It was after five o’clock when he reentered the lobby. His stomach was making ominous grumbling noises — his only provender for the day had been a tasteless sandwich in Marysville — but dining alone tonight had no appeal. Besides, he did not want to be in the midst of a meal when Sabina arrived.
He bought the most recent edition of the Sacramento Bee, found a comfortable leather chair within view of the registration desk, and settled down to wait.
21
Sabina
Sabina thought her eyes must be playing tricks on her.
It had been a long, tiresome day. The day coach on the train from Oakland had been crowded and stuffy, her seatmate a fat man who smelled of cheap cigars and bay rum. Three hours in his proximity plus a lack of food had given her a throbbing headache. The edges of her vision were slightly blurry, and the Golden Eagle’s electric-lighted chandeliers were bright enough to cause her to squint as she started across the crowded lobby, a bellhop carrying her carpetbag two steps behind. The bearded, neatly dressed man who rose from one of the chairs and came toward her made only a vague impression at first, then as he drew closer she saw that he bore a remarkable resemblance to John. She blinked, passed a hand over her eyes. It couldn’t be John—
But it was.
She came to such an abrupt standstill, confusion mingling with surprise, that the porter nearly stumbled into her. He retreated as a smiling John reached her and took her arm. “Hello, my dear,” he said. “Fancy us meeting like this so far from home.”
“John! What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
She felt a trifle faint, a rarity for her under any circumstances. She steadied herself by leaning against his arm. The bellhop was staring at them; so were two passersby in silk hats and evening clothes. She said sotto voce, “We can’t have a discussion standing here among all these people.”
“No, we can’t.”
He guided her to the registration desk, stood by while she signed the register. Then he drew her aside, out of earshot of the clerk and other guests hovering near the desk.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
“No. And I’m half starved.”
“So am I. We can converse over dinner.”
“I need to freshen up first.”
He nodded. “I’ll wait for you here. Don’t be too long, my dear.”
“I won’t.”
Sabina followed the bellhop up to her reserved room on the third floor. She washed her face, applied a small amount of rouge to her cheeks (her skin struck her as pale), brushed and repinned her hair, and exchanged her gray serge traveling dress and Langtry bonnet for the only semiformal outfit she’d brought with her: an ivory white shirtwaist with ruffles capping the shoulder, a pale green skirt that fitted closely over the hip and flared just above the knee, and a small black turban hat. The other outfit in her hastily packed bag was the least conservative in her wardrobe, bought for the infrequent occasions when circumstances required her to pose as a commoner. Now, fortunately, it seemed she would not have to wear it after all.
John had reserved a private table in the elegantly appointed dining room. A white-jacketed waiter set bills of fare in front of them, then took Sabina’s order for a glass of cream sherry and John’s for warm clam juice.
John placed her hand between both of his. “Two weeks is a long time for us to have been parted,” he said. “I missed you, my dear.”
“And I you. It’s a relief to see you hale and hearty, John. No visible scars.”
He started an involuntary reach for his missing earlobe, stopped himself halfway, and lowered his hand. He said with a mild leer, “Nor any hidden ones, as you’ll soon see.”
Sabina let that pass without comment. “Did you succeed in ferreting out the high-graders?”
“I did, and in less than half the time allotted by Everett Hoxley. There’ll be no more organized gold thievery at the Monarch Mine. Two of the gang are dead — not by my hand, I hasten to add — and the rest in jail. All that is except one, the ringleader.”
“Jedediah Yost?”
“None other.”
“And he is the reason you’re in Sacramento?”
“Yes. He slipped out of Patch Creek with a large amount of gold dust on Sunday, and I suspect he came here to dispose of it. He is no more a union representative than I am, and the Yost cognomen is an alias. A sly, canny devil, whatever his real name.”
“Bart Morgan,” Sabina said.
His jaw dropped. He fluffed his whiskers, as he sometimes did when taken aback, before saying, “Bart Morgan? That is Yost’s real name?”
“It is. Bartholomew Morgan.”
“Are you certain?”
“Positive. He is an assayer and metallurgist by trade, with a highly disreputable past.”
“An assayer. Of course! That explains his knowledge of gold mining and of where to sell the stolen gold at the best possible price. How did you find out about him?”
There was no sense in hiding or evading the truth. She’d done enough of that the past few days, far too much of it. “From Carson Montgomery. He was acquainted with Morgan briefly in Downieville ten years ago and recognized him from his description.”
John said through a scowl, “So Morgan was one of the thieves Montgomery was mixed up with back then, eh?”
“No. Carson had no dealings with Morgan, knew him only by reputation.”
“So he claimed to you. I thought you wanted nothing more to do with the man.”
“I don’t in the way you mean,” Sabina said, “nor does he with me. I went to see him in his office as a last resort, when all my other efforts to find out Yost’s true identity failed.”
John made a grumbling noise in his throat, but if he intended a further challenge, the arrival of their drinks forestalled it. Sabina’s empty stomach had set up a grumbling of its own; if she didn’t eat soon, her lingering headache would worsen. She asked the waiter for a dinner recommendation, and was told that the brook trout almondine was quite good. She ordered that and creamed asparagus, and a bowl of clam chowder to start. John, who usually preferred to make his own dinner selections, said he would have the same without consulting the menu.
“Is what you found out about Morgan the reason you came to Sacramento?” he asked her when they were alone again.
“Part of the reason, yes. Carson remembered that Morgan’s wife was from Sacramento and yearned to return, so it seemed possible that he might have moved here from Downieville.”
“What were you planning to do? Travel to Patch Creek to pass the information on to me?”
“I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible, and there was no better way of informing you.”
“How would you have informed me, thinking as you must have been that I was still working undercover as a miner?”
That had been a problem, as Sabina pointed out when Callie had tendered the notion of her going to Patch Creek. She had solved it in the cab she’d hired to take her to her flat to pack for the trip. She would pose as J. F. Quinn’s sister bearing news of a family tragedy, a plausible means of getting a message to him that would not have jeopardized his mission. That had been the reason she’d packed the one dowdy outfit she owned, to disguise her breeding and physical attributes when she arrived in Patch Creek.
When she related the method to John, he said reprovingly, “A gold camp is a perilous place for a respectable woman of any class. And you couldn’t possibly look unattractive no matter how you’re dressed.”