Crucifixion River

The Carville Ghost A John Quincannon Story

Sabina said: “A ghost?”

Barnaby Meeker bobbed his shaggy head. “A strange apparition of unknown origin, Missus Carpenter. I’ve seen it with my own eyes more than once.”

“In Carville, of all places?”

“In a scattering of abandoned cars near my home there. Floating about inside different ones and then rushing out across the dunes.”

“How can a group of abandoned horse-traction cars possibly be haunted?”

“How, indeed?” Meeker said mournfully. “How, indeed?”

“And you say this apparition fled when you chased after it?”

“Both times I saw it. Bounded away across the dune tops and then simply vanished into thin air. Well, into heavy mist, to be completely accurate.”

“What did it look like, exactly?”

“A human shape surrounded by a whitish glow. Never have I seen a more eerie and frightening sight.”

“And it left no footprints behind?”

“None. Ghosts don’t leave footprints, do they?”

“If it was a ghost.”

“The dune crests were unmarked along the thing’s path of flight and it left no trace in the cars…except, that is, for claw marks on the walls and floors. What else could it be?”

Quincannon, who had been listening to all of this with a stoic mien, could restrain himself no longer. “Balderdash,” he said emphatically.

Sabina and Barnaby Meeker both glanced at him in a startled way, as if they’d forgotten he was present in the office.

“Glowing apparitions, sudden disappearances, unmarked sand…confounded claptrap, the lot.” He added for good measure: “Bah!”

Meeker was offended. He drew himself up in his chair, his cheeks and chest both puffing like a toad’s. “If you doubt my word, sir…”

It’s not your word I doubt but your sanity, Quincannon thought, but he managed not to voice the opinion. “There are no such beings as ghosts,” he said.

“Three days ago I would have agreed with you. But after what I’ve seen with my own eyes…my own eyes, I repeat…I am no longer certain of anything.”

Sabina stirred behind her desk. Pale March sunlight, slanting in through the windows that faced on Market Street, created shimmering highlights in her upswept black hair. It also threw across the desk’s polished surface the shadow of the words painted on the window glass: CARPENTER AND QUINCAN-NON, PROFESSIONAL DETECTIVE SERVICES.

She said: “Others saw the same as you, Mister Meeker?”

“My wife, my son, and a neighbor, Artemus Crabb. They will vouchsafe everything I have told you.”

“What time of night did these events take place?”

“After midnight, in all three cases. Crabb was the only one who saw the thing the first time it appeared. I happened to awaken on the second night and spied it in one of the cars. I went out alone to investigate, but it fled and vanished before I could reach the cars. Lucretia, my wife, and my son Jared both saw it last night…in one of the cars and then on the dune tops. Jared and I examined the cars by lantern light and again in the morning by daylight. The marks on walls and floor were the only evidence of its presence.”

“Claw marks, you said?”

Meeker repressed a shudder. “As if the thing had the talons of a beast.”

Quincannon said: “And evidently the heart of a coward.”

“Sir?”

“Why else would it run away or bound away or whatever it did? It’s humans who are afraid of ghosts, not the converse.”

“I have no explanation for what happened,” Meeker said. “That is why I have come to you.”

“And just what do you expect us to do? Missus Carpenter and I are detectives, not dabblers in paranormal twaddle.”

Again Meeker puffed up. He was an oddly shaped gent in his forties, with an abnormally large head set on a narrow neck and a slight body. A wild tangle of curly hair made his head seem even larger and more disproportionate. He carried a blackthorn walking stick, which he held between his knees and thumped on the floor now and then for emphasis.

“What I want is an explanation for these bizarre occurrences. Normal or paranormal, it matters not to me, as long as they are explained to my satisfaction. If they continue and word gets out, residents will leave and no new ones come to take their place. Carville will become a literal ghost town.”

“And you don’t want this to happen.”

“Of course not. Carville-by-the-Sea is my home and one day it will be the home of many other progressive-minded citizens like myself. Businesses, churches…a thriving community. Why, no less a personage than Adolph Sutro hopes to persuade wealthy San Franciscans to buy land there and build grand estates like his own at Sutro Heights.”

A cracked filbert, Mister Barnaby Meeker, Quincannon thought. Anyone who chose of his own free will to live in a home fashioned of abandoned street cars in an isolated, wind-and-sand-blown, fog-ridden place like Carville was welcome to the company of other cracked filberts, Adolph Sutro and his ilk included. He had no patience with eccentrics of any stripe, a sentiment he had expressed to Sabina on more than one occasion. She allowed as how that was because he was one himself, but he forgave her. Dear Sabina-he would forgive her anything. Except, perhaps, her steadfast refusal to succumb to his advances…

“I will pay you five hundred dollars to come to Carville and view the phenomenon for yourself,” Barnaby Meeker said.

“Eh? What’s that?”

“Five hundred dollars, sir. And an additional one thousand dollars if you can provide a satisfactory explanation for these fantastic goings-on.”

Quincannon’s ears pricked up like a hound’s. “Fifteen hundred dollars?”

“If, as I said, you provide a satisfactory explanation.”

“Can you afford such a large sum, Mister Meeker?”

“Of course I can afford it,” Meeker said, bristling. “Would I offer it if I couldn’t?”

“Ah, I ask only because…”

“Only because of where I choose to reside.” Meeker thumped his stick to punctuate his testy displeasure. “It so happens I am a man of considerable means, sir. Railroad stock, if you must know…a substantial portfolio. I have made my home in Carville because I have always been fond of the ocean and the solitude of the dunes. Does that satisfy you?”

“It does.” Quincannon’s annoyance and suspicion had both vanished as swiftly as the alleged Carville ghost. A smile now bisected his freebooter’s beard, the sort Sabina referred to rather unkindly as his “greedy grin.” “I meant no offense. You may consider us completely at your service.”

“John,” Sabina said, “let’s not be hasty. You know how busy we are…”

“Now, now, my dear,” he said, “Mister Meeker has come in good faith with a vexing problem. We can certainly find the time and wherewithal to oblige him.”

“And naturally you’ll keep an open mind in the process.”

Quincannon chose to ignore her mocking tone. He rose, beamed at the cracked filbert, shook his hand with enthusiasm, and said: “Now, to business…”

When Barnaby Meeker had gone, leaving a $500 check neatly blotted on Sabina’s desk, she said: “I’m not so sure it was a good idea to take on this case.”

“No? And why not, with five hundred dollars in hand and another thousand promised?”

“We’ve a full plate already, John. Or have you forgotten the pickpocket case, the missing Miss Devereaux, and the Wells Fargo Express robbery?”

“Hardly. You’ll identify the amusement park dip, we’ll find Miss Devereaux, and I have no doubt I’ll locate the Wells Fargo bandits and recover the stolen loot before anyone else can…all in good time.” Quincannon rubbed his hands together briskly and opined: “This ghost foolishness can be disposed of in short order tonight. Fifteen hundred dollars is a handsome fee for a few hours’ easy work.”

“Don’t be too sure it will be easy. Or that it’s foolishness.”

“Of course it is,” he said. “Ghoulies, ghosties, things that go bump in the night. Pure hogwash.”

Late that afternoon, huddled inside his greatcoat, Quincannon drove the hired livery horse and buggy out past Cliff House and Sutro Heights. A chill, southwesterly wind blew curls and twists of fog in off the Pacific; the mist was already thick enough to hide the sea from the road, although he could hear the distant murmur of surf and the barking of sea lions. The foghorn on the Potato Patch off Point Lobos gave off its mournful moan at regular intervals.

This was a bleak, lonesome section of the city, sparsely traveled beyond the Heights. As he rattled past the Ocean Boulevard turning into Golden Gate Park, a lone wagon emerged from the junglelike tangle of scrub pine and manzanita that marked the park’s western edge; otherwise, he saw no one. Empty sand-blown roadway, grass-topped dunes, gulls, fog-a blasted wasteland. There were no lampposts here, south of the park. At night, in heavy fog, the highway was virtually impassable, even with the strongest of lanterns, to all but the blind and the foolhardy.

The sea mist thinned and thickened at intervals until he reached Carville, where it roiled in like a ragged gray shroud spread out over the barren dunes. Carville-by-the-Sea. Faugh. Some name for a scattering of weather-rusted streetcars and cobbled together board shacks that had been turned into habitations of one type or another by filberts such as Barnaby Meeker.

San Francisco’s transit companies were the culprits. When the city began replacing horse-drawn cars with cable cars and electric streetcars, some of the obsolete carriages had been sold to individuals for $10 if the car had no seats, $20 if it did; the rest were abandoned out here among the dunes, awaiting new buyers or to succumb to rust and rot in the salty sea winds. A grip man for the Ellis Street line had been the first to see the nesting possibilities; in 1895, after purchasing a lot near the terminus of 20th Avenue, he had joined three old North Beach & Mission horse cars and mounted them on stilts above the shifting sand. The edifice was still standing three years later; Quincannon had passed it on the way, a lonesome sight half obscured by the blowing mist.

Farther south, where the Park and Ocean railway line terminated, a Civil War vet named Colonel Charles Daily made his home in a shell-decorated realtor’s shed. An entrepreneur, Daily had bought three cars and rented them at $5 each-one to a ladies’ bicycle club known as The Falcons-and also opened a coffee saloon. Others, Barnaby Meeker among them, bought their own cars and set them up in the vicinity. A reporter for the Bulletin dubbed the place Beachside, but residents preferred Carvilleby-the-Sea and the general public shortened that to Carville.

Quincannon had been there before, once on an outing with a young woman of his acquaintance, once on the trail of a thief who had used the ragtag community as a temporary hideout before taking it on the lammas to San Jose. It had grown since his last visit over a year ago. Most of the structures were strung closely together along the highway, a few others spaced widely apart among the seaward dunes. Most were more or less permanent homes-single-or double-stacked cars, some drawn together in horseshoe shapes for protection against the wind, and embellished by lean-tos and fenced porches. A few were part-time dwellings-clubhouses, weekend retreats or, by reputation, rendezvous for lovers. The whole had a colorless, wind-blown, sanded appearance that blue sky and sunlight did little to brighten; on days like this one, it was downright dismal.

The coffee saloon, a single car with a slant-roofed portico, bore a painted sign: THE ANNEX. Smoke dribbled out of its chimney, to be snatched away immediately by the wind. Quincannon pulled the buggy off the road in front, affixed the weighted hitch strap to the horse’s bit, and went inside.

It was a rudimentary place, with a narrow foot-railed counter running most of its width. There were no seats or decorations of any kind. The smells of strong-brewed coffee and pitch pine burning in a potbellied stove were welcome after the long, cold ride from downtown.

The counterman was a stooped oldster with white whiskers and tufts of hair that grew patchily from his scalp like saw grass atop the beach dunes. Quincannon sensed immediately that he was the garrulous type hungry for company and this proved to be the case.

“One coffee coming up,” the oldster said, and, as he served it in a steaming mug: “Colder than a witch’s hind end out there. My name’s Potter, but call me Caleb, ever’body does. Passing by or visiting, are ye?”

“John Quincannon. Visiting.”

“Ye don’t mind me asking who?”

“The Barnaby Meekers.”

“Nice folks, Mister and Missus Meeker. The boy’s a mite rascally, but then so was I at his age. You a friend of theirs?”

“A business acquaintance of Mister Meeker.” Quincannon sugared his coffee, found it too strong, and added another spoonful. “Strange goings-on out here of late, I understand,” he said conversationally.

“How’s that? Strange goings-on?”

“Ghost lights in cars and vanishing spooks in the dunes.”

“Oh, that,” Caleb said. “Mister Meeker told you, I expect.”

“He did.”

“Well, I ain’t one to dispute a man like Barnaby Meeker, nor any other man with two good eyes, but it’s a tempest in a teapot, ye ask me.”

“You haven’t seen these apparitions yourself, then?”

“No, and nobody else has, neither, except the Meekers and a fella name of Crabb. Neighbor of theirs out there in the dunes.” Caleb leaned forward and said confidentially, even though there was no one else in the car: “Just between you and me, I wouldn’t put too much stock in what Mister Crabb says on the subject.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, he’s kind of a queer bird. Wouldn’t think it to look at him, as strapping as he be, but he’s scared to death of the supernatural. Come in here the morning after he first seen the will-o’-the-wisp or whatever it was and he was white as a ghost himself. Asked me all sorts of questions about spooks and such, whether we’d had ’em out here before. I told him no and ’twas likely somebody out with a lantern, or his eyes playing tricks, but he was convinced he seen the ghost two nights in a row.” Caleb chuckled, revealing loose-fitting store-bought teeth. “Some folks is sure gullible.”

“He lives alone, does he?” Quincannon asked.

“Yep. Keeps to himself, don’t have much truck with any of the rest of us. Only been living in Carville a couple of weeks or so. Squatter, unless I miss my guess. I can spot ’em, the ones just move in all of a sudden and take over a car without paying for the privilege.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“He never said. Mister Meeker’s boy Jared says he’s a construction worker, but seems to me he don’t go nowhere much during the day.”

“Jared Meeker knows him, then.”

“To pass the time of day with. Seen ’em doing that once.”

Quincannon finished his coffee, declined a refill, and went out to the rented buggy. The branch lane that led to the Meekers’ home was 200 rods farther south. The buggy alternately bounced and slogged along the sandy surface; once, a hidden rut lifted Quincannon off the seat and made him pull back hard enough on the reins nearly to jerk the horse’s head through the martingale loops. Neither this nor the cold wind or the bleakness dampened his spirits. A few minor discomforts were a small price to pay for a $1,500 fee.

The lane led in among the dunes, dipped down into a hollow where it split into two forks. A driftwood sign mounted on a pole there bore the name Meeker and an arrow pointing along the right fork. In that direction Quincannon could see a group of four traction cars, two set end to end, the others at a right and a left angle at the far ends, like an arrangement of dominoes; mist-diffused lamplight showed faintly behind curtained windows in one of the two middle cars. A way down the left fork stood a single car canted slightly against the dune behind it; some distance beyond, eight or nine abandoned cars were jumbled together among the sandhills as if tossed there by a giant’s hand. Thick tendrils of fog gave them an insubstantial, almost ethereal aspect, one that would be enhanced by darkness and imagination. A ghost’s lair, indeed.

Quincannon left the buggy at the intersection of the two lanes, ground-hitched the horse, and trudged through drifted sand along the left-hand fork. No lights or chimney smoke showed in the single canted car; he bypassed it and continued on to the jumble.

From the outside there was nothing about any of the abandoned cars to catch the eye. They were or had been painted in various colors, according to which transit company owned them; half had been there long enough for the colors to have faded entirely and the metal and glass surfaces to become sand-pitted. Three had belonged to the Market Street Railway, four to the Ferries and Cliff House Railway, the remaining two to the California Street Cable Railroad.

Quincannon wound his way among them. No one had prowled here recently; the sand was wind-scoured to a smoothness that bore no footprints or anything other than tufts of saw grass. He trudged back to the nearest one, stepped up and inside. All the seats had been removed; he had a brief and unpleasant feeling of standing inside a giant steel coffin. There was nothing in it other than a dusting of sand that had blown in through the open doorway. And no signs that anyone had been inside since it was discarded.

He investigated a second car, then a third. These, too, had had their seats removed. Only the second contained anything to take his attention-faint scuff marks in the drifted sand, the fresh clawlike scratches on walls and floor that Barnaby Meeker had alluded to. The source and meaning of the scratches defied accurate guessing. He stepped outside, with the intention of entering the next nearest car-and a man appeared suddenly from around the end of the car, stood glowering with his hands fisted on his hips and his legs spread, and demanded: “Who are you? What’re you doing here?”

Without replying, Quincannon took his measure. He was some shy of forty, heavily black-whiskered but bald on top, with thick arms and hips broader than his shoulders. The staring eyes were the size and color of blackberries. The man seemed edgy as well as suspicious. None of this was as arresting as the fact that he wore a holstered revolver, the tail of his coat swept back, and his hand on the weapon’s gnarled butt-a large-bore Bisley Colt, judging from its size.

“Mister, I asked you who you are and what you’re doing here.”

“Having a look around. My name’s Quincannon. And you, I expect, would be Artemus Crabb.”

“How the devil d’you know my name?”

“Barnaby Meeker mentioned it.”

“Is that so? Meeker a friend of yours?”

“Business acquaintance.”

“That still don’t explain what you’re doing poking around these cars.”

“I’m thinking of buying some of them,” Quincannon lied glibly.

“Why?”

“For the same reason you and Meeker bought yours. You did buy yours, didn’t you?”

Crabb’s glower deepened. “Who says I didn’t?”

“A curious question, my friend, that’s all.”

“You’re damn’ curious about everything, ain’t you?”

“It’s my nature.” Quincannon smiled. “Ghosts and goblins,” he said then.

“What?” Crabb jerked as if he’d been struck. The hand hovering above the holstered Bisley shook visibly. “What’re you talking about?”

“Why, I understand these cars are haunted. Fascinating, if true.”

“It ain’t true! Ain’t no such things as ghosts!”

“It has been my experience that there are. Oh, the tales I could tell you of the spirit world and its evil manifestations…”

“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t believe none of it,” Crabb said, but it was plain that he did. And that the prospect frightened him as much as Caleb Potter had indicated.

“Mister Meeker tells me you’ve seen the apparition that inhabits these cars. Dancing lights, a glowing shape that races across the tops of dunes, and then vanishes, poof, without a trace…”

“I ain’t gonna talk about that. No, I ain’t!”

“I find the subject intriguing,” Quincannon said. “As a matter of fact, I’m hoping there is a ghost and that it occupies the very car I purchase. I’d welcome the company on a dark winter’s night.”

Crabb said something that sounded like-“Gah!”-and turned abruptly and scurried away. At the end of the car he stopped, looked over his shoulder, and called out: “You know what’s good for you, you stay away from these cars. Stay away!” Then he was gone into the swirling mist.

Quincannon finished his canvas of the remaining cars. Two others showed faint footprints and scratch marks on the walls and floor. In the second his keen eye picked out something half buried in drifted sand in one corner-a small but heavy piece of metal with a tiny ring soldered onto one end. After several turns in his hand, he identified it as a fisherman’s lead sinker. He studied it for a few seconds longer, then pocketed it and left the car.

Before he quit the area he climbed up to the top of the nearby line of dunes. Thick salt grass and stubby patches of gorse grew on the crests; the sand there was windswept to a tawny smoothness, without marks of any kind except for the imprint of Quincannon’s boots as he moved along. From this vantage point, through intermittent tears in the curtain of fog, he could see the white-capped ocean in the distance, the long beach and line of surf that edged it. The distant roar of breakers was muted by the wind’s wail.

He walked for some way, examining the surfaces. There was nothing up here to take his eye. No prints, no mashing of the grass or gorse to indicate passage. The steep slopes that fell away on both sides were likewise smoothly scoured, barren but for occasional bits of driftwood.

Wryly he thought: Whither thou, ghost?

The Meeker property was larger than it had seemed from a distance. In addition to the domino-styled home, there were a covered woodpile, a cistern, a small corral and lean-to built with its back to the wind, and on the other side of the cars a dune-protected privy. As Quincannon drove the buggy up the lane, Barnaby Meeker came out to stand, waiting, on a railed and slanted walkway fronting the two center cars. A thin woman wearing a woolen cape soon joined him. Meeker gestured to the lean-to and corral, where an unhitched wagon and a roan horse were picketed and where there was room for the rented buggy and livery plug. Quincannon debouched there, decided he would deal with the animal’s needs later, and went to join Meeker and the woman.

She was his wife, it developed, given name Lucretia. Her handshake was as firm as a man’s, her eyes bird-bright. She might have been comely in her early years, but she seemed to have pinched and soured as she aged; her expression was that of someone who had eaten one too many sacks full of lemons. And she was not pleased to meet him.

“A detective, of all things,” she said. “My husband can be foolishly impulsive at times.”

“Now, Lucretia,” Meeker said mildly.

“Don’t deny it. What can a detective do to lay a ghost?”

“If it is a ghost, nothing. If it isn’t, Mister Quincannon will find out what’s behind these…will-o’-the-wisps.”

“Will-o’-the-wisps? On foggy nights with no moon?”

“What ever they are, then.”

“Your neighbor believes it’s a genuine ghost,” Quincannon said. “If you’ll pardon the expression, the incidents have him badly spooked.”

“You saw Mister Crabb, did you?” Meeker asked.

“I did. Unfriendly gent. He warned me away from the abandoned cars.”

“Good-for-nothing, if you ask me,” Mrs. Meeker said.

“Indeed? What makes you think so?”

“He’s a squatter, for one thing. And he has no profession, for another. No licit profession, I’ll warrant.”

“According to the counterman at the coffee saloon, Crabb told your son he was in construction work.”

“Jared, you mean?” Her mouth turned even more lemony. “Another good-for-nothing.”

“Now, Lucretia,” Meeker said, not so mildly.

“Well? Do you deny it?”

“I do. He’s yet to prove himself, that’s all.”

“Never will, I say.”

The Meekers glared at each other. Mrs. Meeker was victorious in the game of stare down-as she would be most times they played it, Quincannon thought. Her husband averted his gaze and said to Quincannon: “Come inside. It’s nippy out here.”

The end walls where the two cars were joined had been removed to create one long room. It seemed too warm after the outside chill; a potbellied stove glowed cherry red in one corner. Quincannon accepted the offer of a cup of tea and Mrs. Meeker went to pour it from a pot resting atop the stove. He managed to maintain a poker face as he surveyed the surroundings. The car was a combination parlor, kitchen, and dining area, but it was like none other he had ever seen or hoped to see. The contents were an amazing hodge podge of heavy Victorian furniture and decorations that included numerous framed photographs and daguerreotypes, gewgaws, gimcracks, and what was surely flotsam that had been collected from the beaches-pieces of driftwood, odd-shaped bottles, glass fisherman’s floats, a section of draped netting like a moldy spider web. The effect was more that of a junk shop display than a comfortable habitation.

“Your son isn’t home, I take it,” Quincannon said. The tufted red-velvet chair he perched on was as uncomfortable as it looked.

“Thomas is a sergeant in the United States Army,” Mrs. Meeker said. “Stationed at Fort Huachuca. We haven’t seen him in two years, to my sorrow.”

Meeker said-“Thomas is our eldest son.”-and added wryly: “My wife’s favorite, as you may have surmised.”

“And why shouldn’t he be? He’s the only one who has amounted, or will amount, to anything.”

“Now, Lucretia”-with bite in the words this time-“the way you malign Jared is annoying, to say the least. He may be a bit wild and irresponsible, but he…”

“A bit wild and irresponsible? A bit!” The teacup rattled in its saucer, spilling hot liquid that Quincannon barely managed to avoid, as she handed him the crockery. “He’s a young scamp and you know it…worse today than when he was a kiting youngster. Up and quit the only decent job he ever held just last week, after less than a month’s honest labor.”

Quincannon cocked a questioning eyebrow at his employer.

“It was a clerk’s job downtown, and poorly paid,” Meeker said. “He’s a bright lad and he’ll find a more suitable position one day…”

“You won’t live long enough to see the day and neither will I.”

“That’s enough, Lucretia.”

“Oh, go dance up a rope,” she said, surprising Quincannon if not her husband.

Meeker performed his puffing-toad imitation and started to say something, but at that moment the door burst open and the wind blew in a young man swathed in a greatcoat, scarf, gloves, and stocking cap. His lean, clean-shaven face-weak-chinned and thin-lipped-was ruddy from the cold. Jared Meeker, in the flesh.

His parents might have been two sticks of furniture for all he had to say to them. It wasn’t until he opened his coat and yanked off his cap, revealing a mop of ginger-colored hair, that he noticed Quincannon. “Well, a visitor. And a stranger at that.”

“His name is John Quincannon,” Mrs. Meeker said. “He’s a detective.”

The last word caused Jared’s eyes to narrow. “A detective? What kind of detective? What’s he doing here?”

“Your father hired him to investigate the supernatural. Of all things.”

“…Ah. The ghost, you mean?”

“Whatever it is we’ve seen these past two nights, yes,” Meeker said.

Jared relaxed into an indolent posture as he shed his coat. Then he laughed, a thin barking sound like that of an adenoidal seal. “A detective to investigate a ghost. Hah! That’s rich, that is.”

Quincannon said: “I have had stranger cases, and brought them to a satisfactory conclusion. Are you a believer or a skeptic, lad?”

“I believe what I see with my own eyes. What about you?”

“I have an open mind on the subject,” he lied.

“Well, it’s a real ghost, all right. Likely of a man who died in one of the cars, or in a railway accident. Couldn’t be anything else, no matter what anybody thinks. You may well see it for yourself, if you’re planning to spend the night.”

“I am.”

“If it does reappear, you’ll be a believer, too.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Jared grinned and loosed another bark. “A detective. Hah!”

Alone in the parlor, Quincannon smoked his stubby briar and waited for the hands on his stem-winder to point to 11:30 p.m. The Meekers had all retired to their respective bedrooms in the end cars some time earlier, at his insistence; he preferred to maintain a solitary vigil. He also preferred silence to desultory and pointless conversation. There were ominous rumblings in his digestive tract as well, the result of the bland chicken dish and boiled potatoes and carrots Mrs. Meeker had seen fit to serve for supper.

The car was no longer overheated, now that the fire in the stove had banked. Cooling, the stove metal made little pinging sounds that punctuated the snicking of wind-flung sand against the car’s windows and sides. As 11:30 p.m. approached, he checked the loads in his Navy Colt. Not that he expected to need the weapon-the Carville ghost seemed to have no malevolent intention, and no one had ever succeeded in plugging a spook in any case-but he had learned long ago to exercise caution in all situations.

It was time. He holstered the Navy, donned his greatcoat, cap, scarf, and gloves, and slipped out into the night.

Icy, fog-wet wind and blowing sand buffeted him as he came down off the walkway. The night was not quite black as tar but close to it; he could barely make out the shed and corral nearby. The distant jumble of abandoned cars was invisible except for brief rents in the wall of fog, and then discernible only as faintly lumpish shapes among the dunes.

He slogged into the shelter of the lean-to. The two horses, both blanketed against the cold, stirred and one nickered softly at his passage. He removed his dark lantern from beneath the seat of the rented buggy, lighted it, closed the shutter, and then went to the side wall and probed along it until he found a gap between boards. Another brief tear in the fog permitted him to fix the proper angle for viewing the cars. He dragged over two bales of hay, piled one atop the other, and perched on the makeshift seat. By bending forward slightly, his eyes were on a level with the gap. He settled down to wait.

He had learned patience in situations such as this, by ruminating on matters of business and pleasure. Sabina occupied his mind for a considerable time. Then he sighed and shifted his thoughts to the other cases currently under investigation. The missing Devereaux heiress should be easy enough to locate; like as not she had gone off for an extended dalliance with one of her swains, since no ransom demand had been received by the family. Sabina needed no help from him in yaffling the pickpocket at the Chutes amusement park. The Wells Fargo robbery was more his type of case, and a challenging one since city bluecoats and rival detective agencies were also on the hunt for the two masked bandits who had escaped with $25,000 in cash. He had to admit that he’d made little enough headway over the past two weeks, but the same was true of his competitors for the reward Wells Fargo was offering.

Light. A faint shimmery glow through the mist.

He strained forward, squinting closer to the gap. Gray-black for a few seconds, then the fog lifted somewhat and he spied the eerie radiance again, shifting about behind the windows in one of the cars. More than just a glow-an ectoplasmic shape, an unearthly face.

He snatched up the dark lantern, hopped off the hay bales, and stepped out around the corner of the lean-to. The thing continued to drift around inside the car, held stationary for a few seconds, moved again. Quincannon was moving himself by then, over into the shadow of the cistern. Beyond there, flattish sand fields stretched for thirty or forty rods on three sides; there was no cover anywhere on its expanse, no quick way to get to the cars, even by circling around, without crossing open space.

He waited for a thickening of the fog, then stepped out in a low crouch and ran toward the car. He was halfway there when the radiance vanished.

Immediately he veered to his right, toward the line of dunes behind the cars. But he couldn’t generate any speed; in the wet darkness and loose sand he felt as if he were churning, heavy-legged, through a dream. There were no sounds except for the wind, the distant pound of surf, the rasp of his breathing.

It was two or three minutes before he reached the foot of the nearest dune. No sooner had he begun to plow upward along its steep side than the wraith-like human shape appeared suddenly at the crest and then bounded away in a rush of shimmery phosphorescence.

Quincannon shined the lantern in that direction, but the beam wasn’t powerful enough to cut through the wall of fog. Cursing, he leaned forward and dug his free hand into the sand to help propel himself upward. Behind and below him, he heard a shout. A quick glance over his shoulder told him it had come from a man running across the sand field-Barnaby or Jared Meeker, alerted too late to be of any assistance.

He was a few feet from the crest when a wind-muffled report reached his ears. The ghost shape twitched, seemed to bound forward another step or two, and then suddenly vanished. Two or three heartbeats later, it reappeared, higher up, twisted, and was gone again.

Quincannon filled his right hand with his Navy Colt as he struggled, panting, to the dune top. When he straightened, he thought he saw another flash of radiance in the far distance. After that, there was nothing to see but fog and darkness.

He made his way forward, playing the lantern beam ahead of him. The grassy surface of this dune and the next in line showed no marks of passage. But down near the bottom on the opposite side, the light illuminated a faint, irregular line of tracks that the wind was already beginning to erase.

It illuminated something else below as he climbed atop the third dune-the dark figure of a man sprawled facedown in the sand.

Panting sounds reached his ears; a few moments later, Barnaby Meeker hove into view and staggered toward him. Quincannon didn’t wait. He half slid down the sandhill to the motionless figure at the bottom, anchored the lantern so that the beam shone fully on the dark-clothed man, and turned him over. The staring eyes conveyed that he was beyond help. The gaping wound on his chest stated he’d been shot.

Meeker came sliding down the hill, pulled up, and emitted a cry of anguish. “Jared! Oh, my God, it’s Jared!”

Quincannon cast his gaze back along the dunes. The line of irregular footprints led straight to where Jared Meeker lay. There were no others in the vicinity except for those made by Quincannon and Barnaby Meeker.

At dawn Quincannon helped his distraught employer hitch up his wagon. There were no telephones in Carville; Meeker would have to drive to the nearest one to summon the city police and coroner. Young Jared’s body had been carried to his bedroom car, and Mrs. Meeker had held a vigil there most of the night. Despite her disparaging comments about her son, she had been inconsolable when she learned of his death. And she’d made no bones about blaming Quincannon for what had happened, screaming at him: “What kind of detective are you, allowing my poor boy to be murdered right before your eyes?”

For his part, Quincannon was in a dark humor. As unjust as Mrs. Meeker’s tirade had been, Jared Meeker had been murdered more or less before his eyes. He couldn’t have foreseen what would happen, of course, but the shooting was a potential blow to his reputation. If he failed to find out who was responsible, and why, the confounded newspapers would have a field day at his expense.

One thing was certain, and the apparent evidence to the contrary be damned: Jared Meeker had not been mortally wounded by a malevolent spirit from the Other Side. Spooks do not carry guns, nor can ectoplasm aim and fire one with deadly accuracy in foggy darkness.

When Meeker had gone on his way, Quincannon embarked on his first order of business-a talk with Artemus Crabb. Crabb had failed to put in an appearance at any time during last night’s bizarre happenings, which may or may not have an innocent explanation. The fog was still present this morning, but the wind had died down and visibility was good. The dunes lay like a desert wasteland all around him as he trudged down the left fork to Crabb’s car.

Knuckles on the rough-hewn door produced no response, neither did a brace of shouts. Not home at this hour? Quincannon used his fist on the door, and raised his call of Crabb’s name to a tolerable bellow. This produced results. Crabb was home, and had apparently been asleep. He jerked the door open, wearing a pair of loose-fitting long johns, and glared at Quincannon out of sleep-puffed eyes.

“You,” he said. “What the devil’s the idea, waking me up this early?”

Quincannon said bluntly: “One of your neighbors was murdered last night.”

“What? What’s that? Who was murdered?”

“Jared Meeker. From all appearances, he was done in by the Carville ghost.”

Crabb recoiled a step, his eyes popping wide. “The hell you say. The…ghost? Last night?”

“On the prowl again, the same as before. You didn’t see it?”

“Not me. Once was enough. I don’t want nothing to do with spooks. I bolted my door, shuttered all the windows, and went to bed with a weapon close to hand.”

“Heard nothing, either, I take it?”

“Just the wind. Where’d it happen?”

“On the dunes beyond the abandoned cars.”

“I don’t get it,” Crabb said. “How can a damned ghost shoot a man?”

“A ghost can’t. A man did.”

“What man? Who’d want to kill the Meeker kid?”

Quincannon smiled wolfishly. “Who, indeed?”

He left Crabb in the doorway and made his way past the jumble of abandoned cars, around behind the line of dunes where he’d last seen the white radiance. A careful search of the wind-smoothed sand along their backsides turned up nothing. Opposite where he had found Jared Meeker was another high-topped dune; he climbed it and inspected the sparse vegetation that grew along the crest.

Ah, just as he’d suspected. Some of the grass stalks had broken ends and a patch of gorse was gouged and mashed flat. This was where the assassin had lain to fire the fatal shot-and a marksman he was, to have been so accurate on a night like the last.

Quincannon searched behind the dune. Here and there, in places sheltered from the wind, were footprints leading to and from the abandoned cars. Then he began to range outward in the opposite direction, zigzagging back and forth among the sandhills. Gulls wheeled overhead, shrieking, as he drew nearer to the beach. The Pacific was calmer this morning, the waves breaking more quietly over the white sand.

For more than an hour he continued his hunt. He found nothing among the dunes. The long inner sweep of the beach was littered with all manner of flotsam cast up during storms and high winds-shells, bottles, tins, driftwood large and small, birds and sea creatures alive and dead. Last night’s wind had been blowing from the southeast; he ranged farther to the north, his sharp eyes scanning left and right.

Some 200 rods from where he had emerged onto the beach, he found what he was looking for. Or rather, the wreckage of what he was looking for, caught and tangled around the bare limb of a tree branch.

He extricated it carefully, examined it, and tucked it inside his coat. After which, whistling a temperance tune off-key, he retraced his path along the beach, through the dunes, and back to the Meekers’ home.

The car that had been Jared Meeker’s bedroom was the northernmost of the four. The curtains had been drawn over the windows; he went to the door, knocked discreetly, received no response. Mrs. Meeker, as he’d hoped, had given up her vigil and gone to one of the other cars. He tried the latch, found it unlocked, stepped inside, and shut the door behind him.

The dead man lay on his bed, covered by a blanket provided by his mother. The rest of the room contained a stove, a few pieces of mismatched furniture, a steamer trunk, a framed Wild West show poster depicting a cowboy riding a wildly bucking bronco, and little else. Quincannon searched the dresser drawers first, then the steamer trunk. Several items of interest were tucked inside the latter-hand tools, a ball of twine, a jar of oil-based paint, a board with four ten-penny nails driven through it, and two lead sinkers that matched in size and shape the one he’d found yesterday in the abandoned car.

He left the items where they lay and was closing the trunk’s lid when the door opened and Mrs. Meeker entered. She emitted a startled gasp when she saw him. “Mister Quincannon! How dare you come in here without permission?”

“My apologies. But it was necessary.”

“Necessary? Prowling through my dead son’s possessions?”

“To the conclusion of my investigation.”

“…Are you saying you know who murdered Jared?”

Before he could respond, a hailing shout came from outside. Barnaby Meeker had returned. And not alone. With him were the city coroner in a morgue wagon, and a plainclothes homicide detective named Hiram Dooley in a police hack driven by a bluecoat.

Dooley was middle-aged, portly, sported a thick brushy mustache, and had a complexion the exact hue of cooked beets. Stretched across his bulging middle was a gold watch chain adorned with an elk’s tooth the size of a golf ball. His first words to Quincannon were: “I’ve heard of you, laddybuck. You and that female partner of yours.”

“Only in the most glowing terms, no doubt.”

“Hah. Just because you’ve counted yourselves lucky on a few cases doesn’t mark you high in my book. I don’t like fly cops.”

And I don’t like pompous, empty-headed civil servants, Quincannon thought, but he only smiled and said: “Perhaps I’ll count myself lucky, as you put it, on this case as well.”

“Yeah? We’ll see about that.”

That we will, Inspector. And sooner than you think.

Meeker had already given Dooley an account of last night’s events, but the homicide dick demanded another from Quincannon. He scoffed at what he called “this spook hokum” and seemed skeptical, if not openly suspicious, of Quincannon’s rôle in the matter. Quincannon bore his browbeating with good-natured equanimity. He could have told Dooley then and there what he had deduced, but the man’s manner irritated him and he took a certain amount of pleasure in watching him blunder and bluster about Jared’s bedroom and the scene of the murder, overlooking clues and asking the wrong questions. While the two policemen were examining the abandoned cars, Quincannon took Barnaby Meeker aside and asked him a pair of seemingly innocuous questions. The answers he received were the ones he had expected.

As Dooley and the bluecoat emerged, Artemus Crabb came striding over from the direction of his car. Crabb seemed more at ease this time, his face reflecting curiosity rather than hostility or concern. He barely glanced at Quincannon, his attention focused on the law dogs.

“And who would you be?” Dooley demanded.

“Crabb’s my name. I live over yonder.”

Dooley introduced himself. “I been told you didn’t see anything of what happened out here last night.”

“That’s right, I didn’t. Seen the spook lights the night before and once is enough for me. I spent last night locked up inside my car.”

“No, you didn’t,” Quincannon said.

“What’s that?”

“You spent part of the night lying in wait on one of the dunes, with a cocked revolver in your hand.”

“What the devil would I do that for?”

“To lay the Carville ghost, once and for all.”

All eyes were on Quincannon now, Crabb glaring with feigned indignation, Dooley and Meeker showing their surprise. Quincannon favored them with the smile he reserved for moments such as these. It was time for him to take center stage, to reveal the deductive prowess that made him, in his estimation, the finest detective west of the Mississippi-a rôle he relished above all others.

Meeker said: “What are you saying, Mister Quincannon? That Crabb murdered my son?”

“With malice aforethought.”

“That’s a damn’ lie!” Crabb snapped. “Spook stuff scares the bejesus out of me. Ask Meeker, ask that old coot in the coffee saloon…they’ll tell you.”

“Spook stuff that you fear might be authentic, yes. But by the time you crouched in wait last night, you knew the truth about the Carville ghost.”

“What truth?” Dooley demanded.

“That it was all a sham designed to separate Mister Crabb from his cache of loot.”

“Loot? What loot?”

“The twenty-five thousand dollars he and his accomplice stole from Wells Fargo Express two weeks ago.”

Dooley gawped at him. Crabb shouted: “You’re crazy! You can’t pin that on me. You can’t prove anything against me.”

“I can prove that you murdered Jared Meeker,” Quincannon said, “by your own testimony. When I told you this morning that he’d been killed, you said…‘How can a damned ghost shoot a man?’ But I didn’t say how he’d been killed. How did you know he’d been shot unless you pulled the trigger yourself?”

“I just…ah…assumed it…”

“Bosh. You had no reason to assume such a fact.” Quincannon turned his attention to Dooley. “Jared Meeker was shot with a large-bore handgun, one with a considerable range…the very type Crabb carries. A search of his premises should provide additional evidence. Though not the loot from the robbery, or else Jared would have found it. It’s hidden elsewhere, likely buried under or near one of those abandoned cars…”

“Hold on, Quincannon,” Dooley said. “You telling us Jared Meeker knew Crabb was one of the bandits?”

“He did…because he was the other one, Crabb’s accomplice.”

Meeker emitted a wounded sound, puffed up, and stabbed the sand with his blackthorn stick. “That can’t be true!”

“But I’m afraid it is,” Quincannon said. “You told me yourself just now that the only job Jared held in his young life was that of a clerk in a shoe emporium on Kearney Street downtown…the same street and the very same block on which the Wells Fargo Express office is located, and a perfect position to observe the days and times large sums of cash were delivered. He fell in somehow with Crabb and together they planned and executed the robbery. Afterward they separated, Crabb evidently keeping the loot with him. The plan then called for Crabb to take up residence here in Carville, a place known to have been used before as a temporary hideout by criminals, until the hunt for the stolen money grew cold.

“My guess is that Jared grew impatient for his share of the spoils and Crabb refused to give it to him or to reveal where he’d hidden it. His first action would have been to search Crabb’s car when Crabb was away on one of his infrequent outings. When he didn’t find the loot, he embarked on a more devious, and foolish, course.”

Dooley asked: “Why didn’t he just throw down on Crabb and demand his share?”

“The lad wasn’t made that way. He was a sly schemer and likely something of a coward, afraid of a direct confrontation with his partner in crime. I’m sorry, Mister Meeker, but the evidence supports this conclusion.”

Meeker said nothing. He appeared to be slowly deflating.

Quincannon went on: “At some point during their relationship, Crabb revealed to Jared his fear of the supernatural. This was the core of the lad’s too-clever plan. He would frighten Crabb enough to force him to leave Carville after first digging up and dividing the loot. But he was careless enough to say or do something to alert Crabb to the game he was playing. That, and the probable fact that Crabb wanted the entire booty for himself, cost Jared his life.”

“So he was responsible for the spook business,” Dooley said.

“More than just responsible. He was the Carville ghost.”

“And just how did he manage that?”

“A remark Missus Meeker made yesterday alerted me to the method. She said that he was ‘a kiting youngster.’ At the time I took that to mean flighty, the runabout sort, but she meant it literally. His passion as a boy, as Mister Meeker confirmed to me a few minutes ago, was flying kites.”

“What does that have to do with…?”

Dooley stopped speaking abruptly. For just then Quincannon had removed from beneath his coat the wreckage he’d found earlier on the beach

“This is the Carville ghost, or what’s left of it,” he said. “A simple kite made of heavy canvas tacked onto a wooden frame, roughly fashioned in the shape of a man and coated with an oil-based paint mixed with phosphorous…all the tools for the making of which you’ll find in Jared’s steamer trunk. His game went like this. First he told Crabb that he’d seen spook lights among the abandoned cars and to watch for them himself. Then, past midnight, he slipped out, went to one of the cars, flashed the kite about to create the illusion of an otherworldly glow, used a tool made of a piece of wood and several nails…which you’ll also find in his trunk…to make clawlike scratches on the walls and floors, and then fled with the kite before Crabb or anyone else could catch him.”

Meeker asked dully: “How could he run across the tops of the dunes without leaving tracks?”

“He didn’t run across the tops, he ran along below and behind the dunes with the string played out just far enough to lift the kite above the crests. To hold it at that height, he used these”-Quincannon held out one of the lead sinkers he’d found-“to weight it down so he could control it in the wind. On dark, foggy nights, seen from a distance and manipulated by an expert kite flier, the kite gave every appearance of a ghostly figure bounding across the sandhills. And when he wanted it to disappear, he merely yanked it down out of sight, drew it in, and hid it under his coat. That was what he was about to do when Crabb shot him. When the bullet struck him, the string loosed from his hand and the kite was carried off by the wind. I saw flashes of phosphorescence, higher up, before it disappeared altogether. This morning I found the remains on the beach.”

Dooley said grudgingly: “By Godfrey, it all makes sense. You, Crabb, what do you have to say for yourself now?”

“Just this.” And before anyone could move, Crabb’s hand snaked under his coat and came out holding the large-bore Bisley Colt. “I didn’t let that feather-brain kid get his hands on this money and I ain’t about to let you do it, either. The lot of you, move on over to that car of mine.”

Nobody moved except Crabb. He backed up a step. “I mean it,” he said. “Be locked up until I’m clear or take a bullet where you stand. One killing or several, it don’t make any difference to me.”

He backed up another step. Unfortunately for him, the direction he took brought him just close enough for Quincannon to swat him with the wrecked kite. The blow pitched him off balance; before he could bring his weapon to bear again, Quincannon thumped him once on the temple and once on the point of the jaw. Crabb obligingly dropped the revolver and lay down quietly in the sand.

Quincannon massaged his bruised knuckles. “And what do you think of fly cops now, laddybuck?” he asked Dooley. “Do you mark John Quincannon higher in that book of yours than before?”

Dooley, bending down to Crabb with a pair of handcuffs, muttered something that Quincannon-perhaps fortunately-failed to catch.

Artemus Crabb, with a certain amount of persuasion from Dooley and the bluecoat, confessed to the robbery and the murder of Jared Meeker-the details of both being for the most part as Quincannon had surmised. The Wells Fargo money turned out to be buried beneath one of the abandoned cars; the full amount was there, not a penny having been spent.

Crabb and the loot were carted away in the police hack, and young Jared’s remains in the morgue wagon. The Meekers followed the coroner in their buggy. Neither had anything to say to Quincannon, although Mrs. Meeker fixed him with a baleful glare as they pulled out. He supposed that the $1,000 Barnaby Meeker had promised him would not be paid, but even if it was offered, he would be hard pressed to accept it under the circumstances. He felt sympathy for the Meekers. The loss of a wastrel son was no less painful than the loss of a saintly one.

Besides, he thought as he clattered the rented buggy after the others, he would be well recompensed for his twenty-four hours in Carville-by-the-Sea and his usual brilliant detective work. The reward offered by Wells Fargo for the return of the stolen funds was ten percent of the total-the not inconsiderable sum of $2,500 to fatten the coffers of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Ser vices.

A smile creased his whiskers. A reward of that magnitude might well induce Sabina to change her mind about having dinner with him at Marchand’s French Restaurant. It might even induce her to change her mind about another type of celebratory entertainment. Women were mutable creatures, after all, and John Quincannon was nothing if not per sistent. One of these evenings he might yet be gifted with the only reward he coveted more than the purely financial…