More Oddments

Fergus O’Hara, Detective

On a balmy March afternoon in the third full year of the War Between the States, while that conflict continued to rage bloodily some two thousand miles distant, Fergus and Hattie O’Hara jostled their way along San Francisco’s Embarcadero toward Long Wharf and the riverboat Delta Star. The half-plank, half-dirt roads and plank walks were choked with horses, mules, cargo-laden wagons — and with all manner of humanity: bearded miners and burly roustabouts and sun-darkened farmers; rope-muscled Kanakas and Filipino laborers and coolie-hatted Chinese; shrewd-eyed merchants and ruffle-shirted gamblers and bonneted ladies who might have been the wives of prominent citizens or trollops on their way to the gold fields of the Mother Lode. Both the pace and the din were furious. At exactly four P.M. some twenty steamers would leave the waterfront, bound upriver for Sacramento and Stockton and points in between.

O’Hara clung to their carpetbags and Hattie clung to O’Hara as they pushed through the throng. They could see the Delta Star the moment they reached Long Wharf. She was an impressive side-wheeler, one of the “floating palaces” that had adorned the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers for more than ten years. Powered by a single-cylinder, vertical-beam engine, she was 245 feet long and had slim, graceful lines. The long rows of windows running full length both starboard and larboard along her deckhouse, where the Gentlemen’s and Dining Saloons and most of the staterooms were located, refracted jewel-like the rays of the afternoon sun. Above, to the stern, was the weather deck, on which stretched the “texas”; this housed luxury staterooms and cabins for the packet’s officers. Some distance forward of the texas was the oblong glassed-in structure of the pilothouse.

Smiling as they approached, O’Hara said, “Now ain’t she a fine lady?” He spoke with a careless brogue, the result of a strict ethnic upbringing in the Irish Channel section of New Orleans. At times this caused certain individuals to underestimate his capabilities and intelligence, which in his profession was a major asset.

“She is fine, Fergus,” Hattie agreed. “As fine as any on the Mississippi before the war. How far did you say it was to Stockton?”

O’Hara laughed. “A hundred twenty-seven miles. One night in the lap of luxury is all we’ll be having this trip, me lady.”

“Pity,” Hattie said. She was in her late twenties, five years younger than her husband; dark-complected, buxom. Thick black hair, worn in ringlets, was covered by a lace-decorated bonnet. She wore a gray serge traveling dress, the hem of which was now coated with dust.

O’Hara was tall and plump, and sported a luxuriant red beard of which he was inordinately proud and on which he doted every morning with scissors and comb. Like Hattie, he had mild blue eyes; unlike Hattie, and as a result of a fondness for spirits, he possessed a nose that approximated the color of his beard. He was dressed in a black frock coat, striped trousers, and a flowered vest. He carried no visible weapons, but in a holster inside his coat was a double-action revolver.

The Delta Star’s stageplank, set aft to the main deck, was jammed with passengers and wagons; it was not twenty till four. A large group of nankeen-dressed men were congregated near the foot of the plank. All of them wore green felt shamrocks pinned to the lapels of their coats, and several were smoking thin, “long-nine” seegars. Fluttering above them on a pole held by one was a green banner with the words Mulrooney Guards, San Francisco Company A crudely printed on it in white.

Four of the group were struggling to lift a massive wooden crate that appeared to be quite heavy. They managed to get it aloft, grunting, and began to stagger with it to the plank. As they started up, two members of the Delta Star’s deck crew came down and blocked their way. One of them said, “Before you go any farther, gents, show us your manifest on that box.”

One of the other Mulrooneys stepped up the plank. “What manifest?” he demanded. “This ain’t cargo, it’s personal belongings.”

“Anything heavy as that pays cargo,” the deckhand said. “Rules is rules and they apply to Bluebellies same as to better folks.”

“Bluebellies, is it? Ye damned Copperhead, I’ll pound ye up into horsemeat!” And the Mulrooney hit the deckhand on the side of the head and knocked him down.

The second crew member stepped forward and hit the Mulrooney on the side of the head and knocked him down.

Another of the Guards jumped in and hit the second crewman on the side of the head and knocked him down.

The first deckhand got up and the first Mulrooney got up, minus his hat, and began swinging at each other. The second crewman got up and began swinging at the second Mulrooney. The other members of the Guards, shouting encouragement, formed a tight circle around the fighting men — all except for the four carrying the heavy wooden crate. Those Mulrooneys struggled up the stageplank with their burden and disappeared among the confusion on the main deck.

The fight did not last long. Several roustabouts and one of the steamer’s mates hurried onto the landing and broke it up. No one seemed to have been injured, save for the two deckhands who were both unconscious. The mate seemed undecided as to what to do, finally concluded that to do nothing at all was the best recourse; he turned up the plank again. Four roustabouts carried the limp crewmen up after him, followed by the Guards who were all now loudly singing “John Brown’s Body.”

Hattie asked O’Hara, “Now what was that all about?”

“War business,” he told her solemnly. “California’s a long way from the battlefields, but feelings and loyalties are as strong here as in the East.”

“But who are the Mulrooney Guards?”

Before O’Hara could answer, a tall man wearing a Prince Albert, who was standing next to Hattie, swung toward them and smiled and said, “I couldn’t help overhearing the lady’s question. If you’ll pardon the intrusion, I can supply an answer.”

O’Hara looked the tall man over and decided he was a gambler. He had no particular liking for gamblers, but for the most part he was tolerant of them. He said the intrusion was pardoned, introduced himself and Hattie, and learned that the tall man was John A. Colfax, of San Francisco.

Colfax had gray eyes that were both congenial and cunning. In his left hand he continually shuffled half a dozen small bronze war-issue cents — coinage that was not often seen in the West. He said, “The Mulrooney Guards is a more or less official militia company, one of several supporting the Union cause. They have two companies, one in San Francisco and one in Stockton. I imagine this one is joining the other for some sort of celebration.”

“Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day,” O’Hara told him.

“Ah, yes, of course.”

“Ye seem to know quite a bit about these lads, Mr. Colfax.”

“I am a regular passenger on the Delta Star,” Colfax said. “On the Sacramento packets as well. A traveling man picks up a good deal of information.”

O’Hara said blandly, “Aye, that he does.”

Hattie said, “I wonder what the Mulrooneys have in that crate?”

Colfax allowed as how he had no idea. He seemed about to say something further, but the appearance of three closely grouped men, hurrying through the crowd toward the stageplank, claimed his attention. The one in the middle, O’Hara saw, wore a broadcloth suit and a nervous, harried expression; cradled in both hands against his body was a large and apparently heavy valise. The two men on either side were more roughly dressed, had revolvers holstered at their hips. Their expressions were dispassionate, their eyes watchful.

O’Hara frowned and glanced at Colfax. The gambler watched the trio climb the plank and hurry up the aft stairway; then he said quietly, as if to himself, “It appears we’ll be carrying more than passengers and cargo this trip.” He regarded the O’Haras again, touched his hat, said it had been a pleasure talking to them, and moved away to board the riverboat.

Hattie looked at her husband inquiringly. He said, “Gold.”

“Gold, Fergus?”

“That nervous chap had the look of a banker, the other two of deputies. A bank transfer of specie or dust from here to Stockton — or so I’m thinking.”

“Where will they keep it?”

“Purser’s office, mayhap. Or the pilothouse.”

Hattie and O’Hara climbed the plank. As they were crossing the main deck, the three men appeared again on the stairway; the one in the broadcloth suit looked considerably less nervous now. O’Hara watched them go down onto the landing. Then, shrugging, he followed Hattie up the stairs to the weather deck. They stopped at the starboard rail to await departure.

Hattie said, “What did you think of Mr. Colfax?”

“A slick-tongued lad, even for a gambler. But ye’d not want to be giving him a coin to put in a village poor box for ye.”

She laughed. “He seemed rather interested in the delivery of gold, if that’s what it was.”

“Aye, so he did.”

At exactly four o’clock the Delta Star’s whistle sounded; her buckets churned the water, steam poured from her twin stacks. She began to move slowly away from the wharf. All up and down the Embarcadero now, whistles sounded and the other packets commenced backing down from their landings. The waters of the bay took on a chaotic appearance as the boats maneuvered for right-of-way. Clouds of steam filled the sky; the sound of pilot whistles was angry and shrill.

Once the Delta Star was clear of the wharves and of other riverboats, her speed increased steadily. Hattie and O’Hara remained at the rail until San Francisco’s low, sun-washed skyline had receded into the distance; then they went in search of a steward, who took them to their stateroom. Its windows faced larboard, but its entrance was located inside a tunnellike hallway down the center of the texas. Spacious and opulent, the cabin contained carved rosewood paneling and red plush upholstery. Hattie said she thought it was grand. O’Hara, who had never been particularly impressed by Victorian elegance, said he imagined she would be wanting to freshen up a bit — and that, so as not to be disturbing her, he would take a stroll about the decks.

“Stay away from the liquor buffet,” Hattie said. “The day is young, if I make my meaning clear.”

O’Hara sighed. “I had no intention of visiting the liquor buffet,” he lied, and sighed again, and left the stateroom.

He wandered aft, past the officers’ quarters. When he emerged from the texas he found himself confronted by the huge A-shaped gallows frame that housed the cylinder, valve gear, beam and crank of the walking-beam engine. Each stroke of the piston produced a mighty roar and hiss of escaping steam. The noise turned O’Hara around and sent him back through the texas to the forward stairway.

Ahead of him as he started down were two men who had come out of the pilothouse. One was tall, with bushy black hair and a thick mustache apparently a passenger. The second wore a square-billed cap and the sort of stern, authoritative look that would have identified him as the Delta Star’s pilot even without the cap. At this untroubled point in the journey, the packet would be in the hands of a cub apprentice.

The door to the Gentlemen’s Saloon kept intruding on O’Hara’s thoughts as he walked about the deckhouse. Finally he went down to the main deck. Here, in the open areas and in the shedlike expanse beneath the superstructures, deck passengers and cargo were pressed together in noisy confusion: men and women and children, wagons and animals and chickens in coops; sacks, bales, boxes, hogsheads, cords of bull pine for the roaring fireboxes under the boilers. And, too, the Mulrooney Guards, who were loosely grouped near the taffrail, alternately singing “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and passing around jugs of what was likely poteen — a powerful homemade Irish whiskey.

O’Hara sauntered near the group, stood with his back against a stanchion, and began to shave cuttings from his tobacco plug into his briar. One of the Mulrooneys — small and fair and feisty looking noticed him, studied his luxuriant red beard, and then approached him carrying one of the jugs. Without preamble he demanded to know if the gentleman were Irish. O’Hara said he was, with great dignity. The Mulrooney slapped him on the back. “I knew it!” he said effusively. “Me name’s Billy Culligan. Have a drap of the crayture.”

O’Hara decided Hattie had told him only to stay away from the buffet. There was no deceit in accepting hospitality from fellows of the Auld Sod. He took the jug, drank deeply, and allowed as how it was a fine crayture, indeed. Then he introduced himself, saying that he and the missus were traveling to Stockton on a business matter.

“Ye won’t be conducting business on the morrow, will ye?”

“On St. Pat’s Day?” O’Hara was properly shocked.

“Boyo, I like ye,” Culligan said. “How would ye like to join in on the biggest St. Pat’s Day celebration in the entire sovereign state of California?”

“I’d like nothing better.”

“Then come to Green Park, on the north of Stockton, ’twixt nine and ten and tell the lads ye’re a friend of Billy Culligan. There’ll be a parade, and all the food and liquor ye can hold. Oh, it’ll be a fine celebration, lad!”

O’Hara said he and the missus would be there, meaning it. Culligan offered another drink of poteen, which O’Hara casually accepted. Then the little Mulrooney stepped forward and said in a conspiratorial voice, “Come round here to the taffrail just before we steam into Stockton on the morrow. We’ve a plan to start off St. Pat’s Day with a mighty salute — part of the reason we sent our wives and wee ones ahead on the San Joaquin. Ye won’t want to be missing that either.” Before O’Hara could ask him what he meant by “mighty salute,” he and his jug were gone into the midst of the other Guards.

“Me lady,” O’Hara said contentedly, “that was a meal fit for royalty and no doubt about it.”

Hattie agreed that it had been a sumptuous repast as they walked from the Dining Saloon to the texas stairway. The evening was mild, with little breeze and no sign of the thick Tule fog that often made Northern California riverboating a hazardous proposition. The Delta Star — aglow with hundreds of lights — had come through the Carquinez Straits, passed Chipp’s Island, and was now entering the San Joaquin River. A pale moon silvered the water, turned a ghostly white the long stretches of fields along both banks.

On the weather deck, they stood close together at the larboard rail, not far from the pilothouse. For a couple of minutes they were alone. Then footsteps sounded and O’Hara turned to see the ship’s captain and pilot returning from their dinner. Touching his cap, the captain — a lean, graying man of fifty-odd — wished them good evening. The pilot merely grunted.

The O’Haras continued to stand looking out at the willows and cottonwoods along the riverbank. Then, suddenly, an explosive, angry cry came from the pilothouse, startling them both. This was followed by muffled voices, another sharp exclamation, movement not clearly perceived through the window glass and beyond partially drawn rear curtains, and several sharp blasts on the pilot whistle.

Natural curiosity drew O’Hara away from the rail, hurrying; Hattie was close behind him. The door to the pilothouse stood open when they reached it, and O’Hara turned inside by one step. The enclosure was almost as opulent as their stateroom, but he noticed its appointments only peripherally. What captured his full attention was three men now grouped before the wheel, and the four items on the floor close to and against the starboard bulkhead.

The pilot stood clutching two of the wheel spokes, red-faced with anger; the captain was bending over the kneeling figure of the third man — a young blond individual wearing a buttoned-up sack coat and baggy trousers, both of which were streaked with dust and soot and grease. The blond lad was making soft moaning sounds, holding the back of his head cupped in one palm.

One of the items on the floor was a steel pry bar. The others were a small safe bolted to the bulkhead, a black valise — the one O’Hara had seen carried by the nervous man and his two bodyguards — and a medium-sized iron strongbox, just large enough to have fit inside the valise. The safe door, minus its combination dial, stood wide open; the valise and a strongbox were also open. All three were quite obviously empty.

The pilot jerked the bell knobs, signaling an urgent request to the engineer for a lessening of speed, and began barking standby orders into a speaking tube. His was the voice which had startled Hattie and O’Hara. The captain was saying to the blond man, “It’s a miracle we didn’t drift out of the channel and run afoul of a snag — a miracle, Chadwick.”

“I can’t be held to blame, sir,” Chadwick said defensively. “Whoever it was hit me from behind. I was sitting at the wheel when I heard the door open and thought it was you and Mr. Bridgeman returning from supper, so I didn’t even bother to turn. The next thing, my head seemed to explode. That is all I know.”

He managed to regain his feet and moved stiffly to a red plush sofa, hitching up his trousers with one hand; the other still held the back of his head. Bridgeman, the pilot, banged down the speaking tube, then spun the wheel a half-turn to larboard. As he did the last, he glanced over his shoulder and saw O’Hara and Hattie. “Get out of here!” he shouted at them. “There is nothing here for you.”

“Perhaps, now, that isn’t true,” O’Hara said mildly. “Ye’ve had a robbery, have ye not?”

“That is none of your affair.”

Boldly O’Hara came deeper into the pilothouse, motioning Hattie to close the door. She did so. Bridgeman yelled, “I told you to get out of here! Who do you think you are?”

“Fergus O’Hara — operative of the Pinkerton Police Agency.”

Bridgeman stared at him, open-mouthed. The captain and Chadwick had shifted their attention to him as well. At length, in a less harsh tone, the pilot said, “Pinkerton Agency?”

“Of Chicago, Illinois; Allan Pinkerton, Principal.”

O’Hara produced his billfold, extracted from it the letter from Allan Pinkerton and the Chicago & Eastern Central Railroad Pass, both of which identified him, as the bearer of these documents, to be a Pinkerton Police agent. He showed them to both Bridgeman and the captain.

“What would a Pinkerton man be doing way out here in California?” the captain asked.

“Me wife Hattie and me are on the trail of a gang that has been terrorizing Adams Express coaches. We’ve traced them to San Francisco and now have reliable information they’re to be found in Stockton.”

“Your wife is a Pinkerton agent too? A woman...”

O’Hara looked at him as if he might be a dullard. “Ye’ve never heard of Miss Kate Warne, one of the agency’s most trusted Chicago operatives? No, I don’t suppose ye have. Well, me wife has no official capacity, but since one of the leaders of this gang is reputed to be a woman, and since Hattie has assisted me in the past, women being able to obtain information in places men cannot, I’ve brought her along.”

Bridgeman said from the wheel, “Well, we can use a trained detective after what has happened here.”

O’Hara nodded. “Is it gold ye’ve had stolen?”

“Gold — yes. How did you know that?”

He told them of witnessing the delivery of the valise at Long Wharf. He asked then, “How large an amount is involved?”

“Forty thousand dollars,” the captain said.

O’Hara whistled. “That’s a fair considerable sum.”

“To put it mildly, sir.”

“Was it specie or dust?”

“Dust. An urgent consignment from the California Merchant’s Bank to their branch in Stockton.”

“How many men had foreknowledge of the shipment?”

“The officials of the bank, Mr. Bridgeman, and myself.”

“No other officers of the packet?”

“No.”

“Would you be telling me, Captain, who was present when the delivery was made this afternoon?”

“Mr. Bridgeman and I, and a friend of his visiting in San Francisco — a newspaperman from Nevada.”

O’Hara remembered the tall man with bushy hair who had been with the pilot earlier. “Can ye vouch for this newspaperman?” he asked Bridgeman.

“I can. His reputation is unimpeachable.”

“Has anyone other than he been here since the gold was brought aboard?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Chadwick said that no one had come by while he was on duty; and none of them had noticed anyone shirking about at any time. The captain said sourly, “It appears as though almost any man on this packet could be the culprit. Just how do you propose we find out which one, Mr. O’Hara?”

O’Hara did not reply. He bent to examine the safe. The combination dial appeared to have been snapped off, by a hand with experience at such villainous business. The valise and the strongbox had also been forced. The pry bar was an ordinary tool and had likely also been used as a weapon to knock Chadwick unconscious.

He straightened and moved about the enclosure, studying each fixture. Then he got down on hands and knees and peered under both the sofa and a blackened winter stove. It was under the stove that he found the coin.

His fingers grasped it, closed it into his palm. Standing again, he glanced at the coin and saw that it was made of bronze, a small war-issue cent piece shinily new and free of dust or soot. A smile plucked at the edges of his mouth as he slipped the coin into his vest pocket.

Bridgeman said, “Did you find something?”

“Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not.”

O’Hara came forward, paused near where Bridgeman stood at the wheel. Through the windshield he could see the moonlit waters of the San Joaquin. He could also see, as a result of the pilothouse lamps and the darkness without, his own dim reflection in the glass. He thought his stern expression was rather like the one Allan Pinkerton himself possessed.

Bridgeman suggested that crewmen be posted on the lower decks throughout the night, as a precaution in the event the culprit had a confederate with a boat somewhere along the route and intended to leave the packet in the wee hours. The captain thought this was a good idea; so did O’Hara.

He was ready to leave, but the captain had a few more words for him. “I am grateful for your professional assistance, Mr. O’Hara, but as master of the Delta Star the primary investigative responsibility is mine. Please inform me immediately if you learn anything of significance.”

O’Hara said he would.

“Also, I intend my inquiries to be discreet, so as not to alarm the passengers. I’ll expect yours to be the same.”

“Discretion is me middle name,” O’Hara assured him.

A few moments later, he and Hattie were on their way back along the larboard rail to the texas. Hattie, who had been silent during their time in the pilothouse, started to speak, but O’Hara overrode her. “I know what ye’re going to say, me lady, and it’ll do no good. Me mind’s made up. The opportunity to sniff out forty thousand in missing gold is one I’ll not pass up.”

He left Hattie at the door to their stateroom and hurried to the deckhouse, where he entered the Gentlemen’s Saloon. It was a long room, with a liquor buffet at one end and private tables and card layouts spread throughout. A pall of tobacco smoke as thick as tule fog hung in the crowded enclosure.

O’Hara located the shrewd, handsome features of John A. Colfax at a table aft. Two other men were with him: a portly individual with sideburns like miniature tumbleweeds, and the mustached Nevada reporter. They were playing draw poker. O’Hara was not surprised to see that most of the stakes — gold specie and greenbacks — were in front of Colfax.

Casually, O’Hara approached the table and stopped behind an empty chair next to the portly man, just as Colfax claimed a pot with four treys. He said, “Good evening, gentlemen.”

Colfax greeted him unctuously, asked if he were enjoying the voyage thus far. O’Hara said he was, and observed that the gambler seemed to be enjoying it too, judging from the stack of legal tender before him. Colfax just smiled. But the portly man said in grumbling tones, “I should damned well say so. He has been taking my money for three solid hours.”

“Aye? That long?”

“Since just after dinner.”

“Ye’ve been playing without pause since then?”

“Nearly so,” the newspaperman said. Through the tendrils of smoke from his cigar, he studied O’Hara with mild blue eyes. “Why do you ask, sir?”

“Oh, I was thinking I saw Mr. Colfax up on the weather deck about an hour ago. Near the pilothouse.”

“You must have mistaken someone else for me,” Colfax said. Now that the draw game had been momentarily suspended, he had produced a handful of war-issue coins and begun to toy with them as he had done at Long Wharf. “I did leave the table for a few minutes about an hour ago, but only to use the lavatory. I haven’t been on the weather deck at all this trip.”

O’Hara saw no advantage in pressing the matter. He pretended to notice for the first time the one-cent pieces Colfax was shuffling. “Lucky coins, Mr. Colfax?”

“These? Why, yes. I won a sackful of them on a wager once and my luck has been good ever since.” Disarming smile. “Gamblers are superstitious about such things, you know.”

“Ye don’t see many coins like that in California.”

“True. They are practically worthless out here.”

“So worthless,” the reporter said, “that I have seen them used to decorate various leather goods.”

The portly man said irritably, “To hell with lucky coins and such nonsense. Are we going to play poker or have a gabfest?”

“Poker, by all means,” Colfax said. He slipped the war-issue cents into a pocket of his Prince Albert and reached for the cards. His interest in O’Hara seemed to have vanished.

The reporter, however, was still looking at him with curiosity. “Perhaps you’d care to join us?”

O’Hara declined, saying he had never had any luck with the pasteboards. Then he left the saloon and went in search of the Delta Star’s purser. It took him ten minutes to find the man, and thirty seconds to learn that John A. Colfax did not have a stateroom either in the texas or on the deckhouse. The purser, who knew Colfax as a regular passenger, said wryly that the gambler would spend the entire voyage in the Gentlemen’s Saloon, having gullible citizens for a ride.

O’Hara returned to the saloon, this time to avail himself of the liquor buffet. He ordered a shot of rye from a bartender who owned a resplendent handlebar moustache, and tossed it down without his customary enjoyment. Immediately he ordered another.

Colfax might well be his man; there was the war-issue coin he’d found under the pilothouse stove, and the fact that Colfax had left the poker game at about the time of the robbery. And yet... what could he have done with the gold? The weight of forty thousand in dust was considerable; he could not very well carry it in his pockets. He had been gone from the poker game long enough to commit the robbery, perhaps, but hardly long enough to have also hidden the spoils.

There were other factors weighing against Colfax, too. One: gentlemen gamblers made considerable sums of money at their trade; they seldom found it necessary to resort to baser thievery. Two: how could Colfax, while sitting here in the saloon, have known when only one man would be present in the pilothouse? An accomplice might have been on watch — but if there were such a second party, why hadn’t he committed the robbery himself?

O’Hara scowled, put away his second rye. If Colfax wasn’t the culprit, then who was? And what was the significance of the coin he had found in the pilothouse?

Perhaps the coin had no significance at all; but his instincts told him it did, and he had always trusted his instincts. If not to Colfax, then to whom did it point? Answer: to no one, and to everyone. Even though war-issue cents were uncommon in California, at least half a dozen men presently on board might have one or two in their pockets.

A remark passed by the newspaperman came back to him: such coins were used to decorate various leather goods. Aye, that was a possibility. If the guilty man had been wearing a holster or vest or some other article adorned with the cent pieces, one might have popped loose unnoticed.

O’Hara slid the coin from his pocket and examined it carefully. There were small scratches on its surface that might have been made by stud fasteners, but he couldn’t be sure. The scratches might also have been caused by any one of a hundred other means — and the coin could still belong to John A. Colfax.

Returning it to his vest pocket, O’Hara considered the idea of conducting a search for a man wearing leather ornamented with bronze war coins. And dismissed it immediately as folly. He could roam the Delta Star all night and not encounter even two-thirds of the passengers. Or he might find someone wearing such an article who would turn out to be completely innocent. And what if the robber had discovered the loss of the coin and chucked the article overboard?

Frustration began to assail him now. But it did not dull his determination. If any man aboard the Delta Star could fetch up both the thief and the gold before the packet reached Stockton, that man was Fergus O’Hara; and by damn, if such were humanly possible, he meant to do it!

He left the saloon again and went up to the pilothouse. Bridgeman was alone at the wheel. “What news, O’Hara?” he asked.

“None as yet. Would ye know where the captain is?”

Bridgeman shook his head. “Young fool Chadwick was feeling dizzy from that blow on the head; the captain took him to his quarters just after you and your wife left, and then went to make his inquiries. I expect he’s still making ’em.”

O’Hara sat on the red plush sofa, packed and lighted his pipe, and let his mind drift along various channels. After a time something in his memory flickered like a guttering candle — and then died before he could steady the flame. When he was unable to rekindle the flame he roared forth with a venomous ten-jointed oath that startled even Bridgeman.

Presently the captain returned to the pilothouse. He and O’Hara exchanged identical expectant looks, which immediately told each that the other had uncovered nothing of significance. Verbal confirmation of this was brief, after which the captain said bleakly, “The prospects are grim, Mr. O’Hara. Grim, indeed.”

“We’ve not yet come into Stockton,” O’Hara reminded him.

The captain sighed. “We have no idea of who is guilty, thus no idea of where to find the gold... if in fact it is still on board. We haven’t the manpower for a search of packet and passengers before our arrival. And afterward — I don’t see how we can hope to hold everyone on board while the authorities are summoned and a search mounted. Miners are a hotheaded lot; so are those Irish militiamen. We would likely have a riot on our hands.”

O’Hara had nothing more to say. By all the saints, he was not yet ready to admit defeat. He bid the captain and Bridgeman good night, and spent the next hour prowling the decks and cudgeling his brain. It seemed to him that he had seen and heard enough since the robbery to know who it was he was after and where the missing gold could be found. If only he could bring forth one scrap of this knowledge from his memory, he was certain the others would follow...

Maddeningly, however, no scrap was forthcoming. Not while he prowled the decks, not after he returned to his stateroom (Hattie, he was relieved to find, was already fast asleep) — and not when the first light of dawn crept into the sky beyond the window.

When the Delta Star came out of one of the snakelike bends in the river and started down the last long reach to Stockton, O’Hara was standing with Hattie at the starboard deckhouse rail. It was just past seven-thirty — a spring-crisp, cloudless St. Patrick’s Day morning — and the steamer would dock in another thirty minutes.

O’Hara was in a foul humor: three-quarters frustration and one-quarter lack of sleep. He had left the stateroom at six o’clock and gone up to the pilothouse and found the captain, Bridgeman, and Chadwick drinking coffee thickened with molasses. They had nothing to tell him. And their humors had been no better than his; it seemed that as a result of O’Hara’s failure to perform as advertised, he had fallen out of favor with them.

Staring down at the slow-moving waters frothed by the sidewheel, he told himself for the thousandth time: Ye’ve got the answer, ye know ye do. Think, lad! Dredge it up before it’s too late...

A voice beside him said, “Fine morning, isn’t it?”

Irritably O’Hara turned his head and found himself looking into the cheerfully smiling visage of the Nevada newspaperman. The bushy-haired lad’s eyes were red-veined from a long night in the Gentlemen’s Saloon, but this did not seem to have had any effect on his disposition.

O’Hara grunted. “Is it?” he said grumpily. “Ye sound as if ye have cause for rejoicing. Did ye win a hatful of specie from the gambler Colfax last night?”

“Unfortunately, no. I lost a fair sum, as a matter of fact. Gambling is one of my sadder vices, along with a fondness for the social drink. But then, a man may have no bad habits and have worse.”

O’Hara grunted again and looked out over the broad, yellowish land of the San Joaquin Valley.

The reporter’s gaze was on the river. “Clear as a mirror, isn’t it?” he said nostalgically. “Not at all like the Mississippi. I remember when I was a boy...”

O’Hara had jerked upright, into a posture as rigid as an obelisk. He stood that way for several seconds. Then he said explosively, “In the name of Patrick and all the saints!”

Hattie said with alarm in her voice, “Fergus, what is it?”

O’Hara grinned at her, swung around to the newspaperman and clapped him exuberantly on the shoulder. “Lad, it may yet be a fine a morning. It may yet be, indeed.”

He told Hattie to wait there for him, left her and the bewildered reporter at the rail, and hurried down to the aft stairway. On the weather deck, he moved aft of the texas and stopped before the gallows frame.

There was no one in the immediate vicinity. O’Hara stepped up close to the frame and eased his head and both arms inside the vent opening, avoiding the machinery of the massive walking-beam. Heat and the heavy odor of cylinder oil assailed him; the throb of the piston was almost deafening.

With his left hand he felt along the interior wall of the frame, his fingertips encountering a greasy build-up of oil and dust. It was only a few seconds before they located a metal hook screwed into the wood. A new hook, free of grease; he was able to determine that by touching it with the clean fingers of his right hand. Nothing was suspended from the hook, but O’Hara was now certain that something had been during most of the night.

He was also certain that he knew where it could be found at this very moment.

When he withdrew his head and arms from the vent opening, grease stained his hands and his coat and shirt sleeves, and he was sweating from the heat. He used his handkerchief, then hastened across to enter the texas. There were identifying plates screwed to the doors of the officers’ cabins; he stopped before the one he wanted, drew his coat away from his revolver and laid the fingers of his right hand on its grip. With his left hand he rapped on the door panel.

There was no response.

He knocked again, waited, then took out his pocket knife. The door latch yielded in short order to rapid manipulations with one of the blades. He slipped inside and shut the door behind him.

A brief look around convinced him that the most likely hiding place was a dark corner formed by the single bunkbed and an open-topped wooden tool carrier. And that in fact was where he found what he was looking for: a wide leather belt ornamented with bronze war-issue coins, and a greasy calfskin grip. He drew the bag out, worked at the locked catch with his knife, and got it open.

The missing gold was inside, in two-score small pouches.

O’Hara looked at the sacks for several seconds, smiling. Then he found himself thinking of the captain, and of the bank in Stockton that urgently awaited the consignment. He sobered, shook himself mentally. This was neither the time nor the place for rumination; there was still much to be done. He refastened the grip, hefted it, and started to rise.

Scraping noise on the deck outside. Then the cabin door burst open, and the man whose quarters these were, the man who had stolen the gold, stood framed in the opening.

Chadwick, the cub pilot.

Recognition darkened his face with the blood of rage. He growled, “So you found out, did you? You damned Pinkerton meddler!” And he launched himself across the cabin.

O’Hara moved to draw his revolver too late. By then Chadwick was on him. The young pilot’s shoulder struck the carpetbag that O’Hara thrust up defensively, sandwiched it between them as they went crashing into the larboard bulkhead. The impact broke them apart. O’Hara spilled sideways across the bunk, with the grip between his legs, and cracked his head on the rounded projection of wood that served as headboard. An eruption of pain blurred his vision, kept him from reacting as quickly as he might have. Chadwick was on him again before he could disengage himself from the bag.

A wild blow grazed the side of O’Hara’s head. He threw up a forearm, succeeded in warding off a second blow but not a third. That one connected solidly with his jaw, and his vision went cockeyed again.

He was still conscious, but he seemed to have momentarily lost all power of movement. The flailing weight that was Chadwick lifted from him. There were scuffling sounds, then the sharp running slap of boots receding across the cabin and on the deck outside.

O’Hara’s jaw and the back of his head began a simultaneous and painful throbbing; at the same time strength seemed to flow back into his arms and legs. Shaking his head to clear his vision, he swung off the bunk and let loose with a many-jointed oath that even his grandfather, who had always sworn he could out-cuss Old Nick himself, would have been proud to call his own. When he could see again he realized that Chadwick had caught up the calfskin grip and taken it with him. He hobbled to the door and turned to larboard out of it, the way the running steps had gone.

Chadwick, hampered by the weight and bulk of the grip, was at the bottom of the aft stairway when O’Hara reached the top. He glanced upward, saw O’Hara, and began to race frantically toward the nearby main-deck staircase. He banged into passengers, scattering them; whirled a fat woman around like a ballerina executing a pirouette and sent the reticule she had been carrying over the rail into the river.

Men commenced calling in angry voices and milling about as O’Hara tumbled down the stairs to the deckhouse. A bearded, red-shirted miner stepped into Chadwick’s path at the top of the main-deck stairway; without slowing, the cub pilot bowled him over as if he were a giant ninepin and went down the stairs in a headlong dash. O’Hara lurched through the confusion of passengers and descended after him, cursing eloquently all the while.

Chadwick shoved two startled Chinese Out of the way at the foot of the stairs and raced toward the taffrail, looking back over his shoulder. The bloody fool was going to jump into the river, O’Hara thought. And when he did, the weight of the gold would take both him and the bag straight to the bottom—

All at once O’Hara became aware that there were not many passengers inhabiting the aft section of the main deck, when there should have been a clotted mass of them. Some of those who were present had heard the commotion on the upper deck and been drawn to the staircase; the rest were split into two groups, one lining the larboard rail and the other lining the starboard, and their attention was held by a different spectacle. Some were murmuring excitedly; others looked amused; still others wore apprehensive expressions. The center section of the deck opposite the taffrail was completely cleared.

The reason for this was that a small, rusted, and very old half-pounder had been set up on wooden chocks at the taffrail, aimed downriver like an impolitely pointing finger.

Beside the cannon was a keg of black powder and a charred-looking ramrod.

And surrounding the cannon were the Mulrooney Guards, one of whom held a firebrand poised above the fuse vent and all of whom were now loudly singing “The Wearing of the Green.”

O’Hara knew in that moment what it was the Mulrooneys had had secreted inside their wooden crate, and why they had been so anxious to get it aboard without having the contents examined; and he knew the meaning of Billy Culligan’s remark about planning to start off St. Patrick’s day with a mighty salute. He stopped running and opened his mouth to shout at Chadwick, who was still fleeing and still looking back over his shoulder. He could not recall afterward if he actually did shout or not; if so, it was akin to whispering in a thunderstorm.

The Mulrooney cannoneer touched off the fuse. The other Mulrooney Guards scattered, still singing. The watching passengers huddled farther back, some averting their eyes. Chadwick kept on running toward the taffrail.

And the cannon, as well as the keg of black powder, promptly blew up.

The Delta Star lurched and rolled with the sudden concussion. A great sweeping cloud of sulfurous black smoke enveloped the riverboat. O’Hara caught hold of one of the uprights in the starboard rail and clung to it, coughing and choking. Too much black powder and not enough bracing, he thought. Then he thought: I hope Hattie had the good sense to stay where she was on the deckhouse.

The steamer was in a state of bedlam: everyone on each of the three decks screaming or shouting. Some of the passengers thought a boiler had exploded, a common steamboat hazard. When the smoke finally began to dissipate, O’Hara looked in the direction of the center taffrail and discovered that most of it, like the cannon, was missing. The deck in that area was blackened and scarred, some of the boarding torn into splinters.

But there did not seem to have been any casualties. A few passengers had received minor injuries, most of them Mulrooney Guards, and several were speckled with black soot. No one had fallen overboard. Even Chadwick had miraculously managed to survive the concussion, despite his proximity to the cannon when it and the powder keg had gone up. He was moaning feebly and moving his arms and legs, looking like a bedraggled chimney sweep, when O’Hara reached his side.

The grip containing the gold had fared somewhat better. Chadwick had been shielding it with his body at the moment of the blast, and while it was torn open and the leather pouches scattered about, most of the sacks were intact. One or two had split open, and particles of gold dust glittered in the sooty air. The preponderance of passengers were too concerned with their own welfare to notice; those who did stared with disbelief but kept their distance, for no sooner had O’Hara reached Chadwick than the captain and half a dozen of the deck crew arrived.

“Chadwick?” the captain said in amazement. “Chadwick’s the thief?”

“Aye, he’s the one.”

“But... what happened? What was he doing here with the gold?”

“I was chasing him, the spalpeen.”

“You were? Then... you knew of his guilt before the explosion? How?”

“I’ll explain it all to ye later,” O’Hara said. “Right now there’s me wife to consider.”

He left the bewildered captain and his crew to attend to Chadwick and the gold, and went to find Hattie.

Shortly past nine, an hour after the Delta Star had docked at the foot of Stockton’s Center Street, O’Hara stood with Hattie and a group of men on the landing. He wore his last clean suit, a broadcloth, and a bright green tie in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. The others, clustered around him, were Bridgeman, the captain, the Nevada reporter, a hawkish man who was Stockton’s sheriff, and two officials of the California Merchants Bank. Chadwick had been removed to the local jail in the company of a pair of deputies and a doctor. The Mulrooney Guards, after medical treatment, a severe reprimand, and a promise to pay all damages to the packet, had been released to continue their merrymaking in Green Park.

The captain was saying, “We are all deeply indebted to you, Mr. O’Hara. It would have been a black day if Chadwick had succeeded in escaping with the gold — a black day for us all.”

“I only did me duty,” O’Hara said solemnly.

“It is unfortunate that the California Merchants Bank cannot offer you a reward,” one of the bank officials said. “However, we are not a wealthy concern, as our urgent need for the consignment of dust attests. But I don’t suppose you could accept a reward in any case; the Pinkertons never do, I’m told.”

“Aye, that’s true.”

Bridgeman said, “Will you explain now how you knew Chadwick was the culprit? And how he accomplished the theft? He refused to confess, you know.”

O’Hara nodded. He told them of finding the war-issue coin under the pilothouse stove; his early suspicions of the gambler, Colfax; the reporter’s remark that such coins were being used in California to decorate leather goods; his growing certainty that he had seen and heard enough to piece together the truth, and yet his maddening inability to cudgel forth the necessary scraps from his memory.

“It wasn’t until this morning that the doors in me mind finally opened,” he said. He looked at the newspaperman. “It was this gentleman that gave me the key.”

The reporter was surprised. “I gave you the key?”

“Ye did,” O’Hara told him. “Ye said of the river: Clear as a mirror, isn’t it? Do ye remember saying that, while we were together at the rail?”

“I do. But I don’t see—”

“It was the word mirror,” O’Hara said. “It caused me to think of reflection, and all at once I was recalling how I’d been able to see me own image in the pilothouse windshield soon after the robbery. Yet Chadwick claimed he was sitting in the pilot’s seat when he heard the door open just before he was struck, and that he didn’t turn because he thought it was the captain and Mr. Bridgeman returning from supper. But if I was able to see me reflection in the glass, Chadwick would sure have been able to see his — and anybody creeping up behind him.

“Then I recalled something else: Chadwick had his coat buttoned when I first entered the pilothouse, on a warm night like the last. Why? And why did his trousers look so baggy, as though they might fall down?

“Well, then, the answer was this: After Chadwick broke open the safe and the strongbox, his problem was what to do with the gold. He couldn’t risk a trip to his quarters while he was alone in the pilothouse; he might be seen, and there was also the possibility that the Delta Star would run into a bar or snag if she slipped off course. D’ye recall saying it was a miracle such hadn’t happened, Captain, thinking as ye were then that Chadwick had been unconscious for some time?”

The captain said he did.

“So Chadwick had to have the gold on his person,” O’Hara said, “when you and Mr. Bridgeman found him, and when Hattie and I entered soon afterward. He couldn’t have removed it until later, when he claimed to be feeling dizzy and you escorted him to his cabin. That, now, is the significance of the buttoned coat and the baggy trousers.

“What he must have done was to take off his belt, the wide one decorated with war-issue coins that I found in his cabin, and use it to strap the gold pouches above his waist — a makeshift money belt, ye see. He was in such a rush, for fear of being found out, that he failed to notice when one of the coins popped loose and rolled under the stove.

“Once he had the pouches secured, he waited until he heard Mr. Bridgeman and the captain returning, the while tending to his piloting duties; then he lay down on the floor and pretended to’ve been knocked senseless. He kept his loose coat buttoned for fear someone would notice the thickness about his upper middle, and that he was no longer wearing his belt in its proper place; and he kept hitching up his trousers because he wasn’t wearing the belt in its proper place.”

Hattie took her husband’s arm. “Fergus, what did Chadwick do with the gold afterward? Did he have it hidden in his quarters all along?”

“No, me lady. I expect he was afraid of a search, so first chance he had he put the gold into the calfskin grip and then hung the grip from a metal hook inside the gallows frame.”

The Stockton sheriff asked, “How could you possibly have deduced that fact?”

“While in the pilothouse after the robbery,” O’Hara said, “I noticed that Chadwick’s coat was soiled with dust and soot from his lying on the floor. But it also showed streaks of grease, which couldn’t have come from the floor. When the other pieces fell into place this morning, I reasoned that he might have picked up the grease marks while making preparations to hide the gold. My consideration then was that he’d have wanted a place close to his quarters, and the only such place with grease about it was the gallows frame. The hook I discovered inside was new and free of grease; Chadwick, therefore, must have put it there only recently — tonight, in fact, thus accounting for the grease on his coat.”

“Amazing detective work,” the reporter said, “simply amazing.”

Everyone else agreed.

“You really are a fine detective, Fergus O’Hara,” Hattie said. “Amazing, indeed.”

O’Hara said nothing. Now that they were five minutes parted from the others, walking alone together along Stockton’s dusty main street, he had begun scowling and grumbling to himself.

Hattie ventured, “It’s a splendid, sunny St. Patrick’s Day. Shall we join the festivities in Green Park?”

“We’ve nothing to celebrate,” O’Hara muttered.

“Still thinking about the gold, are you?”

“And what else would I be thinking about?” he said. “Fine detective — faugh! Some consolation that is!”

It was Hattie’s turn to be silent.

O’Hara wondered sourly what those lads back at the landing would say if they knew the truth of the matter: That he was no more a Pinkerton operative than were the Mulrooney Guards. That he had only been impersonating one toward his own ends, in this case and others since he had taken the railroad pass and letter of introduction off the chap in Saint Louis the previous year — the Pinkerton chap who’d foolishly believed he was taking O’Hara to jail. That he had wanted the missing pouches of gold for himself and Hattie. And that he, Fergus O’Hara, was the finest confidence man in these sovereign United States, come to Stockton, California, to have for a ride a banker who intended to cheat the government by buying up Indian land.

Well, those lads would never know any of this, because he had duped them all — brilliantly, as always. And for nothing. Nothing!

He moaned aloud, “Forty thousand in gold, Hattie. Forty thousand that I was holding in me hands, clutched fair to me black heart, when that rascal Chadwick burst in on me. Two more minutes, just two more minutes...”

“It was Providence,” she said. “You were never meant to have that gold, Fergus.”

“What d’ye mean? The field was white for the sickle—”

“Not a bit of that,” Hattie said. “And if you’ll be truthful with yourself, you’ll admit you enjoyed every minute of your play-acting of a detective; every minute of the explaining just now of your brilliant deductions.”

“I didn’t,” O’Hara lied weakly. “I hate detectives...”

“Bosh. I’m glad the gold went to its rightful owners, and you should be too because your heart is about as black as this sunny morning. You’ve only stolen from dishonest men in all the time I’ve known you. Why, if you had succeeded in filching the gold, you’d have begun despising yourself sooner than you realize — not only because it belongs to honest citizens but because you would have committed the crime on St. Patrick’s Day. If you stop to consider it, you wouldn’t commit any crime on St. Pat’s Day, now would you?”

O’Hara grumbled and glowered, but he was remembering his thoughts in Chadwick’s cabin, when he had held the gold in his hands — thoughts of the captain’s reputation and possible loss of position, and of the urgent need of the new branch bank in Stockton. He was not at all sure, now, that he would have kept the pouches if Chadwick had not burst in on him. He might well have returned them to the captain. Confound it, that was just what he would have done.

Hattie was right about St. Pat’s Day, too. He would not feel decent if he committed a crime on—

Abruptly, he stopped walking. Then he put down their luggage and said, “You wait here, me lady. There’s something that needs doing before we set off for Green Park.”

Before Hattie could speak, he was on his way through clattering wagons and carriages to where a towheaded boy was scuffling with a mongrel dog. He halted before the boy. “Now then, lad; how would ye like to have a dollar for twenty minutes good work?”

The boy’s eyes grew wide. “What do I have to do, mister?”

O’Hara removed from the inside pocket of his coat an expensive gold American Horologe watch, which happened to be in his possession as the result of a momentary lapse in good sense and fingers made nimble during his misspent youth in New Orleans. He extended it to the boy.

“Take this down to the Delta Star steamboat and look about for a tall gentleman with a mustache and a fine head of bushy hair, a newspaperman from Nevada. When ye’ve found him, give him the watch and tell him Mr. Fergus O’Hara came upon it, is returning it, and wishes him a happy St. Patrick’s Day.”

“What’s his name, mister?” the boy asked. “It’ll help me find him quicker.”

O’Hara could not seem to recall it, if he had ever heard it in the first place. He took the watch again, opened the hunting-style case, and saw that a name had been etched in flowing script on the dustcover. He handed the watch back to the boy.

“Clemens, it is,” O’Hara said then. “A Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens...”