O’Hara sauntered near the group, stood with his back against a stanchion, and began to shave cuttings from his tobacco plug into his briar. One of the Mulrooneys — small and fair and feisty looking noticed him, studied his luxuriant red beard, and then approached him carrying one of the jugs. Without preamble he demanded to know if the gentleman were Irish. O’Hara said he was, with great dignity. The Mulrooney slapped him on the back. “I knew it!” he said effusively. “Me name’s Billy Culligan. Have a drap of the crayture.”
O’Hara decided Hattie had told him only to stay away from the buffet. There was no deceit in accepting hospitality from fellows of the Auld Sod. He took the jug, drank deeply, and allowed as how it was a fine crayture, indeed. Then he introduced himself, saying that he and the missus were traveling to Stockton on a business matter.
“Ye won’t be conducting business on the morrow, will ye?”
“On St. Pat’s Day?” O’Hara was properly shocked.
“Boyo, I like ye,” Culligan said. “How would ye like to join in on the biggest St. Pat’s Day celebration in the entire sovereign state of California?”
“I’d like nothing better.”
“Then come to Green Park, on the north of Stockton, ’twixt nine and ten and tell the lads ye’re a friend of Billy Culligan. There’ll be a parade, and all the food and liquor ye can hold. Oh, it’ll be a fine celebration, lad!”
O’Hara said he and the missus would be there, meaning it. Culligan offered another drink of poteen, which O’Hara casually accepted. Then the little Mulrooney stepped forward and said in a conspiratorial voice, “Come round here to the taffrail just before we steam into Stockton on the morrow. We’ve a plan to start off St. Pat’s Day with a mighty salute — part of the reason we sent our wives and wee ones ahead on the San Joaquin. Ye won’t want to be missing that either.” Before O’Hara could ask him what he meant by “mighty salute,” he and his jug were gone into the midst of the other Guards.
“Me lady,” O’Hara said contentedly, “that was a meal fit for royalty and no doubt about it.”
Hattie agreed that it had been a sumptuous repast as they walked from the Dining Saloon to the texas stairway. The evening was mild, with little breeze and no sign of the thick Tule fog that often made Northern California riverboating a hazardous proposition. The Delta Star — aglow with hundreds of lights — had come through the Carquinez Straits, passed Chipp’s Island, and was now entering the San Joaquin River. A pale moon silvered the water, turned a ghostly white the long stretches of fields along both banks.
On the weather deck, they stood close together at the larboard rail, not far from the pilothouse. For a couple of minutes they were alone. Then footsteps sounded and O’Hara turned to see the ship’s captain and pilot returning from their dinner. Touching his cap, the captain — a lean, graying man of fifty-odd — wished them good evening. The pilot merely grunted.
The O’Haras continued to stand looking out at the willows and cottonwoods along the riverbank. Then, suddenly, an explosive, angry cry came from the pilothouse, startling them both. This was followed by muffled voices, another sharp exclamation, movement not clearly perceived through the window glass and beyond partially drawn rear curtains, and several sharp blasts on the pilot whistle.
Natural curiosity drew O’Hara away from the rail, hurrying; Hattie was close behind him. The door to the pilothouse stood open when they reached it, and O’Hara turned inside by one step. The enclosure was almost as opulent as their stateroom, but he noticed its appointments only peripherally. What captured his full attention was three men now grouped before the wheel, and the four items on the floor close to and against the starboard bulkhead.
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.”