‘Are you ready?’ asked Collis. ‘Whatever all of this money adds up to, it says eight, five, king.’
The dealer coughed. Then, out of the box, he dealt the eight of hearts. Andrew glanced at Collis, gnawing uncertainly at his knuckle, but Collis, even though he saw him, did everything he could to stay straight-faced. It was one of the principles that Henry Browne had always taught him: stay calm, whatever happened; or try to. The odds were that everyone else was just as upset and wound up as you were.
Underneath the eight of hearts was the five of spades.
The tension was unrelieved. Collis blew out smoke, watching the dealer to see what he would do. Of course, there was nothing he could do. The Eagle Saloon may have been boisterous by New York standards, but it wasn’t a hole-in-the-wall gambling hell. Collis reached across the table and picked up the Navy revolver. It was much heavier than he had expected it to be, and it smelled of oil.
‘Give me your hat,’ he said to the dealer.
The dealer blinked. ‘Whut?’
‘Your hat. Hand it over.’
Uncertainly, the man took his white hat off and gave it to Charles, who passed it to Collis. Collis held it up by the brim and then looked across at the dealer, the pistol raised in his hand, as if he was sizing him up for one neat shot between the eyes. The dealer unconsciously wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
Completely by surprise, Collis squeezed the revolver’s trigger and fired through the top of the hat, upward into the ceiling. There was an ear-splitting bang, and the crown of the hat burst apart in black tatters. Almost everybody in the saloon, with the exception of the pianist, who was too fat, and one or two people who were too shocked to move, huddled in a rush under the tables.
Collis was trembling with tiredness and the strain of the game he was playing. But he handed the dealer’s hat back to him with great control and calmness, and said, ‘There. Put it on.’
The dealer examined the hat unhappily and then put it on his head. He looked like a hobo, or a giant firecracker that had failed to light properly. There was a ripple of laughter around the saloon, and a sudden relaxation of fear.
‘What’s your name?’ Collis asked the dealer.
‘Dan McReady.’
‘Where are you from, Dan?’
The man coughed. ‘Vermont, originally. But I did time on the riverboats.’
Collis handed his revolver back to him. ‘Well, Dan,’ he said, so quietly that only Charles and Andrew could hear him, ‘I guess we were all raw once, and all strangers to San Francisco, and I guess that we were all taken advantage of, now and again, because we were green. But I hope what I did to your hat is going to be a permanent reminder of something, and that is, just because you’re green, it doesn’t mean you’re yellow.’
Dan McReady dropped his gaze.
‘I’m going to take my money now, and I’m going off to get some sleep,’ Collis said. ‘But I hope you’ll be here tomorrow, because I have an outstanding bet with you, four to one, and I want to make sure I get what’s coming to me.’
There was a difficult silence. Then Dan McReady looked up again, and he was smiling, although he was plainly doing his best not to.
‘You son of a bitch.’ He grinned. ‘You goddam son of a bitch.’
They shook hands, and the pianist suddenly burst into ‘Dear Old Home of Mine’, and Charles sat there shaking his head as if he’d just witnessed a tornado pick up a house and put it right down again without so much as disturbing the flowers in the front yard.
Collis woke up at ten. He could hear a clock chiming somewhere. He sat up in bed, his hair tousled, and blinked at the brightness of the primrose-draped windows. Then, his head beating with a hangover, he climbed out of bed and walked across to the washbasin. This must be civilisation, he thought to himself, examining his face in the mirror. Nothing else but civilisation could give anyone such a goddam terrible headache.
He dressed, slowly and carefully, with several pauses, in a plain light-brown suit and a white shirt, tied with a dark-brown necktie. While he was lacing up his shoes, he rested for a while and took a couple of breaths. He could recall the faro game quite clearly, and he certainly remembered firing through the dealer’s hat. But he wasn’t at all sure what had happened after that. They had drunk a few more whiskys with the dealer to celebrate, and then he had been introduced to some of the Eagle’s regulars, and there had been drinks all around again, and at six o’clock, with the sky already light, Charles and Andrew had brought him back to Knickerbocker Jane’s in the phaeton, with Billy grumbling and complaining all the way that all these late nights would give him dark rings under his eyes. It had been too late for any romps with Ursula, even if he had been able to raise the energy. Knickerbocker Jane had packed her off to bed just after midnight, with a grocer’s assistant called Phelps. Guests were guests, but business was business.
Collis cleaned his teeth, then went downstairs to find himself some breakfast. On the landing, just coming out of her room, he met a small blonde girl in a décolleté day gown of white figured cotton, in which her breasts nestled like two soft-set puddings. She was blue-eyed, and snub-nosed, and couldn’t have been much older than fifteen. Two diamond pendants hung from her earlobes, and in her cleavage was a gold-and-sapphire cluster which was certainly just as expensive as any piece of jewellery that Collis had seen on any woman at a New York society dance.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
The girl gave him a little curtsy. ‘Good morning. I see you’ve recovered. Well, almost.’
‘Recovered? Recovered from what?’
‘Oh,’ she said, pursing her lips. ‘You must have been worse than I thought.’
‘Worse than you thought? Why should you have thought I was bad at all?’
‘Why,’ she said, ‘you had to be carried to bed this morning. A girl at each corner. And Knickerbocker Jane had to undress you and tuck you up. We all watched, of course.’
Collis looked at her warily. ‘Are you pulling my leg?’ he asked her. ‘I’m sure I distinctly remember going up those stairs on my own, unaided.’
‘You made it half-way,’ she told him. ‘But then you fell flat on your back and you lay there singing. You wouldn’t open your eyes, and you wouldn’t move, so there wasn’t anything else for it.’
Collis cleared his throat and tried to stand straight in a dignified manner. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, er, how many were there?’
‘How many what? I don’t understand you.’
‘How many were there, in the room? You know, watching.’
The girl closed her eyes and began to count on her fingers, whispering the numbers as she counted. Collis interrupted her by taking her hand in his and giving it a gentle squeeze. ‘Never mind,’ he said hoarsely. ‘If there were that many, I’d rather not know.’
They began to descend the stairs together. Collis said, ‘I don’t suppose I need to introduce myself. You’ve probably seen all you require for the striking up of a fairly close relationship.’
The girl laughed. ‘I’m only teasing you. It was Mr Hunt and Mr Tucker who put you to bed, really. But you were bad. If you’d had to make your own way back here, you would have been worked over for sure.’
The words of the street seemed strange, coming from the lips of such a young girl. ‘Do you mind if I ask you your name?’ Collis said.
‘Why should I? Clara, they call me, although my real name is Clarabelle.’
‘I think I prefer Clarabelle. It’s prettier.’
She made a face. ‘I hate it. I hate Clara, too.’
They reached the downstairs parlour. Collis opened the door for her, and she curtsied again and went in. Knickerbocker Jane was there, with her hair tied up in rags, in a lounging gown of layer upon layer of exquisite scalloped lace, with wide sleeves gathered at the cuffs, and a wide skirt. She was reading the San Francisco Bulletin on a long tasselled stick, with the aid of a pair of amber-tinted spectacles. Collis was sure he could see the rose
-pink of her nipples through the lace.
‘Ah, the dreamer awakes,’ said Knickerbocker Jane. ‘There’s some black coffee here, fresh, if you’d like some. Charles tells me you created quite a stir last night, and it seems that you’re richer, too.’
‘It was only a game of faro,’ said Collis. His face felt stiff, and he didn’t seem to be able to pronounce his words properly. It would probably pass after a plate of ham and eggs and a quart of steamer beer.
‘Only a game of faro? Well, it was the kind of faro that gets this city all stirred up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the newspapers write about it. We’ll have to buy this afternoon’s editions to see if you’re in them.’
Collis sat down. Clara went across to the rickety little occasional table and poured coffee. ‘I didn’t kill the man,’ Collis said. ‘I only shot a hole in his hat.’
‘That’s precisely the point,’ Knickerbocker Jane told him. ‘So many people get shot in San Francisco that it’s not news any more. But hats! How many hats get shot? They’ll love you, you know. That’s exactly the kind of extravagant behaviour that everybody in San Francisco adores.’
‘In New York, it would be frowned on,’ said Collis. ‘If I did anything like that nobody would speak to me for at least a month.’
‘In New York, there are more interesting things to do,’ replied Knickerbocker Jane. ‘Here, what is there? In the spring, you can go for a picnic on the seashore; in the summer, you can stay indoors and swelter. In the fall, it’s so foggy you can never see where you are; and in the winter it rains all the time. Charles swears that Montgomery Street was so bad last year that an entire ox wagon sank into the mud and was never seen again.’
‘You have your dance halls, and your theatre,’ Collis said.
‘Well, I suppose so,’ said Jane unenthusiastically. ‘And, incidentally, that reminds me. I have some tickets for the Empire this evening, to see Rodney Mulgrave perform. Would you like to come along?’
‘I had planned on playing faro.’
‘You can play later. You can play here, if you like. I should have a good crowd this evening.’
Collis sipped his coffee. ‘Is it a big social event, this performance?’
‘Of course. It’s Mr Mulgrave’s first night.’
‘I see. Will Laurence Melford be there?’
‘He’s bound to be,’ said Jane. ‘And so is Sarah, if that’s what really interests you.’
‘I think I’m more interested in the father than the daughter. It seems to me from what Andrew said that he’s the hardest nut in the whole social circle. Once you’ve cracked him, you’ve cracked every nob in San Francisco.’
‘Does society mean that much to you?’
‘It’s where I belong.’
‘You belong here too. You have friends here, which is more important.’
Collis bowed his head appreciatively, and finished his coffee. ‘I’m going out for some breakfast now,’ he told Jane. ‘Then I’m going to take a walk around, to see what I can see. I should be back by lunchtime.’
‘Don’t be too late. Charles said he wanted to take you out to the Auction Lunch, on Sansome Street, and introduce you to some of his business friends.’
Clara gave him a little wave as he left the parlour and went to find his hat. It had been hung in a closet in the hallway, along with dozens of other men’s hats, opera hats and derbies and skimmers and beavers, all of which had presumably been left behind by forgetful customers. Collis pulled on his gloves and then stepped out into the dusty, sunny street, taking a left and making his way along to Stockton Street. As he walked north, he was surprised by the elegance of most of the wood-and-iron houses, and by the well-laid boardwalks.
It was a dry, bright day and he began to feel better after walking only a few blocks. He stopped at a reasonable-looking lunchroom called the Mission Eating House, where he sat alone at a wooden table which had one leg violently shorter than the other three, surrounded by clerks and storemen and carriers, but where he was able to eat a huge breakfast of venison steak, fried trout, hot rolls, toast, and brown bread, washed down with cold steam beer served in a pot the size of a flower vase. There was also a table of cheese and cold cuts, from which he picked honeyed ham and smoked pork, and pickled onions.
After eating, he lit a cheroot and walked across to Montgomery. He knew where he was headed, and it was no surprise to him at all when he arrived on the boardwalk between Bush and Sutter Streets, outside a wide brown adobe building on which there was a red-painted sign reading: ‘Fancy Goods, Sewing Notions, Etc., Walter F. West, Prop.’
Collis stood outside the store, not moving, for three or four minutes. Passers-by jostled him, and mule wagons, struggling along the rutted street, ground past him in clouds of sunlit dust. But his thoughts, for those few minutes, were with Hannah, and in an equatorial garden under grey forbidding skies. His thoughts were with the kisses that might have to stay unkissed, with the hands that might never be held, with the moments of waking up next to Hannah that might never be. At last he tossed his cheroot into the road and entered the open door of the store.
It was dim inside the store, because the windows were small, and crowded with linens on display; but there was a circular skylight above the door which threw an elliptical pattern across the polished boarded floor, and on to the glass counter, where, with a tape measure around his shoulders and his hands clasped across the front of his dark-grey vest as if he were a preacher imminently about to sermonise, bearded and neat, rounded in appearance but not plump, his head slightly held to one side, stood Walter West. He was so much like the picture that Hannah had shown him on the ship that Collis found the resemblance unnerving; as if Walter West would also recognise him.
Across the counter was spread a profusion of Valenciennes laces, silk soutaches braids, silk grenadine veils, point d’ésprit dress nets, grosgrain ribbons, pongee silks and Wamsutta cambrics. There was a smell of fabric dressing and mustiness, and a faint hint of lily-of-the-valley toilet water.
Collis walked across to the counter. Walter West smiled at him and nodded. ‘Good morning. Can I help you?’
He was shorter than Collis had imagined him to be, and somehow plainer. He was, indeed, a very plain man. There were cuts on his fingers from handling threads and fabrics, and on the third finger of his left hand, a gold wedding band. It matched Hannah’s.
‘I was looking for a workbox,’ Collis said. ‘For a gift, you understand. A niece of mine. Very keen on sewing.’
Walter West pulled thoughtfully at his beard. ‘I see. Well we have a variety. It depends how much you wish to spend.’
Collis didn’t answer. He had been listening to Walter West’s voice, which was kind, but rather reedy, instead of to what he had actually been saying. He looked up and said: ‘Hm? I beg your pardon?’
‘I said, it depends how much you wish to spend. You see, we have a fancy one here, with a picture on the lid, varnished, and the inside fully lined with sateen, and that comes out at one dollar and twenty-three cents. But if you didn’t wish to lay out as much as that, this one here is plainer, but large, and it has a diamond-shaped mirror in the back, which is attractive.’
Collis cast his eyes over the two workboxes which Walter West had produced for him from beneath the counter. He had to admit that he didn’t know a damned thing about workboxes, and it was almost embarrassing to meet a man who did. How could Hannah think of staying with a man like this, who spent all his hours surrounded by Newton suiting and washable buttons? He was probably worthy, and Christian, and an excellent husband, but a woman like Hannah deserved so much more. At least, he imagined she did.
‘Are … either of these to your liking?’ inquired Walter West, puzzled by Collis’s silence.
‘What? I’m sorry.’
‘I have more in my store room. I could get them out for you.’
‘No, no, don’t trouble to do that. These are – well, these are very suitable.’
‘Which one would you like?’<
br />
Collis reached into his pocket for his purse. ‘The – er, varnished one. That one. Thank you.’
‘Would you care for it gift-wrapped? That’s three cents more.’
‘Yes. That sounds like a good idea.’
Walter West tugged pink tissue from a roll beside the counter and began to wrap the workbox up. As he neatly creased the paper and folded it, he said, ‘You’re from the East, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right,’ said Collis. ‘New York.’
‘Recent arrival?’
‘Very. I came on the California yesterday morning.’
‘Come to look for your fortune, huh?’ Walter West smiled.
‘Something of that kind.’
There was a pause, while Walter West went to find ribbon to tie around the paper. Then, as he made a bow and pulled at the satin with the blade of his scissors so that it would curl, he said, ‘My wife’s on her way out here from New York.’
‘Is that so?’
Walter West raised his eyes. To Collis’s discomfiture, they were radiant with optimism and affection. Collis gave a quick, jerky smile and then looked away.
‘She had to stay behind when I came out here. She had a sick mother, you see. But she’s on her way out here now.’
‘You must be looking forward to it very much,’ said Collis.
‘I can’t tell you,’ said Walter West. ‘It’s been real hard and lonesome, setting up this place on my own, without her. We wrote to each other, of course, but a letter isn’t anything like having the woman you adore right by your side to help you.’
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