He left Hattie at the door to their stateroom and hurried to the deckhouse, where he entered the Gentlemen’s Saloon. It was a long room, with a liquor buffet at one end and private tables and card layouts spread throughout. A pall of tobacco smoke as thick as tule fog hung in the crowded enclosure.
O’Hara located the shrewd, handsome features of John A. Colfax at a table aft. Two other men were with him: a portly individual with sideburns like miniature tumbleweeds, and the mustached Nevada reporter. They were playing draw poker. O’Hara was not surprised to see that most of the stakes — gold specie and greenbacks — were in front of Colfax.
Casually, O’Hara approached the table and stopped behind an empty chair next to the portly man, just as Colfax claimed a pot with four treys. He said, “Good evening, gentlemen.”
Colfax greeted him unctuously, asked if he were enjoying the voyage thus far. O’Hara said he was, and observed that the gambler seemed to be enjoying it too, judging from the stack of legal tender before him. Colfax just smiled. But the portly man said in grumbling tones, “I should damned well say so. He has been taking my money for three solid hours.”
“Aye? That long?”
“Since just after dinner.”
“Ye’ve been playing without pause since then?”
“Nearly so,” the newspaperman said. Through the tendrils of smoke from his cigar, he studied O’Hara with mild blue eyes. “Why do you ask, sir?”
“Oh, I was thinking I saw Mr. Colfax up on the weather deck about an hour ago. Near the pilothouse.”
“You must have mistaken someone else for me,” Colfax said. Now that the draw game had been momentarily suspended, he had produced a handful of war-issue coins and begun to toy with them as he had done at Long Wharf. “I did leave the table for a few minutes about an hour ago, but only to use the lavatory. I haven’t been on the weather deck at all this trip.”
O’Hara saw no advantage in pressing the matter. He pretended to notice for the first time the one-cent pieces Colfax was shuffling. “Lucky coins, Mr. Colfax?”
“These? Why, yes. I won a sackful of them on a wager once and my luck has been good ever since.” Disarming smile. “Gamblers are superstitious about such things, you know.”
“Ye don’t see many coins like that in California.”
“True. They are practically worthless out here.”
“So worthless,” the reporter said, “that I have seen them used to decorate various leather goods.”
The portly man said irritably, “To hell with lucky coins and such nonsense. Are we going to play poker or have a gabfest?”
“Poker, by all means,” Colfax said. He slipped the war-issue cents into a pocket of his Prince Albert and reached for the cards. His interest in O’Hara seemed to have vanished.
The reporter, however, was still looking at him with curiosity. “Perhaps you’d care to join us?”
O’Hara declined, saying he had never had any luck with the pasteboards. Then he left the saloon and went in search of the Delta Star’s purser. It took him ten minutes to find the man, and thirty seconds to learn that John A. Colfax did not have a stateroom either in the texas or on the deckhouse. The purser, who knew Colfax as a regular passenger, said wryly that the gambler would spend the entire voyage in the Gentlemen’s Saloon, having gullible citizens for a ride.
O’Hara returned to the saloon, this time to avail himself of the liquor buffet. He ordered a shot of rye from a bartender who owned a resplendent handlebar moustache, and tossed it down without his customary enjoyment. Immediately he ordered another.
Colfax might well be his man; there was the war-issue coin he’d found under the pilothouse stove, and the fact that Colfax had left the poker game at about the time of the robbery. And yet... what could he have done with the gold? The weight of forty thousand in dust was considerable; he could not very well carry it in his pockets. He had been gone from the poker game long enough to commit the robbery, perhaps, but hardly long enough to have also hidden the spoils.
There were other factors weighing against Colfax, too. One: gentlemen gamblers made considerable sums of money at their trade; they seldom found it necessary to resort to baser thievery. Two: how could Colfax, while sitting here in the saloon, have known when only one man would be present in the pilothouse? An accomplice might have been on watch — but if there were such a second party, why hadn’t he committed the robbery himself?
O’Hara scowled, put away his second rye. If Colfax wasn’t the culprit, then who was? And what was the significance of the coin he had found in the pilothouse?
Perhaps the coin had no significance at all; but his instincts told him it did, and he had always trusted his instincts. If not to Colfax, then to whom did it point? Answer: to no one, and to everyone. Even though war-issue cents were uncommon in California, at least half a dozen men presently on board might have one or two in their pockets.
A remark passed by the newspaperman came back to him: such coins were used to decorate various leather goods. Aye, that was a possibility. If the guilty man had been wearing a holster or vest or some other article adorned with the cent pieces, one might have popped loose unnoticed.
O’Hara slid the coin from his pocket and examined it carefully. There were small scratches on its surface that might have been made by stud fasteners, but he couldn’t be sure. The scratches might also have been caused by any one of a hundred other means — and the coin could still belong to John A. Colfax.
Returning it to his vest pocket, O’Hara considered the idea of conducting a search for a man wearing leather ornamented with bronze war coins. And dismissed it immediately as folly. He could roam the Delta Star all night and not encounter even two-thirds of the passengers. Or he might find someone wearing such an article who would turn out to be completely innocent. And what if the robber had discovered the loss of the coin and chucked the article overboard?
Frustration began to assail him now. But it did not dull his determination. If any man aboard the Delta Star could fetch up both the thief and the gold before the packet reached Stockton, that man was Fergus O’Hara; and by damn, if such were humanly possible, he meant to do it!
He left the saloon again and went up to the pilothouse. Bridgeman was alone at the wheel. “What news, O’Hara?” he asked.
“None as yet. Would ye know where the captain is?”
Bridgeman shook his head. “Young fool Chadwick was feeling dizzy from that blow on the head; the captain took him to his quarters just after you and your wife left, and then went to make his inquiries. I expect he’s still making ’em.”
O’Hara sat on the red plush sofa, packed and lighted his pipe, and let his mind drift along various channels. After a time something in his memory flickered like a guttering candle — and then died before he could steady the flame. When he was unable to rekindle the flame he roared forth with a venomous ten-jointed oath that startled even Bridgeman.
Presently the captain returned to the pilothouse. He and O’Hara exchanged identical expectant looks, which immediately told each that the other had uncovered nothing of significance. Verbal confirmation of this was brief, after which the captain said bleakly, “The prospects are grim, Mr. O’Hara. Grim, indeed.”
“We’ve not yet come into Stockton,” O’Hara reminded him.
The captain sighed. “We have no idea of who is guilty, thus no idea of where to find the gold... if in fact it is still on board. We haven’t the manpower for a search of packet and passengers before our arrival. And afterward — I don’t see how we can hope to hold everyone on board while the authorities are summoned and a search mounted. Miners are a hotheaded lot; so are those Irish militiamen. We would likely have a riot on our hands.”