The Plague of Thieves Affair

by Marcia Muller

  “… How do you know that? The body was gone when you were brought to the room.”

  Sabina smiled again. “Detectives have ways of finding out such things.”

  “A match would hardly prove a case against me. The stick Charles used to murder Roland had a similar type of knob.”

  “No, it didn’t. He carried his usual round-knobbed blackthorn stick when he paid his visit yesterday morning.”

  “You can’t know that unless you’ve seen him, talked to him. You’re harboring a murderer—”

  “On the contrary, I’m conversing with one.”

  “It’s Charles’s word against mine. Whom do you suppose the police will believe, a bereaved widow or a madman who masquerades as Sherlock Holmes?”

  “His, if corroborated by mine and by the rest of the case against you. Your motive, for instance.”

  “What motive could I possibly have?”

  “The age-old one—wealth. With your husband dead and Charles the Third judged insane and incarcerated in an asylum, you stand to inherit the Fairchild millions as next of kin by marriage. You planned all along to dispose of Roland and frame his cousin for the crime. That is why you traveled to San Francisco with your husband, why you were so insistent that Charles be located and induced to meet privately with him.”

  “Conjecture. Sheer conjecture.”

  “When Charles left your hotel room yesterday, you picked up Roland’s stick, brained him with it, then changed clothing and began screaming to attract attention. That is the way it happened, isn’t it?”

  “More ridiculous conjecture. You have no proof of any of this!”

  “You’re forgetting the gash on your cheek.”

  “What about it? It came from Charles’s stick when he attacked me.”

  “No, it didn’t. He never attacked you. It was your husband who gashed your cheek in an effort to ward off your attack on him.”

  “A scurrilous lie—”

  “A fact, a provable fact. He inflicted the wound with two downward-hooked fingers on his right hand. You neglected to clean the skin and blood from beneath the nails on those two fingers. They’re still there and can be matched to the gash.”

  Fissures had formed in the ice mask now. Even the eyes were no longer a glacial blue. The woman’s fury had shifted from cold to hot, an inner fire that was melting the exterior chill.

  “So you see, Mrs. Fairchild?” Sabina said. “That one fact alone is sufficient to cast serious doubt on the validity of your story. Combined with my testimony and that of the man you sought to frame, you stand no chance of getting away with your crime.”

  “The police … do they know any of this yet?”

  “No, but they soon will.”

  “Have you told anyone else?”

  “Only Charles.”

  “No one will pay heed to him.”

  “But the police will pay heed to me. I guarantee it. Why maintain your pretense of innocence? Why not admit the truth?”

  More of the ice melted; the blue eyes held a fiery glow now. “Damn you, why don’t you drop your pretense. How much do you want to keep silent? Ten thousand dollars?”

  Sabina shook her head.

  “Twenty thousand? Fifty?”

  “You couldn’t buy my silence for ten times fifty thousand dollars. I can’t be bought, Mrs. Fairchild. Your only hope is to admit the truth. To me, to Lieutenant McGinn. Admit that you murdered your husband. Admit your guilt.”

  All the ice was gone now; the woman’s face was contorted with a feverish rage.

  “Admit it,” Sabina said relentlessly. “Admit that you bashed his brains in with his own stick. Admit—”

  “All right! Yes! I killed him, I bashed his brains in and I’m glad of it! He was a failure and a cheat and a bully and I loathed him!”

  The eruptive confession brought Sabina halfway out of her chair. But her elation turned to sudden dismay, for Octavia Fairchild had withdrawn a small-caliber pistol from her coat pocket.

  Sight of the steadily pointed weapon froze Sabina. She could have kicked herself for not anticipating the possibility that Octavia Fairchild might have come here armed. Both her hands were clutching the desk edge; she let the right one slide off slowly, move downward to the partially open middle drawer.

  “But you’ll never tell anyone!” the woman cried. “You’ll be as dead as Roland and no one will believe that lunatic Charles!”

  Sabina’s heart skipped a beat as her fingers touched the Remington derringer. Could she draw and fire it in time to save her life?

  She was never to know the answer. For in that moment, the alcove door flew open and out, bless him, came that lunatic Charles.

  What happened next came so swiftly that it was almost a blur. He entered the office in a rush, his blackthorn stick upraised and flicking the air. Octavia Fairchild swung toward him, but she had no time to fire her pistol. In two slashing strokes Charles disarmed her: the first smacked her wrist and elicited a sharp cry of pain, the second, driven up underneath, popped the pistol free of her grasp and into an arc that allowed him to catch it deftly in midair with his free hand.

  “Lunatic, indeed!” he snapped indignantly. “Charles, indeed! Holmes is the name, Sherlock Holmes, acknowledged expert at singlestick”—he waggled the blackthorn for emphasis—“as well as the use of sword, riding crop, and baritsu.”

  Sabina sank down into her chair; she had faced a handgun twice before in her years as a detective, but in neither instance had she come so close to being shot, and her knees were understandably a little shaky. Edward Boone, who had also emerged from the alcove, stood gawping at Charles. So did Octavia Fairchild, clutching her wrist and grimacing in pain, but only for a few seconds. Then, all at once, she melted completely. Collapsed to the floor and puddled there, her face buried in her arms, tears of self-pity staining the sleeves of her brand-new muskrat coat.

  “Now then,” Sherlock Holmes said, “I will summon the police and finis will be written to, as the good Doctor Watson might have it, the Adventure of the Wronged Detective.”

  24

  QUINCANNON

  It was evening when he returned to the city. His arrival at the Ferry House would have been much later if he hadn’t been fortunate in boarding the last southbound train just as it was leaving Los Alegres and then the ferry just as it was departing Sausalito.

  He’d had plenty of time on the trip to decide on a way to accomplish the final phase of his mission. The one he settled on required immediate action, which meant postponing the night’s rest his body craved after the long, wearying day. It also required breaking of the law (though only technically, in his view), and its success depended on his powers of persuasion and a not inconsiderable amount of luck. The risk bothered him not at all—he didn’t exactly thrive on danger, but neither did he shy away from it—and it was the only method of recovering the stolen steam beer formula that did not involve violence. Besides which, if it could be accomplished it would provide an added element of satisfaction to the closing of the Golden State case.

  Outside the Ferry House he boarded a Market Street trolley and rode it to Fourteenth Street. From there he walked three blocks and turned onto Capp, a narrow residential street that contained facing rows of modest Victorian Stick–style houses. Light showed in the front windows of the fifth in the row on the south side. This one had been occupied by Slick Fingers Sam Rigsby and his wife for the past dozen or so years—except, that was, for the three years Slick Fingers had spent in Folsom Prison. It had been more than twelve months since Quincannon had had any contact with the man; if providence was with him, the Rigsbys would still be in residence.

  It was and they were. The door was opened in answer to his turn of the bell by Anna Rigsby, a middle-aged harridan with the face of a dyspeptic mule and a disposition to match. Her mouth pinched into a lemony pucker when she recognized him. Her obvious dislike stemmed from the fact that Quincannon had been responsible for the three years her husband had spent as a guest of the
state. Slick Fingers, on the other hand, held no grudge. Quincannon had spoken on his behalf at his trial, requesting leniency because Rigsby had been coerced by his two partners into taking part in the abortive bank caper, and as a result the judge had imposed the minimum sentence.

  “Oh, it’s you, is it,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re here to arrest Rigsby again?”

  “On the contrary. Is he home?”

  “What do you want with him?”

  “A private conversation on a matter beneficial to both of us.”

  “Hah. Double-talk. Say it out plain or you don’t come in.”

  “An offer of money—a sizable sum if he accepts a proposition I have for him. Plain enough?”

  Her eyes took on an avaricious glitter. “Plain enough,” she said, and stood aside. Then, when Quincannon had entered the vestibule, “He’s in the back bedroom working on another of his fool gadgets. Down the hall there, second door on the right.”

  The house smelled of a none-too-pleasant blend of boiled cabbage, cooked fish, dust, and dry rot. Mouth-breathing, he went along the hallway, the floorboards creaking ominously under his weight. The second door on the right stood ajar; he pushed it inward and stepped through.

  “Good evening, Slick Fingers.”

  Rigsby was seated at a table on which was spread an array of tools, a soldering iron, metal rods and plates of various sizes, and other objects which Quincannon neither could nor cared to identify. Slick Fingers, in addition to his primary source of income, fancied himself an inventor. He tinkered continually with this or that mysterious contraption, none of which, so far as Quincannon knew, had ever earned him a dime.

  He looked up, registered startlement and flickers of anxiety, started to stand, changed his mind, and sighed gustily as he sank back in his chair. A slender gent of some fifty hard-lived years, he had two distinguishing features: protuberant jumbo ears and large hands with long, spatulate fingers, both of which figured prominently in the plying of his chosen trade. He regarded Quincannon in a wary, defeated way, the expression of a man expecting to hear the voice of doom.

  “I ain’t done nothing,” he said, his nervousness and his shifty gaze belying the words. “No box jobs since I got out of Folsom. I learned my lesson, I’m out of the game for good. Handyman work now when I can get it, that’s all until I sell one of my inventions. Clean as a whistle.”

  “You needn’t try to snow me. Once a box man, always a box man. And still the best in the business, I’ll wager.”

  Slick Fingers almost but not quite managed to conceal his pride at the compliment. “What is it you want, Mr. Quincannon?”

  Quincannon shut the door behind him before he answered. “Your expertise and a few hours of your time, in order to right a wrong. For which you’ll be well paid.”

  “I don’t see what— Wait a minute. You ain’t here to offer me a box job?”

  “That’s precisely why I’m here.”

  “What kind? Legit?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You mean you want me to crack a safe and steal what’s in it?”

  “Something in it, yes.”

  Slick Fingers shook his head, as if the proposition had rattled his senses. “Geez,” he said, “I never figured you for a thief.”

  Quincannon winced, recalling his righteous thought in Caleb Lansing’s rooms that he was many things but a thief wasn’t one of them. “Extenuating circumstances demand it,” he said, as much in self-defense as explanation to Rigsby. A man was not a thief, after all, if he had no intention of realizing illegal profits from the commission of an unlawful act.

  “What is it you want swiped?”

  “One or two pieces of paper.” Assuming the formula was still in Cyrus Drinkwater’s office safe, but the odds were good that it was. The old reprobate had no real cause yet to have moved it elsewhere, nor to have had it copied. Though he might well do one or both when he got wind of Elias Corby’s arrest. Immediate action, therefore, was imperative.

  “No money or other valuables?”

  “Just the paper or papers, nothing more.”

  “You mind if I ask why?”

  “I told you. To right a wrong.”

  “No, I mean why you picked me for the job?”

  “Because you’re the best box man in California. And a closemouthed fellow when a job’s done and a proper price paid for it.”

  The same sort of avarice that had been in his wife’s eyes sparked the cracksman’s. “How much?”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars,” Quincannon said. He could afford to be generous; James Willard would be the one to foot the bill.

  The figure made Slick Fingers suck in his breath. “That’s a lot of lettuce. You must want them papers pretty bad.”

  “I do, in order to close a case. Well? Is the fee enough to put you back in the game?”

  “I dunno, I got to think about it. What kind of box is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Well, Jesus, Mr. Quincannon…”

  “Does it matter? You’ve been known to brag that there’s not a safe made you can’t crack.”

  “Yeah, sure, that’s true,” Slick Fingers said. “But I got to have some idea what I’m dealing with. If it’s one of these so-called burglarproof boxes they’re manufacturing nowadays, likely you got to blow the door to open it up. That takes a lot of work. And I don’t work with soup, you know that.”

  “I wouldn’t want it blown open no matter what kind it is. Given the location, this job has to be done with as little noise as possible. And without damage to the safe.”

  “What’s the location?”

  “An office in a building near Civic Center.”

  “Whoa.” Slick Fingers held up both hands, palms outward. “Office building, Civic Center … public places like that are too hard to get into.”

  “Not for me.”

  “You mean you got a key?”

  “I don’t need a key. I’ll have no trouble getting us in.”

  “Us? You’d be there, too?”

  “The entire time,” Quincannon said. “Inside the building, inside the office. All you have to do is open the safe.”

  “If I can.” Rigsby scratched his long fingers through the remaining few strands of hair clinging to his scalp. Then he said musingly, half to himself, “Downtown office … so it won’t be an old box, the kind you can crack with a hammer. A hammer’s out anyway … no noise, no damage. Won’t need to take my kit, just a dark lantern and a stethoscope, and hope it’s a box with a rotary combination dial.”

  A cracksman’s kit, Quincannon knew, was a small valise packed with a carpenter’s hand brace, the drill bits known as “dan” and “stems,” a ball-peen hammer, and a pinch bar, among other items. He said, “Most safes have rotary combination dials, don’t they?”

  “Most.”

  “Then chances are this one will, too. And opening one of that type by ear and touch is your specialty. Slick Fingers Sam Rigsby, the best lock manipulator in the state.”

  “Hell, in the entire West.”

  “Are you in, then?”

  “When’s the job to be?”

  “Tonight. Late.”

  “Tonight! Does it have to be so soon?”

  “Yes. There’s no time to waste.”

  Slick Fingers ruminated in silence for a clutch of seconds. Then he said, “Suppose the box is one I can’t crack by taking the high road.” Meaning his specialty method of lock manipulation; the use of tools and brute strength was considered the “low road” in safecracking. “Do I still get the two-fifty?”

  “You do.”

  “Guaranteed? Word of honor?”

  “Guaranteed. Word of honor.”

  The promise made up the cracksman’s mind for him. “All right, Mr. Quincannon,” he said. “You talked me into it. I just hope I ain’t gonna live to regret it.”

  So did Quincannon.

  * * *

  Three A.M.

  Neither veh
icle nor pedestrian was abroad on the block of Turk Street where Cyrus Drinkwater’s office was located. A sharp night wind blew scraps of paper like will-o’-the-wisps along the empty passage. Electroliers cut pale strips of light out of the darkness, but the puddles of illumination on the cobblestones and sidewalks only deepened the shadows around them. All the windows in the two-story brick building were dark. Those in Drinkwater’s office above appeared to be curtained or blinded, though Quincannon couldn’t be absolutely sure from street level.

  He went to work on the door latch with his lock picks, Slick Fingers beside him in the doorway keeping watch for a beat patrolman or anyone else who might happen along. No one did in the two minutes it took Quincannon to snap the last of the tumblers into place. He opened the door, led the way quickly inside the small lobby.

  There was a single elevator, he recalled, in the left-hand wall and a staircase at the rear. He flicked a lucifer alight with his thumbnail, shielding the flare with his other hand, and used it to guide the way to the stairs before blowing it out. They climbed to the second floor in total blackness. Once there, he whispered, “To the right,” and turned in that direction, Slick Fingers close behind him. Drinkwater’s office, one of six in the building, took up the far right-hand corner, its windows overlooking both Turk and Hyde.

  A few strides clear of the stairs, Quincannon halted and fired another match, again shielding the glow with his free hand. “Light your lantern here,” he said.

  Rigsby went to one knee, took the small dark lantern from under his coat, and opened the shutter. Quincannon quickly lit the wick, shook out the lucifer as Slick Fingers lowered the shutter again—not quite all the way, allowing a sliver of a beam. By its glow they went ahead to Drinkwater’s door.

  It took Quincannon even less time to pick the lock here. Before they entered, Rigsby completely shuttered the lantern’s eye. The darkness inside the outer office was complete, which meant that the windows were fully covered. He said as much to Slick Fingers, who then reopened the lantern to a slit.

  The safe was not in this room; Quincannon would have noticed it on his previous visit if it were. The door to Drinkwater’s private sanctum was to the left, beyond a rail divider and his secretary’s desk. It wasn’t locked. Again, before entering, Slick Fingers extinguished his light—a precaution that once more proved to be unnecessary. The Hyde Street windows were also covered. Drinkwater had a fetish for the color maroon; the drapes and deep pile carpet were all of that dark red shade.