“That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
“Among other things, all of them commanding of respect.”
The corner of his mouth containing the panatela lifted in a half-formed sneer.
“I’m sorry your wife has vanished,” Sabina said with more restraint than she felt, “but she must have had a good reason for leaving and three days is not a long time. She may have returned home already, for all you know. If she is still missing tomorrow, I suggest you set aside your concerns about ‘the good name of Egan’ and consult with the authorities. Now I’ll thank you to leave, sir. Immediately.”
He glowered at her. There wasn’t a trace of the seductive charm, the predatory lothario he had exhibited in his office at Bradford and Egan; in a sense he stood naked before her, his true vindictive, phlegmatic, self-involved nature revealed in all its unsavoriness. Then, abruptly, he turned on his heel and stomped out.
Sabina finished fastening her hat with her favorite Charles Horner pin, wondering again how a woman as bright as Amity could be fooled by such a man. She herself had seen through him at their first meeting, although admittedly she had had advance warning. But then, loneliness and physical attraction were powerful temptations that could lead even the most intelligent individual to don temporary blinders.
She waited long enough to allow Egan to leave the building, then left herself to deliver the Featherstone file to Cornelius Sutton.
17
Quincannon
The night’s unexpected events aboard the Captain Weber and a scant few hours of restless sleep combined to put Quincannon in a foul humor come morning. Awake at dawn, he dressed straightaway and left the cabin. The day was dull gray with swarming clouds, the wind blustery and cold again — weather that worked to his advantage, for it allowed him to once more hide most of his bearded face with his high-wrapped muffler and low-pulled cap. Warm beverages and bakery goods were available in the Social Hall, where only a handful of other early risers had gathered, none of them his quarry or her guest. He drank as much coffee as he could hold, then went out on deck and occupied himself in alternately pacing and standing at the starboard rail astern in a pretense of watching their course past long stretches of broad, yellowish farmland and banks thickly grown with willows, tangles of wild grape, and mistletoe-festooned cottonwoods.
They had come out of the last of the snakelike bends in the river and were on the long reach to Stockton when Buffalo Coat appeared with his possibles bag and entered the Social Hall. Quincannon was close enough to get a better look at him by daylight. His guess of the previous night was accurate: no older than thirty-five, a powder keg of a man with short stubby arms and legs and a large head that seemed to sit squarely on his shoulders. Faugh! Either Pauline Dupree had tastes in men that included the coarse and ugly or he was another of her dupes. Perhaps both.
It was only when the Captain Weber whistled her final approach that Dupree herself ventured out on deck with her carpetbag. Quincannon spied her as she went to stand at the starboard rail, again wearing the distinctive red-and-gold cape and ostrich-plume hat. She stood looking downriver, paying no attention to him or any of the other passengers now abroad.
Buffalo Coat emerged from the Social Hall shortly afterward, but instead of joining her he stood at the rail amidships. Not to be seen together in the light of day, evidently. Which would seem to indicate that once ashore they would go their separate ways.
The Captain Weber docked at the landing at the foot of Stockton’s Center Street, the gangplank was lowered, and the deckhouse passengers began to descend and then to disembark. The actress was among the first group, again refusing a deckhand’s offer of aid with her carpetbag. Buffalo Coat followed at a distance, Quincannon fairly close behind him.
Horse-drawn streetcars and a line of hansom cabs waited on the street. It was no surprise that Dupree made straight to the cab at the front. Buffalo Coat went to join the queue waiting to board one of the streetcars. Quincannon had the darkly fanciful wish that he could divide himself in two, so that he could follow the man as well as his quarry. He was keen to know what the lad was up to — but even more keen to find out where the actress was bound.
As her cab drove away, he hurried to the next in line. Feigning breathlessness, he said to the driver, “Dratted woman! Couldn’t wait for me, blast her.”
“How’s that, sir?”
“My wife. We had a spat just before landing and off she went in a huff without telling me our exact destination. She handles all the details when we travel, you see. That’s her in the cab that just departed. Would you be so good as to follow? There’ll be an extra half-dollar in it for you.”
The cabbie, probably married himself, had no objections. He gigged his horse and they clattered out onto Center Street.
Quincannon knew that Stockton had grown appreciably during the past decade, but since his last trip here four years ago it seemed to be still sprouting. It was now a major transportation and commercial center, its economy driven by flour mills, carriage and wagon factories, iron foundries, farm machinery, and shipyards. Buildings newly erected and in various stages of construction dotted the route into the city center and throughout the downtown.
Pauline Dupree’s destination turned out to be East Main Street and the Yosemite Hotel. A block square, containing two hundred rooms in two stories set above a gallery-windowed main floor, its roof surmounted by a huge American flag, the Yosemite was considered Stockton’s finest hostelry. She departed from her cab at the main entrance. Quincannon, pretending clumsiness, fumbled coins from his change purse to give her time to enter the hotel before he paid the hack driver and followed.
Quincannon shook his head at the door porter, rebuffing him as Dupree had, for she still had her carpetbag in hand as she approached the front desk. Casually, as if examining the lobby’s reasonably lavish furnishings, he moved to a vantage point behind one of numerous urn-encased palms and philodendrons distributed about the lobby. As far as he could tell from a distance, Dupree either was engaging a room or had already done so by wire; he watched her complete the registration and receive a key. But instead of heading for the bank of elevators, she carried her bag through the open glass doors to the dining room, where breakfast was evidently still being served.
Quincannon bought a copy of the Stockton Record from a lobby vendor, then found a velvet plush chair partially concealed by another of the potted plants from where he had an oblique look into the dining room. The actress sat at a dining table near one of the windows, fortunately with her back to the lobby. His mouth began to water as he watched her linger over whatever repast she’d ordered; he made an effort to force his mind away from food.
Resign yourself, John lad, he told himself. It’s likely to be some while before you’re able to partake of another meal yourself.
When Pauline Dupree rose after finishing her breakfast, he raised the newspaper above eye level and peeked around its edges as she reentered the lobby. This time, looking neither left nor right, she went straight to the elevator bank. Once she was inside one of the cars with the door closed, he stood quickly and drifted over there. The indicator arm above the door told him her room was on the top floor.
He resumed his surveillance in a different chair shaded by a different and somewhat larger plant. More than an hour passed, sufficient time for her to have bathed and changed clothes if she intended to go out again. But no, that was not her intention — not yet, at any rate. Another half hour crept away, during which he finished reading the newspaper. Waiting in her room for someone, mayhap Buffalo Coat, or Noah Rideout if he were here in Stockton rather than on Schyler Island. Or for it to be time to keep an appointment elsewhere—