Quincannon, from his personal knowledge of the Chinese race, agreed with that assessment. It was something that had been bothering him. Either trouble ran deep and dark between Coffin and the Orientals of Silver City, or somebody else was responsible for the break-ins. The same person or persons who had ransacked Jason Elder’s shack, for instance.
Sabina Carpenter?
Looking for what?
When Quincannon left the sixth saloon he was feeling the effects of the whiskey, starting to lose his clear-headedness. It was dark now and the gas lamps had been lighted along Jordan and along the narrow winding streets that climbed the hillsides to the east and west. The night wind blowing down off War Eagle Mountain was chill; he walked into the teeth of it, to chase away the muzziness from the liquor.
On impulse he turned west on Avalanche Avenue, toward Sabina Carpenter’s millinery shop. He expected to find it dark, but it wasn’t; lamplight illuminated the second-floor window and the words painted on it: SABINA’S MILLINERY FINE HATS FOR LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Quincannon stopped across the street, behind a waiting buggy drawn by a sleek dappled gray, and peered up at the lighted glass. Nothing moved behind it, at least not within the range of his vision.
He stayed where he was for a time, waiting for his head to clear completely, debating with himself. Should he talk to her again? He felt a compulsion to do so, yet he also felt that it would be futile and that it would only arouse her suspicions; he sensed that already she thought him something more than the patent medicine drummer he claimed.
He was sure she was something more than the milliner she claimed.
A single horsemen trotted by, followed by a carriage with its side curtains drawn. When the carriage passed beyond where he stood he saw that the street door to the millinery shop had opened and a woman was coming out. At first he thought it was Sabina Carpenter; but then the woman picked up her skirts and hurried across the rutted street toward the buggy, and he recognized Helen Truax.
He moved out into the spillage of light from a nearby lamp. She stopped abruptly when she saw him; but after he tipped his hat and spoke to her, saying, “Good evening, Mrs. Truax,” she came ahead to where he stood.
“Mr. Lyons, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I hope you don’t mind my speaking to you this way.”
“No, it’s quite all right.”
Quincannon said casually, “Are you a friend of Sabina Carpenter’s?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Well, I noticed that you’ve just come from her shop.”
“We’re acquainted, yes.”
Behind and above her, the second-floor window of Sabina’s Millinery went dark as the lamp was extinguished. Quincannon held his gaze on it for a moment but could detect no movement behind the shadowed glass.
He said, “A new hat, then?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The purpose of your visit tonight.”
“Oh… yes, a new hat. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Lyons, I must be going. My husband is waiting at home.”
She stepped past him to the buggy, drawing closer the white shawl she wore over her dress. In that same moment the door across the street opened again and Sabina Carpenter emerged. Quincannon still stood in the light from the street lamp; the Carpenter woman looked straight at him and he was sure she recognized him. She hesitated briefly, then pivoted and hurried away toward Washington Street.
Quincannon hesitated too. But this was neither the time nor the place to try getting at the sense of whatever game she was playing: she would not respond well to being accosted on a dark street. And there was the matter at hand of Helen Truax. There was no telling when he might have another opportunity to speak to her alone.
Mrs. Truax was just climbing onto the tufted leather seat of the buggy. He moved over alongside as she settled herself; reached out to stroke the gray’s sleek withers.
“A fine-looking horse,” he said.
“Yes. My husband bought him for me.”
“He must be a generous man. I spoke to him at the Paymaster this afternoon, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. I haven’t seen him since breakfast.”
“A business matter,” Quincannon told her. “Concerning shares of stock in the Paymaster Mining Company.”
“What shares of stock?” she asked a little sharply.
“Why, shares that might be for sale.”
“To whom?”
“My employer, Mr. Arthur Caldwell of San Francisco. He is quite wealthy and his avocation is stock speculation. I often act as an unofficial scout for him. And the Paymaster would seem to be a good investment.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I understand you own stock in the company yourself, Mrs. Truax.”
A pause. “Did my husband tell you that?”
“Yes, he did. Sabina Carpenter also remarked on it.”
Another pause, longer this time; he would have liked to see her face more clearly. When she spoke again there was a tense, wary edge to her voice. “How would Miss Carpenter know about my Paymaster stock?”
“Why… didn’t she tell you abut the certificate?”
“What certificate?”
“Yours, of course — the one she found this morning. She said she intended to return it…”
“Well, she didn’t,” Helen Truax said angrily. “Where did she find it?”
“At Jason Elder’s shack, she said. Perhaps she intends to return it to Mr. Elder.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Well, she told me the stock belongs to him now. That you had signed it over to him.”
“That’s a liel”
“You mean you do still own it?”
“Of course I own it. My husband gave it to me as a wedding present. I… I lost the certificate not long ago.”
“Ah. I wonder what Jason Elder was doing with it?”
“I have no idea. I don’t even know the man.” She seemed to be making an effort to control herself. Jerkily she took up the reins. “Miss Carpenter is a liar and very likely a thief. Thank you for making me aware of the fact, Mr. Lyons. Good night.” She snapped the reins and the gray broke into a smart trot, forcing Quincannon to step back quickly from the buggy’s front wheel.
He watched until Helen Truax had turned the corner on Jordan Street and passed out of sight. Then he went in the opposite direction, to Washington. There was no sign of Sabina Carpenter; he wondered if she had gone to her rooming house or if she were up to something else this night. He wondered also if the lies he had told Mrs. Truax would lead to anything revealing. A calculated risk: the time had come to stir things up a bit, even if it meant opening a hornet’s nest.
He walked back to the War Eagle Hotel and took Emily Dickinson to bed.
Virginia City, Nevada.
September 9, 1892, fifty-five minutes past noon.
Hot.
He moved along the dusty backstreet on the south edge of town, toward the rear of the printing shop owned by the Stanley brothers, Ross and Adam. With him were two armed special deputies summoned by Sheriff Joseph Armitage. Armitage himself, along with two more armed deputies, was approaching from the front. At exactly one o’clock, by their synchronized watches, the two groups would converge on the shop with weapons drawn and take the Stanley brothers into custody for the crime of counterfeiting United States Government currency.
He had arrived in Virginia City the night before, with the federal arrest warrant in his pocket. The warrant was the result of two months of investigation into a boodle game involving raised queer — greenbacks whose denomination had been increased from a low value to a high one by pasting a higher number over a lower and then overprinting a higher denomination on the face of the bill. The trail had lead, circuitously, to the Stanley brothers and their printing shop, and the evidence he had gathered had been sufficient to induce a federal judge in San Francisco to issue the warrant.