Quincannon (13 page)

She was alone in the front part of the millinery shop, cutting a strip from a bolt of paisley cloth, when Quincannon turned in off the stairs. She looked up, wearing the polite smile of a proprietress for a prospective customer; then the smile vanished and she straightened and set down her shears. She stood stiffly, watching him.

He stopped five feet from the table. Her hair was different again today: pulled back and rolled into a tight chignon. It gave her face a severity that was enhanced by the displeasure in her expression. Nevertheless he felt the same physical desire as last night: like it or not, she was a fire in his blood. He forced himself to remember their last meeting, the embarrassment of it; to face her with a professional detachment.

She said, “You have quite a nerve, Mr. Lyons, coming back here after last night. I should have thought I made it quite clear how I felt.”

“You did. The purpose of this visit is strictly business.”

“What sort of business?”

“The sort that needs to be discussed in complete privacy. I think you should go downstairs, put up the ‘Closed’ sign, and lock the door so we won’t be disturbed.”

She smiled wryly. “I’m sure you do.”

“I assure you,” he said with some of her stiffness, “that I have no intention of making any more improper advances. Your virtue is quite safe.”

“Just what is it you wish to discuss?”

“Among other matters, you and your reason for coming to Silver City.”

She frowned. “My reason for coming here was to open this millinery shop.”

“No it wasn’t,” he said. “You came to prove, if you could, that Oliver Truax is operating a pyramid swindle with Paymaster Mining Company stock.”

The words startled her. Some of the color faded out of her cheeks; the displeasure and the feminine righteousness faded with it, leaving her with an uncertain look. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, realized what she was doing, and released it. She didn’t speak.

Quincannon said, “The fact is, Miss Carpenter, you are a Pink Rose operating out of Denver. You do know what the term ‘Pink Rose’ means, don’t you?”

She knew and she grew even paler. Her gaze held his for another second or two, then slid away. Abruptly she came away from the table, moved past him to the stairs, picked up her skirts, and hurried down. He heard her at the door, the sound of the bolt being thrown. When she came back up she returned to the table, without looking at him as she passed, and stood with one hand resting on the bolt of cloth. Her fingers, he noticed, were only inches from the sharp pair of shears.

“Your name isn’t Andrew Lyons, is it,” she said.

“No. It’s Quincannon. John Quincannon.”

“Quincannon,” she repeated, as if tasting the word. “Very well, Mr. Quincannon., what is it you want from me?”

“Cooperation.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We are more or less in the same profession, you and I,” he said. “I am an operative of the United States Secret Service, attached to the field office in San Francisco.”

Her eyes widened. Incredulously she said, “The Secret Service? Really, Mr. Quincannon ...”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Why should I? After all, you’re a — ” She broke off.

“A drunkard? Yes, Miss Carpenter, I am. And the fact will no doubt cost me my job one day.” He took out his Service badge and Boggs’ latest telegram, moved over to set both items on the table, and then stepped back. “Perhaps those will convince you.” He waited until she had examined them, then said, “The telegram is from the agent in charge of the San Francisco office. He signs himself Arthur Caldwell, but his real name is Boggs. You can verify that by wire, if you like, through the Pinkerton office in Denver. I’m sure Mr. Boggs has been in touch with your superior there.”

She seemed confused and nonplussed now, as if all of this was too much for her to grasp at once. She moved away from the table again, this time to sit down on a stool used for customer fittings. After a moment she said, “You’ve shaken me, Mr. Quincannon. More than I’d care to admit.”

“It was as much of a shock for me to learn that you’re a Pinkerton.”

“I suppose so. But what is a Secret Serviceman doing
here
? Not also investigating Oliver Truax and the Paymaster Mining Company, surely ...”

“No. A gang of counterfeiters is what I’m after.”

“Coneymen? In Silver City?”

“Yes. One of the largest and most organized boodle games ever to operate west of the Rocky Mountains.”

“Do you know who is running it?”

“I have strong suspicions, yes.”

“It’s not Oliver Truax?”

“No. I don’t believe he’s involved. But I do think his wife might be.”

That surprised the Pink Rose, but not as much as it might have. She said, “How would Helen Truax be mixed up with counterfeiters?”

“Jack Bogardus,” he said.

“You mean you suspect Bogardus is the ringleader?”

“I do. And that the Rattling Jack mine is the manufacturing and shipping point for the queer.”

She nodded slowly and thoughtfully. “Yes, I can see how that might be possible. Do you have proof?”

“Not quite enough to act on as yet. I take it you had no suspicions anything of the sort might be going on?”

“No, none. It’s common knowledge that Mrs. Truax and Bogardus are engaged in a clandestine relationship; I have even seen the two of them together. But I believed, as everyone else does, that Bogardus’ newfound wealth was the result of a rich new silver vein.”

“Whistling Dixon was involved, too,” Quincannon said. “I believe that’s why he was killed. And the same is true of Jason Elder.”

“Elder is dead?”

“Yes. His body was found yesterday, in a canyon back in the hills. He had been tortured before he was killed.”

“My God. Why?”

“He had something Bogardus and his gang badly wanted; I’m not sure what. But he wouldn’t tell them what he’d done with it even under the torture. They thought he might have hidden it at the newspaper office or given it to Will Coffin; that is why the office and Coffin’s house were broken into, not because of any Chinese retaliation against his stand on opium. They also searched Elder’s shack, of course. It was ransacked before you searched it yourself?”

“Yes. I thought it strange when I found it that way.”

“Why were you at Elder’s shack?”

“Last week I followed Mrs. Truax there — a curious rendezvous for a woman of her station. I intended to investigate her relationship with Elder, but then I learned Oliver Truax was going to Boise to sell a block of Paymaster stock and I followed him there instead. Tuesday morning was the first opportunity I had to check up on Elder. And it seemed safe enough to search his shack then; I ran into Will Coffin before I went there and he told me Elder had disappeared.”

“Where did you find the stock certificate?”

“In a fireproof box inside the stove.”

“Was there anything else in the box?”

She shook her head. “Is it possible the certificate is what Bogardus was after?”

“I don’t see how. Do you?”

“No,” she said. “There is nothing important or incriminating about it that I can see. Still ... she
was
eager enough to have it back when she confronted me.”

“
She
confronted
you
? Didn’t you tell her on Tuesday night that you had found the certificate?”

“I did not. I had struck up an acquaintance with the woman and invited her to visit the shop.” There was reproof in Sabina Carpenter’s tone as she said, “You were the one who told her I had the stock.”

“A foolish mistake,” Quincannon admitted, “and I apologize for it. What was her mood when she came to you about it?”

“Angry, of course. She demanded that I let her have the certificate.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“I had no choice. She threatened to go to the marshal if I didn’t.”

“Do you know why she signed her stock over to Elder?”

“No. She wouldn’t say, and I had no luck finding out on my own. I couldn’t imagine a personal relationship between her and Elder. You never saw him, did you? He was an ugly little man with yellow skin from his addiction. But now I wonder if it was something to do with the boodle game that caused her to give him the stock.”

“It must have been.”

“You suspect Elder of being the engraver of the counterfeit plates?”

“Yes,” Quincannon said, and something stirred in his memory — something he had overheard Bogardus say to Helen Truax.
Now that we’re operating again, another couple of weeks is all we’ll Meed — at least two more big shipments.

Now that we’re operating again. ...

“The plates,” he said.

Sabina Carpenter looked at him questioningly.

“The plates,” he repeated. “God, yes,
that
must be what Elder hid from Bogardus. There was a falling out of some sort, Elder took the plates, Bogardus tried to buy them back with Mrs. Truax’s Paymaster stock and when that didn’t work, he resorted to torture that went too far.”

“That does sound reasonable,” she said. There was animation in her voice now that her initial shock and confusion had gone. An excitement, too — the kind that had once been in him when a difficult and intriguing case was about to break wide open. “But where could Elder have hidden the plates?”

“He didn’t hide them; he gave them to his opium supplier, Yum Wing, for safekeeping.”

“Of course! And Yum Wing’s death last night — Bogardus was responsible for that?”

Quincannon dipped his chin affirmatively. “I was almost able to prevent it,” he said, “but I realized the truth too late. Yum Wing was already dead when I arrived. His killers jumped me from hiding; they mistook me for another Chinese in the dark or they would probably have murdered me too.”

“That explains the cut on your head — I’ve been wondering about that.” She paused. “Do you think they got the plates?”

“I’m certain they did,” Quincannon said. He explained what he had overheard at the Truax house.

“What will you do now?” she asked. “It seems to me you have sufficient proof against Bogardus to take direct action.”

“To me as well. But Mr. Boggs and the gentlemen in Washington are much more cautious in these matters than either of us.”

“I know what you mean. The man I work for in Denver, James Lumley, is the same sort. Which is why I’m still operating this shop and Oliver Truax is still a free man.”

“You have evidence of Truax’s guilt, then?”

“Considerable evidence.”

“A pyramid swindle?”

“Exactly. The man is riddled with greed, and reckless because of it. He will sell any amount of Paymaster stock to any interested party for immediate payment in cash. He told me there were no shares available for sale when I first approached him, but when I showed him the Agency’s five thousand dollars, I owned a hundred shares less than twenty-four hours later.”

“He tried the same ploy on me,” Quincannon said, “when I approached him on behalf of the owner of my fictitious patent medicine company.”

“Then you see what I mean. Bold as brass. The reason he went to Boise was to sell five hundred shares to a banker there; I got wind of the deal and arranged for a witness to the exchange. And still Mr. Lumley and our clients want more proof to insure a conviction.”

“Who are your clients?”

“A group of Paymaster investors. They began to suspect the swindle a few weeks ago.”

Quincannon nodded, and a momentary silence settled between them. A shaft of sunlight slanting in through the window touched her hair, making it glisten with reddish highlights. He felt the physical desire again, rebuked himself sharply, and looked away from her.

“May I ask you a personal question, Miss Carpenter?”

“That depends on the question.”

“How do you happen to work for Pinkerton?”

She smiled faintly. “Do you hold a prejudice against women operatives, Mr. Quincannon?”

“None whatsoever. I met Allan Pinkerton’s first female employee, Kate Warne, on a case in Chicago some years ago and found her highly competent. But I confess to curiosity: detective work is not an ordinary job for a woman.”

“My husband was an operative for the Denver agency,” she said. “One of its best, I may say.”

“Was?”

“He was killed while on a land-fraud case two years ago.” She spoke the words matter-of-factly, but he detected traces of bitterness and lingering grief. “Shot to death during a raid.”

“So was my father,” Quincannon said. “Several years ago on the Baltimore docks. He was a detective too, a rival of Pinkerton’s.”

There was a space before she spoke again; her eyes, steady on his now, held a look of what he took to be compassion and a sense of kinship. He felt that he wanted to go to her, touch her, but he was afraid she might misinterpret any such intimacy as another improper advance.

“Birds of a feather,” she said. “Lonely birds, always on the wing — targets for a hunter’s gun.”