The Spook Lights Affair

5

There was no sign of Bob Cantwell at the Bucket of Beer Saloon. And neither the bartender nor the handful of remaining customers could or would say where the young rascal might have gone to gamble away his one hundred-dollar windfall. Quincannon tarried long enough to drink two cups of hot clam broth, his favorite tipple; his blood had thinned considerably since his discovery in Drifter’s Alley and the night’s chill had cut into him bone-deep. His earlier exhilaration was gone, his mood now considerably darker.

It turned darker still when he discovered that Cantwell had not as yet returned to his room at Drake’s Rest. The front door of the lodging house was unlocked, the crone having carelessly forgotten to lock it, or else it was intentionally left off the latch so she wouldn’t have to admit late-arriving tenants who had misplaced their keys. No lamp burned in the common room or anywhere else inside; Quincannon had to burn another lucifer to light his way upstairs and locate the door with a painted numeral 3 on it. Locked, that one, and no sounds from within or response to his knuckle rap on the panel.

Downstairs again, he paused in the hallway. There was nothing to be gained in doing any more tramping around the area; for all he knew Cantwell had gone uptown to do his rolling of the bones at Riley’s House of Chance. But he was loath to put off his second conversation with the clerk until tomorrow; in all cases he preferred to strike while the iron was hot, the more so in situations such as this one. He thumbed another match alight to consult his stemwinder. Nearly eleven o’clock. Tomorrow being a workday, it was likely that Cantwell, win or lose, would return before it got to be too late. A wait of an hour or even two, Quincannon decided, wouldn’t try his patience too severely. And he had no compunction about doing so on the premises, uninvited.

He followed the match flame into the common room, where he took the liberty of lighting a small oil lamp. His presence disturbed the scrawny parrot, whose cage was now covered with a black cloth; the bird made rustling and muttering noises before subsiding again. Quincannon sat in a lumpy, dusty armchair and settled down to his vigil.

A creeping weariness from his night’s exertions, the lateness of the hour, and the house’s stillness combined after a while to put him into a long doze. But the sounds of the front door opening and footsteps in the hallway brought him instantly alert. He was on his feet and moving when Bob Cantwell came into his line of sight.

The self-pitying look on the youth’s face said that he’d had no more luck than usual with the dice tonight. When he saw Quincannon approaching, sudden fright replaced the self-pity and he backed up a step, his body stiffening, his hands lifting as if to ward off an attack.

“You,” he said. “What … what’re you doing here?”

“We need to have another talk, Bob.”

“Why? I’ve already told you all I know—”

“Have you? I doubt it.” Quincannon caught his arm, tugged him into the common room. Cantwell tried in vain to pull away.

“Don’t hurt me! If you try I’ll shout the house down—”

“Tell me what Jack Travers looks like.”

“… What?”

“Your cousin, Jack Travers. Describe him.”

“I don’t … what’s the idea? Why do you want to know that?”

Quincannon fixed him with a steely eye and pinched his arm more tightly. “Describe him, Bob.”

“Lean, hard … black hair … clean-shaven…”

“Large mole at one side of his mouth?”

“Yes. A mole, yes.”

“Now tell me about ‘the Kid.’”

Cantwell blinked, blinked again. “Kid? What kid?”

“The one your cousin was meeting regularly at the same place.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he did know. The furtive shift of his eyes, the sudden tenseness of his body, testified to that.

“You, Bob? Are you the Kid?”

“No! I told you, I haven’t seen Jack Travers since I gave him the key to the cottage—”

“What was your role in the robbery?”

“My … None! I had nothing to do with it! I’m a respectable—”

“But the Kid did, eh? Who is he?”

“I … I don’t have any idea.”

“I think you do.”

“Jack never said anything to me about a kid. Why’re you asking me all these questions? Why don’t you go up to Drifter’s Alley and ask him?”

“I’ve already been to Drifter’s Alley,” Quincannon said. “Your cousin was there, but he couldn’t tell me anything.”

“Why couldn’t he?”

“He’s dead. Shot. And the cottage torn apart by whoever killed him.”

Cantwell’s eyes bugged wide. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, not unlike a gaffed sea bass.

“Jack Travers killed? Oh, my God! But it couldn’t have been—”

“Couldn’t have been whom?”

Cantwell wagged his head. Then his body spasmed, stiffened, as if he’d been struck by a sudden thought, and a name burst out of him unbidden. “Zeke!”

“Zeke, eh? Who would he be?”

“No. Oh, God, no! Suppose that big bastard comes after me next?”

“Why would he, if you had nothing to do with the robbery?”

Another head wag. In the lamplight Cantwell’s face was the color of clabbered milk.

Quincannon said, “If that were his intention you’d already be dead. Travers was shot three or four days ago—”

But Cantwell wasn’t listening. A surge of panic had him in its grip, and it served to double his strength. He struggled mightily, managed to break loose from the tight-fingered grip on his arm. Quincannon clutched at him, caught the tail of his coat as he turned away, but couldn’t hold it; Cantwell twisted away and ran for the front door.

In the darkness and his haste to give chase, Quincannon stumbled over a fold in the threadbare carpet and banged into and upset a table. By the time he regained his balance Cantwell was out the door and gone. The noise caused by the falling table woke the parrot, which began screeching maniacally in its cage. This in turn woke some of the house’s other residents; angry cries followed Quincannon as he lurched outside.

It took him a few seconds to locate Cantwell in the foggy darkness. The youth was twenty rods distant, fleeing in a spindle-legged run along the sidewalk. “Stop!” Quincannon yelled. “Come back here, you damned young scruff!”

The shout had no effect. Cantwell didn’t even break stride, running head down as if a demon from hell were breathing fire on his backside. Quincannon gave chase, but couldn’t catch him. It was all he could do to maintain enough speed to keep him in sight.

Cantwell dashed diagonally across the empty street in mid-block, casting a brief look back over his shoulder. The nearness of Quincannon’s pursuit spurred him past the darkened front of a warehouse and into an alley beyond its board-fenced side yard. The fog not only hid him then, but deadened the pound of his footsteps. Furious now, Quincannon charged around the corner of the fence without slowing. It was like hurling himself into a vat of India ink; wet black closed around him and he could see nothing but vague shapes through the ragged coils and streamers of mist. He slowed, heard only silence, plunged ahead —

Something swung out of the murk, struck him squarely across the left temple, and knocked him over like a ninepin.

It was not the first time he had been hit on or about the head, and his skull had withstood harder blows without serious damage or loss of consciousness. He didn’t lose consciousness now, though for a few seconds his thoughts rattled around like pebbles in a tin can. Through a faint ringing in his ears he heard Cantwell’s frightened voice cry something unintelligible, then a clatter on the cobbles nearby — a board or whatever it was that had been used to bludgeon him. He rolled over onto his knees and forearms, hoisted himself unsteadily to his feet. Fresh pain throbbed in his temple. Somewhere in the darkness ahead there was again the faint beat of receding footfalls.

A multijointed oath swelled his throat. He bit it back and plunged onward, shaking his head to clear it, using the fence to guide him and heedless of obstacles. Blood trickled warm and sticky down his right cheek, adding fuel to his outrage.

The fog-softened steps veered off to the right, were replaced by scraping sounds, resumed dimly at a greater distance. Quincannon’s mental processes steadied. There must be a second alley that crossed this one through the middle of the block. He slowed, saw the intersection materialize through the gray vapors, and swung himself around into the new passage.

Where, after half a dozen paces, he ran into another wooden fence.

He caromed off, staggering. The multijointed oath once more swelled his throat and this time two of the smokier words slipped out. He threw himself back to the fence, caught the top and scaled its six-foot height. When he dropped down on the far side he could hear Cantwell’s steps a little more clearly. The fog was patchier here; he was able to see all the way to the dull shine of an electric streetlamp on Howard Street beyond. A running shadow was just blending into other shadows there, heading toward the Embarcadero.

When he reached the corner he skidded to a halt, breathing in thick wheezes. Visibility was still good; he could make out Cantwell’s thin shape less than half a block away. He broke into another run, summoning reserves that lengthened his strides; he was less than thirty rods behind when the youth crossed Beale Street. Gaining on him, by Godfrey! Quincannon raced across Beale. But as he came up onto the sidewalk on the opposite side, his quarry once more disappeared.

Another blasted alley, this one dirt-floored, he saw as he reached its mouth. He turned into it with considerably more caution than he’d entered the previous pair. No ambush this time: Cantwell was still fleeing. Quincannon plowed ahead, managed to reach the alley’s far end without blundering into anything. There, he slowed long enough to determine that the footfalls were now fading away to his right, in the direction of Folsom Street. He angled that way, spied Cantwell some distance ahead — and then, again, lost sight of him. And when that happened, his footsteps were no longer audible.

The restless mist was thick-pocketed that way; the side lamps on a hansom cab at the far intersection were barely visible. At a fast walk now, Quincannon continued another ten paces. Close by, then, he heard the nervous neighing of a horse, followed by a similar sound from a second horse. A few more paces, and the faint glow of a lantern materialized. Another, slender wedge of yellow appeared on the right. One of the horses nickered again, and harness leather creaked. He heard nothing else.

He kept moving until he could identify the sources of the light. One came from a lantern mounted on a large brewery wagon drawn by two dray animals that filled the alley, the other from a partially open door to the building on the right — a two-story brick structure with an overhanging balcony at the second level. Above the door was a sign whose lettering was just discernible: MCKENNA’S ALE HOUSE.

The wagon was laden with medium-sized kegs, which indicated a late delivery to the saloon. There was no sign of anyone human, though he could hear the mutter of voices from inside. He drew closer, peering to the right because that direction offered the largest amount of space for passage around the wagon.

The thrown object came from his left. Quincannon saw it — one of the kegs — in time to pitch his body sideways against the ale house wall. The keg sailed past his head, missing him by precious little, slammed into the bricks above and broke apart. He threw his arm up to protect his head as staves and metal strapping and the contents of the keg rained down on him.

The foamy brew, a green and pungent lager, drenched him from head to foot, got into his eyes and mouth and nose. Spluttering, he pawed at his face and shook his head like a bewildered bull. Once again he heard the pound of retreating footfalls, which impelled him to continue the chase. But in his haste to get past the wagon, his foot slipped on the beer-muddied ground. Down he went on his backside, sliding forward so that he was nearly brained by one of the frightened dray horses’ plunging hooves.

The rear door to McKenna’s Ale House opened as he struggled upright and a pair of curious heads poked out. Quincannon, giving vent now to most of his vocabulary of cuss words, drew and brandished the Navy and the heads disappeared so swiftly that they might never have been there at all. He slid along the bricks, rubbing at his beer-stung eyes. The dray horses were still shuffling around in harness, though neither was plunging any longer. He finally managed to shove past them, stumbled out onto Folsom Street.

The fog rolling up from the waterfront was as thick here as Creole gumbo. All he could hear was the ever-present clanging of fog bells. All he could see was empty damp-swirled darkness.

Cantwell, damn his cowardly eyes, had vanished again. And this time there was no picking up his trail.