Билл Пронзини - The Bags of Tricks Affair

“In Nevada City.”

“Doing what?”

“The same as I’ll be doing today and tonight,” Sabina said. “What you’re paying us to do — investigate.”

She spent the rest of the morning once again asking veiled questions of various habitués of the Gold Nugget and Grass Valley’s other gaming parlors, seeking information on locals whose anti-gambling sentiments were strong enough to have resulted in the threatening letter, and on the activities past and present of Lady One-Eye, Jack O’Diamonds, and Jeffrey Gaunt. One of those she wanted to speak to, but didn’t, was Lily Dumont; the faro dealer was nowhere to be found at her cottage, in the parlors, or anywhere else in town.

She learned nothing of significance.

After she had her midday meal at a fairly good restaurant, the humid summer heat drove her back to the relatively cool confines of the Holbrooke Hotel. As she entered the lobby, she thought — not for the first time — what a curious coincidence it was to have undertaken a case that brought her to Grass Valley and the Holbrooke. For they were where Carson Montgomery had worked as a young metallurgist in the rough-and-ready boom years of Nevada County gold mining.

It had been during that period that Carson committed the transgression that left him open to blackmail and threatened his successful career as a mining engineer — a dark secret uncovered by Sabina that had led to the end of their brief romance less than a year ago. She hadn’t seen him since. Although she was not sorry they’d parted company, she retained pleasant memories of the interlude and wished him well. And from what she’d read in the newspapers’ social columns, he had recovered from the incident quite nicely: he was now engaged to the daughter of a wealthy stockbroker.

The thought of Carson led naturally, as she ascended the staircase to the second floor, to Charles Percival Fairchild III. It had been Charles the Third who had learned of the blackmail attempt and alerted her to it. The daft but shrewdly clever fellow who fancied himself to be the great detective Sherlock Holmes, but who was in fact scion to a Chicago meatpacking fortune, had for nearly a year skulked among the denizens of San Francisco’s underworld and insinuated himself into several of her and John’s cases, often with startling results. He could be highly annoying, with his secretive ways and outlandish disguises, yet also quite charming and helpful. And the last time she’d seen him, at the close of the Plague of Thieves Affair in January, he had literally saved her life.

He had left the city shortly afterward, to avoid the police and legal ramifications, and hadn’t been heard from or about since. She wondered again what had become of him. Had he returned to England, where he’d lived in self-exile for several years? To Chicago, to claim his father’s inheritance despite the unshakable conviction that he was Sherlock Holmes, Esquire? To some other city, where he was now continuing to indulge his delusion? She would have liked to know; in spite of herself she almost missed having him around. Not so, John, however. Charles had been a thorn in his side too long, upstaging him on more than one occasion with some rather amazing detective work and earning his everlasting enmity...

In her room, she pulled the cord to the ceiling fan, then removed the itchy wig, slipped out of Rose’s dress, and lay down on the bed. Afternoon naps were a luxury she hardly ever had the time or inclination to indulge in in the city. Here, one was a necessity as well as a relief, given the likely stresses of the evening ahead.

Her internal clock woke her after forty-five minutes. Another fifteen were sufficient to refresh her guise as the Saint Louis Rose. The clock in the lobby read 2:50 when she left the hotel to keep her three o’clock appointment with John on the City Hall green.

Nevada City, three miles to the east, was likewise a gold-mining town. It had been founded during the first year of the Gold Rush, Quincannon knew, two years before Grass Valley was settled. Its first and largest mine, the Gold Tunnel on the north side of Deer Creek, had made it the richest mining town in the state during that period. Grass Valley’s Empire and North Star mines had eventually surpassed the Gold Tunnel’s output, and siphoned off some of Nevada City’s population of miners and their families. But the amount of gold-bearing ore produced here remained substantial enough to the present day to support the local economy.

Quincannon spent the better part of four hours making the rounds of the saloons and gaming parlors — one of them Glen Bonnifield’s Ace High — and local merchant establishments, pretending to be a patent-medicine drummer and asking seemingly casual questions. He learned several things about Bonnifield and the saloon owner’s relationship with Lily Dumont, a few of potential significance.

The slow NCNG train deposited him back in Grass Valley a few minutes past two o’clock. From the depot, he walked up heat-glazed, semi-deserted East Main to the Gold Nugget.

In the harsh glare of sunlight, the exterior of the gambling hall had an uninviting aspect. Like nearly all of the commercial buildings here, it been constructed of brick — the consequence of a disastrous fire in 1855 that had consumed the township’s three hundred wooden structures, leaving nothing standing but Wells Fargo’s brick-and-iron vault and a dozen scorched brick chimneys. The massive sign above the door had a warped and faded look; the brass fittings of the red-globed lamps were pitted with rust. Little wonder, Quincannon thought, that the bluenoses were bent on closing it and its sisters down. Some of the other gambling resorts here and in Nevada City had even tawdrier appearances by daylight.

At this hour there were relatively few customers. All but two of the gaming tables were covered, Lily Dumont’s faro bank among them. There was no sign of the buxom Lily, nor of Lady One-Eye, Jack O’Diamonds, or Jeffrey Gaunt. Amos McFinn hovered behind the bar, looking harried as usual. Quincannon went to the unoccupied end and McFinn, spying him, hurried over.

“Well?” the little man demanded without preamble. “Did you find out anything today?”

“Nothing to be confided just yet, Mr. McFinn.”

“Damn! That is just what your compatriot—”

Quincannon said warningly, “I have no compatriot here.”

“The Saint Louis Rose, I meant to say. Just what she said when I spoke to her earlier.”

“Not a wise idea to be questioning her. You’ll upset the apple cart if you’re not careful.”

“She came to see me. We spoke privately in my office. She claims to be able to tell me tonight whether or not Lady One-Eye is cheating.”

“And so she will.”

“Are you sure she knows the game of poker well enough to be absolutely certain?”

“Better than you or I, and as well as Lady One-Eye,” Quincannon assured him. “You needn’t worry. Your money is being well spent.”

“That remains to be seen,” McFinn said dolefully.

Sabina was waiting on a tree-shaded bench on the Stewart Street side of City Hall, her open parasol providing additional insulation from the blazing afternoon sun. The bright yellow summer dress she wore, he was relieved to note as he strolled up, revealed less of her charms than her evening attire. He sat down beside her, fanned himself with his derby. There was no one else in the vicinity except for a heat-flattened mongrel dog stretched out asleep behind the bench.

Sabina looked a bit on the wilted side herself, and he made the mistake of saying so.

“You’d be wilted, too, if you had to wear this infernal wig,” she said crossly. “I should have had the sense not to bother covering my own hair with such a contrivance.”