Glowering, Quincannon left the study to comb the premises. Not long afterward, the Englishman joined in the search. The results were rather astonishing.
They found no sign of Dodger Brown, and yet every window, upstairs and down, was firmly latched. Furthermore, the wedge Quincannon had kicked under the back door was still in place, as was the heavy chair Holmes had dragged over to block the front door. Those were the only two doors that provided an exit from the house.
“How the deuce could he have gotten out?” Quincannon wondered aloud. “Even the cellar door in the kitchen is locked tight. And there wasn’t enough time for him to have slippped away before we entered.”
“Dear me, no,” Holmes agreed. “You or I would have seen him.”
“Well, he managed it somehow.”
“So it would seem. A miraculous double escape, in fact.”
“Double escape?”
“From a locked room, and then from a sealed house.” The Englishman punctuated this statement with another of his dauncy little smiles. “According to Dr. Axminster, you are adept at solving seemingly impossible crimes. How then did the pannyman manage a double escape? Why was Andrew Costain shot as well as stabbed? Why was the pistol left in the locked study and the bloody stiletto taken away? And why was the study door bolted in the first place? A pretty puzzle, eh, Quincannon? One to challenge the deductive skills of even the cleverest sleuth.”
Quincannon muttered five short, colorful words, none of them remotely of a deductive nature.
As much as Quincannon disliked and mistrusted the city police, the circumstances of this crime were such that notifying them was unavoidable. He telephoned the Hall of Justice on the instrument in Costain’s study. After that he paced and cogitated, to no reasonable conclusion.
The Englishman, meanwhile, examined the corpse a second time, paying particular attention, it seemed, to a pale smear on the coat near the fatal knife wound. He then proceeded to squint through the glass at the carpet in both the study and the hallway, crawling to and fro on his hands and knees, and at any number of other things after that. Now and then he muttered aloud to himself: “More data! I can’t make bricks without clay!” and “Hallo! That’s more like it!” and “Ah, plain as a pikestaff!”
Neither man had anything more to say to the other. It was as if a gauntlet had been thrown down, a tacit challenge issued-which the bughouse Sherlock seemed to think was the case. Two bloodhounds on the scent, no longer working in consort, but as competitors in an undeclared contest of wills. Quincannon would have none of that nonsense. As far as he was concerned, there was only one detective at work here, only one sane man qualified and capable of answering the challenge.
The blue coats arrived in less than half an hour, what for them was swift dispatch. They were half a dozen in number, accompanied by a handful of reporters representing Fremont Older’s Call, the Daily Alta, and San Francisco’s other newspapers, who were made to wait outside-half as many of both breeds as there would have been if the murder of a prominent attorney had happened on Nob Hill.
The inspector in charge was a beefy, red-faced Prussian named Kleinhoffer, whom Quincannon knew slightly and condoned not in the slightest. Inspector Kleinhoffer was both stupid and corrupt, a lethal combination, and a political toady besides. His opinion of flycops was on par with Quincannon’s opinion of him.
His first comment was, “Involved in another killing, eh, Quincannon? What’s your excuse this time?”
Quincannon explained, briefly, the reason he was there. He omitted mention of Dodger Brown by name, using the phrase “unknown burglar” instead and catching the Englishman’s eye as he spoke so the lunatic would say nothing to contradict him. He was not about to chance losing a fee-small chance though it was, the police being such a generally inept bunch-by providing information that might allow them to stumble across the Dodger ahead of him.
Kleinhoffer sneered. “Some fancy flycop. You’re sure he’s not still somewhere in the house?”
“Sure enough.”
“We’ll see about that.” He gestured to a burly red-faced sergeant, who stepped forward. “Mahoney, you and your men search the premises top to bottom.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kleinhoffer’s beady gaze settled on the Englishman, ran over his face and his ridiculous disguise. “Who’re you?” he demanded.
“S. Holmes, of London, England. A temporary associate of Mr. Quincannon’s private inquiry agency.”
Quincannon was none too pleased at the last statement, but he offered no disclaimer. Better that false assertion than a rambling monologue on what a masterful detective Holmes fancied himself to be.
“A limey, eh?” Kleinhoffer said. Then, to Quincannon, “Picking your operatives off the docks these days, are you?”
“If I am, it’s no concern of yours.”
“None of your guff. Where’s the stiff?”
“In the study.”
Kleinhoffer gave Andrew Costain’s remains a cursory examination. “Shot and stabbed both,” he said wonderingly. “You didn’t tell me that. What the hell happened here tonight?”
Quincannon’s account, given in detail, heightened the inspector’s apoplectic color and narrowed his beady eyes to slits. Any crime more complicated than a Barbary Coast stabbing or coshing invariably confused him, and the evident facts in this case threatened to tie a permanent knot in his cranial lobes.
He shook his head, as if trying to shake loose cobwebs, and snapped, “None of that makes a damned bit of sense.”
“Sense or not, that is exactly what took place.”
“You there, limey. He leave anything out?”
“Tut, tut,” Holmes said with dignity. “I am an Englishman, sir, a British subject … not a ‘limey.’”
“I don’t care if you’re the president of England-”
“There is no president of England. My country is a monarchy.”
Kleinhoffer gnashed his yellowed teeth. “Never mind that. Did Quincannon leave anything out or didn’t he?”
“He did not. His re-creation of events was precise in every detail.”
“So you say. I say it couldn’t have happened the way you two tell it.”
“Nonetheless, it did, though what seems to have transpired is not necessarily what actually took place. What we are dealing with here is illusion and obfuscation.”
The inspector wrapped an obscene noun in a casing of disgust. After which he stooped to pick up the Forehand amp; Wadsworth revolver. He sniffed the barrel, broke it open to check the chambers as Quincannon had done, then dropped the weapon into his coat pocket. He was squinting at the empty valuables case when Sergeant Mahoney entered the room.
“No sign of anybody in the house,” he reported.
“Back door still wedged shut?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then he must’ve managed to slip out the front while these two flycops weren’t looking.”
“I beg to differ,” Holmes said. He mentioned the heavy chair. “It was not moved until your arrival, Inspector, by Mr. Quincannon and myself. Even if it had been, I would surely have heard the scraping and dragging sounds. My hearing is preternaturally acute.”
Kleinhoffer said the rude word again.
Mahoney said, “Mrs. Costain is here.”
“What’s that?”
“The dead man’s wife. Mrs. Penelope Costain. She just come home.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Bring her in here.”
The sergeant did as directed. Penelope Costain was stylishly garbed in a high-collared blouse, flounced skirt, and fur-trimmed cloak, her brunette curls tucked under a hat adorned with an ostrich plume. She took one look at her husband’s remains, shuddered violently, and began to sway as if about to faint. Mahoney caught one arm to steady her. Quincannon took hold of the other and together they helped her to one of the chairs.