On my way there I passed the First Unitarian church, a much simpler affair of whitewashed wood with a squat bell tower, common unstained windows, and its name painted in block letters on the lintel above the door. A squat woman with her hair in a bun quit sweeping the front steps to watch me pass in my working uniform. When I touched my hat, she stopped leaning on her broom and got back to business.
A long flight of steps cut from native limestone and sunk into the hill led to the front porch of the house. The porch was semicircular, with fluted Greek columns supporting a gothic roof and a shark’s-mouth transom above the front door in the Queen Anne style. It was a crazy sort of house until you realized its architect had sought the effect of an ancient English castle that had acquired new additions in many styles over hundreds of years. Then you remembered you were in Texas and it went back to being a crazy sort of house.
The compass-and-square symbol of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons was carved in the center of the paneled mahogany door. I found a blue china bell pull and used it. The ringing on the other side was barely audible. Whoever had constructed the walls and door had built them to withstand a battering ram.
A fine-boned Mexican of around seventy, small as a boy, with white hair and dressed in a loose white cotton shirt and trousers, opened the door. His feet were brown and bare in woven-leather sandals and his face was the color of dark honey and every bit as smooth. Mine had more wrinkles.
I took off my hat and gave him Sebastian’s name. “I think Mr. Freemason is expecting me.”
“Please come in.” No accent accompanied the words.
He closed the door behind me, took my hat, and left me standing in a baronial foyer with a fourteen-foot ceiling, wainscoted with polished walnut six feet up, and furnished on either side with a bench and a chair with high straight backs that looked as inviting as iron maidens. The windows were equipped with wooden shutters that could be swung shut and bolted from inside, with gun ports that would assume the shape of the Swiss cross when the shutters were closed. Either the owner of the house was a fiend on the subject of security or he’d come prudently prepared to defend himself during sheep wars.
In a little while the old man returned, his sandals making no sound at all on the parquet floor, and led me past a cantilevered staircase and down a hall hung with English hunting prints to another paneled door and swung it wide. He held it while I went through the opening and pressed it shut behind me with a faint gasp of a click. The room was an office large enough to contain two of Texas Rangers Captain Jordan’s and the post office next door. There were panels on the walls, dark and ancient, a row of oaken file cabinets, several tables scattered with newspapers and Eastern periodicals, and a gargantuan desk six feet tall that opened out into rows of compartments and drawers for letters, stationery, rolls of paper, and ledgers, with a hinged writing surface and scrolled architectural features that probably doubled as secret niches revealed only by hidden mechanisms known only to the cabinetmaker and the owner. When closed, the fixture would assume the appearance of a chifforobe built to shelter a foppish collection of gentlemen’s suits of clothes. It was made of cherrywood, deep red and glistening, with burled-walnut insets; an office in itself, redundantly contained within an office.
It impressed me more than anything else I’d seen since I’d spotted the house on my way into town. This marvel of nineteenth-century business machinery was only the third one I’d seen; the others had stood in the private office of the president of the biggest bank in Louisiana and a brokerage firm in Chicago, and they had not been as ornate, the median model geared for less extravagant budgets. I’d heard J. Pierpont Morgan had one in his New York City mansion, but this was my first personal experience of one in a private house.
The man seated in front of it, in a padded leather chair swiveled to face me, was somewhat less impressive physically, but then the dimensions of the house and his reputation had prepared me for a large man on the order of Grover Cleveland or Jumbo the elephant; one of those notorious trenchermen who ate a bucket of oysters for breakfast, sides of pork for dinner, and blew their noses into silk handkerchiefs the size of bedsheets. Richard Freemason was not a small man in comparison to his Mexican manservant, but compact, with slender hands adorned only with a Masonic ingot on the left little finger and a narrow torso in a snug waistcoat of figured silk, small feet in calfskin shoes that gleamed like polished mahogany, and a sandy Vandyke beard trimmed by a barber who ought to have been making violins or miniature portraits in enamel. The only thing large about him was his forehead, which bulged out from the bridge of his nose like Lawrence Lazarus Little’s, but with a lower hairline and a sharp widow’s peak that made him appear more lupine than leonine. A dedicated phrenologist would have coveted that head, shaved and pickled and marked out in ink like a butcher’s chart, the choice cuts labeled Reason, Aggression, Strategy, and Logic. Humor and Fear would occupy the tiniest compartments, like the ones reserved for wire brads in the Brobdingnagian desk.
Tightly packaged men are restrained as a rule, preferring to let the other fellow make the first gesture. Richard Freemason appeared to exist outside the rules. The moment the door snicked shut, he sprang from the chair and strode the distance between us in half the time of a long-legged man, seizing my hand in a grip that was not so much ironclad as electric; when we broke contact, I still felt the tingle to my fingertips.
“Damned glad to see you!” His tenor voice was clipped, telegraphic, with a British edge that might have been affected, but was too narrow to expose as outright fraud. “I hope you’ll pardon the blasphemy, but between the kneelers and the Scotchmen and the poured-in-the-mold Dutch Reformed I’ve been on the defensive longer than the Jews. Do you know the Baptists say that both my blessed parents and ninetenths of the world are in hell merely because they didn’t embrace Christ as their savior? Surely the devil’s ship is sunk to the gunnels.”
It was the most succinct description of the Catholic, Presbyterian, and Calvinist faiths I’d heard, including Eldred Griffin’s. The Baptists always summed up quickly.
“All paths lead to God,” was all I could think of to say.
“A most Christian sentiment.”
“Actually it’s Buddhist. I studied the world’s religions for purposes of comparison.” Which was true of Eldred Griffin, whose apostasy had sent him in various directions searching for a substitute.
The sheepman didn’t seem to disregard this statement so much as file it away for future review. Unlike Judge Blackthorne, he would be a difficult man to annoy. He waved me into a Morris chair in a reading corner beside a barrister case lined with sets bound in morocco and returned to his swivel. I noticed his back never touched the back of the chair. “How was your journey from Denver?”
“Educational. This is the farthest I’ve ever been from home. I was engaged for many years caring for my poor mother.”
“Have you lived in Colorado Territory your entire life?”
I allowed myself—him, too—a small smile. “Only until eight years ago, when it became a state.”
“That was clumsy of me. You must understand I have enemies who think they can benefit by surrounding me with spies. May I ask for some documentation? Costumes are easily come by.”
“Certainly.” I drew out the shabby wallet and gave him the telegram I’d received from him by way of Denver. He glanced at it and returned it. I had the impression he was inventorying the rest of the wallet’s contents as I slid the flimsy back inside.
“Your predecessor, the Reverend Rose, retired last month to live with his daughter and son-in-law in California. He was a holy man but a trial at the pulpit, and the lay fellows who have been filling in read directly from the Bible. If you can manage not to put half the congregation to sleep, you’ll be a success.”
“I haven’t had much practice in public, but I’ve come with a collection of original sermons.”
“Did you write them yourself?”
“I d
ictated them to an acquaintance. I think best while pacing.” It was plagiarism, but any reference to my mentor might inspire questions whose answers wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny. If he got hold of Griffin’s sermons and compared the writing to mine, the differences would be explained.
“I think you’ll find the accommodations behind the church comfortable. Sunday is the day after tomorrow. Do you think you’ll be settled enough to preside?”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
The door opened and a woman leaned in. She hesitated when she saw me. The look she gave me was long and cool. “I’m sorry, Richard. I thought you were alone.”
I gripped the arms of my chair hard enough to leave nail marks in the leather and rose behind my host.
“Quite all right, dear. I wanted you to meet Brother Bernard Sebastian, our new minister. My wife.”
She closed the door and rustled her skirts across the floor to offer her hand. It was as cool as her eyes, which were blue in the porcelain pallor of her face. She was some years younger than her husband. “Welcome to Owen, sir.” Her voice was a contralto, sandy at the edges, thrilling. Before I could thank her she turned toward Freemason. “You asked me to remind you of your committee meeting.”
“Is it so late?” He confirmed the time by a gold watch no thicker than a coin and returned it to his waistcoat. “Please forgive me, Brother. Some scoundrel wants to build a saloon on the site we’ve set aside for a school, and there are one or two fools on the committee whose priorities are suspect.” As he spoke he removed a Prince Albert lined in white silk from a hall tree and shrugged into it.
“I’ll pray you triumph,” I managed to say.
“Dear, the brother has come many miles, the last several in that torture trap of a stage from Wichita Falls. Please offer him refreshment.”
“Of course.”
He grasped my hand again and left. Mrs. Freemason swung her gaze back to me. “He means tea.”
“I was afraid of that.”
She wore a pale green satin dress with a square neckline that exposed her collarbone, a fine one that shone like polished marble. She unclasped a thin gold chain from around her neck with the air of one undressing and used the tiny key attached to unlock a cabinet behind a wall panel. “Fielo is a wonderful servant, but he has a problem. Richard carries his key on his watch chain.” From the recess she drew a bottle of Hermitage and two cut-crystal glasses, which she filled to the rims on the writing surface of the great desk.
“You won’t get anywhere with that dog collar, Page.” She handed me a glass. “The devil isn’t a fool.”
THIRTEEN
I smiled, ill feeling it. “How long has it been, Colleen? Three years. It was Mrs. Baronet then. You were in widow’s weeds.”
“I was Mrs. Bower again when I met Richard, but don’t take any courage from that. You’ve nothing to gain from threatening to expose me. I told him my story.”
“Even Poker Annie?”
“Especially Poker Annie. Other names I went by, too, that even you don’t know. He’d have found out about all of them in time. Many people owe him favors. One of them is letting them live. But you’re aware of that.”
“I heard about the horsewhipping in Waco.”
She made a face, not that it lessened her attraction. Her hair was still startlingly black, without assistance, and when she wore it piled on her head as today she looked like a Spanish princess painted by a Renaissance artist who wanted to keep his job. Except for the blue eyes, of course. They were as Irish as her name. Luther Cherry, the lawyer, had said she painted her face, but he must’ve been sensitive about such things. She knew how to apply it so that it called attention to her best features rather than to itself.
“Richard put a fool in charge and nearly paid for his poor judgment with his life,” she said. “It was ironic that the one thing that tripped him up was someone else’s fault.”
I pretended disinterest. She obviously thought I’d come to spy on Freemason, as he’d suspected himself, and setting her straight wouldn’t teach me anything about my supposed employer, who’d begun to interest me. We were seated, I in the Morris chair, she in her husband’s business throne before the desk. She filled it better. She was slender, but her skirts and petticoats just fit between the arms and although she wasn’t tall, the way she held herself, with her back straight and her chin lifted, gave that impression. Her narrow feet were encased in green satin slippers that matched the dress, her trim ankles in black stockings.
I’d seen her without all those things, or anything else, and she had been just as much of a pleasure to look at, treacherous as she was. Colleen Bower and I went back five years and a thousand miles.
I took a drink and sighed. Hermitage is good sipping whiskey, and I’d been dry since the day of my untimely death. “I suppose it’d be a waste of time to try to convince you I’ve put aside my wicked past to carry the Word to the heathen.”
“Why not as Brother Page? Bernard Sebastian is just the kind of name Harlan Blackthorne would invent. How is the old bastard; ailing, I trust? I heard his heart was stricken, but I didn’t credit it. He hasn’t one.”
“It didn’t mellow him. Can a man who’s heard the Call not change his name and wipe the slate?”
“I read newspapers. I confess I felt a twinge of regret when I read of your assassination.”
I gave it up as a bad investment. She’d been a professional cardsharp for years and was impossible to bluff. “That was the Judge’s idea, too, in case someone recognized me. People believe what they read in print, God knows why.” I felt my face twisting at the blasphemy. The clothes had begun to wear the wearer.
“I won’t, from now on. This is about what happened in Montana Territory, isn’t it? That ogre in Helena never forgets a slight.”
“It was a little more than a slight.” I said it without thought, not wanting to hesitate and tip my hand. I’d been sure from the start Judge Blackthorne hadn’t sent me to Texas as a favor to Austin.
“An injury, then; and to his reputation, which is the only place he can be stung. What’s the statute of limitations on a wound to a man’s pride?”
“None, where he’s concerned. I wasn’t aware you’d met.” I was still trying to draw her out.
“We haven’t. But friends of mine have, and they came to regret it. That was neither here nor there to me until just now, when I found out he still has his sights set on Richard.”
“I’d forgotten you’re always loyal to your husbands.”
She drew healthily from her glass and set it on the desk. She looked thoughtful; but then her expressions operated independently of her honest emotions, if indeed anything about her was honest. “Like Judge, like deputy, I see,” she said. You’re still holding me responsible for what happened in San Sábado.”
“Breen, too. Don’t forget Breen.”
“Everyone else has. The place doesn’t even exist anymore. In the meantime I’ve heard rumors about your time in Canada and San Francisco. You’re growing notorious.”
“You do read newspapers.”
“Not only that. You’ve become a staple of the ten-cent press. I can’t wait to see what they’ll write about your time in Owen.”
“The Man Who Died Twice,” I said, “if this conversation is allowed to leave this room.”
“At long last you’ve learned fear. Are you begging for my silence?”
“I’m asking for it. It won’t have to be for long, just until I’ve finished what I haven’t started yet.”
“I cannot believe you expect me to conspire in a plot against my husband.”
There was nothing for it. There never had been, but I’d been bound to make the attempt. “I’m not here for Freemason, whatever he’s done. I never came across his name until I read it in a telegram to Brother Bernard on my way here. He sent it himself, inviting me to replace the Reverend Rose, whoever he may have been.”
“You always were an accomplished liar. I’m glad we never played pok
er in earnest.”
“I give you my word if the job has anything to do with Freemason I wasn’t told.”
“Then what is the job?”
“I won’t tell you that.”
She nodded. “At least you didn’t say you can’t. That’s one lie even you couldn’t bring off.”
The subject needed changing. It wasn’t as if we’d forget to come back to it. “How did you hook up with Freemason?”
“In Waco. I was dealing faro in a place called the Hispaniola, in a district known as the Reservation, where vice was licensed and taxed. The owner had an arrangement with the local collector, but he neglected to tell me. Five minutes after the dirty little man tapped out, I was in jail on some trumped-up ordinance prohibiting women from playing games of chance in the public room. Richard saw the arrest, figured out what had happened, and had me out on bail in a half hour; it was Friday night, and otherwise I’d have been stuck in that cell until the arraignment Monday morning. Somehow my court date never was set. That was before the infamous horsewhipping, which gave his enemies in the cattle trade an opportunity to remove him as an inconvenience. By then we were married.”
“He wouldn’t accept a simple thank you?”
She picked up her glass and drank. “I’d throw this in your face if it didn’t mean I’d have to pour another. I don’t want to give him the impression I share Fielo’s problem. Naturally I can’t tell him I joined his new minister in a drinking bout.”
“Does that mean you won’t peach?”
“‘Peach.’ You did visit San Francisco.” She rattled her nails on the glass. She used a clear polish or else one of palest coral; Colleen was not self-effacing, but nor was she vulgar. “I’ve been sitting here thinking I’d be foolish not to keep you where I can watch you for the time being. Next time, Blackthorne might send someone I won’t be able to spot so easily.”
The Book of Murdock Page 10