Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years

by Michael Kurland

  Bluefield was drinking beer and counting profits, two of his favorite activities, and seemed not to mind being visited again so soon. “I’ve nothing for you yet, John, my lad,” he said. “You know I’ll send word when I do.”

  “I’m the one with news today,” Quincannon said. “The housebreaker I’m after is Dodger Brown.”

  “The Dodger, is it? Well, I’m not surprised. How did you tumble?”

  “I came within a hair of nabbing him in the act last night. He escaped through no fault of mine.”

  “So he knows you’re onto him?”

  “I don’t believe he does, as dark as it was.”

  “He’ll still be in the vicinity, then, you’re thinking,” Bluefield said. He raised his mug of lager with one thick finger, drank, licked foam off his mustached upper lip. The mustache was an impressive coal black handlebar, its ends waxed to rapier points, of which he was inordinately proud. “And mayhap old Ezra can find out where he’s hanging his hat.”

  “You’ll make me a happy man if it can be done quickly.”

  “I’ll put out the word. A favor in return, John?”

  “Name it.”

  “There’s a saloon and restaurant just up for sale in the Uptown Tenderloin. The Redemption, on Ellis Street.”

  “I know it. A respected establishment.”

  “I’m looking to buy it. It’s past time I put this hellhole up for sale and leave the Coast for good. There’ll never be a place better suited or better named for the likes of me to die a respectable citizen. I have the money, I’ve made overtures, but the owners aren’t convinced my intentions are honorable. They’re afraid I have plans to turn the Redemption into a fancy copy of the Scarlet Lady.”

  “And you’ve no such plans.”

  “None, lad, I swear it.”

  “Is it a letter of reference you’re after, then?”

  “Yes. Your name carries weight in this city.”

  “You’ll have it tomorrow, by messenger.”

  Bluefield lumbered to his feet and thumped Quincannon’s back with a meaty paw. “You won’t regret it, John. You and your lady partner will never pay for a meal at Ezra Bluefield’s Redemption.”

  Quincannon had never turned down a free meal in his life, and never would. “I’ll settle for word of Dodger Brown’s whereabouts,” he lied.

  “Within twenty-four hours,” Bluefield said, “and that’s a bloody promise. Even if it means hiring a gang of men to hunt through every rattrap from here to China Basin.”

  5

  Andrew Costain’s offices were in a brick building on Geary Street that housed a dozen attorneys and half as many other professional men. The anteroom held a secretary’s desk but no secretary; the bare desktop and dusty file cabinets behind it suggested that there hadn’t been one in some while. A pair of neatly lettered and somewhat contradictory signs were affixed to one of two closed doors in the inside wall. The upper one proclaimed PRIVATE, the lower invited KNOCK FOR ADMITTANCE.

  Quincannon knocked. Costain’s whiskey baritone called him in. The lawyer sat behind a cluttered desk set before a wall covered with law books, among them what appeared to be a full set of Blackstone. More books and papers were scattered on dusty pieces of furniture. On another wall, next to a framed law degree, was a lithograph of John L. Sullivan in a fighting pose.

  Costain’s person was more tidy than his office; he wore an expensive tweed suit and a fancy striped vest, and when he stood up, an elk’s tooth gleamed at the end of a heavy gold watch chain. The successful image, however, was spoiled by his rum-blossom nose and a faint perfume of forty-rod whiskey that could be detected at ten paces. If Quincannon had been a prospective client, he would have thought twice about entrusting his legal business to Mr. Andrew Costain.

  “Well, Quincannon, I expected you much sooner than this.”

  “At my convenience, your message said.”

  “It also offered you a financial advantage.”

  “So it did. For what service, Mr. Costain?”

  “That’s rather obvious, isn’t it, after last night? Sit down, Quincannon. Cigar? Drink?”

  “Neither.” He moved a heavy volume of Blackstone from the single client’s chair and replaced it with his backside.

  Costain asked, “Have you caught the scoundrel yet?”

  “If you mean the housebreaker, no, not yet.”

  “Identified him?”

  “Yes. It’s only a matter of time until he’s locked away in the city jail.”

  “How much time?”

  “A day or two.”

  “How do you plan to catch him? While in the act?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Don’t be ambiguous, man. I have a right to know what you’re up to.”

  “My client is the Great Western Insurance Company,” Quincannon said. “I need answer only to them.”

  “My name is on that list of potential victims: you said so last night. Naturally I’m concerned. Suppose he wasn’t frightened off by his near capture at the Truesdales’? Suppose he’s bold enough to try burgling my home next, even this very night? I can ill afford to have my house ransacked and valuables stolen. Those damned insurance people never pay off at full value.”

  “A legitimate fear.”

  “I want you to prevent that from happening. Hire you to prevent it. Watch my home every night until the thief is arrested, beginning tonight.”

  Quincannon said reluctantly, “There are other alternatives, you know, that would cost you nothing.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Move our valuables to a safe place and simply stay home nights until the threat is ended. But we have too many possessions to haul away willy-nilly and too little time to do so. Even if we did remove everything of value, the burglar might still break in and vandalize the premises if he found nothing worth stealing. That has been known to happen, hasn’t it?”

  “It has, though not very often.”

  “I don’t like the idea of my home being invaded in any case. And it damned well could be. My wife and I have separate appointments tonight and a joint one tomorrow evening that we’re loath to cancel. The house will be empty and fair game from seven until midnight or later both nights.”

  “You have no servants?”

  “None that live in. And it would be useless to ask help from city police without certain knowledge of a crime to be committed.”

  “So it would.”

  “Well? There is no conflict of interest involved, after all.”

  True enough. If Costain wanted to pay him to do the same work for which he was being paid by Great Western Insurance, there was neither conflict nor a reasonable argument against it. The notion of another night or two hiding in shrubbery and risking pneumonia had no appeal, but minor hardships were part and parcel of the detective game. Besides, nothing warmed his Scot’s blood like the fattening of the agency’s bank account.

  “You’ll accept the job, then?”

  “I will,” Quincannon said blandly, “provided you’re willing to pay an additional fee.”

  “What’s that? For what?”

  “Surveillance on your home is a job for two men.”

  “Why? You were alone at the Truesdales.”

  “The Truesdale house has front and side entrances which could be watched by one man alone. Yours has front and rear entrances, therefore requiring a second operative.”

  “How is it you know my house?”

  “I tabbed it up, along with the others on the list, the day I was hired.”

  “Tabbed it up?”

  “Crook’s argot. Paid visits and scrutinized the properties, the same as the housebreaker would have done to size up the lay.”

  Costain opened a desk drawer, removed a flask and a finger-marked glass, poured the glass half-full, and sat frowning while he nipped at it. At length the frown smoothed off and he drank the rest of his whiskey at a gulp. “Very well,” he said. “How much will it cost me?”

  Quincannon named a per diem figure, only
slightly higher than his usual for a two-man operation. He cared little for Costain, but the dislike was not enough to warrant gouging the man unduly.

  The amount induced the lawyer to pour himself a second drink. “That’s damned close to extortion,” he muttered.

  “Hardly. My fees are standard.”

  “And nonnegotiable, I suppose.”

  “Under all circumstances,” Quincannon lied.

  “Very well, then. How much in advance?”

  “One day’s fee in full.”

  “For services not yet rendered? No, by God! Half, and not a penny more.”

  Quincannon shrugged. Half in advance was more than he usually requested from his clients.

  “You had better not fail me, Quincannon,” Costain said as he wrote out a bank check. “If there is a repeat of your bungling at the Truesdales, you’ll regret it—I promise you that.”

  “I did not bungle at the Truesdales. What happened last night—”

  “—wasn’t your fault. Yes, I know. And if anything similar happens, it won’t be your fault again, no doubt.”

  Quincannon said, “You’ll have your money’s worth,” tucked the check into a waistcoat pocket, and left Costain to stew in his alcoholic juices.

  The Geary Street address was not far from his own offices; he traveled the distance on foot at a brisk pace. San Francisco was a fine city, the more so on balmy days such as this one. The fresh salt smell from the bay, the rumble and clang of cable cars on Market Street, the booming horn of one of the fast coastal steamers as it drew into or away from Embarcadero, the stately presence of the Perry Building in the distance … he had yet to tire of any of it. It had been a banner day when he had been reassigned to San Francisco during his days with the United States Secret Service. The nation’s capital had not been the same for him after his father, Thomas L. Quincannon, himself a fearless rival of Allan Pinkerton, succumbed to an assassin’s bullet on the Baltimore docks; he had been ready for a change. His new home suited him as Washington, D.C., had suited his father. The same was true of the business of private investigation.

  When he arrived at the building that housed Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, he was in high spirits. He whistled tunefully under his breath as he climbed the stairs to the second floor and approached the door to his offices. But he stopped when he saw that the door stood ajar by a few inches and heard the voice that emanated from within.

  “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic,” the voice was declaiming, “and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge that might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools that may help him in doing his work; but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. There comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

  Quincannon’s cheerful smile turned upside down as he elbowed his way inside. The voice belonged to Sherlock Holmes.

  6

  The Englishman was sitting comfortably in the client’s chair in front of Sabina’s desk, a gray cape draped over his narrow shoulders and an odd-looking cloth cap hiding his ears. The office was blue with smoke from the long, black clay pipe he was smoking. Quincannon’s nostrils twitched and pinched; the tobacco Holmes used might have been made from floor sweepings.

  From the expression on Sabina’s face, Holmes had had a rapt listener for his prattle about brain-attics. This annoyed Quincannon even more. He was not gentle in closing the door behind him, nor gracious in his opening remark.

  “I seem to have walked in on a lecture,” he said to Sabina.

  Her sharp look warned him to be civil. “Mr. Holmes wasn’t lecturing, he was simply answering a question. He really does have amazing powers of observation and deduction.”

  If it was possible to bow while sitting down, the Englishman managed it. “You’re most kind, my dear Mrs. Carpenter.”

  Under his breath Quincannon muttered an unkindness.

  “Why,” Sabina said, “he wasn’t here one minute before he knew about Adam.”

  “Adam? Who the deuce is Adam?”

  “My new roommate.”

  “Your … what?”

  “Oh, you needn’t look so horrified. Adam is a cat.”

  “Kitten, in point of fact,” Holmes said. “Three months old.”

  “Cat? You never told me you had a cat.”

  “Well, I’ve only had him two days,” Sabina said. “Such a cute little fellow that I couldn’t bring myself to turn away when a neighbor brought him by.”

  “Rather a curious mix of Abyssinian and long-haired Siamese,” Holmes announced.

  “He was able to deduce that from a few wisps of fur on the hem of my skirt. Adam’s approximate age, as well. Isn’t that remarkable?”

  “Stultifying,” Quincannon said. “Have you written a monograph on breeds of cat as well as tobacco ash, Holmes?”

  “No, but perhaps one day I shall.”

  “Which will doubtless earn you the mantle of recognized authority. What brought you here, may I ask?”

  Sabina said, “Mr. Holmes is interested in the inner workings of an American detective agency. And in the progress of our investigation into the house burglaries.”

  “Is he now. Why?”

  “Now that I’ve finished my researches here,” Holmes said, “I fear I’ve grown bored with conventional tourist activities. San Francisco is a cosmopolitan city, to be sure, but its geographical, cultural, and historical attractions have decidedly limited appeal.”

  “What researches?”

  Holmes smiled enigmatically. “They are of an esoteric nature, of no interest to the average person.”

  Another bumptious statement. Quincannon shed his chesterfield, went to open the window behind his desk. The Englishman’s strong, acrid tobacco was making his head swim.

  “The time of my self-imposed exile has almost ended,” Holmes was saying to Sabina. “Soon I shall return to London and my former life. Crime and the criminal mind challenge my intellect, give zest to my life. I’ve been away from the game too long.”

  “I can’t imagine leaving it in the first place,” Quincannon said.

  “I daresay there were mitigating factors.”

  “Not for any reason, without or without mitigating factors.”

  Their gazes locked, struck a spark or two. Sabina said quickly, “You’ve been gone most of the day, John. What news?”

  “Yes,” Holmes said, “were you able to locate your pannyman?”

  Quincannon ignored the Englishman, fixed his partner with a disapproving eye. “You’ve been confiding some of our business, I see.”

  “I confided little except Dodger Brown’s name. You revealed most details about the case yourself, last night.”

  “If I did, it was from necessity.”

  “Did you find the Dodger?”

  “Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  Holmes puffed up a great cloud of smoke, and said through it, his eyes agleam, “Dr. Axminister provided a brief tour of the Barbary Coast shortly after my arrival, but it was superficial and hardly enlightening. I should like to see it as I’ve seen Limehouse in London, from the perspective of a consulting detective. Foul dives, foul deeds! My blood races at the prospect.”

  Blasted rattlepate, Quincannon thought. The man’s daft as a church mouse.

  “Would you permit me to join you on your next visit? Introduce me to the district’s hidden intrigues, some of its more colorful denizens—the dance hall que
en known as ‘The Galloping Cow,’ Emperor Norton, the odd fellow who allows himself to be beaten up for money?”

  “Emperor Norton is dead, and Oofty Goofty soon will be if he allows one more thump on his cranium with a baseball bat. Besides, I’m a detective, not a tour guide.”

  “Tut, tut. It’s knowledge I’m interested in, not sensation. In return, perhaps I can be of assistance in tracking down Dodger Brown and the stolen loot.”

  “I don’t need assistance, yours or anyone else’s. I have no intention—” Quincannon broke off because a pleasantly evil thought had popped into his head. He nurtured and fondled it for a few moments. Then he said to Sabina, “I stopped by Andrew Costain’s law offices on my way here.”

  “Yes? What exactly did he want?”

  “To have his home put under surveillance until Dodger Brown is caught.”

  “You didn’t accept?”

  “I did, and why not? There’s no conflict of interest in taking payment from more than one client to perform the same task, as Costain himself pointed out.”

  “Still, it doesn’t seem quite ethical …”

  “Ethics be damned. A fee is a fee for services rendered, and that includes providing peace of mind to nervous citizens. Eh, Holmes?”

  “Indubitably.”

  “We’re to begin tonight,” Quincannon told Sabina. “Costain’s home is near South Park, not as large a property as banker Truesdale’s but nonetheless substantial, and with both a front and rear entrance. I explained to Costain that proper surveillance will require two operatives, and he agreed to the extra fee.”