She said: “Others saw the same as you, Mister Meeker?”
“My wife, my son, and a neighbor, Artemus Crabb. They will vouchsafe everything I have told you.”
“What time of night did these events take place?”
“After midnight, in all three cases. Crabb was the only one who saw the thing the first time it appeared. I happened to awaken on the second night and spied it in one of the cars. I went out alone to investigate, but it fled and vanished before I could reach the cars. Lucretia, my wife, and my son Jared both saw it last night…in one of the cars and then on the dune tops. Jared and I examined the cars by lantern light and again in the morning by daylight. The marks on walls and floor were the only evidence of its presence.”
“Claw marks, you said?”
Meeker repressed a shudder. “As if the thing had the talons of a beast.”
Quincannon said: “And evidently the heart of a coward.”
“Sir?”
“Why else would it run away or bound away or whatever it did? It’s humans who are afraid of ghosts, not the converse.”
“I have no explanation for what happened,” Meeker said. “That is why I have come to you.”
“And just what do you expect us to do? Missus Carpenter and I are detectives, not dabblers in paranormal twaddle.”
Again Meeker puffed up. He was an oddly shaped gent in his forties, with an abnormally large head set on a narrow neck and a slight body. A wild tangle of curly hair made his head seem even larger and more disproportionate. He carried a blackthorn walking stick, which he held between his knees and thumped on the floor now and then for emphasis.
“What I want is an explanation for these bizarre occurrences. Normal or paranormal, it matters not to me, as long as they are explained to my satisfaction. If they continue and word gets out, residents will leave and no new ones come to take their place. Carville will become a literal ghost town.”
“And you don’t want this to happen.”
“Of course not. Carville-by-the-Sea is my home and one day it will be the home of many other progressive-minded citizens like myself. Businesses, churches…a thriving community. Why, no less a personage than Adolph Sutro hopes to persuade wealthy San Franciscans to buy land there and build grand estates like his own at Sutro Heights.”
A cracked filbert, Mister Barnaby Meeker, Quincannon thought. Anyone who chose of his own free will to live in a home fashioned of abandoned street cars in an isolated, wind-and-sand-blown, fog-ridden place like Carville was welcome to the company of other cracked filberts, Adolph Sutro and his ilk included. He had no patience with eccentrics of any stripe, a sentiment he had expressed to Sabina on more than one occasion. She allowed as how that was because he was one himself, but he forgave her. Dear Sabina-he would forgive her anything. Except, perhaps, her steadfast refusal to succumb to his advances…
“I will pay you five hundred dollars to come to Carville and view the phenomenon for yourself,” Barnaby Meeker said.
“Eh? What’s that?”
“Five hundred dollars, sir. And an additional one thousand dollars if you can provide a satisfactory explanation for these fantastic goings-on.”
Quincannon’s ears pricked up like a hound’s. “Fifteen hundred dollars?”
“If, as I said, you provide a satisfactory explanation.”
“Can you afford such a large sum, Mister Meeker?”
“Of course I can afford it,” Meeker said, bristling. “Would I offer it if I couldn’t?”
“Ah, I ask only because…”
“Only because of where I choose to reside.” Meeker thumped his stick to punctuate his testy displeasure. “It so happens I am a man of considerable means, sir. Railroad stock, if you must know…a substantial portfolio. I have made my home in Carville because I have always been fond of the ocean and the solitude of the dunes. Does that satisfy you?”
“It does.” Quincannon’s annoyance and suspicion had both vanished as swiftly as the alleged Carville ghost. A smile now bisected his freebooter’s beard, the sort Sabina referred to rather unkindly as his “greedy grin.” “I meant no offense. You may consider us completely at your service.”
“John,” Sabina said, “let’s not be hasty. You know how busy we are…”
“Now, now, my dear,” he said, “Mister Meeker has come in good faith with a vexing problem. We can certainly find the time and wherewithal to oblige him.”
“And naturally you’ll keep an open mind in the process.”
Quincannon chose to ignore her mocking tone. He rose, beamed at the cracked filbert, shook his hand with enthusiasm, and said: “Now, to business…”
When Barnaby Meeker had gone, leaving a $500 check neatly blotted on Sabina’s desk, she said: “I’m not so sure it was a good idea to take on this case.”
“No? And why not, with five hundred dollars in hand and another thousand promised?”
“We’ve a full plate already, John. Or have you forgotten the pickpocket case, the missing Miss Devereaux, and the Wells Fargo Express robbery?”
“Hardly. You’ll identify the amusement park dip, we’ll find Miss Devereaux, and I have no doubt I’ll locate the Wells Fargo bandits and recover the stolen loot before anyone else can…all in good time.” Quincannon rubbed his hands together briskly and opined: “This ghost foolishness can be disposed of in short order tonight. Fifteen hundred dollars is a handsome fee for a few hours’ easy work.”
“Don’t be too sure it will be easy. Or that it’s foolishness.”
“Of course it is,” he said. “Ghoulies, ghosties, things that go bump in the night. Pure hogwash.”
Late that afternoon, huddled inside his greatcoat, Quincannon drove the hired livery horse and buggy out past Cliff House and Sutro Heights. A chill, southwesterly wind blew curls and twists of fog in off the Pacific; the mist was already thick enough to hide the sea from the road, although he could hear the distant murmur of surf and the barking of sea lions. The foghorn on the Potato Patch off Point Lobos gave off its mournful moan at regular intervals.
This was a bleak, lonesome section of the city, sparsely traveled beyond the Heights. As he rattled past the Ocean Boulevard turning into Golden Gate Park, a lone wagon emerged from the junglelike tangle of scrub pine and manzanita that marked the park’s western edge; otherwise, he saw no one. Empty sand-blown roadway, grass-topped dunes, gulls, fog-a blasted wasteland. There were no lampposts here, south of the park. At night, in heavy fog, the highway was virtually impassable, even with the strongest of lanterns, to all but the blind and the foolhardy.
The sea mist thinned and thickened at intervals until he reached Carville, where it roiled in like a ragged gray shroud spread out over the barren dunes. Carville-by-the-Sea. Faugh. Some name for a scattering of weather-rusted streetcars and cobbled together board shacks that had been turned into habitations of one type or another by filberts such as Barnaby Meeker.
San Francisco’s transit companies were the culprits. When the city began replacing horse-drawn cars with cable cars and electric streetcars, some of the obsolete carriages had been sold to individuals for $10 if the car had no seats, $20 if it did; the rest were abandoned out here among the dunes, awaiting new buyers or to succumb to rust and rot in the salty sea winds. A grip man for the Ellis Street line had been the first to see the nesting possibilities; in 1895, after purchasing a lot near the terminus of 20th Avenue, he had joined three old North Beach & Mission horse cars and mounted them on stilts above the shifting sand. The edifice was still standing three years later; Quincannon had passed it on the way, a lonesome sight half obscured by the blowing mist.
Farther south, where the Park and Ocean railway line terminated, a Civil War vet named Colonel Charles Daily made his home in a shell-decorated realtor’s shed. An entrepreneur, Daily had bought three cars and rented them at $5 each-one to a ladies’ bicycle club known as The Falcons-and also opened a coffee saloon. Others, Barnaby Meeker among them, bought their own cars and set them up in the vicinity. A reporter for the Bulletin dubbed the place Beachside, but residents preferred Carvilleby-the-Sea and the general public shortened that to Carville.