Marcia Muller - The Plague of Thieves Affair

The hallway there was deserted. He paused before the door bearing a pot-metal numeral 8 and tested the latch. Locked, naturally. Not that this presented a problem. Quincannon had developed certain skills during his years as an operative with the United States Secret Service and his subsequent time as a private investigator, some of which rivaled those of the most accomplished yeggs and housebreakers. The set of burglar tools he had liberated from a scruff named Wandering Ned several years ago, and which he now carried with him at all times in a small pouch, gave him swift access to Caleb Lansing’s two small rooms.

Both sitting room and bedroom were as untidy as most bachelor’s quarters, cluttered with personal items and several bottles of rye whiskey both empty and full. But no steam beer; Lansing evidently had little taste for what he helped brew. Quincannon commenced a methodical search, beginning with a moderately large steamer trunk at the foot of an unmade bed. It yielded naught but clothing and a faded daguerreotype of a plump young woman, scantily dressed, which was inscribed “To Caleb from his Sugar Sweet.” Sugar Sweet. Faugh!

He found nothing of interest in the closet, the bureau, or anywhere else in the bedroom. His first important discovery came when he examined the fireplace. It was gas-fitted, its iron grate little more than a cheap ornament, but something had been burned there nonetheless. Caught around one of its legs was a partially charred note penned in a sprawling backhand. Some of the writing was still legible, including an injunction from the writer to Lansing to destroy it after reading. Also present was the writer’s signature, the initials X.J. And damning this was, for very few men in San Francisco could lay claim to those initials. Quincannon knew of only one: Xavier Jones, the head brewmaster at West Star Brewing Company.

A smile parted his freebooter’s whiskers as he tucked the paper carefully inside his billfold. Little doubt remained now that Cyrus Drinkwater had a hand in this dirty business.

His second find took longer, but was equally rewarding. In a small strongbox cleverly (but not too cleverly) concealed beneath a loose floorboard he found a sheaf of greenbacks bound together with a rubber band and a handful of double eagles. A quick count revealed the total to be slightly more than two thousand dollars.

As much as he enjoyed the look and feel of spendable currency, he hesitated only a few seconds before returning the money to the strongbox and the strongbox to its hiding place. Only a corrupt detective would appropriate a wad of greenbacks, illegally obtained by Lansing though they were. John Frederick Quincannon was many things, but a thief was not one of them. He would inform the police of the booty and its whereabouts once Lansing was in their custody. Of course the cash might well mysteriously disappear before it could be used as evidence against Lansing in court — more than a few dicks on the city payroll lacked Quincannon’s code of ethics — but that was not his concern. His duty was to himself, his reputation, and his clients, no more and no less.

His mouth quirked wryly as he straightened. Criminals — bah! The lot of them, fortunately, were arrogant and careless dolts. Lansing’s failure to completely burn the note and his hiding of the payoff money here in his rooms, coupled with the testimony of the witness Quincannon had found who’d seen him entering the brewery late on the night of Otto Ackermann’s murder and Lansing’s bald denial of this fact, was more than sufficient evidence to arrest him and eventually help hang him.

Quincannon whistled an old temperance tune, “The Brewers’ Big Horses Can’t Run Over Me,” as he relocked the door to the assistant brewmaster’s rooms and then left the boardinghouse. Naught was left but to confront Lansing, urge a confession out of him through one means or another, then hand him over to those blue-coated denizens of the Hall who had the audacity to call themselves San Francisco’s finest. Then he could collect his fee from James Willard, and return to the relative peace and clean, brewery-free air of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.

Where only one temptation awaited him — one he would succumb to in an instant were the opportunity to present itself. A possibility, by Godfrey, that was not as unlikely as it had once seemed, not for a man as determined and optimistic as John Frederick Quincannon. For in the words of Emily Dickinson, one of his favorite poets, “Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul.”

Ah, Sabina. Dear Sabina.

Sabina entertained three visitors that morning in the Market Street offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. The first two arrived together to confirm their hiring of the agency for what promised to be a routine matter, though one of some interest to her. The third individual was a complete stranger, and who he was and what he wanted came as a startling surprise.

Marcel Carreaux and Andrew Rayburn, the first two callers, arrived promptly for their ten o’clock appointment. Both were well dressed in the fashion of the day — sack coats with covered buttons and matching waistcoats, gray and dark brown respectively; stiff-collared shirts, bow ties, narrow-brimmed bowler hats — but otherwise they were as unalike as two gentlemen could be. Their only commonality, so far as Sabina knew, was an abiding love of artistic creation in its many forms.

Carreaux, tall, spare, with ascetic features and elegantly tonsured silver hair, was assistant curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris; the short, balding, fussy Rayburn, whose most prominent features were a large hooked nose and a thin shoelace mustache, owned the well-regarded Rayburn Art Gallery on Post Street. The Frenchman bowed formally, said, “ Enchanté, madame,” and when she gave him her hand, actually bestowed a brief Gallic kiss on the back of her hand. The gallery owner, whom she had met before, favored her with a professional smile as skimpy as his mustache.

What had brought the two men together was an exhibition of rare and valuable antique ladies’ handbags, dubbed Reticules Through the Ages, which had just arrived under railroad guard from Seattle, its previous stop on a nationwide, twelve-city American tour; the exhibit was due to open for public viewing at the Rayburn Gallery two days hence. It was on Andrew Rayburn’s recommendation that Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, be hired to provide security for the week-long showing in San Francisco. Sabina’s only communication with Carreaux had been an exchange of wires during his stay in Seattle.

“We have had no difficulties in other cities, Madame Carpenter, nor do we expect any here,” the Frenchman said when he and Rayburn were seated before her desk. “ Mais non . But San Francisco is known to be, ah, a city in which there is much wickedness...”

“Deservedly so,” Rayburn said in his fussy way. “Thieves abound in the Barbary Coast. Criminals who will steal anything of value if they can, anything at all. The district is a blight on our fair escutcheon.”

“Thus it is better to be safe than sorry, n’est-ce pas ?”

“The Marie Antoinette chatelaine bag alone is valued at several thousand dollars,” Rayburn added. He smoothed his rather silly little mustache with a neatly manicured forefinger. “It and the other items must be protected while they are on display in my gallery.”

“At all times, m’sieu et madame, and in all places until their safe return to Paris.”

“Yes, of course, but especially here.”

Sabina said, “The Marie Antoinette bag is the centerpiece of the exhibition, I gather.”