“Damn.”
Will took another agitated turn around the sitting room. Thomas eyed him with concern.
“Will, don’t kill me, but—well—are you absolutely certain you want to marry into that family? I mean, those two relatives of Aunt Emily’s don’t seem too, uh, right in their heads to me.”
As far as Will knew, nobody had ever uttered such an understatement before. “They’re both crazy as loons, Thomas,” he growled
“Well, but—” Thomas paused, uncertain how to phrase the next part of his concern. He finally just blurted it out. “But, Will, do you have any—uh—worries that it might be an inherited condition?”
Will jaw dropped. Then, for the first time since Thomas entered the room, he smiled.
“Lord above, Thomas, you don’t know my Emily yet. She’s the most level-headed woman I’ve ever met in my life. I know her relatives are crazy, but honest to God, she’s all that’s saved them from ruin these many years. They’re crazy as loons, Thomas, but Emily loves them.”
As soon as he spoke the words, Will experienced a moment of swift, unexpected, almost earth-shaking comprehension. He stopped pacing.
“Yeah,” he murmured, more to himself than to Thomas. “She loves them. She loves them because they’re her family.”
“Right,” Thomas said uncertainly.
“Don’t you see, Thomas? She loves them because they’re her family.” Will turned away, shaken to the core by his new understanding. He walked to the window and stared outside, unseeing. “I never had any family, Thomas. Not family to love, come hell or high water, feast or famine, sanity or lunacy. Until right this second, it never even struck me such feelings could exist in this world. But they do. In good people, with good hearts, they do.”
Will turned around and eyed Thomas intensely. “Emily and I are going to be a family like that. Somehow, some way, we will be. We’re going to make a family like that. And Emily knows how to do it, too, because she’s already done it. And I’m not going to let Clarence Pickering play fast and loose with Emily’s family. I’ll be damned if I will.”
“Right,” Thomas said again.
Will straightened up. No lingering worries about Emily’s unwillingness to marry him marred his determination. He knew what he had to do. Nothing else mattered.
“Somehow or other, Pickering has tricked Emily’s aunt into giving him those papers, Thomas,” he said briskly. “I’m going to get them back.”
Happy to have the old, trusty, businesslike Will back again, Thomas asked, “How? Are you going to try to buy them from him?”
“Buy them? I’ll eat hog swill before I’ll give that bastard a single red cent of my money.”
“Then what do you plan to do? Steal them? I’ve known you for years, Will, and I’ve known you to do some of the damnedest things, but I’ve never known you to thieve before.”
“Steal? Hell, Thomas, I haven’t had to outright steal anything from a person since I was knee-high to a toadstool and had to borrow a blanket in order not to freeze to death.”
Thomas would have laughed, but Will’s words pierced a deeper place than his usual jolly bantering did. “You had a pretty hard time of it, didn’t you, Will, with your Uncle Mel.” There was an edge to his voice.
Will looked uncomfortable. “Hell, Thomas, all I know is, Emily’s not going to suffer for her family, that’s all.”
The memory of all those times in gold camps, sitting by innumerable fires, surrounded by strangers, all of them roaring with laughter at Will Tate’s stories about growing up with Uncle Mel struck Thomas. Will had padded and protected himself with such a thick layer of humor over the years, even Thomas had never thought about how deep his hurt must go.
He thought about it now, though. Thomas knew he was the only friend Will had ever allowed himself. He’d never thought about that before, either. Suddenly, Thomas felt greatly honored.
“Well, Will, whatever you do, I’m going with you.”
“What for, Thomas? I know what I’m doing.”
“Maybe. But you’ve got to deal with Pickering. While you’re doing that, I’m going to be watching your back.”
For a split second, Will had it in his mind to protest. Then he noted the look of determination on Thomas’s face. For Emily, he thought, and decided for once in his life he’d let another human being help him.
“Thanks, Thomas,” he said.
“Hell, Will, what are friends for?”
“Don’t reckon I ever thought about it until right this minute, Thomas.”
“Well, you don’t have to think about it now, either, Will, because I’m coming whether you want me or not.”
Will had to talk around the lump in his throat “I want you to come with me, Thomas. Thank you.”
They grinned at each other for several seconds before shaking hands and getting down to business. They spent the next three hours hatching a brilliant plot.
“Ready, Thomas?” Will asked, cocking his Texas hat at an appropriate angle.
“Ready, Will.” Thomas tweaked his cravat and stood back to survey his elegant form in the mirror.
“Well, then, let’s go.”
As night fell and the fog rolled in, Will Tate and Thomas Crandall, partners in business and in life, left the Nob Hill estate arm in arm. They were ready.
# # #
Innocent of the plans being spun on her behalf, Emily von Plotz marched up to Clarence Pickering’s rented lodgings on Powell Street, determination fueling every step. She considered the dirty surroundings with distaste. Not that Emily was a snob; far from it. But her aunt’s home, situated as it was in an area characterized by a somewhat fallen grandeur, was a far cry from Pickering’s squalid neighborhood.
Taking great care, she picked her way over bottles and trash littering the sidewalk. Then she had to lift her skirts to step over a drunk sleeping it off on the stairs. Her heart palpitated wildly. She was glad she had thought to arm herself with a stout walking stick.
With a brisk yank, she tugged the bell pull next to the tacked-up card designating one suite of rooms as those of Clarence Pickering. Since the moment she had formed the resolve to do this until right this minute, she had not considered what on earth she would do if Pickering were not at home. She did so now and frowned.
Fortunately or unfortunately, she did not have to think of an alternate plan. She had just begun to consider her oversight when Bill Skates, complete with one black eye and one arm in a sling, opened the door.
Although Emily recognized Bill Skates as the brash, uncouth employee of her nemesis, she could not identify him as the person who had tried to kidnap her uncle’s dogs. She noticed his bruised face but didn’t associate it with the assault the other night. She figured he’d been in a barroom brawl. “Is Mr. Pickering at home, please, Mr. Skates?” she asked primly.
Once Skates realized Emily didn’t mark him as the perpetrator of the kennel break-in, he relaxed. “Yeah, he’s here,” he said insolently. “What do you want?”
It was not for nothing Emily von Plotz had been drilled mercilessly by her aunt in the proper way for a lady to behave. There were rules for everything, Aunt Gertrude had taught her. Included among them were rules intended to suppress the pretensions of sullen household servants.
At Skates’ surly question, Emily drew herself up to her full height, all five feet two inches of it. She said in a cold voice, “Please take me to him. I wish to speak to him. At once.”
Skates had never encountered a bearing like Emily’s before, having only ogled her from a distance until this minute. Her presence actually cowed him.
“Yes’m,” he muttered, and turned to lead Emily into Pickering’s rooms.
They were a mess, Emily saw immediately. Newspapers were scattered everywhere, interspersed with old woolen socks, dirty shirts, bread crumbs, and empty bottles.
As soon as Pickering realized who had come to call on him, he made an attempt to sweep the filth behind his tatty sofa. Emily caught him in the
act and was not surprised. Her insides recognized this as just the sort of thing one might expect from Clarence Pickering. This was the man behind the sincere, polished facade. She felt a quick surge of triumph at having discovered herself to be right as to his true colors. She wished Aunt Gertrude could see him now.
Before he turned to greet her, tugged his coat tails straight. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t my dear Miss Emily,” he murmured. “And what brings you here, my dear. Have you reconsidered my offer?”
“I will drink poison before I reconsider your disgusting offers, Mr. Pickering,” Emily announced, not mincing her words.
Pickering’s smile tilted slightly askew, and he looked a little less sincere. “Now, Miss Emily, you shouldn’t talk to your old friend Clarence that way. I can help you, you know.”
“You are not my friend, old or otherwise, and the only way in which you can help me, Mr. Pickering, is by returning my aunt’s share of my uncle’s business in exchange for these notes. It’s the same deal you gave Aunt Gertrude; obviously, you consider it a fair one, or you would never have offered it to her.”
Emily held up the envelope containing her aunt’s notes. She’d just managed to rescue them before Gertrude could burn them. She clutched it tightly now, not about to wave it in front of Pickering, for fear he’d snatch it from her. Nothing of an underhanded nature was beyond him, Emily knew. She’d never before encountered anybody with such a well-honed sense of dishonor.
Opening his eyes wide, Pickering said innocently, “Why Emily, my dear, why would I do a thing like that?”
“Why wouldn’t you, Mr. Pickering? You’ll not be losing a thing. It’s a square deal; the same one you offered my aunt. We’ll just reverse it now.”
Pickering put an elegant finger to his cheek and tapped, as though he were actually considering her offer.
“Well, now, Miss Emily, what if I’ve suddenly developed a yen to invest in those dogs of your uncle’s? Have you considered that possibility, my dear.”
His smile was slick enough to grease an axle, and it made Emily’s stomach knot up. “Not for a minute, Mr. Pickering,” she declared. “You have no interest at all in my uncle’s dogs, and you know it as well as I do. They hate you and you hate them; it’s a known fact.”
Emily noticed he was wearing the same patent-leather shoes he had worn to her aunt’s home for dinner the night Helga bit him. She stared pointedly at the jagged tooth mark on the leather.
Pickering stopped even pretending to smile. He frowned at her. “Is that so? Well, then, maybe you’re right, Miss Emily, Miss holier-than-thou von Plotz. Maybe you’re just right at that. Maybe I do hate those dogs. And maybe I hate the way you sneer at me all the time, too. But you won’t be sneering very much longer, my sweet dear, because I’ve got your idiot aunt right where I want her now. Your precious Texas country boy won’t be able to help you now, Emily, my darling girl, because it’s too damned late. He’s going to have to deal with me now. I own more than half of his damned business, and I’m no damned pussy-footer like your crazy uncle Ludwig von Plotz.”
He looked quite petulant when he added: “And I hate Texans.”
Emily was profoundly shocked. Never in her entire life had a gentleman actually used profanity at her in this way. Then she scolded herself for her reaction. Clarence Pickering, she reminded herself, was not a gentleman.
“How dare you speak to me that way?” she demanded. “Why, you’re nothing but a miserable blackguard, Mr. Pickering. If you won’t trade back those papers for my aunt’s debts to you, I’ll—I’ll—”
She had no idea what she’d do, in fact, a circumstance Clarence Pickering realized in an instant. At once, he found his lost smile and it slithered back onto his face.
“You’ll what, my darling little Emily? You’ll just what? You’ll bargain something else for the papers? Well, now, perhaps the possibilities for a trade are improving, my dear.” His leer was almost grotesque.
Until this moment, Emily had not been truly frightened. But now, as Pickering began to inch across the room toward her, her steady nerves began to quiver. She stepped back a pace.
“Keep away from me, Mr. Pickering,” she said. “You just keep away from me, or you’ll be sorry.”
“I don’t think so, Emily, my darling. Just think of your loving aunt and uncle, my dear. Just think of them, and I’m sure you’ll find my offer appealing. I find you appealing, my darling. And, oh, Emily, my sweet, I have a feeling you’d like it quite well, if you tried it.”
Pickering’s words slithered their way through the atmosphere to settle like slime in Emily’s ears. She shuddered, appalled. In the next instant, though, she dragged her courage up and stood her ground.
“Stay where you are, Mr. Pickering, or you’ll be sorry,” she declared once more in a resolute voice.
But Pickering only chuckled. His chuckle was as sincere and disgusting as the rest of him.
“Now, now, now, you darling little thing. Why don’t you just give me one little peck on the cheek now? We can call it a promise. Just to see what you’re going to be getting lots more of if you want to keep your auntie and uncle from losing everything they own to me. Because if you’re not nice to me, my sweet little Emily, it’s going to happen. You can bet your pretty little bottom on that.”
Emily gasped in outrage. She had taken quite enough of this horrible man’s disgusting advances. She followed her gasp with a vicious swipe of her uncle’s walking stick, the twin to the one she had wielded with such stunning effect against Bill Skates. As Pickering reached out to grab her she caught him with a bruising blow to the arm.
At his roar of pain, Emily decided her visit was at an end. She fled from his lodgings at a dead run, using her walking stick as knights of old used their lances. Bill Skates just missed being skewered by executing a deft leap aside, thereby bumping his wounded arm against a wall. His bellow blended with that of Clarence Pickering to create a regular cacophony of pain. The noise accompanied Emily down the stairs and outside to Powell Street.
“Hell!” The imprecation was the worst Emily had ever uttered in her entire life.
Her irate exclamation seemed to amuse a sailor walking along Powell. He snickered and winked at her.
His mistake earned him an outraged, “How dare you?” and a sharp poke from Emily’s stick. As she made her way down Powell and turned up Geary, everyone else she encountered very intelligently avoided her.
“Well, it’s as I suspected, at any rate,” Emily muttered as she stormed along. “And at least I found out what I needed to know.”
She stopped at a second-hand shop operated by the Sisters of Benevolence in Chinatown. There, she spent forty-five minutes choosing a rather startling costume. The outfit consisted of a pair of boy’s knickerbockers, a large, plaid flannel shirt, a pair of sturdy brown boy’s shoes, and a floppy cloth cap.
Thus armed, she made her determined way back home.
Chapter 16
When Will and Thomas arrived at Abe Warner’s Cobweb Palace around ten o’clock that evening, Clarence Pickering and his crony Bill Skates were already there.
Pickering had dropped his sincere demeanor for the evening. He looked sulky as a poked bear as he smoked a knobby cigar. He was also sucking up whiskey and playing cards, twin circumstances that made Will smile. He winked at Thomas, who winked back.
The two newcomers moseyed over to the bar where Abe acknowledged them with a knowing nod as he poured them out a couple of beers. Then Will made his way through the crowded barroom while Thomas leaned against the bar and watched.
Acting as though he were merely interested in observing the game, Will stopped beside Pickering’s table. Pickering had his sleeves rolled up, thereby giving Will a perfect view of the livid bruise Emily had inflicted on his forearm earlier in the day.
Pickering glowered at the cards in front of him. It was some time before he realized who was standing beside him, sipping beer and peering with all apparent innocence at the card game.
“Well, if it isn’t the Texas cowboy,” he said sourly, blowing a huge puff of acrid cigar smoke in the general direction of Will’s face. He didn’t bother to smile.
Will, who was used to much worse than cigar smoke from his adversaries, only gave Pickering a guileless grin. “Howdy, Mr. Pickering. Playin’ cards tonight, I see.”
“Clever devil, aren’t you?”
Will chuckled. “How’re ya doin’, Mr. Pickering? Winnin’?”
“I always win at cards, Tex,” Pickering said , with a sneer.
“That so?” Will tried his best to sound impressed.
Pickering’s words were music to Will’s ears. One of his Uncle Mel’s guiding principles was that a man in the throes of a vanity attack was easy pickings. Especially one who was drinking. And Pickering was in the midst of just such an attack right now, and drinking like a fish.
He scratched his chin in an attempt to look both bashful and eager at the same time. “Can I join you gents? I ain’t a big-city feller like you, but I like to play me a game of cards every now and agin.”
Pickering eyed him. “I don’t know that I care to play cards with a Texan,” he said.
“It’d give you a chance to get back at me for throwing’ you acrost that room, Mr. Pickering.” He watched contentedly as Pickering stiffened up like setting cement.
“Damn you,” Pickering muttered.
“I ain’t the best, but I’d like to try.”
Will could tell Pickering was furious. “Well, now, I guess we could find room for a country boy at this table. How about it, gents?”
The other men nodded, obviously uninterested in Pickering’s private animosities, and Will pulled out a chair and sat down, he knew he’d won.
As was his wont, Will started out slowly, assessing the skill of his fellow players carefully. He lost the first two hands, although it took a good deal of effort to do so. His respect for Clarence Pickering, already dim, flickered and died out entirely when he realized what an unutterably bad poker player the man was.
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