Bill Pronzini - The Bughouse Affair

“What’s that? Additional fee for what?”

“Surveillance on your home is a job for two men.”

“Why? You were by yourself at the Truesdales’.”

“The Truesdale house has front and side entrances that could be watched by one man alone. Yours has front and rear entrances, therefore requiring a second operative.”

“How is it you know my house?”

“I tabbed it up, along with the others on the list, the day I was hired by Great Western.”

“Tabbed it up?”

“Crook’s argot. Paid visits and scrutinized the properties, the same as the housebreaker would have done to size up the lay.”

Costain continued to twitch, but he didn’t argue. “Very well,” he said. “How much will it cost me?”

Quincannon named a per diem figure, only slightly higher than his usual for a two-detective operation. His dislike for the bibulous lawyer was not sufficient to warrant gouging him unduly.

The amount induced Costain to mutter, “That’s damned close to extortion,” then to reopen his desk drawer and help himself to another “small libation.”

“Hardly.”

“I suppose the figure is nonnegotiable?”

“I don’t haggle,” Quincannon said.

“All right. How much in advance?”

“One day’s fee in full.”

“For services not yet rendered? No, by God. Half, and not a penny more.”

Quincannon shrugged. Half in advance was more than he usually requested from his clients.

“You’ll take a check, I assume?”

“Of course.” As long as it wasn’t made of rubber.

“You had better not fail me, Quincannon,” Costain said as he wrote out the check. “If there is a repeat of your bungling at the Truesdales’, you’ll regret it. I promise you that.”

Quincannon bit back an oath, scowled his displeasure instead, and managed an even-toned reply. “I did not bungle at the Truesdales’. What happened two nights ago-”

“-wasn’t your fault. Yes, yes, I know. And if anything similar happens it won’t be your fault again, no doubt.”

“You’ll have your money’s worth.”

“I had better.”

And I’ll have my money’s worth, and then some, Quincannon thought. He tucked the check into a waistcoat pocket and left Costain to stew in his alcoholic juices.

The Geary Street address was not far from his bank or the agency offices. He went first to the Miner’s Bank, where he made sure Costain had sufficient funds in his account before depositing the check. Then he set off for the agency at a brisk pace.

San Francisco was a fine city, he reflected as he walked, the more so on a nippy but sun-bright day such as this one. The fresh salt smell from the bay, the rumble and clang of cable cars on Market Street, the stately presence of the Ferry Building in the distance-he had yet to tire of any of it. It had been a banner day when he was reassigned here during his days with the United States Secret Service. The nation’s capital had not been the same for him after his father succumbed to the assassin’s bullet on the Baltimore waterfront; he had been ready for a change. His new home suited him as Washington, D.C., had suited Thomas Quincannon. The same was true of the business of private investigation, a much more lucrative and satisfying profession than that of an underpaid and overworked government operative.

When he arrived at the building that housed Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, he was in a cheerful mood. Temperance songs were among his favorite tunes, not because of his vow of sobriety but because he found them as exaggerated and amusing as temperance tracts; he whistled “Lips that Touch Liquor Will Never Touch Mine” as he climbed to the second floor and approached the agency’s door. But he came to an abrupt halt when he saw that the door stood ajar by a few inches, and heard the voice that came from within.

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic,” the voice was declaiming, “and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes in to his brain attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. There comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

Quincannon’s smile turned upside down as he elbowed inside. The voice belonged to the crackbrain masquerading as Sherlock Holmes.

SABINA

The Englishman sat comfortably in the client’s chair in front of her desk, a gray cape draped over his shoulders and a deerstalker cap pulled down over his ears. Even though she had opened both windows, the office was blue with smoke from the long, curved clay pipe he was smoking. The tobacco was worse than the shag John preferred, a mixture that might have been made from floor sweepings.

He had arrived at the agency twenty minutes earlier, shortly after her return. Sabina had had just enough time to transfer most of the valuables she’d gathered in Clara Wilds’s rooms from her bag into the office safe before he strolled in. Paying a call, he said, for a look at the offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, for he had a keen interest in learning how his American counterparts conducted their business.

Sabina, suspecting an ulterior motive, was none too welcoming, but the Englishman didn’t appear to notice and made himself comfortable across from her. She was in no mood for his foolishness and anxious to confer with John about the death of Clara Wilds, so tried to tell the probable impostor she was busy and send him on his way. But he was persistent without being offensive-courtly and charming, in fact, if something of a bore once he began expounding on such arcane topics as brain attics.

He may well have been the addlepate John and Ambrose Bierce believed him to be, but Sabina had to admit he seemed benign enough and extremely well educated, with knowledge of a variety of subjects. And his “parlor tricks,” of which she’d had a sampling, were certainly impressive-so much so that she felt he must have exhaustively studied the deductive methods utilized by the London detective he pretended or believed himself to be. Nonetheless she had had just about enough of him, and soon would have gotten rid of him, if necessary at the point of the derringer she kept in her reticule if her partner hadn’t finally returned.

John sized up the situation from Sabina’s frustrated expression and was not gentle in closing the door, or gracious in his opening remark. He aimed one of his piratical scowls at their caller, and said to Sabina, “I seem to have walked in on a lecture.”

A lecture was exactly what she had mentally termed it. If she’d wanted to hear one, she’d have sooner visited the Academy of Sciences or one of the city’s excellent art museums.

The Englishman answered John before Sabina could. “Hardly that, sir. Hardly that. I was merely stating a portion of my methodology to the most engaging Mrs. Carpenter.”

“And demonstrating your amazing powers of observation and deduction, no doubt.”

Sabina waved away a plume of smoke from the clay pipe. “Oh, yes. He wasn’t here three minutes before he knew about Adam.”