Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades

12.

ROPE, n. – An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are mortal.

–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

Monday I was turned away from 913 Taylor Street again, after standing on the porch outside the closed door feeling snubbed and foolish. This time I wrote Amelia a note that I had been told twice now that she was not at home, giving the day and hour. And I said I must know about her “shadow.”

By Tuesday it had been over a week without another playing card murder, whose continuation was so grimly suggested by the progression of the suit of spades. It was as though the counterfeit murder of Mrs. Hamon, like a backfire, had halted the main conflagration.

Bierce and I met with Sgt. Nix in a saloon up Kearny Street from police headquarters at Old City Hall, in a pleasant stench of beer, with the cold food layout on the bar, iron-legged chairs grating on the brick floor, and the ubiquitous sign in front advertising PRETTY WAITER GIRLS, although there were no pretty waiter girls in evidence at this time of day.

“Jennings was in Sacramento on Wednesday‌—‌that’s the day the house was burned,” Nix said, leaning on the table.

“But he was surely in town the night of the murder. He and his wife live on Jones Street. He belongs to the Pacific Club. A State Senator is pretty big game for the Captain to lock horns with.”

Bierce sat with his fingers knitted together looking at Nix down his nose. “But Captain Pusey has something to go on.”

“Maybe,” Nix said. “He don’t just show his cards around the table.”

“Specific information,” Bierce said. “All I have so far are implications and intimations, and a personal conviction.”

This didn’t take us any further toward the identity of the Slasher. Bierce’s concentration on Jennings and the Railroad galled me.

Nix said, “There was a lawyer in Tulare who collected evidence for the Mussel Slough farmers. Jennings threw it all out of court, and something shut this lawyer up. Ran him out of the district.”

“I think the man Tom saw in Santa Cruz was Klosters,” Bierce said.

“Might be the captain has a photograph of this Klosters,” Nix said.

“I’ve wired the editor of the Virginia Sentinel offering him two hundred dollars for the tintype of the Spades he told Tom about,” Bierce said. “Tom is writing a piece recalling Mussel Slough,” he added. “There will be a response.”

“From the Railroad, you mean?” Sgt. Nix said. “If they even bother.”

“Yes,” Bierce said sourly. “So far they are as intact as the Prelapsarian apple.”

Bierce had written in Tattle, responding to a letter from a reader:

To P.D.‌—‌In assuming that we have abandoned the “fight against the railroad people” you are in error. In the natural course of comment‌—‌verbal and graphic‌—‌upon public matters, we have often found occasion to censure the piratical methods of the Railrogues, and on similar occasions shall do so again, as you will presently observe.

For instance, our Mr. Huntington has remarked that if the Railroad’s profits continue to decline, he will have to resort to reducing wages. He is the largest employer in the state, and if Mr. Huntington is not permitted to earn two millions a year on an original investment of a suspender button and a postage stamp, no mechanic shall earn more than a dollar a day if he can help it.

Mr. Huntington has announced himself opposed to politics. In the purity of his motives, as compared to Mr. £eland $tanford’s, he will turn the offices at Fourth and Townsend into a Sunday School and appoint the faithful Aaron Jennings chaplain of both branches of the State Legislature. If we rightly understand him, Mr. Huntington, whose claim it is that “every man has his price,” promises to renounce the sinful practice of paying money to the legislators, and substitute the saintly habit of taking up a collection, in which operation we recommend that he consult the most successful operator in that field, the Reverend Stottlemyer of the Washington Street Church.

We will have more to say of the senator from Southern Pacific presently. There is the matter of an arson in Santa Cruz that destroyed the papers of former Circuit Court Judge Hiram Hamon, which were concerned with corruption in the judiciary in general and the purchase of then Judge Jennings in particular, and with the murder in Morton Street of Judge Hamon’s widow, which, as we have written, was ineptly arranged to seem to be the third of the “placing card” murders.

The column included some of his usual targets, dogs as “leakers, reekers, smilers and defilers,” the Spring Valley Water Company as “the hydrants of Infamy, the springs of felony,” and reflections on the politics of the Hawaiian Islands: “This bald-faced land-grab by mizzle-spouting missionaries and sugar landlords.”

I was proud that Bierce had run my piece on Mussel Slough on the page opposite Tattle:

During the ‘70s the Railroad advertised in the East and Midwest for farmers to buy and settle Railroad-grant lands in the San Joaquin Valley. Thousands of farmers came on the Railroad’s promise to sell them their land at $2.50 to $5.00 per acre.

The Railroad laid out the towns of Goshen, Tulare, Tipton and Hanford in the Tulare Basin, which came to be known as Starvation Valley from the farmers’ struggle to make a living there.

In 1877, when the lands were prospering, the Railroad broke its promise. Instead of being reconveyed to the settlers at the low figures, lands that had already been settled would be sold to the highest bidders at prices ranging from $25 to $40 per acre.

The farmers sued but lost in several cases in San Francisco Circuit Court, presided over by Judge (now Senator) Aaron Jennings.

The Railroad began foreclosures on farmers who would not pay the higher price, and sent to Hanford two armed men, who had been offered free farms if they could wrest them from the settlers. These men, named Hartt and Crow, in their capacity as gunmen arrived in a buggy laden with firearms. They were met by a dozen armed farmers led by James Harris, who sought to disarm the strangers. Crow discharged his shotgun into Harris’s face, and shot six other farmers. Hartt was killed in the first exchange, and Crow escaped briefly, to be shot down as he was taking aim at another farmer.

The Railroad telegraph was the only means for the news of the gun battle to be disseminated, and the Railroad shut down the line after an announcement of an “armed insurrection.” The public thus knew nothing of the farmers’ side of the dispute. The embattled farmers were taken into custody by Sheriffs deputies commanded by a Railroad employee named Elza Klosters, and were brought to trial in Circuit Court in San Francisco under Judge Jennings. Evidence favorable to their cause was thrown out of court. They were found guilty of resisting officers of the law in performance of their duties and sentenced to prison terms.

Information supporting the cause of the settlers has over the years become available to the public, and facts of the Mussel Slough Tragedy and the trial of the farmers may have furnished the motive for the murder last week of Judge Hamon’s widow, and the arson that burned her Santa Cruz bungalow, including her husband’s papers.

This time Bierce made only one comment, warning me on the selection of words, in particular Hartt and Crow’s “capacity” as gunmen. “Capacity is receptive,” he said. “Ability is potential. A sponge has a capacity for water; a hand, the ability to squeeze it out.”

My next assignment was to gather material for a piece on Senator Jennings.

Seated in the parlor of Mrs. Johnson’s house, Annie Dunker clasped her hands with the tips of her fingers beneath her chin and rocked.

“He’s a very nice young man, Tommy,” she said. “He takes her to the opera and sends her things. He sends her flowers! The other girls are jealous because Rachel is treated so special.”

“I wondered if he beat her or hurt her, or anything like that‌—‌when he’s with her.”

“There’s nothing like that my cousin knows about. Tommy.”

I had the blunt feeling that this whole line of investigation had been ill-conceived.

“It just seems funny he don’t‌—‌set her up in her own place!” Annie said. “The way rich men will do sometimes. Why, they will even marry some of the girls. Isn’t he awful rich? It just seems like he wants her in the house there. That’s the only thing seems funny about it. He is very nice-spoken, my cousin says.”

“Nothing wrong with him—” I gestured.

“Oh, him! No!”

“Did anybody know of someone that had that trouble I asked you about?”

“I mentioned it to a couple of girls, but they hadn’t heard anything like that.”

And that was all I was to learn about Beau McNair or the mister without a dingle from Annie Dunker.

I had discovered that she was proud of being a parlorhouse girl. She had said of whoring that it was better than going blind in a sweatshop sewing, or twenty hours a day as a kitchen drudge or housemaid, with the old man and his sons laying for you in the hallways.

Except for Slashers laying for you.

Mammy Pleasant lived in the Octavia Street mansion belonging to the financier Thomas Bell, whom she had furnished with a wife from her stable of beautiful young females. Mammy Pleasant referred to herself as the “housekeeper” but her status did not seem to correspond to that title. It was rumored that she had collected so much information about Bell’s youthful malefactions in Scotland, and later ones in San Francisco, that he could never rid himself of her.

A colored butler opened the door for Bierce and me and took Bierce’s card back inside. He returned to usher us into a parlor so curtained and lightless that we had to feel for chairs in which to seat ourselves. Mammy Pleasant was manifested as a faceless darkness between a white lace cap and a neckpiece that glowed phosphorescently in the murk.

As my eyes became accustomed to the dark I could make out that she was seated in a straight chair with her hands folded in her lap, waiting for Bierce or me to speak.

“Madam, we are interested in some ancient history that may affect current events, and I understand that you can assist us,” Bierce said with that degree of coolness that could make a person feel that he was exposed in his iniquities.

“How may I assist you?” Mammy Pleasant said. She had a rather rasping voice that made me want to clear my throat.

“When Caroline LaPlante married Nathaniel McNair, was she already pregnant with the child she named Beaumont McNair?”

“How would I know that?” Mammy Pleasant said.

“I have reason to believe you were the midwife at the birth.”

“If I was professionally employed by Mrs. McNair I could not reveal such information without her consent.” She had a very precise and unaccented way of speaking, with a slight puff of a pause before each word, as though she considered it carefully beforehand.

“Such information might assist the case of the young man, her son, who finds himself in some difficulties.”

“Mr. Bierce, I have been employed by many different gentry in my years in San Francisco, and I owe them respect for their confidences.”

This woman was by no means intimidated by Bierce. She said, “Even if I possessed the information you require, I could not supply it without the permission of Lady Caroline Stearns.”

Bierce regarded her intently. “Mrs. Pleasant, you know who I am. This young man, Mr. Redmond, is a journalist with The Hornet. He writes occasional pieces on recent history, which are published opposite my column. Perhaps you have seen his most recent one. It is the tale of the Mussel Slough Tragedy and of certain corrupt actions and decisions on behalf of the Railroad. Mr. Redmond has asked to come along today because he also is interested in your career among the gentry in your several different capacities, and some mysteries that attend those functions.

“What particularly interests us is the charge of baby-farming that has been laid at your door. The acquisition of wanted children and the disposal of unwanted ones.”

Mammy Pleasant did not move a muscle. Her gold hoop earrings caught little dipping segments of light in that dim musty room.

Bierce continued, “As to Mrs. McNair’s condition when she married Mr. McNair‌—‌or shall we say her marital situation when she gave birth to Beaumont McNair‌—‌those dates are available in the Hall of Records.”

After a pause. Mammy Pleasant said, “Mrs. McNair was in a family way when she married Mr. McNair.”

“How far along was she?”

“About five months.”

“Who was the father?” Bierce asked.

Her earrings flipped as Mammy Pleasant shook her head.

“I think you would have made it your business to know,” Bierce said, leaning toward her.

“I cannot help you further,” she said, rising. She swept out of the room. We heard her say to the butler, “Please show the gentlemen to the door.”

I admired her dismissal of us.

As I climbed into the buggy after Bierce, I said, “You got something out of her. I didn’t think you would.”

“She doesn’t know what information they have recorded at the Hall of Records. I do.”

“What did you find out?”

“Not much,” he said chuckling. “Beau was born in March 1863. Mr. and Mrs. McNair were married in December of 1862.”

I couldn’t think what application that information could have. “Who was the father?” I asked.

“Ah,” Bierce said. “The pleasure of that discovery is still before us.”