The Dangerous Ladies Affair

5 Quincannon

From where he sat propped behind a copy of the Argonaut, Quincannon had an unobstructed view of both the entrance to the Hotel Grant’s elegant bar parlor and the booth in which Titus Wrixton waited with the aid of a large brandy. The Seth Thomas clock above the backbar gave the time as five minutes past nine, which made the extortionist or his emissary, whichever he was, late for their appointment. This was no surprise to Quincannon. Blackmailers seldom missed an opportunity to heap additional pressure on their victims.

The banker fidgeted, looked at the clock for perhaps the dozenth time, and once more pooched out his cheeks in that habitual trick of his. Large, red-faced rodent indeed. As per their arrangement, he continued to ignore the table where Quincannon sat with his newspaper. The satchel containing the five-thousand-dollar payoff demand was on the seat next to him, one corner of it just visible to Quincannon’s sharp eye.

The Argonaut, like all of the city’s papers this month, contained considerable mention of two prominent news stories. First, rumors that gold had been discovered in the Klondike region of Yukon Territory, which if true would surely trigger a stampede to rival the California Gold Rush of ’49. And second, that an American named James Connolly had won a silver medal in an event called the Triple Jump at the first modern Olympic games in Athens, Greece.

Neither of these articles, nor any others in this day’s issue, held more than a modicum of Quincannon’s attention; baseball and horse racing were the only two sports that interested him, and he considered men who succumbed to gold fever to be foolish. He pretended to be engrossed, however, while keeping watch on both the banker and the entrance to the bar parlor.

He took a sip of warm clam juice, his favorite tipple since he had given up alcohol, and turned a page of the Argonaut. Wrixton glanced again at the clock, which now read ten past nine. He drained what was left of his brandy, a sop for his nerves but not for his sour stomach; he winced noticeably and fished out his vial of dyspepsia tablets. He was in the process of chewing two or three when the man he awaited finally appeared.

The fellow’s entrance into the bar parlor was slow and cautious. This was one thing that alerted Quincannon. The other was the way the man was dressed. Threadbare overcoat, slouch hat drawn low on his forehead, wool muffler wound up high inside the coat collar so that it concealed the lower part of his face. This slatternly attire might have been conspicuous if the night had retained the day’s warmth; but rain clouds driven by a cold wind had darkened the sky during the late afternoon, dropping the temperature some twenty degrees by nightfall. No one except Quincannon and Wrixton paid him the slightest attention.

He paused just inside the archway to peer around before his gaze locked in on his prey. Out of the corner of one eye Quincannon watched him approach the booth. What little of the man’s face was visible corroborated the banker’s description of him: middle-aged, small of stature, with a hooked nose and sallow complexion. Not such-a-much at all.

Wrixton stiffened when the fellow slipped into the booth opposite him. There was a low-voiced exchange of words, after which the banker passed the satchel under the table. The hook-nosed gent opened it just long enough to determine that it contained stacks of greenbacks, closed it again, then produced a manila envelope from inside his coat and slid it across the table. Wrixton opened the envelope and furtively examined the few papers it contained — one or two but certainly not all of the indiscreet letters he had written. The rest and no doubt the most damning would remain in the blackmailer’s possession until Quincannon completed his assignment.

While the two men were making their exchange, he casually folded the newspaper and laid it on the table, finished his clam juice, gathered up umbrella and derby, and strolled out into the hotel lobby. He took a position just inside the corridor that led to the elevators, where he had an oblique view of the bar entrance. His quarry would have to come out that way because there was no other exit from the bar parlor.

The wait this time was less than two minutes. When Hook-nose appeared, he went straight to the swing door that led out to New Montgomery Street. Quincannon followed twenty paces behind. A drizzle of rain had begun and the salt-tinged bay wind had the sting of a whip. It being a poor night for travel by shank’s mare, Quincannon expected his man to take one of the hansom cabs at the stand in front of the Palace Hotel opposite. But this didn’t happen. With the satchel clutched inside his overcoat, the fellow angled across Montgomery and turned the far corner into Jessie Street.

Quincannon reached the corner a few seconds later. He paused to peer around it, to make sure he wasn’t observed, before unfurling his umbrella and turning in to Jessie himself. Hook-nose apparently had no fear of pursuit; he was hurrying ahead through the misty rain without a backward glance.

Jessie was a dark, narrow thoroughfare and something of an anomaly as the new century approached — a mostly residential street that ran for several blocks through the heart of the business district, midway between Market and Mission streets. Small, old houses and an occasional small-business establishment flanked it, fronted by tiny yards and backed by barns and sheds. The electric glow from Third Street and the now-steady drizzle made it a chasm of shadows. The darkness and the thrumming wind allowed Quincannon to quicken his pace without fear of being seen or heard.

After two blocks, his quarry made another turning, this time into a cracked cobblestone cul-de-sac called Gunpowder Alley. The name, or so Quincannon had once been told, derived from the fact that Copperhead sympathizers had stored a large quantity of explosives in one of the houses there during the War Between the States. Gunpowder Alley was even darker than Jessie Street; the frame buildings strung along its short length were shabby presences in the wet gloom. The only illumination was strips and daubs of light that leaked palely around a few drawn window curtains.

Not far from the corner, Hook-nose crossed the alley to a squat, dark structure that huddled between the back end of a saloon fronting on Jessie Street and a private residence. The squat building appeared to be a shop of some sort, its plate-glass window marked with lettering that couldn’t be read at a distance. The man used a key to unlock a recessed door next to the window and disappeared inside.

As Quincannon cut across the alley, lamplight bloomed in pale fragments around the edges of a curtain that covered the store window. He ambled past, pausing in front of the glass to read the lettering: CIGARS, PIPE TOBACCO, SUNDRIES. R. SONDERBERG, PROP. The curtains were made of two sections of heavy muslin; all he could discern through the folds in the middle was a slice of narrow counter. He put his ear to the cold glass. The faint whistling voice of the wind, muted here in the narrow lane, was the only sound to be heard.

He moved on. A narrow, ink-black passage separated R. Sonderberg’s cigar store from the house on the far side — a low, two-story structure with a gabled roof and ancient shingles curled by the weather. The parlor window on the lower floor was a curtainless, palely lamplit rectangle; framed in it was the just discernible shape of a white-haired, shawl-draped woman in a high-backed rocking chair, either asleep or keeping a lonely watch on the street. Crowded close along the rear of store and house, paralleling Gunpowder Alley from the Jessie Street corner to its end, stood the long back wall of a warehouse, its dark windows steel shuttered. There was nothing else to see. And still nothing to hear except the wind.

A short distance beyond the house Quincannon paused to close his umbrella, the drizzle having temporarily ceased. He shook water from the fabric, then turned back the way he’d come. The elderly woman in the rocking chair hadn’t moved — asleep, he decided. Lamp glow now outlined a window in the squat building that faced into the side passage; the front part of the shop was once again dark. R. Sonderberg, if that was who Hook-nose was, had evidently entered a room or rooms at the rear — living quarters, like as not.

Quincannon stopped again to listen and again detected only silence from within. He sidestepped to the door and tried the latch. Bolted. His intention then was to enter the side passage, to determine if access could be gained at the rear. What stopped him was the realization that he was no longer the only pedestrian abroad in Gunpowder Alley.

Heavy footsteps echoed hollowly from the direction of Jessie Street. Even as dark and wet as it was, he recognized almost immediately the brass-buttoned coat, helmet, and handheld dark lantern of a police patrolman. Damn and damnation! Of all times for a blasted bluecoat to happen along on his rounds.

Little annoyed Quincannon more than having to abort an assignment in mid-skulk, but he had no other choice here. He turned from the door, moved at an even pace toward the approaching copper. They met just beyond the joining of the saloon’s back wall and the cigar store’s far-side wall.

Unlike many of his brethren, the bluecoat, an Irishman of some forty years, was a gregarious sort. He stopped, forcing Quincannon to do likewise, and briefly opened the lantern’s shutter so that the beam flicked over his face before saying in conversational tones, “Evening, sir. Nasty weather after a pleasant spring day, eh?”

“More coming, I expect.”

“Aye. A bit of heavy rain before morning. Like as not I’ll have a thorough soaking before my patrol ends.”

Quincannon itched to touch his hat and move on. But the bluecoat was not done with him yet. “Don’t believe I’ve seen you before, sir. Live in Gunpowder Alley, do you?”

“No. Visiting.”

“Which resident, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“R. Sonderberg, at the cigar store. Do you know him?”

“Only by sight. We’ve yet to meet. I’ve only been on this beat two weeks now, y’see. Maguire’s my name, at your service.”

Before Quincannon could frame a lie that would extricate him from Officer Maguire’s company there came in rapid succession a brace of muffled reports. As quiet as the night was, there was no mistaking the fact that they were pistol shots and that the weapon had been fired inside the squat building.

Quincannon’s reflexes were superior to the patrolman’s; he was already on the run by the time the bluecoat reacted. Behind him Maguire shouted something, but he paid no heed. Another sound, a loudish thump, reached his ears as he charged past the shop’s entrance. Seconds later he veered into the side passage. The narrow confines appeared deserted and there were no sounds of movement at its far end. He skidded to a halt in front of the lit window.

Vertical bars set close together prevented both access and egress. The glass inside was dirty and rain spotted, but he could make out the figure of a man sprawled supine on the floor of a cluttered room. There was no sign of anyone else in there.

The spaces between the bars were just wide enough to reach a hand through; he did that, pushing fingers against the pane. It failed to yield to the pressure.

Officer Maguire pounded up beside him, the beam from his lantern cutting jigsaw pieces out of the darkness. The bobbing light illuminated enough of the passage ahead so that Quincannon could see to where it ended at the warehouse wall. He hurried back there while Maguire had his look through the window.

Another short walkway, shrouded in gloom, stretched at right angles to the side passage like the crossbar of the letter T. Quincannon thumbed a lucifer alight as he stepped around behind the cigar store, shielding the flame with his other hand. That section was likewise empty except for a pair of refuse bins. There was no exit in that direction; the walkway ended in a board fence that joined the shop and warehouse walls, built so high that only a monkey could have climbed it. The match’s flicker showed Quincannon the outlines of a rear door to R. Sonderberg’s quarters. He tried the handle, but the heavy door was secure in its frame.

Maguire appeared, his lantern creating more dancing patterns of light and shadow. “See anyone back here?” he demanded.

“No one.”

“Would that rear door be unlatched?”

“No. Bolted on the inside.”

The bluecoat grunted and pushed past him to try the handle himself. While he was doing that, Quincannon struck another match in order to examine the other half of the walkway. It served the adjacent house, ending in a similarly high and unscalable board fence. The house’s rear door, he soon determined, was also bolted from within.

The lantern beam again picked him out. “Come away from there, laddie. Out front with me, step lively now.”

Quincannon complied. As they hurried along the passage, Maguire said, “Is it your friend Sonderberg lying shot in there?”

No friend of mine or society’s, Quincannon thought. But he said only, “I couldn’t be sure.”

“Didn’t seem to be anybody else in the room.”

“No.”

“Well, we’ll soon find out for sure.”

When they emerged from the passage, Quincannon saw that the elderly woman had left her rocking chair and was now standing stooped at the edge of her front window, peering out. One other individual had so far been alerted; a man wearing a cape and high hat and carrying a walking stick had appeared from somewhere and stood staring nearby. A gaggle of other onlookers would no doubt materialize before long.

No one had exited the cigar store through the Gunpowder Alley entrance; the recessed door was still locked on the inside. Maguire grunted again. “We’ll be having to break it down,” he said. “Sonderberg, or whoever ’tis, may still be alive.”

It took the combined weight of both of them to force the door, the bolt finally splintering free with an echoing crack. Once they were inside, Maguire flashed his lantern’s beam over displays of cigars and pipe tobacco, partly filled shelves of cheap sundries, then aimed it down behind the low service counter. The shop was cramped and free of hiding places — and completely unoccupied.

The closed door to the rear quarters stood behind a pair of dusty drapes. “By the Saints!” Maguire exclaimed when he caught hold of the latch. “This one’s bolted, too.”

It proved no more difficult to break open than the outer door had. The furnished room behind it covered the entire rear two-thirds of the building. The man sprawled on the floor was short, sallow complexioned, and hook-nosed — Quincannon’s quarry, right enough, though he no longer wore the bulky overcoat, muffler, and slouch hat that had covered him in the Hotel Grant. Blood from a pair of wounds spotted the front of his linsey-woolsey shirt; his open eyes glistened in the light from a table lamp.

Maguire went to one knee beside him, felt for a pulse. “Dead,” he said unnecessarily.

Quincannon’s attention was now on the otherwise empty room. It contained a handful of secondhand furniture, a blanket-covered cot, a potbellied stove that radiated heat, and a table topped with a bottle of whiskey and two empty glasses. The whole was none too tidy and none too clean.

Another pair of curtains partially concealed an alcove in the wall opposite the window. Quincannon satisfied himself that the alcove contained nothing more than a wooden icebox and larder cabinet. The only item of furniture large enough to provide a hiding place was a rickety wardrobe, but all he found when he opened it was a few articles of inexpensive clothing.

Maguire was on his feet again. He said, “I wonder what made him do it.”

“Do what?”

“Shoot himself, of course.” The patrolman made the sign of the cross on the breast of his tunic. “Suicide’s a cardinal sin.”

“Is that what you think happened, Officer?”

“Aye, and what else could it be, with all the doors and windows locked tight and no one else on the premises?”

Suicide? Faugh! Murder was what else it could be, and murder was what it was despite the apparent circumstances.

Four things told Quincannon this beyond any doubt. Sonderberg had been shot twice in the chest, a location handgun suicides seldom chose because it necessitated holding the weapon at an awkward angle. The entry wounds were close together, indicating that both bullets had entered the heart; Sonderberg would have had neither time nor cause nor ability to pull the trigger more than once. The pistol that had fired the two rounds lay some distance away from the dead man, too far for it to have been dropped if he had died by his own hand. And the most damning evidence of all: the satchel containing the five-thousand-dollar blackmail payoff was nowhere to be seen here, nor had it been in the front part of the shop.

But Quincannon only shrugged and said nothing. Let the bluecoat believe what he liked. The dispatching of R. Sonderberg was part and parcel of the blackmail game, and that made it John Quincannon’s meat.

“I’ll be needing to report in straightaway,” Maguire said. “The nearest call box is on Jessie two blocks distant. You’ll stay here, will you, and keep out any curious citizens until I return, Mr...?”

“Quinn. That I will, Officer. On my word.”

“Quinn, is it? You’ll be Irish yourself, then?”

“Indeed,” Quincannon lied glibly, “though of a generation once removed from the Auld Sod.”

Maguire hurried out. As soon as he was alone Quincannon commenced a search of the premises. The dead man’s coat and trouser pockets yielded nothing of value or interest other than an expired insurance card that confirmed his identity as Raymond Sonderberg. The pistol that had done for him was a small-caliber Colt, its chambers loaded except for the two fired rounds; it bore no identifying marks of any kind. There was no place where the payoff money might have been hidden, nor was there any sign of the remaining letters belonging to Titus Wrixton.

The bolt on the rear door was tightly drawn, the door itself sturdy in its frame; and for good measure a wooden bar set into brackets spanned its width. Sonderberg had been nothing if not security conscious, for all the good it had done him. The single window was hinged upward, the swivel latch at the bottom of the sash loosely in place around its stud fastener. Quincannon flipped the hook aside and raised the glass to peer again at the vertical bars. They were set firmly top and bottom; he was unable to budge any of them. And as close together as they were, there was no way by which anything as bulky as the satchel could have passed between them.

Sonderberg had brought the satchel inside with him; there could be no mistaking that. Whoever had shot him had made off with it; that, too, was plain enough. But how the devil could the assassin have committed the crime and then escaped from not one but two sealed rooms in the clutch of seconds that had passed between the triggering of the fatal shots and Quincannon’s entry into the side passage?