Oakley Hall - Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades

“Abused?” Beau said harshly.

“Swindled then.”

Curtis said, “Are you implying that Senator Jennings is our madman? I will not believe—”

“Senator Jennings is no madman,” Bierce said. “He is, however, a murderer.”

“Is he a part of the conspiracy you have mentioned?” Lady Caroline asked. For the first time she sounded breathless. I could see her hand, spread-fingered before her bosom; it was not a young hand.

“I do not know that yet, madam. You have perceived that I want something. I am bound to see Senator Jennings prosecuted for the murder of Mrs. Hamon. You can help me accomplish that.”

Bierce would give the prosecution of Jennings precedence over the Slashings because he was set like a locomotive on rails after the SP, and he considered Jennings his particular target.

“How is that, Mr. Bierce?” Lady Caroline said.

“Lady Caroline, it is a strength of your personality to have a power of persuasion over men. That is not an empty compliment. I ask you to persuade Elza Klosters to reveal the fact that Senator Jennings tried to hire him to murder Mrs. Hamon. Then I can promise you that the identity of the Slasher will be revealed.”

Beau started to speak, but Lady Caroline halted him with a motion of her bare hand. She whispered, “You overestimate my powers, Mr. Bierce.”

“I believe I do not.”

“I would not be able to persuade Elza Klosters to such an action,” she said firmly.

Bierce rose. “Very well, madam,” he said. “Good day, madam. Sirs. I believe we have nothing more to communicate here.”

We left. I thought he would have his way, when they had had time to confer.

“That is a remarkable woman,” Bierce said, in the tone in which he had spoken of Lillie Coit, Ada Claire and Adah Isaacs Mencken.

We turned onto California Street, which slanted upward to Nob Hill, some traffic of wagons and carriages, two cable cars passing halfway up the slope. There was a shout, a cracking of hoofs, a screeching of scraped metal. Bierce grasped my arm and flung me against the brick wall behind us.

A carriage careened toward us, a pair of horses with white-rimmed eyes, forelegs flashing, the muffled figure of the driver poised whip-swinging above them. I snatched Bierce’s revolver from my pocket, raised the muzzle and pressed the trigger. The shot exploded in my ear as the carriage spun away past us with its rear wheels grating and sparking on the pavement. Shouts of alarm and anger erupted further along. I held the revolver shakily aimed but did not fire again. The carriage raced away up California Street and turned at the second corner and was gone, leaving plug-hatted pedestrians staring in its wake, one shaking a cane after it. A man had leaped out of his buggy to calm his frightened horse. Smoke curled from the muzzle of the revolver.

“Missed,” I said.

Bierce said in a flat voice, “I read in one of the Penny Dreadfuls that Billy the Kid holds his forefinger along the barrel of his weapon and simply points the finger at his target.”

I seemed to have become his bodyguard. I pocketed the revolver. The barrel was hot. “That was a response, not a threat,” I said. “Senator Jennings still has not heard from Klosters.”

“No, that was for me,” Bierce said. “That was not intimidation, that was an attempt to shorten my life.” He sounded pleased.

Mammy Pleasant came again to him in the office of the editor of The Hornet .

She wore black bombazine that rustled like a forest when she seated herself. She had a black straw hat tied on her head with a black scarf and carried a black bag that would have contained a fair-sized infant. The gold hoop earrings glinted at her ears. She pointed her fierce, dark face at Bierce.

“I’m glad to see you, Mrs. Pleasant,” Bierce said. “Why does it occur to me that your visit has to do with the return to San Francisco of Lady Caroline Stearns?”

Mammy Pleasant looked down at her hands folded in her lap and said, in her manner that was both assertive and hesitating, “It is because that is your nature, Mr. Bierce.”

Bierce stroked the fair sparrow-wings of his mustache.

“And what do you have to say to me, Mrs. Pleasant?”

She turned her white-rimmed eyes toward me. “I understand that information is being collected for a news article on aspects of my life in San Francisco,” she said.

“That is correct,” Bierce said.

“I have some information that may be of assistance to you, if you will guarantee that my history will not be made public at this time. It would be most inopportune for me, Mr. Bierce.”

Bierce sat silently for a moment, studying her. “I believe you can tell me the identity of the Slasher.”

A dark hand pulled her shawl more closely around her. She leaned forward with a show of teeth in her lean face, shaking her head.

“Mr. Bierce, I believe I understand your way of thinking. You will be thinking because Mr. James Brittain forbade his daughter to marry Beau McNair that you have uncovered the truth. You have not uncovered the truth. You have only looked at half a picture.”

She gathered up her bag and rose and, a hunched figure, hurried out.

Bierce and I stared at each other. “What does that sibylline utterance mean, please?”

I shook my head helplessly.

“Is our solution to Beau’s parentage brought to question? Brittain did admit to it.”

I said I didn’t know what to think.

27

EDUCATION, n. – That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

Sgt. Nix arrived at The Hornet with the latest news from Old City Hall.

“Bos Curtis come in the station like a wagonload of wildcats,” he said. “There was fur flying in the Captain’s office.”

“Is it a fact that Pusey has a witness to Rachel LeVigne’s murder?” Bierce asked.

“Fellow named Horswill. Showed him the photograph and he said it was Beau McNair, all right. And Mr. R. Buckle had sworn false that Beau was with him.”

“Pusey was waiting to broach that to Lady Caroline?”

Nix managed to shrug and nod at the same time.

Bierce said, “I imagine Curtis told Pusey what he would do to Edith Pruitt, and this Horswill, on the witness stand‌—‌as identifiers of photographs. Not to speak of why the Captain chose to show Beau McNair’s photograph in the first place.”

I wondered aloud if police were stationed at the McNair mansion.

“The lady don’t want anybody there,” Nix said. “I understand the place is forted up pretty good from back when those Sandlotters would mob up on Nob Hill and raise the dickens. Your pal Klosters has been there,” he added.

“Tom and I have been invited to call upon Lady Caroline after supper tonight,” Bierce said.

“Wouldn’t it be better for you to go alone?” I asked, when Nix had departed.

“I want you to observe. You will be listening, to her and to me, in order to inform me later of anything I may have missed.”

At nine o’clock we rolled up California Street in a hack, jolted when the horse’s hoofs slipped on the paving stones, the hackie cursing and using his whip. We came out among the edifices of the Big Four, passing the Crocker mansion with its scrollwork facade and its tower, and the loom of the spite-fence beyond it. A fog bank blocked out the lights of the western part of the City.