Quincannon jq-1 Page 10

  He threaded a path through the noisy throng, went outside and put Mother Mack’s behind him. For the first block he was a little unsteady on his feet, but the wind soon remedied that. He walked up Washington Street and over to the office of the Volunteer, found it dark. From the third passerby he stopped he learned that Will Coffin’s home was on Union Street, off Morning Star north of Jordan Creek.

  He found his way to Union Street. Coffin’s house was a weathered frame structure perched apart from others on the steep hillside, with a second-story privy curiously set on stilts and connected to the house by a catwalk. Lamplight made a yellow rectangle of the front window. He climbed the stairs, lifted the brass knocker on the door and let it fall.

  It took Coffin almost a minute to respond. He was in shirt sleeves and stocking feet, galluses down and his hemp-colored hair tousled; he blinked sleepily at Quincannon, stifled a yawn, and said, “Well, you do surprise me, Mr. Lyons. This is the second unexpected visit from you in two days.”

  “Have I come at a bad time, Mr. Coffin?”

  “No, no. I was reading and I must have fallen asleep. I was up until all hours last night, getting out this week’s edition of the paper.”

  “Yes, I’ve just seen it. An impressive editorial.”

  “Thank you. I rather thought so myself.”

  “The editorial is the reason I’ve come tonight. Can we talk inside? It’s a bit chilly out here.”

  “Of course.”

  Coffin led the way into the front sitting room. “I can offer you a brandy, if you like. I don’t keep whiskey on hand, I’m afraid.”

  Quincannon hesitated, but then shook his head. “Thank you, no. I expect I won’t be staying long.”

  “Well then. Sit down and tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Coffin moved a heavy volume of Shakespeare off a Morris chair and settled himself down in its place; Quincannon sat on an overstuffed divan. A wood fire burned on the grate nearby. Its warmth took away the night’s chill that had lingered on his face and hands.

  He said, “I’m curious about the illegal entries into the newspaper office and your home. Just how many were there altogether?”

  “Two at the office and one here.”

  “Was anything stolen on those three occasions?”

  “Not that I have been able to determine.”

  “Was there any vandalizing done?”

  “Not of the usual sort, no. Files, type, clothing and such were strewn around, but nothing was deliberately destroyed.”

  Quincannon said, “That sounds as if the culprits might have been searching for something.”

  “Searching?” Coffin frowned. “What the devil could those heathens have been searching for at the Volunteer office or among my personal effects?”

  “You’re certain it was the Chinese who were responsible?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Then you found evidence that pointed to one or more of their number?”

  “No,” Coffin admitted, “no physical evidence. But the first break-in occurred the evening my first anti-opium editorial appeared in the Volunteer. I’ve angered no white man in Silver, made no other enemies. It could be no one but the Chinamen.”

  “I see,” Quincannon said, and what he saw was the bigoted inflexibility of Coffin’s perceptions. He mused for a time. Then he said, “Tell me, did Jason Elder happen to give you anything for safekeeping before he disappeared?”

  The question made the newspaperman frown again. “No, he did not. What are you implying? That the Chinamen invaded my office and home looking for something that belongs to Elder? That is preposterous.”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t the Chinese who broke in after all,” Quincannon said.

  “White men? I still say the notion is preposterous. What could Elder own of sufficient value to warrant three illegal entries?”

  What, indeed? Quincannon thought. He made no reply.

  Coffin said, “Your interest in Jason Elder strikes me as excessive. Do you believe he had something to do with the death of your friend Whistling Dixon?”

  “It is possible, isn’t it?”

  “Not to my mind. Elder disappeared some time before Dixon was shot.”

  “From public view, yes. Not necessarily from the Owyhees. And the two of them were acquainted.”

  “You’ve found that out, have you?” Coffin gave him a long, calculating look. “You know, you’re rather a persistent and inquisitive fellow for a drummer. You act more like a lawman — a detective I once knew in Kansas City.”

  Quincannon laughed. “Hardly that, Mr. Coffin. My tolerance for violence is much too low and my fondness for whiskey much too high.”

  The answer had its desired effect: Coffin laughed, too, and seemed to dismiss the notion, at least for the time being. He said, “Well, you do seem overly concerned about Dixon’s death — a man you hadn’t seen in a good many years.”

  “Whistling Dixon and I were very close when I was a youngster,” Quincannon said, making his voice and his manner intense. “His murder

  … well, it was quite a shock, happening as it did the very night I arrived in Silver City. I can find myself just a bit obsessed with identifying the man or men who killed him. You can understand how I feel, I’m sure.”

  “I suppose I can.”

  “I haven’t spoken to Marshal McClew. Has he uncovered any leads of his own, do you know?”

  “He hasn’t,” Coffin said. “I had a drink with him not two hours ago.”

  “How did he feel about your editorial?”

  A wry smile. “He didn’t like it. He is of the opinion that I’m trying to foment racial strife, which is ridiculous. He thinks the damned heathens are a peace-loving bunch and ought to be left alone.”

  Quincannon’s estimate of the marshal rose a notch; McClew might after all be a man whose confidence he would want to enter into. He said, “Then the marshal doesn’t share your certainty of their guilt?”

  “He says he has no proof either way. He even refuses to interrogate Yum Wing, much less close down his filthy opium-peddling operation. I am beginning to believe that Oliver Truax is right: vigilante action is the only sure course of action open to us.”

  “Violence is seldom the answer to any problem, Mr. Coffin.”

  “Are you a pacifist? Not that it matters. I have no intention of debating the matter with you. You are not the victim of Oriental harassment and I am.”

  There was no arguing with the man; Coffin’s prejudice acted on his judgment as a pair of blinders acted on a horse’s vision, making it impossible for him to take any but the narrowest view. Quincannon said, “As you wish, then,” and got to his feet. “I’ll be leaving now. With thanks for your time and hospitality.”

  Coffin made a dismissive gesture. “I’ll show you out.” At the door he said, “I wish you success in your quest, Mr. Lyons. Nothing would please me more than to write a story for the Volunteer about justice served.”

  “Justice usually is served,” Quincannon said, “in one way or another.” He started out onto the porch and then paused. “Before I go, would you happen to know a man named Conrad who works for Jack Bogardus at the Rattling Jack mine? He’s a shirttail cousin of Whistling Dixon’s, I’ve learned.”

  “Conrad? No, I can’t say I do.”

  “You do know Bogardus, though?”

  “I know him,” Coffin said with distaste. “A ruffian and a fornicator.”

  “But a successful miner for all of that. Oliver Truax told me the Rattling Jack’s new vein assays at one hundred dollars the ton.”

  “I suspect that sum is a gross exaggeration. Bogardus certainly doesn’t freight out much silver.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “No. The man who runs the Poison Creek station is a personal friend of mine. He has told me that he seldom sees Bogardus’ wagons on the Boise or Nampa roads.”

  Quincannon took his leave. As he started downhill to Morning Star Street, he considered what he had learned from Coff
in. The information about Bogardus and the Rattling Jack coincided — with his suspicions. It also tended to eliminate the possibility of a link between Coffin and Bogardus; if Bogardus was the leader of the koniakers, it seemed unlikely that Coffin, in view of the man’s candor, was the engraver of the plates for the counterfeit notes. Jason Elder was still the most probable candidate.

  But what had happened to Elder? And what, if Quincannon’s hunch was correct, could he have possessed that had prompted a ransacking of his shack and the illegal entry of the newspaper office and Coffin’s home? Helen Truax’s shares of stock in the Paymaster Mining Company were one possibility; the searchers had evidently overlooked the certificate at Elder’s shack. Yet the stock seemed a minor prize, hardly worth the effort and risk of three separate break-ins. It seemed important only to Helen Truax, her husband, and Jason Elder himself.

  Whatever the object of the hunt, what had Elder done with it? The man had had no friends in Silver City. He hadn’t given it to his employer. And assume for the moment that he hadn’t hidden it where he lived. Was there anyone else to whom he might have entrusted such a valued object?

  Yum Wing.

  Quincannon cursed himself for being slow-witted, too befuddled by whiskey to see the obvious truth of the matter long before this. Elder was or had been an opium addict; who better to take into his trust than the man who supplied him with his daily ticket to the land of celestial dreams. And Yum Wing had plainly been hiding something behind his Oriental stoicism yesterday: his refusal to discuss Elder proved that.

  At Jordan Street, Quincannon turned uphill toward the Chinese colony. Not surprisingly, considering the hour, he found Yum Wing’s store closed and dark. Across the street and a dozen yards farther uphill, excited Chinese voices and the click of Mah-Jongg tiles came from inside the meeting hall. He considered going there to ask where Yum Wing lived, but he had spent enough time among the Chinese to know that he would not be welcome in such a place and that his questions might not be answered. Instead, he turned along the uphill side of the store, thinking that he might find a way inside at the rear. He was not above nocturnal breaking-and-entering himself, if it might serve a useful purpose.

  The darkness was thick and clotted back there, forcing him to move slowly. But when he came to the rear corner, starshine and the pale wedge of a moon let him see that there was a second building tucked in behind a knobby outcrop. It was connected to the store by a long, narrow shed that would probably serve as a covered passageway between the two and keep Yum Wing dry during the heavy winter snows. Because of the outcrop, neither the second dwelling nor the shed could be seen from downhill on Jordan Street.

  Quincannon moved along parallel to the shed, out away from it to avoid the heaviest shadows that crouched there. There was light inside the house; he could make out the glow against the darkness around back, where the outside door must be. The near side wall was empty of windows or doors. He turned the corner. One window in that wall, but it was curtained in monk’s cloth; the light came through the partially open door beyond. He took a step toward the door, putting his hand on the Remington holstered inside his coat.

  Something moved in the shadows behind him.

  He heard the sound, knew it as the scraping of a bootsole, and came around swiftly, drawing his weapon as he did. But he still was not quick enough. There were two of them, blobs of black rushing toward him from the side wall; the smaller one hit him first, a glancing blow over his right eye. He grunted and staggered sideways with the stench of the man’s rancid breath in his nostrils. The second one slashed him across the side of the neck with what must have been a gun barrel. He went to his knees, his senses jarred awry. Tried to get up and couldn’t find the strength.

  The smaller man kicked him in the side, toppling and rolling him, then kicked him twice more and drove him up against the building wall. The pain brought a groaning sound out of his throat. Distantly, through the blood pulsing in his ears, he could hear the two of them talking in low, urgent whispers.

  “That’s enough. We make any more noise, some of the other Chinamen might hear.”

  “Hell with them yella-skinned bastards.” Another vicious kick, in the stomach this time, that brought up the whiskey Qain-cannon had drunk earlier.

  “That’s enough, I said! We got what we come for. You want to be seen now, for Christ’s sake?”

  Shuffling noises on the hard-packed earth. A muttered epithet. And then the sounds of them moving away, sounds that faded and were lost in the humming and buzzing in his ears.

  He lay there hurting, only half conscious, for a space of time. Then he was on his knees, vomiting again. Then he was groping his way up the rough clapboards, leaning against them and holding on for fear his shaking legs would give way under him. Something wet, blood or sweat, flowed down over one cheek and dripped off the end of his chin. He didn’t bother to wipe it off — just stood there shivering in the cold wind. It was another minute or two before the pulsing inside his head went away and his thoughts settled and he was able to think rationally again.

  We got what we comefor.

  Quincannon pushed away from the wall, stumbled but held his balance. He touched the holster under his coat, found it empty and dimly recalled the revolver being knocked from his hand; it was somewhere on the ground, hidden now in the darkness. Find it later, he thought, and moved back around the corner, toward the open door to Yum Wing’s quarters.

  Inside, on a black-lacquered chest, an Aladdin lamp bathed the room in a dusky yellow glow. It let him see Yum Wing almost immediately. They had hung him from a support beam in one corner, at an outward angle so that his sandal-shod feet seemed braced against the wall. The expression on his dead face was ghastly in the pale light.

  The rest of the room was a shambles; Yum Wing had put up a fight before he died. We got what we come for. The smell of death was strong in there, but it was another smell that Quincannon was remembering as he backed out of the room — the rancid stench of the small man’s breath.

  Sudden Wheeler’s voice echoed across his mind: Mean little. booger with bad teeth and breath that’d knock a man over at twenty rods.

  Conrad, Whistling Dixon’s shirttail cousin.

  Conrad, who now worked for Jack Bogardus at the Rattling Jack mine.

  Chapter 13

  When Quincannon came downstairs at nine the next morning he found a message waiting at the hotel desk. Marshal Wendell McClew had sent word that he wanted to see Andrew Lyons in his office “any time before noon.”

  He considered the request as he left the hotel. He doubted that it had anything to do with the murder of Yum Wing; he was reasonably certain that he hadn’t been seen leaving the Chinese quarter last night. If he was under suspicion for that or any other crime, McClew would not have sent a message; he would have come in person and either talked in Quincannon’s room or put him in custody. No, it was probably that McClew had heard about the questions he’d been asking, from Will Coffin perhaps, and wanted a first-hand explanation.

  Quincannon walked up Jordan Street, moving at a retarded pace. His ribs ached and there were stabs of pain whenever he took any but shallow breaths. None of the ribs was broken or cracked, but half a dozen on his right side were badly bruised. Except for his slow movements, and a cut above one temple that he had treated with carbolic salve, he bore no outward signs of the beating he had taken at Yum Wing’s. But inside he carried a bitter rage that was thinly contained.

  He reached the Wells Fargo office, entered to talk to the Western Union brass pounder. And finally found a wire waiting from Boggs. It was more fully coded than his own had been, for obvious reasons, but the telegrapher seemed to think nothing of it. Such codes were common among businessmen who preferred that their long-distance dealings remain private.

  BUSINESS SLOW HERE STOP GLAD TO LEARN OF FRUITFUL POSSIBILITIES YOUR TERRITORY DESPITE BANKRUPT ACCOUNT STOP GREENSPAN ENROUTE BOISE WILL JOIN YOU ASAP STOP WMC RECORD GOOD FORMER CAP OR VOL TWICE DEC BRAV STOP MY RE
GARDS HT AND JB BOTH PORTLAND STOP FORMER SAL HOS LATTER MIN LAB AG AMONG OTHERS STOP SHARED ADDRESS AND BADGER FOUR YEARS AGO NO CON STOP PARTED AFTER DISPUTE NOTHING THEREAFTER STOP RECONCILIATION QMK REGARDING OT HINT PMC POSSIBLE FMFM BUT NO CORROBORATION YET STOP STILL CHECKING OTHER MATTERS

  ARTHUR CALDWELL

  Quincannon folded the wire and tucked it into his coat pocket. The news that his fellow Service operative, Samuel Greenspan, was on his way from Seattle to Silver City was reassuring; matters here appeared to be escalating to the point where he would need as many allies as possible. It appeared that Marshal Wendell McClew might well be another one. The fact that McClew had a good record as a peace officer, and the added facts that he was a former captain with the Oregon Volunteers during the War Between the States, and had been twice decorated for bravery, testified in favor of his competency and his honesty.

  The rest of Boggs’ information was eye-opening, and answered some of the questions that had arisen the past few days. Helen Truax and Jack Bogardus were both from Portland, where she had worked as a saloon hostess and he had been a mining labor agitator, among other dubious undertakings; and they had not only known each other there but had lived together four years ago. “Shared badger no con” meant that they had worked a version of the old badger game, in which an amorous married man’s indiscretion was used as grounds for blackmail, and had managed to escape criminal conviction. This put a new light on Helen Truax’s character. If Bogardus was one of the koniakers, as seemed more and more likely, and Mrs. Truax had taken up with him again here in Silver City, then it was conceivable that she, too, was involved in the boodle game.

  The telegram suggested that there might also be another game afoot here, one in which Helen Truax could also be involved. “Regarding OT hint PMC possible fmfm” meant that Oliver Truax was apparently responsible for some sort of illegal manipulation or flimflam involving Paymaster Mining Company stock. Boggs hadn’t yet been able to find out what it was. If the allegation were true it explained Truax’s eagerness to sell Paymaster stock to the mythical Arthur Caldwell of San Francisco.