Mercury's Rise (Silver Rush 04)

by Ann Parker

  Epperley stepped to the side and invited the Stannerts in with a grand sweep of his arm. Mark, standing behind her, rested his hands on her shoulders and leaned in, saying in a low voice, “I got what I came for, darlin’. Now, it’s your turn.”

  Inez turned her head and smiled at him. From inches away, he returned her smile with one of his own, raised her hand to his lips, and kissed the inside of her wrist. Even through the glove, she felt a sudden, unexpected thrill of response curl through her body. His blue eyes—warm, eager, filled with anticipation of the coming game—generated a corresponding heat within her.

  Wordlessly, she undid the clasp of her cloak. Mark lifted it from her shoulders, and she stepped into the room.

  All the lads—the conscious ones, in any case—were riveted, eyes upon her.

  She lifted a hand and began to unbutton one glove. “I am so honored to be here, that you would think to invite me to your gathering,” she said in a low, musical voice. “It’s been a long ride from Manitou, and I find I am much in need of a glass of the best brandy you might have—for medicinal purposes, of course, for I’m feeling a little faint. And, I am positively dying for a leisurely evening of cards and clever conversation. What do you say to a game of poker?”

  Drawing off the glove, finger by finger, she moved toward the table, Mark following at her back.

  Chapter Forty-two

  “Just like old times, darlin’. You were magnificent.” Mark settled Inez’s cloak back about her shoulders.

  The Stannerts were outside the infamous room of two-aught-eight, preparing to leave. They had said their goodbyes to the Brits who were still standing. Of the original six, three had dropped away as the darkest hours of the night ticked by, victims of waning funds and indiscriminate drinking. The various bottles had emptied, only to be replaced by full ones, which emptied again, and were again replaced. It was like the cycle of an hour-glass, in which the level of sand drops, the glass is turned, and the level drops again.

  The card playing was, as Mark had presupposed, more a friendly pastime than a money-making proposition. Even so, they were walking away with far more than they had brought to the table, despite their concerted efforts to go easy on the lads. The players had imbibed enough to be sloppy in their calculations. Sir Daniel, who appeared to have the most to spend, seemed intent on hanging onto his “gopher endowment” and was the only one of the group, besides the Stannerts, to finish with a full purse.

  The night had been profitable in other ways. Through various remarks and asides, Inez was now certain that Epperley was itching to take over the Mountain Springs House and that he had no respect for how Lewis was handling business but was doing his level best to keep things afloat, even so.

  As for delicate inquiries regarding Lewis and Crowson’s relationship, he added bits to the backstory. “Siblings, or maybe cousins. Whenever someone even dares to say something against the nurse, he springs to her defense in a way that is positively brotherly.”

  As to a possible spouse for Mrs. Crowson? “Haven’t heard a peep,” Epperley said shortly. “If there was a marriage, it must have been long ago. I say, she doesn’t strike me as the type, though. She’s devoted to Lewis now and to Dr. P, of course. She’s his right-hand woman, I suppose you’d say.”

  What about a second brother?

  Epperley screwed up his face, setting his mustache even more askew. “Never heard of one. I’d say it’s just the two of them. Who knows about the past, though. They never talk about where they were or what they did before they came to Manitou.” He slanted a suspicious look at her. “Why?”

  She hastily changed the subject. After some time passed in desultory small talk, she dared to bring up the incident with the Herb Paris.

  “Oh yes. Heard that claptrap about the horse. Must have been a mistake. Did you see this berry Calder was prattling on about? No evidence of it now, so who’s to say what it was. Probably from one of the local plants. Locoweed, maybe. Calder always thought he knew everything about everything. Not to speak ill of the dead. Why do you ask?” His eyes narrowed dangerously, and for a moment, he looked almost sober. Inez veered away from the topic, and inquired instead about Mr. Travers.

  “Right, right. He’s taken up residence in this hotel,” said Epperley. “Never a good sign, when they leave Dr. P’s care in that sort of state. Poor chap. Last gasp, is my take on it. I’ve seen enough lungers to know when their number’s up.”

  Had he ever heard of a Dr. Galloway?

  “Can’t say that I have. But, the Springs area draws doctors the way your city in the clouds draws lawyers. I understand you can’t throw a stone across Leadville’s main avenue without hitting half a dozen solicitors.”

  Even as they added more dollars to their winnings, Inez added more pieces to the puzzle. Only a few pieces were still missing, she mused. Unfortunately, they were the most important ones.

  “Shall we pay a visit to Mr. Travers?” Mark asked as they started down the stairs.

  “I suppose so.” She stifled a yawn. “It may be our only opportunity to find out about Dr. Galloway.”

  Travers was not hard to spot. The lobby was empty, the night clerk dozing behind the desk, settled in one chair with his feet up on another. Off to one side, a hunched figure sat in an invalid chair. A single oil lamp, turned low, shed a weak light. A Negro boy, of about fourteen years and all long legs and arms, was curled up on a nearby sofa, asleep. As Inez and Mark approached, Inez wondered if perhaps they weren’t too late, and Mr. Travers had already passed from this life to the next.

  As they drew near, however, Mr. Travers’ chest visibly heaved, and he began a tortured cough. The boy stirred and sprang up, pulling a cloth from his pocket. He hurried to hold it up to Mr. Travers’ mouth. Once Travers stopped coughing, the boy carefully wiped the man’s face. “Is it time, Mr. Travers?” he asked in a timid voice.

  Travers nodded and motioned with one skeletal hand.

  The attendant fished around in his pocket again, pulled out a bottle, and shook a pill into the outstretched claw.

  “Mr. Travers?” Inez inquired.

  He looked up with sunken rheumy eyes. Sparse hair lay slicked across his sweating skull. He was so emaciated that Inez thought that, when Charon did invite him into his boat to cross the river Styx, the boatman could take Travers’ body as well as his soul, for they would be equally insubstantial.

  Travers’ gaze swept past Inez to Mark. Mark stepped forward. “Mr. Travers, I’m Mr. Stannert. I left a card for you with the clerk today. About Dr. Galloway?”

  “You don’t look like you suffer from the white plague.” His voice was the merest of whispers, a breeze intimating death in the wings.

  Mark spoke. “I was inquiring for my wife’s uncle.” He put a hand on Inez’s arm, a signal that he would steer the conversation. “He is doing very poorly from the wasting disease. We came to the Mountain Springs House to see if the physician there might cure him. He says not. But then, we heard that Galloway might be the one who can help.”

  “A cure. A cure,” Travers wheezed, triumphant. “Yes! Galloway is a genius. All the rest—charlatans. He has eased my breathing, brought me back from the brink. Hemlock extract for inhalation. Injections of mercury salts. And calomel,” he held out a shaky hand, disclosing the chalk white pill, “chloride of mercury, just as in the War. It worked then, and it will now. Mercury! Ah now, that’s the ticket. Galloway understands.”

  Inez scrutinized Travers, who beamed up at them with fevered, shiny eyes. The dried blood at the corners of his mouth. The emaciation, flushed skin stretched over cheekbones. The laboring chest, rising, falling, with each hard-won breath.

  Anger coiled within her. Wasting away from the wasting disease. Consumed by consumption. Who is this Galloway, who is so cold-hearted as to raise false hopes in a dying man?

  Travers grasped Mark’s wrist. Thin fingers with swollen joints tightened. Fingernails thickened and curved dug into Mark’s snow-white cuff. “You talked to Mr
s. Crowson? She gave you the card?”

  Mark nodded.

  “Then, you know what I know, for I’m certain she told you. The doctor comes twice a week to start with. More often, if you send word to the nurse. He comes at night. She assists in his stead, brings the medications, performs the injections, when he is busy. The man with a cure is a busy man. A very busy man.”

  “What does he look like?” Inez asked.

  Mark shot her a warning glance, but Travers answered readily.

  “Wears his jacket from the army. Showed me his green sash, his surgical bag, with eagle on the lock. Yes, from the War.”

  “But his appearance,” she persisted. “Tall? Short? Gray hair? Mustache?”

  He frowned, perplexed.

  “So we may recognize him,” she added hastily.

  He nodded, closed his eyes. Inez wasn’t certain if he was exhausted and trying to recapture lost energy, or calling up an image behind his fluttering paper-thin lids. He finally responded, “Much like the nurse. Same eyes. Same broad forehead. A relative? I do not inquire. That he provides the cure is enough. Beard.” He drew a vague arc at his throat. “Chin beard.”

  His eyes opened and refocused on Mark. “You could have seen for yourself, if you’d been here an hour earlier. Dr. Galloway came, gave me an injection. I told him of your interest. I gave him your card. He thanked me. Said he would find you.”

  A cold breath of fear, like a winter wind, sighed up Inez’s spine. “Do you ever see them, together? The nurse and the physician?”

  He shook his head. “No. Different nights.” He smiled, lost in vague memory. “Another thing. Like the nurse, this Dr. Galloway, he smells of…mint.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  “I guess I was wrong and you were right about women in trousers,” Mark said, as he urged the horse the last mile to Manitou.

  Inez clutched his arm, leaning forward as if leaning would encourage the horse to pick up the pace. “Can’t you make him go a little faster?”

  “Darlin’, fast horses on a road we don’t know, that’s how horses break legs and riders break necks. I’m going as fast as is safe.”

  “The road is straight here,” Inez said.

  Mark sighed, and urged the horse into a slow and cautious trot. “What’s got you so wound up, Inez? Mrs. Crowson and Lewis aren’t likely to do anything tonight. They may know we’re on to something—I guess leavin’ my card for Travers wasn’t the best move I’ve ever made—but how much we know, that’s got to be a mystery to them.”

  “Don’t bet on it. Mrs. Crowson may have overheard me ask Dr. Prochazka about herb Paris tonight. She knows that Calder spoke to me before he died. She was there when we were walking in the garden. She knew I was up to something when she cornered me in the hallway after I’d been downstairs looking around. At least, thank goodness, she didn’t catch me in Lewis’ rooms—or hers, for that matter.”

  “Remember, darlin’, they see me as a likely investor. It’s not reasonable that they’d turn around and bite my hand at this point.”

  “I don’t know, Mark. I just don’t know. As you said, she’s not likely to run. Everything she values is here, as far as I can see. Her garden, her brother, her herbs, teas, and potions. The invalids need her and count on her. If she is, indeed, living a double life as a male physician, she must be doing it for a reason. Why not just hire herself out as a nurse and tend to others in that way? Why don trousers and a fake beard,” the carefully boxed coil of gray hair in the nurse’s rooms now made sense, “unless she’s doing something she wants to be kept secret?”

  “Don’t forget she probably gave you that not-so-gentle shove down the stairs.”

  She frowned. “Could be. But, it doesn’t fit. As you said, you and Jonathan DuChamps are their most promising prospects to pull them out of this financial disaster they’re in. Just look at their situation: up to their necks in debt, yet still building, planning on a bowling alley, billiard room, adding cottages and another floor, hiring a telegraphist so they can have their own telegraph station here. How do they expect to pay? Who will take them on credit, if they don’t pay up on what they owe now? They must desperately want your money, and of course, Jonathan DuChamps’. So the question is, what will she or they do next? Who is the next likely target? The person who knows too much and is expendable, if it isn’t you, me, or Jonathan and his family?”

  In an agony of impatience and worry, Inez twisted her hands into the fabric of her cloak, gazing ahead into the waning night. When is dawn going to come? When will the skies lighten up so we can see?

  She recognized buildings that heralded the outskirts of the Manitou hamlet. “The telegraph office is on the way, at the Manitou House,” she said abruptly. “We’ll stop there, and you can send a message to Doc. Tell him it is urgent and ask him to respond quickly, that the situation is dire. Ask him if he knew any physicians with initials VLF and SCF from the days of the War. Mention the names Crowson and Galloway and as well as Victor, Lewis, and Franklin.”

  “You’ll wait while I parse this out?”

  “I cannot. I cannot sit and dither, not the way I feel. I’ll take the buggy back to the Mountain Springs House. I feel something is going to happen, and if so, I want to be there. It won’t take you more than a handful of minutes to walk to the hotel.”

  “So, tell me what you are going to do and where you’ll be. You plan on taking the buggy to the livery and then what? You going up to our rooms, or plan on pitchin’ a tent outside your sister’s or William’s room?”

  “I could actually watch them both at the same time from the hallway. No, I’ll head up to our rooms. You will find me there.”

  “I surely hope so, darlin’. If you’re not there, I’m going to tear the place apart looking for you, starting with the lower floor and workin’ my way up.”

  ***

  After dropping Mark off at the Manitou House and promising several times over that, yes, she would be waiting in their rooms, Inez returned to the Mountain Springs House. Dawn was finally approaching. Not yet arrived, but the sky was lightening from impenetrable black to a darkling gray, with the shapes of the foothills just taking on substance against the sky.

  She drove the buggy to the livery and delivered care of the horse up to a very sleepy Billy. She was disappointed that Morrow wasn’t on duty that night. Somehow, she would have felt better, knowing that he was there with his keen eye and calm ways.

  She walked out of the livery, to the edge of the garden, and paused. Ahead of her, the hotel kept its silence, its occupants still deep in sleep. At least, that’s what she assumed. But behind some of the plants screening the lower story from idle eyes, she thought she detected a glimmer of light corresponding to the location of Lewis’ study.

  So, he is still awake. Probably still trying to ‘fix’ the numbers for this morning’s meeting with Mark and Jonathan.

  One foot on the path to the hotel, she hesitated, and glanced toward the clinic. Lights still burned through drawn window blinds. Dr. Prochazka should be told. The sooner the better. Who knows what the nurse might do, if she thinks he’s worked out her part in all this? He seems almost oblivious to her. An invisible person can be more dangerous than someone who is an outright enemy.

  Decision made, she hurried to the clinic. She pushed on the door, which swung open. Moving silently inside, she entered the dark waiting room and moved into the office. The door to the backroom was partially ajar, with lamplight blazing. She saw a shadow moving within. Heartened, she walked forward as quickly as she could in her slim evening skirts.

  “Dr. Prochazka?” she called, setting one hand on the door and pushing. “I must speak with you.”

  She stopped. The room revealed a long, lank figure on the floor, pool of red spreading around his head. Nurse Crowson, enveloped in a long cloak, crouched by him, hand on wrist as if searching a pulse, but eyes lifted, gazing straight at Inez.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Inez took a quick step back. “What
happened?” was all she could think of saying.

  Nurse Crowson rose. The long cloak fell back to reveal the nurse was dressed in men’s jacket and trousers. The heavy statuette of Asclepius was clutched in one hand.

  One end of the white marble statue was stained with blood.

  “Excellent. You’re here.” Mrs. Crowson sounded as if she had been expecting her, as if she’d rung a bell and the bellboy had arrived.

  Inez snuck her hand through the side slit of her cloak and into her secret dress pocket. She almost swore out loud.

  No pocket pistol.

  Then, she recalled Mark earlier that evening, his fingers warm on her wrist, saying, “You won’t need that tonight.”

  “Please, pull your hand out of your pocket slowly,” said Crowson. “I want to see it empty.”

  Inez eyed her, wondering if she could, perhaps, physically subdue the nurse. Obviously, Mrs. Crowson was strong. And she was in trousers, whereas Inez was hampered by her evening dress. Tight skirts didn’t make for swift movements, so Inez didn’t think she could outrun the nurse. Of course, there was always screaming for help.

  Crowson sighed, shifted the bloody statue to her other hand, reached into the basket next to the phonograph and pulled out a revolver. “I really don’t want to use this, Mrs. Stannert. Makes far too much noise. But I will if I must. Now, I’ll keep Dr. Prochazka company, and you do the housekeeping. Then, we will decide what to do with you.”

  Inez slowly pulled her empty hand out of her pocket.

  “Better,” said the nurse with a nod, as if commending a patient for swallowing a particularly evil-tasting dose. “Now, please remove your cloak. I want to be able to see your hands and what they are doing at every moment. You are too fast and clever by half. It’s not good for a woman to be so clever. I know.”

  “What do you mean?” Inez slowly, so as to not antagonize her, unfastened the clasp and let the cloak slither to the floor.