“This is the first opportunity we’ve had to talk since I came home,” said Cromwell, secure in the knowledge that the driver could not hear their conversation through the divider window separating the front and rear seats.
“I know that your trip to Salt Lake City was successful. And our bank is another seven hundred thousand dollars richer.”
“You haven’t told me how you made out in Denver.”
“Your spies in the Van Dorn Agency were quite accurate in their assessment of the investigation. The Denver office has taken on the job of lead investigator in the hunt for the Butcher Bandit.”
“I hate being called that. I would have preferred something with more swank.”
“Like what, pray tell?” she asked, laughing.
“The Stylish Spirit.”
She rolled her eyes. “I doubt that newspaper editors would be enthused with that one.”
“What else did you find out?”
“The head of the Denver office, Nicholas Alexander, is an idiot. After I flashed a few of my charms, he couldn’t stop speaking about the hunt. He was angry he wasn’t put in charge of the investigation and had no reservations about revealing pertinent information concerning the methods they were going to use to catch the notorious bandit. Van Dorn himself named his top agent, Isaac Bell, to the case. A handsome and dashing devil, and very wealthy, I might add.”
“You saw him?”
“I met him, and, what’s more, I danced with him.” She pulled a small photograph from her purse. “I was waiting to give you this. Not the greatest likeness, but the photographer I hired was not very proficient at shooting photographs without setting them up in advance.”
Cromwell switched on the dome light of the car and examined the photo. The photo showed a tall man, with blond hair and mustache. “Should I be concerned about him?”
Her eyes took on an evasive expression. “I can’t say. He seemed more intelligent and sophisticated than our spies led me to believe. I had them check his background. He rarely if ever fails to find and apprehend his man. His record is quite admirable. Van Dorn thinks very highly of him.”
“If, as you say, he is affluent, why is he wasting his time as a simple detective?”
Margaret shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe, like you, he craves a challenge, too?” She hesitated as she adjusted an imaginary loose curl with her fingers.
“Where did he get his money?”
“Did I forget to mention that he comes from a family of bankers in Boston?”
Cromwell stiffened. “I know of the Bells. They own the American States Bank of Boston, one of the largest financial institutions in the country.”
“He’s a paradox,” she said slowly, recalling her few minutes with him in the Brown Palace Hotel. “But he can also be very dangerous. He’ll come after us like a fox chasing a rabbit.”
“A detective who knows the inner workings of banking procedures is not good,” Cromwell said, his tone low and icy. “We must be especially wary.”
“I agree.”
“You’re certain he had no clue to your true identity?”
“I covered my tracks well. As far as he and Alexander know, my name is Rose Manteca, from Los Angeles, where my father owns a large ranch.”
“If Bell is as smart as you suggest, he’ll check that out and prove Rose doesn’t exist.”
“So what?” she said impishly. “He’ll never know my name is Margaret Cromwell, sister of a respected banker who lives in a mansion on Nob Hill in San Francisco.”
“What other information did you pry out of Alexander?”
“Only that Bell’s investigation is not going well. They have no clues that lead in your direction. Alexander was angry that Bell hadn’t taken him into his confidence. He said that Bell was close-mouthed concerning his actions with a pair of agents known as Curtis and Irvine. All I could find out is, they’re all out beating the bushes in search of a lead.”
“That’s good to hear.” Cromwell smiled thinly. “They’ll never consider that a banker is behind the robberies.”
She gazed at him. “You could quit, you know. We no longer need the money. And no matter how careful, no matter how sharp-witted you are, it’s only a question of time before you’re caught and hung.”
“You want me to give up the excitement and the challenge of achieving what no one else would dare and play the role of a stodgy banker for the rest of my days?”
“No, I do not,” she said with a wicked sparkle in her eye. “I love the excitement, too.” Then her voice softened and became distant. “It’s just that I know it cannot go on forever.”
“The time will come when we know when to stop,” he said without emphasis.
Neither brother nor sister possessed even a tinge of repentance or remorse for all the men, women, and children Cromwell had murdered. Nor could they have cared less for all the savings of small businesses, miners, and farmers they had wiped out when the robbed banks, unable to refund their depositors, had to close their doors.
“Who are you taking tonight?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Marion Morgan.”
“That prude,” she scoffed. “It’s a mystery to me why you keep her on the payroll.”
“She happens to be very efficient,” he retorted, not seeking an argument.
“Why haven’t you ever taken her to bed?” she said with a soft laugh.
“You know I never play with my employees. It’s a principle that has saved me much grief. I’m only taking her out tonight as a bonus for her work. Nothing more.” His sister’s dress was pulled to her knees and he reached over and squeezed one of them. “Who is the lucky man this evening?”
“Eugene Butler.”
“That fop?” he taunted. “He’s as worthless as they come.”
“He’s filthy rich—”
“His father is filthy rich,” Cromwell corrected her. “If Sam Butler hadn’t made a lucky strike when he stumbled onto the Midas gold vein, he’d have died broke.”
“Eugene will be richer than you when his father dies.”
“He’s a wastrel and a sot. He’ll spend his fortune so fast your head will swim.”
“I can handle him,” said his sister. “He’s madly in love with me and will do anything I tell him.”
“You can do better, much better,” grunted Cromwell. He picked up a speaking tube and spoke to the driver. “Abner, turn left at the next street and stop at the Butler residence.”
Abner held up a hand to indicate he understood. He stopped the Rolls in front of a huge mansion constructed of wood in the Victorian style of the day. Then he stepped from the car and rang the bell at the iron-gated front door. A maid answered, and he handed her Cromwell’s calling card. The maid took it and closed the door. A few minutes later, the door reopened and a tall, handsome man with sharply defined facial features came out and walked toward the car. He could have passed for a matinee idol onstage. Like Cromwell, he wore a woolen suit that was dark navy rather than black, a starched collar, and a tie with a white-diamond pattern. He paused in the portico and sniffed the air, which was tinged with a light fog that rolled in from the bay.
Abner opened the Rolls’s rear door, pulled down a jump seat, and stood back. Butler got in and sat down. He turned to Cromwell’s sister. “Maggie, you look positively stunning, good enough to eat.” He left it there, seeing the fearsome, hostile look in Cromwell’s eyes. He greeted Cromwell without offering his hand. “Jacob, good to see you.”
“You look fit,” said Cromwell as if he cared.
“In the pink. I walk five miles a day.”
Cromwell ignored him, picked up the speaking tube, and instructed Abner where to pick up Marion Morgan. He turned to his sister. “What saloon on the Barbary Coast do you wish for us to mingle with the foul-smelling rabble?”
“I heard that Spider Kelly’s was quite scrubby.”
“The worst dive in the world,” Cromwell said knowledgeably. “But they have good bands and a la
rge dance floor.”
“Do you think it’s safe?” asked Margaret.
Cromwell laughed. “Red Kelly hires a small army of husky bouncers to protect affluent clientele like us from harm or embarrassment.”
“Spider Kelly’s it is,” said Butler. “I even took my mumsy and dad there one evening. They truly enjoyed watching the mix of unsavory people who frequent the place. We sat in the slummers’ balcony to watch the lowlife cavort.”
The Rolls stopped in front of an apartment building on Russian Hill just off Hyde Street on Lombard, a fashionable but affordable district of the city. This area of Russian Hill contained the homes and meeting places where intellectuals, artists, architects, writers, and journalists engaged in lofty arguments and discussions—but mostly socialized and partied.
Marion did not stand on protocol. She was waiting out front, on the top step of her building. As the Rolls eased to the curb, she descended and then stopped as Abner opened the door for her. She was dressed in a short jacket over a blue blouse with a matching skirt that had a simple elegance about it. Her blond hair was drawn back and twisted into a long braid with a bow at the back of her long neck.
Cromwell stepped out and gallantly helped her into the backseat. The chauffeur pulled down the other jump seat in which Cromwell, in a courtly manner, seated himself. “Miss Marion Morgan, may I present Mr. Eugene Butler. And you’ve met my sister Margaret,” he said, using her proper name.
“Miss Cromwell, a pleasure to see you again.” Marion’s tone was gracious but not exactly filled with warmth. “Likewise, Eugene,” Marion acknowledged sweetly with familiarity.
“You know each other?” asked Margaret in surprise.
“Eugene…Mr. Butler…took me to dinner some time ago.”
“Two years,” Butler said good-naturedly. “I failed to impress her. She spurned all my later invitations.”
“And advances,” Marion added, smiling.
“Ready for a hot night on the Barbary Coast?” asked Cromwell.
“It will be a new experience for me,” said Marion. “I’ve never had the courage to go there.”
“Remember the old song,” said Margaret:
“The miners came in ’forty-nine,
the whores in ’fifty-one.
And when they got together,
they produced the native son.”
Marion blushed and looked demurely at the carpet on the floor as the men laughed.
A few minutes later, Abner turned onto Pacific Street and drove through the heart of the Barbary Coast, named after the lair of the Barbary pirates of Morocco and Tunisia. Here was the home of gamblers, prostitutes, burglars, con men, drunks, derelicts, cutthroats, and murderers. It was all there, debauchery and degradation, poverty and wealth, misery and death.
The infamous coast boasted more than three hundred saloons, wall-to-wall, within six city blocks, fifty of them on Pacific Street alone. It existed because of crooked politicians who were bribed by the saloon, gambling house, and brothel owners. The reputable citizens of the city complained publicly about the den of iniquity but averted their eyes because they were secretly proud of the distinction that their fair city of San Francisco more than equaled Paris, which bore the enviable reputation as the wickedest city in the Western Hemisphere, as a carnival of vice and corruption.
And yet the Barbary Coast was glitzy and glamorous, with loads of ballyhoo and skulduggery, a veritable paradise for people of honest means to go slumming. The unsavory who ran the dens of sin—in most cases, men—relished seeing the swells from Nob Hill enter their establishments because they had no scruples charging them exorbitant prices for admission and liquor, usually thirty dollars for a bottle of champagne rather than the going rate of six to eight. Mixed drinks in most saloons were twenty-five cents and beer a dime.
Abner slipped the Rolls through the revelers wandering the street and pulled to a stop in front of a three-story building that served as a hotel upstairs—in reality, a brothel, called a cow yard, which housed fifty women in rooms, called cribs. The main floor was for gambling and drinking, while the downstairs basement had a stage for bawdy shows and a large wooden floor for dancing. They stepped from the car, with the men in the lead to shield the ladies, who stared with fascination at a flashy uniformed barker on the sidewalk.
“Step right into Spider Kelly’s, the finest drinking and dancing establishment on the coast. All are welcome, all will have the night of their lives. See the wildest show and the most beautiful girls to be found anywhere. See them kick their heels over their heads; see them sway in a manner that will shock and amaze you.”
“I like this place already,” said Margaret gaily.
Marion stared and clutched Cromwell’s arm tightly and looked up at a sign largely ignored by the clientele that read NO VULGARITY ALLOWED IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT.
They entered a large, U-shaped entrance lobby decorated with framed panels of nude women dancing amid Roman ruins. A manager decked out in an ill-fitting tuxedo greeted them and escorted them inside. “Do you wish to go downstairs for the show?” he asked. “The next one starts in ten minutes.”
“We would like a safe table away from the riffraff,” said Cromwell in a demanding tone. “After we’ve enjoyed a bottle of your finest champagne, we’ll go downstairs for dancing and the show.”
The manager bowed. “Yes, sir. Right this way.”
He escorted Cromwell’s party through the crowded saloon up to a table on the slummers’ balcony Butler had mentioned overlooking the main floor of the saloon. Soon a waitress wearing a thin blouse cut low across her breasts and a skirt that came well above her knees, showing an ample display of legs in black silk stockings held up by capricious garters, brought a magnum of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne, vintage 1892. As she eased the bottle into an ordinary bucket filled with ice, she brushed against the men and gave each an earthy smile. Margaret returned the smile, letting the waitress know that Margaret knew that besides serving customers in the saloon she also worked in the cribs upstairs. Surprised at seeing a Nob Hill swell dressed in a revealing outfit, the waitress gave Margaret a lewd look.
“You know, dearie, a redhead like you is in high demand. You could name your own price.”
Marion was stunned. Cromwell fought to keep from laughing, while Butler became outright indignant. “This is a lady!” he snapped. “You will apologize!”
The waitress ignored him. “If she’s Jewish, she can make the top of the scale.” Then she turned, gave a wiggle to her buttocks, and walked down the stairway.
“What does being Jewish have to do with it?” Marion asked naively.
“There is a myth going around,” explained Cromwell, “that Jewish redheads are the most passionate of all women.”
Margaret was enjoying herself as she gazed around the main floor of the saloon. She felt a giddy elation at seeing the sailors and dock-workers, the young and honest working girls who unknowingly were easily led astray, and the hardened criminals milling around the floor, which was littered with a small army of men too drunk to stand. Unknown to the others, including her brother, Margaret had visited the dives of the Barbary Coast on several occasions. And she was well aware that her brother Jacob often frequented the expensive and most exclusive parlor houses, where the royalty of the shady women plied their trade.
Marion found it disgusting and fascinating at the same time. She had heard the coast was the pit of bitterness and despair for the poor of San Francisco, but she had no idea how far humans could sink. She was not used to drinking and the champagne mellowed her after a while, and she began to see the depravity in a less-sickening light. She tried to imagine herself as one of those loose women, taking men to the cribs upstairs for as little as fifty cents. Horrified at herself, she quickly pushed the thought from her mind and rose unsteadily to her feet after Cromwell held up the empty bottle and announced that it was time for them to go downstairs.
The manager appeared and found a table that was occupied on t
he dance floor not far from the stage. Two couples dressed in soiled working clothes protested at having to give up their table, but the manager threatened them with bodily harm if they didn’t move.
“What luck,” said Margaret. “The show is just starting.”
Cromwell ordered another magnum of champagne as they watched a well-endowed woman step onto the small stage and begin a Dance of the Seven Veils. It wasn’t long before the veils dropped away and she was left with a scanty costume that left little to the imagination. Her abdominal muscles rippled as she gyrated and made several lusty contortions. When she was finished, the men in the audience threw coins on the stage.
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