Quincannon
He arrived at the UT wharf at five o’clock. The early arrival was deliberate, in the hope that he would already be on board when Pauline Dupree appeared. He would have come even earlier, but it had been necessary to return to his flat on Leavenworth to pack his cowhide valise and then to stop in at the offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Sabina hadn’t been there, which was probably just as well, since it allowed him to avoid lengthy explanations and a probable reprimand. He’d written her a short message:
In haste—
Bound for San Joaquin Delta aboard night boat this evening, on the trail of P. Dupree. May be away for several days. Will wire details and developments if so.
Have gathered sufficient evidence to prove Featherstone guilty of embezzlement. No time to deliver report to client as promised. Regret task is now yours. Will make it up to you upon return.
Your Devoted Servant,
The Captain Weber was a fairly new stern-wheeler, having been built in 1892. One hundred and seventy-five feet in length, with a modern, high-revolution compound engine, she had slim, graceful hull lines and three decks, the uppermost weather deck containing the pilothouse and officers’ quarters. Despite being well-appointed and the fastest boat on the Stockton run, she carried fewer passengers on the average than the other packets. The reason for this was Mrs. Sarah Gillis, who had inherited the Union Transportation Company after her husband’s death and who was an outspoken leader of the Stockton local of the W.C.T.U. The Captain Weber and her sister boat, the Dauntless, were the only two dry packets on either river. Either Pauline Dupree wasn’t aware of this or alcohol was not one of her many vices.
Freight wagons and baggage vans clogged the wharfside, joining with the deep-throated bellows of foghorns to create a constant din. Burly roustabouts unloaded sacks and boxes of freight, passenger luggage, and steamer trunks and trundled them up the aft gangplank. A smattering of travelers had already boarded, and a well-dressed gentleman and a handsome woman in a large hat preceded Quincannon up the forward gangplank to the steerage and cargo deck. He wondered idly if they were married or if they might be about to indulge in a clandestine extramarital or premarital dalliance. The night boats to Sacramento and Stockton had a reputation among the city’s upper class as discreet floating bagnios.
A few of the early arrivals were clustered along the deck railings, watching the loading process — a scant few, for the evening was cold, the bay shrouded in thick, wet fog. This worked to Quincannon’s advantage, allowing him to wear his chesterfield, a wool muffler drawn up tightly over the lower half of his face, and a woolen cap pulled down over his forehead. Anyone who knew him by sight, Pauline Dupree included, would have to stand close to recognize him. Valise in hand, he ascended to the deckhouse, where the Social Hall and the staterooms were located, and took up a position among the watchers at the hammock-netted rail there that allowed him a clear view of the gangplank.
More passengers began to arrive on foot and by hansom. Small merchants, miners, sun-weathered farmers and farmhands, and coolie-hatted Chinese remained on the steerage deck; the more affluent continued on up the stairway to the deckhouse. It was five-thirty by Quincannon’s stem-winder when a hansom delivered Pauline Dupree.
He watched her alight — she was alone — and make her approach. Dusk was descending; electric lamps had been lit along the wharf, lanterns on the gangplank. He had a clear view of her as she mounted, one gloved hand on the railing, the other clutching a large neutral-color carpetbag that looked to be moderately heavy. She was regally dressed in a heavy wool hooded cape of red and gold, high-button calfskin shoes, and a red ostrich-plumed hat atop her dark gold hair.
She allowed one of the deckhands to help her aboard but not to relieve her of the carpetbag, then climbed the staircase looking neither left nor right and proceeded into the tunnel-like hallway that bisected the deckhouse lengthwise, where the entrances to starboard and larboard staterooms faced each other across the wide plank deck.
Quincannon followed, waiting a few seconds to give her time to present herself to the cabin steward. Then he entered slowly, in time to watch the steward show her to her stateroom, the forward most in the starboard row.
When she was inside with the louvered door closed and the steward returned, he claimed his own stateroom near the aft larboard end.
It was well appointed, the upholstery red plush, the paneling of tongue-and-groove pine, brass lamps polished to a bright sheen. None of this made an impression; he had traveled the far more opulently furnished Mississippi River steamers during his years in Baltimore. He stayed just long enough to deposit his valise and shutter the window, locking the door behind him with the key provided by the steward. Outside again, he made his way forward to a place at the rail where he could keep an eye on the passage between the deckhouse exit and the Social Hall.
Pauline Dupree did not join the handful of other passengers on deck when the gangplank was raised at exactly six o’clock. The Captain Weber’s buckets astern immediately began to churn the water in a steady rhythm; her whistle, which had been shrilling an all-aboard and all-visitors-ashore warning, altered cadence to become a steerage signal for the pilot. Competing whistles sounded and bells clanged elsewhere along the waterfront as the other night packets commenced backing down from their berths. There was a period of controlled chaos as the boats, flags flying from their jackstaffs and from their verge staffs astern, maneuvered for right-of-way in the heavy mist. Columns of smoke from their stacks joined with the fog to turn the evening sky a sooty gray-black.
When the Captain Weber was well clear of the wharves and the other packets, her speed increased steadily. As she passed near Fort Alcatraz, where a garrison of soldiers had stood ready to repel attacks by Rebel privateers during the Civil War (none such had taken place), Quincannon crossed through the passage to the starboard side. Cautiously he approached the window of Pauline Dupree’s stateroom. It was shuttered, but thin strips of lamplight leaked palely through the downturned slats.
Accompanied by the throb of foghorns, the steamer progressed north into San Pablo Bay. From that point their course, and that of the other boats, would be east into the narrow Carquinez Strait and southeast past Cripp’s Island to the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers; there they would swing south and proceed along a circuitous route among the myriad delta islands to their final destinations.
The icy evening wind blowing across the bay eventually drove him into the Social Hall. This was where coffee, tea, and other non-alcoholic beverages could be purchased, gentlemen passengers smoked pre- and post-prandial cigars and engaged in friendly games of poker, chess, and checkers, and ladies and couples played bridge or whist. There was even entertainment of a sort, which tonight consisted of a gaudily outfitted gent strumming industriously on a banjo. Quincannon warmed himself with two cups of hot clam juice. After the second cup, he went out on deck and again reconnoitered her stateroom windows. The faint light glow through the slats attested to the fact that the actress was still closeted inside. And likely intended to remain there.
He’d had faint hopes, now gone, that she would crave company in the Social Hall and be away long enough for him to surreptitiously pick the lock on her stateroom door and conduct a quick search. It was unlikely that she would have risked carrying ten thousand dollars in cash on a crowded riverboat; she was brazen, but no fool. Chances were she had taken steps to safeguard it. Sent the cash, carefully packed, on ahead of her by railroad express to New York, if that was in fact her final destination. Or opened an account at a San Francisco bank other than the Woolworth National and arranged to have the funds transferred to an eastern bank. But if he’d been able to gain access he might have discovered Titus Wrixton’s letters, if Dupree had chosen to keep them, or other telltale evidence among her possessions.