The Quest of Brady Kenton / Kenton's Challenge

by Cameron Judd

  Roxanne spoke. “I think Kenton is not revealing where he is because he’s afraid of endangering others around him.”

  “It seems to me he should feel safer making it all public,” Gunnison replied. “Victoria would be safe.”

  “No,” Rachel said with conviction. “If you knew Dr. Kevington, you would understand. He is not a rational man, not a safe man. I can understand why he would hide. And Victoria would know even better. As soon as Kevington knows where she is, she is in danger. And the public will not protect her. If David Kevington believes he has lost her, he will not care what happens to him. He would murder her before the eyes of the entire world and not care what the result was.”

  “Then Victoria and Kenton will only be safe…”

  “When David Kevington is dead.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Rachel stood, slowly and looking weak, but once upright she did not totter. She walked to the window and looked out into the rain.

  “I want to leave here,” she said. “They’ve been good to me here, but I’m tired of being in this room. And I have a feeling that there is danger.… I’ve had dreams in which David Kevington comes here, and appears right in this room. And even though I run, he’s always there.”

  Roxanne rose and joined her at the window. “That will not happen, Rachel. Alex and I are taking you away from here. You’ll go home with us.”

  Rachel smiled. Roxanne smiled back, then looked out the window and lost the smile.

  “Alex, he’s still there.”

  “Who?”

  “The man with the newspaper. It’s raining harder than before, but he’s still there.”

  Gunnison went to the window and looked out. This time it wasn’t so easy to dismiss his wife’s concerns. The man did look absurdly out of place, seated in an inadequate shelter in a pouring rain, staring at a newspaper that was growing more sodden by the moment.

  “We’ll take no chances,” Gunnison said. “We’ll leave here by a back way. And we’ll find a different cab. The question is, though, if Rachel is really strong enough.”

  “I’m strong enough,” she said. “I’ll go now. Do you believe that man out there was sent by David Kevington?”

  “Maybe so,” Gunnison said. “We believe that he might have been on the train that brought us here and followed us from the station. But we’ll shake him off. I’ll try to get the cooperation of the good sisters as well, should he come inquiring.”

  Rachel withdrew and seemed to grow smaller and paler as she pondered the idea of being watched and pursued.

  “How much do you have to pack?” Roxanne asked Rachel.

  “What I have on and two dresses given to me by the hospital.”

  “The cost of your treatment will be paid by the Illustrated American,” Gunnison said. “And we’ll keep watch over you until we can reunite you with Kenton, and—we hope—Victoria.”

  * * *

  The man in the shelter outside was named Morrisey, a name that had once garnered a lot of respect in the Davenport Agency for Detection Services, one of the leading detective agencies in the nation. A certain incident involving the disappearance of a key piece of evidence in a case—a small cache of jewels—had destroyed his career even as it enriched his pocketbook. A poorly played game of cards had made the enrichment short-lived, and from then on he had worked as an independent, contracting for whatever work he could find. It was unlikely that he’d ever again find the opportunity to get his hands on any money to compare to what he’d had so briefly, so he didn’t try. The comfort he’d taken in wealth for that one short and glorious period he now found in whiskey.

  As he sat on the soaked bench under the leaky shelter, holding a soaked newspaper in his hand, he was looking more forward by the moment to the minute he could leave his position and head for the nearest saloon. Part of him was ready simply to desert his job, which at present was most uncomfortable. But the money the Englishman was paying made this too lucrative a hire. He’d stick it out, no matter how wet he got.

  Morrisey, though, had some serious doubts about this assignment. The Englishman just might be loco, with his talk of the legendary Brady Kenton really being alive even though the Illustrated American itself had reported his death. Supposedly there was a chance that Alex Gunnison and his wife, whom Morrisey was hired to track, might lead him to Kenton.

  It seemed unlikely. Kenton’s funeral had been a lavish and highly reported affair, visited by all kinds of dignitaries. Of course, there was the fact that Kenton had been cremated, so there was no body to be seen. And it was always possible that what had really been cremated was a good-sized dog or goat or something, with Kenton himself being alive and snickering while everyone wept over a bunch of animal ashes.

  A more likely explanation was that the English doctor was simply crazy and his notion of a still-living Brady Kenton was a madman’s figment. What else could it be, considering that Dr. David Kevington also seemed to believe that Brady Kenton’s wife—who Kevington also apparently claimed as his own wife—was also still alive and with Kenton. It was absurd; everyone who knew anything about Brady Kenton knew that his wife had died in a train accident many years ago.

  Madman or not, Kevington paid well. Morrisey would stick it out as long as he could and milk as big a fee as he could from the obsessive Englishman. And if by some miracle the good doctor’s wild notions proved to be correct, maybe he could deliver up Kenton to him as well. Pondering the size of the bonus that would generate was enough to make Morrisey’s mouth water.

  Could it be that Brady Kenton himself was inside that hospital?

  Morrisey vowed he wouldn’t let this job slip out of his hands. He’d almost gotten himself caught aboard the train when Gunnison’s wife saw him looking into their private car. From then on he’d been extremely cautious and somehow managed to evade being seen by them for the rest of the journey.

  His newspaper was so soaked now that it looked foolish to keep pretending to read it. Morrisey tossed it aside and simply sat on the bench, staring at the hospital and trying to look like nothing more than a common pedestrian who’d taken shelter from the rain.

  Time dragged by, the rain slowing, then building again, then slowing, but never fully stopping. The cab that had carried the Gunnisons, and which Morrisey had followed, came rolling around again, slowing, but the Gunnisons never came out. Ten minutes later the cabbie made another go-around. Again no Gunnisons.

  Morrisey began to grow concerned. But he made himself wait another hour. Still the Gunnisons did not emerge.

  The rain stopped and the sun even managed to break through over toward the west. Morrisey could wait no longer. He rose and went to the door.

  Sister Anna answered, smiling at him.

  “Pardon me,” Morrisey said, touching the brim of his hat and nodding a greeting. “I happened to be passing a couple of hours ago and thought I saw an old friend of mine, name of Gunnison, come in here with his wife. I had pressing business and couldn’t stop to be sure, but now I’m finished and thought I’d drop in and see if they might be here. It would be good to see old Alex again. He’s here visiting a friend or relative maybe?”

  “Do come in, sir,” Sister Anna said. “I’ll go see if this gentleman you are looking for is here.”

  “All right … but if he is, don’t tell him I’m out here looking for him. I’d like to surprise him myself, you see.” In fact, Morrisey planned to slip out the door again if Gunnison proved to still be in the hospital. The last thing he wanted was to actually run into the man.

  “Very well. Do have a seat on our waiting bench. I’ll be back around to give you information.”

  He sat down, picking up a newspaper that chanced to lie beside him. If Gunnison or his wife should appear around the corner, he’d make sure to have his face hidden in the paper, just in case Mrs. Gunnison had caught a clearer glimpse of him on the train than he thought she had.

  Ten minutes passed and Sister Anna did not return. It dragged on to twenty minutes, the
n thirty, and finally Morrisey rose and walked farther into the hospital, where he encountered another nun.

  “Pardon me, Sister, but have you seen Sister Anna in the last few minutes?”

  “No, sir, but I can find her, if you wish.”

  “Please do. She was to come give me some information about a man I saw entering the hospital, but it’s been some time now and she’s not done so.”

  “Please be seated again. I’ll find her.”

  He didn’t sit down but paced, restless and beginning to suspect something was up. Another ten minutes dragged by. He was about to plunge into the depths of the hospital and find Sister Anna on his own when she came around the corner.

  She had no apologies for her tardiness. “I’m sorry, sir, but the man you are looking for isn’t here,” she reported.

  “What? Where is he?”

  “He and his wife departed, with one of our patients.”

  “Patients … male or female?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we make it a practice to release no information regarding our patients except through a formal inquiry system.”

  “They couldn’t have left. I’d have seen them coming out the door.”

  “You told me you were elsewhere on business. How could you see our door? But it doesn’t matter; they left by one of our side entrances.”

  Morrisey swore bitterly, turned, and left the hospital on the run.

  CHAPTER 24

  They’d evaded him. Deliberately or not he couldn’t say, but it didn’t matter, because the point was they were gone and the trail was broken.

  It would be hard to catch up to them again … but wait! That private passenger car of theirs … that’s where they’d go.

  He caught a cab and urged the driver to make the best time he could back to the same railroad station from which he’d departed earlier. The driver made a run fit for a racetrack, and Morrisey overpaid him by a good margin, not so much because he tended toward high gratuities as because he had no time to wait around for making change.

  He ran to the rail yard and jumped a fence designed to keep the general public on one side.

  There was the Illustrated American private car, separated from the train and shunted off onto a side holding track.

  “You there, boy!” he shouted at a middle-aged black fellow carrying a bundle of mail toward a train. “Come here a minute.”

  The man did so, laying down the bundle at his feet and looking glad to have reason to be rid of the Atlaslike burden for a moment. “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “That car over there on the sidetrack was part of a train I rode in on.”

  “Was it? That’s the private passenger car of the Illustrated American magazine.”

  “I know that. Just tell me if someone has come back to that car within the last hour or so! It’s important.”

  “Oh, there ain’t nobody on it, I can tell you. Ain’t nobody allowed to be on the cars when they’re sidetracked like that, except of course for folks working for the railroad. Truth is, sir, you ain’t really supposed to be where you is right now, ’less you’re a railroad man.”

  “You let me worry about that, boy. Tell me when that car will be reconnected and pull out again.”

  “I don’t know, sir, but I’ll go find out, if you’ll watch my mailbag for me.”

  “I’ll watch your damned mailbag! Now hurry! This is important!”

  The black fellow nodded, scurried off, then slowed down as soon as he rounded the corner of the building and was out of sight. He plodded along deliberately, not about to hurry up for a man as rude as this one.

  He saw a railroad detective and went to him. “There’s a man who jumped the fence and took my mailbag from me, sir. He’s still around the corner there, I think. I believe he’s going to take that mail and go through it for money.”

  The railroad detective was gone in a shot. The black man pulled a cheap cigar from his pocket, lit it, and moved over to where he could hear the railroad detective giving the intruder some serious attention, threatening a trespassing arrest and maybe worse. The intruder was swearing and furious, denying vehemently any intent to steal the mail, and in the end managed to regain control of his temper and with an apology win the privilege of being allowed to leave without being taken into custody.

  When he was gone, the black man finished his cigar, plodded back around the corner, and picked up the mailbag again. Hefting it onto his shoulder, he headed for the waiting car, humming a happy tune to himself.

  “Boy,” indeed! He was a workingman, and proud of it. It was the fence jumpers of the world, the kind who got themselves run off by railroad detectives, who were the “boys” of the world in his book.

  So far this was turning out to be a nice day.

  * * *

  Morrisey was furious, and wishing he could get his hands on that black scoundrel and that railroad detective sometime when they weren’t safe on the job! But he had bigger things to worry him now than a wounding of his pride. He had to find Gunnison’s trail again or otherwise give up any hope of further gain from his madman employer.

  He had the strongest notion that it was Brady Kenton whom the Gunnisons had gone into that hospital to fetch. Kenton himself … and if he could only get him and deliver him to Kevington …

  That private railroad car remained his only potential point of reconnection with his quarry. He found a hidden place on the other side of the rail yard—beyond the fence and out of the domain of the railroad detective—and settled down to watch the car and hope that Gunnison and company showed up at it soon.

  * * *

  Miles away, in a passenger cubicle on a train that had pulled out of New York while Morrisey was still sitting in the leaky shelter outside the hospital, Roxanne Gunnison laid her cloak over a shivering Rachel Frye.

  “Thank you, mum,” Rachel said. “I don’t know why I feel so cold.”

  “Because it’s a wet day and you’ve gone from being a hospital patient in a chair to running through the rain to catch a train … and all the while hoping nobody is watching.

  “Did we get away from him?” Roxanne asked Alex.

  “I think we did. But we’re going to give things one more twist just to make sure. We’ll get off at the next station, visit the telegraph station to see if we’ve heard anything from Billy Connery, then catch another train. Maybe to Philadelphia. From there we’ll catch a train to St. Louis. If anybody is following us, him or anyone else, we’ll shake him off.”

  “I’m worried about Kenton,” Rachel said.

  “So am I,” replied Gunnison.

  They rode in silence to the next stop, then disembarked. As quickly as possible they entered the station and sat down in a corner, hiding themselves behind the moving crowd in the station. Roxanne sat close to Rachel, occasionally smiling at her reassuringly.

  The telegraph station was in the next building. Gunnison walked over. Five minutes later, he was back.

  Roxanne knew he had something just from the look on his face.

  “There was a wire waiting for me.… Billy has found Kenton.”

  “In Culvertown?” Roxanne asked.

  “Yes.” He handed Roxanne the wire.

  KB FOUND IN CULVERTOWN. LIVINGSTON HOUSE. PLEASE COME.

  “Why ‘KB’?” she asked.

  “Just to make it a little more unlikely for anyone to think we’re talking about Brady Kenton.”

  “What’s the Livingston house?”

  “A place Kenton wrote about, occupied by an eccentric fellow named Jack Livingston—a big mansion on a hill he built for his wife. Kenton did an excellent piece of work about him and the house. And I think he may have hinted once that there was some sort of family connection between Livingston and himself, or Livingston and Victoria. I can’t remember which … and my memory may be entirely wrong on that score, anyway. It’s murky for me.”

  “If there is a family relationship, it might explain why Kenton chose Culvertown as his hiding place,” Roxanne s
aid.

  “I’ve got to get there, as soon as I can,” said Gunnison.

  “What about me and Rachel?”

  Gunnison shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d thought of taking you home to St. Louis, but now I’m not sure. If Kevington is having us watched, followed … you know he’ll have spies observing our house and the Illustrated American offices. I don’t want to leave you there if I’m gone.”

  “Take us with you.”

  “I don’t know that Rachel is strong enough.”

  Rachel said, “I am strong enough … and if Kenton is there, I want to join him.”

  Roxanne looked at the telegram again. “We can’t tell from this whether he has Victoria with him.”

  “My fear is that he doesn’t,” Gunnison said. “My fear is that he found she was dead, or unwilling to join him, and he came back to the United States alone, and maybe intent on drinking himself to death. I wish Billy had given more information in that telegram.”

  “Will you take us to Colorado with you?” Roxanne asked.

  Gunnison grinned. “I guess there would be no easier way to keep an eye on you … and you on me … than having you with me.”

  “I’m glad. That’s the way it should be.”

  “What we find may not be pleasing. Kenton may be in bad shape. Victoria may not be there at all, and may even be dead.”

  “How delicate do you think I am, Alex? This is something we should do together. And though I’ve had my share of resentments toward Kenton because of all the times he took you away from me, I want to be there to help him if he needs it. I care about him, too.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Roy Ramsey, underpaid and overburdened town marshal of Culvertown, Colorado, fell back into his chair heavily, making it creak. He threw his hands upward and shook his head.

  “Tell me, Jim,” he said to James Ramsey, his brother, who held no official capacity but helped fill in for Roy when he was out of town. “How is it that I can go to Scallonville for two days and come back and find the whole town gone to hell?”