Sleuths Page 2

  O'Hara sauntered near the group, stood with his back against a stanchion, and began to shave cuttings from his tobacco plug into his briar. One of the Mulrooneys — small and fair and feisty looking noticed him, studied his luxuriant red beard, and then approached him carrying one of the jugs. Without preamble he demanded to know if the gentleman were Irish. O'Hara said he was, with great dignity. The Mulrooney slapped him on the back. "I knew it!" he said effusively. "Me name's Billy Culligan. Have a drap of the crayture."

  O'Hara decided Hattie had told him only to stay away from the buffet. There was no deceit in accepting hospitality from fellows of the Auld Sod. He took the jug, drank deeply, and allowed as how it was a fine crayture, indeed. Then he introduced himself, saying that he and the missus were traveling to Stockton on a business matter.

  "Ye won't be conducting business on the morrow, will ye?"

  "On St. Pat's Day?" O'Hara was properly shocked.

  "Boyo, I like ye," Culligan said. "How would ye like to join in on the biggest St. Pat's Day celebration in the entire sovereign state of California?"

  "I'd like nothing better."

  "Then come to Green Park, on the north of Stockton, 'twixt nine and ten and tell the lads ye're a friend of Billy Culligan. There'll be a parade, and all the food and liquor ye can hold. Oh, it'll be a fine celebration, lad!"

  O'Hara said he and the missus would be there, meaning it. Culligan offered another drink of poteen, which O'Hara casually accepted. Then the little Mulrooney stepped forward and said in a conspiratorial voice, "Come round here to the taffrail just before we steam into Stockton on the morrow. We've a plan to start off St. Pat's Day with a mighty salute—part of the reason we sent our wives and wee ones ahead on the San Joaquin. Ye won't want to be missing that either." Before O'Hara could ask him what he meant by "mighty salute," he and his jug were gone into the midst of the other Guards.

  "Me lady," O'Hara said contentedly, "that was a meal fit for royalty and no doubt about it."

  Hattie agreed that it had been a sumptuous repast as they walked from the Dining Saloon to the texas stairway. The evening was mild, with little breeze and no sign of the thick Tule fog that often made Northern California riverboating a hazardous proposition. The Delta Star—aglow with hundreds of lights—had come through the Carquinez Straits, passed Chipp's Island, and was now entering the San Joaquin River. A pale moon silvered the water, turned a ghostly white the long stretches of fields along both banks.

  On the weather deck, they stood close together at the larboard rail, not far from the pilothouse. For a couple of minutes they were alone. Then footsteps sounded and O'Hara turned to see the ship's captain and pilot returning from their dinner. Touching his cap, the captain—a lean, graying man of fifty-odd—wished them good evening. The pilot merely grunted.

  The O'Haras continued to stand looking out at the willows and cottonwoods along the riverbank. Then, suddenly, an explosive, angry cry came from the pilothouse, startling them both. This was followed by muffled voices, another sharp exclamation, movement not clearly perceived through the window glass and beyond partially drawn rear curtains, and several sharp blasts on the pilot whistle.

  Natural curiosity drew O'Hara away from the rail, hurrying; Hattie was close behind him. The door to the pilothouse stood open when they reached it, and O'Hara turned inside by one step. The enclosure was almost as opulent as their stateroom, but he noticed its appointments only peripherally. What captured his full attention was three men now grouped before the wheel, and the four items on the floor close to and against the starboard bulkhead.

  The pilot stood clutching two of the wheel spokes, red-faced with anger; the captain was bending over the kneeling figure of the third man—a young blond individual wearing a buttoned-up sack coat and baggy trousers, both of which were streaked with dust and soot and grease. The blond lad was making soft moaning sounds, holding the back of his head cupped in one palm.

  One of the items on the floor was a steel pry bar. The others were a small safe bolted to the bulkhead, a black valise—the one O'Hara had seen carried by the nervous man and his two bodyguards—and a medium-sized iron strongbox, just large enough to have fit inside the valise. The safe door, minus its combination dial, stood wide open; the valise and a strongbox were also open. All three were quite obviously empty.

  The pilot jerked the bell knobs, signaling an urgent request to the engineer for a lessening of speed, and began barking standby orders into a speaking tube. His was the voice which had startled Hattie and O'Hara. The captain was saying to the blond man, "It's a miracle we didn't drift out of the channel and run afoul of a snag—a miracle, Chadwick."

  "I can't be held to blame, sir," Chadwick said defensively. "Whoever it was hit me from behind. I was sitting at the wheel when I heard the door open and thought it was you and Mr. Bridgeman returning from supper, so I didn't even bother to turn. The next thing, my head seemed to explode. That is all I know."

  He managed to regain his feet and moved stiffly to a red plush sofa, hitching up his trousers with one hand; the other still held the back of his head. Bridgeman, the pilot, banged down the speaking tube, then spun the wheel a half-turn to larboard. As he did the last, he glanced over his shoulder and saw O'Hara and Hattie. "Get out of here!" he shouted at them. "There is nothing here for you."

  "Perhaps, now, that isn't true," O'Hara said mildly. "Ye've had a robbery, have ye not?"

  "That is none of your affair."

  Boldly O'Hara came deeper into the pilothouse, motioning Hattie to close the door. She did so. Bridgeman yelled, "I told you to get out of here! Who do you think you are?"

  "Fergus O'Hara—operative of the Pinkerton Police Agency."

  Bridgeman stared at him, open-mouthed. The captain and Chadwick had shifted their attention to him as well. At length, in a less harsh tone, the pilot said, "Pinkerton Agency?"

  "Of Chicago, Illinois; Allan Pinkerton, Principal."

  O'Hara produced his billfold, extracted from it the letter from Allan Pinkerton and the Chicago & Eastern Central Railroad Pass, both of which identified him, as the bearer of these documents, to be a Pinkerton Police agent. He showed them to both Bridgeman and the captain.

  "What would a Pinkerton man be doing way out here in California?" the captain asked.

  "Me wife Hattie and me are on the trail of a gang that has been terrorizing Adams Express coaches. We've traced them to San Francisco and now have reliable information they're to be found in Stockton."

  "Your wife is a Pinkerton agent too? A woman . . ."

  O'Hara looked at him as if he might be a dullard. "Ye've never heard of Miss Kate Warne, one of the agency's most trusted Chicago operatives? No, I don't suppose ye have. Well, me wife has no official capacity, but since one of the leaders of this gang is reputed to be a woman, and since Hattie has assisted me in the past, women being able to obtain information in places men cannot, I've brought her along."

  Bridgeman said from the wheel, "Well, we can use a trained detective after what has happened here."

  O'Hara nodded. "Is it gold ye've had stolen?"

  "Gold—yes. How did you know that?"

  He told them of witnessing the delivery of the valise at Long Wharf. He asked then, "How large an amount is involved?"

  "Forty thousand dollars," the captain said.

  O'Hara whistled. "That's a fair considerable sum."

  "To put it mildly, sir."

  "Was it specie or dust?"

  "Dust. An urgent consignment from the California Merchant's Bank to their branch in Stockton."

  "How many men had foreknowledge of the shipment?"

  "The officials of the bank, Mr. Bridgeman, and myself."

  "No other officers of the packet?"

  "Would you be telling me, Captain, who was present when the delivery was made this afternoon?"

  "Mr. Bridgeman and I, and a friend of his visiting in San Francisco—a newspaperman from Nevada."

  O'Hara remembered the tall man with
bushy hair who had been with the pilot earlier. "Can ye vouch for this newspaperman?" he asked Bridgeman.

  "I can. His reputation is unimpeachable."

  "Has anyone other than he been here since the gold was brought aboard?"

  "Not to my knowledge."

  Chadwick said that no one had come by while he was on duty; and none of them had noticed anyone shirking about at any time. The captain said sourly, "It appears as though almost any man on this packet could be the culprit. Just how do you propose we find out which one, Mr. O'Hara?"

  O'Hara did not reply. He bent to examine the safe. The combination dial appeared to have been snapped off, by a hand with experience at such villainous business. The valise and the strongbox had also been forced. The pry bar was an ordinary tool and had likely also been used as a weapon to knock Chadwick unconscious.

  He straightened and moved about the enclosure, studying each fixture. Then he got down on hands and knees and peered under both the sofa and a blackened winter stove. It was under the stove that he found the coin.

  His fingers grasped it, closed it into his palm. Standing again, he glanced at the coin and saw that it was made of bronze, a small war-issue cent piece shinily new and free of dust or soot. A smile plucked at the edges of his mouth as he slipped the coin into his vest pocket.

  Bridgeman said, "Did you find something?"

  "Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not."

  O'Hara came forward, paused near where Bridgeman stood at the wheel. Through the windshield he could see the moonlit waters of the San Joaquin. He could also see, as a result of the pilothouse lamps and the darkness without, his own dim reflection in the glass. He thought his stern expression was rather like the one Allan Pinkerton himself possessed.

  Bridgeman suggested that crewmen be posted on the lower decks throughout the night, as a precaution in the event the culprit had a confederate with a boat somewhere along the route and intended to leave the packet in the wee hours. The captain thought this was a good idea; so did O'Hara.

  He was ready to leave, but the captain had a few more words for him. "I am grateful for your professional assistance, Mr. O'Hara, but as master of the Delta Star the primary investigative responsibility is mine. Please inform me immediately if you learn anything of significance."

  O'Hara said he would.

  "Also, I intend my inquiries to be discreet, so as not to alarm the passengers. I'll expect yours to be the same."

  "Discretion is me middle name," O'Hara assured him.

  A few moments later, he and Hattie were on their way back along the larboard rail to the texas. Hattie, who had been silent during their time in the pilothouse, started to speak, but O'Hara overrode her. "I know what ye're going to say, me lady, and it'll do no good. Me mind's made up. The opportunity to sniff out forty thousand in missing gold is one I'll not pass up."

  He left Hattie at the door to their stateroom and hurried to the deckhouse, where he entered the Gentlemen's Saloon. It was a long room, with a liquor buffet at one end and private tables and card layouts spread throughout. A pall of tobacco smoke as thick as Tule fog hung in the crowded enclosure.

  O'Hara located the shrewd, handsome features of John A. Colfax at a table aft. Two other men were with him: a portly individual with sideburns like miniature tumbleweeds, and the mustached Nevada reporter. They were playing draw poker. O'Hara was not surprised to see that most of the stakes—gold specie and greenbacks—were in front of Colfax.

  Casually, O'Hara approached the table and stopped behind an empty chair next to the portly man, just as Colfax claimed a pot with four treys. He said, "Good evening, gentlemen."

  Colfax greeted him unctuously, asked if he were enjoying the voyage thus far. O'Hara said he was, and observed that the gambler seemed to be enjoying it too, judging from the stack of legal tender before him. Colfax just smiled. But the portly man said in grumbling tones, "I should damned well say so. He has been taking my money for three solid hours."

  "Aye? That long?"

  "Since just after dinner."

  "Ye've been playing without pause since then?"

  "Nearly so," the newspaperman said. Through the tendrils of smoke from his cigar, he studied O'Hara with mild blue eyes. "Why do you ask, sir?"

  "Oh, I was thinking I saw Mr. Colfax up on the weather deck about an hour ago. Near the pilothouse."

  "You must have mistaken someone else for me," Colfax said. Now that the draw game had been momentarily suspended, he had produced a handful of war-issue coins and begun to toy with them as he had done at Long Wharf. "I did leave the table for a few minutes about an hour ago, but only to use the lavatory. I haven't been on the weather deck at all this trip."

  O'Hara saw no advantage in pressing the matter. He pretended to notice for the first time the one-cent pieces Colfax was shuffling. "Lucky coins, Mr. Colfax?"

  "These? Why, yes. I won a sackful of them on a wager once and my luck has been good ever since." Disarming smile. "Gamblers are superstitious about such things, you know."

  "Ye don't see many coins like that in California."

  "True. They are practically worthless out here."

  "So worthless," the reporter said, "that I have seen them used to decorate various leather goods."

  The portly man said irritably, "To hell with lucky coins and such nonsense. Are we going to play poker or have a gabfest?"

  "Poker, by all means," Colfax said. He slipped the war-issue cents into a pocket of his Prince Albert and reached for the cards. His interest in O'Hara seemed to have vanished.

  The reporter, however, was still looking at him with curiosity. "Perhaps you'd care to join us?"

  O'Hara declined, saying he had never had any luck with the pasteboards. Then he left the saloon and went in search of the Delta Star's purser. It took him ten minutes to find the man, and thirty seconds to learn that John A. Colfax did not have a stateroom either in the texas or on the deckhouse. The purser, who knew Colfax as a regular passenger, said wryly that the gambler would spend the entire voyage in the Gentlemen's Saloon, having gullible citizens for a ride.

  O'Hara returned to the saloon, this time to avail himself of the liquor buffet. He ordered a shot of rye from a bartender who owned a resplendent handlebar moustache, and tossed it down without his customary enjoyment. Immediately he ordered another.

  Colfax might well be his man; there was the war-issue coin he'd found under the pilothouse stove, and the fact that Colfax had left the poker game at about the time of the robbery. And yet . . . what could he have done with the gold? The weight of forty thousand in dust was considerable; he could not very well carry it in his pockets. He had been gone from the poker game long enough to commit the robbery, perhaps, but hardly long enough to have also hidden the spoils.

  There were other factors weighing against Colfax, too. One: gentlemen gamblers made considerable sums of money at their trade; they seldom found it necessary to resort to baser thievery. Two: how could Colfax, while sitting here in the saloon, have known when only one man would be present in the pilothouse? An accomplice might have been on watch—but if there were such a second party, why hadn't he committed the robbery himself?

  O'Hara scowled, put away his second rye. If Colfax wasn't the culprit, then who was? And what was the significance of the coin he had found in the pilothouse?

  Perhaps the coin had no significance at all; but his instincts told him it did, and he had always trusted his instincts. If not to Colfax, then to whom did it point? Answer: to no one, and to everyone. Even though war-issue cents were uncommon in California, at least half a dozen men presently on board might have one or two in their pockets.

  A remark passed by the newspaperman came back to him: such coins were used to decorate various leather goods. Aye, that was a possibility. If the guilty man had been wearing a holster or vest or some other article adorned with the cent pieces, one might have popped loose unnoticed.

  O'Hara slid the coin from his pocket and examined it carefully. There were small
scratches on its surface that might have been made by stud fasteners, but he couldn't be sure. The scratches might also have been caused by any one of a hundred other means—and the coin could still belong to John A. Colfax.

  Returning it to his vest pocket, O'Hara considered the idea of conducting a search for a man wearing leather ornamented with bronze war coins. And dismissed it immediately as folly. He could roam the Delta Star all night and not encounter even two-thirds of the passengers. Or he might find someone wearing such an article who would turn out to be completely innocent. And what if the robber had discovered the loss of the coin and chucked the article overboard?

  Frustration began to assail him now. But it did not dull his determination. If any man aboard the Delta Star could fetch up both the thief and the gold before the packet reached Stockton, that man was Fergus O'Hara; and by damn, if such were humanly possible, he meant to do it!

  He left the saloon again and went up to the pilothouse. Bridgeman was alone at the wheel. "What news, O'Hara?" he asked.

  "None as yet. Would ye know where the captain is?"

  Bridgeman shook his head. "Young fool Chadwick was feeling dizzy from that blow on the head; the captain took him to his quarters just after you and your wife left, and then went to make his inquiries. I expect he's still making 'em."

  O'Hara sat on the red plush sofa, packed and lighted his pipe, and let his mind drift along various channels. After a time something in his memory flickered like a guttering candle—and then died before he could steady the flame.

  When he was unable to rekindle the flame he roared forth with a venomous ten-jointed oath that startled even Bridge-man.

  Presently the captain returned to the pilothouse. He and O'Hara exchanged identical expectant looks, which immediately told each that the other had uncovered nothing of significance. Verbal confirmation of this was brief, after which the captain said bleakly, "The prospects are grim, Mr. O'Hara. Grim, indeed."

  "We've not yet come into Stockton," O'Hara reminded him.