The Dangerous Ladies Affair

15 Quincannon

He arrived at the UT wharf at five o’clock. The early arrival was deliberate, in the hope that he would already be on board when Pauline Dupree appeared. He would have come even earlier, but it had been necessary to return to his flat on Leavenworth to pack his cowhide valise and then to stop in at the offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Sabina hadn’t been there, which was probably just as well, since it allowed him to avoid lengthy explanations and a probable reprimand. He’d written her a short message:

The Captain Weber was a fairly new stern-wheeler, having been built in 1892. One hundred and seventy-five feet in length, with a modern, high-revolution compound engine, she had slim, graceful hull lines and three decks, the uppermost weather deck containing the pilothouse and officers’ quarters. Despite being well-appointed and the fastest boat on the Stockton run, she carried fewer passengers on the average than the other packets. The reason for this was Mrs. Sarah Gillis, who had inherited the Union Transportation Company after her husband’s death and who was an outspoken leader of the Stockton local of the W.C.T.U. The Captain Weber and her sister boat, the Dauntless, were the only two dry packets on either river. Either Pauline Dupree wasn’t aware of this or alcohol was not one of her many vices.

Freight wagons and baggage vans clogged the wharfside, joining with the deep-throated bellows of foghorns to create a constant din. Burly roustabouts unloaded sacks and boxes of freight, passenger luggage, and steamer trunks and trundled them up the aft gangplank. A smattering of travelers had already boarded, and a well-dressed gentleman and a handsome woman in a large hat preceded Quincannon up the forward gangplank to the steerage and cargo deck. He wondered idly if they were married or if they might be about to indulge in a clandestine extramarital or premarital dalliance. The night boats to Sacramento and Stockton had a reputation among the city’s upper class as discreet floating bagnios.

A few of the early arrivals were clustered along the deck railings, watching the loading process — a scant few, for the evening was cold, the bay shrouded in thick, wet fog. This worked to Quincannon’s advantage, allowing him to wear his chesterfield, a wool muffler drawn up tightly over the lower half of his face, and a woolen cap pulled down over his forehead. Anyone who knew him by sight, Pauline Dupree included, would have to stand close to recognize him. Valise in hand, he ascended to the deckhouse, where the Social Hall and the staterooms were located, and took up a position among the watchers at the hammock-netted rail there that allowed him a clear view of the gangplank.

More passengers began to arrive on foot and by hansom. Small merchants, miners, sun-weathered farmers and farmhands, and coolie-hatted Chinese remained on the steerage deck; the more affluent continued on up the stairway to the deckhouse. It was five-thirty by Quincannon’s stem-winder when a hansom delivered Pauline Dupree.

He watched her alight — she was alone — and make her approach. Dusk was descending; electric lamps had been lit along the wharf, lanterns on the gangplank. He had a clear view of her as she mounted, one gloved hand on the railing, the other clutching a large neutral-color carpetbag that looked to be moderately heavy. She was regally dressed in a heavy wool hooded cape of red and gold, high-button calfskin shoes, and a red ostrich-plumed hat atop her dark gold hair.

She allowed one of the deckhands to help her aboard but not to relieve her of the carpetbag, then climbed the staircase looking neither left nor right and proceeded into the tunnel-like hallway that bisected the deckhouse lengthwise, where the entrances to starboard and larboard staterooms faced each other across the wide plank deck.

Quincannon followed, waiting a few seconds to give her time to present herself to the cabin steward. Then he entered slowly, in time to watch the steward show her to her stateroom, the forward most in the starboard row.

When she was inside with the louvered door closed and the steward returned, he claimed his own stateroom near the aft larboard end.

It was well appointed, the upholstery red plush, the paneling of tongue-and-groove pine, brass lamps polished to a bright sheen. None of this made an impression; he had traveled the far more opulently furnished Mississippi River steamers during his years in Baltimore. He stayed just long enough to deposit his valise and shutter the window, locking the door behind him with the key provided by the steward. Outside again, he made his way forward to a place at the rail where he could keep an eye on the passage between the deckhouse exit and the Social Hall.

Pauline Dupree did not join the handful of other passengers on deck when the gangplank was raised at exactly six o’clock. The Captain Weber’s buckets astern immediately began to churn the water in a steady rhythm; her whistle, which had been shrilling an all-aboard and all-visitors-ashore warning, altered cadence to become a steerage signal for the pilot. Competing whistles sounded and bells clanged elsewhere along the waterfront as the other night packets commenced backing down from their berths. There was a period of controlled chaos as the boats, flags flying from their jackstaffs and from their verge staffs astern, maneuvered for right-of-way in the heavy mist. Columns of smoke from their stacks joined with the fog to turn the evening sky a sooty gray-black.

When the Captain Weber was well clear of the wharves and the other packets, her speed increased steadily. As she passed near Fort Alcatraz, where a garrison of soldiers had stood ready to repel attacks by Rebel privateers during the Civil War (none such had taken place), Quincannon crossed through the passage to the starboard side. Cautiously he approached the window of Pauline Dupree’s stateroom. It was shuttered, but thin strips of lamplight leaked palely through the downturned slats.

Accompanied by the throb of foghorns, the steamer progressed north into San Pablo Bay. From that point their course, and that of the other boats, would be east into the narrow Carquinez Strait and southeast past Cripp’s Island to the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers; there they would swing south and proceed along a circuitous route among the myriad delta islands to their final destinations.

The icy evening wind blowing across the bay eventually drove him into the Social Hall. This was where coffee, tea, and other non-alcoholic beverages could be purchased, gentlemen passengers smoked pre- and post-prandial cigars and engaged in friendly games of poker, chess, and checkers, and ladies and couples played bridge or whist. There was even entertainment of a sort, which tonight consisted of a gaudily outfitted gent strumming industriously on a banjo. Quincannon warmed himself with two cups of hot clam juice. After the second cup, he went out on deck and again reconnoitered her stateroom windows. The faint light glow through the slats attested to the fact that the actress was still closeted inside. And likely intended to remain there.

He’d had faint hopes, now gone, that she would crave company in the Social Hall and be away long enough for him to surreptitiously pick the lock on her stateroom door and conduct a quick search. It was unlikely that she would have risked carrying ten thousand dollars in cash on a crowded riverboat; she was brazen, but no fool. Chances were she had taken steps to safeguard it. Sent the cash, carefully packed, on ahead of her by railroad express to New York, if that was in fact her final destination. Or opened an account at a San Francisco bank other than the Woolworth National and arranged to have the funds transferred to an eastern bank. But if he’d been able to gain access he might have discovered Titus Wrixton’s letters, if Dupree had chosen to keep them, or other telltale evidence among her possessions.

Quincannon climbed to the weather deck and entered the purser’s cubicle. “What time do we reach Kennett’s Crossing?” he asked.

“Shortly before midnight, sir.”

“Is a stop scheduled there tonight?”

The thin, bewhiskered purser consulted his passenger manifest. “Yes,” he said, “a request has been made.” That was all he’d say, but Quincannon thought it was enough to confirm his suspicions.

In the lamplit deckhouse tunnel, Negro and Chinese waiters were busily setting up long, linen-covered tables. Dinner was served here, as on all the river packets, since none had space for separate dining rooms. Quincannon had no intention of eating with the other passengers, lest Pauline Dupree put in an appearance while he was doing so. But neither did he intend to skip the meal; he’d had no lunch and already his innards were complaining. He tipped the dining steward a silver dollar for the privilege of having his meal — a dozen raw oysters on the half shell, venison stew, fresh vegetables — delivered to his stateroom.

The food was delivered shortly after the mealtime hubbub began. He ate slowly, then sat planning strategy through a pipeful of Navy Cut. Given the late hour of their arrival at Kennett’s Crossing, and if Dupree was in fact bound for Noah Rideout’s Schyler Island farm, it seemed probable that she would be met at the landing by Rideout or one of his minions. There was an inn there, but it was as primitive as the rest of the little backwater hamlet — not the sort of place a woman like her would find comfortable even for part of a night if it could be avoided.

What he would do then, Quincannon thought, was follow her off the Captain Weber at a distance, taking care to avoid being seen, and put up at Kennett’s Inn himself. In the morning he would get directions to Rideout’s property, rent a horse, and ride there. The element of surprise and whatever cunning was necessary should have the desired results. Assuming, of course, that Noah Rideout was not the same sort of obdurate, lovesick ignoramus as his Titus Wrixton. And judging by the landowner’s reputation, he was susceptible to but not blinded by feminine charms.

Once the dining period ended, silence, broken only by the rhythmic chunking of the stern buckets, descended on the packet. Quincannon read for a while in the book he’d brought along, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s splendid May Day and Other Poems, then dozed until his trained mind brought him alert at eleven. Twenty-five minutes later by his stem-winder, he donned chesterfield, scarf, and cap and then, carrying his valise, went out to the forward deckhouse observation area.

He stood in the shadows along the rail, loaded and fired his pipe. The packet was on her winding course among the San Joaquin Delta islands now, the weather here mostly clear except for patches of ground mist, the wind light and not as cold.

His wait lasted some fifteen minutes. During that time he expected Pauline Dupree to emerge from the deckhouse with her carpetbag in hand, but when they traversed a bight in the river and Kennett’s Crossing’s lantern-lit landing appeared ahead, she had yet to put in an appearance. Nor did she emerge as the Captain Weber slowed and the pilot began whistling their arrival. Or when the packet nosed up to the rickety dock. Or when deckhands swiftly lowered the gangplank.

No one disembarked.

But someone boarded — a lone male. After which the gangplank was quickly raised and the Captain Weber swung out again into the channel.

Nonplussed, Quincannon watched the new passenger climb the stairs to the deckhouse, a small possibles bag looped over his shoulder. There was enough lantern light and pale moonlight to make out the features of a man no older than thirty-five dressed in a long buffalo-skin coat. The man passed him without a glance, went into the deckhouse.

On impulse Quincannon followed, peering around the corner in time to see the newcomer knock on the door of Pauline Dupree’s stateroom. It opened immediately and the man disappeared inside.

Hell, damn, and blast!

Who was he? Not Noah Rideout, who was twenty years older and sufficiently wealthy to encase himself in clothing of a much better quality. Another of Pauline Dupree’s paramours or pawns? If so, it seemed probable that he had some connection with her plans and that those plans concerned Rideout; the late-night boarding at Kennett’s Crossing augered against any other explanation.

Grumbling and glowering, Quincannon returned to the observation area to fetch his valise. He took it into his stateroom, then almost but not quite closed the door, leaving a crack through which he could look out into the tunnel. He stood watch there for the better part of half an hour. Buffalo Coat had evidently been invited to spend the rest of the night with the promiscuous, duplicitous Miss Dupree.

It now appeared that she intended to travel all the way to Stockton. To meet Noah Rideout there or for some other purpose? And just who the devil was the fellow who’d boarded at Kennett’s Crossing?