The Stolen Gold Affair

25 Quincannon

Morgan went through the packed third day coach, through the first-class Pullman and the dining and lounge cars, past men’s and women’s lavatories into the smoking car. Quincannon had no chance to brace him along the way, for Morgan moved at a smart pace and there were other people in the aisles in all four cars.

Quincannon paused outside the smoking car door; through the glass he watched his quarry sit down at the far end, facing back toward the entrance, then produce a cigar from his coat pocket, fit it into the amber holder, and snip off the end with a pair of gold cutters. Settling in there, evidently, as he’d settled into the day coach. Blast the man and blast the luck!

He debated the advisability of entering, decided to take the chance. Morgan paid no attention to him when he claimed a seat just inside the door. The car was three-quarters full, smoke from cigars, pipes, cigarettes creating a thickly swirling haze. Quincannon tugged his briar and tobacco pouch from an inside coat pocket, opened the pouch — and then stayed his hand as he was about to dip the pipe bowl inside.

Morgan was on his feet again. His cigar unlit, an expression of mild distress on his lean features, he came striding forward with eyes front as he passed where Quincannon sat. What was this? Ah, the sudden call of nature, evidently, for he stopped at the door to the men’s lavatory, found it unoccupied, and closed himself inside.

Quincannon’s mouth pinched into a tight smile. This might well be the break he’d been waiting for. He stowed his pipe and pouch, stood, and took up a position near the lavatory door as if waiting his turn to enter. If no one was in the immediate vicinity when Morgan emerged, he would crowd the man back inside and use his superior size and strength in that small space to subdue and disarm him — club him into unconsciousness if such proved necessary.

Waiting, watching the lavatory door, he gripped the handle of the Webley revolver in his coat pocket. A hefty individual in the flashy dress of a traveling drummer came in from the lounge, staggering slightly when couplings clashed and the car lurched as its wheels passed over a rough section of track. Outside the windows, a series of low hills, shadowed by the waning afternoon light, created a barren backdrop for a patchwork of plowed and unplowed fields.

The door to the lavatory remained closed.

A prickly sensation formed between Quincannon’s shoulder blades. How long had Morgan been in there? It had to be more than five minutes now. One of the other occupants left the smoking car; a fat man, his round face adorned with a thicket of muttonchop whiskers, came in. The fat gent paused, glancing around, then turned to the lavatory door and tried the latch. When he found it locked, he rapped on the panel. There was no response.

The prickly sensation grew as hot as a fire-rash. Quincannon prodded the fat man aside, ignoring the indignant oath this brought him, and laid an ear against the panel. All he could hear were train sounds: the pound of beating trucks on the fishplates, the creek and groan of axle play, the whisper of the wheels. He hammered on the panel with his fist, much harder than the fat fellow had. Once, twice, three times. This likewise produced no response.

“Hell and damn!”

The ejaculation brought him the attention of the remaining smokers, and so startled the fat man that he did a quick about-face and went through the connecting door onto the iron-plated vestibule, where he nearly collided with another man just stepping through. The newcomer was the conductor, Bridges, who had evidently heard the hammering and outcry while passing through the lounge car.

“Here, now, what’s all the commotion?”

Quincannon snapped, “A man went into the lavatory some time ago, hasn’t come out. And hasn’t made a sound.”

“Well, perhaps he isn’t feeling well—”

“Use your master key and we’ll soon know.”

“I can’t do that, sir, on your word alone—”

Quincannon took hold of the conductor’s coat sleeve, drew him back into the vestibule out of earshot. He said, low and sharp, “I am a San Francisco detective — Quincannon, John Frederick Quincannon. The man who went into the lavatory is a dangerous fugitive. The only reason I haven’t taken him into custody is concern for the safety of the other passengers.”

The fervency of Quincannon’s words and demeanor brooked no argument, and brought none. “Good Lord!” the conductor said in shocked tones. “What did he do? Who is he?”

“I’ll explain later; there’s no time now.”

“You don’t think he—”

“Open the door, Mr. Bridges, and be quick about it.”

The conductor unlocked the lavatory door. Quincannon pushed in first, his hand on the butt of the Webley revolver — and immediately blistered the air with a five-jointed oath.

The cubicle was empty.

“By all the saints!” Bridges said behind him. “He must have gone through the window and jumped.”

The lone window was small, designed for ventilation, but not too small for a man Morgan’s size to wiggle through. Quincannon, if he’d tried it, would have gotten stuck halfway through. It was shut but not latched; he hoisted the sash, poked his head out. The stinging slipstream made him pull it back in again. A futile effort at any rate, for there had been nothing worth seeing.

“Gone, yes,” he said, “but I’ll eat my hat if he jumped at the rate of speed we’ve been traveling.”

“But... he must have. The only other place he could have gone...”

“Up atop the car. That’s where he did go.”

The conductor didn’t want to believe it. His thinking was plain: if the dangerous fugitive Quincannon was after had leaped out, he was rid of a threat to his passengers’ security. He said, “A climb like that can be almost as lethal as jumping.”

“Not for an agile and desperate man.”

“He couldn’t hide up there. Nor for long on top of any of the cars. There is nowhere for him to hide inside, either — the only possible places are too easily searched. He must know that if he’s familiar with trains.”

Quincannon had nothing to say to that.

Bridges asked, “Do you think he crawled along the roofs, then climbed back down between two other cars?”

“It’s the likeliest explanation.”

“Why would he do such a thing?”

Why? The answer was obvious enough to Quincannon, bitterly so. Morgan must have recognized him on the platform or in the coach, from a description furnished by Walrus Ben, and confirmed the recognition when he was followed into the smoking car. He also must have guessed that J. F. Quinn was a detective employed to investigate the high-grading — the primary reason he’d left Patch Creek so abruptly on Sunday. For all Morgan knew now there were other lawmen on board or waiting at the Capitol Express’s first stop in Vacaville; he couldn’t take the chance of waiting to find out, not with the stolen gold dust in his possession, as it surely was in a belt buckled around his middle. If there had been anything of value in the satchel, he had removed whatever it was before chucking the bag through the window and climbing out.

The actions of a desperate man, but also a cunning one. Morgan had some sort of escape plan in mind, or else he would not have taken the risk he had.

Bridges asked anxiously, “Who is he? What crimes did he commit?”

“His name is Morgan, Bartholomew Morgan. A thief, among other criminal offenses.”

“You said he’s dangerous. Do you think he’s armed?”

“No question of it.”

“Oh, Lordy. What does he look like?”

Quincannon provided a cogent description. “The birthmark should make him easy enough to spot. If he tries to conceal it under a stolen garment, that will give him away too.”

“So you think he’ll attempt to blend in with the other passengers?”

“Unless he has another trick up his sleeve. How long to the Vacaville stop?”

Bridges checked his railroad watch. “Forty minutes.”

“That should give us plenty of time for a search. Every nook and cranny from locomotive to caboose, if necessary.”

“If we don’t find him, what then?”

“We’ll find him,” Quincannon said darkly. “He is still on this train, Mr. Bridges. He can’t have gotten off.”

While Bridges stood watch, Quincannon stepped through the vestibule doorway and carefully climbed to the top of the iron ladder outside. He peered over the roofs of the cars, protecting his eyes with an upraised arm, for the coal-flavored smoke that rolled back from the locomotive’s stack was peppered with hot cinders. As expected, he saw no sign of his quarry. But he did find evidence of the man’s passage: marks in the thin grit that coated the tops of the lounge car as well as the smoking car, indicating that Morgan had gone forward.

Back in the vestibule, he used his handkerchief to cleanse his hands and face. The grimy streaks on the cloth confirmed another fact: no matter how long Morgan had been above or how far he’d crawled, his clothing had to be soiled when he came down. Someone may have seen him. And he couldn’t have wandered far in that condition. Either he was hiding where he lighted — one of the Pullman compartments, mayhap — or he would take the time to wash up and brush his clothes.

Quincannon said as much to the conductor, who responded, “I still say it makes no sense. Not a lick of sense.”

“It does to him. And it will to us when we find him.”

They worked their way forward, making sure Morgan wasn’t closeted in any of the lavatories, Bridges quietly alerting members of the crew. Their inspection of the lounge and dining cars was cursory. Morgan, shrewd as he was, could not have hoped to pass undetected in either one and so had avoided them.

When they reached the first-class Pullman, Bridges began knocking on compartment doors. No one in those occupied had seen Morgan. Nor was he in either of two temporarily empty compartments; Bridges’ passkey allowed searches of both. By the time they finished, the urgency and frustration both men felt were taking a toll: Quincannon nearly bowled over a pudgy matron outside the first-class women’s lavatory, and Bridges snapped at a pompous gent who demanded to know what the devil was going on.

It took them five minutes to scan through the passengers in the third day coach — another exercise in futility. When they entered the middle coach, Sabina rose as soon as she saw them. Quincannon beckoned her out onto the vestibule, where he introduced her to Bridges — “My partner, Mrs. Sabina Carpenter” — and gave her a terse account of the situation. She received the news stoically; unlike him, she met most crises with a shield of calm.

She said, “He’s not in the second coach. I would have noticed any newcomers, especially one with the side of his face covered.”

“Almost certainly not in the first then, either. He wouldn’t have crawled that far over the tops of the cars.”

No, Morgan was not in the first coach. A swift search proved that.

In the vestibule again, Sabina said, “The man may be full of tricks, but he can’t make himself invisible. He has to be somewhere.”

“Not the tender or the locomotive,” Bridges said. “There’s no way he could get into either one without being seen and thwarted.”

“Which leaves the baggage car and the caboose.”

“He couldn’t get into those, either.”

Quincannon said, “Are you sure about the baggage car?”

“The baggage master secures all the doors as soon as we depart.”

He bit back a self-deprecating expletive in deference to Sabina. “Blast it, we should have checked there before we came forward. But it’s not too late if we hurry, Mr. Bridges.”

Sabina said, “I’ll go with you—”

“No need. Take a slow stroll through the cars on the off chance we somehow overlooked him among the passengers.”

She didn’t argue.

The baggage master’s office was empty. Beyond, the door to the baggage car stood open a few inches.

Frowning, Bridges stepped up to the office door, tried the latch. Unlocked. “Oh, Lordy,” he said in a choked whisper, then opened the door and called out, “Dan? You in the car?”

No answer.

The hot prickly sensation was back between Quincannon’s shoulder blades. He drew the Webley, shouldered the conductor aside, and crossed the office to widen the doorway to the baggage car. The oil lamps inside were lighted; most of the interior was visible. Boxes, crates, stacks of luggage and express parcels, but no sign of human habitation.

“What do you see, Mr. Quincannon?”

“Nothing. No one.”

“I don’t like this, none of this,” Bridges said. “Where’s Dan? He’s always here, and he never leaves doors unlocked...”

Quincannon eased his body through the doorway and into a crouch behind a packing crate. Peering out, he saw no one and no evidence of disturbance anywhere. Several large crates and trunks were belted in place along the inner wall. Against the far wall stood a pair of carts piled with luggage. More of the same rested in neat rows nearby, among them Sabina’s carpetbag and his war bag. None of the baggage appeared to have been tampered with, or moved except by the natural motion of the train.

Toward the front was a shadowed area into which he could not see clearly. A possible hiding place? He straightened, edged around and alongside the crate with the revolver cocked and ready. No sounds other than the thrum of steel on steel. And no movement until a brief lurch and shudder as the locomotive nosed into a curve and the engineer used his air. Then something slid into view in the dusky corner.

A leg. A man’s leg, twisted and bent.

Quincannon muttered the expletive he had suppressed earlier, closed the gap by another half dozen paces. He could see the rest of the man’s body then — a sixtyish fellow in a trainman’s uniform, lying crumpled, his cap off and a dark blotch staining his wispy gray hair. Quincannon went to one knee beside him, found a thin wrist, and pressed it for a pulse. The beat was there, faint and irregular.

“Mr. Bridges! Be quick!”

The conductor came running inside. When he saw the unconscious crewman he jerked to a halt; a moaning sound vibrated in his throat. “My God, old Dan! Is he—?”

“No. Wounded but still alive.”

“Shot?”

“Struck with something hard. A gun butt, like as not.”

“Morgan, damn his eyes.”

“He was after something in here,” Quincannon said. “We’ll take a quick look around. Tell me if you notice anything missing or out of place.”

“What about Dan? One of the drawing-room passengers is a doctor...”

“Fetch him. But look around first.”

They took a turn through the car. None of the belted boxes and crates showed signs of having been tampered with, nor did any of the hand luggage. If Morgan had gotten into any of the baggage, he had done a good job of covering up afterward. But why would he have bothered?

Bridges confirmed that as far as he could tell, nothing was amiss. “But Dan is the only one who’ll know for sure.”

“One thing before you go. Are you carrying weapons of any kind? Rifles, handguns in unmarked boxes? Or dynamite or black powder?”

“None by manifest or declaration, thank heaven.”

Bridges hurried away. Quincannon pillowed the baggage master’s head on one of the smaller bags, noting that the blood on and around his wound had begun to coagulate. The assault must have taken place not long after Morgan’s disappearance from the lavatory. The foxy devil had anticipated a check of the tops of the cars, marked the grit on the lounge car to give the false impression that he’d gone forward, then crawled back here. Damnation! If they had thought to check the baggage car first thing, they might have caught him in the act.

But this was no time for recriminations. Whatever Morgan’s reason for coming here, it had to be an integral part of the escape plan he’d devised. Yes, but he still had no idea what that could possibly be.