The Flimflam Affair

5 Sabina

First stop: the Geary Street suite belonging to Maguire and Sullivan, Attorneys at Law. Archibald Maguire was in court today, so Sabina met with his junior partner, a reliable man named Conroy, and told him of the Milford subterfuge. He said he would notify Mr. Maguire upon his return, and that he would alert the other members of the staff to refer any inquiries to him or to Mr. Maguire.

Next stop: the Western Union office on Market. One wire in response to hers of the day before had been delivered in her absence, from the Pinkerton office in Chicago. They knew nothing of the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses, a medium named A. Vargas and a woman called Annabelle, or anyone involved in the spirit racket answering their general descriptions. Either Vargas had never practiced his spiritualism dodge in the Windy City, or if he had, had never had a brush with the law. It was also possible that it was a relatively new undertaking. The research mistakes he’d made indicated that it might be, though he did seem to have put a reasonable polish on the rest of his game.

At the agency, Sabina added a detailed report of her meeting with Vargas and her impressions of him and Annabelle to the Buckley case file. There was little question in her mind that the pair was out to bilk as much money as possible from wealthy believers such as Margaret Buckley. But her professional opinion was not sufficient; proof was required before she presented her findings to the client. Saturday night’s séance, with both Winthrop Buckley and his wife in attendance, might well provide that proof.

She was familiar with some of the tricks employed by fraudulent mediums, though not all. It was too bad John was away; he might well have acquired knowledge to augment hers. If he should return from the southern Mother Lode in time, she would ask him to accompany her to the séance. He might grumble and growl a bit, but the chance to expose a bunco scheme would persuade him. His dislike of grifters who preyed on the honest and gullible was as great as hers.

When she finished updating the file, she was surprised to note that it was nearly two o’clock. How quickly time passed. And another day in which work had distracted her enough to miss a noon meal. She would treat herself to an early tea shop dinner, she decided, after close of business.

First things first, however. She locked the office and took herself to the library to see what might be learned about the tricks of phony spiritualists.

The library possessed a number of books, pamphlets, and treatises on spiritualism. All but two of these were staunchly supportive, among them Emma Hardinge Britten’s Nineteenth Century Miracles: Spirits and Their Work in Every Country of the Earth, and the London Spiritualist Alliance’s “Journal Devoted to the Highest Interests of Humanity, Both Here and Hereafter.”

The less informative of the skeptical items was a pamphlet printed by England’s Society for Psychical Research, published in the mid-eighties, in which professional researcher Frank Podmore wrote of having investigated the reality of ghosts by setting up a committee on haunted houses, and of having exposed numerous cases of fraud among mediums. No specifics as to how the frauds were perpetrated were included, however.

The most useful tract was the report of the Seybert Commission. Published in 1887, this detailed the findings of a three-year investigation of several respected spiritualist mediums by members of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. In every case examined, fraud or suspected fraud was uncovered in the presentation of allegedly visible, audible, and tangible evidence of the existence of spirits.

Slate writing, for instance — one of the most common ploys, in which two slates are fastened together so that the writing surfaces face each other and a small pencil between them is made to produce “spirit writing” — was said to be performed “in a manner so closely resembling fraud as to be indistinguishable from it.” Other gimmicks such as spirit rappings, movement of objects, and spirit photography were also treated with skepticism. The report’s appendices described how spiritualist mediums operated, but here, too, the information was sketchy. There were few details explaining the methods used by mediums to perform their various marvels.

It was nearly four thirty by the time Sabina finished her researches. She returned to the agency to determine if there was any new business to be dealt with before calling it a day. A second wire had been delivered, this one from the Pinkerton office in Washington, which stated essentially the same as the previous response from the Chicago office: they had no file or knowledge of Professor A. Vargas, Annabelle, or the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses. There was also a message from Madame Louella in her spidery hand, typically brief and typically mercenary: Subject unknown. Word out. Two dollars, dearie.

Sabina was straightening her desk, preparatory to closing up again, when the telephone bell set up its clamor. The identity of the caller was something of a surprise.

“Mrs. Carpenter?” the gruff male voice said, and when she confirmed it, “Boggs here. Recognize the name?”

Of course she did. Mr. Boggs (she had never been told his first name) was head of the Secret Service’s San Francisco field office in the U.S. Mint, and John’s superior in the days when John had been the Service’s best operative. Boggs had been one of the thirty detectives brought together to form the Service in 1865, and was a personal friend of William P. Wood, its first chief, who had handpicked him for his position here. She had met him only once, a large, graying man with a brusque manner and a penchant for cigars, but John had a great deal of respect for him — more than for any man he had ever known except his father.

“An unexpected pleasure, Mr. Boggs,” she said.

“I wish it were. Is your partner available?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. He is out of town.”

A noise came over the wire that might have been a bitten-back oath. “When do you expect him back? Soon?”

“By the end of the week, I hope, though it depends on how his investigation progresses.”

“Where is he? Can he be reached by telephone?”

“I don’t believe so. He left Sunday for Jamestown in the southern Mother Lode, on a job for the Sierra Railway. Is there anything I can help you with, Mr. Boggs?”

There was a long, staticky pause before he said, “The name Long Nick Darrow mean anything to you, Mrs. Carpenter?”

“Long Nick Darrow. Yes, a notorious counterfeiter. John told me of his encounter with the man several years ago.”

“Ten, to be exact. Have you heard anything of Darrow recently?”

“No, sir. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“So we’ve presumed,” Mr. Boggs said. “What is the name of the man who hired John for Sierra Railway?”

“C. W. Cromarty, the line’s division superintendent.”

“Based in Jamestown, you said?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll try contacting John by wire. It’s urgent that I speak with him as soon as possible.”

“Can you tell me why, Mr. Boggs?”

“Not on the telephone. But it’s nothing for you to be concerned about. If you should hear from him before I make contact, inform him of our conversation and ask him to get in touch with me immediately.”

The urgent matter might not be cause for concern, Sabina thought after Boggs ended the call, but it was puzzling and a bit disconcerting nonetheless. According to John, Long Nick Darrow had been one of the slipperiest coney men west of the Mississippi, whom John had tracked down in Seattle and who had died as a result of a pitched battle between them. In his estimation, no koniaker had ever done a better or more distinctive job of bleaching and bill-splitting than Darrow.

The process, he’d explained to her, was one in which a one-dollar note was sliced lengthwise down the center, the two thin sheets then bleached to transparency with chemicals; colored silk threads were placed in the zone systems between the layers to resemble the authentic variety, then the halves were pasted back together, and each side was reprinted from bogus hundred-dollar plates. When done with skill, the counterfeit could be detected only by looking for two giveaways through a magnifying glass: a slight thickness from the paste; and the pressure marks from the original scroll work on the one-dollar bills, marks that couldn’t be bleached out along with the colors.

And now, fantastic as it seemed, Long Nick Darrow might not be dead after all. If not, was he back in the counterfeiting business after a long absence, or had he never left it and somehow managed to escape detection the past ten years? Something along these lines must be the reason for Mr. Boggs’s apparent apprehension. But why did he want to confer with John? Was it because Darrow was now thought to be in San Francisco or the Bay Area?

Now even more than before, Sabina hoped for her partner’s early return from Jamestown.