“Oh . . . you wanted to . . . know what she said. Lemme see now . . . what was it . . .”
John Henry clenched his teeth and resisted the impulse to grab the bellboy’s shoulders and try to shake the words out faster.
“Oh, yeah . . . She told the fella . . . she told the fella to take her . . . to the train station.”
“Thanks!” John Henry called over his shoulder as he broke into a run for the hotel’s front door. Behind him, the clerk and the bellboy stared after him. The bellboy’s head moved back and forth as if he were shaking it in amazement that anybody could move that fast.
“The train station!” John Henry told Wing Sun’s driver as he swung up into the carriage.
When the man hesitated at taking John Henry’s orders, Wing Sun leaned from one of the carriage’s windows and spoke to him sharply in Chinese. The vehicle lurched into motion, throwing John Henry onto the rear seat where Wing Sun was. She surprised him by turning toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pressing her mouth to his.
“What was that for?” John Henry asked when Wing Sun broke the kiss. “I thought we were already square when it comes to saving each other’s lives.”
“We are,” she said. “But I’ve been wanting to kiss you, and the way this night has been going I didn’t know if I’d get another chance.”
She had a point there, and the whole thing had been pleasant enough that he thought it was worth doing again. Since it was going to take several minutes to reach the train station, he put his arms around her and urged her lips back toward his.
When the carriage rocked to a stop in front of the station, Wing Sun said a little breathlessly, “I’m coming with you this time. I know you’re worried that this Smith woman has some sort of gang with her, but there’s not going to be a gun battle in the middle of the train station.”
John Henry didn’t figure they could be sure of that, but he wasn’t going to waste time arguing. He said, “Come on. Maybe you’d better bring those two hombres who work for your father, too.”
With the driver and the guard following closely behind them, John Henry and Wing Sun trotted into the depot. There were quite a few people around, even at this late hour. John Henry’s gaze darted around the big, cavernous lobby as he searched for Penelope Smith.
“I don’t see her,” Wing Sun said.
“Neither do I,” John Henry said. He headed for the row of ticket windows.
Once again the sight of his badge brought immediate cooperation. Three ticket clerks were on duty at the moment. John Henry gathered all of them behind one of the windows and described Penelope to them.
“I’m pretty sure I sold a ticket to a woman who looked like that,” one of the men said. “About twenty minutes ago, it was.”
“Do you know where she is now?” John Henry asked.
“On her way to San Francisco, I suppose. She barely made the train.”
John Henry drew in a deep breath and blew it out in an exasperated sigh. So close. So blasted close.
“She got on the train by herself, did she?”
“As far as I know, Marshal.” The ticket clerk paused. “She wasn’t the only one who cut it close, though. A fella came along and jumped on the train just as it was pulling out. He’ll have to buy his ticket from the conductor, or get thrown off at the next stop.”
Lawman’s instinct made John Henry ask, “What did he look like, the man who almost missed the train?”
“I didn’t really get that good a look at him. He was big, though, and well dressed, I know that. Good-looking in a way, I guess, although I’m no judge of that. Oh, and he had dark hair, I’m pretty sure of that. Clean-shaven.”
That description could fit dozens, if not hundreds of men in Los Angeles, John Henry thought.
But it also fit somebody he had seen earlier tonight at Matteo Campos’s villa, and John Henry couldn’t help but wonder if it was the same man.
He was thinking about Nick Prentice, who had sat in on that high-stakes game.
Maybe Prentice had been playing a game with even higher stakes.
“What are you going to do now?” Wing Sun asked.
“There’s only one thing I can do,” John Henry replied as he shook his head. “Reckon I’m going to need a ticket on the next train to San Francisco.”
Chapter Eighteen
He could tell that Wing Sun wanted to come with him, but that just wasn’t feasible, not with war looming in Los Angeles’s Chinatown. She knew that, too.
“My father will need me by his side,” she said while they waited at the train station for her carriage to return from John Henry’s hotel. She had sent her father’s men to the hotel to fetch John Henry’s gear, what little of it there was. He was looking forward to putting on some clean clothes as soon as he got the chance.
“I know that,” he told her. “The Black Lotus’s place is here, after all. You came all the way from China to be with your father. You can’t run out on him.”
“If not for the trouble with Ling Yuan . . .”
“I know.”
John Henry put his hand under her chin and tilted her head back slightly so he could meet the gaze of her dark, compelling eyes. He didn’t have to look down much, since she was almost as tall as he was.
“I might be coming back this way, once this case is over. You can’t ever tell.”
“If fate smiles and you do come back, you know now where to find me. And the talisman I gave you will keep you safe no matter where you go in Chinatown.”
“I’ll remember that,” John Henry promised.
The next northbound train left at four in the morning. After he said good-bye to Wing Sun, John Henry dozed on one of the benches in the station lobby and thought about everything that had happened.
The only thing he felt reasonably certain about was that Penelope Smith was part of the counterfeiting ring. She had to be working for Ignatius O’Reilly, distributing the phony bills to confederates such as Quentin Ross. John Henry didn’t know how Ross had gotten involved, whether through sheer greed or if Penelope had seduced him into taking part in the operation.
That mystery would probably never be solved since Ross was dead, and it didn’t really matter anyway. The important thing now was to catch up to Penelope, stop her before she could spread more of the bogus bills, and use her to lead him to the mastermind, O’Reilly.
John Henry’s thoughts turned to Nick Prentice. His involvement was a lot more uncertain. The man who had caught the train for San Francisco at the last moment—in pursuit of Penelope?—might have been Prentice, or it might have been someone else entirely. He might not have any connection with the case at all.
But if it had been Prentice, was he really pursuing Penelope? Or was he her partner, who had been delayed for some reason and almost missed the train? John Henry had no way of knowing if either of those scenarios was true.
Again, the only way to know for sure was to catch up to Penelope and force her to talk.
The time passed slowly. John Henry had never been the sort of man to be content just sitting and waiting. He always wanted to be doing something.
At last a conductor in blue walked through the lobby and called out that the northbound was now boarding. The place was mostly empty at this early hour of the morning, but half a dozen people got up from the benches and moved toward the doors leading to the platform. John Henry studied them with narrowed eyes, trying to see if any of them might be connected to the case, but all the passengers looked completely innocuous.
He got onto the train, found an empty bench in one of the cars, and placed his war bag beside him as he sat down. He intended to stay awake and mull over the case some more, but after the train rolled out and the conductor came through the cars punching the passengers’ tickets, weariness caught up to John Henry. It had been a long, long night, full of action and fury. He had been shot at, whipped, and pummeled. He had uncovered leads only to have them crash into dead ends. All that took a toll on a man.
/> He went to sleep and didn’t wake up until the conductor came back through the car, bawling that they were arriving in San Francisco.
Hours had passed. The sun was up. It was a new day, and John Henry had slept through all the stops the train had made on its way up the coast.
He stood up and stretched. His muscles creaked and his bones popped like those of an old man. That was what sleeping on a train would do for you, he thought as he lifted his war bag to his shoulder and left the car.
Penelope Smith had bought a ticket for San Francisco. But once she was on the train, she could have bought another ticket from the conductor, one that would carry her past the so-called city by the bay. That would have been a good dodge on her part to throw off any possible pursuit.
On the other hand, she really could have been bound for San Francisco, and John Henry couldn’t afford to assume that she hadn’t stopped here. He got off the train, walked through the lobby, and found the stationmaster’s office.
The man had a stove in the corner with a coffeepot sitting on it, and the smell of the strong black brew almost made John Henry groan from wanting a cup of it. He had business to tend to first, though.
The stationmaster was a burly, bald man in a brown tweed suit. He glanced up from his desk and asked, “What can I do for you, mister?”
“Marshal,” John Henry corrected. “Deputy United States Marshal Sixkiller.”
He took out his badge and identification papers and let the stationmaster take a good look at them.
The man seemed to be impressed but cautious. He asked, “What brings you to San Francisco, Marshal?”
“I’m looking for a woman who left Los Angeles on the midnight train.”
“That train got in several hours ago, around dawn,” the stationmaster said as he spread his hands. “I’m afraid the woman could be almost anywhere by now.”
“I know that, but I’d like to question your porters. She had several bags and likely would have wanted help with them. Are the same men still on duty now who were working when that train came in?”
“That’s right. Would you like me to call them in here one by one so you can talk to them?”
“That would be mighty helpful,” John Henry said. “And there’s one other thing . . . You reckon you could spare a cup of that coffee?”
That put a grin on the stationmaster’s pleasantly ugly face. He waved a hand at the stove and said, “There are cups on that shelf there. Help yourself, Marshal. I warn you, though. I’m not known for the quality of my coffee.”
“As long as it’s got a bite to it, that’s all I’m interested in right now,” John Henry said. “I got a little sleep on the train, but other than that it was a mighty long night.”
The stationmaster left the office. John Henry poured a cup of coffee and sipped it gratefully. The stuff was strong enough to get up and walk around on its own hind legs, as folks said back home, and it had an immediate bracing effect on him.
A few minutes later the stationmaster came back with an elderly black man, the first of the porters that John Henry would interview. The man was friendly and obviously eager to help. John Henry described Penelope Smith to him and said, “She would have come in very early in the morning on a train from Los Angeles, and I need to know where she went from here.”
“I sure wish I could help you, Marshal,” the porter said. “I don’t recollect seein’ any young lady who looked like that, though. The station ain’t too busy at that hour, so I sees just about ever’body who comes an’ goes.”
John Henry had worried that that was the answer he would get. He nodded and thanked the man anyway, and the stationmaster told the porter, “Send the next fellow in.”
Over the next few minutes, John Henry questioned four more porters, and they all told the same story. John Henry’s frustration was growing as it began to appear that Penelope hadn’t stopped in San Francisco after all. If she had continued on northward into Oregon, he might never find her. All he could do was head in that direction himself and check with all the local lawmen along the way to find out if any counterfeit money had been passed recently in their jurisdiction.
“There’s only one more porter who was on duty when that train came in,” the stationmaster said. “I’ll get him, but it’s not looking very good for you, Marshal.”
“I know,” John Henry replied with a sigh. “But I might as well talk to everybody.”
The stationmaster called in the last porter, another elderly black man with white hair.
“This is Carl,” he said to John Henry. “Carl, this is a U.S. marshal. He wants to ask you some questions.”
“And I want to answer ’em,” Carl said. “How do, Marshal.”
“Carl,” John Henry said. “Earlier this morning, did you happen to help a young blond woman with her bags? She might have been traveling alone, or she might have been with a dark-haired man a little taller and heavier than me.”
“Sure, I seen her,” Carl replied without hesitation. “And she was alone, all right, didn’t have nobody with her. That’s why I remember her, in fact. We don’t see too many young ladies come through here travelin’ by theirselves. Sure don’t see many who are that pretty.”
John Henry’s pulse quickened at the old man’s answer. For the first time, this was an indication that maybe he was still on the right trail after all. He said, “The woman I’m looking for has a beauty mark—”
“Right here,” Carl broke in as he lifted a hand and touched his finger to a spot on his face near his mouth. “I recollect that, too.”
That confirmed it. Penelope Smith had gotten off the train here in San Francisco.
Now it was a matter of trying to find out where she had gone next.
“Did she take a cab, hire a buggy, something like that?”
“I put her bags in a cab for her,” Carl said. Without waiting for John Henry to ask, he went on, “She told the driver to take her to the ferry. She was goin’ over to Oakland.”
“Then that’s where I’m going,” John Henry said.
Chapter Nineteen
The cab ride to the ferry landing was . . . spectacular, that was the only word for it, John Henry decided. The hills covered with buildings, the water—bay on one side, endless ocean on the other—the towering clouds and the blue sky . . . There was nothing like this back in Indian Territory. Or Arkansas. Or Kansas or anywhere else he’d ever been.
Los Angeles had been interesting. San Francisco was beautiful.
He was just passing through, though, on the trail of an outlaw. When you got right down to it, that’s all Penelope Smith was. Just another outlaw to chase down and bring to justice.
John Henry bought passage on the Oakland ferry, then had to wait for a while before one of the big boats returned to the San Francisco side of the bay. The vaguely uneasy feeling he’d had when he looked at the ocean in Los Angeles returned as he gazed out over the wide, dark blue expanse. He could see the hills rising on the other side of the bay, but between here and there was an awful lot of water.
He had to cross it in order to find Penelope. The trip would be fine, he told himself. Ferries crossed the bay dozens of times a day without incident.
The big, bargelike vessel had two levels, John Henry saw as he stood on the landing and watched it chug toward the shore. Wagons and other horse-drawn vehicles entered the lower level directly from the landing. Passengers who didn’t have a horse or a wagon were supposed to climb a set of stairs to the upper deck. That was where he would ride, John Henry thought.
After the ferry docked, it was several minutes before everyone on it had gotten off and the passengers and vehicles from this side were allowed aboard. Carrying his war bag, John Henry went up the stairs and came out on a broad deck with the ferry’s pilothouse set in the center of it. In a way, the ferry reminded him of riverboats he had seen on the Mississippi, although it completely lacked the grace and elegance of those paddle-wheel-driven vessels.
Not many people were headed for
Oakland this morning. About a dozen passengers shared the upper deck with John Henry. As the ferry got under way, he stood at the railing with a cool wind blowing in his face and watched the seagulls soaring around the boat. He saw a couple of desolate-looking islands in the bay, one of them with some forbidding buildings on it. He didn’t know what the place was, but it looked like a prison to him.
A man came up to the railing beside him. John Henry glanced over and gave the hombre a pleasant nod. The man wore a bowler hat and a gray tweed suit. He had sandy hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, and he reminded John Henry of a teller in a bank.
“Morning,” the man said as he returned John Henry’s nod. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“I reckon,” John Henry replied. “I’m not too fond of boats.”
The stranger chuckled.
“You get used to them, I suppose. I’ve ridden this ferry so many times I don’t think anything about it anymore.” He put out his hand. “I’m Clive Denton.”
“John Henry Sixkiller,” John Henry introduced himself. He left off the part about being a deputy U.S. marshal.
“Not from around here, eh?”
“Indian Territory.”
“Out here on business, or is it a pleasure trip?”
John Henry didn’t particularly want to make friendly conversation with Denton, but his natural politeness kept him from saying that. He said, “Business . . . but it’ll be a pleasure if I get what I’m after.”
That brought another laugh from Denton, who said, “Isn’t that always the way? I hope it works out for you.”
Clive Denton wandered off, and John Henry was glad to see him go. He would be even happier when the ferry reached the Oakland side of the bay and he could get dry, solid ground under his feet again.
The trip seemed to take longer than it really did, but finally the ferry docked and John Henry walked off as soon as the rope across the broad gangplank was unfastened. Several horse-drawn cabs were parked nearby, their drivers waiting for passengers from the ferry to hire them.
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