The Bughouse Affair

17

QUINCANNON

Quincannon had no need to order the Englishman to cover the front door; Holmes immediately veered off in that direction. The Navy Colt and the dark lantern were both at the ready when Quincannon reached the rear porch. Somewhere inside, another door slammed. He ran up the steps to the rear entrance, thumbed open the lantern’s bull’s-eye lens, and shouldered his way through.

The thin beam showed him a utility porch, then an opening into a broad kitchen. His foot struck something as he started ahead; the light revealed it to be a wooden wedge, of the sort used to prop open doors. He shut the door and toed the wedge tightly between the bottom and the frame-a safeguard against swift escape that took only a clutch of seconds.

Two or three additional sounds reached his ears as he plunged ahead, none distinguishable or close by. The beam picked out an electric switch on the kitchen wall; he turned it to flood the room with light. Empty. Likewise an adjoining dining room.

His twitching nose picked up the acrid tang of burnt gunpowder. The odor led him into a central hallway, which he flooded with more electric light. Then he eased past two closed doors to a third at the far end, where another hallway intersected this one. The powder smell was strongest there.

Quincannon paused to listen.

Thick, crackling silence.

He moved ahead to where he could see along the intersecting hall, found it deserted, and stepped to the third door to try the latch. Locked from within. There was no key on this side.

He rapped sharply on the panel, called out, “Mr. Costain?”

No response.

“John Quincannon here. It’s safe for you to come out now.”

Again, no response.

More sounds came from the front of the house-a heavy dragging noise, as of a piece of furniture being moved.

“Costain?” Louder this time.

Silence from behind the door.

Movement at the corner of his eye swung Quincannon around and brought the Navy to bear on the intersecting hallway. The Englishman was but a short distance away, approaching as noiselessly as a cat stalking prey.

Quincannon lowered his weapon and extinguished the lantern. “A sign of either man?” he said as Holmes hurried up.

“None.”

“One or both must be on the other side of this door. It’s locked on the inside.”

“If the intruder is elsewhere and attempts to leave by the front door, he’ll first have to move a heavy oak chair. We’ll hear him.”

“I wedged the rear door shut for the same reason.”

Quincannon holstered the Navy, then backed off two steps and flung the full weight of his body against the door panel. This rash action succeeded only in bruising flesh, jarring bone and teeth. Holmes, who was standing with his head cocked in a listening attitude, made no remark. If he had, he would have gotten his ears blistered.

Grumbling to himself, Quincannon again backed off and then drove the flat of his booted foot against the panel above the latch. Two more kicks were necessary to splinter the wood, tear the locking mechanism loose, and send the door wobbling inward.

Only a few scant inches inward, however, before it bound up against something bulky and inert on the floor.

Quincannon shoved hard against the panel until he was able to widen the opening enough to wedge his body through. The room was dark except for faint patches that marked uncurtained windows at the far end. He swept his hand along the wall, located a switch, turned it. The pale burst of electric light revealed what lay on the floor just inside the door-Andrew Costain in a facedown sprawl, both arms outflung, the one visible eye staring blankly.

Dead, and no mistake. Blood stained the back of his cheviot coat, the sleeve of his left forearm. Scorch marks blackened the sleeve as well.

The room, evidently the lawyer’s study, was otherwise empty. Two drawers in a rolltop desk stood open; another had been yanked out and upended on the desktop. Papers littered the surface and the floor around the desk. Also on the floor, between the dead man and the desk, were two other items: a new-looking revolver, and a brassbound valuables case that appeared to have been pried open and was now plainly empty.

Holmes crowded in and swept the room with a keen gaze while Quincannon crossed to examine the windows. Both were of the casement type, with hook latches firmly in place; Dodger Brown hadn’t gotten out that way. Still hiding somewhere in the house, upstairs or down. Or possibly gone by now through another window.

When Quincannon turned, he found himself looking at the bughouse Sherlock down on one knee, hunched over the corpse and peering through a large magnifying glass at the wound in Costain’s back. Under the ridiculous cap, his lean hawk’s face was darkly flushed, his brows warped into two hard black lines. A small smile appeared as he lifted his head. His eyes showed a glitter that was steely, mad, or both.

“Interesting,” he said. “Quite.”

“What is?”

“Andrew Costain was stabbed to death.”

“Stabbed?”

“He was also shot.”

“What!”

“Two separate and distinct wounds,” Holmes said. “The superficial one in his forearm was made by a bullet. The fatal wound was the result of a single thrust with an instrument at least eight inches in length and quite sharp. A stiletto, I should say. The blow was struck by a right-handed person approximately five and a half feet tall, at an upward angle of perhaps fifteen degrees.”

Quincannon gawped at him. “How the devil can you judge that from one quick study?”

The Englishman flashed his enigmatic smile and said nothing.

It took only a few seconds to locate the lead pellet that had passed through Costain’s arm; it was in the cushion of an armchair near the desk. While Holmes commenced studying it through his blasted glass, Quincannon picked up the revolver. It was a Forehand amp; Wadsworth.38 caliber, its nickel-plated finish and wooden grips free of marks of any kind. He sniffed the barrel to confirm that it had been recently fired, then opened the breech for a squint inside. All of the chambers were empty. A few seconds after he returned the weapon to the place where it had lain, Holmes was down on his knees examining it under magnification as he had the bullet.

Glowering, Quincannon left the study to comb the premises. Not long afterward, the Englishman joined in the search. The results were rather astonishing.

They found no sign of Dodger Brown, and yet every window, upstairs and down, was firmly latched. Furthermore, the wedge Quincannon had kicked under the back door was still in place, as was the heavy chair Holmes had dragged over to block the front door. Those were the only two doors that provided an exit from the house.

“How the deuce could he have gotten out?” Quincannon wondered aloud. “Even the cellar door in the kitchen is locked tight. And there wasn’t enough time for him to have slippped away before we entered.”

“Dear me, no,” Holmes agreed. “You or I would have seen him.”

“Well, he managed it somehow.”

“So it would seem. A miraculous double escape, in fact.”

“Double escape?”

“From a locked room, and then from a sealed house.” The Englishman punctuated this statement with another of his dauncy little smiles. “According to Dr. Axminster, you are adept at solving seemingly impossible crimes. How then did the pannyman manage a double escape? Why was Andrew Costain shot as well as stabbed? Why was the pistol left in the locked study and the bloody stiletto taken away? And why was the study door bolted in the first place? A pretty puzzle, eh, Quincannon? One to challenge the deductive skills of even the cleverest sleuth.”

Quincannon muttered five short, colorful words, none of them remotely of a deductive nature.

As much as Quincannon disliked and mistrusted the city police, the circumstances of this crime were such that notifying them was unavoidable. He telephoned the Hall of Justice on the instrument in Costain’s study. After that he paced and cogitated, to no reasonable conclusion.

The Englishman, meanwhile, examined the corpse a second time, paying particular attention, it seemed, to a pale smear on the coat near the fatal knife wound. He then proceeded to squint through the glass at the carpet in both the study and the hallway, crawling to and fro on his hands and knees, and at any number of other things after that. Now and then he muttered aloud to himself: “More data! I can’t make bricks without clay!” and “Hallo! That’s more like it!” and “Ah, plain as a pikestaff!”

Neither man had anything more to say to the other. It was as if a gauntlet had been thrown down, a tacit challenge issued-which the bughouse Sherlock seemed to think was the case. Two bloodhounds on the scent, no longer working in consort, but as competitors in an undeclared contest of wills. Quincannon would have none of that nonsense. As far as he was concerned, there was only one detective at work here, only one sane man qualified and capable of answering the challenge.

The blue coats arrived in less than half an hour, what for them was swift dispatch. They were half a dozen in number, accompanied by a handful of reporters representing Fremont Older’s Call, the Daily Alta, and San Francisco’s other newspapers, who were made to wait outside-half as many of both breeds as there would have been if the murder of a prominent attorney had happened on Nob Hill.

The inspector in charge was a beefy, red-faced Prussian named Kleinhoffer, whom Quincannon knew slightly and condoned not in the slightest. Inspector Kleinhoffer was both stupid and corrupt, a lethal combination, and a political toady besides. His opinion of flycops was on par with Quincannon’s opinion of him.

His first comment was, “Involved in another killing, eh, Quincannon? What’s your excuse this time?”

Quincannon explained, briefly, the reason he was there. He omitted mention of Dodger Brown by name, using the phrase “unknown burglar” instead and catching the Englishman’s eye as he spoke so the lunatic would say nothing to contradict him. He was not about to chance losing a fee-small chance though it was, the police being such a generally inept bunch-by providing information that might allow them to stumble across the Dodger ahead of him.

Kleinhoffer sneered. “Some fancy flycop. You’re sure he’s not still somewhere in the house?”

“Sure enough.”

“We’ll see about that.” He gestured to a burly red-faced sergeant, who stepped forward. “Mahoney, you and your men search the premises top to bottom.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kleinhoffer’s beady gaze settled on the Englishman, ran over his face and his ridiculous disguise. “Who’re you?” he demanded.

“S. Holmes, of London, England. A temporary associate of Mr. Quincannon’s private inquiry agency.”

Quincannon was none too pleased at the last statement, but he offered no disclaimer. Better that false assertion than a rambling monologue on what a masterful detective Holmes fancied himself to be.

“A limey, eh?” Kleinhoffer said. Then, to Quincannon, “Picking your operatives off the docks these days, are you?”

“If I am, it’s no concern of yours.”

“None of your guff. Where’s the stiff?”

“In the study.”

Kleinhoffer gave Andrew Costain’s remains a cursory examination. “Shot and stabbed both,” he said wonderingly. “You didn’t tell me that. What the hell happened here tonight?”

Quincannon’s account, given in detail, heightened the inspector’s apoplectic color and narrowed his beady eyes to slits. Any crime more complicated than a Barbary Coast stabbing or coshing invariably confused him, and the evident facts in this case threatened to tie a permanent knot in his cranial lobes.

He shook his head, as if trying to shake loose cobwebs, and snapped, “None of that makes a damned bit of sense.”

“Sense or not, that is exactly what took place.”

“You there, limey. He leave anything out?”

“Tut, tut,” Holmes said with dignity. “I am an Englishman, sir, a British subject … not a ‘limey.’”

“I don’t care if you’re the president of England-”

“There is no president of England. My country is a monarchy.”

Kleinhoffer gnashed his yellowed teeth. “Never mind that. Did Quincannon leave anything out or didn’t he?”

“He did not. His re-creation of events was precise in every detail.”

“So you say. I say it couldn’t have happened the way you two tell it.”

“Nonetheless, it did, though what seems to have transpired is not necessarily what actually took place. What we are dealing with here is illusion and obfuscation.”

The inspector wrapped an obscene noun in a casing of disgust. After which he stooped to pick up the Forehand amp; Wadsworth revolver. He sniffed the barrel, broke it open to check the chambers as Quincannon had done, then dropped the weapon into his coat pocket. He was squinting at the empty valuables case when Sergeant Mahoney entered the room.

“No sign of anybody in the house,” he reported.

“Back door still wedged shut?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then he must’ve managed to slip out the front while these two flycops weren’t looking.”

“I beg to differ,” Holmes said. He mentioned the heavy chair. “It was not moved until your arrival, Inspector, by Mr. Quincannon and myself. Even if it had been, I would surely have heard the scraping and dragging sounds. My hearing is preternaturally acute.”

Kleinhoffer said the rude word again.

Mahoney said, “Mrs. Costain is here.”

“What’s that?”

“The dead man’s wife. Mrs. Penelope Costain. She just come home.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Bring her in here.”

The sergeant did as directed. Penelope Costain was stylishly garbed in a high-collared blouse, flounced skirt, and fur-trimmed cloak, her brunette curls tucked under a hat adorned with an ostrich plume. She took one look at her husband’s remains, shuddered violently, and began to sway as if about to faint. Mahoney caught one arm to steady her. Quincannon took hold of the other and together they helped her to one of the chairs.

She drew several deep breaths, fanned herself with one hand. “I … I’m all right,” she said after a few moments. Her gaze touched the body again and immediately away. “Poor Andrew. He was a brave man.… He must have fought terribly for his life.”

“We’ll get the man who did it,” Kleinhoffer promised foolishly.

“Can’t you … cover him with something?”

“Mahoney. Find a cloth.”

“Yes, sir.”

Penelope Costain nibbled at a torn fingernail, her head tilted to one side as she peered up at the faces ringed above her. “Is that you, Mr. Holmes? What are you doing here, dressed in such outlandish clothing?”

“He was working with me,” Quincannon said.

“With you? Two detectives in tandem failed to prevent this … this outrage?”

“None of what happened was our fault.”

She said bitterly, “That is the same statement you made two nights ago. Nothing, no tragedy, is ever your fault, evidently.”

Kleinhoffer was still holding the empty valuables case. He extended it to the widow, saying, “This was on the floor, Mrs. Costain.”

“Yes. My husband kept it in his desk.”

“What was in it?”

“Twenty-dollar gold pieces, a dozen or so. And the more expensive pieces among my jewelery … a diamond brooch, a pair of diamond earrings, a pearl necklace.”

“Worth how much, would you say?”

“I don’t know … several thousand dollars, I should think.” She looked again at Quincannon, this time with open hostility.

Kleinhoffer did the same. He said, “You and the limey were here the entire time, and still you let that yegg murder Mr. Costain and get away with the swag … right under your noses. Well? What’ve you got to say for yourselves?”

Quincannon had nothing to say.

Neither did the bughouse Sherlock.