Marcia Muller: The Body Snatchers Affair

While Gentry was being handcuffed by his angry superiors, Quincannon judiciously slipped out of the office and went to find a quiet corner where he could smoke his pipe and enjoy his vindication.

The twenty-year-old Palace Hotel, also colloquially known as the “Bonanza Inn” and the “Grand Dame of the West,” was San Francisco’s most luxurious hostelry, far more elegant than the older, second-best Baldwin Hotel in the Uptown Tenderloin. At the time of its construction it had had the distinction of being the largest hotel west of the Mississippi, its many features including 755 guest rooms and suites equipped with private baths, forty-five public and utility rooms, three inner courts, and five redwood-paneled hydraulic elevators referred to by the staff as “rising rooms.” Seven floors of white-columned balconies overlooked the open, glass-roofed Grand Central Court which served as a carriage entrance.

Even though she hurried as much as possible, Sabina arrived ten minutes late for the one o’clock appointment with Carson. Confiscating the $75,000 ransom money, over more of Bertram Blanchford’s pathetic pleas, and then transporting it to the agency and locking it away for temporary safekeeping had taken longer than she’d anticipated.

Carson was waiting on the marble-floored promenade, next to one of the columned archways facing the circular carriageway, when she entered the Grand Court. She spied him immediately, a stationary figure among the stream of arriving and departing guests, bellboys with luggage carts, and carriage drivers and their rigs. A smile brightened his handsome face as she approached. As always, he was nattily if conservatively dressed, today in a gray frock coat with matching vest and striped trousers; the gold-headed stick he carried was tucked under one arm. Sabina’s heart had skipped a beat the first time she’d seen him, and she’d felt the stirrings of excitement on each of the previous occasions they’d been together, but today she felt nothing other than a faint apprehension. Not even his blue eyes, Stephen’s eyes, moved her as they had before.

She allowed him to take her hand in greeting — his touch created no tingling sensations — but not to hold it as he said lightly, “I was beginning to think I’d been stood up.”

“I’m sorry to be late. I was unavoidably detained.”

“One of your investigations?”

“Yes. The close of one.”

“Satisfactorily closed, I trust.”

“For the most part.”

His smile dimmed a bit as he studied her. Whatever else he might be, he was also perceptive. “You don’t seem particularly happy about it,” he said. “Or is it something else that makes you seem so tense and cheerless?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Something to do with me?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Oh, I see. The matter of considerable urgency you alluded to in your message.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then. Shall we discuss whatever it is over luncheon in the American Dining Room?”

“I’d rather not dine, Carson. I’m not particularly hungry.”

“Then the matter must be serious, considering your usual fine appetite.” He strove for lightness of tone once again, and failed. The smile was gone now, replaced by the shadow of a frown. “It’s too public for conversation here. Where would you like to go?”

“There are benches in the garden. One of those will do.”

He took her elbow as they moved around to the walkway that led into the tropical garden with its array of exotic plants, statuary, and fountains. Marble benches were set at intervals along the walkway and among the greenery, all presently unoccupied; Carson led her to one of the latter next to a tinkling fountain.

“Well, then,” he said when they were seated facing each other. “What’s on your mind?”

Sabina had decided to be blunt. Pussyfooting around the subject would only make this more difficult. She said, “The Gold King Mine high-grading scandal eight years ago.”

Carson stared at her for several heartbeats, rigidly unmoving, as if he had been temporarily turned to stone. Then his shoulders seemed to sag slightly, and though his gaze held hers, there was hurt in it now. Whether it was old or new pain, she couldn’t tell.

“What about the Gold King scandal?” he asked then.

“Were you involved in it in any way?”

“My God. What makes you think that?”

“By your own admission you were employed in the Mother Lode in 1887, in such counties as Amador and such mines as the Gold King. You returned to San Francisco not long after the high grading was exposed and the gang members arrested. You were well acquainted with one of the principals in the scheme, George M. Kinney, a friend and business associate of your father.”

“That’s hardly evidence of complicity in the crime. You must know that my name was never connected to the Gold King conspiracy. Lord, Sabina, do you always investigate your prospective beaux?”

“Not unless I have cause.”

“What cause in this matter? What led you to poke around in my past, to suspect me of wrongdoing?”

“It was brought to my attention that you were being blackmailed by another ringleader recently released from prison, Artemas Sneed.”

Carson winced. “Brought to your attention by whom?”

“The man who calls himself S. Holmes.”

“Holmes? I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“He has used others on occasion. Tall, spare, middle-aged, with a thin, hawkish nose and a prominent chin. Speaks with a pronounced British accent.”

“I’ve never met anyone who answers that description. How on earth would he know of the Gold King and Artemas Sneed?”

A very good question. One I intend to ask Mr. S. Holmes if our paths cross again.

“You haven’t answered my question, Carson,” she said. “Were you involved in any way in the gold-stealing? And please don’t lie to me. I’ll know it if you do.”

He said nothing for a time, both hands tightly clasping the gold handle of his stick. Then he let out a breath and said resignedly, “All right. I’ll tell you the absolute truth. The answer is yes — and no.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I was involved, yes, but only briefly and indirectly. I took no active part in the thefts, received not a single penny of the proceeds from the stolen gold. I was fortunate — my name was never brought up because so far as Kinney and the others knew, they had no cause to bring me down with them. I was never part of the gang.”

“Then in what way were you involved?”

“Kinney came up to Amador just after I was hired by the Gold King’s owners and attempted to recruit me,” Carson said with some bitterness. “I had no idea he was a crook until then — it was a shock to learn that he was. He’d had heavy stock-market setbacks and was in dire need of cash, his excuse for having orchestrated the scheme. Sneed was his first recruit, I was to be his second.”

“To do what, exactly?”

“Falsify my reports on new and established veins, to make it seem as though there were not as much gold-bearing ore in certain sections of the Gold King as there was. That would have made it easier for Sneed and his crew to steal and smuggle out the richest dust. For doing this I was to be paid five thousand dollars in cash.”

“Did you agree to it?”

“Not in the beginning. I turned Kinney down at first, but he kept after me — he could be very persuasive. Finally, at a meeting with Kinney and Sneed, and under the influence of several drinks of forty-rod whiskey, I weakened and gave in to temptation. To my everlasting shame.”

“Your family is rich,” Sabina said. “Did you really need the five thousand dollars?”