“These are the fakes, all right,” he said as he tossed the bundle back into the carpetbag. “If nothing else, we’ve stopped these two from distributing the rest of the counterfeit money.”
“That doesn’t get us O’Reilly.”
“Maybe when Miss Smith realizes that she’s going to spend a number of years in federal prison, she’ll be more inclined to talk,” John Henry suggested.
Penelope’s voice held a slight note of panic as she said, “I’m telling you, I don’t know where he is.”
“I notice you’re not denying anymore that you know who O’Reilly is,” Prentice said.
“All right!” Penelope burst out. “My God, you’re a persistent bastard. Of course I’ve heard of Ignatius O’Reilly. Everybody who’s involved in our line of work has heard of him. But that doesn’t mean I have any connection to him or know where to find him.”
Prentice shook his head and said, “I don’t believe you, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart! Or darling or dear or anything else like that.” Penelope’s lips twisted in a snarl. “I hate you. I hate both of you!”
“Might as well get over that. We’ll be spending a lot of time together for a while, starting with tonight.”
“You can’t mean to stay in this room,” Penelope said.
“If you think I’m letting you out of my sight, you’re crazy. Don’t get shy on us now. You can’t be too worried about propriety when you’ve been working with this English crook, and probably doing a lot more than that.”
John Henry said, “There’s no need to be rude.”
“All you cowboys are always gallant with the ladies, aren’t you?” Prentice said scornfully. He turned back to Penelope and went on, “Get your clothes on, or I’ll just tie you up the way you are now.”
Through gritted teeth, she said, “You’d probably enjoy that, but I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”
Defiantly, she dropped the bedspread and reached into the open wardrobe for some of her clothes.
John Henry was just as glad Prentice was there. If he hadn’t been, John Henry would have felt duty bound to keep an eye on Penelope, even while she was getting dressed. This way, he could let Prentice do that while he hunkered on his heels in front of Clive Denton and took hold of the man’s chin. He lifted Denton’s head.
“I know you came to a little while ago and heard what we were talking about,” John Henry said. “Maybe you’d like to tell us where we can find Ignatius O’Reilly, Denton. Cooperating could help you in the long run.”
Denton opened his mouth and spewed out a string of profanity. He concluded by saying, “I should have pulled the trigger right away when I had the chance and splattered your brains all over the floor, Sixkiller.”
“Well, you missed your chance, and I don’t intend to give you another one. In fact, you’re not going to have any sort of chance for anything except a lot of years of iron bars and gray walls.”
“So there’s no point in me helping you, is there?” Denton asked with a sneer.
John Henry glanced toward the other side of the room and saw that Penelope was dressed now, in a simple traveling gown. She sat on the foot of the bed and took turns glaring at her two captors.
John Henry looked out the window, past the gauzy curtains that hung over the glass, and saw that night had fallen. Prentice must have been thinking the same thing that he was, because the Secret Service man said, “I could do with something to eat.”
“The man who runs the hotel told me there’s a pot of beans on the stove in the kitchen,” John Henry said. “One of us could go down and bring some back up here.”
Prentice cocked an eyebrow and said, “That would require both of us trusting the other one.”
“Yeah, I thought of that,” John Henry said. “You don’t trust a deputy United States marshal?”
“You don’t trust an agent of the United States Secret Service?”
“I haven’t seen a bit of identification,” John Henry pointed out. “All I’ve got is your word that you work for the Secret Service.”
Prentice looked like he was going to argue, but then he shrugged again and said, “I suppose you’ve got a point. I have identification papers.”
He moved the gun from his right hand to his left and used the right to reach inside his coat. He brought out a thin wallet and handed it to John Henry, who opened it and removed a folded document. It looked official and identified the bearer as Nicholas Prentice, an agent of the United States Secret Service.
“Anybody could carry this around,” John Henry said.
“Anybody can carry a marshal’s badge, too,” Prentice said. “Look, if we weren’t on the same side, why the hell did I stop Denton from killing you?”
John Henry didn’t have an answer for that, other than the thought that Prentice might be carrying out some sort of particularly deep deception.
He didn’t actually believe that was the case, though. Prentice’s words earlier had carried the ring of truth. There came a time when you had to trust somebody, and right now the odds were a lot more in Prentice’s favor.
John Henry handed the wallet back and said, “All right. I’ll fetch some bowls of beans.”
“You might look around and see if they’ve got any bottles of beer down there, too,” Prentice suggested.
John Henry grunted, but he didn’t argue. He supposed it made sense that they would need something to wash down the beans. He preferred coffee, though, and hoped that there would be a pot of it simmering on the stove, too.
He went downstairs, not seeing anyone along the way. He supposed all the other guests in the hotel were staying in their rooms, hoping to avoid as much contact with other people as possible in order to increase their chances of not getting sick. He looked around and found the kitchen. It was empty, too.
The cast-iron pot of beans was half-full. John Henry rummaged in the cabinets, found bowls and utensils and a tray on which to carry them. He filled four bowls and put spoons on the tray with them. He took cups from a shelf and filled them with coffee from the pot sitting next to the pot of beans.
A faint smile touched his mouth as he thought about the night ahead. He and Prentice would have to take turns standing guard, so he hoped the coffee would fortify them and help them stay alert when the time came. The fact that all four of them were going to eat beans for supper and then spend the night together in a relatively small room was a little daunting, but nothing could be done about that.
When he had the tray ready, he carried it out of the kitchen and up the stairs. As he approached Room 14, he saw that the door was pushed up but not caught, just the way he had left it. He used his shoulder to push it open, since he had his hands full with the tray.
He had just stepped inside when he spotted Nick Prentice lying motionless on the floor. There was blood on his head.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The split second that it took for John Henry to realize what he was looking at was almost his undoing. In that fraction of a heartbeat, he heard a slight noise to his left and twisted in that direction, ducking his head and thrusting the tray hard in front of him.
The gun that Clive Denton tried to use to bash his brains out struck John Henry on the shoulder instead. The blow was painful, but it didn’t slow him down. He crashed the tray into Denton’s face. Denton cried out, not only from being hit but from having hot coffee and beans splattered all over his head as well.
John Henry bulled into Denton and drove him backward, ramming him against the wall. He still had hold of the tray, so he swung it like a club and smashed Denton across the face with it again. Then he dropped the tray and grabbed the wrist of Denton’s gun hand. John Henry lifted his knee and brought Denton’s wrist down on it. The gun flew from Denton’s fingers.
While Denton was still half-stunned, John Henry lifted his right elbow. It caught Denton under the chin and drove his head hard against the wall. Denton went limp. His feet slid out from under him. John Henry ste
pped back and let the man crumple to the floor.
He hadn’t seen Penelope Smith since he came into the room, but he hadn’t really had time to look for her, either. He’d been busy fighting for his life against Denton.
Now John Henry swung around, palming out his Colt in case he faced a new threat.
Right away, though, he spotted Penelope lying on the rug next to the bed, at right angles to where Nick Prentice was sprawled on the floor. She was moving around a little, so John Henry knew she was alive. The side of her face was red where evidently something had struck her.
John Henry picked up the gun Denton had dropped. It was Prentice’s .38, he saw. He stepped over to Prentice and knelt next to him.
The Secret Service agent lay on his side. John Henry rolled him onto his back and was glad to see that Prentice’s chest was rising and falling. Prentice was alive. From the looks of the wound on his head, he had been walloped with something, probably the same pistol that Denton had tried to use on John Henry.
John Henry checked quickly and found that Prentice wasn’t wounded anywhere else. He had been knocked out cold, but that was all.
That probably wouldn’t have been the end of it, though, if John Henry hadn’t come back in when he did. He had seen how vicious Clive Denton was and had no doubt that Denton would have murdered Prentice if he’d had the chance.
That didn’t explain how Penelope had gotten knocked out, though, unless it had happened while she and Denton were struggling with Prentice.
There was also the question of how Denton had gotten free, but when John Henry looked around some more, he found what he thought was the answer to that. A small knife lay on the floor, its blade shining in the light from the lamp. He found the cord he had used to tie Denton, too, and the loose ends of it definitely had been cut.
He used the pieces to bind Denton’s wrists again and pulled the knots even tighter this time, not worrying about how uncomfortable it was going to be for the prisoner. As many times as Denton had tried to kill him, John Henry wasn’t inclined to be lenient.
While he was doing that, Penelope moaned a couple of times. As John Henry finished with Denton, she got her hands under her and pushed herself up to lean against the bed as she sat on the floor. She blinked and shook her head as if trying to clear out the cobwebs, and a moment later as her vision cleared she looked up at John Henry in surprise.
“You’re alive,” she said. Her breath caught in her throat and her eyes widened as she started to look around. “Prentice . . . !”
“He’s alive, too, no thanks to you,” John Henry said harshly.
A humorless laugh escaped from her lips. She said, “That’s where you’re wrong, Marshal. I think he’s alive, thanks to me. If I hadn’t tried to stop Clive from cutting his throat, he’d be dead now. And what did it get me? A clout across the face that knocked me silly.”
“And how did Denton get his hands on a knife in the first place?” John Henry shot back at her. “I’m guessing that you slipped it to him somehow. You either cut him loose, or you gave him the knife and let him do it himself.”
“Prentice doesn’t know how many hiding places there are in a woman’s dress. He watched me like a hawk and still didn’t see the knife until it was too late. I dropped it next to Clive while I was giving him a drink of water.” She nodded toward the pitcher of water and the glass that now sat on the night table. John Henry supposed they had been there all along; he had been too busy to notice. “Then I kept Prentice’s attention on me by talking while Clive cut himself loose. And you know what? You would have done the same thing if you’d been faced with going to prison for something that’s not really your fault.”
“How do you figure it’s not your fault?” John Henry asked. “You’re the one who passed out all that counterfeit money.”
“Yes, but it was all Clive’s idea! He’s the one who got his hands on it, I don’t know where. He planned the whole operation. That’s why I kept telling you blasted lawmen that I don’t know anything about that damned Ichabod O’Reilly!”
“Ignatius,” John Henry corrected her.
“Ignatius, Ichabod, what the hell does it matter?” Penelope’s lip curled in disdain, but it seemed to be directed at herself as she went on, “I’m just another foolish woman who convinced herself she was in love with a man and let him talk her into doing something stupid. That’s no crime, Marshal. Just a damned shame, that’s all it is.”
“I reckon a judge and jury will have to sort that out,” John Henry said. “What happened after Denton got loose?”
“What do you think? He jumped Prentice and they fought over the gun. Everybody underestimates Clive. He was a boxing champion, and you wouldn’t think it to look at him but he’s strong as an ox.”
John Henry nodded. He had seen evidence of those things and bore the bruises to prove it.
“Clive managed to wrestle the gun away from Prentice and knocked him out with it,” Penelope went on. “Then he was going to cut Prentice’s throat to dispose of him quietly. I argued with him. I told him it wasn’t necessary to kill anybody. I said we should wait for you, knock you out when you came in, tie you both up, and then take the buggy and get out of here tonight.” A note of bitterness came into her voice as she continued, “He called me a stupid bitch and was going to kill Prentice anyway. I grabbed his arm and he backhanded me and . . . and that’s really all I know until I woke up a few minutes ago and you were here. You must have come in right after Clive knocked me out.”
John Henry had listened to her story all the way through. Everything she said was reasonable enough. It might even be true, he thought.
But it might be a pack of lies, too. He didn’t know that it really mattered, one way or the other. Penelope was still guilty of distributing all that counterfeit money, and she would have to answer for it in a court of law.
He had to admit, though, that she had sounded sincere as she explained her version of what had happened while he had gone down to the kitchen. And he could believe that Denton was handsome and charming enough to have talked her into becoming his accomplice.
That didn’t explain the connection between Denton and Ignatius O’Reilly, if there was one. Denton had to get those bogus tens and twenties from somewhere, John Henry mused. It was still possible that Denton could lead the law to O’Reilly.
But all that could be hashed out later. Right now, Nick Prentice was coming around. The Secret Service agent grimaced and moved his head from side to side. That made him wince. He lifted a hand to the bloody lump on his head as his eyes tried to flutter open.
“Take it easy,” John Henry told him. “You’re all right, but you’re going to have a headache, I imagine.”
“Sixkiller?” With an effort, Prentice lifted himself onto an elbow. He looked back and forth between John Henry and Penelope Smith. “What the hell happened here?”
“I reckon the score is a little closer to even between us now,” John Henry said. “Denton was going to carve you a new grin.”
“I’m the one who stopped him, not you,” Penelope said sullenly. “You can at least give me a little credit for that.”
“The worst of it is that we lost our supper,” John Henry said as he nodded toward the mess that had been made when he walloped Denton with the tray. Coffee stains were on the wall, and there were puddles of coffee and bean juice on the floor. A lot of the spilled beans had been tromped into paste while John Henry and Denton were fighting.
Prentice closed his eyes and let his head rest on the floor again.
“I don’t think I could eat now anyway,” he said. “I feel a little sick.”
John Henry tensed. With things the way they were in Copperhead right now, feeling a little under the weather might just be a death sentence.
Chapter Thirty
Prentice drank some of the water from the pitcher, then poured a little in his hand and splashed it in his face, rubbing it in. That perked him up, or at least so he claimed. John Henry figured it would be a
good idea to keep an eye on the big Secret Service agent anyway.
He helped Prentice into the room’s lone chair. Penelope sat down on the bed, crossed her arms over her bosom, and continued glaring at them.
“If you’re going to keep on being so hostile, it’ll make for a long night,” John Henry told her.
“I don’t care,” she said. “If you think I’m going to go out of my way to help you put me in jail, you’re crazy.” She paused, then went on, “Making counterfeit money doesn’t really hurt anybody, you know.”
“It’s the same thing as stealing from the government.”
“Ha! How does that hurt anybody?”
“Well, then, it’s the same thing as stealing from the people you give those phony bills to,” John Henry said. “Like that woman in Sonora you bought the scarf from. It didn’t cost as much as what you paid her, so she owed you some change. You got the scarf, and you got a handful of real money in return, to boot. That’s robbery as far as I’m concerned.”
“Nobody loses enough that way for it to really matter,” Penelope insisted.
“It all adds up.”
She fell into a sullen, pouting silence and didn’t look at him anymore.
The bad part about it was that she had a point, John Henry thought. Not about counterfeiting being harmless, of course. It did hurt people, as he had just pointed out to her. It was a crime, too, and John Henry was sworn to uphold the law.
But in the past he had gone after murderers and outlaws who robbed on a much grander scale. Counterfeiting was a petty crime, and John Henry felt a little resentment toward Judge Parker for saddling him with this chore.
On the other hand, Clive Denton had tried to kill both a deputy United States marshal and a Secret Service agent, so John Henry supposed that elevated the case to a more serious level. Denton had demonstrated that he was vicious enough and ruthless enough to be a danger to folks, so getting him behind bars was a worthwhile objective. The same held true for Ignatius O’Reilly, who had a history of bloody violence behind him.
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