotel, above the casino. “Look at this leaflet for his museum, Watson. I think you’ll agree that the figures are so lifelike as to defy belief. I made some calls before we left, and all of them confirmed that Mr Kevin Lowe is the foremost waxwork modeller of his generation.”
I turned over the folder in my hands, marveling at the depictions of Reggie Jackson and President Carter. “He’s very good. Do you plan to visit the brother tomorrow? Or track down that mysterious visitor in the Hawaiian shirt?”
“I will be very much mistaken if one does not lead to the other. Goodnight, my friend, and stay away from the roulette table.”
A FTER A BRACING visit to the breakfast buffet the next morning, Holmes and I were ready to go. He spent some more time in the alleyway, pacing its length, once or twice flinging himself onto all fours to examine the tarmac in the daylight. Finally, he straightened. “Most instructive. Let’s hail a taxi to Mr. Louie Lowe’s office.”
The office was a single-storey building near the edge of the desert, with a low-pitched roof and an adobe front. The gold lettering on the glass door informed us that we had called on Mr. Louis Lowe, Travel Agent .
Mr. Louis Lowe himself was a slight, weaselly man, with greased-back hair and a plaid suit. He wore a heavy medallion on his chest, and platform shoes even higher than his brother’s. When we entered his office, he reclined in his leather chair, his hands behind his head, his feet propped on his desk.
“You’ve come about the robbery at Kev’s place, I guess. If you can call it a robbery, since he was paid for what was taken.”
“Your brother mentioned an argument about money,” said Holmes.
“I wanted my half of Uncle Vern’s dough to invest in condos in Reno, fair enough. But you know what? I’ve decided I don’t need it after all. Kev can keep it, for all the good it does him.”
“Of course, it doesn’t do him much good if he’s lost his life’s work,” said I.
Louie Lowe shrugged.
“You noticed, of course,” said Holmes as we left, “the map on the wall?”
“Of all of Nevada. But Holmes, the area is vast.”
“It’s slightly less vast when one has a greasy fingerprint for guidance.”
There was a Hertz office nearby,
T HUS WE FOUND ourselves on the red-eye to Vegas. Lowe and Holmes chose seats in the smoking section, which was, to be honest, trying, even to someone with my iron constitution. “All the latest medical research indicates that smoking is hazardous to your health,” I told Holmes as he puffed away. But he waved aside my objections, choosing to spend the flight quizzing Kevin Lowe about his techniques for modelling from life in wax.
Recalling Holmes’s experiments in this very art, in the adventure of the Abandoned Condominium, I occupied myself with talking to the very pretty stewardess, regaling her with anecdotes of my time in service, until the plane touched down at McCarran Airport.
It was too late that evening to do much more than a cursory inspection of the basement of the Starlight Casino, which had until recently housed Lowe’s House of Stars. Holmes examined the doors and their stout padlock, and the alleyway leading up the side of the building, which was indeed dingy and ill-lit. Inside the museum, all that remained was some furniture which presumably the waxworks had been posed upon, and the forlorn figure of the dog Toto, lying on his side by the wall.
“We won’t get much more tonight,” declared Holmes, straightening from his scrutiny of a footmark that was invisible to the rest of us. “Mr. Lowe, tomorrow we may pursue our own methods. Stay by a phone; we will call you as soon as we have any news.
“Mr. Lowe is a true artist,” he said to me, when we were in the elevator ascending to our rooms in the Starlight Hotel, above the casino. “Look at this leaflet for his museum, Watson. I think you’ll agree that the figures are so lifelike as to defy belief. I made some calls before we left, and all of them confirmed that Mr Kevin Lowe is the foremost waxwork modeller of his generation.”
I turned over the folder in my hands, marveling at the depictions of Reggie Jackson and President Carter. “He’s very good. Do you plan to visit the brother tomorrow? Or track down that mysterious visitor in the Hawaiian shirt?”
“I will be very much mistaken if one does not lead to the other. Goodnight, my friend, and stay away from the roulette table.”
A FTER A BRACING visit to the breakfast buffet the next morning, Holmes and I were ready to go. He spent some more time in the alleyway, pacing its length, once or twice flinging himself onto all fours to examine the tarmac in the daylight. Finally, he straightened. “Most instructive. Let’s hail a taxi to Mr. Louie Lowe’s office.”
The office was a single-storey building near the edge of the desert, with a low-pitched roof and an adobe front. The gold lettering on the glass door informed us that we had called on Mr. Louis Lowe, Travel Agent .
Mr. Louis Lowe himself was a slight, weaselly man, with greased-back hair and a plaid suit. He wore a heavy medallion on his chest, and platform shoes even higher than his brother’s. When we entered his office, he reclined in his leather chair, his hands behind his head, his feet propped on his desk.
“You’ve come about the robbery at Kev’s place, I guess. If you can call it a robbery, since he was paid for what was taken.”
“Your brother mentioned an argument about money,” said Holmes.
“I wanted my half of Uncle Vern’s dough to invest in condos in Reno, fair enough. But you know what? I’ve decided I don’t need it after all. Kev can keep it, for all the good it does him.”
“Of course, it doesn’t do him much good if he’s lost his life’s work,” said I.
Louie Lowe shrugged.
“You noticed, of course,” said Holmes as we left, “the map on the wall?”
“Of all of Nevada. But Holmes, the area is vast.”
“It’s slightly less vast when one has a greasy fingerprint for guidance.”
There was a Hertz office nearby,
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