Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

“Can you see the door from the bar?” Langford asked.

“No. But since only regular—” Melody’s face changed, as the implication of what the sergeant had said dawning on her. “Oh, I see. . . .”

“That’s how Penman managed it,” Langford said. “He slipped out the door, did his dirty work, then sneaked back inside, and nobody the wiser.”

“He told me to leave him strictly alone unless he asked for something,” the woman recalled. “He said he didn’t want to be disturbed while he was studying his lawbooks.”

“So he had time enough to do what he had to do,” Tone said.

“Damn it, I’m going out there and dragging that slut Lucy Barnes back in here by the hair,” Melody said, alarmed. “The Ripper could be out there laying in wait for her.”

Once they were in the street again, Tone said, “What do you think about Penman’s sea voyage? Was he just covering his tracks?”

“I’ve been studying on it,” Langford answered. “Lambert Sprague has been pushed to the wall by the Celestials. It could be that he’s given up on the Barbary Coast and planning to set up somewhere else. He’d want to take his faithful lawyer and business manager with him.”

“Now I remember something,” Tone said. “When I went after Penman he yelled to me that everything had gone to shit. He must have been talking about Sprague’s enterprises along the waterfront.”

“Sprague is getting weaker while the Tong is growing in strength. They already control most of the Barbary Coast and are looking for more.” Langford glanced at the black sky. “At heart, Sprague is still a pirate and it’s not in his code to stand and fight when the odds are stacked against him. He’ll haul down his flag, make a run for it and hope for better times.”

“It seems to me that a man with his money could hire all the gunmen he needed and make a better fight of it,” Tone said.

“He’d need hundreds, an army, and even then the Tong would outnumber him. There are a lot more Chinese in San Francisco than guns for hire in the western lands. Besides, it would take time to recruit the kind of force you’re talking about, and by then Sprague knows he could be dead. The Tong have already come close to killing him once, and by now he must be afraid that every coolie carrying a bundle of dirty laundry on his head is a potential assassin.”

The big sergeant nodded to himself. “No, he’ll cut his cable and run. Gentlemen of fortune know when they’re outgunned.”

“Where to now?” Tone asked.

Langford sighed. “Do some more searching for Penman, I guess.”

Tone smiled. “Like you said, it’s going to be a long night.”

“Some nights,” the cop said, “are longer than others.”

Chapter 39

Dawn came slowly to the waterfront. Out in the bay a gray mist hung over green water and the sky had cleared, shading from scarlet to violet, adorned with ribbons of jade. Gulls squawked and quarreled around the topgallants of the tall ships at the docks and the morning smelled of salt air and timbers worn by wind and sea.

A sorry procession of hungover sailors and miners, exhausted by rum and whores, made their way to their bunks in the brightening light, seeking sleep or a merciful death.

Tone and Langford sat in Tilly Tucker’s Tea Room off Pacific Street, watching the world go by as they yawned over coffee and Tilly’s famous hot rolls and unsalted Wisconsin butter. There were few other patrons at this time of the morning and the three men and two women who were present sat pale, silent and numb.

Tilly was a little old lady, bent and wrinkled, with lively brown eyes and hands mottled with the same color. She stepped to the table, opened the lid of a cigar box and displayed them to Langford. “A morning cigar, Sergeant?” she said. “You look all in.” Then to Tone, “And so do you, young man.”

“It’s been a long night, Tilly.” Langford sighed. “A man gets tired.”

He selected a cigar and the woman reached into the pocket of her pinafore, found a match, thumbed it into flame, and lighted his smoke.

She did the same for Tone, who marveled at her expertise. He’d been around Texas drovers who lit matches like that, but none of them had possessed the old lady’s casual skill.

He told her so, and Tilly smiled. “Young man, I’ve been lighting cigars for gentlemen since I was fourteen. That was when these”—she slapped her flat chest—“were out to here.” She cupped both hands an exaggerated distance in front of her. “Back in those days, on the riverboats, they called me Tits Tucker.”

The last was so unexpected, coming as it did from the prim mouth of a little old lady, that Tone laughed, his first real bellow in a long time, and it felt good.

Tilly toddled away to wait on another customer and Tone and Langford smoked and drank coffee, letting a comfortable silence stretch between them.

After a few minutes a police whistle warbled in the distance. Tone looked at the sergeant and raised a questioning eyebrow.

The big cop shrugged. “Ah, let him get his head kicked in. I’m off duty.”

Then more whistles, strident and urgent.

Tilly was at her far window, craning her neck so she could see the waterfront.

“What’s happening out there, Tilly?” a man asked.

“I don’t know. Some kind of disturbance at the docks. Policemen running . . .”

Langford sighed and got to his feet. He looked at Tone. “I guess we’d better get down there.”

“Is Sprague making his run, you think?”

“Could be. Or they caught a drunken sailor pissing off the dock.”

There were two dozen policemen milling around the dock area when Tone and Langford arrived, the sergeant with a cigar in one hand, a half-eaten roll in the other.

“What’s going on?” he asked the nearest cop. “And where’s Inspector Anderson?”

“He’s escaping, Sergeant!”

“Damn it man, who’s escaping?”

“The Ripper! Look, out there in the boat.”

Langford’s eyes moved to the bay, where the boat was a dark dot in the distance, almost lost between a shoaling sea and the flaming sky. Desperately he turned to Tone. “Can you see anything?”

Tone’s far-sighted gaze searched the bay. “I think maybe six, seven men. Is Sprague’s longboat still tied up?”

Langford hurried to the edge of the dock, glanced down, then yelled, “No, it’s gone.”

Agitated, he tossed away his cigar and roll and walked back to Tone. “It’s got to be Sprague and Penman must be with him.” He looked around at the milling cops. “Who saw the boat leave?”

An officer stepped forward. “We did, Sarge, my partner and me. We were proceeding to relieve the two officers on duty here and that’s when we saw the rowboat pull away.”

“How do you know it was”—Langford hesitated—“the Ripper?”

“One of the individuals on board answered his description: a slight, small man wearing a gray coat.”

“Did you recognize any of the others?”

The officer shook his head. “No, but one of the men at the oars was a real giant.” He jerked a thumb at Tone. “Even bigger than him.”

“That could be Blind Jack,” Tone said.

“Sergeant Langford!”

Langford turned to the voice. “Inspector Anderson, I was wondering where you were.”

“I’ve got two dead officers back there, hidden behind the stack of whale oil barrels yonder. Their necks are broken.” He looked into the bay. “I believe the men who murdered my officers are in that boat, and quite possibly the Ripper is with them.”

“And Lambert Sprague,” Langford said. “If he’s harboring a fugitive from justice we could put that damned pirate away for years.”

Anderson was a young man with a full, spade-shaped beard and intelligent blue eyes. At that moment he looked both frustrated and helpless.