The Paradise Affair

2 Quincannon

Sabina was at her desk, engaged in the writing of a report or perhaps a letter, when he entered the offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. He had spent regrettably little time with her the past two weeks; being with her now should serve to lift his spirits, relieve his dour mood, but he suspected that it wouldn’t.

He answered her smile with a weak one of his own, then shed his rain-spotted Chesterfield and derby and hung them on the coat tree. Seated at his desk, he loaded his briar from the pouch of Navy Cut. Sabina had gifted him with a flint cigar and pipe lighter at Christmas, and while he preferred matches, he had to admit that the lighter was an improvement over sulfur-smelling lucifers. Or it was when it worked properly. Which it chose not to do this morning. He muttered, “Confounded thing!” fished in his desk for a match, and commenced a furious puffing to get the tobacco burning evenly.

Sabina had replaced her pen in its holder and was watching him quizzically. “What’s the matter, John? Why are you so glum?”

He hadn’t told her what he’d learned from the Tenderloin bawd last night, believing as he had that it was probably a falsehood. And he’d left the Leavenworth Street flat alone early this morning, instead of sharing the trolley ride to Market Street with her as he usually did, in order to canvass the shipping companies that offered passenger service to the Hawaiian Islands. So she had had no foreknowledge of the calamity that had struck him.

“Lonesome Jack Vereen and Nevada Ned Nagle.” Speaking the two names left a bitter taste like that of camphor.

“What about them? What happened?”

“Nothing happened, curse the luck,” Quincannon said. “They’re gone. Long gone. Far gone.”

“Far gone? You mean they’ve left California?”

“Not only California — the United States. They’re on their merry way to Honolulu.”

“Honolulu! Are you serious?”

“Never more,” he said bleakly. “Departed on a Matson steamship on Saturday.”

“Hawaii, of all places. Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“Not for a vacation from crime, that’s bloody certain. Otherwise I’ve not a clue.”

Sabina folded her hands together on the desktop. “Tell me what you do know and how you found it out.”

He told her, puffing out great clouds of bluish smoke as he did so.

“You mustn’t blame yourself, John,” she said when he finished. Sympathetic, but also practical as was her wont. “You had no way of knowing those rogues were planning a trip to Hawaii.”

“No, but I should have caught up to them in time to prevent them from leaving. I had two blasted weeks.”

“Not every investigation plays out quickly, you know that.”

“That doesn’t make their escape or the loss of our client’s property any easier to accept.”

“Do you suppose they took the bonds and stock certificates with them?”

“At a guess I’d say yes. But I have no way of knowing, and it hardly matters now.”

“Perhaps it does,” she said. “What do you intend to do?”

“Do? What can I do?”

“You could go after them.”

“... All the way to Honolulu? That is hardly feasible.”

“Why isn’t it feasible?”

Quincannon pawed his left ear, the lobe of which had been removed by a would-be assassin’s bullet the previous year. Sabina insisted its loss had not disfigured him, but he couldn’t seem to break himself of the habit of fingering the scar tissue in moments of stress.

“For more than one good reason,” he said. “Travel time to Honolulu is seven days, so I was told, and passenger vessels depart only on weekends; by the time I arrived they would have been there a full week. Trying to find them would be prohibitively difficult.”

“Not necessarily. Most of the population is native Hawaiian and Chinese, and there are relatively few Caucasian visitors.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read newspaper articles, among other things, that don’t engage your interest,” Sabina said. “The point is a pair of newcomers with profligate ways surely wouldn’t escape notice.”

“Upon arrival, perhaps not,” Quincannon admitted. “But if they have a game on, their pattern has been to put a hold on public indulgence of their vices so as not to call attention to themselves. For all I know a week is enough time for them to finish their scurvy business, whatever it is, and be ready for a return voyage.”

“It’s just as likely they will be in the midst of it. The high-profit swindles they specialize in take time to set up.”

“Yes, but where and with whom? The game doesn’t have to be in Honolulu or even on Oahu. There are three or four other islands—”

“Eight altogether in the Hawaiian archipelago.”

“Eight makes the odds that much longer.”

“Well, you could seek the aid of the police.”

“In a backwater foreign country? They’re bound to be as inept as the bluecoats here.”

“Hawaii is not a foreign country,” Sabina reminded him. “The Sandwich Islands Kingdom was overthrown and Queen Lili‘uokalani’s reign ended in January of ’93, five years ago. If President McKinley and his partisans have their way, the Republic of Hawaii will be annexed as a United States territory later this year.”

“And if Japan doesn’t invade and annex it first, as they have threatened to do.”

“That isn’t likely to happen. It was last year that the Japanese dispatched warships, and only for a short time. The threat hasn’t materialized.”

Quincannon said gloomily, “It still might if this ill-advised war with Spain drags on.”

“The belief in Washington is that the war will end quickly. It has been only three weeks since the president signed the congressional resolution authorizing use of force to drive the Spanish out of Cuba.”

“War with Spain over the independence of a Caribbean island, and all because of a naval ship that may not have been sunk by sabotage as claimed. ‘Remember the Maine!’ Bah.”

“If not a consultation with the police,” Sabina said doggedly, “then why not engage the services of a member of our profession? Honolulu is a city of some size; there must be at least one private investigative agency. The Pinkertons would know.”

Quincannon gave his mutilated ear another tug. “Do you know what a round-trip ticket to Honolulu costs? The confiscatory sum of one hundred and fifty dollars. On top of which add the price of lodging, transportation rentals, and an added professional fee among other expenses. No, my dear, it just won’t do. Our client would never sanction such a trip.”

“He might given the circumstances,” Sabina said. “R. W. Anderson is a wealthy and an angry man, as you well know. The return of some or all of his stocks and bonds and the ruin of those two thieves is vital to him. You’ve had his financial support for two weeks now. Would you consider making the trip if he agreed to finance it?”

“Why are you so keen on the prospect of my going?” he said. “If I didn’t know better I might think you want to be rid of me.”

“Stuff and nonsense. I’m only thinking of your welfare. I know how you hate to mark an investigation unresolved and I couldn’t bear to see you mired in the doldrums for the Lord knows how long...”

Abruptly Sabina grew silent, her expression becoming oddly introspective. His gaze lingered on her; she was never more attractive to him than when she was in repose. On another day, in a better frame of mind, he would have been content to sit and admire her fine cameo features, her bright blue eyes and raven-black hair, her engaging smile, and count himself the luckiest of men to have her as his bride of six months. But not on this day. After a time her silence, broken only by the pattering of raindrops on the office roof and windows, became a trifle bemusing.

Quincannon tapped the bowl of his briar on the desktop to break her reverie. When he had her attention he asked, “What is it you’re thinking so hard about?”

“An idea, John. A rather wonderful idea.”

“Yes? And that is?”

“Why don’t we both travel to Honolulu?”

Quincannon’s whiskers bristled like those on a startled dog. He stared at her. “Surely you’re joking.”

“Not at all. Despite the war, there have been no warnings against travel to the Islands. There is no real danger to the citizenry or to visitors; the troops being sent to protect Pearl Harbor will see to that. We have no pressing business on the docket other than the Anderson investigation, and I can help you track down Vereen and Nagle—”

“Anderson would never agree to paying passage for both of us.”

“No, nor should he be asked to,” Sabina said. “Our bank balance is substantial, as you well know. We can certainly afford to pay for my passage and expenses.”

He had a brief vision of hard-earned greenbacks vanishing in puffs of smoke. “And what would you do when your assistance was not needed?”

“The same things you can do once the swindlers have been found,” Sabina said. “Explore Honolulu and Oahu, sample exotic foods, lounge on a bathing beach... become indolent lotus-eaters for a change. The weather is warm in the Islands, John, not cold and dreary as it has been and may well continue to be here.”

“No,” he said, “it’s a daft notion.”

“Daft? Why is it daft?”

“Fourteen days at sea round trip. Another week or more on the hunt, and with no guarantee of success. Think of the business we’d lose if we closed the agency for three weeks to a month.”

“Chances are we wouldn’t lose much at all. And we would not have to close the agency. I’m sure Elizabeth Petrie would be willing to take temporary charge, as she has in the past when we’ve both been away, and she and our part-time operatives could handle most new investigations or their preliminaries.” Then, after a pause, she said pointedly, “Besides, your undercover job at the Monarch Mine last fall might well have lasted a month and you had no qualms about accepting that. Or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Quincannon said. “But that was a lucrative business decision, and the assignment was completed in less than three weeks.”

“It still meant a postponement of our wedding.”

“I’ve apologized for that any number of times, my dear. But it has nothing to do with this fanciful notion of yours—”

“Fanciful? We have done nothing but labor long hours since November, and we have been apart far too much of the time. We deserve a vacation, even if it is a working one. Yes, and a second honeymoon, too.”

“What was wrong with our first honeymoon?”

“Not a thing,” she said. “It was lovely. But you must admit it was also quite brief, and the Valley of the Moon a place we had been to before. A pair of seven-day ocean voyages and a week on a tropical island would be a unique and memorable experience, one that would do us both a world of good.”

Quincannon said stubbornly, “No, it’s out of the question.”

“Not even if Mr. Anderson should agree to pay your passage?”

“Not in any case.”

“Is that your final word?”

“It is. Neither of us is going to Hawaii.”

His final word? Hah. He should have known better.

It took Sabina less than a day to change his mind.

She did not resort to pleading or cajoling to have her way; her woman’s wiles were too finely honed for that sort of ploy. Subtlety and finesse were her weapons. Without informing him beforehand, she sent a wire to R. W. Anderson and received by return wire confirmation of the investor’s willingness to finance his portion of an Island trip. She consulted with the local Pinkerton office and obtained the name of a reputable Honolulu private investigator, a former police constable named George Fenner. She also obtained Elizabeth Petrie’s promise to take charge of the agency in the event of their absence.

Thus armed, Sabina then commenced a forceful promotional campaign. If he didn’t seize the opportunity to close out his pursuit of Lonesome Jack Vereen and Nevada Ned and maintain his unblemished record, he would never forgive himself. He was, after all, the most accomplished detective in the western United States. Hadn’t he said more than once that he prided himself on never giving up on an investigation when there was so much as a remote chance of success?

Once this baited hook was firmly set, she dwelt on the virtues of ocean travel by steamship — first-class accommodations, sumptuous cuisine, a restful atmosphere conducive to passionate interludes. And, bolstered by a pamphlet she had found somewhere, she enumerated the virtues of the Hawaiian Islands and Honolulu, Crossroads of the Pacific. Lauded by such luminaries as Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain, who called them “the loveliest fleet of islands anchored in any ocean,” they were a virtual paradise where lush vegetation grew in aromatic profusion, the sky was a soft blue, balmy trade winds wafted gently over white sand beaches, sun-browned Polynesian girls performed native dances clad in little more than grass skirts and flower leis. Could he justify denying himself the pleasure of a once-in-a-lifetime experience? Could he justify denying her that same pleasure merely because it would cost a few hundred dollars they could easily afford?

No, he couldn’t. And so he weakened and gave in. And not as reluctantly as he might have, after due consideration.

Both of them were going to Hawaii.