The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion

by Loren D. Estleman

  Two minutes later, Cornelius stood pinned against a stack of leaning canvas flats with his foil lying on the floor six feet away and the button tip of Johnny’s weapon pressing against his throat. The cast, distracted from their bright scraps of cloth, applauded.

  The loser swallowed against the pressure. “Where did you learn that?”

  “In Paris; where else? From the finest swordsman in France; who else? Also the one with the least pleasant personality. Which says a great deal when one is speaking of the French.” Johnny withdrew his foil, described a bright whizzing pattern in the air, and slung the blade into an imaginary scabbard on his hip. It seemed to have left a thin blue phosphorescence in its wake.

  Cornelius enjoyed once again the unobstructed motion of his Adam’s apple. “You realize there is no swordplay in Merry Wives.”

  “I thought I might persuade you to write some in. I need the practice, and I don’t think dear Will would object.”

  “With whom will you fight?”

  “With you, of course. We represent two sides of a love triangle, do we not?”

  The other hesitated. Of course Johnny was speaking of their characters in the play. “I won’t be able to offer you much contest. All the fencing masters in Hot Springs left their hardware at home.”

  “You’ll have lessons from the finest swordsman in Wichita. We’ll work them into rehearsals.”

  “But, who will, er—”

  Johnny smiled. “You’ll make love to the fair Anne in Act Three, Scene Four. I’d thought of sending forth the Major after the clothes-basket business, but he’s on probation for Salt Lake City. You’ve filled out, Corny; my costume will fit you this time without padding. Just wear your hat low and mind your moustaches are stuck on tight. Where is the revolver?”

  Cornelius got the bundle from the chair where he’d hung his street coat, unwound the cloth, and handed him the Forehand & Wadsworth that Lizzie had found on the ground after she was assaulted outside Salt Lake City.

  “I forgot we’d lost the Colt,” Johnny said. “I hope we didn’t make a poor trade. What did you do with the cartridges?”

  “I took them out to clean it. Do you want it loaded?”

  “God, no. Why change our luck now? April can tell you what kind of sharpshooter I am. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t leave the shells lying around for the chambermaid to find.”

  “I threw them out the window into the alley.”

  “You aren’t usually so foolish, Corny.” April, who’d won the tug-of-war with Lizzie, held the frock against the front of her person, looking at herself in a dusty cheval glass with a crack down its center. “What if someone stumbles upon them?”

  “This is Wichita, dear,” Johnny reminded her. “The duellists don’t allow each other much time to reload. There is bound to be spillage.”

  “I should take out my bicycle once or twice before Saturday,” said Lizzie, fingering a loose paste diamond on a tiara. “I haven’t ridden all year.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ve made other arrangements to recover the money.”

  April looked up. “Without consulting us?”

  “The details would only distract you. Our blocking needs work.” Johnny tossed up the revolver, caught its trigger guard on the end of his foil, and extended it toward Cornelius. “Put away this fowling piece, good sir, and take up your weapon from the ground. This is an affair between gentlemen.”

  Cornelius returned the Forehand & Wadsworth to its cloth and bent to retrieve his foil. As he did so, a projectile the size and shape of a percussion ball grazed the back of his neck and struck the wall backstage with a sharp ping.

  “Oh, damn!” said the Major. “I’ve popped a button off my doublet.”

  The best of it was Tom Riddle had found a cure for his euphoria. The worst of it was he was dying.

  He’d been struck, he reckoned, three times by the Gatling. The hunk of meat he’d lost from his left upper arm could be patched up, and he’d done that after a fashion by tearing off his sleeve and knotting it in place with his teeth as he rode away. The broken collarbone was more serious, but the bullet had passed straight through, and Mysterious Bob, who knew a thing or two about stopping up wounds from the fighting in Missouri, had stuffed more rags into the holes that would keep Tom from bleeding out until he could get to a doctor. But there was nothing anyone could do about the slug in his belly. That was the payoff.

  It hurt plenty bad, but not as much as he’d always heard. Mostly he was cold. The fire they’d built in the kitchen hearth belonging to the first farmhouse they’d come to couldn’t reach as far as his insides, and that was the source of the chill. He lay on his back on the plank table where the farmer and his wife took their meals with his legs dangling off the end, staring up at a squirrel hole in the ceiling and trying not to move. He didn’t know what Bob and Black Jack had done with the couple. Shot them, he supposed, or gagged and hog-tied them and put them in the barn.

  Something gurgled. Tom didn’t turn his head to see what it was. Brixton had probably found a jug. He and Bob stood guard at the windows near the opposite end of the house facing the road, in case the troopers came trailing them. It was a long open building, with no interior walls to divide it up into separate rooms. So far as Tom knew, they three were what was left of Ace-in-the-Hole.

  “They knew we was coming,” Brixton said. “You sure you took care of that greaser general?”

  “I took care of him.”

  “Maybe it was his men. They never came out of them trees.”

  “They stood to profit better if the job came off. Somebody got the drop on them.”

  “Well, it sure wasn’t Breed or Charlie or Tom, there; he’s gone as the Confederacy. What about Ed?”

  “Ed got it first. If he wasn’t dead when he hit the ground, he was by the time we finished riding over him on the way out.”

  “It was that woman.”

  There was a little silence. Tom wasn’t sure they’d heard him; it had come out in a croak.

  “What woman’s that, Tom?” Brixton’s voice was so close it made him jerk. A fresh wave of cold swept through him, followed by a pain like a toothache in the pit of his belly. Sweat pricked his forehead like fire ants. He gathered up spit to take out the croak.

  “That Prairie Rose woman. The tall one Charlie jumped in Salt Lake. I seen her that time in Denver and again in Wichita just before we rode out. At the train station it was. I was as close to her as I am to you.”

  He saw Brixton’s face then, looking down at him from up near the ceiling, and knew he’d miscalculated the distance between them. Black Jack seemed to be peeping through the squirrel hole. The hole was too small and his face too far away to see what was on it. But then Black Jack always looked sore.

  “You seen her at the station?”

  “She was with a fat jasper, probably the one stuck up the freight office. I didn’t say nothing, ‘cause you got a mad on against that there Prairie Rose, and we had us a train to rob. I was fixing to tell you about it after.”

  He breathed in and out a couple of times. He never thought talking would ever take so much out of him. That was one thing he’d always been able to do, even when he was stuck underground and drawing in a peck of dirt with every breath. “I reckon she must of saw me too, though I didn’t think she’d know me,” he said.

  “You reckon?” Something squeaked; metal against leather, or maybe the squirrel was back.

  “She must of went to the law for the bounty, and they told the army, and the army figured out the rest,” Tom said. “That’s how I see it. Thing is—”

  “Shut up, Tom.” The muzzle of Brixton’s big American was as big as the squirrel hole. It swallowed Tom up.

  23

  The Wichita Variety Theater provided only a single dressing room for its visiting artists, but it was large enough to accommodate a company larger than the Prairie Rose, with a cheerful buffalo-plaid blanket suspended from a rope tied across the middle for the modest
y of the female players. Tim Saunders had added a second entrance for the ladies and planned to construct a permanent partition by next season. Cornelius, who shared space with Johnny and Major Davies, entered that side without knocking and found the head of the company filling two crystal glasses from a stout black bottle, using the top of an upright trunk for a table. The Major plucked one up and sniffed at the contents. Sir John Falstaff’s cotton burnsides still adhered to his scarlet face, and nineteenth-century galluses held up Johnny’s puffed Elizabethan pantaloons, the straps resting on shoulders clad in a white linen undervest.

  The newcomer bore the Saturday editions of both the City Eagle and the Beacon, containing excellent reviews of the Friday-night opening; but as he was sure the others had seen neither, he drew the obvious conclusion.

  “I take it things went smoothly at the bank.”

  For answer, Johnny tilted the neck of the bottle in the direction of the oilcloth sack slumped heavily on the chair of the dressing table; it was the twin of the one that had been taken from Lizzie in Utah, along with the money the Major had robbed from the Overland office there. Johnny filled a third glass and held it out.

  “You brought it here? What if there’s a search?” Cornelius took the offering and swallowed half. His face flushed as from fever.

  “Easy, old man; that port slumbered a quarter-century below ground before I woke it up and carried it across the sea. It’s a bit touchy. As for the sack, I told you I’d made other arrangements.”

  “What sort of—”

  “Goodness, what’s the fight about? I should have thought you lads had spent all your energies playing at swords.” April emerged from behind the blanket, brushing her hair. She wore a green silk dressing gown with matching slippers and her face glistened with residue from the cream she used to remove her makeup. Without paint and powder she looked as fresh as a child.

  “Corny thinks we’re about to be pinched. I say, this is capital stuff.” The Major took another drink.

  Lizzie emerged in a faded-pink terry robe, veteran of a dozen tours, took the glass from his hand, and helped herself to a healthy sip. “Evie, this is far too rich for you. You’ll be down with gout before dark.”

  Johnny poured another and handed it to April. “I was just explaining that a new season calls for a new system. Especially since it’s our last. As of today, the Prairie Rose Repertory Company has taken its final curtain call.”

  Eyebrows shot up all around. Cornelius was first to find his voice. “Did we do so well, then?”

  “I hadn’t time to count, of course, but I’ve gotten to be a fair judge of weight since we opened in St. Louis. It seems an excellent year for the United States beef industry. We should clearly sixty thousand after expenses.”

  The members of the company began chattering all at once. April threw her arms around Johnny’s neck, spilling port down his back. He disengaged himself and called for quiet. “Come, come. The reviews can’t be that good; drowning out the cowboys will only lead to suspicion.”

  Cornelius said, “It’s a bit late for caution, isn’t it? We haven’t even begun packing, and that blasted sack’s a prison sentence for us all.”

  “Dear old fellow.” Johnny set down his glass. “What exactly do you think is in it?”

  “Empty ink bottles, or I’ve misjudged my source.”

  This was a new voice, coming from the opposite end of the room. The company turned in a body to look at the stranger who’d appeared from behind the hanging blanket. He was an ugly toad of a man with a polished bald head, wearing a suit that needed a press and a brush.

  “Good Lord, it’s Ruskin! What are you doing so far from—Barbary?”

  The Major’s voice trailed off on the last word. Lizzie had placed a hand on his arm, silencing him.

  “Philip Rittenhouse. I represent the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.” With the air of a man somewhat ashamed of its gaudiness, the stranger opened a leather folder to which was pinned a golden orb engraved on a shield.

  No one moved. Rittenhouse pocketed the badge and stepped forward to seize Johnny’s hand. “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to meet you. I’ve followed your career with keen interest ever since Nebraska. I’m sorry I missed both performances here. Last night I was busy, but I did manage to catch a piece of your act this afternoon; from the back row, as it were. You were in and out of the bank so fast I almost missed you.”

  When he let go of Johnny’s hand, it fell to his side like an empty sleeve. Rittenhouse walked around the silent half circle as if it were a reception line, shaking masculine hands and bowing crisply over feminine ones. “Miss Clay: Brava. Major Davies: I apologize for misrepresenting myself in San Francisco, but thank you for the splendid review. I’d hardly hoped to impress so experienced a pair of thespians as you and Madame Mort-Davies. Madame. Mr. Ragland: Perhaps when Mr. Pinkerton publishes his account of his investigation you’ll consent to look at the galley proof and provide comment. The reading public responds favorably to endorsements by other famous writers.”

  Johnny cleared his throat. The Pinkerton looked at him. There was something beyond amusement in the reptilian face. It was almost the proprietary pride of a sincere admirer watching him step back into character after a profound shock.

  “Mr. Rusthouse—”

  “Rittenhouse; but I think you knew that. You’ve a reputation for committing pages of dialogue to memory swiftly. Floor plans as well.”

  “Rittenhouse. You’ve made an honest blunder. You overheard us rehearsing Mr. Ragland’s new play and drawn the obvious conclusion.”

  “Please pardon the interruption.” Rittenhouse raised his voice. “Come in, Marshal. You have the key.”

  No one but the Pinkerton appeared to have noticed the knock at the door. It opened and Marshal Meager entered, carrying a short-barreled shotgun.

  “I doubt you’ll need that.” Rittenhouse took a step past the chair where the oilcloth sack rested, lifted the Forehand & Wadsworth from the table, and inspected the chambers. “Empty. Stage pistols usually are, unless the script requires blanks to be fired. But then there are no revolvers in Shakespeare.” He slid it into his right side pocket. From the left he drew April’s Remington derringer, balanced it on his palm a moment, then returned it. “Two rounds there, but a lady needs protection. All the more reason not to leave her reticule lying around.”

  April stepped up to Rittenhouse and slapped his cheek. Meagher said, “Hey!” and palmed back the shotgun’s hammers.

  The Pinkerton raised a hand to calm him, then used it to rub the red patch on his sallow skin. “I’ll cherish that, Miss Clay. No woman’s even kissed me, let alone struck me for a cad.”

  “You’re worse than a cad. You’re a detective.”

  “Haw-haw!” barked the Major. “If I had my stick, I’d give him another memory to press between his pages.”

  Rittenhouse picked up the sack suddenly and shook out its contents. They clattered to the floor with a noise that rattled eardrums, but none of the hundred or so squat ink bottles shattered. They were made of thick glass, and although many had no stoppers, no ink spilled out.

  “LaVern Munn, the Longhorn manager, is a frugal man,” he said. “The bank goes through a lot of ink in six months’ time, but he saves the bottles and returns them to a man who comes through twice a year to collect them for the ink company to refill. The company pays him ten cents a pound for the service.” He looked around. “I can tell by your expressions that Mr. Vermillion didn’t take you into his confidence. He seems to enjoy surprising people.”

  “Who told you?” demanded Cornelius.

  “Mr. Munn, when I confronted him with what I’d learned about him from my colleagues in Chicago. Before he emigrated West, our banker friend ran odd jobs there for the late Scipio Africanus McNear, principally delivering graft to the heads of various city departments. He failed to deliver some of it, and fled here to invest his new fortune. Would you care to provide the rest, Mr. McNear?”


  “Vermillion,” Johnny corrected. “There’s no law against being a politician’s son. What’s the penalty for stealing fifty dollars’ worth of empty bottles?”

  “I think we can persuade Marshal Meagher to waive that charge. That is, if his people caught the shipment?” Rittenhouse looked at the lawman.

  “I just got the wire. Dodge City’s got its hands full with a train robbery, but they took it off the nine-fifteen from Wichita. They’re holding it.”

  Johnny seemed to remember then he was still holding his glass of port. He drained it, but the color barely stained his pale cheeks before receding. It was the first time the company had seen him other than saturated with his own confidence. Cornelius turned his head away.

  “Munn’s agreed to testify in return for a shorter sentence,” Rittenhouse went on. “Vermillion threatened to expose his past if he didn’t agree to turn over all the gold and silver in the vault. He was reluctant to bring up the five percent fee Vermillion allowed him for the service, but when I suggested searching the bank and his home, he volunteered that information as well. Once all the figures are tabulated, the examiners will find that Munn has embezzled no small amount on his own from his depositors. That’s why Vermillion staged the robbery, so the sum could be rolled into the loss.

  “The ink bottles were supplied merely to weight the sack and convince any chance eyewitnesses that a robbery had taken place. Munn gave Vermillion the money before the bank opened this morning, and Vermillion put it on the first train, addressed to the Coronet Hotel in Denver, to be held for the Prairie Rose Repertory Company. I got that much from the station agent, who saw to it personally that the large parcel was placed aboard.”