The Case of the Petrified Man

by Caroline Lawrence

“Vanilla, ginger and sarsaparilla,” he said. “I recommend the sarsaparilla. It is good for purifying the blood in this thin air.”

  “Give me a sarsaparilla soda then, please.”

  He nodded & turned & got a four-sided blue-green bottle from the shelf below the mirror. It said Dr. Townsend’s Sarsaparilla on the side. He put a shot of syrup in the bottom of a glass mug & then topped up the mug with fizzing soda from a spigot. He left the blue-green bottle on the bar so I could see it was the Genuine Article, imported from faraway New York.

  “That’ll be a short bit,” he said.

  I put down a dime & sipped my sarsaparilla soda.

  It was sweet & spicy & prickly all at the same time. It made my throat & stomach tingle in a nice way.

  As I turned to watch Jace, a man in a brown bowler hat came to stand beside me. He ordered whiskey & then whistled a little tune under his breath. I did not pay attention to him because I was looking at Jace.

  Jace was one of the main reasons I had decided to stay in Virginia City. When I realized he knew how to read people, I wanted his knowledge more than I had ever wanted anything. He agreed to teach me, in exchange for my help.

  Jace was playing poker with three other men.

  Unlike Mr. Leahigh, the men all looked pretty much the same to me. They all had mustaches & hats & wore dark clothes. In fact, they all looked a bit like Jace, who also has a mustache & hat & wears dark clothes. But there is something about Jace that makes him stand out from the crowd. He has a kind of stillness. All the other men were fidgeting or tapping their fingers or shuffling their feet. But he just sat there, his face in shadow because of the window behind him, occasionally taking a puff from his cigar.

  Two of the other men were smoking cigars, too, and a cloud of blue smoke hung over their table. The fourth man was a tobacco chewer. I could tell by the lump in his left cheek.

  Jace had taught me how to tell what a person is thinking by looking at their feet. I could tell that the tobacco chewer had a good hand. The toe of his right foot was pointing up. But the man opposite probably had a better hand. His feet were doing a little dance under the table.

  I took a sip of my sarsaparilla soda, and set down my glass mug on the bar so that the handle pointed towards the man with the dancing feet.

  Jace folded up his fanned-out cards. “I’m out,” he said.

  “Me, too,” said the man across from him. They both put their cards facedown and sat back.

  The tobacco chewer put a gold coin into a pile of coins. Then he turned his head and spat into a brass spittoon on the floor beside him.

  “How is pecking for corn like chewing tobacco?” said the man in the brown bowler hat who was standing beside me. He had a pleasant Southern accent a little like Jace’s.

  I turned and looked at him.

  He was tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard!

  I wondered if he was the Killer and if he had followed me here.

  “It is a conundrum,” said the possible Killer of Short Sally. “A riddle with a pun for an answer. I repeat: How is pecking for corn like chewing tobacco?”

  “I do not know,” said I. “How is pecking for corn like chewing tobacco?”

  The man smiled & took out a pipe. “Because it is a foul habit.” He looked at me as if he was expecting a response. “Did you catch the pun?” he said. “‘Fowl’ with a w sounds just like ‘Foul’ with a u. A fowl habit. Chickens peck for corn and they are fowl.”

  I nodded. I liked that. It was a bit like a mystery in one sentence.

  “I like that,” I said. “It is a bit like a mystery in one sentence.”

  “If you like it, then you are supposed to laugh,” said he.

  “I never laugh,” I said. “Nor cry, neither.”

  “Oh,” he said, and took a sip of whiskey.

  He puffed his pipe, and the scent of it sent a strange pang to my heart. He was smoking the same brand of tobacco as my foster pa, who had been murdered the week before. My throat felt tight & my vision got blurry. It must have been the smoke because I never cry.

  I blinked and everything got clearer.

  “Is that Green’s Irish Flake tobacco?” I asked him.

  “Why, yes,” he drawled. “Would you like some?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I do not smoke or chew. I believe them to be foul habits.”

  He chuckled & puffed away.

  “But I like the smell of that one,” I admitted. “My dead foster pa used to smoke it.”

  He nodded. “It reminds me of home, too.” He put the briar pipe in his mouth and extended his hand. “Absalom Smith,” he said. “Actor and Professional Punster.”

  “P.K. Pinkerton,” I replied, shaking his hand. “Private Eye.”

  Ma Evangeline taught me a Trick to remembering people’s names and faces. She said to make a picture of that name and link it to something I can imagine in my head and then put the person in it. Absalom was a person from the Bible. He was King David’s favorite son, but his vanity betrayed him and he was caught in low-lying tree branches by his long hair and died. Absalom Smith had short hair as far as his bowler hat let me see, so I pictured him sitting on the branch from which King David’s favorite son dangled.

  “Are you a Pinkerton Detective?” he repeated. “I did not realize they made them so small.”

  “I am a Pinkerton, and a Detective,” I said, “but I am not employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, per se. I am a Private Eye.”

  “What does every detective, no matter how smart, overlook?” he said.

  “I do not know.”

  He removed his pipe. “His nose.” He paused to see if I would laugh.

  I did not laugh & he said, “Are you working on a detective job now?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “We call them ‘cases.’” Caution prevented me saying more.

  At a table near Jace’s a man gave an almighty sneeze. He put some snuff in his nostril and sneezed again.

  “What would contain all the snuff in the world?” said Mr. Absalom Smith, and as I was puzzling this out, he said, “No one knows.” He repeated this, tapping his nose & I realized he had said, “No one NOSE.”

  I said, “That was another conundrum.”

  “It was. And I believe that one almost made you smile.”

  I was about to deny this when the jingly sound of spurs made me turn around real fast. That sound makes me jumpy because two of my mortal enemies wear spurs: Boz & Extra Dub.

  But it was not Boz or Extra Dub.

  It was only a smiling youth of about 17 or 18 years old with a dainty little slouch hat tipped over his left eye. I turned away in relief and then turned back.

  He was tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard!

  Actually, he was of medium height. But perhaps to Martha he might seem tall. And his mustache & beard were almost invisible, being mainly fluff. But under his small hat, his hair was the yellowest I had seen.

  He was very dusty but you could tell he was good-looking underneath. He had about the whitest teeth I ever saw & the biggest silver spurs, too.

  He also had two revolvers. The flaps of the holsters were undone & I could see the walnut grips of those guns.

  He turned his brilliant smile towards the bar but as soon as he saw me his smile faded. He put on Expression No. 5 & took up a gunfighter’s stance. “You!” he said. “Draw!”

  Ledger Sheet 14

  WHEN THE BLOND YOUTH said Draw! all conversation in the saloon instantly ceased. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Leahigh slowly sink down behind the bar. Jace and the other poker players had stopped in mid-deal.

  “Draw!” The youth tipped his head back so that his jaunty slouch hat did not block his vision. “I ain’t afraid of you.”

  A pipe clattered to the floor, and I realized the dusty young man was not looking at me, but at the man standing beside me.

  Mr. Absalom Smith did not rise to the bait nor make the slightest move. Was he petrified with fear? Or cool as a radi
sh?

  “I see that piece in your pocket,” said the blond gunman.

  I glanced over at Absalom Smith’s right-hand trowser pocket. Sure enough, it was bulging, and I was close enough to see the brass trigger guard of an Augusta Revolver, which some folk called the “Confederate Colt.”

  (Although I do not have a Gun Collection, I know a lot about firearms.)

  “I see your piece,” repeated the blond youth, “so I know you’re heeled. Now draw!”

  Absalom Smith made no reply.

  “What is wrong with you?” said the young man. “Why won’t you draw? Ain’t you Farmer Peel? Chief of the Desperados?”

  Absalom Smith still made no reply.

  I spoke up. “He ain’t Farner Peel,” I said. “His name is Absalom Smith.”

  The young gunman’s eyes flickered towards me. They were very blue, with thick eyelashes. “You keep out of this, kid!” But after a moment his eyes flicked back. “You sure it ain’t him? He fits the description.”

  I looked at Absalom Smith. It was true: he did look a bit like Peel, but no more than the dusty gunman himself. And of course he did not have the scar of a bullet below his right cheekbone.

  I said, “Farner Peel has a bullet scar below his right cheekbone. That is how you can tell them apart.”

  Absalom Smith finally spoke. His voice was shaky. “The boy’s right,” he said in his Southern accent. “I am not Farmer Peel. I admit I carry a gun, but so does everyone in this place.”

  “Whew!” The young man exhaled & took off his hat & ran his hand through his dusty hair. Then he flashed his white teeth in a broad grin. “I’m mighty sorry about that. Don’t I look a fool?”

  People in the saloon started moving again.

  The gunman stepped towards Absalom Smith with his right hand extended. “My name is John Dennis,” he said. “But you can call me El Dorado Johnny. Let me buy you a whiskey.” He turned to Mr. Leahigh, who had resumed his standing position. “Two whiskeys,” he said, replacing his hat at its rakish angle. “And a drink for the little Indian, too.” He shone his smile on me. “What’s that you’re drinking, kid?”

  “It is soda water with sarsaparilla syrup,” I said.

  I bent over & picked up the briar pipe & handed it to Absalom Smith, Actor and Professional Punster.

  “Thank you, P.K.,” he said. He took the pipe with a shaky hand.

  “What brings you to Virginia, Johnny?” asked Mr. Leahigh, as he put down a new whiskey glass.

  “Oh, I ain’t new to these parts,” said Mr. El Dorado Johnny. “I got me a placer mine in Flowery Canyon, about two miles from here. I just heard you got a position vacant here in Virginia.” He looked around to make sure everybody was listening.

  “What position might that be?” asked Mr. Leahigh, filling his glass.

  “Chief of the Desperados,” announced the youth. He was smiling again & showing his pearly teeth. “Yes, I aim to be Chief of the Desperados hereabouts.”

  Some people laughed at that. But not Jace, nor Mr. Leahigh neither.

  El Dorado Johnny knocked back his whiskey and put the small glass back on the bar. Then he turned and faced the people in the saloon, who were still watching him with interest.

  “Can any of you recommend a good bath house and barber?” he said in a carrying voice. “I intend to call out Farmer Peel today or tomorrow at the latest. If he kills me, I want to make a Good-Looking Corpse.”

  Some more people laughed & this seemed to please El Dorado Johnny.

  “That’s right,” he said, hooking his thumbs in his gun belt & looking around with a grin. “I aim to be either Chief of the Comstock or a Good-Looking Corpse.”

  There was more laughter.

  Mr. Leahigh filled Johnny up again. “Your best bet for a bath and barber,” he said, “is Selfridge & Bach’s just a few doors down. They will make you look real pretty.”

  El Dorado Johnny knocked back his second whiskey, put a silver dollar on the bar, touched the brim of the dainty slouch hat with his finger & clanked out of the saloon in the direction of the bath house.

  “By God, I need another whiskey, too,” said Absalom Smith.

  Mr. Leahigh poured it & Mr. Absalom Smith took it with trembling hand. “What is the difference between roast beef and pea soup?” he asked us.

  Before we could answer, he downed his whiskey in one. “Anyone can roast beef,” he said & hurried out the back door of the saloon.

  Mr. Leahigh gave a rare chuckle.

  Then his smile faded & he shook his head. “I sure hope that durn fool El Dorado Johnny don’t end up a good-looking corpse.”

  The card players at Jace’s table had finished their hand. They were all rising to depart, shaking hands with Jace and each other.

  Jace saw me looking at him and he tipped his head towards the back of the saloon.

  I was not sure what he meant at first, but when he disappeared out the back a few minutes later, I followed.

  I had not seen him for nearly two whole days. I hoped he did not think I was ignoring him.

  I went out the saloon’s back door and down some wooden stairs to the steep slope. When I reached the bottom, I could see no sign of him. Apart from some woodpiles & heaps of garbage, there were only a couple of privies out there: the one with a moon cut in the door for women & the star one, for men.

  Then I smelled Jace’s Cuban cigar & saw a wisp of smoke emerge from the star hole in the door of the right hand privy. Jace smokes a brand called “Mascara,” which means “mask” in Spanish. This is fitting, as his face is usually a mask.

  I went over to the outhouses & squeezed between them so that unless you were standing right in front of them or right behind them you would not see me.

  “Jace?” I said, in a low voice. “You in there?”

  “Yeah,” came his voice from within. “I’m in here. You did the right thing back there when you spoke up. Defused a nasty situation. But I been thinking…Might be better for our partnership if we ain’t seen together in public. How about you join me and Stonewall for dinner this evening about eight? After dinner you can help me play a few hands of poker over at the Virginia City Saloon. All right?”

  “All right,” I said. I glanced around. “Can I just ask you something?”

  “Ask away,” came his voice after a moment. “But make it quick.”

  Ledger Sheet 15

  I HAVE BEEN HIRED to find the Murderer of Short Sally,” I told Poker Face Jace through the wall of the privy out back of the Fashion Saloon. “My client says Sally was strangled but you told me her throat was cut.”

  His voice emerged through cracks in the planks along with wisps of cigar smoke. “You sure you want to take on the biggest mystery in Virginia?” he said. “Ain’t the Law investigating?”

  I said, “If I can solve this mystery then people will respect me and stop pranking me. Who told you her throat was cut?”

  “Don’t recall. Heard it in a saloon.”

  I said, “How can I find out if my client is telling the truth or not?”

  Jace’s answer came along with another wisp of smoke. “Ask the Coroner. He operates out back of a saloon down on South C Street.”

  I knew a Coroner was an official who investigated deaths, but I had never heard of one operating out back of a saloon.

  “Which saloon?” I asked.

  “The Washoe Exchange Billiard Saloon. There is a kind of vault built into the mountain there,” explained Jace. “Sometimes they use it as a morgue.”

  I was surprised to learn there was a coroner’s office and a morgue out back of the Washoe Saloon. I figured they must be right underneath my bedroom window.

  “P.K.?” said Jace.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You take on this case you better be careful not to cross the Coroner or the Deputy Marshal. I do not think they would be favorably disposed towards you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “That is good advice.”

  “Now skedaddle,” said Jace. �
��I got business to attend to.”

  I left Jace to finish his business.

  It was now past noon and I was hungry.

  On my way to see the Coroner, I stopped by the Colombo Restaurant & asked Titus Jepson if he had any old copies of the Daily Territorial Enterprise newspaper with reports of Short Sally’s murder. He sent Gus to look and he brought a plate of cheese & crackers to my usual table along with a glass of sarsaparilla—my new favorite drink. By and by, Gus brought over a three-day-old, grease-stained newspaper, dated Monday September 29.

  It contained a short notice of Sally Sampson’s death:

  BRUTAL MURDER!

  WOMAN KILLED IN HER BED.

  On Saturday morning a sporting woman known as “Short” Sally Sampson was found murdered in her crib on D Street. There was no evidence of robbery and the motive remains a mystery. Her ten-year-old servant girl is missing but is not considered dangerous as neighbors said she “would not hurt a fly.” Hundreds of men turned out for Miss Sampson’s funeral yesterday, including all three Volunteer Fire Companies and a brass band. Most mines shut down for a few hours as a mark of respect. The Reverend Samuel B. Rooney gave his final eulogy before leaving this Territory. He spoke most eloquently of Sally’s bravery and compassion. Virginia City and this newspaper eagerly await the results of the inquest. Crimes such as this one should not go unpunished.

  That brief report did not say whether Sally had been cut or throttled. But at least it seemed accurate. If Mr. Sam Clemens had written it, he probably would have subjected Short Sally to death by a thousand arrows from marauding Shoshone, or had her peppered with balls like a “nutmeg-grater.” I closed the paper & finished my sarsaparilla & thanked Mr. Titus Jepson and Gus, too.

  Then I headed down to the Coroner’s office at the back of the Washoe Exchange Billiard Saloon. I decided to take the normal route even though the ladder below my back window could have taken me directly there.

  I went down Taylor and turned right and sure enough, there it was: the Washoe Exchange Billiard Saloon, a sturdy building in fireproof brick. As I stood there looking at it, I noticed a big, red-faced man with bushy brown whiskers & a silver-tipped walking stick go down the alley I had used several times. He was unlocking a door. As I came closer, I saw the words G.T. SEWALL, CORONER painted on it. I had been following Martha’s footprints with my nose down, which is why I had not noticed the sign before.