Jessie was a dark, narrow thoroughfare and something of an anomaly as the new century approached — a mostly residential street that ran for several blocks through the heart of the business district, midway between Market and Mission streets. Small, old houses and an occasional small-business establishment flanked it, fronted by tiny yards and backed by barns and sheds. The electric glow from Third Street and the now-steady drizzle made it a chasm of shadows. The darkness and the thrumming wind allowed Quincannon to quicken his pace without fear of being seen or heard.
After two blocks, his quarry made another turning, this time into a cracked cobblestone cul-de-sac called Gunpowder Alley. The name, or so Quincannon had once been told, derived from the fact that Copperhead sympathizers had stored a large quantity of explosives in one of the houses there during the War Between the States. Gunpowder Alley was even darker than Jessie Street; the frame buildings strung along its short length were shabby presences in the wet gloom. The only illumination was strips and daubs of light that leaked palely around a few drawn window curtains.
Not far from the corner, Hook-nose crossed the alley to a squat, dark structure that huddled between the back end of a saloon fronting on Jessie Street and a private residence. The squat building appeared to be a shop of some sort, its plate-glass window marked with lettering that couldn’t be read at a distance. The man used a key to unlock a recessed door next to the window and disappeared inside.
As Quincannon cut across the alley, lamplight bloomed in pale fragments around the edges of a curtain that covered the store window. He ambled past, pausing in front of the glass to read the lettering: CIGARS, PIPE TOBACCO, SUNDRIES. R. SONDERBERG, PROP. The curtains were made of two sections of heavy muslin; all he could discern through the folds in the middle was a slice of narrow counter. He put his ear to the cold glass. The faint whistling voice of the wind, muted here in the narrow lane, was the only sound to be heard.
He moved on. A narrow, ink-black passage separated R. Sonderberg’s cigar store from the house on the far side — a low, two-story structure with a gabled roof and ancient shingles curled by the weather. The parlor window on the lower floor was a curtainless, palely lamplit rectangle; framed in it was the just discernible shape of a white-haired, shawl-draped woman in a high-backed rocking chair, either asleep or keeping a lonely watch on the street. Crowded close along the rear of store and house, paralleling Gunpowder Alley from the Jessie Street corner to its end, stood the long back wall of a warehouse, its dark windows steel shuttered. There was nothing else to see. And still nothing to hear except the wind.
A short distance beyond the house Quincannon paused to close his umbrella, the drizzle having temporarily ceased. He shook water from the fabric, then turned back the way he’d come. The elderly woman in the rocking chair hadn’t moved — asleep, he decided. Lamp glow now outlined a window in the squat building that faced into the side passage; the front part of the shop was once again dark. R. Sonderberg, if that was who Hook-nose was, had evidently entered a room or rooms at the rear — living quarters, like as not.
Quincannon stopped again to listen and again detected only silence from within. He sidestepped to the door and tried the latch. Bolted. His intention then was to enter the side passage, to determine if access could be gained at the rear. What stopped him was the realization that he was no longer the only pedestrian abroad in Gunpowder Alley.
Heavy footsteps echoed hollowly from the direction of Jessie Street. Even as dark and wet as it was, he recognized almost immediately the brass-buttoned coat, helmet, and handheld dark lantern of a police patrolman. Damn and damnation! Of all times for a blasted bluecoat to happen along on his rounds.
Little annoyed Quincannon more than having to abort an assignment in mid-skulk, but he had no other choice here. He turned from the door, moved at an even pace toward the approaching copper. They met just beyond the joining of the saloon’s back wall and the cigar store’s far-side wall.
Unlike many of his brethren, the bluecoat, an Irishman of some forty years, was a gregarious sort. He stopped, forcing Quincannon to do likewise, and briefly opened the lantern’s shutter so that the beam flicked over his face before saying in conversational tones, “Evening, sir. Nasty weather after a pleasant spring day, eh?”
“More coming, I expect.”
“Aye. A bit of heavy rain before morning. Like as not I’ll have a thorough soaking before my patrol ends.”
Quincannon itched to touch his hat and move on. But the bluecoat was not done with him yet. “Don’t believe I’ve seen you before, sir. Live in Gunpowder Alley, do you?”
“No. Visiting.”
“Which resident, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“R. Sonderberg, at the cigar store. Do you know him?”
“Only by sight. We’ve yet to meet. I’ve only been on this beat two weeks now, y’see. Maguire’s my name, at your service.”
Before Quincannon could frame a lie that would extricate him from Officer Maguire’s company there came in rapid succession a brace of muffled reports. As quiet as the night was, there was no mistaking the fact that they were pistol shots and that the weapon had been fired inside the squat building.
Quincannon’s reflexes were superior to the patrolman’s; he was already on the run by the time the bluecoat reacted. Behind him Maguire shouted something, but he paid no heed. Another sound, a loudish thump, reached his ears as he charged past the shop’s entrance. Seconds later he veered into the side passage. The narrow confines appeared deserted and there were no sounds of movement at its far end. He skidded to a halt in front of the lit window.
Vertical bars set close together prevented both access and egress. The glass inside was dirty and rain spotted, but he could make out the figure of a man sprawled supine on the floor of a cluttered room. There was no sign of anyone else in there.
The spaces between the bars were just wide enough to reach a hand through; he did that, pushing fingers against the pane. It failed to yield to the pressure.
Officer Maguire pounded up beside him, the beam from his lantern cutting jigsaw pieces out of the darkness. The bobbing light illuminated enough of the passage ahead so that Quincannon could see to where it ended at the warehouse wall. He hurried back there while Maguire had his look through the window.
Another short walkway, shrouded in gloom, stretched at right angles to the side passage like the crossbar of the letter T. Quincannon thumbed a lucifer alight as he stepped around behind the cigar store, shielding the flame with his other hand. That section was likewise empty except for a pair of refuse bins. There was no exit in that direction; the walkway ended in a board fence that joined the shop and warehouse walls, built so high that only a monkey could have climbed it. The match’s flicker showed Quincannon the outlines of a rear door to R. Sonderberg’s quarters. He tried the handle, but the heavy door was secure in its frame.
Maguire appeared, his lantern creating more dancing patterns of light and shadow. “See anyone back here?” he demanded.
“No one.”
“Would that rear door be unlatched?”
“No. Bolted on the inside.”
The bluecoat grunted and pushed past him to try the handle himself. While he was doing that, Quincannon struck another match in order to examine the other half of the walkway. It served the adjacent house, ending in a similarly high and unscalable board fence. The house’s rear door, he soon determined, was also bolted from within.
The lantern beam again picked him out. “Come away from there, laddie. Out front with me, step lively now.”