Bill Pronzini - The Bughouse Affair

There the gaslit street scene was even livelier. Saloons, shooting galleries, auction houses, discount clothiers, and painless dentists lined the block; gaudy signs proclaimed PROF. DIAMOND, COURSES IN HYPNOTISM and THE GREAT ZOCAN, ASTRAL SEER and DR. BLAKE’S INDESTRUCTIBLE TEETH. And there were sellers and pitchmen of all sorts-fakirs, snake charmers, news vendors, organ players, matrimonial agents, plug-hatted touters of Marxism and Henry George’s Single Tax. The only difference between the pitchmen and a pickpocket or footpad, Sabina thought, was that they employed quasi-legitimate means to relieve individuals of their money.

Her quarry continued to walk at a leisurely pace, stopping once to finger a bolt of Indian fabric and then again to listen to a speaker extol the dubious virtues of phrenology. Momentarily she lost her in the crowd, then spotted her again edging up close beside a gentleman in a frock coat. Hurrying, Sabina drew near just as the man cried out and bent over at the waist, his silk hat falling to the sidewalk.

The crowd swarmed around him as he straightened, his face frozen in a grimace of pain. Sabina, elbowing her way forward, saw him reach inside his coat, and suddenly anger replaced pain. “My gold watch,” he shouted, “it’s been stolen! Stop, thief!”

But no one was fleeing. Voices rose from the group around him, heads swiveled in alarm and confusion, bodies formed a moving wall that prevented Sabina from reaching or pursuing her quarry.

When she finally extricated herself, the blue hat was nowhere to be seen. The pickpocket had found an ideal mark, struck, and swiftly vanished into the crowd.

QUINCANNON

The house at the upper westward edge of Russian Hill was a dormered and turreted pile of two stories and some dozen rooms, with a wraparound porch and a good deal of gingerbread trim. It was set well back from the street and well apart from its neighbors, given seclusion by shade trees, flowering shrubs, and marble statuary. A fine home, as befitted the likes of Samuel Truesdale, senior vice president of the San Francisco Maritime Bank. A home filled with all the treasures and playthings of the wealthy.

A home built to be burglarized.

Thirty feet inside the front gate, Quincannon shifted position in the deep shadow of a lilac bush. From this vantage point he had clear views of the house, the south side yard, and the street. He could see little of the rear of the property, where the bulk of a carriage barn loomed and a gated fence gave access to a carriageway that bisected the block, but this was of no consequence. The housebreaker might well come onto the property from that direction, but there was no rear entrance to the house and the night worker’s method of preferred entry was by door, not first- or second-story windows; this meant he would have to come around to the side door or the front door, both of which were within clear sight.

No light showed anywhere on the grounds. Banker Truesdale and his wife, dressed to the nines, had left two hours earlier in a private carriage, and they had no live-in servants. The only light anywhere in the immediate vicinity came from a streetlamp some fifty yards distant, a flickery glow that did not reach into the Truesdale yard. High cirrostratus clouds made thin streaks across the sky, touching but not obscuring an early moon. The heavenly body was neither a sickle nor what the scruffs called a stool-pigeon moon, but a near half that dusted the darkness with enough pale shine to see by.

A night made for burglars and footpads. And detectives on the scent.

A raw wind had sprung up, thick with the salt smell of the bay, and its chill penetrated the greatcoat, cheviot, gloves, neck scarf, and cap Quincannon wore. Noiselessly he stomped his feet and flexed his fingers to maintain circulation. His mind conjured up the image of steaming mugs of coffee and soup. Of a fire hot and crackling in his rooms on Leavenworth Street. Of the warmth of Sabina’s flesh on the scant few occasions he had touched her, and the heat of his passion for her …

Ah, no. None of that now. Attention to the matter at hand, detective business first and foremost. Why dwell on his one frustrating failure instead of contemplating another professional triumph? Easier to catch a crook than to melt a stubborn woman’s resistance.

A rattling and clopping on the cobbled street drew his attention. Moments later a hack, its side lamps casting narrow funnels of light, passed without slowing. When the sound of it faded, Quincannon grew aware of another sound-music, faint and melodic. Someone playing the violin, and reasonably well, too.

He listened for a time, decided what was being played were passages from Mendelssohn’s Leider . He was hardly an expert on classical music, or even much of an aficionado, but he had allowed himself to be drawn to enough concerts to identify individual pieces. Among his strong suits were a photographic memory and a well-tuned ear.

More time passed at a creep and crawl. The wind had died down some, but he was so thoroughly chilled by then he scarcely noticed. Despite the heavy gloves and the constant flexing, his fingers felt stiff; much more time out here in the night’s cold, and he might have difficulty drawing his Navy Colt if such became necessary.

Blast this blasted burglar, whoever he was! He was bound to come after more spoils tonight; Quincannon was sure of it, and his instincts seldom led him astray. So what was the yegg waiting for? It must be after nine by now. Wherever banker Truesdale and his missus had gone for the evening, chances were they would return by eleven. This being Thursday, Truesdale’s presence would surely be required tomorrow morning at his bank.

Quincannon speculated once more on the identity of his quarry. There were scores of house burglars in San Francisco and environs, but the cleverness of method and skill of entry in this case narrowed the field to but a few professionals. Of those known to him, the likeliest candidates were the Sanctimonious Kid and Dodger Brown. Both were suspected to be in the Bay Area at present, but neither had done anything to attract attention to themselves. In any case, the swag seemed to have been planted for the nonce, since none of the stolen items had surfaced. Likely the thief’s plan was to dispose of it all at once, in a bundle, after he had gone through most if not all of the six names on the target list.

Quincannon relished the prospect of convincing him otherwise, almost as much as he relished the thought of collecting the fat fee and bonus from Great Western Insurance.

The violin music had ceased; the night was hushed again. He flexed and stomped and shifted and shivered, his mood growing darker by the minute. If the burglar gave any trouble, he would rue his foolishness. Quincannon prided himself as possessing guile and razor-sharp wits, but he was also a brawny man of Pennsylvania Scots stock and not averse to a bit of thumping and skull dragging if the situation warranted.

Another vehicle, a small carriage this time, clattered past the property. Shortly a figure appeared on the sidewalk, and Quincannon tensed expectantly-but it was only a citizen walking his dog, and soon gone.

Hell and damn. Had he been wrong that the burglar would strike again so soon? Or been wrong in his choice of the Truesdale home as the next probable target? Both were possible, though it was already a surprise to him that the yegg hadn’t chosen the banker’s vulnerable home as one of his first three objectives.

Ah, but he wasn’t wrong on either count. That became evident in the next few seconds, when he turned his gaze from the street to the inner yard and house.

Someone was moving over there, not fifty yards from Quincannon’s hiding place.