Sleuths

by Bill Pronzini

The captain sighed. "We have no idea of who is guilty, thus no idea of where to find the gold . . . if in fact it is still on board. We haven't the manpower for a search of packet and passengers before our arrival. And afterward—I don't see how we can hope to hold everyone on board while the authorities are summoned and a search mounted. Miners are a hotheaded lot; so are those Irish militiamen. We would likely have a riot on our hands."

  O'Hara had nothing more to say. By all the saints, he wasnot yet ready to admit defeat. He bid the captain and Bridgeman good night, and spent the next hour prowling the decks and cudgeling his brain. It seemed to him that he had seen and heard enough since the robbery to know who it was he was after and where the missing gold could be found. If only he could bring forth one scrap of this knowledge from his memory, he was certain the others would follow.

  Maddeningly, however, no scrap was forthcoming. Not while he prowled the decks, not after he returned to his stateroom (Hattie, he was relieved to find, was already fast asleep)—and not when the first light of dawn crept into the sky beyond the window.

  When the Delta Star came out of one of the snakelike bends in the river and started down the last long reach to Stockton, O'Hara was standing with Hattie at the starboard deckhouse rail. It was just past seven-thirty—a spring-crisp, cloudless St. Patrick's Day morning—and the steamer would dock in another thirty minutes.

  O'Hara was in a foul humor: three-quarters frustration and one-quarter lack of sleep. He had left the stateroom at six o'clock and gone up to the pilothouse and found the captain, Bridgeman, and Chadwick drinking coffee thickened with molasses. They had nothing to tell him. And their humors had been no better than his; it seemed that as a result of O'Hara's failure to perform as advertised, he had fallen out of favor with them.

  Staring down at the slow-moving waters frothed by the sidewheel, he told himself for the thousandth time: Ye've got the answer, ye know ye do. Think, lad! Dredge it up before it's too late.

  A voice beside him said, "Fine morning, isn't it?"

  Irritably O'Hara turned his head and found himself looking into the cheerfully smiling visage of the Nevada newspaperman. The bushy-haired lad's eyes were red-veined from a long night in the Gentlemen's Saloon, but this did not seem to have had any effect on his disposition.

  O'Hara grunted. "Is it?" he said grumpily. "Ye sound as if ye have cause for rejoicing. Did ye win a hatful of specie from the gambler Colfax last night?"

  "Unfortunately, no. I lost a fair sum, as a matter of fact. Gambling is one of my sadder vices, along with a fondness for the social drink. But then, a man may have no bad habits and have worse."

  O'Hara grunted again and looked out over the broad, yellowish land of the San Joaquin Valley.

  The reporter's gaze was on the river. "Clear as a mirror, isn't it?" he said nostalgically. "Not at all like the Mississippi. I remember when I was a boy . . ."

  O'Hara had jerked upright, into a posture as rigid as an obelisk. He stood that way for several seconds. Then he said explosively, "In the name of Patrick and all the saints!"

  Hattie said with alarm in her voice, "Fergus, what is it?"

  O'Hara grinned at her, swung around to the newspaperman and clapped him exuberantly on the shoulder. "Lad, it may yet be a fine a morning. It may yet be, indeed."

  He told Hattie to wait there for him, left her and the bewildered reporter at the rail, and hurried down to the aft stairway. On the weather deck, he moved aft of the texas and stopped before the gallows frame.

  There was no one in the immediate vicinity. O'Hara stepped up close to the frame and eased his head and both arms inside the vent opening, avoiding the machinery of the massive walking-beam. Heat and the heavy odor of cylinder oil assailed him; the throb of the piston was almost deafening.

  With his left hand he felt along the interior wall of the frame, his fingertips encountering a greasy build-up of oil and dust. It was only a few seconds before they located a metal hook screwed into the wood. A new hook, free of grease; he was able to determine that by touching it with the clean fingers of his right hand. Nothing was suspended from the hook, but O'Hara was now certain that something had been during most of the night.

  He was also certain that he knew where it could be found at this very moment.

  When he withdrew his head and arms from the vent opening, grease stained his hands and his coat and shirt sleeves, and he was sweating from the heat. He used his handkerchief, then hastened across to enter the texas. There were identifying plates screwed to the doors of the officers' cabins; he stopped before the one he wanted, drew his coat away from his revolver and laid the fingers of his right hand on its grip. With his left hand he rapped on the door panel.

  There was no response.

  He knocked again, waited, then took out his pocket knife. The door latch yielded in short order to rapid manipulations with one of the blades. He slipped inside and shut the door behind him.

  A brief look around convinced him that the most likely hiding place was a dark corner formed by the single bunkbed and an open-topped wooden tool carrier. And that in fact was where he found what he was looking for: a wide leather belt ornamented with bronze war-issue coins, and a greasy calfskin grip. He drew the bag out, worked at the locked catch with his knife, and got it open.

  The missing gold was inside, in two-score small pouches.

  O'Hara looked at the sacks for several seconds, smiling. Then he found himself thinking of the captain, and of the bank in Stockton that urgently awaited the consignment. He sobered, shook himself mentally. This was neither the time nor the place for rumination; there was still much to be done. He refastened the grip, hefted it, and started to rise.

  Scraping noise on the deck outside. Then the cabin door burst open, and the man whose quarters these were, the man who had stolen the gold, stood framed in the opening.

  Chadwick, the cub pilot.

  Recognition darkened his face with the blood of rage. He growled, "So you found out, did you? You damned Pinkerton meddler!" And he launched himself across the cabin.

  O'Hara moved to draw his revolver too late. By then Chadwick was on him. The young pilot's shoulder struck the carpetbag that O'Hara thrust up defensively, sandwiched it between them as they went crashing into the larboard bulkhead. The impact broke them apart. O'Hara spilled sideways across the bunk, with the grip between his legs, and cracked his head on the rounded projection of wood that served as headboard. An eruption of pain blurred his vision, kept him from reacting as quickly as he might have. Chadwick was on him again before he could disengage himself from the bag.

  A wild blow grazed the side of O'Hara's head. He threw up a forearm, succeeded in warding off a second blow but not a third. That one connected solidly with his jaw, and his vision went cockeyed again.

  He was still conscious, but he seemed to have momentarily lost all power of movement. The flailing weight that was Chadwick lifted from him. There were scuffling sounds, then the sharp running slap of boots receding across the cabin and on the deck outside.

  O'Hara's jaw and the back of his head began a simultaneous and painful throbbing; at the same time strength seemed to flow back into his arms and legs. Shaking his head to clear his vision, he swung off the bunk and let loose with a many-jointed oath that even his grandfather, who had always sworn he could out-cuss Old Nick himself, would have been proud to call his own. When he could see again he realized that Chadwick had caught up the calfskin grip and taken it with him. He hobbled to the door and turned to larboard out of it, the way the running steps had gone.

  Chadwick, hampered by the weight and bulk of the grip, was at the bottom of the aft stairway when O'Hara reached the top. He glanced upward, saw O'Hara, and began to race frantically toward the nearby main-deck staircase. He banged into passengers, scattering them; whirled a fat woman around like a ballerina executing a pirouette and sent the reticule she had been carrying over the rail into the river.

  Men commenced calling in angry voices and milling about as O
'Hara tumbled down the stairs to the deckhouse. A bearded, red-shirted miner stepped into Chadwick's path at the top of the main-deck stairway; without slowing, the cub pilot bowled him over as if he were a giant ninepin and went down the stairs in a headlong dash. O'Hara lurched through the confusion of passengers and descended after him, cursing eloquently all the while.

  Chadwick shoved two startled Chinese Out of the way at the foot of the stairs and raced toward the taffrail, looking back over his shoulder. The bloody fool was going to jump into the river, O'Hara thought. And when he did, the weight of the gold would take both him and the bag straight to the bottom.

  All at once O'Hara became aware that there were not many passengers inhabiting the aft section of the main deck, when there should have been a clotted mass of them. Some of those who were present had heard the commotion on the upper deck and been drawn to the staircase; the rest were split into two groups, one lining the larboard rail and the other lining the starboard, and their attention was held by a different spectacle. Some were murmuring excitedly; others looked amused; still others wore apprehensive expressions. The center section of the deck opposite the taffrail was completely cleared.

  The reason for this was that a small, rusted, and very old half-pounder had been set up on wooden chocks at the taffrail, aimed downriver like an impolitely pointing finger.

  Beside the cannon was a keg of black powder and a charred-looking ramrod.

  And surrounding the cannon were the Mulrooney Guards, one of whom held a firebrand poised above the fuse vent and all of whom were now loudly singing "The Wearing of the Green."

  O'Hara knew in that moment what it was the Mulrooneys had had secreted inside their wooden crate, and why they had been so anxious to get it aboard without having the contents examined; and he knew the meaning of Billy Culligan's remark about planning to start off St. Patrick's day with a mighty salute. He stopped running and opened his mouth to shout at Chadwick, who was still fleeing and still looking back over his shoulder. He could not recall afterward if he actually did shout or not; if so, it was akin to whispering in a thunderstorm.

  The Mulrooney cannoneer touched off the fuse. The other Mulrooney Guards scattered, still singing. The watching passengers huddled farther back, some averting their eyes. Chadwick kept on running toward the taffrail.

  And the cannon, as well as the keg of black powder, promptly blew up.

  The Delta Star lurched and rolled with the sudden concussion. A great sweeping cloud of sulfurous black smoke enveloped the riverboat. O'Hara caught hold of one of the uprights in the starboard rail and clung to it, coughing and choking. Too much black powder and not enough bracing, he thought. Then he thought: I hope Hattie had the good sense to stay where she was on the deckhouse.

  The steamer was in a state of bedlam: everyone on each of the three decks screaming or shouting. Some of the passengers thought a boiler had exploded, a common steamboat hazard. When the smoke finally began to dissipate, O'Hara looked in the direction of the center taffrail and discovered that most of it, like the cannon, was missing. The deck in that area was blackened and scarred, some of the boarding torn into splinters.

  But there did not seem to have been any casualties. A few passengers had received minor injuries, most of them Mulrooney Guards, and several were speckled with black soot. No one had fallen overboard. Even Chadwick had miraculously managed to survive the concussion, despite his proximity to the cannon when it and the powder keg had gone up. He was moaning feebly and moving his arms and legs, looking like a bedraggled chimney sweep, when O'Hara reached his side.

  The grip containing the gold had fared somewhat better. Chadwick had been shielding it with his body at the moment of the blast, and while it was torn open and the leather pouches scattered about, most of the sacks were intact. One or two had split open, and particles of gold dust glittered in the sooty air. The preponderance of passengers were too concerned with their own welfare to notice; those who did stared with disbelief but kept their distance, for no sooner had O'Hara reached Chadwick than the captain and half a dozen of the deck crew arrived.

  "Chadwick?" the captain said in amazement. "Chadwick's the thief?"

  "Aye, he's the one."

  "But . . . what happened? What was he doing here with the gold?"

  "I was chasing him, the spalpeen."

  "You were? Then . . . you knew of his guilt before the explosion? How?"

  "I'll explain it all to ye later," O'Hara said. "Right now there's me wife to consider."

  He left the bewildered captain and his crew to attend to Chadwick and the gold, and went to find Hattie.

  Shortly past nine, an hour after the Delta Star had docked at the foot of Stockton's Center Street, O'Hara stood with Hattie and a group of men on the landing. He wore his last clean suit, a broadcloth, and a bright green tie in honor of St. Patrick's Day. The others, clustered around him, were Bridgeman, the captain, the Nevada reporter, a hawkish man who was Stockton's sheriff, and two officials of the California Merchants Bank. Chadwick had been removed to the local jail in the company of a pair of deputies and a doctor. The Mulrooney Guards, after medical treatment, a severe reprimand, and a promise to pay all damages to the packet, had been released to continue their merrymaking in Green Park.

  The captain was saying, "We are all deeply indebted to you, Mr. O'Hara. It would have been a black day if Chadwick had succeeded in escaping with the gold a black day for us all."

  "I only did me duty," O'Hara said solemnly.

  "It is unfortunate that the California Merchants Bank cannot offer you a reward," one of the bank officials said. "However, we are not a wealthy concern, as our urgent need for the consignment of dust attests. But I don't suppose you could accept a reward in any case; the Pinkertons never do, I'm told."

  "Aye, that's true."

  Bridgeman said, "Will you explain now how you knew Chadwick was the culprit? And how he accomplished the theft? He refused to confess, you know."

  O'Hara nodded. He told them of finding the war-issue coin under the pilothouse stove; his early suspicions of the gambler, Colfax; the reporter's remark that such coins were being used in California to decorate leather goods; his growing certainty that he had seen and heard enough to piece together the truth, and yet his maddening inability to cudgel forth the necessary scraps from his memory.

  "It wasn't until this morning that the doors in me mind finally opened," he said. He looked at the newspaperman. "It was this gentleman that gave me the key."

  The reporter was surprised. "I gave you the key?"

  "Ye did," O'Hara told him. "Ye said of the river: Clear as a mirror, isn't it? Do ye remember saying that, while we were together at the rail?"

  "I do. But I don't see—"

  "It was the word mirror,"O'Hara said. "It caused me to think of reflection, and all at once I was recalling how I'd been able to see me own image in the pilothouse windshield soon after the robbery. Yet Chadwick claimed he was sitting in the pilot's seat when he heard the door open just before he was struck, and that he didn't turn because he thought it was the captain and Mr. Bridgeman returning from supper. But if I was able to see me reflection in the glass, Chadwick would sure have been able to see his—and anybody creeping up behind him.

  "Then I recalled something else: Chadwick had his coat buttoned when I first entered the pilothouse, on a warm night like the last. Why? And why did his trousers look so baggy, as though they might fall down?

  "Well, then, the answer was this: After Chadwick broke open the safe and the strongbox, his problem was what to do with the gold. He couldn't risk a trip to his quarters while he was alone in the pilothouse; he might be seen, and there was also the possibility that the Delta Star would run into a bar or snag if she slipped off course. D'ye recall saying it was a miracle such hadn't happened, Captain, thinking as ye were then that Chadwick had been unconscious for some time?"

  The captain said he did.

  "So Chadwick had to have the gold on his person," O'Hara sa
id, "when you and Mr. Bridgeman found him, and when Hattie and I entered soon afterward. He couldn't have removed it until later, when he claimed to be feeling dizzy and you escorted him to his cabin. That, now, is the significance of the buttoned coat and the baggy trousers.

  "What he must have done was to take off his belt, the wide one decorated with war-issue coins that I found in his cabin, and use it to strap the gold pouches above his waist—a makeshift money belt, ye see. He was in such a rush, for fear of being found out, that he failed to notice when one of the coins popped loose and rolled under the stove.

  "Once he had the pouches secured, he waited until he heard Mr. Bridgeman and the captain returning, the while tending to his piloting duties; then he lay down on the floor and pretended to've been knocked senseless. He kept his loose coat buttoned for fear someone would notice the thickness about his upper middle, and that he was no longer wearing his belt in its proper place; and he kept hitching up his trousers because he wasn't wearing the belt in its proper place."

  Hattie took her husband's arm. "Fergus, what did Chadwick do with the gold afterward? Did he have it hidden in his quarters all along?"

  "No, me lady. I expect he was afraid of a search, so first chance he had he put the gold into the calfskin grip and then hung the grip from a metal hook inside the gallows frame."

  The Stockton sheriff asked, "How could you possibly have deduced that fact?"

  "While in the pilothouse after the robbery," O'Hara said, "I noticed that Chadwick's coat was soiled with dust and soot from his lying on the floor. But it also showed streaks of grease, which couldn't have come from the floor. When the other pieces fell into place this morning, I reasoned that he might have picked up the grease marks while making preparations to hide the gold. My consideration then was that he'd have wanted a place close to his quarters, and the only such place with grease about it was the gallows frame. The hook I discovered inside was new and free of grease; Chadwick, therefore, must have put it there only recently—tonight, in fact, thus accounting for the grease on his coat."