The town’s long, crooked main street stretched out beyond the depot. Two- and three-storied wood and stone buildings lined both sides — business establishments and professional offices on one, rows of saloons and Chinese washhouses on the other — and the street was packed with rough-garbed men and a variety of conveyances. Behind the saloons, hidden by tall cottonwoods, lay the notorious red-light district known as “Back-of-Town.” Quincannon happened to know this by hearsay, not personal experience; this was his first visit to the Queen of the Mines. If he were fortunate, he thought irritably, it would also be his last.
Jimtown’s long-standing reputation as the “rip-snortin’est, most altogether roughest town in the mines” was evidently justified. It certainly appeared to be far less tamed down than the mining communities of Grass Valley and Nevada City, seventy-some miles to the north, where he and Sabina had had the misfortune of visiting this past summer. A mad cacophony of noises bludgeoned his eardrums — whistles, cowbells, raucous shouts, tinny piano music, crowing roosters, braying mules, snorting horses, clanks and rattles and steam hisses in the rail yards, distant dynamite blasts and the constant pound of ore crushers at the Ophir and Crystalline mines on the southern outskirts. Those mines, and hundreds more within a ten-mile radius, had already reputedly produced some two million dollars of gold in this year of 1897. Little wonder that the small town was wide open and clamorous.
A reception committee of two awaited Quincannon in front of the depot. The middle-aged gent sporting skimpy brown side whiskers introduced himself as Adam Newell, Sierra Railway’s chief engineer. The long and lanky one with fierce gray eyes and a mustache to match was Samuel B. Halloran, Jimtown’s marshal.
The pair ushered Quincannon into a private office inside the depot, where a third man waited — heavyset, clean-shaven, dressed in a black broadcloth suit spotted with cigar ash and overlain with a gold watch chain as large as any Quincannon had ever seen. This was C. W. Cromarty, the railroad’s division superintendent.
Cromarty’s desk was stacked with profiles, cross-sections, and specification sheets for bridges and building materials such as rails, ties, and switches; arranged behind it was a series of drafting boards containing location and contour maps of the area. All of this, Quincannon was to learn, was for the continuation of the road’s branch into Angels Camp. The branch had been completed as far as Tuttletown, where the trouble that had brought him here had taken place three nights ago.
After they had shaken hands, Cromarty said, “We’ll make this conference brief, Mr. Quincannon. A freight is due in from Tuttletown any minute. As soon as it arrives, we’ll leave in my private car.”
That was fine by Quincannon; the sooner the second jolting train ride commenced, the sooner it would end. He produced his stubby briar and pouch of Navy Cut, began thumbing tobacco into the blackened bowl.
“Has any new information come to light on the robbery?” he asked.
“None so far.”
The engineer, Newell, said, “Tuttletown’s constable, George Teague, would have sent word if he’d learned anything. He’s a good man, Teague, but out of his element in a matter such as this. We’ll be relying on you, sir.”
“A well-placed reliance, I assure you.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, ain’t you?” Halloran said around the stub of a slender cheroot. His voice and his expression both held a faint sneer.
“With just cause.”
“That remains to be seen. You may have a fancy-pants reputation as a detective in San Francisco, you and that woman of yours, but you don’t cut no ice up here.”
Quincannon bristled at this — literally. When his ire was aroused, the hairs in his dark freebooter’s beard stiffened and quivered like the quills on a porcupine. He fixed the marshal with an eye fiercer than Halloran’s own. “Sabina Carpenter is my partner, not ‘my woman.’” Not yet anyway. “A Pinkerton-trained detective the equal of any man.”
“So you say. Me, I never put much stock in a man that’d partner up with a female, trained or not.”
“And I put no stock at all in one who blathers about matters he knows nothing about.”
Cromarty said, “Here, that’ll be enough of that. Marshal, this is a railroad matter, as you well know. The decision to engage Mr. Quincannon has been made and will be abided by.”
“I still say I can do a better job than some citified puff-belly.”
Quincannon bit back a venomous retort. A substantial fee to fatten the bank account of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, had been requested in his reply to Cromarty’s first wire, and agreed upon in his second. It wouldn’t do to indulge in an angry sparring match with a small-town peacekeeper who had no say in the matter and no jurisdiction outside his own bailiwick.
He made a point of ignoring Halloran while he snicked a match alight and fired his pipe. When it was drawing to his satisfaction, he said to Cromarty, “Now then, Superintendent — suppose you provide the details of the robbery left out of your wire. What exactly was the contents of the safe that was stolen?”
“Ten thousand dollars in gold dust and bullion from two of the mines near Tuttletown, awaiting shipment here and on to Stockton.”
“A considerable sum. Why was it being kept in the express office overnight?”
“The shipment failed to arrive in time for the last train that afternoon. The Tuttletown agent felt no cause for concern.”
“Damn fool,” Halloran muttered.
“No, I don’t blame Booker. We all believed the gold was secure where it was. What we overlooked was the audacity of thieves who would carry off a four-hundred-pound burglarproof safe in the middle of the night.”
Quincannon said, “Burglarproof?”
“A brand-new model, guaranteed as such by the manufacturer.”
“I’ve heard such guarantees before.”
“This one has been proven to our satisfaction. Sierra Railway Express now uses them exclusively.”
“What brand of safe is it?”
Cromarty said, “Cannon Berch, with a circular door of reinforced steel. The dial and spindle can be removed once the combination is set, and when that has been done, the safe is virtually impenetrable and indestructible. Not even the most accomplished cracksman was able to breach it in the manufacturer’s tests.”
“And the dial and spindle were removed in this case?”
“Yes. Booker did that before he locked up, took them home with him. He still has them and swears they were never out of his sight.”
“Virtually impenetrable and indestructible, you said? Even with explosives? Dynamite or nitroglycerin inserted in the dial hole in the door?”
“Can’t be done,” Newell said. “You couldn’t open a dialless Cannon Berch with a pile driver.”
Quincannon remained dubious. Ingenuity could be a two-edged sword, as he well knew from experience. If a so-called burglarproof safe could be built, a way to breach it could likewise be found.
“Is this fact common knowledge locally?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say common knowledge,” Cromarty said, “but we’ve made no secret of the fact.”
Then why had the thieves — thieves, plural, for it would have taken at least two strong men to transport four hundred pounds of gold-filled steel — broken into the express office and made off with the safe? Half-wits who refused to believe “burglarproof” and yielded to temptation? Professional yeggs? The latter seemed unlikely, for how would they have known of the availability of both safe and gold in this remote area?