The Bags of Tricks Affair

10 Sabina

She spent a quiet, relaxing evening with Adam and Eve.

After yesterday’s train trips from Grass Valley to Oakland, the ferry ride across the bay, and a rattling cab ride to her apartment building, she’d been too weary to pay much attention to the two cats; she had gone straight to bed. Today had been long and tiring, too, what with returning the Saint Louis Rose outfits to the costumers, all the catch-up work at the office, and some necessary shopping on the way home. She needed time to herself, away from John and his well-meaning but overbearing concern, and then a more restful night’s sleep.

Eve, an Abyssinian female, had taken to Adam from the moment Charles the Third gifted her with the coal-black male, then just a kitten, at the close of the Body Snatchers Affair last year. A maternal streak on Eve’s part, perhaps. The two cats were good company for each other, comported well together, but they craved Sabina’s affection. They followed her around the apartment, curled up on her lap when she sat in her morris chair and next to her in bed, even gazed at her with watchful, wondering eyes while she treated herself to a soak in the copper-lined, bronze-legged tub in her bathroom.

The apartment was comfortable enough — four rooms in an older building near the foot of Russian Hill — but John’s quarters were much more spacious. She’d been surprised at its size on that one recent visit, a five-room flat that was certainly large enough for two. If he ever did propose to her, and if she accepted (the jury was likely to remain out on both for some time), he would surely want her to move in with him. Would she be content to share what was clearly a masculine abode designed for seduction as well as comfort? For a while, perhaps, but only if he first agreed to replace the hideous gold-framed mirror decorated with nude nymphs in his parlor. And agreed to eventually seek out new and different quarters that suited them both...

Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sabina, she chided herself, what’s the matter with you? You’re getting way ahead of yourself. Stop acting like a lovesick prospective bride.

Besides, she was quite content living here with Adam and Eve. Well? Wasn’t she?

She stepped out of the tub, toweled herself vigorously with some playful and unwanted assistance from Adam. Before she put on her dressing gown, the bathroom mirror gave her a glimpse of her nakedness. Her body was still as lissome as it had been when she was a girl, her breasts still high, still firm. Looking at them, she remembered the touch of Stephen’s caressing hands. He was the only man who had ever caressed her in that intimate fashion, and it had been more than five years now since the bandit’s bullet had destroyed his life and theirs together. For a long time afterward she neither wanted intimacy with anyone else nor even thought about it. But lately, at moments in John’s company, she’d felt stirrings of the passion that Stephen had kindled in her. Even had not one but two erotic dreams about John, the second quite vivid, that still brought color to her face whenever she thought about them. Would his touch, his caresses arouse her as Stephen’s had? Would he be as gentle and expert a lover—?

She felt her face grow warm, quickly covered herself with the robe. Perhaps she was a bit lovesick after all. And she didn’t want to be, confound it. Not now!

In the parlor, she was drawn to the framed photograph of Stephen on the mantelpiece. Such a handsome man, slender, his high-browed head topped with a wealth of black curls. She looked upon his image, as she often did, with deep sadness. He had been the love of her life; no man could ever take his place in her heart. But he would not have wanted her to go on mourning him for the rest of her life, to deny herself the happiness and pleasure of another relationship. He had said as much to her once, when they first moved from Chicago to Denver to join the Pinkerton Agency’s office there — that if anything should happen to him, she must remain strong and move on with her life.

She wondered, not for the first time, how he would have felt about John. Would he have approved of John’s sometimes unorthodox and idiosyncratic methods, his sly sense of humor, his lofty opinion of his detective abilities? Would they have gotten along had they ever met? She sensed that they would have. They were cut from the same cloth, both courageous, strong-willed, dedicated, compassionate, caring. Stephen would have admired John, and John him, she decided. The thought was somehow comforting.

In the small kitchen and dining room, Sabina gave the cats another portion of the raw fish they liked and then prepared a light supper for herself. Finished eating, she sat in the parlor with a copy of The Old Curiosity Shop. Dickens was one of her favorites; she found his work both stimulating and relaxing, the kind of fiction in which she could lose herself for hours at a time. She read until after ten o’clock, and when she went to bed Adam and Eve followed her and curled up at her side.

She dreamed of Stephen, a dream the details of which she couldn’t remember in the morning. But John was in it, too, lurking... no, that was the wrong word... hovering somewhere in the background....

The first responses to her partner’s various inquiries were delivered shortly after she opened the office for business on Thursday morning. One was a wire from the Pinkerton office in Kansas City, stating that they had no information on the self-styled “cloud cracker” who called himself Leonide Daks. The second came by telephone from police lieutenant William Price, shortly after John arrived; he took the call. From his end of the conversation, and his frustrated expression when he ended it, Sabina knew what to expect even before he spoke to her.

“Not a blasted thing on Jeffrey Gaunt,” he said. “No known criminal record in California, Arizona, or Nevada.”

“Lady One-Eye? Her late husband?”

“The same. You spotted her card manipulation trick, but no one else seems to have since her arrival in this part of the country.” He added darkly, “Or to have survived long enough to press charges if they did.”

“She is, or was, a very good mechanic,” Sabina said. “And very careful to use her trick only when it gave her a definite advantage. No one else she played was privy to my knowledge or experience, evidently.”

“At least not in three states. But Price agreed to check with others. And mayhap the Pinkerton office in New Orleans will have news when they respond to my wire.”

In the next hour two more collect wires were delivered in tandem by a Western Union messenger. One was from the Pinkerton office in Denver, signed by a resident operative Sabina knew from her Pink Rose days, Jeremy Link; the other was from the detective agency in Cincinnati. Neither had a dossier on a bogus rainmaker answering to the descriptions and methodology of Leonide Daks and his cohorts.

The lack of progress put John into one of his restless funks. He left shortly afterward on an unspecified errand, saying he would return in the early afternoon.

Not long after his departure, a second call came through the Telephone Exchange. This one was for Sabina, from her cousin, Callie French.

Callie was not only her closest living relative, but her best friend in the city. Like Sabina, Callie had been born in Chicago, but her family had moved to California five years later, lived in Oakland for a time, then settled in San Francisco when her father was promoted to the regional headquarters of the Miner’s Bank. Shortly after her debut as a debutante, she had married Hugh French, a protégé of her father’s, in a lavish wedding that reputedly (though incorrectly, as Callie later confided) cost fifty thousand dollars. When Sabina had come here from Denver to join John in establishing Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, Callie had been her entrée into the lives and intrigues of the city’s social elite.

As kind and supportive as she was, she had two less than endearing traits. One was that of inveterate matchmaker, having been the catalyst for Sabina’s brief and abortive romance with Carson Montgomery the previous year, and since then a staunch promoter of her budding personal relationship with John. The other was constant fretting over the dangers of Sabina’s profession. It was the latter that had prompted her call.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re back safe and sound,” her voice said in relieved tones. “You know how I worry when I don’t hear from you. Did everything go well in... where was it you and John went? Nevada County?”

“Yes. Our investigation had a satisfactory resolution.”

“I would love to hear the details, if you’re able to confide them.”

“Well, some, perhaps.”

“And I have some juicy bits of gossip to share with you in return,” Callie said. “Are you free for luncheon today, dear?”

Sabina hesitated, but only for a moment. She had to eat, after all; and there was little enough for her to do here at the moment. Callie was always pleasant company and her tidbits of gossip worth listening to, and she wouldn’t be put off a get-together for long. Today was as good a time as any.

They arranged to meet at noon at the Sun Dial, one of Callie’s favorite restaurants. As usual, her cousin was already at table when Sabina arrived, her plump and tightly corseted body encased in a stylish Charvet dress and chemisette, her blond hair braided and coiled in the current fashion. Past her fiftieth year now, she was still a handsome woman, though her fondness for sweets had added some twenty pounds to her once svelte figure.

Callie was full of questions as they dined, she on a veal chop, Sabina on crab cakes. She chuckled at Sabina’s account of her make-believe performance as the Saint Louis Rose, exclaimed over the turn of events that had led to the fatal shooting of Jack O’Diamonds, expressed astonishment at the method with which Lady One-Eye had disposed of her philandering husband.

The one thing Sabina made no mention of was Jeffrey Gaunt’s threat; it would have thrown Callie into a tizzy of concern greater than John’s, led her once again to fuss over the dangers, real and imagined, of Sabina’s profession.

Her “juicy bits of gossip” in return were of the mildly scandalous variety. One of her very best friends — she had the grace not to name the woman — was indulging in a clandestine affair with a tradesman well below her station. And a business acquaintance of Hugh’s, whom Callie did name, had made a series of bad investments and was in serious financial straits as a result. Prattle, for the most part, to which Sabina listened politely. Transgression among the upper echelons of society held little interest for her unless they had relevance within her own sphere — as had been the case earlier in the year when the life of her suffragist friend Amity Wellman had been endangered as the result of a foolish affaire de coeur.

Over dessert, Callie probed, as she was wont to do, into Sabina’s personal life. Had John shown any inclination that he was thinking of asking for her hand in marriage? No? Oh, but he would, surely. And the answer would be yes when he did, wouldn’t it? Callie’s eyes gleamed eagerly; there was nothing she’d have liked better than to arrange and host a lavish wedding celebration along the lines of her own. Sabina would have liked nothing less. Pomp and circumstance of any kind held no appeal for her. If John ever did propose and she accepted, their union would be a small, quiet, and dignified event, no matter how much Callie protested.

It was one-forty when they parted company, and nearly two when Sabina returned to the agency. As she was about to enter the building, a voice called her name. She turned to see the familiar Western Union messenger, a lad named Silas, hurrying toward her with an envelope in hand.

“Another collect wire, Mrs. Carpenter,” he said. “You folks sure must be busy these days. This is the fifth I’ve delivered today and the second in the past hour.”

“Yes, very busy. How much is it?”

“Twelve seventy-five. Another long one. Even longer than the previous one — that was eleven-twenty. For a change Mr. Quincannon didn’t bat an eye when he paid me.” A reference to John’s usual grumbling manner whenever he was required to pay cash for something that could not be added to a client’s expense account.

“I don’t have that much in my bag,” Sabina said. “Come upstairs and I’ll pay you in the office.”

“Yes, ma’am. Gladly.”

The agency door was locked; John had gone again after receiving the other long wire. Inside, she took thirteen dollars from petty cash and paid Silas, telling him to keep the quarter change for himself. It would make up for the lack of any largesse from John on the previous delivery. Naturally he didn’t believe in tipping for services rendered.

His desktop was empty, as was hers; he must have taken the other wire with him. Something to do with the Delford matter, then. If it contained information regarding Jeffrey Gaunt, he would have remained here to show it to her or left it for her to peruse.

The newly delivered wire had been sent by the agent in charge of the Pinkerton’s New Orleans office. And it did contain information on Blanche Gaunt Diamond and her brother.

The semi-coded message translated to this: Although neither Jeffrey Gaunt nor his sister had a criminal record in Louisiana or Texas, they had been suspected of criminal acts in both states. Lady One-Eye of cheating at cards, Gaunt of being mixed up in a shady land-speculation deal with a man named D. S. Nickerson — and both of involvement in not one but two homicides.

The first of the homicides had taken place in New Orleans five years ago, shortly after the land-speculation swindle was uncovered. A small-time gambler named Purdy had publicly accused Lady One-Eye of fleecing him at poker; she had denied the charge and her brother had threatened Purdy in front of witnesses. Three days later the gambler had been shot to death in a crowded French Quarter club — Lady One-Eye perhaps having been responsible, by means of the same hidden-revolver trick she’d used to dispatch her philandering husband. She and Gaunt were questioned by police and released for lack of evidence, but both were ordered to leave New Orleans and never return. Jack O’Diamonds was not involved, having been away on one of the Mississippi River packets at the time.

The victim in the second homicide, three years ago in San Antonio, had been a wealthy landowner, Herman Jackson, who’d taken a shine to Lady One-Eye and made bold advances to her. No public threats were made against him by either her or her brother, but not long afterward he had been found dead in a horse stall in his stable, his head bashed in. Again Gaunt and Lady One-Eye had been questioned but not charged. For lack of evidence to the contrary, a coroner’s jury had concluded that the landowner had been kicked to death by one of his prize thoroughbreds.

As provocative as this material was, it provided no proof that Jeffrey Gaunt had gone to lethal lengths to protect and avenge his sister. He may have killed the Texas landowner, and been complicit in the murder of the New Orleans gambler, but it was also possible that neither of them had had a hand in the first death and that the second had in fact been accidental.

John would surely take the grim view, that of Gaunt as a cold-blooded murderer, and insist upon acting as her bodyguard until after Lady One-Eye’s trial, to the neglect of the Delford matter and his other investigative work. It might even incite him to rush back to Grass Valley and confront Gaunt — a foolish act with potentially deadly consequences.

She couldn’t let either of those things happen. And since he might not listen to the voice of reason, there was only one way to prevent it.

Don’t let him see the wire.

Sabina refolded it, returned it to the envelope, and tucked the envelope into the bottom drawer of her desk. Withholding pertinent information from her partner was something she seldom did, but in this case it seemed justified. She was not afraid of Jeffrey Gaunt, whether he was murderously inclined or not, and she refused to be intimidated or coddled.

Let him attempt to carry out his threat; he would regret it if he did. She was as adept with pistol or derringer as any man alive.