The Stolen Gold Affair

4 Sabina

The day John departed for Patch Creek she arranged to have lunch with Callie, to tell her the wedding date would have to be postponed. The restaurant she chose was a favorite of her cousin’s, the Sun Dial on Geary Street — a calculated and probably futile effort to provide a convivial atmosphere for the telling. Sabina was not looking forward to the task.

When she left Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, she stopped at the nearby Western Union office to send a wire, at John’s request. It was to the headquarters of the Far West Mine Workers Union in Sacramento, asking for general background information on FWMWU representative Jedediah Yost; the reason she gave for the request was a routine insurance matter. The day being Friday, neither she nor John expected a reply until Monday.

Callie was already seated in the Sun Dial’s bright, airy main dining room when Sabina arrived. Sunlight slanting through one of the large skylights laid a golden sheen on her cousin’s intricately braided and coiled blond hair. On the chair beside her was one of the many lavishly fashionable hats she owned, a creation decorated with bunches of dark red currants that matched the color of her outfit and trimmed with a tall peacock feather.

In her youth Callie had been a vivacious beauty, and despite the addition of several pounds — she had an inordinate fondness for sweets — she was still regally attractive in her mid-forties. Like Sabina, she had been born in Chicago, but her family had moved to California when she was five, before Sabina was born. They had resided in Oakland for a time, settling in San Francisco when her father was promoted to the regional headquarters of the Miners Bank. Her marriage to Hugh French, a protégé of her father’s who eventually became the bank’s president, had firmly entrenched her among the city’s social elite.

She had been delighted when Sabina moved to San Francisco from Denver, and even more delighted when she learned of John’s marriage proposal and Sabina’s acceptance. But today, as expected, she was anything but delighted at the news of the delay and the reason for it.

“Oh, Sabina,” she said, “how could you let John take on such a lengthy assignment now?”

“I couldn’t very well stop him.”

“But virtually at the last minute...”

“Three weeks is not the last minute, Callie. There’s still plenty of time to reschedule.” Sabina paused. “You haven’t already sent out the invitations, have you?”

“No. But I was about to have them printed.”

“Then all that’s necessary is to change the date.”

“Once we know what the new date is.”

“It won’t be far off. John gave me his solemn promise that if he can’t finish the job within the allotted month, he won’t ask for an extension.”

Callie said portentously, “Assuming he survives that long. Dangerous undercover work in a gold mine, of all things!”

“He has survived more hazardous undertakings.” Such as the near-fatal shooting that robbed him of his earlobe, but she banished that thought as quickly as it came. “He simply can’t resist a challenge or an attractive fee.”

“Surely you tried to talk him out of it?”

“Yes, but he had already agreed, and his word is his bond.”

“Agreed without consulting with you?”

Sabina repeated John’s explanation for that.

“Humph.”

A white-jacketed waiter delivered their luncheon orders — crab-and-prawn salads and crusty sourdough bread. Callie poked reflectively at one of the large prawns in her salad. “You know,” she said at length, “there is one thing you could do, but I hope you’re not foolish enough to do it.”

“Now there’s an enigmatic statement. What could I do that you hope I don’t?”

“Travel to Patch Creek yourself. Keep a close eye on John instead of waiting and worrying here.”

“What makes you think I’m worrying about him? He only just left.”

“I know you, dear. You can’t fool me by pretending you’re not concerned about the welfare of the man you’re about to marry.”

“Concerned, yes, but not unduly. And certainly not enough to hie myself off to Patch Creek. John wouldn’t like it, for one thing. And for another, the sudden arrival of an unescorted woman in a gold camp would cause undue attention.”

“You went to Grass Valley not long ago in the guise of a lady gambler.”

“With John’s consent and in consort with him, and that adventure nearly cost me my life. This is an entirely different situation.”

“Yes, of course it is,” Callie agreed with a sigh. “It’s a foolish notion and I’m relieved that you find it so. I shouldn’t have mentioned it in the first place.”

Foolish indeed, Sabina thought. Of course she couldn’t travel to Patch Creek. The only women other than lady gamblers who went to such rough-and-ready towns were saloon girls and cheap prostitutes, and she was not about to resurrect the bawdy Saint Louis Rose. Plus, there was little or nothing she could do there to assist John’s investigation; her presence might even compromise it. He would never forgive her for meddling without just cause.

Sabina speared and ate a section of crabmeat, then switched the conversational topic back to the wedding.

The rest of that day and the weekend passed slowly. Saturday afternoon, after half a day at the agency, she spent shopping. She visited three exclusive women’s apparel shops in an effort to select her wedding dress, but the only one that appealed to her — a taffeta gown with a fitted empire-style bodice, dropped waist, and pleated ruffles — was too fancy for what would be a relatively simple ceremony, and its pure white color was inappropriate for a widow marrying for the second time. Two more hours were devoted to a stroll through the open-air California Market, the city’s block-square “entrepôt of foods,” where she bought fresh fruit, vegetables, seafood for herself, and a small amount of codfish for Adam and Eve, the cats’ favorite treat.

Solitary evenings at her Russian Hill flat, which she usually looked forward to, seemed to have temporarily lost some of their allure. A feeling of being at loose ends was the cause, she supposed. The flat had been her home since arriving in San Francisco, a comfortable three rooms and bath, and she would miss it, at least for a while, when she moved in with John after the wedding. His Leavenworth Street flat was larger, with plenty of room for her belongings, and though there were alterations that needed to be made — the removal, to which he’d agreed, of certain items he’d accumulated during his uninhibited bachelorhood — she was certain she would be perfectly content living there. So would Adam and Eve, eventually; cats were adaptable creatures.

On Sunday she indulged in one of her favorite activities, riding in the park with Amity Wellman and other members of the Golden Gate Ladies Bicycle Club. Amity, like her, was a “New Woman,” the term used to describe the modern woman who broke with the traditional role of wife and mother by working outside the home; Amity was also an even more ardent suffragist than Sabina, head of the most active local organization, Voting Rights for Women. They had become good friends as a result of their mutual passions and Sabina’s solution to a series of deadly threats to Amity’s life. Sabina told her of the probable wedding postponement, Amity having agreed to be her matron of honor, and explained the reason for it. Unlike Callie, she was not critical of John’s decision or Sabina’s acceptance of it.

In terms of business, Monday was another dull day. No prospective clients at the office, no calls through the Telephone Exchange, no mail of any importance. And no answering wire as yet from the Far West Mine Workers Union office in Sacramento. Evidently the FWMWU was too busy or did not consider her request for information on Jedediah Yost important enough for a swift response.

She passed time by writing letters to slow-paying clients, responding to correspondence of a minor nature, reorganizing files, sifting through the wanted posters John accumulated, and finally delving into recent issues of the Police Gazette, a publication Callie considered unfit reading matter for ladies of culture and refinement. Sabina found that attitude amusing, given the fact that her cousin’s taste in reading ran to such women’s magazines as the Ladies’ Home Journal and the moribund Godey’s Lady’s Book.

She hoped that the lack of business did not mean the agency was about to experience one of its protracted slack periods. That would make the wait for John’s safe return even more difficult. What she needed was an investigation of her own to pursue, one such as the department stores’ shoplifting case, that tested her detective skills...

Ask, and sometimes ye shall receive.

At ten o’clock Tuesday morning, a potential client arrived at the agency in the person of a young woman named Gretchen Kantor. And what she brought developed into a complicated investigative challenge, though it did not start out that way.