The Plague of Thieves Affair

by Marcia Muller

  “Well, he did help us solve several difficult crimes.”

  “Bah. Sheer lunatic luck in every case.”

  The very thought of the crackbrain Sherlock raised Quincannon’s blood pressure. He finished scraping the cake from his pipe bowl with an angry swipe, scowled at the black residue on the knife blade, and produced his already soiled handkerchief to cleanse it.

  Sabina, watching him, said, “What’s that yellow residue?”

  “Eh? Yellow?”

  “On your handkerchief. Yellow and black streaks now, a fetching combination.”

  Quincannon peered at the saffron marks. “Oh, they came from—” He broke off abruptly, blinking, his mind filling with a memory image of the last storeroom he’d investigated.

  “It’s an odd color,” Sabina said. “What is it?”

  The answer, that was what it was. Thunderation! Why hadn’t he realized it before? Excitement seized him; he bounced to his feet, stuffed pipe and closed penknife into his coat pocket, and crossed quickly to the hat rack for his derby.

  “John? Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  “To the public library. And after that, if all goes well, to nab a double murderer.”

  8

  QUINCANNON

  It was well past dark when he once again arrived at Golden State Steam Beer. The night guard at the front entrance had evidently been briefed on the fact that Quincannon was in James Willard’s employ; a look at his credentials and he was allowed admittance with no questions asked.

  The business offices on the second floor were all deserted, which suited Quincannon’s aim perfectly. The door to the cubicle he sought was locked, but only for less than a minute once he set to work with his picks.

  He found what he’d hoped to find almost immediately—a yellow smear on one chair leg, and two small dried flower buds on the floor beneath the desk. Hop buds. And the yellow stuff was lupulin, a fine powdery dust that clings to the yellow glands between the petals of hop flowers, some of which is released when the flowers are picked. It was this dust, not the hop buds themselves, that offset the sweetness of malt and gave beer its sedative and digestive qualities. A book at the public library at Civic Center had informed him of these facts, complete with pictures. The book had also imparted another tidbit of information, one which made the balance of the day’s events crystal clear.

  Now he knew how Caleb Lansing had been murdered behind locked doors, by an assassin who had seemingly vanished into thin air.

  And that assassin, Lansing’s accomplice in theft and murder, was the man he’d come to suspect it would be—the man who had popped up suddenly and without explanation soon after the discovery of Lansing’s body, in a section of the brewery he had no good reason to be. Elias Corby, Golden State’s long-snouted bookkeeper.

  * * *

  There were no cabs in the vicinity of the brewery when Quincannon emerged. He had to cover the two blocks to Market Street on shanks’ mare before he found one.

  As he was settling inside, one of the newfangled horseless carriages that were supposedly being manufactured in large quantities in the East, though few had yet to be in use in San Francisco, passed by snorting and growling like a bull on the charge. The confounded machines were noisy polluters that frightened women, children, and horses, but he had to admit that they were capable of traveling at an astonishing rate of speed. Too bad he hadn’t the use of one himself right now; it would get him to his destination twice as fast as the hansom. Speed was not of the essence, but the sooner he confronted Elias Corby and dragged a confession from the man, the sooner he would be rewarded with the balance of his fee from James Willard.

  Corby resided in a boardinghouse in the Western Addition, a fact that Quincannon had learned by a further search of the bookkeeper’s office: the addresses of all of Golden State’s employees were kept on file there. He hadn’t uncovered anything else of interest, but that was hardly surprising; any additional incriminating evidence against Corby, if such existed, would be found in his private quarters.

  No, it wouldn’t, blast the luck. He was also denied the pleasure of putting the arm on Corby immediately as well. The man was not home, and when Quincannon took the opportunity to pick the lock and search the premises, as he had Lansing’s that morning, there was nothing damning for him to find. Unlike Lansing, Corby evidently kept his ill-gotten gains elsewhere; there were no loose floorboards or other hiding places here. The three rooms were sparsely furnished and kept neat as a pin, but utterly lacking in personal items of any value. The only wall adornment was an illustrated calendar from a supplier of chickens and eggs in Los Alegres, an agricultural and ranching community in the North Bay. Even the clothing in the bedroom wardrobe was mostly old and threadbare.

  The Spartan atmosphere explained, perhaps, why Corby had succumbed to the temptation to turn crook and slayer. His bookkeeper’s salary could not have been much, and he may well have yearned for the finer things life had to offer. But if he had been paid some or all of his blood money, he’d hoarded it just as Lansing had, though much more carefully. Had it been anywhere in these rooms, Quincannon would have ferreted it out.

  Across the street from the boardinghouse was a bakery and coffee bar. He claimed a table at the window overlooking the street. The night was beset with coils of fog, and the interior warmth caused the glass to mist up a bit, but he could see the boardinghouse stoop and gaslit entrance well enough. He ordered coffee and a plate of sweet rolls, and settled down for what he hoped would not be a long wait.

  It was, however. Long and ultimately futile.

  Quincannon sat filling and distressing his bladder with too much weakly brewed coffee until the shop closed at ten o’clock. The only individual who entered the boardinghouse was a gent far too tall and corpulent to be Elias Corby.

  Where the devil was he? It was unlikely that he’d taken it on the lammas; as far as he knew, he was under no suspicion for either Ackermann’s murder or Lansing’s bogus suicide. It was possible he’d been paid enough for his role in the theft of the steam beer formula to head for parts unknown and the establishment of a new life. But it would have been a foolish act to disappear suddenly, with no word to anyone, thereby calling attention to himself—and Corby, unlike Lansing, was no fool. He would surely have followed the more prudent course of remaining at his job for the present.

  Unless he’d been unable to. Unless something had happened to him, too—that payment for his evil deeds had not been money but hot lead or cold steel. Would Cyrus Drinkwater go so far as to order Corby’s death? He might, if the bookkeeper had been witless enough to demand more money for his deeds; a scoundrel such as Drinkwater would not take kindly to threats and an attempt at blackmail. On the other hand, he was a businessman whose shady enterprises depended on payoffs; so far as anyone knew, he had never resorted to violence. Or ever would, in all probability, except as a last desperate recourse.

  Quincannon debated the wisdom of lingering in the neighborhood a while longer, but there was no telling when Corby would decide to return; it might be the wee hours if he was out spending some of his ill-gotten gains. Besides which, it was a cold night and Quincannon was tired; the prospect of shivering in doorways for even a short while held no appeal. Yaffling Corby could wait until tomorrow.

  * * *

  Quincannon had lived in the same bachelor digs on Leavenworth Street since his arrival in the city a dozen years before, when as an agent for the Secret Service he’d been transferred to the San Francisco field office in the U.S. Mint. He’d been a hard-drinking man in those early days, and something of a hell-raiser; the large flat had been the scene of several small but raucous parties, and more than a handful of willing young wenches had shared his bed. Not that he’d been a celibate monk since taking the pledge, leaving the Service, and establishing his partnership with Sabina. On the contrary. His appetites were as lusty as ever when it came to pleasures of the flesh, or had been until the past eighteen months or so. In that period of time,
only one young lady had entered the flat in the evening and not left again until morning.

  Sabina was the cause of his waning interest in casual affairs, of course. All other women seemed to pale by comparison, even those whom some men—men who valued beauty above all else—might consider more attractive. It had taken him some time to admit to himself just how strong his feelings for her were. In the beginning of their relationship, seduction had been his primary goal; but as his respect and affection for her grew, lust had evolved into passion of a much more virtuous sort. He still wasn’t sure it was that nebulous emotion called love. How could he be, never having been in love before? But it must be something akin to it, for he’d never felt this way about any woman before.

  Since realizing and accepting this, he’d tried over and over to convince Sabina that his intentions were gentlemanly, even honorable. Her constant refusal of his attempts at social interaction led to the obvious conclusion that she simply didn’t care for him in the same way he cared for her, which saddened as well as frustrated him. But then had come the subtle change in her attitude, the acceptance of invitations to dinner, plays, concerts, the softened smiles and speculative looks. He couldn’t help wondering what had brought it on. Nothing he’d said or done. A simple matter of almost daily proximity building an affection that reciprocated his own? Something to do with her failed (happily failed) relationship with that society coxcomb, Carson Montgomery, last fall? Impossible to guess what went on inside a woman’s mind. Not that it really mattered why she had altered her stance, only that his ardor for her might yet be requited after all …

  These thoughts were on Quincannon’s mind as he let himself into the flat. He lit the gas in the parlor and the bedroom to chase away the evening chill. Usually, these rooms were his sanctuary and he minded not at all being alone in them, but tonight they had a different effect on him, their emptiness making him feel oddly lonely. In the five years of his partnership with Sabina, she had never once set foot in here. What would she think of the place if she ever did, with its collection of Civil War artifacts inherited from his father, the shelves of books of poetry and temperance tracts he collected, the massive rolltop desk with its overflowing clutter of papers, pipes, and tobacco canisters, the marble-topped buffet and gold-framed mirror decorated with paintings of nude nymphs? Approve? Disapprove? Lord, how he yearned to find out!

  He selected one of the tracts and took it to bed with him. It was one he’d read often before, not because he subscribed to the precepts of the temperance movement—he was not against alcohol per se, only his own use of it—but because it put him to sleep more quickly than any of the others. Written and printed by a flaming zealot named Ebenezer Talbot, one of the founders of the True Christian Temperance Society, it bore the title “A Bibulous Evening with Satan” and was luridly and ungrammatically inflammatory in its denunciation of the evils of drink. He was already half asleep by the time he reached the end of page 2.

  9

  QUINCANNON

  A light rain had begun to fall during the night and it was still slicking streets and sidewalks when Quincannon once again arrived at Golden State Steam Beer shortly before ten on Friday morning. He would have preferred not to confront and arrest Elias Corby at the brewery, after yesterday’s debacle, but it was a better choice than waiting until later in the day. He was bigger and stronger than the bookkeeper, and Corby was not the sort to panic as Caleb Lansing had. The coldly calculating fashion in which he had dispatched Lansing in the utility room and subsequently escaped proved that.

  The issue, however, turned out to be moot.

  Corby was not in his office or anywhere else on the premises.

  Impatiently Quincannon waited in the bookkeeper’s cubicle. He might have revealed Corby’s guilt to James Willard, but his client also had yet to put in an appearance. Just as well. It better suited him and his sense of the dramatic to reserve explanations until after all the facts in a case were known to him and the felon in custody.

  Ten o’clock came and went. Still no sign of Corby. Or Willard, for that matter.

  By this time Quincannon had worked himself into something of a lather. Enough of this blasted inactivity. Action was what he craved, his hands on Corby’s scrawny neck if the rascal gave him even the slightest bit of trouble. He quit pacing the cubicle, as he’d been doing restlessly for the past several minutes, slapped on his derby at a forward-leaning angle, and went to determine if his quarry could be found at his boardinghouse.

  The answer to that was yes. He rattled his knuckles sharply on the door, once without a response, then a second time, and if that last knock had gone unanswered he was prepared to pick the lock for another quick search. But his sharp ears picked up stirrings inside—the creak of bedsprings, followed by the muted shuffle of approaching steps.

  Corby’s voice, hoarse and wary, called out, “Who is it?”

  “John Quincannon.”

  “… What do you want?”

  “Open the door and I’ll tell you.”

  “I … I’m not feeling well. That’s why I didn’t go to work this morning. A touch of the grippe…”

  “You’ll soon feel worse if you don’t open the door.”

  There were a few seconds of silence. Then the latch lock rattled and the door opened partway, just far enough for Quincannon to see that Corby was in his nightshirt and that his eyes were bleary from more than just interrupted sleep. His beard-stubbled cheeks had a sunken, grayish tinge. A touch of the grippe? Bah. Severe hangover was more like it. The bookkeeper had, in fact, spent much of last night in the company of demon rum, either by way of celebration or in an attempt to assuage a guilty conscience.

  “Well? If you’re here on behalf of Mr. Willard—”

  Quincannon said, “On his behalf and mine,” and threw his shoulder against the door panel. Corby, driven into a backward stagger, emitted a bleat of protest as Quincannon entered and thrust the door shut behind him.

  “What … what’s the idea? You have no right to barge in here—”

  “On the contrary. I have every right as a duly licensed upholder of the law to make a citizen’s arrest.”

  Fear crawled into the little man’s bloodshot eyes. “Arrest?”

  “For the murders of Otto Ackermann and Caleb Lansing and the theft of Ackermann’s steam beer formula.”

  “Those are ridiculous accusations. Lansing is the one who stole the formula and killed poor Otto. And he wasn’t murdered, he died by his own hand—”

  “It’ll do you no good to lie or deny, laddybuck. I know the two of you were partners in the first crime, hired by Cyrus Drinkwater through his West Star brewmaster, Xavier Jones. And that it was your hand, not Lansing’s, that put the bullet in his heart. I also know the clever method you employed afterward to avoid detection. The yellow hop dust, lupulin, gave you away.”

  Corby’s face was a deathly gray color now. He avoided Quincannon’s piercing gaze, swinging his head in wobbly arcs as if seeking an avenue of escape.

  “You have two choices,” Quincannon said. “You can come along peaceably to the Hall of Justice, or you can be carried there unconscious and trussed up hand and foot. Which will it be?”

  Corby’s desperation lasted until Quincannon, to emphasize his words, opened his greatcoat and then his frock coat to reveal the holstered Navy Colt. Then the wild look evaporated, the thin shoulders sagged; there was no resistance in him as he half staggered to the rumpled bed, sank down on it, and covered his face with splayed fingers.

  “No, there’ll be no bogus remorse, either. On with your clothes, and be quick about it.”

  Slowly, jerkily, Corby obeyed. Quincannon kept a sharp eye on him as he shed his nightshirt and reached for his shirt and pants. There had been no weapon in the room when he’d searched it the day before, and it was likely that the LeMat revolver had been the only one he’d possessed. Vigilance was called for nevertheless, but Corby made no false moves.

  While he draped his skinny frame, Quinc
annon asked him how much he’d been paid for his theft of the formula and what he’d done with the money. Headshakes were his only response. Either the bookkeeper had been rendered mute by his fear, or more likely there was enough stubbornness left in him to avoid self-incrimination. Quincannon might have been able to get it out of him by threat or force, but inasmuch as he had no claim to the spoils he saw no reason to exert himself. Let the coppers attend to that chore once Corby was in their custody.

  When Corby had donned his raincoat, they went downstairs and out onto the wet sidewalk, Quincannon maintaining a tight grip on the small man’s arm. It was still raining, harder now and driven on a slant by a gusty wind; citizens with unfurled umbrellas hurried along, not all of them mindful of their surroundings. The hack that had brought Quincannon here was waiting at the curb, and as he and Corby crossed to it, a pedestrian with his head down and his umbrella canted forward came bustling toward them. Quincannon sidestepped, but not in time to avoid a glancing collision that turned him half around and broke his grip on Corby’s arm. Before he could untangle himself from the fathead with the umbrella, his prisoner was off and running.

  Quincannon shouted, “Corby! Halt, blast you, halt!” to no avail, and plunged after him.

  Corby dodged past the front of the hansom, causing the harnessed horse to rear and the hack to buck forward, which in turn caused Quincannon to change direction to avoid the horse’s plunging hooves; this allowed Corby to put a few more yards between them. He raced diagonally across the street and into a vacant lot.

  Providence seemed to have cursed Quincannon with a continual scourge of foot chases. He’d been involved in more than one the previous year, there was yesterday’s in pursuit of Lansing, and now here he was after Corby in yet another—none through any direct fault of his own. This one stoked his wrath to a white heat as he ran. Damned weather! Damned fools who didn’t watch where they were going in the rain! Damned cheeky murdering thieves!