The pilot stood clutching two of the wheel spokes, red-faced with anger; the captain was bending over the kneeling figure of the third man — a young blond individual wearing a buttoned-up sack coat and baggy trousers, both of which were streaked with dust and soot and grease. The blond lad was making soft moaning sounds, holding the back of his head cupped in one palm.
One of the items on the floor was a steel pry bar. The others were a small safe bolted to the bulkhead, a black valise — the one O’Hara had seen carried by the nervous man and his two bodyguards — and a medium-sized iron strongbox, just large enough to have fit inside the valise. The safe door, minus its combination dial, stood wide open; the valise and a strongbox were also open. All three were quite obviously empty.
The pilot jerked the bell knobs, signaling an urgent request to the engineer for a lessening of speed, and began barking standby orders into a speaking tube. His was the voice which had startled Hattie and O’Hara. The captain was saying to the blond man, “It’s a miracle we didn’t drift out of the channel and run afoul of a snag — a miracle, Chadwick.”
“I can’t be held to blame, sir,” Chadwick said defensively. “Whoever it was hit me from behind. I was sitting at the wheel when I heard the door open and thought it was you and Mr. Bridgeman returning from supper, so I didn’t even bother to turn. The next thing, my head seemed to explode. That is all I know.”
He managed to regain his feet and moved stiffly to a red plush sofa, hitching up his trousers with one hand; the other still held the back of his head. Bridgeman, the pilot, banged down the speaking tube, then spun the wheel a half-turn to larboard. As he did the last, he glanced over his shoulder and saw O’Hara and Hattie. “Get out of here!” he shouted at them. “There is nothing here for you.”
“Perhaps, now, that isn’t true,” O’Hara said mildly. “Ye’ve had a robbery, have ye not?”
“That is none of your affair.”
Boldly O’Hara came deeper into the pilothouse, motioning Hattie to close the door. She did so. Bridgeman yelled, “I told you to get out of here! Who do you think you are?”
“Fergus O’Hara — operative of the Pinkerton Police Agency.”
Bridgeman stared at him, open-mouthed. The captain and Chadwick had shifted their attention to him as well. At length, in a less harsh tone, the pilot said, “Pinkerton Agency?”
“Of Chicago, Illinois; Allan Pinkerton, Principal.”
O’Hara produced his billfold, extracted from it the letter from Allan Pinkerton and the Chicago & Eastern Central Railroad Pass, both of which identified him, as the bearer of these documents, to be a Pinkerton Police agent. He showed them to both Bridgeman and the captain.
“What would a Pinkerton man be doing way out here in California?” the captain asked.
“Me wife Hattie and me are on the trail of a gang that has been terrorizing Adams Express coaches. We’ve traced them to San Francisco and now have reliable information they’re to be found in Stockton.”
“Your wife is a Pinkerton agent too? A woman...”
O’Hara looked at him as if he might be a dullard. “Ye’ve never heard of Miss Kate Warne, one of the agency’s most trusted Chicago operatives? No, I don’t suppose ye have. Well, me wife has no official capacity, but since one of the leaders of this gang is reputed to be a woman, and since Hattie has assisted me in the past, women being able to obtain information in places men cannot, I’ve brought her along.”
Bridgeman said from the wheel, “Well, we can use a trained detective after what has happened here.”
O’Hara nodded. “Is it gold ye’ve had stolen?”
“Gold — yes. How did you know that?”
He told them of witnessing the delivery of the valise at Long Wharf. He asked then, “How large an amount is involved?”
“Forty thousand dollars,” the captain said.
O’Hara whistled. “That’s a fair considerable sum.”
“To put it mildly, sir.”
“Was it specie or dust?”
“Dust. An urgent consignment from the California Merchant’s Bank to their branch in Stockton.”
“How many men had foreknowledge of the shipment?”
“The officials of the bank, Mr. Bridgeman, and myself.”
“No other officers of the packet?”
“No.”
“Would you be telling me, Captain, who was present when the delivery was made this afternoon?”
“Mr. Bridgeman and I, and a friend of his visiting in San Francisco — a newspaperman from Nevada.”
O’Hara remembered the tall man with bushy hair who had been with the pilot earlier. “Can ye vouch for this newspaperman?” he asked Bridgeman.
“I can. His reputation is unimpeachable.”
“Has anyone other than he been here since the gold was brought aboard?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Chadwick said that no one had come by while he was on duty; and none of them had noticed anyone shirking about at any time. The captain said sourly, “It appears as though almost any man on this packet could be the culprit. Just how do you propose we find out which one, Mr. O’Hara?”
O’Hara did not reply. He bent to examine the safe. The combination dial appeared to have been snapped off, by a hand with experience at such villainous business. The valise and the strongbox had also been forced. The pry bar was an ordinary tool and had likely also been used as a weapon to knock Chadwick unconscious.
He straightened and moved about the enclosure, studying each fixture. Then he got down on hands and knees and peered under both the sofa and a blackened winter stove. It was under the stove that he found the coin.
His fingers grasped it, closed it into his palm. Standing again, he glanced at the coin and saw that it was made of bronze, a small war-issue cent piece shinily new and free of dust or soot. A smile plucked at the edges of his mouth as he slipped the coin into his vest pocket.
Bridgeman said, “Did you find something?”
“Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not.”
O’Hara came forward, paused near where Bridgeman stood at the wheel. Through the windshield he could see the moonlit waters of the San Joaquin. He could also see, as a result of the pilothouse lamps and the darkness without, his own dim reflection in the glass. He thought his stern expression was rather like the one Allan Pinkerton himself possessed.
Bridgeman suggested that crewmen be posted on the lower decks throughout the night, as a precaution in the event the culprit had a confederate with a boat somewhere along the route and intended to leave the packet in the wee hours. The captain thought this was a good idea; so did O’Hara.
He was ready to leave, but the captain had a few more words for him. “I am grateful for your professional assistance, Mr. O’Hara, but as master of the Delta Star the primary investigative responsibility is mine. Please inform me immediately if you learn anything of significance.”
O’Hara said he would.
“Also, I intend my inquiries to be discreet, so as not to alarm the passengers. I’ll expect yours to be the same.”
“Discretion is me middle name,” O’Hara assured him.
A few moments later, he and Hattie were on their way back along the larboard rail to the texas. Hattie, who had been silent during their time in the pilothouse, started to speak, but O’Hara overrode her. “I know what ye’re going to say, me lady, and it’ll do no good. Me mind’s made up. The opportunity to sniff out forty thousand in missing gold is one I’ll not pass up.”