“So you keep claiming. You’d damn well better prove it if you know what’s good for you.”
“I don’t take kindly to threats, Mr. O’Hearn, from anyone, including my employers and their minions. When you hear from me again, it will be with proof in hand.”
Quincannon turned on his heel and stomped back up the stairs without a backward glance.
Frank McClellan’s shack was larger and somewhat better built than the other miners’ dwellings staggered along the hillside above Patch Creek. Elderberry and chokecherry bushes crowded around it, giving it more privacy than most of its neighbors and making it easier for Quincannon to approach it without being seen.
It was a few minutes before midnight now, the cold mountain night moonless, the shadows a deep velvety black. Lamplight showed in a few of the other shacks, but none of those were close to McClellan’s. His was a completely dark, looming shape. The assistant foreman had been sharing a bottle of forty-rod whiskey with three others in the Golden Dollar when Quincannon left, and judging by their boisterous conversation, they intended to remain there for quite some time.
Keeping to clots of shadow, Quincannon eased up to the shack. He had armed himself tonight with the hideout weapon he favored for undercover work such as this Monarch business, and that he’d kept secreted in a pouch inside his war bag — a Remington double-barrel.41-caliber rimfire derringer. Not that he expected to need it, but he felt more secure with it close to hand.
He paused at the door to listen; the only sounds came from a distance, wind-carried snatches of saloon piano music and the distant throb of the stamps. There was a large padlock on the door latch, fairly new by the feel of it and its staple, but it presented no problem. He had come prepared with his burglar’s set of lock picks, which he’d also kept secreted in his war bag. It took him less than five minutes to breach the lock.
He left it hanging open in its hasp, parted the door from the jamb, eased himself inside, and shut it quickly behind him. The sharp odors of unwashed clothing, wood smoke, and alcohol set him to breathing through his mouth. The darkness was stygian; he struck a match to orient himself, shielding its flame with his hand. One large room, slightly less monastic than a monk’s cell. Sheet-iron stove, puncheon table, wall bench, pole bunk with a thick mattress and woolen blankets. The only window was covered by a thick muslin curtain. He crossed to it, made sure the curtain fit tight to the frame by propping the shack’s only chair against its lower edge.
From his coat pocket he took the other item he’d brought with him, a miner’s candle appropriated from the mine stores. Searching by candlelight was no easy chore, but it was the only method open to him; his oil-wick cap lamp cast too bright a light even with the window curtain secured. He struck a match to light the candle’s wick. In its glow he spied a tin dish on the wall bench; a residue of wax identified it as a candleholder. He wax-anchored the candle in the dish, then set quickly to business.
Two items were wedged beneath the bunk, McClellan’s duffel and a small leather case. He examined the case first. Its only contents were three identical dark brown bottles; the label on one he lifted out bore a steel-engraved photograph of a healthy-looking, muscle-flexing gent and the words “Perry Davis’ Pain Killer.” Quincannon was familiar with the product — a patent medicine that claimed to have great thaumaturgic powers, good for man and beast, but whose main ingredient was pure alcohol. It was more potent, in fact, than most lawfully manufactured whiskeys. McClellan evidently did as much private drinking here as he did publicly in the Golden Dollar.
Quincannon turned his attention to the duffel and its contents. Wads of soiled shirts, socks, and union suits. A new, sealed deck of playing cards. A torn dime novel featuring the exploits of a Wild West character named Deadwood Dick. And a leather drawstring pouch. But the pouch turned out to be a disappointment. All it contained was a collar button, a woman’s corset stay, two Indian Head pennies, the nib of a pen, and half a dozen other odds and ends of value only to the assistant foreman.
Quincannon replaced the pouch and the rest of the items, pushed the duffel and the case of Pain Killer back under the bunk. He searched the bunk itself, feeling under the mattress; all he found was the desiccated remains of a large moth. The wall bench yielded nothing, either; nor did the stove’s ash box and flue. The woodbox beside the stove was partially full; he lifted out the sticks of firewood, to no avail. Then he moved the empty box aside to probe underneath.
Ah! A foot-long section of floorboard there was loose.
He pried it up with the aid of his pocket knife. Tucked into the narrow opening beneath was a drawstring pouch similar to the one in the duffel. This one, however, contained paydirt — literally. McClellan’s private stash. Quincannon emptied a little of the gold dust into the palm of his hand, where it glittered wickedly in the candle flame. After a moment he sifted it back inside, then hefted the pouch. Perhaps two troy ounces, he judged.
He returned the pouch to the hidey-hole, covered it with the loose board, covered that with the woodbox, and restacked the cordwood inside. Then he removed the candle from the tin dish, set the dish back on the bench where he’d found it, and slid the propped chair away from the window curtain. A quick glance around assured him that everything was now as it had been when he entered. He blew out the candle flame, cracked the door open, peeked out. A night owl had the area to itself, and flew off hooting when Quincannon emerged and slipped away downhill among the shadows, feeling well pleased with the night’s effort.
Two troy ounces of gold were worth less than $50 total. Not enough to prove conclusively that McClellan was one of the high-graders, but enough to satisfy himself of the man’s complicity. What other reasonable explanation could there be for a mine official paid in greenbacks and coins to possess a hidden stash of pure gold dust?
9
Sabina
It did not take Sabina long to locate the man who had called himself Oscar Follensbee.
The business card Gretchen Kantor had given her was what made the task much simpler than she’d anticipated. Another study of it stirred her memory: it was familiar because another card made of the same heavy white vellum and with a similar design had been presented by an agency client within the past year or so. She rummaged through their file of business cards. Yes, there it was. Philip Justice, Importer of Fine Cigars. She recalled the case: John had exposed the individual, a disgruntled former employee, behind an attempt to extort money from Justice by dint of a false claim of marital infidelity.
The card gave Justice’s business address on Battery Street but no telephone number. The importer was on the Exchange, however; a check of John’s report of the investigation provided the number. And a call to an obliging Mr. Justice elicited the name of the firm that printed his business cards — Bromberg Printing and Lithographic Company.
The printer’s Commercial Street address was within walking distance. Sabina closed the agency and joined the throng of downtown pedestrians. The crisp fall air was invigorating after the stuffy confines of the office; she set a brisk pace.
Bromberg Printing turned out to be a small storefront, its name neatly painted in a half-moon scroll on a plate-glass panel in the entrance door. The thump and chatter of a printing press in operation, and the usual, not unpleasant odors of ink, paper, and machine oil, greeted her when she stepped inside.
There were no customers at present, and no one behind the service counter. A hand bell on the countertop gave out a surprisingly loud ring when she struck it with her palm. Presently a middle-aged man wearing a full-length leather apron appeared. He bore a somewhat startling resemblance to a hound dog — pouches like miniature valises under his eyes, drooping jowls, ears so large and protuberant they gave the impression of flopping when he moved. Even his smile had a faintly mournful canine quality.