The Bags of Tricks Affair--A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery

by Bill Pronzini

  The one thing he made sure to do before departing Delford was to collect the balance of his fee from Aram Kasabian. The banker insisted on paying him in cash rather than by check, which was fine with Quincannon. There was nothing so comforting as the feel of crisp new greenbacks. Nothing, that was, except for the feel of Sabina in his arms.

  19

  QUINCANNON

  Frustration dogged him on the return trip. The slow freight ran nearly half an hour late leaving Delford, and the delay might well have caused him to miss the westbound passenger train except that it, too, was running late—more than an hour late by the time it reached Stockton. And for one reason or another, the blasted rattler was yet another twenty-five minutes behind schedule when it chuffed into the Third and Townsend depot. A pox on Southern Pacific! He would write them a letter of complaint, not that it was likely to have any positive effect.

  His Hampden stem-winder gave the time as 10:15 when he climbed into one of the waiting cabs. Too late to go calling on Sabina tonight. He’d struggled with the decision, but as much as he wanted to satisfy himself that all was well with her, it would take half an hour to reach her flat and she might be in bed asleep by the time he got there. She would not take kindly to receiving him at such a late hour, particularly in his tired, rumpled, sweat-dampened, and rather malodorous condition. The slow freight had been loaded with cattle, and the caboose, in which he’d ridden with the brakeman, anything but spotlessly maintained.

  He gave the driver his home address on Leavenworth.

  As tired as he was, he slept a full eight hours. After coffee and a light breakfast, he rode a trolley to Russian Hill. Sabina didn’t answer her bell. Well, that was nothing to be concerned about. She might have gone to church, or to visit Callie French, or resumed her Sunday bicycle outings with Amity Wellman in Golden Gate Park.

  Another trolley took him downtown to Market Street. When he entered the agency, he found a scatter of mail on the floor under the door slot—Saturday’s delivery. It would not have been there if Sabina had come into the office yesterday. Not that it was unusual that she hadn’t; only the press of business brought her in on Saturdays. A brief, undated note on his desk blotter, anticipating his return with the statement that she was closing up half an hour early in order to attend a Voting Rights for Women supper, must have been written late Friday afternoon.

  No cause for alarm in any of that, but there was cause, by God, in three other items he discovered.

  The first was among the mail, a hand-delivered envelope addressed to Sabina. Under the letterhead of James Pollard, Great Western Insurance’s chief claims adjuster, and bearing yesterday’s date, were a dozen lines taking her to task for failing to keep their ten o’clock appointment. He had attempted to telephone her and then waited in his office until noon, he wrote, and unless she presented him with an acceptable excuse first thing Monday morning, he would give the injury claim to another investigative agency.

  Sabina was punctual to a fault. And Quincannon had never known her not to give notification if circumstances prevented her from keeping an appointment with a client, especially a regular one such as Pollard.

  He hardly ever snooped in her desk, but Pollard’s missive drove him to it. That was where he found the two wires, in a bottom drawer beneath a report of a two-day investigation she had successfully conducted while he was away. The first wire, from Pinkerton’s New Orleans office detailing the suspected crimes of Jeffrey Gaunt and Lady One-Eye, was disturbing enough. The date on it indicated it had been delivered before his departure for Delford. Why hadn’t she shown it to him? To spare him what she felt was undue concern?

  The second wire, from Sheriff Hezekiah Thorpe informing them of Lady One-Eye’s imminent trial date and Gaunt’s sudden disappearance, must have arrived while he was in Delford and increased his anxiety twofold. “Whereabouts unknown”—an ominous phrase. Where else would that blackguard have gone but here to San Francisco?

  Dark thoughts tumbled through Quincannon’s mind. If Gaunt harmed a hair on Sabina’s head—!

  Steady now, he told himself, don’t go off half-cocked. She’s all right, Gaunt hasn’t done anything to her yet. Find her, make sure she’s safe. Then track him down and neutralize his threat one way or another.

  Rather than continuing to rely on public transportation, he went to the United Carriage Company office outside the Palace Hotel, where he arranged to rent a small hooded buggy and a good horse—damn the expense. A cab delivered him to the company’s stables on Eighth Street where he claimed the equipage. From there he drove back to the foot of Russian Hill.

  Sabina still had not returned. He rang the bell of the other flat in the building, in the hope that one or both of the occupants, a young married couple named Christopher, had seen her recently. As blasted luck would have it, they were also away.

  He drove to Hyde Street, where Elizabeth Petrie resided. The former police matron was home, but she had nothing to tell him. She hadn’t had any contact with Sabina other than a brief telephone conversation shortly after their return from Grass Valley.

  Callie and Hugh French’s home on Van Ness Avenue drew him next. Sabina’s cousin, dressed in Sunday lounging clothes, greeted him effusively. Through a smile that felt pasted on, he told her he had just returned from a three-day business trip to the San Joaquin Valley and was eager to confer with Sabina. She wasn’t at her flat; had Callie seen her today?

  “No, not since our luncheon on Thursday,” she said. Then, with keen perception, “You seem worried, John. Is everything all right?”

  “Worried? No, not about Sabina,” he lied. “I’m just eager to see her. Have you any idea where she might be?”

  “None, I’m afraid.”

  “She didn’t indicate any plans for the weekend when you lunched with her?”

  “No. John … are you sure there’s no cause for concern?”

  “Not in the way you mean. You needn’t worry.”

  “Well, if you say so. But your and dear Sabina’s profession frightens me sometimes. After what happened to her late husband and all the dangers you and she have faced together…”

  Callie’s fretting only served to increase his anxiety. He patted her hand, said something mundanely reassuring, and made a hasty exit.

  Amity Wellman and her husband, a well-known dealer in Spanish antiques, resided on Telegraph Hill. Quincannon went there next. Kamiko, the Wellmans’ adopted Japanese daughter, answered his ring and his questions. Mrs. Wellman was not at home, she had gone bicycling in Golden Gate Park, as was her custom on Sundays. Yes, she had mentioned having seen Mrs. Carpenter on Friday evening, at the Voting Rights for Women supper, and that they had arranged to ride together today.

  This relieved him, but only until he reached the Golden Gate Ladies Bicycle Club on Clayton Street near the Panhandle. The woman on duty there knew Sabina, but said she hadn’t appeared today as expected; Mrs. Wellman had waited half an hour for her before riding off to join the other members of the club.

  Tense, frustrated, Quincannon waited nearly an hour for Amity Wellman’s return, sitting in the rented buggy and smoking pipeful after pipeful of shag cut until his mouth and throat were scorched raw. Mrs. Wellman, a slender, handsome woman with hair the color of taffy, was surprised to see him since they had never met in person before. She expressed dismay at Sabina’s failure to keep their date; Sabina had been enthusiastic about resuming their Sunday rides together, she said, and in good spirits when they parted after the Friday-night supper.

  “There must be a good reason why she didn’t come today,” Mrs. Wellman said. “An urgent business matter that came up suddenly, perhaps.”

  Quincannon recalled the report he’d found in her desk of her recent two-day investigation. He’d only glanced through it, but he recognized the prominent client’s name, Joshua Brandywine, and remembered the man’s address on Nob Hill. Could something related to that case have required an urgent follow-up on Sabina’s part? A slim possibility, since she ha
d marked it “Closed,” but he had no other leads to check.

  The menswear magnate was home, but he refused an audience with Quincannon. He sent word by way of a dour-faced housekeeper that he hadn’t seen Mrs. Carpenter since Friday morning, and furthermore wanted nothing more to do with her or Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. Whatever had happened to ruffle Brandywine’s feathers couldn’t have been Sabina’s doing; she took pains to be civil with clients, and if there had been a contretemps of any import she would have mentioned it in her report. Dead end. The Brandywine case had nothing to do with her disappearance.

  Evening was coming on now. With nowhere else to go, he drove once more to Russian Hill. Ringing Sabina’s bell proved as futile as the previous two times. So did another attempt to summon the Christophers.

  Desperation led him to do then what he would never have done under normal circumstances: invade the sanctity of her home. If Gaunt was not responsible for her absence and she learned of his intrusion, she might never forgive him. But he had to know if everything was as it should be inside her flat. There might even be something there that would explain her failure to keep the appointment with Amity Wellman.

  The lock on her door was not as easy to pick as most, but he’d expected this: she was as security conscious as he. Quincannon had to work at it for several minutes before the tumblers finally released. He stepped quickly inside, to be greeted by a pair of mewling cats. He cudgeled his memory for their names … Adam and Eve. This was the first time he had seen either of them, never yet having been invited inside Sabina’s private domain. On all their social outings to date, she had greeted him at the door and parted from him afterward on the front porch.

  He made a swift check of each of the flat’s four rooms. That all were empty and showed no signs of disorder was a temporary relief, tempered by the flat’s faintly musty odor and then ended by the cats’ behavior. They kept following him, mewling loudly all the while—cries of hunger, he realized, when he saw their licked-clean food bowls in the kitchen. How long since they’d been fed? At least a day, likely two or more. Sabina would never have abandoned them without making arrangements for feeding, no matter how urgent a new investigation that might have come her way.

  The sense of dread seized him again. Something had happened to her, Friday night or early Saturday. There could be little doubt of it now.

  Gaunt. Accosted by that goddamned rogue somewhere in the city. But he hadn’t silenced her, not yet. She was alive, she had to be. He refused to think otherwise.

  Adam’s and Eve’s cries grated on Quincannon’s nerves. He found a bottle of milk and a package of liver in the icebox, filled their bowls to the brim. Then he commenced a search, looking for anything that might give him a clue to what had happened to her.

  A Wooton secretary-desk in the parlor yielded nothing except private papers. In different circumstances he would have been reassured of his position in her affections by the fact that none of the letters she’d kept bore a man’s signature; now, he barely noticed. There was nothing in any of the other rooms, either.

  Quincannon reset the door lock when he left the flat, hurried downstairs. When he emerged onto the porch, he encountered the Christophers, Everett and Letitia, just returning from their day’s outing. He assumed a neutral expression as they met at the foot of the steps.

  “Mrs. Carpenter isn’t home,” he said, “and I very much need to speak with her. Would you have any idea where she might be?”

  Plump, dark-haired Letitia Christopher said, “I’m sorry, no. We’ve been away all day visiting my mother in Oakland.”

  “When did you last see Mrs. Carpenter?”

  “Well … I’m not quite sure.”

  “At any time yesterday?”

  “No. It must be, oh, three days.”

  “At least that,” her husband said.

  “Did you happen to notice if her lamps were lighted last night or Friday night?”

  They hadn’t. Good neighbors, the sort that tended to their own affairs and respected the privacy of others. Hell, damn, and blast!

  Quincannon bid them good evening, climbed into the rented buggy. And sat there, his large hands gripping the reins almost as tightly as he would have gripped Jeffrey Gaunt’s neck.

  What now? Maintaining a passive vigil here was out of the question. Even if he’d had the patience for it, it would surely prove futile. Sabina was not going to come to him under her own power, not tonight, not at any time in the foreseeable future. He had to find her. And to do that, he had to find Gaunt. How to accomplish it, where to begin? Formidable task in a city this size, one that seemed insurmountable.

  But it wasn’t—he wouldn’t let it be.

  She had to be somewhere.

  Where?

  20

  SABINA

  At first she’d had no idea where she was imprisoned. Now she did, after two long, miserable days and a third just beginning, but the knowledge did her no good. She still had not found a possible means of escape.

  She had run a gamut of emotions during that interminable period. Disorientation when she’d awakened on a filthy cot after God only knew how many hours of unconsciousness, her head aching abominably, her mouth dry and her throat parched—the aftereffects of the ether. Confusion when her vision cleared enough to penetrate the gloom of her surroundings. Bewilderment that she had been brought to a place like this and left here alone. Fear that she had overcome and continued to hold at bay by sheer force of will. Disgust at herself for not paying closer heed to John’s concerns, the lapse in caution that had allowed Jeffrey Gaunt to catch her as he had. Anger at him that had grown into an alternately hot and cold, sustaining fury.

  Except for the ether, he hadn’t abused her in any other way. Her body bore no marks or wounds, and her clothing was intact, hardly disarrayed at all, when she awakened. And there had been no sign of him since; he had left her completely alone in this place with no food, no water, not even a blanket to help take away the night’s chill.

  He had locked her in here to die.

  Why, instead of simply doing away with her by gunshot or some other lethal means? Initially she’d thought that he might be squeamish about killing a woman in a direct confrontation, and so by employing this method he avoided blood on his hands. Now she was convinced that the kidnapping and imprisonment were by coldly calculated design. His pose as a Southern gentleman disguised his true nature—a sadistic shell of a man lacking all human feeling other than his warped protective love for his sister.

  If Sabina simply disappeared, foul play could not be proven against him. And when she failed to appear to give her damning testimony at Lady One-Eye’s trial, the chances of acquittal would increase considerably. He would then have his revenge and his sister’s freedom, both. And once again he would get away with cold-blooded murder, damn his black soul, for there could be little doubt now that he was responsible for the deaths of the gambler in New Orleans and the landowner in San Antonio.

  One other emotion had been born of this understanding—an unwavering determination not to let his plan succeed. She would not die in this foul place. She would not. She would not.

  And foul it was, literally. Cold, damp, dirty, rife with an array of rank odors that she had identified one by one: salt water, rotting wood, dust, paint, linseed oil, turpentine, rodent and bird droppings. Rife with sounds, too: the creaks and groans of old wood, the lapping of water close by outside, the chittering and scurrying of rats. Sabina had seen some of them, red-eyed shadows flitting through the daytime gloom.

  The long nights were the worst. She lay wrapped cocoonlike in her evening cape, sleeping only fitfully for short periods before some sound brought her awake. Her loathing for rats was not as intense as in many women, those who would cower and swoon at the mere thought of a rodent large or small, but when she heard the creatures moving in the thick darkness she couldn’t help imagining that they were about to pounce on her, tear into her flesh with their sharp teeth
and claws.

  Rationally she knew this would not happen—not yet. Despite more than two days without food and water, she had lost little of her strength. Whenever one of the rats seemed to venture too close, she hammered the floor with the length of rusty pipe she’d found to frighten it away. But if she remained trapped here another two, three, four days, the rats would sense her weakening condition and eventually they would attack.

  Hunger was bad enough, painfully cramping her empty stomach, but thirst was worse by far. Her mouth and throat were so arid this morning she had difficulty swallowing. And the dampness and sinus-clogging dust made breathing painful.

  As on the previous two mornings, it had been the moans of foghorns mounted on buoys in the bay and the shrieks of seagulls that had awakened her. She lay shivering until a paroxysm of dry coughing prodded her into a sitting position. When it subsided she stood, adjusted her now filthy cape with cracked and blistered fingers, then spent a little time flexing her arms and legs to free them of stiffness.

  She could see well enough again now that the night had ended. There was a ragged, foot-wide hole in the roof—possibly created or enlarged by the small marsh birds nesting in the rafters, or by gulls trying to get at eggs in the nest—that admitted a funnel of daylight. And a score of thin threads and ribbons of gray daylight came through chinks in the warped wooden walls. Heavy shadows still crouched in corners and among the rafters, shrouded the contents of the cavernous building.

  Her explorations had identified it for her. It was or had been a repair shop for boats, the rear half of the warehouse section built on pilings. An isolated derelict situated at the edge of the bay—the salt smell that permeated the structure and the lapping of wavelets beneath the floorboards told her that—but just where she couldn’t be sure.