He slept late, catching up on the past week’s lost sleep, then rode a trolley car to the Cobweb Palace, Abe Warner’s eccentric eatery on Meigg’s Wharf, for a leisurely meal of abalone steak and rhubarb pie. One of two slumming young women at a nearby table kept casting glances in his direction and smiling when she caught his eye. Interested and flirtatious — a sort he knew well from past experience. It would have been easy enough to have made her acquaintance, and eventually if not immediately been permitted to sample her favors.
But now, feeling as he did about Sabina, he was not even slightly tempted. There was something a bit sad in that, in the transformation... no, the demise... of a practiced ladies’ man. Not that he regretted it. A woman as attractive, as exciting, as exceptional as Sabina made all others seem deficient in both charm and sex appeal.
After lunch he went for a stroll through the Sunday bazaar in the open field opposite the Palace Hotel, with its salmagundi of patent medicine and physical therapy pitchmen, phrenologists, palm readers, temperance speakers, organ grinders, food sellers, Salvation Army musicians. He viewed all of this with his usual jaundiced eye, stopping at none of the booths and buying nothing, but it helped pass the afternoon.
A light evening meal and games of pool and snooker, both of which he played expertly, at Hoolihan’s Saloon, and then home to his lonely flat to read from his collection of volumes of poetry until it was time for bed. All in all a pleasant enough Sunday.
But it would have been so much better had he shared it with Sabina.
18
Quincannon
Monday, like Sunday, was another uneventful day. Or it was until that evening.
He heard nothing from Ezra Bluefield or any of his other contacts regarding the coney game, there was no old business that required his attention nor any new business at all. The only thing that made it tolerable was Sabina’s presence in the office, and at that she refused to allow him to do nothing more than sit at his desk smoking his pipe and meditating; instead she coerced him into helping her with billing matters and the updating of the agency’s file of dossiers on known criminals. Paperwork, bah! He was a man of action, when there was any action to be had, not a glorified clerk.
He made the mistake of saying that last to Sabina, and received a tongue-lashing in return. “Is that what you think I am, a glorified clerk?” she said crossly.
“No, no, of course not...”
“I do most of the invoicing and bill-paying, as you well know. Not to mention writing reports, handling our finances, and now and then conducting an investigation such as the one for Winthrop Buckley. And yet you growl and grumble every time I ask you to do a few simple tasks to ease my burden, even when you’re not busy.”
Quincannon swallowed a sigh. A small crisis last night, and now another today. Women could be difficult on occasion, an emancipated woman twofold. Not that he blamed her for pointing out what few shortcomings he possessed. She did spend a great deal of her time attending to office chores he avoided, and clearly found them as dull and repetitious as he did.
He poured oil on the troubled waters by saying, “You’re right, my dear, and you’ll get no more argument from me. What would you like me to do?”
“Write the report on the Buckley case. I’ll give you my notes.”
And a long, detailed report it was bound to be. Ah, well. He tackled it with as much good humor as he could muster. He made sure to give most of the credit for the investigation’s successful resolution to Sabina — she deserved it, after all — and to minimize his own role in the matter. When he showed the finished report to her and she’d read through it, she nodded and smiled her approval.
“Now that wasn’t such a difficult chore, was it, John?”
“Not at all.”
The white lie earned him another smile, a warmer one to show that he was back in her good graces.
The rest of the day crawled away. The prospect of an intimate dinner for two would have made the slow passage of time more tolerable, but he’d been thwarted once again by her involvement with the suffrage movement: she was dining tonight with her cousin Callie French and other female members of the social set in an effort to raise more funding for the upcoming convention. Another dull evening loomed ahead for him.
Sabina departed early and Quincannon closed the office shortly afterward. Home? No, Hoolihan’s. There, at least, he would have the company of other lonely souls in a convivial atmosphere.
Hoolihan’s Saloon was a haven for those who disliked the noisy grandiosity of the tony saloons that catered to the politicians, judges, businessmen, and prowling gay blades who indulged in the nightly Cocktail Route bacchanal. Small merchants, office workers, tradesmen, Embarcadero dock-wallopers were its clientele — men who preferred a place free of the glitter of crystal chandeliers and fancy mirrors, a floor coated with sawdust, a back room packed with pool, billiard, and snooker tables, and a stomach-filling free repast of corned beef, strong cheese, rye bread, pigs’ feet, hard-boiled eggs, and pickles. Some were solitary drinkers, whose privacy was respected by staff and patrons alike. Quincannon had been drawn there in his drinking days, and even after taking the pledge continued to frequent it. He knew most of the regulars well and considered the head bartender, Ben Joyce, a friend.
“Hello, you bloody Scotsman,” Joyce said, his usual greeting, when Quincannon bellied up. “Back again tonight, eh?”
“In spite of having to look at your ugly face.”
“Hah. At least mine doesn’t resemble a black sheep’s hind end.”
He poured a mug of warm clam juice without being asked, set it in front of Quincannon with a feigned expression of distaste. “Only a barbarian would drink the likes of this,” he said.
“You must have a fair lot of barbarians among your customers, else you wouldn’t stock it.”
Quincannon had been there for the better part of half an hour, and was helping himself to a generous plate of free food, when a little, seedy-looking fellow in a patched coat and lye-colored pants sidled up to him and tugged on his sleeve. No one he’d ever seen before, and not the sort to be drawn to or long tolerated in Hoolihan’s at any rate, dressed as he was and giving off a ripe odor of unwashed flesh.
“You be Mr. Quincannon, eh?” he said in a voice like a frog’s croak. An Australian frog, judging from the slight accent. Like as not a second-generation Sydney Duck.
“And if I am?”
“I was told I might find you here. Me name’s Owney.”
Quincannon extricated his sleeve from the grubby fingers. “What do you want?”
“A private word with you, sir, to your benefit.”
“Who told you to look me up?”
“A gent I knows gives me your name. An acquaintance, as you might say, of Mr. Ezra Bluefield.”
Quincannon’s interest sharpened considerably at the mention of Bluefield’s name. “Come along, then,” he said. “We’ll have our private word at one of the tables.”
Owney was eyeing the plate of food, his tongue flicking over chapped lips; obviously it was much more appetizing fare than he was used to. “Would you mind, sir, if I was to have a bite to eat meself? Pigs’ feet’s always been me favorite.”
“We’ll talk first. If what you have to say is worthwhile, you can have this plateful.”
“And p’raps a glass of beer to quench me thirst?”
“That, too.”
“Ah, I can tell you’re a gentleman, sir, a true gentlemen. You’ll not be disappointed in what I haves to tell you, I guarantee it.”