The Stolen Gold Affair

26 Quincannon

The doctor was young, brusque, and efficient. Quincannon and Bridges left old Dan in his care, hurried forward again.

As they passed through the dining car, the locomotive’s whistle sounded a series of short toots.

“Oh, Lordy,” the conductor said. “That’s the first signal for Vacaville.”

“How long before we arrive at the depot?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Blast!”

They came upon Sabina in the Pullman car; she shook her head.

Quincannon was beside himself by this time. The entire rolling stock had been carefully searched now, front to back. So where the bloody hell was Morgan?

They held a huddled conference. Quincannon’s latest piece of bad news ridged the smoothness of Sabina’s forehead, her only outward reaction. “You’re certain nothing was taken from the baggage car?” she asked Bridges.

“As certain as I can be without a thorough examination and the cooperation of the passengers.”

“If Morgan did steal something,” Quincannon said, “he was careful not to call attention to the fact, in case the baggage master regained consciousness before he could make good his escape.”

“Which could mean,” Sabina said, “that whatever it was would have been apparent to us at a cursory search.”

“Either that, or where it was taken from would have been apparent.”

Something seemed to be nibbling at her mind; her expression turned speculative. “I wonder...”

“What do you wonder?”

The locomotive’s whistle sounded again. There was a rocking motion and the loud thump of couplings as the engineer began the first slackening of their speed. Bridges said, “Five minutes to the Vacaville station. If Morgan is still on board—”

“He is.”

“—do you think he’ll try to get off there?”

“No doubt of it. Wherever he’s hiding, he can’t hope to avoid being discovered in a concentrated search. And he knows we’ll mount one in Vacaville with the train crew and the local authorities.”

“What do you advise we do?”

“Assign someone to summon the law as soon as we arrive at the station,” Quincannon said. “Then tell your porters not to allow anyone off the train until you give the signal. And when passengers do disembark, they’re to do so in single file from between two cars only. That will prevent Morgan from slipping off in a crowd.”

“The second and third day coaches?”

“Good. Meet me in the vestibule there.”

Bridges hurried off.

Quincannon said to Sabina, “You may as well take your seat until we reach the station.”

“No, I have something else to do.”

“Yes? What?”

“I noticed something earlier that I thought must be a coincidence. Now I’m not so sure it is.”

“Explain that.”

“There’s no time now. You’ll be the first to know if I’m right.”

“Sabina...”

But she had already turned her back and was purposefully heading aft.

He took himself out onto the vestibule between the second and third coaches. The train had slowed to half speed; once more the whistle cut shrilly through the late afternoon stillness. He stood holding on to the hand bar and leaning out on the side away from the station to look both directions along the cars — a precaution in the event Morgan attempted to jump and run through the yards. But he was thinking that this was another exercise in futility. Morgan’s scheme was surely too clever for such a predictable ending.

Bridges reappeared and stood watch on the offside as the train entered the rail yards. On Quincannon’s side the dun-colored depot building swam into view through the fading daylight ahead. Once a pioneer settlement and Pony Express stop, Vacaville was now a thriving agricultural center widely known as the fresh fruit capital of California. But it was nonetheless a small town, so relatively few passengers would be waiting to board. Even if Morgan managed to get off the train here, he couldn’t reasonably expect to escape detection and capture. Yet it was utter folly for him to remain hidden on the Capitol Express.

He had to be planning to exit here, but how? A diversion of some sort? That was the most probable gambit. Quincannon warned himself to be alert for anything at all out of the ordinary.

Sabina was on his mind, too. Where had she gone in such a hurry? What sort of coincidence...?

Brake shoes squealed on the rails as the Express neared the lighted station platform. He’d been right in his estimate of the number of those waiting; less than a score of men and women stood beneath a roof overhang. He swiveled his head again. Steam and smoke clouded the gathering dusk, but he could see clearly enough. No one was making an effort to leave the train on this side. Nor on the offside, or else Bridges would have cut loose with a shout.

The engineer brought the cars to a rattling stop alongside the platform. Quincannon dropped off, with Bridges close behind him. At the same time a porter jumped down from between the two forward cars, raced off through a cloud of steam on his mission to fetch the local law.

Minutes passed. Quincannon’s eyes moved restlessly back and forth along the length of the rolling stock. Through the windows he could see passengers lining up for departure; Sabina, he was relieved to note, was one of them, in the forefront. Another porter stood in the vestibule between the second and third coaches, waiting for the signal from Bridges to put down the steps.

Some of the embarking passengers began voicing complaints at the delay, and Bridges took command of the situation. What he said by way of explanation Quincannon didn’t hear, but it succeeded in quieting them. With the aid of the station agent, he herded them all off the platform and into the safety of the depot.

It was another five tense minutes before the law arrived, in the person of the police chief and two deputies. The chief, who gave his name as Hoover, was burly and sported a large drooping mustache; on the lapel of his frock coat he wore a five-pointed star, and holstered at his belt was a heavy Colt Dragoon.

He said to Bridges, “You have a fugitive on board your train, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Who is he? What’s he done?”

“Ask Mr. Quincannon here. He’s a detective from San Francisco on the man’s trail.”

“That so? Police detective?”

Quincannon said, “Private. Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.”

“Oh, a flycop.” Hoover was not impressed, but neither did he show any hostility. A man not given to rushes in judgment. “Well? What’s this all about?”

Quincannon explained in concise terms, stating for emphasis that Morgan was the man responsible for a series of gold robberies and likely in possession of some of the loot.

Now Hoover was impressed. “You say you searched everywhere, every possible hiding place,” he said. “If that’s so, how can this thief Morgan still be on the train?”

“That question has no answer yet. But he is — I’ll stake my reputation on it.”

“Well, then, we’ll find him.” The police chief turned to Bridges. “Conductor, disembark your passengers. All of ’em, not just those for Vacaville.”

“Just as you say.”

Bridges signaled to the porter, who swung the steps down and permitted the exodus to begin. One of the first passengers to alight was Sabina. She came straight to where Quincannon stood, took hold of his arm. Her manner was urgent, her eyes bright.

“John,” she said, an edge in her voice, “I found Morgan.”

Hoover said, “What’s that? Who’re you, madam?”

“Sabina Carpenter. Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.”

“A lady flycop. Now if that don’t beat all.”

Quincannon had long ago ceased to be surprised at anything Sabina said or did. He asked her, “Where? How?”

She shook her head. “He’ll be getting off any second.”

“Getting off? With the other passengers?”

“Yes, he— There he is!”

Quincannon squinted at the passengers who were just then disembarking — two women, one of whom had a small boy in tow. “Where? I don’t see him...”

Sabina was moving again. Quincannon trailed after her, his hand on the Webley. The two women and the child were making their way past Chief Hoover and his deputies, not paying the law any heed. The woman towing the little boy was young and pretty, with tightly curled blond hair; the other woman, older and pudgy, powdered and rouged, wore a traveling dress and a close-fitting bonnet that covered most of her head and shadowed her face. She was the one, Quincannon realized, that he had nearly bowled over outside the women’s lavatory in the first-class Pullman.

She was also Bartholomew Morgan.

He found that out five seconds later, when Sabina boldly walked up and tore the bonnet off to reveal the short-haired male head and clean-shaven face hidden beneath. Her action so surprised Morgan that he had no time to do anything but swipe at her with one arm, a blow that she nimbly dodged. Then he fumbled inside the reticule he carried, pulled out the hammerless .32-caliber pistol he’d drawn at the Patch Creek poker game; in the next second he commenced a headlong flight along the platform.

Sabina shouted, Quincannon shouted, the blond woman let out a thin screech; there was a small scrambling panic among the disembarking passengers. But it lasted no more than a few seconds, and without a shot being fired.

Morgan was poorly schooled in the mechanics of running while garbed in women’s clothing; the dress’s long skirt tripped him before he reached the platform’s end. He went down in a tangle of arms, legs, petticoats, and assorted other garments that he had wadded up and tied around his torso to create the illusion of pudginess. The fall also unveiled the other item tightly buckled around his midriff — a money belt whose pockets bulged with what was certainly the stolen gold dust.

He was still clutching the pistol when Quincannon reached him, but one well-placed kick and it went flying. Quincannon then plunged down on Morgan’s chest with both knees, driving the wind out of him in a hissing grunt. Another well-placed blow, this one to the jaw, put an end to the skirmish.

Chief Hoover, his deputies, Mr. Bridges, and a gaggle of the Capitol Express’s passengers stood gawping at the half-disguised and unconscious crook. Hoover was the first to speak. He murmured in awed tones, “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch.”

Which mirrored Quincannon’s sentiments exactly.

Morgan was soon carted off in steel bracelets to the Vacaville jail, Quincannon accompanying him, Hoover, and one deputy in the paddy wagon. Once he verified that the stolen gold dust was indeed packed into the money belt, he was not about to let it out of his sight until it was locked into the jail safe. Also put into the safe was a packet of papers that had been tucked between the belt and Morgan’s belly, for they contained evidence identifying the San Francisco smelting firm that had been buying the gold. Morgan must have been carrying the packet in his satchel and later transferred it to his person.

Sabina and Bridges remained at the depot. The departure of the Capitol Express, much to the consternation of the waiting westbound passengers, was delayed a while longer. One reason was the removal of Sabina’s and Quincannon’s luggage from the baggage car. He’d suggested that she continue on to San Francisco, since he intended to remain in Vacaville until arrangements could be made to transport the prisoner to the Yuba County jail in Marysville where the other high-graders had been taken, and for the gold — some $13,000 worth at a rough estimate — to be returned to James O’Hearn. But she insisted on staying overnight with him here, a prospect he naturally found pleasing.

An attempt to question Morgan proved futile; he had wrapped himself in unbroken silence. This suited Quincannon well enough, but Hoover wanted to know the details of the miscreant’s daring escape attempt. The situation being what it was, he had to settle for an educated guess.

Morgan had climbed out through the lavatory window, Quincannon opined, taking his satchel with him. He then crawled over the top of the smoking car and down the ladder to the baggage car, where he used some sort of ruse to get the baggage master to open up. After finding and rifling a woman passenger’s suitcase, he stuffed the various items of female apparel into the satchel, mounted topside again, and crawled forward over three car roofs to the Pullman.

Once there, he waited until he was sure the first-class women’s lavatory was empty, then climbed down into it through its window. He locked the door, washed and shaved off his mustache with a razor from the satchel, dressed in the stolen clothing, put on pilfered rouge and powder to cover his birthmark, and stuffed his own clothing into the satchel before dropping it through the window.

And when he left the lavatory on his way to a seat in the third day coach, Quincannon had nearly knocked him down. If only he had, he thought ruefully. It would have saved them all considerable trouble.

The one question Hoover asked that Quincannon could not satisfactorily answer was how Sabina had known Morgan was disguised as a woman. Perhaps she had gotten close enough to him while they were waiting to disembark to see through his disguise. But that didn’t account for her earlier statement about coincidence or her rushing off on an unexplained errand.

He put the question to her later that evening, while they were having dinner in the Vacaville Hotel. How did she know?

“Familiarity,” she said.

“Familiarity? With what?”

“Something I first thought was a coincidence but wasn’t.”

“So you said. Don’t be enigmatic, my dear.”

“I’m not, intentionally. John, you are without question a splendid detective, but there are times when you’re not as observant as you might be. Tell me, what was I wearing when you met me in the lobby of the Golden Eagle Hotel last night?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with—” Then, as the light dawned, he said in a smaller voice, “Oh.”

“That’s right,” Sabina said. “The bag Morgan plundered was one of the last loaded into the baggage car. The gray serge traveling dress and Langtry bonnet he was wearing are mine.”