“Cromarty and the others thought so, too. Worthy of a bonus, in my estimation, though one probably won’t be forthcoming. Railroad accountants are notoriously tightfisted.”
“A satisfactory fee for your time and effort, nonetheless.”
“True.” He polluted the room’s atmosphere with more streams of noxious gray-white smoke. “And what have you been up to while I was gone?” he asked then. “Any new cases?”
“One.”
“Lucrative?”
Naturally that would be his first question. “Lucrative enough. The client is a well-to-do securities broker, Winthrop Buckley.”
“A case involving financial shenanigans?”
“No. His problem is personal, concerning his wife.”
“The eternal triangle, eh?”
“Nothing like that.” Sabina paused. “John, if you’re free tomorrow night, I’d like you to attend a séance with me.”
“... Did you say séance?”
“At the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses.”
His thick eyebrows lifted even higher. “Are you serious?”
“Never more.”
“What the devil is the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses?”
“The guise for a spiritualism racket operated by a transplanted New Yorker named Vargas. Professor A. for Abraham Vargas, medium, spirit counselor, and womanizer.”
“Womanizer?”
“By reputation and confirmed by observation and experience.”
John scowled. “You mean he made advances to you?”
“Not overtly. He’s too clever for that.”
“How then?”
Sabina summarized her three experiences in the Turk Street house, word of the hand-holding and finger-stroking and Vargas’s subtly sly innuendoes causing John’s scowl to become fiercer. She also related what she had learned about the charlatan’s past in New York.
“Damn the man,” John said witheringly. “Communication with the dead and the rest of his stage-managed claptrap is nothing but a pile of horse... ah... horsefeathers.”
“In Vargas’s case, yes, I’m sure it is. But quite a lot of people believe in the existence of a spirit afterlife.”
“Don’t tell me you give a whit of credence to such folly?”
“I have an open mind.”
“So do I, on most matters.”
“But not the paranormal.”
“Not a bit of it.”
“Well, your skepticism is more than justified in this case,” Sabina said. “Mr. Buckley’s wife is an avid believer, however, bent on an audience with her long-departed daughter, and Vargas has convinced her that he will be able to arrange it through his self-styled Egyptian spirit guide, Angkar.”
“At this séance tomorrow night?”
“Quite likely, in view of the fact that Mrs. Buckley has promised a substantial donation to his ‘college’ if he succeeds to her satisfaction. Five thousand dollars, to be exact.”
John whistled softly. “And Buckley wants to forestall the financial loss by exposing Vargas for a fraud.”
“That, and to convince his wife of the futility of her quest. Mrs. Buckley must be shown the truth in person before she’ll accept it.”
“And you propose to accomplish this by exposing his spirit-world manifestations for the tricks they are.”
“Just so. It shouldn’t be too difficult, thanks to Madame Louella’s tutoring — I spent half an hour with her earlier today. I expect I could manage it alone, but the two of us working in concert would ensure success.”
“Your safety and that of the Buckleys, as well. There is no telling what scoundrels like this Vargas are capable of when unmasked, even in front of witnesses.”
“You’ll come with me, then? I paved the way this morning by asking Vargas if he minded my bringing my cousin with me. Of course he had no objection to another twenty-five-dollar donation.”
“Unless Mr. Boggs has urgent need of me, yes, I will. Attending a séance will be a new experience for both of us.” John’s glower modulated into one of his basilisk smiles. “The prospect of putting a philandering flimflammer who preys on vulnerable women out of commission warms my cockles.”
Sabina gazed fondly at him. His ready agreement was gratifying; she had expected him to balk some at the suggestion, to have to cajole him into accepting. Another measure of his feelings toward her and their budding intimacy? It pleased her to believe so.
11
Quincannon
A streetcar deposited him at Fifth and Mission, in front of the San Francisco Mint, shortly past nine on Saturday morning. The two-story Greek Revival and Doric-style structure, known as the Granite Lady even though only its base and basement were constructed of granite — the external and upper stories were of sandstone — had been erected in 1874, a much larger replacement of the original mint built during the ’49 Gold Rush. In its granite bowels, millions upon millions of dollars of gold bullion was refined and made into ingots and into coins as needed. It was also where the second-floor offices of the Secret Service, presided over by Mr. Boggs, were located.
As always when he had occasion to come here, Quincannon had mixed feelings as he climbed the broad front steps to the entrance. His memories of his time as a senior Service operative were both good and bad. Until the incident in Arizona nearly eight years ago, in which a stray bullet from his sidearm during a pitched gun battle with a gang of counterfeiters had struck and killed a pregnant bystander, he had gloried in his government work and expected to remain with the Service until retirement age.
But the weight of guilt over the deaths of the innocent woman and her unborn child had plunged him into a downward spiral of alcohol consumption that eventually would have destroyed his career, had it not been for the unwavering support of Mr. Boggs. And meeting Sabina during the course of separate but convergent investigations that had taken them both to the mountain settlement of Silver Springs, Idaho. His decision to leave the Service and open his own private agency, and Sabina’s acceptance of his offer to join forces with him, had firmed his resolve to put a permanent end to his drinking. And though Boggs had been sorry to lose him, the decision had nonetheless met with the chief’s wholehearted approval. The guilt remained, but Quincannon had succeeded in walling it off in a corner of his mind so that, except for an occasional nightmare, it no longer plagued him.
The mint had a central pedimented portico flanked by projecting wings and a completely enclosed courtyard that contained a working well. The entrance to the basement where the gold was stored and refined was well guarded, but the main floor and the one above were open to the public. Quincannon circled halfway around the courtyard, climbed the staircase to the second floor, and found his way to the Secret Service suite. That door was kept locked at all times; he rapped on it, announced himself, and was admitted immediately.
Mr. Boggs waited in his large, cluttered sanctum. It had been nearly a year since Quincannon had last seen his former chief, a chance meeting at the Ferry Building; Boggs hadn’t changed an iota since then, and except for being a little grayer, a little heavier, hardly at all since their working days together. His bulbous nose glowed like a red bung in a keg of whiskey, and as usual one of his favored long-nine cigars jutted from a corner of his mouth.
His handclasp, as always, was as iron-hard as his will. “Good to see you again, John,” he said, “even in pressing circumstances.”
“And you as well, sir.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you came yesterday. Called away on a matter not related to the one I wired you about. You remember the Darrow case, of course.”
Quincannon nodded. “I’m not likely ever to forget Long Nick Darrow, even after ten years.”