There was still no sound as I rose and stood staring at the door, which I had locked. Out the window behind me I heard carriage wheels passing in the plaza. The doorknob did not turn again. I listened for the sound of retreating footsteps but heard nothing.
I did not sleep much that night and took the train back to San Francisco in the morning.
7.
LOVE, n. – A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.
–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
At The Hornet, after I had reported my adventures in Santa Cruz, Bierce handed me a letter to read:
July 14, 188-
Dear Mr. Bierce:
You have wondered in your paper about spades in connection with the Morton Street slashings. Spades mean death. A spade is used to dig a grave. The Queen of Spades is well known to be the lady of death. Spades are used to dig mines as well as graves. A mine in the Washoe was named the Jack of Spades. It belongs to the Queen of Spades.
The Jack of Spades Mine is a part of the Consolidated-Ohio that has been as productive a property as George Hearst’s Homestake or Will Sharon’s Ophir. When it was the Jack of Spades it was purchased by investors who called themselves the spades because of the miner’s implement. Two of the spades turned to hearts and bought up a trey to fleece the pigeons. That trey was to suffer from a case of clubs as a momento.
This is just to inform you of the various meanings of spades, although who can tell what this madman Slasher of Morton Street has in his rabid mind.
The letter was signed “A Former Spade.”
Standing over me as I sat holding the missive, Bierce was beaming. “The bulk of the mail I receive, I consign to nullity after reading one sentence,” he said. “But this is a lovely piece! The writer is not uneducated, except for the misspelling of ‘memento.’ ”
“Lady Caroline,” I said.
“The Queen of Spades! Is she the target of the progression of spades? Can the murderer hope to reach that unreachable lady with his strangling fingers and his questing blade? It is unthinkable! And yet once it is mentioned, not to think of it becomes unthinkable.”
“Are you thinking of it?”
“I am!”
“But Beau McNair!”
“I certainly considered the idea of a young man driven to perversions and violence by the knowledge of his mother’s past. But this letter seems to me a strong implication of Beau’s innocence. It mentions hearts rather than diamonds, for instance! What does ‘a case of clubs’ refer to, please?”
“Someone was bashed?”
“Indeed!” Bierce said. He seated himself with careful tucks at the knees of his trousers. “What else can we decipher from this marvelous missive? These are all ‘moling’ creatures of the Comstock Lode. The two hearts would be Nat McNair and his missus, joined by a third to make a majority. Two spades were then forced out by the familiar method of pyramiding assessments. The spade who had made the majority was then disposed of by means of a club? Revenge? The remaining two bilked spades nurse their hatred. This writer must be one of them. Can there be a mad idea of murdering poor soiled doves and ultimately reaching the Queen of Spades—vengeance at last?”
It was too many for me.
“Can the fellow Brown you observed in Santa Cruz, and who may have been inclined to threaten you or worse, be the fifth spade? Was Mrs. Hamon connected to the spades? At any rate Mrs. Hamon is connected to the Railroad through her husband’s association with Senator Jennings.”
There he was bringing it back to the Railroad again.
As though talking to himself, nodding, he muttered, “What Mrs. Hamon had to tell me did have to do with Railroad malfeasance. Her information concerned Jennings and the Railroad.”
“Well, all that is burned up,” I said. “And the Queen of Spades is on her way.”
“I am most anxious to meet that personage,” Bierce said and sent me off to see Sgt. Nix with information from Santa Cruz.
I encountered Amelia Brittain in front of a ladies’ dress shop on Montgomery Street, gazing upon a bottle-green velvet gown that gleamed in the sunlight as though it contained shifting lights in its folds. Amelia wore her usual white lace. I remarked the heartbreak slimness of her waist as it dipped into the swell of her hips. I had forgotten how tall she was.
I snatched off my hat as she turned toward me, executing a little figure with her scrolled parasol. Her eyebrows drifted up her forehead, and she smiled her bright smile.
“Mr. Redmond!”
She took my arm and we walked along together, passing gents who tipped their hats or saluted with their canes. A Chinaman in his black pajamas hawked cigars that looked like a pack of neat brown torpedoes. Brick buildings we passed had black iron shutters closed over their windows. There was heavy traffic, very noisy. I was glad I was decently dressed as Bierce’s assistant and not Dutch John the printer’s, in a black suit, high collar and derby hat. In Union Square and Montgomery Street, and along the north side of Market Street, the gentry dressed for each other’s eyes.
“How pleasant to be strolling in this carefree manner, rather than the fearful circumstance of our first expedition,” Amelia said. She frowned at the Examiner’s headline on a newsstand: POLICE PARALYZED IN SLASHINGS.
“So they have not arrested this lunatic,” she said.
“No.”
We strolled on. “I had some discussion with Mr. McNair about his frequenting those places I asked to see,” Amelia said.
I blew out my breath at her frankness. It was as though we were old friends exchanging confidences.
“He doesn’t frequent those on Morton Street, surely,” I said.
“He spoke of premises on Union Square. Do you yourself visit such establishments, Mr. Redmond?”
“Not I,” I lied.
“Mr. McNair has explained to me their necessity. He tells me that men of strong gender would become quite uncontrollable if they did not have recourse to these women. Is that true, Mr. Redmond?”
I said I had heard that theory. Thinking of Beau McNair frequenting whores made my skin crawl.
“He tells me that the favors of red-haired Jewesses are the most sought after. Is that true?”
I blew out my breath again. “I have heard that also.”
“Why would that be, I wonder?”
“Such women are thought to be very lively,” I said.
“He calls these jauntings his researches. I caught a glimpse of him once in his sweater and workingman’s jacket. He thought he was invisible in his disguise.”
We walked on in silence, Amelia in thought. I was very pleased to be accompanying her along Montgomery Street with her hand on my arm, even though we were headed in the wrong direction for my business with Sgt. Nix.
“So Mr. McNair’s mother is en route from England,” I said.
“She should arrive in ten days’ time.”
I hoped it was safe to say, “Does this have to do with wedding plans, Miss Brittain? If you will pardon me for asking.”
She laughed lightly. “Oh, no! That is finished! I have become quite unattached.” She displayed her gloved hand, as though I could make out the absence of her engagement ring through the fine leather.
We turned into the English Tearoom, where we sat with cups of tea at a marble-topped table. I watched her ungloved, unringed hand lift her cup to her lips.
I wanted to know why she had become unattached, and I said, “I suppose young English gents like that are brought up to think they are better than other people.”
She frowned at me, so I assumed it was improper to criticize Beau McNair.