Over the objections of Teague, Cromarty, and Newell, Quincannon had withheld explanation of how the burglarproof safe had been successfully burgled until all these worthies could be assembled together. He admitted to a dramatic streak in his nature; if he hadn’t become a detective, he might have gone on the stage and become a notable dramatic actor. “Ham, you mean,” Sabina had said when he mentioned this to her once, but he’d forgiven her.

  Cromarty had been effusive in his praise initially, but he had grown impatient in the interim. Now he said, “You’ve done a splendid job, Mr. Quincannon, and there’s no gainsaying that you’re something of a wizard to have solved the riddle in less than twenty-four hours, but—”

  “I prefer the term ‘artist,’” Quincannon interrupted. Humility was not one of his virtues, if in fact it was a virtue. “You might even say I am the Rembrandt of crime solvers.”

  Teague said, “Who’s Rembrandt?” but no one answered him.

  “Be that as it may,” Cromarty said, “there is no need to keep us in suspense any longer. How did you deduce the identity of the thieves and the location of the gold?”

  “Yes, and how did they get the safe open? That’s what I’d most like to know.”

  The two railroad men nodded emphatic agreement.

  Quincannon took his time loading and lighting his briar. When he had it drawing to his satisfaction, he fluffed his beard and said, “Very well, gentlemen, I’ll begin by noting the clues that led me to the solution. When I examined the abandoned safe I found several items of interest. To begin with, the bloodstains. Obviously one of the thieves had suffered a wound that bled copiously during the robbery, one severe enough to bleed again when the empty safe was transported the following day. Naturally such a wound would require medical attention. Amos Goodfellow being the only doctor in Tuttletown, I consulted with him and learned that he had treated Bodo Schneider for a deep cut on his hand and wrist. That, and the doctor’s description of the two brothers as brawny fellows, pointed me in their direction.”

  Newell asked, “And the other items of interest in the abandoned safe?”

  “The fact that the interior was cold and damp, too cold and damp for the night and morning air to have been responsible. A hard residue of putty where the chisel marks were located on the door. And a piece of straw caught on one of the bolts. Straw, as of course you all know, is used to pack blocks and chunks of ice to preserve them by slowing the melting process.”

  “Seems like pretty flimsy evidence,” Teague observed. “And what’s putty got to do with it?”

  Quincannon addressed the constable’s statement, ignoring his question for the moment. “On the contrary, the evidence was not at all flimsy when taken in toto and combined with the location of the discarded safe—less than a mile from the icehouse. The thieves saw no need and had no desire, given Bodo Schneider’s wounded hand and the cumbersome weight of the safe, to transport it any further than that meadow. They were foolishly certain no one would suspect them of the crime.”

  “How did you know the gold was hidden in the icehouse?” Cromarty asked. “The Schneiders might just as well have secreted it elsewhere.”

  “Might have, yes, but it would have required additional risk. The weight of the gold and the necessity of finding a different hiding place also argued against it having been moved any appreciable distance. As far as they were concerned, it was perfectly secure inside the icehouse until it could be disposed of piecemeal.”

  “Are you saying that the icehouse was where the safe was opened?”

  “I am. It’s the only place it could have been managed in this region at this time of year.” Quincannon puffed out a cumulus of smoke, shifted his gaze to Teague. “Do you recall my stating yesterday that the how and the why of the crime were linked?”

  “I do.”

  “And so they are. Once I determined that the Schneiders must be guilty, it was a simple matter of cognitive reasoning to deduce the how.”

  “Fancy talk,” Teague said. “Say it in plain English, man. How’d they bust into that safe?”

  “Strictly speaking, they didn’t. The safe was opened from the inside, not the outside.”

  “From the inside? What the devil are you talking about?”

  “The application of a simple law of physics,” Quincannon said. “After the safe had been allowed to chill inside the icehouse, the Schneiders turned it on its back and hammered a wedge into the crack of the door along the bottom edge, the purpose being to widen the crack through to the inside—a procedure similar in nature to their objective with the express-office door. Then, using a bucket and a funnel, they poured water into the safe until it was full. The final steps were to seal the crack with hard-drying putty”—he glanced meaningfully at the constable as he spoke—“and then to pack ice around the safe and cover the whole with straw.”

  Newell smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Of course! The object being to freeze the water inside. Water expands as much as one-seventh of its volume when it freezes.”

  “Exactly. Once the water in the safe froze, the intense pressure from the ice caused the door’s hinges to rupture. It was a simple matter, then, for the pair to chip out the ice and remove the gold. The residue in the safe melted after they carted it away to the field, hence the cold, damp interior.”

  Cromarty, Newell, even Teague were satisfied. And Quincannon was well pleased with himself, for once again he had solved the seemingly insoluable by a combination of observation and deductive reasoning—qualities which made him the most accomplished detective west of the Mississippi River, if not in the entire nation. Anyone who didn’t agree with that assessment—other than Sabina, whose own talents he respected and for whom he made allowances—was a dunderhead.

  Marshal Samuel B. Halloran of Jamestown, for instance.

  Quincannon chuckled to himself. Halloran, all unwittingly, had provided him with one other minor clue to the solution of this investigation, one he hadn’t seen fit to mention in his summation. He was saving it to use as part of his gloat when he sought out that dunderhead lawman before departing the Queen of the Mines.

  “You may be a fancy-pants detective in San Francisco,” Halloran had said in Cromarty’s office, “but you don’t cut no ice up here.” Ah, but he had—figuratively if not literally.

  He’d cut more ice in Tuttletown last night, by godfrey, than the Schneiders had from inside that so-called burglarproof safe!

  * * *

  The private car, once more coupled to a Baldwin locomotive, departed Tuttletown a short while later for the return trip to Jamestown. The only passengers were Quincannon and Cromarty, Newell having additional business to attend to at the railroad construction site near the Stanislaus River.

  The division superintendent, busy at his desk as they chuffed along the edge of the valley toward Table Mountain, was disinclined to conversation, which suited Quincannon. He’d had no sleep since leaving the Cremer Hotel at three A.M., and his tense skirmish with Jakob Schneider and the night’s and morning’s other events had taken their toll. Settled comfortably in one of the tufted chairs, he was thinking of Sabina in a pleasant near doze when a sudden exclamation from Cromarty roused him.

  “I have something here for you, Mr. Quincannon.”

  He turned in his chair. “Yes?”

  “A wire that came for you in Jamestown and was delivered to me earlier. I completely forgot about it in all the excitement; came upon it just now in my coat pocket.”

  Quincannon felt a faint stirring of alarm. The wire must be from Sabina; no one else knew he’d come to the southern Mother Lode. And she wouldn’t have wired him unless some sort of emergency had come up. He snatched the envelope out of Cromarty’s extended hand, tore it open.

  No, it wasn’t from Sabina. But his relief was short-lived, consumed by surprise and puzzlement as he read the message.

  URGENT I SEE YOU SOONEST STOP

  PRINCIPAL IN SEATTLE MATTER TEN YEARS

  AGO APPARENTLY NOT DECEASED STOP

  BELIEVED IN BUSINESS AGAIN HERE STOP

  WIRE REPLY WITH TIME OF EXPECTED

  RETURN TO CITY STOP

  BOGGS

  Crusty old Boggs, his superior during his San Francisco tenure as an operative of the Secret Service. Quincannon retained a soft spot for the man; Boggs had taught him a great deal about investigative work, and been a staunch friend during the darkest period of his life. Press of their now separate careers prevented them from seeing much of each other these days, and this was the first time Boggs had sought his assistance since he’d left the Service.

  “The Seattle matter” referred to a case involving a counterfeiter named Long Nick Darrow. Quincannon sat frowning, working his memory. He recalled following a circuitous trail of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills north through Oregon to Washington State and finally to a warehouse near Colman Wharf on the Seattle waterfront where the coney man was manufacturing his queer. During a nocturnal raid by him and agents from the Seattle branch, a lamp had been knocked over and the tinder-dry warehouse set ablaze.

  Darrow had managed to escape, with Quincannon in close pursuit. The chase had ended in a fierce hand-to-hand struggle between them on a deserted pier nearby. He had deflected a knife thrust that sent the blade plunging into Darrow’s torso instead of his own. Darrow had staggered away, plunged into the black waters of the harbor. The fact that his body had not been found, nor had there been any word of him in the years since, seemed to bear out the presumption that the blackleg had met his Maker that night.

  Yet according to this wire, Darrow might have somehow managed to survive both the knife wound and the icy harbor water, and was now not only back at his old trade but plying it in or near San Francisco. It seemed fantastic. A counterfeiter whose work resembled his must be responsible. If Darrow was alive, where had he been the past ten years? Certainly not somewhere working at his old trade with a new set of plates, the originals having been destroyed in the fire along with the engraver who made them, else his distinctive product would have come to light before now. Counterfeiters, no matter how practiced or clever, had never outwitted the Secret Service for long during Quincannon’s tenure, and hadn’t since, he’d wager.

  What was also puzzling about Boggs’s wire was the urgent need to consult with his former operative. The sector chief had a handful of well-trained agents on staff and could call on as many others as might be needed, and the fact that Quincannon had handled the original case was of no real consequence. Nor could it be to rehash the events of that flaming night on the Seattle waterfront; Quincannon had recorded them all in detail in his written and verbal reports. There must be some other reason for Boggs’s request.

  Well, there was nothing to be gained by speculating now on what it might be. He would meet with Boggs as soon as he returned to the city and find out then—late tomorrow afternoon, if he could book passage out of Jamestown early enough today and if the trains from there and Stockton ran on time, always a problematical circumstance.

  Home tomorrow, at any rate, which fact he would wire to Boggs as soon as they arrived in Jimtown. And to Sabina as well, along with brief preliminary word of his success in Tuttletown.

  9

  SABINA

  Sabina’s second audience with Professor A. Vargas on Thursday afternoon and third on Friday morning followed along similar lines as the first. At Thursday’s he professed to have made contact with his spirit control, and that Angkar had agreed to seek out the shade of the mythical Gregory Milford; at the just completed Friday sitting, he claimed that Angkar had made contact with Gregory, who was “quite happy in the Afterworld though still adjusting to spirit life.” It was possible that communication might be established between brother and sister at Saturday’s séance, he said, though Angkar had told him that the alleged “malevolent forces” were particularly active at present. It was therefore necessary that her “psychic energy be properly focused” at the séance in order to circumvent the evil influence. Which, of course, required the third audience and another ten-dollar “donation.”

  At both the second and third, Vargas probed for additional information about the Milford family’s finances, and for personal details about Gregory’s life and activities before “his passage beyond the veil.” And deflected Sabina’s attempts to question him about his and the college’s past activities and the reason for his move to San Francisco as neatly as she deflected his subtle attempts at seduction. The remainder of each session was taken up with embellishments in his line of double-talk about attuned impulses, paranormal rapport, spatial and temporal laws, and theocratic unity.

  There was no doubt that Vargas was an out-and-out fraud and a shameless womanizer to boot. The answer to Sabina’s wire to the Pinkerton Agency’s New York office provided evidence of both facts.

  Six years previously, one Abraham Vargas had acted as assistant to a fraudulent clairvoyant known as the “Albany Seer” who had bilked gullible Social Register clients of thousands of dollars before being unmasked and arrested. Vargas had been charged, tried, and convicted along with him, receiving a six-month prison sentence. And during the trial, it had come to light that both men had indulged in immoral escapades with more than one of their female acolytes.

  Nothing was known in New York of Vargas since his release. But he had obviously learned enough tricks from his employer to set up his own fake spiritualist confidence game. Where he had operated the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses before traveling west was anyone’s guess. As was where and how he had acquired the services of the cold-eyed Annabelle; there was no record of her having been involved with Vargas or the “Albany Seer” in New York. Another of his sexual conquests, no doubt.

  Winthrop Buckley would surely be as satisfied as Sabina that the professor was a fraud, but an ardent occultist such as Mrs. Buckley might well be inclined to give Vargas the benefit of the doubt unless she was presented with empirical proof of his duplicity. This, Sabina felt sure, could be accomplished at Saturday’s séance, assuming Vargas’s bag of mediumistic tricks was as standard as she expected it must be from her client’s description of what had transpired the previous Saturday.

  The task of providing that proof would be made even easier if she had a better idea of how those tricks were worked. And if she could talk John into attending the séance with her.

  His wire from Jamestown had arrived just before close of business on Thursday, letting her know that he had successfully wrapped up his investigation for the Sierra Railway Company and expected to be back in the city sometime this afternoon. Both bits of news had pleased her, the latter more than the former. And not only because she coveted his assistance.

  The old adage was true where John was concerned: absence did indeed make the heart grow fonder.

  * * *

  The narrow storefront where Madame Louella conducted her Gypsy fortune-telling dodge was on Kearney near Pine, sandwiched between the shop of a woman who made what she billed as “fashionable cloaks for the ladies” and a grifter who called himself the “Napoleon of Necromancers.” A large sign above the entrance proclaimed that Madame Louella SEES ALL, KNOWS ALL, TELLS ALL and would inform those who wished to know what their futures held for the price of twenty-five cents per reading.

  Sabina climbed a short flight of stairs to the second floor and entered to the tinkling of a bell. The anteroom was empty, but the low murmur of voices from behind the drawn black curtain that separated it from Madame Louella’s inner sanctum indicated a visitor. The odor of incense permeated the room, a different variety than that used by A. Vargas but no less unpleasant. Black curtains, cabalistic signs, incense—all seemed de rigueur with those who practiced spiritualism, fortune-telling, mind reading, and other such flimflams.

  She sat on one of three wooden chairs to wait. The incense seemed particularly strong today; if she hadn’t stopped at a tea shop for lunch on her way to Kearney Street, the biting odor would have had an even queasier effect on her stomach than it did. It was one reason Sabina avoided coming here except when absolutely necessary. The other was that a little of Madame Louella in person went a long way. Absence in the fortune-teller’s case did not make the heart grow fonder.

  Her wait, fortunately, was not long. The curtain was soon drawn aside and a corpulent man wearing a satisfied smile emerged. He smiled at Sabina, bowed slightly, set a large derby firmly atop his bald head, and exited. Once the bell ceased tinkling, Madame Louella’s turbaned head appeared, then the rest of her large body encased as usual in a robe of tarnished-gold color emblazoned with mystic symbols in black and crimson. The turban was also gold, a fat blue costume jewel set into the middle of it. Stray black curls straggled from beneath the cloth.

  When she saw Sabina, her solemn expression dissolved into a bright-eyed smile. “Well, hello there, dearie. What brings you here this fine afternoon? Come to pay the two dollars you owe me, eh?”

  “Those, and perhaps a few more.”

  “So? I’ve yet to uncover any information on Professor Vargas and the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses. He hasn’t been operating in the city long and has done nothing to attract attention.” In the grifters’ community, she meant.

  Sabina said, “There is another way you can earn an additional fee.”

  “How large an additional fee?”

  “That remains to be determined. Large enough to suit you, I should think.”

  The woman’s nostrils twitched visibly. To her, the whiff of money to be had was stronger than that of any other odor including her dratted incense. As a prod, she commenced her usual litany of complaints: how dreadful business had been of late, how her rent was in arrears and she was living hand to mouth, how her lot in life was an affront to a woman born with Romany blood in her veins and the gift of foretelling the future.