Билл Пронзини - The Bags of Tricks Affair

O. H. Goodland still clutched his scalp, grimacing, blinking now as if his eyes refused to focus properly. Dizziness overcame him when he tried to stand; he sank down again to one knee. “My head... feels as though it’d been cracked like an eggshell...”

Rollins said, “He must have slipped and fallen somehow when he shot poor Leonide.”

“Shot? I didn’t shoot anyone...”

Boxhardt stepped forward, relieved Quincannon of the Colt’s revolver. He sniffed the barrel, then turned it over in his hand. “This here’s your weapon, Mr. Goodland. Recently fired.”

“Tell you, I didn’t shoot anyone.”

“He’s guilty as sin,” Rollins said. “There was no one else here, no one else could have done it. You see that, don’t you, Marshal?”

“I see it,” Boxhardt agreed grimly. “Mr. Goodland, I got no choice but to arrest you for the crime of murder.”

Quincannon did not accompany the marshal and his prisoner to the jailhouse. Nor did he follow Rollins and a still-sobbing Cora Lee Johnson to the hotel. Instead he remained at the shack until the town’s undertaker arrived to claim Leopold Saxe’s remains and Kasabian, Mayor Parnell, and the rest of the shocked Delfordians had dispersed. Then he shut himself inside.

The first thing he did was to examine the door and its sliding bolt. Then he searched among the jars of chemicals, spare rockets, and other items that littered the floor in the vicinity of the boiler and crocks; searched every nook and cranny until he satisfied himself that there was nothing else to be found, least of all the coalition’s two thousand dollars. The money hadn’t been on Saxe’s person, either; he had given the body a quick frisk while Boxhardt was occupied in arresting the dazed wheat farmer.

From the rail yards he went to the Western Union office, where he sent a night wire to his contact at the Pinkerton Agency in Chicago. The wire asked specific questions and ended with the words URGENT REPLY NEEDED. If the Pinks operative heeded this, as he surely would, an answering wire would arrive by tomorrow noon.

Meanwhile, tonight’s vigil would be held as planned. Rollins and Cora Lee may or may not still intend to slip away during the night. If they did, they would join O. H. Goodland under lock and key in a jail cell. Otherwise, their arrest would come on the morrow.

Warm, dusty darkness was settling when Quincannon left the telegraph office. Word of the shooting had spread quickly; gaslit Main Street was packed with citizens discussing the Cloud Cracker’s violent demise. They would have a great deal more to discuss within the next twenty-four hours, he thought as he made his way to the marshal’s office. And they weren’t the only ones for whom there were surprises in store.

Within twenty-four hours the name most often spoken in Delford would not be Leonide Daks/Leopold Saxe or O. H. Goodland. It would be John Frederick Quincannon.

Rollins and Cora Lee made their escape attempt at two-thirty A.M.

Stationed in the locust trees with Boxhardt and his deputy, Quincannon spied the pair first. They were moving shadows at the far side of the field where the dougherty wagon and roan horse were picketed, having evidently left the hotel by the rear entrance and circled around through the back streets.

His hunch was that they intended to abandon all the bogus rainmaking apparatus, including the mortar, and slip away quickly and quietly into the night, and it proved to be correct. Rollins went directly to the wagon, while Cora Lee fetched the placid dray horse. They worked in tandem to harness the animal, performing the task with the dispatch of long practice. The pair were just climbing up onto the seat when Quincannon and the other two men opened the dark lanterns they carried and hurried out of hiding.

The confidence tricksters feigned shock and indignation at first, as well as surprise when Quincannon revealed himself to be a detective hired by Aram Kasabian. Rollins claimed that “Mrs. Daks” was so distraught over her husband’s death that she couldn’t bear to remain in Delford any longer. “I am escorting her to Stockton, where she has a relative,” he lied. “Leonide’s murderer is locked in a cell. There is no good reason why either of us should remain here or for you to detain us—”

“You’re forgetting the Delford Coalition’s two thousand dollars,” Quincannon said.

“If you think we’re making off with that, you’re mistaken. We have no idea where the money is.”

“My husband insisted on keeping all our funds,” Cora Lee said, “and he was very secretive about where.”

“Hid it someplace inside the wagon, mayhap?”

“With it sitting out here in an open field? No, he never would have taken such a risk.”

“So a thorough search of the wagon would be fruitless.”

“Completely fruitless, I’m sure.”

“And I’m sure that it won’t be. We’ll find the two thousand dollars, Cora Lee, wherever you and Mortimer here hid it.”

She gasped and Rollins stiffened at the use of their true names. They knew then that the game was up and any more protest would be futile. When Marshal Boxhardt informed them that Sheriff Beadle was bringing fugitive warrants for their arrest on multiple charges of fraud and placed them in restraints, they lapsed into sullen silence.

The hiding place of the coalition money, whether devised by one of them or by Leopold Saxe, was clever, but not clever enough to fool Quincannon’s canny brain. The cash was not concealed anywhere in the wagon proper. He found it in a pouch attached to the underside of one of the harness traces.

Whit Slattery came for her promptly at eight-thirty Friday morning, not in his blacksmith’s wagon but in a small, calèche-topped carriage that he must have rented or borrowed. He also wore a coat and cravat, despite the task he would be performing. When she commented on this, he said laconically, “Can’t go bringing a lady to Nob Hill dressed in my work garb.” Sabina smiled at that. Gallantry was another of Whit’s virtues.

The front gates to the Brandywine property were once again open. Philip was not out doing his calisthenics today; the greensward was empty. Nor did the purveyor of fine apparel for the gentleman come out to meet them when they drew to a stop on the turnaround near the front entrance, as he had the day before. He was waiting in the library.

With him was a gray-haired woman whom he introduced as his wife, Alice. She must have been quite a belle in her youth, Sabina thought, and time had been much kinder to her than it had to her husband; she was still slender, still attractive in her late forties or early fifties. But she carried herself with the kind of matronly, vaguely absent air Sabina had seen before, that of a woman to whom motherhood had been the focal point of her life and who had been vaguely lost since her child left the nest. She no doubt doted on Philip, but he wouldn’t mean the same to her as if he were her own son, and he, too, would soon be gone. Her days then would be entirely taken up with time fillers such as garden parties and women’s club activities.

Once Whit had been introduced — the client acknowledged him with a curt nod and thereafter ignored him — Mrs. Brandywine said to Sabina, “Joshua has told me of your intention to trample my delphinium beds. Must you do that?”

“I’m afraid so. We’ll be careful to create as little damage as possible.”

“And you’ll replace any plants that are damaged?”

“At our expense, if the task proves to be fruitless.”

“If it does,” her husband said ominously, “and you fail to solve the dilemma quickly, I will terminate our arrangement without payment of the balance of your fee.”