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She had laughed heartily, with not an inkling that it would be the last laughter to come from her for many months. For when she read the note, her loving husband was already lying dead in a Denver alleyway.

Sighing, she cleared the table and washed the dishes. Usually she spent her post-prandial hours in the parlor writing personal letters or reading Harper’s Bazaar, The Cosmopolitan, and a magazine that most proper ladies of the day avoided as shocking fare, the National Police Gazette. This evening she sat with pad and paper and carefully set down all the information she’d gleaned during her investigation and the conclusions she drew from them. She often did this when a case was nearing its closure. Hers was an orderly mind, unlike her partner’s; creating a careful written outline of facts, observations, and suppositions satisfied her that she hadn’t overlooked anything important and had events detailed in their proper sequence.

The last thing John had said to her before their parting earlier was, “There will be a public unveiling of the facts tomorrow, my dear, just as that blasted Englishman wants. Only I’ll be the one to arrange it. And I’ll be the one to take the credit.”

Given his flair for the dramatic, Sabina thought, he would no doubt put on quite a performance. But he wouldn’t be alone on whatever stage he set, and for once he wouldn’t receive all the applause.

27

QUINCANNON

It took him most of the following morning to contact the principals in the Costain case and arrange for them to assemble in the offices of Great Western Insurance at one o’clock that afternoon. All were already present when he and Sabina entered the anteroom on the stroke of one. Penelope Costain, the crackbrain Sherlock in the company of Dr. Caleb Axminster, and the doltish Prussian, Kleinhoffer. He had invited Kleinhoffer not so much in his official capacity but to bask in the copper’s reaction to a demonstration of genuine detective work.

Quincannon was in fine fettle. He had slept well, as he normally did when he was about to bring a case to a successful conclusion, breakfasted well, and was eager for the proceedings to unfold. Sabina, too, seemed to have spent a restful night and was in good spirits. He had expected her to ask questions and demand answers, as she had before their sojourn to Andrew Costain’s law offices last night. But she had remained curiously silent, a small, private smile lurking at the corners of her mouth, before departing on an unrevealed errand that kept her away from the agency for more than two hours.

In a body they were shown into Jackson Pollard’s private sanctum, a large but spartan room with no permanent fixtures beyond a desk, a telephone, and a bank of filing cabinets. Chairs had been brought in to accommodate the group. Pollard wore his usual brusque expression, and behind his spectacles his bugged eyes issued a mute warning when he regarded Quincannon. The little claims adjustor had not been pleased when he’d been refused any advance knowledge of the meeting’s purpose.

Everyone sat down except Quincannon. Holmes lit his oily clay pipe and sat in a relaxed posture, his eyes bright with anticipation. Sabina sat quietly with hands clasped in her lap; patience was one of her many virtues. Penelope Costain was like a statue in her chair, her small black eyes unblinking and her head stiffly tipped, fingers toying with a tigereye and agate locket at the throat of a high-collared black dress. Dr. Axminster sucked on horehound drops, wearing the bright-eyed, expectant look of a small boy on Christmas morning. Kleinhoffer’s red face was bent into a sneer, as if he considered this business a waste of his time.

Pollard said, “Well, Quincannon? Get on with it. And what you have to say had better be worthwhile.”

“It will be,” Quincannon assured him. “First of all, Dodger Brown is in custody awaiting formal charges. I tracked him down late yesterday and handed him over to the authorities.”

Kleinhoffer stirred and said gruffly, “Not to me, you didn’t.”

“No, to Sergeant Percy at the city jail. You hadn’t come on duty yet.”

“Nobody told me about it today.”

“The sergeant’s fault, not mine.”

“You didn’t inform me, either,” Pollard said. “Not last night and not earlier today. Why not?”

“I came straight here from the Hall of Justice last evening, but you’d already gone.”

“You could have told me this morning. Why didn’t you?”

“I had my reasons.”

“Yes? Well, what about all the valuables Brown stole? I don’t suppose you recovered any of them?”

“Ah, but I did.”

Quincannon drew out the sack of valuables, which he’d removed from the office safe before coming to Great Western, and with a flourish, placed it on Pollard’s desk blotter. The little claims adjustor seemed pacified as he spread the contents out in front of him, but once he’d sifted through the lot some of his ill temper returned. “All present and accounted for from the first three burglaries,” he said. “But none of Mrs. Costain’s losses is here.”

“I haven’t recovered those items as yet.”

“Well? Do you have any idea what Brown did with them?”

“He did nothing with them. He never had them.”

“Never had them, you say?”

“Dodger Brown didn’t burgle the Costain home,” Quincannon said. “Nor is he the murderer of Andrew Costain.”

Kleinhoffer made a noise not unlike the grunt of a rooting shoat. Pollard blinked owlishly behind his spectacles. “Then who did burgle it?”

“No one.”

“Come, come, man, speak plainly, say what you mean.”

“It was Andrew Costain who planned the theft, with the aid of an accomplice, and it was the accomplice who punctured him and made off with the contents of the valuables case.”

This announcement brought an “Ahh!” from Dr. Axminster. Sabina arched one of her fine eyebrows, but not as if she were surprised. Even Kleinhoffer and the bughouse Sherlock sat up straight in their chairs. The reactions fueled Quincannon’s ardor. He was in his element now, and enjoying himself immensely.

Penelope Costain said icily, “That is a ridiculous accusation. Why on earth would my husband conspire to rob his own home?”

“To defraud the Great Western Insurance Company. For monetary gain, so he could pay off his substantial gambling debts. You knew he was a compulsive gambler, didn’t you, Mrs. Costain? And that his finances had been severely depleted and his practice had suffered setbacks as a result of his addiction?”

“I knew of no such thing.”

“If what you say is true,” Pollard said to Quincannon, “how did you find it out?”

“I was suspicious of the man from the moment he asked me to stand watch on his property.” This was not quite true, but what harm in a little embellishment? “Two nights ago at Dr. Axminster’s home, Costain seemed to consider me incompetent for allowing Dodger Brown to escape from the Truesdales’. Why then would he choose me of all people to protect his property? The answer is that he wanted a detective he considered inept to bear witness to a cleverly staged break-in. Underestimating me was his first mistake.”

“Was that the only thing that made you suspicious?”

“No. Costain admitted it was unlikely that a professional housebreaker, having had a close call the previous night, would risk another crime so soon, yet he would have me believe his fear was so great, he was willing to pay dear for not one but two operatives to stand surveillance on one or two nights. An outlay of funds he could ill afford, for it was plain from his heavy drinking and the condition of his office that he had fallen on difficult times. He also made two dubious claims-that he had no time to remove valuables from his home and hide them elsewhere until the burglar was apprehended, and that he had no desire to cancel ‘important engagements’ in order to guard the premises himself.”

Dr. Axminster asked, “So you accepted the job in order to find out what he was up to?”