The ivy-covered stone building sat creekside a short distance off the road, connected to it by a graveled lane. Set apart from it on the near side was a shedlike structure with a single facing window, likely the business office. There was no sign of activity there or at a wagon entrance barred by a set of wide double doors at the far end. A somewhat dilapidated wooden livery barn and a rough-fenced corral occupied a grassy section between the road and the creek. No conveyances or animals were visible from where Quincannon stood. Either one or both of the Schneider brothers were out delivering ice, or their wagon and dray horses were tucked up inside the barn.
When he’d seen enough, he walked at a leisurely pace back to Main Street and entered the stone-housed general store near the hotel, Swerer’s by name. As he paid for his purchases, the garrulous young fellow behind the counter took pride in informing him that the writer Bret Harte had once clerked there. Quincannon was more impressed by the outlandish prices charged for one small dark lantern, one tin of lamp oil, and a plug of shag-cut tobacco. Not that the outlay bothered him; these amounts, along with the price of the horse rental and other expenses, would be added to the bill he would present to the Sierra Railway Company for services rendered.
He took the lantern and lamp oil to the hotel and stored them in his room. Then he went to the railroad depot. C. W. Cromarty’s private car, he was pleased to see, still sat on the siding onto which it had been shunted the day before.
“Well, Mr. Quincannon?” Cromarty said. He was alone in the car, seated at a desk almost as cluttered with papers as the one in his Jimtown office. “Have you come to report progress in your investigation?”
“Not exactly, though progress has been made. Do you intend spending another night here in Tuttletown?”
“Not unless there is good cause.” He removed a lighted cheroot from one corner of his mouth, though not in time to prevent an inch of ash from spilling onto the front of his vest. “Is there?”
“There may well be. Unless you have pressing business in Jamestown, I suggest you lay over until tomorrow morning.”
“Why? Do you expect to have finished your investigation by then?”
“Perhaps, if all goes well.”
“Does that mean you know how the safe was breached?”
“Perhaps.”
“And who stole it? And where the gold is?”
“Perhaps.”
Cromarty aimed the cheroot at Quincannon as if it were a pistol. “Dammit, man, don’t be evasive. If you know the answers to this confounded mystery, let me hear them.”
“Not until I’m certain. You’re paying me for definite results, corroborated facts, not premature speculation.”
“You expect to have those results by morning?”
“I do. One way or another. Either the matter will be resolved by then, or I’ll need more time to explore other possibilities. Will you be staying over, Mr. Cromarty? Or shall I report to you in Jamestown tomorrow?”
The division superintendent restored the cheroot to his mouth, bit down hard on the end of it. “You leave me little choice in the matter,” he said. “Adam Newell and I have no urgent need to return to Jamestown. I’ll be here in the morning.”
Quincannon spent the remainder of the day in what amounted to a waiting mode. He asked as many Tuttletown residents as deigned to be responsive discreet questions about the Schneider brothers, learning little more than what Doc Goodfellow had told him; they were not well liked, the prices they charged for blocks and bags of ice being considered exorbitant, and so evidently made a less than comfortable living from their business. Yet another poor dinner at the Miners Rest Café and unproductive visits to a trio of saloons occupied his time until an hour past nightfall.
Once more in his room at Cremer House, he stripped to his long johns and again made an effort to settle himself on the mound of bricks disguised as a mattress. He set his internal clock, a mechanism so unfailing that he never had cause to use one of the alarm variety. He was asleep within minutes, this time without the aid of a temperance tract.
7
Quincannon
At three A.M., dressed in layers of clothing and his buttoned-up Chesterfield, Quincannon slipped out of the hotel’s side entrance. In one gloved hand he carried the dark lantern, its wick already lit and the shutter tightly closed. A thickening layer of clouds deepened the night’s blackness, which suited his purpose well. The few scattered night-lights in business establishments along Main Street, pale by contrast, were oil lamps with their wicks turned down low; electric lights had been installed in Jamestown, but not here as yet.
Main Street was all but deserted at this hour; even the saloons had closed. He avoided the one man he saw, a lurching individual obviously under the influence of strong drink, as he made his way through the town to the side street that led to Icehouse Road. Here he had the night to himself. The darkness was unbroken except for distant flickers of lamplight that marked the locations of the mines and cabins at the higher elevations.
The road in both directions was deserted when he neared the icehouse. He veered over to the tall cottonwoods that bordered it on the south. Under the trees and along the nearby creek, the shadows were as black as India ink. The stone building was likewise shrouded, as were the shedlike office, the livery barn and corral. He stood listening for half a minute. A night bird’s cry, a faint sound from the direction of the corral that was likely the restless movement of a horse. Otherwise, silence. Even the mine stamps were temporarily still.
Quincannon picked his way through dew-wet grass to the rear entrance to the icehouse. Naturally, the pair of heavy wooden doors were secure. He opened the lantern’s shutter a crack, shielding the light with his body, and quickly examined the iron hasp and padlock. Well and good. The padlock was large and looked new, but it was of inferior manufacture.
He closed the shutter, set the lantern down. The set of lock picks he carried, an unintentional gift from a burglar he’d once snaffled, were the best ill-gotten funds could fabricate, and long practice had taught him how to manipulate them as dexterously as any housebreaker. The absence of light hampered his efforts here; it took him three times longer, working by feel, than it would have under normal circumstances to free the padlock’s staple. Not a sound disturbed the stillness the entire time.
He removed the lock, hung it from the hasp, and opened one door half just wide enough to ease his body through. The temperature inside was several degrees colder. When he opened the lantern’s shutter all the way, he saw that he was in a narrow space that sloped downward and was blocked on the inner side by a second set of doors. These, fortunately, were not locked.
The interior of the icehouse was colder still, as frigid as a ward politician’s heart. Quincannon opened the lantern’s eye to its fullest, shined the light around.
This was an old-fashioned ice-harvesting business, without benefit of an expensive modern compression refrigeration unit. The stone walls, he judged, were at least two feet thick and the wooden floor set six feet or so below ground level. Large and small blocks of ice lined both walls, cut from the creek or more likely from the Stanislaus River during the winter months. Thick layers of straw covered the floor, and more was packed around the ice blocks; the low ceiling would likewise be insulated with straw to help keep the sun’s heat from penetrating. A trapdoor in the middle of the floor doubtless gave access to a stone- or brick-walled pit that would also be ice-filled, a solid mass ready to be broken by ax and chisel into smaller chunks as needed.