The Bags of Tricks Affair

11 Quincannon

The daily train to Stockton and the San Joaquin Valley departed from Third and Townsend at 9:45 A.M. Aram Kasabian had already boarded and was waiting in the private Pullman compartment he’d booked when Quincannon arrived. The banker was still plainly nervous, his hands opening and closing restlessly as if he were attempting to pluck dust mites from the pale shaft of sunlight filtering in through the window.

Quincannon stowed his valise on the overhead rack. It was still cool in the city, but he wore a lightweight linen suit and blue silk vest in anticipation of the San Joaquin Valley heat. Kasabian, on the other hand, was once again draped in his banker’s duds, the starched collar included.

“I hope there won’t be any delays today,” he said as Quincannon took the seat across from him. “The sooner we arrive in Delford, the better for my nerves.”

“Fretting won’t get us there any more quickly.”

“I know. But I can’t help worrying that Daks—”

“Saxe,” Quincannon corrected. “Leopold Saxe.”

“Yes, that Saxe and his accomplices have already absconded with the coalition’s payment.”

“They have no cause to believe that we’re onto them, or that they’re about to be arrested.”

“They still might have decided to leave early.”

“If they did, our wire yesterday to your town marshal will have prevented it. You said Tom Boxhardt is a competent lawman.”

“Yes, but with no experience in this sort of business. His peacekeeping duties are mostly limited to the arrest of drunks and rowdies on Saturday night. He also has but one deputy.”

“And the authority, don’t forget, to deputize others if necessary.”

Kasabian mopped his forehead dry with a large red handkerchief. “I would feel better if he had the authority to arrest the lot of them.”

“But he doesn’t, not without a proper warrant. Technically the con artists have yet to do anything illegal in Delford.”

“But they’re wanted in two states—”

“Three.”

“All the more reason for them to be held until County Sheriff Beadle arrives from Fresno with the warrant. I still don’t see why the wire you received wasn’t sufficient cause for Marshal Boxhardt to take them into custody.”

Quincannon reined in a sharp retort. The wire, now safely tucked into the breast pocket of his coat, had come from an operative named Hooper in the Pinkerton Agency’s Chicago office. Hooper had provisionally identified “Leonide Daks” as an alias of Leopold Saxe, and his two cohorts as Mortimer Rollins and Cora Lee Johnson. Saxe and Rollins had operated confidence swindles dating back ten years, to their days as Chicago theatrical performers — low comedy and specialty acts in variety beer halls. More confidence men than one might suppose had such backgrounds. Since becoming professional con artists they had left a trail of victims in Illinois, Missouri, and Nebraska. Rainmaking was their most recent dodge, begun when Saxe had met and taken up with Cora Lee Johnson in Omaha two years ago; she was his mistress, not his wife. Before that the men had posed as mining-stock speculators, purveyors of a fountain-of-youth elixir, and inventors of an electric cancer cure.

With more patience than he felt Quincannon once again pointed out to his client that the wire and the information it contained held no legal weight; that despite the similarity in names Leonide Daks had not yet been officially identified as Leopold Saxe, nor his accomplices under their real names.

“But if their true identities haven’t been verified,” Kasabian said, “how could the arrest warrant have been issued?”

Quincannon refrained from asking him how a seemingly intelligent banker could be so dull-witted on occasion. He and Hooper had notified the authorities in the three states where Saxe, Rollins, and Cora Lee Johnson were wanted, and of their suspicions that the threesome was presently operating in northern California; this had been enough for the Illinois attorney general to request that they be arrested and detained. Once their identities were confirmed, extradition would be arranged.

He had just finished explaining this for the second time when the engineer sounded his whistle and the conductor’s shout of “All aboard!” went up. Kasabian heaved a long sigh as the cars jerked into motion. “About time,” he said.

Quincannon produced, charged, and fired his pipe. The banker continued to fidget as the train rolled out of the yards, began to pick up speed. “I must say, Mr. Quincannon,” he said then, “I’m glad you consented to join me today. It’s not a trip I would have relished taking alone.”

“I always see my investigations through to the finish.”

“Commendable, sir. Commendable.”

Such had been Quincannon’s code of ethics throughout his careers as Secret Service operative and private investigator, and he had never yet broken it. But he was reluctant nonetheless in this case. Neither his wires, Lieutenant Price’s inquiries, nor the efforts of Ezra Bluefield and Slewfoot had produced a single bit of information about Jeffrey Gaunt. Or, for that matter, Lady One-Eye. This should have eased his concern over Sabina’s safety, but it didn’t.

She’d insisted that he make the trip. As she rightly pointed out, his usual stellar detective work was responsible for the apprehension of three wanted fugitives, and it was fitting and proper that he be present to receive the accolades of Delford’s citizens and the county law. Well and good, then. If all went according to plan, he would be back in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon. A day and a half was not such a long time to be away, after all — or so he kept telling himself.

The ride to Delford seemed interminable, the more so because Kasabian in his nervousness indulged in nonstop chatter even when Quincannon pretended to be asleep. And once they entered the San Joaquin Valley, the intense summer heat turned the compartment into a sweatbox. Opening a window was not an option; it would only have let in flying cinders from the locomotive’s stacks as well as more dry heat.

A noonday meal in the dining car helped pass some of the time. Afterward Quincannon sought to escape the banker’s company by entering the club car, but Kasabian followed him and proceeded to down two large whiskies and soda, the liquor serving to make him more talkative. By the time they reached the farming community in mid-afternoon, Quincannon’s patience and temper were both on short leashes.

The old watchman’s shack Leopold Saxe had made his headquarters was at the south end of the railroad yards, a short distance from the station. As the train passed it, slowing and hissing steam, he had a clear look at it. And at a portion of the field behind it where the swindlers’ equipage — a roan horse and what looked to be a converted dougherty wagon — were picketed.

The shack was a ramshackle affair, listing a few degrees farther south on one side, its dusty windows blinded by squares of monk’s cloth. Half a dozen citizens lounged in the shade of a small copse of locust trees at the rim of the field nearby — far fewer, no doubt, than had been in attendance when Saxe began his rain-conjuring experiments the previous week.

The length of brand-new stovepipe that poked up more than a dozen feet through the shack’s roof was presently emitting clouds of the yellowish gas Kasabian had described. The contraption on the wooden platform that had been erected alongside resembled a cross between a cannon and a gigantic slingshot. Stretched between the platform and the building was a silken banner festooned with ribbons that hung limp in the hot dry air. The crimson words emblazoned on the banner were the same as those on the Cloud Cracker’s business card.

When the train stopped in the station, Quincannon and Kasabian were the only two passengers to alight. Of course not a trace of cloud, cracked or otherwise, marred the smoky blue of the sky overhead. Nor was there even the faintest whiff of ozone among the mingled odors of summer dust, river water, and the noxious chemical gas. Quincannon thought sourly that the temperature here must be at least ten degrees higher than it had been in Grass Valley, the faint breeze like a breath from an open furnace. Sweat immediately slicked his face, trickled through the hairs of his beard as he stood surveying the town of Delford.

It stretched out to the north and east, some five square blocks in size, its main street defined by orderly rows of gaslight standards, electricity not having come into general use here as yet, and zinc-sheathed telegraph poles. The few crop, hay, and freight wagons that moved along it raised puffs and spurts of dust that seemed to hang suspended in the lifeless air. There was hardly any pedestrian activity, owing to the heat and the fact that this was a farm community still caught in the vise of a drought. Wheat fields surrounded it, broken only by the Southern Pacific tracks on one side and the willow-lined banks of the San Joaquin River on the other.

Two men who had been standing in the shade of the depot’s roof stepped out together and came forward. Both were middle-aged, one very fat and bald except for little sprouts of gray hair here and there on his scalp, the other thin and lantern-jawed. Kasabian introduced the fat man as James Parnell, mercantile proprietor and mayor of Delford, and the thin gent as town marshal Tom Boxhardt. Quincannon hardly needed the introduction to deduce Boxhardt’s occupation; a badge was pinned to his shirt under a sweat-stained cowhide vest, and he wore an old-fashioned Civil War — vintage Beaumont-Adams revolver in a side holster. Parnell’s handshake was moist, Boxhardt’s firm and dry.

The banker looked around nervously before saying, “Sheriff Beadle and his deputies haven’t arrived yet, I take it.”

“Not yet,” Parnell said. He had a high, reedy voice, incongruous in a man of his bulk. A gleaming watch chain a quarter of an inch thick bisected his bulging corporation. “No, not yet.”

Just as well, Quincannon thought. The sheriff’s tardy arrival would allow him to join in the arrest of the three swindlers.

“When are they coming?” Kasabian asked Boxhardt. “Have you had word?”

“No. Better be soon, though. Matters have heated up, and I don’t mean the weather.”

“Those crooks haven’t tried to leave?”

“No. They’re still at work in the shack. Fired off them chemical bombshells of theirs the last two nights and claim they’ll do the same again tonight.”

“Then what—?”

“Trouble between Daks and Mr. Goodland.”

“What kind of trouble? What’s happened?”

“O.H. threatened to kill the rainmaker last evening.”

“Oh Lord. For what reason?”

“Evidently Daks, or Saxe, made improper advances to his daughter,” Parnell said distastefully. “May even have seduced the poor girl. Molly denied it, but Mr. Goodland’s not convinced.”

Quincannon asked when and where the advances were made.

“Same day Mr. Kasabian left for San Francisco, over in the willow grove by the river. The girl went there for the evening shade and Saxe followed her. Mr. Goodland found out yesterday afternoon, when he came upon Molly crying in her room.”

“Does Saxe’s mistress know about this?”

“Well, she wasn’t there when he accosted Daks, but she must’ve heard by now. The other one... Rollins, is it?... was there when it happened outside the Valley House.”

“Accosted?” Kasabian said. He was putting his red handkerchief to use again, mopping his ruddy cheeks and neck inside the already wilted starched collar. “Were blows struck?”

“Worse’n that,” Boxhardt said. He spat into the dust beyond the edge of the station platform. “Mr. Goodland was carrying his revolver and he drew the weapon when the rainmaker give him no satisfaction. I disarmed him, warned him against any more violence. But you know how he is.”

“All too well. Stubborn, and a grudge-holder. There’s no telling what he might do.”

Quincannon asked, “Is he here in town today?”

“Never left,” Boxhardt said. “Took a room last night at the hotel, down the hall from Saxe’s and the woman’s room.”

“Any more trouble between them since?”

“Not that I know about.”

“Is he at the hotel now?”

“In the saloon, last I saw of him.”

“Building his courage with whiskey,” Kasabian said. His disapproving tone was wryly ironic, given his own penchant for strong spirits. “O.H. is temperamental enough when he’s sober, but under the influence he is twice as unpredictable.”

“He hasn’t been told about the fugitive arrest warrant?”

Mayor Parnell said, “No, of course not. No one in town knows but the four of us.”

Quincannon leaned down to pick up his valise. “Suppose we go have a talk with Mr. Goodland,” he said, “and make sure he keeps a tight rein on his temper until Sheriff Beadle arrives.”