Dan McReady’s cold eyes remained fixed on the reception desk opposite. He was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, and it waggled between his lips as he spoke. ‘I talked to Teach,’ he said, in his odd Vermont-Louisiana accent. ‘In fact, we had ourselves quite a tête-à-tête.’
‘And?’
‘He bought them. That was the upshot. Twenty thousand in dust and small nuggets.’
‘You put it in the hotel safe?’
‘I weighed it first, and took out my ten per cent.’
Collis put his hat on again. ‘I hope it was ten per cent precisely.’
‘Don’t you fear about that.’
Collis sat down beside him. ‘What about the fire? Is that all arranged?’
Dan McReady nodded. ‘I was just waiting to hear you say go ahead and do it. Then I was going to go ahead and do it. Do you want to watch?’
‘Is it all ready to go?’
Dan McReady’s cigarette had fizzled out, and he relit it. He sucked a few times until the tip was glowing. ‘You’ve got the best in the business. Gordon Jarvis, from New South Wales. That man could set fire to a raincloud, if you paid him enough.’
‘All right, then. Let’s go watch.’
They stepped outside the hotel and hailed a shabby-looking cab that was waiting-across the street. The girls came clustering up to them again, but Dan McReady pushed them aside and said something harsh under his breath that made them retreat. He opened the cab door for Collis and said to the driver, ‘Davis at Sacramento. And make it as quick as you damn well can.’
It was a chilly night. Their breath smoked in the darkness of the cab’s interior. Dan McReady sat upright, with his hands clasped together in his lap like a man on his way to a wedding reception. There was a smell of smoke and fog and Chinese satay in the air.
‘You’re sure Teach didn’t suspect anything?’ asked Collis.
‘Nope. He wouldn’t have paid over twenty thousand if he had. He was just bubbling over to get his revenge. Just bubbling over. You would’ve laughed.’
Collis stared out of the window. The cab was rattling south on Battery past the Merchant’s Exchange. It was nearly one-thirty now. In five and a half hours, he could be dead, lying in a pine box on the north shore of Lake Merced. He touched his closed eyelids with the tips of his fingers. He wondered if they would lay gold pieces on his eyes. Bits were in such short supply.
‘Maybe you can do me a favour,’ he said to Dan McReady.
‘A favour?’ The gambler turned his head and looked at him. His eyes registered nothing.
Collis swallowed. ‘I, er, I’m fighting a duel. I wondered if you could come along and help me. Be my second.’
‘A duel? Who the hell fights duels?’
‘It looks as though I do. I didn’t want to. But I guess things got out of hand.’
Dan McReady took a hand-rolled cigarette out of the breast pocket of his coat and put it between his lips.
‘What’s it over?’ he asked Collis, searching for his matches. ‘A woman?’
‘It was Grant Melford,’ Collis said. ‘Laurence Melford’s young whelp. All puffed up and indignant, and full of the family pride.’
Dan McReady grunted. ‘In that case, I hope you blow his head off.’
‘You’ll come along?’
‘If that’s what you want. I could always bear to see a Southerner get his just deserts.’
Collis smiled uncertainly. ‘You seem to be pretty sure that I’m going to win.’
‘Sure you’ll win. I fought a gunfight myself once, in a back street in Vicksburg. It wasn’t exactly a duel, but it added up to the same kind of affray when you think about it. I stayed calm, and that was the reason I won. The other fellow was popping away, and all I did was walk right up to him and point my pistol at his forehead and say, “If you don’t lay down your gun, it’s St Peter for you, instanter”.’
‘I wish I had your confidence,’ said Collis.
Dan McReady relit his cigarette. ‘Just remember that a heavy-calibre pistol is not an accurate weapon. By no means. So the steadier you are, the better chance you have of hitting what you want to hit. Hold your pistol in both hands, take a good long aim, and don’t fret about what the other fellow’s doing. If he’s as young and as burned up about things as you say he is, then the chances are that he’ll miss you by continents.’
The cab had arrived at the corner of Davis and Sacramento. Dan McReady opened the door, climbed down to the street, and looked up at Collis like the prompter in a melodramatic play.
‘It’s those who don’t want to die that usually do,’ he said, with a hard smile. ‘Those who don’t care one way or the other, they’re the ones who generally survive.’
Collis climbed down beside him and handed the cab driver a dollar. ‘That’s about the least reassuring thing that anybody ever told me,’ he said. ‘I just hope I don’t take those words to my grave.’
‘You’re really scared?’ Dan McReady pronounced it ‘skeered’.
Collis looked at him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you be?’
The cab turned in the street with a grinding of iron-hooped wheels and made its way uptown again, at a trot. Davis Street in the small hours of a winter morning was not a salubrious place to be, and the hazards to health weren’t confined to the stinking pools of water that had collected in the sandy infill around the edge of the Bay. There were crimps, fleecers, and vicious ticket-of-leave men who didn’t think very much about breaking a man’s head with a bung starter to take his purse. Collis didn’t know whether it was more frightening to stand on this bleak, fog-cold corner, waiting for Gordon Jarvis, or to face up to Grant Melford and his pistols-for-two. He felt chilled. His nose was running and he wished to God he was back in New York.
Eventually, a short, broad figure came limping along Sacramento Street from the direction of Battery. He walked straight up to Dan McReady and Collis and said gruffly, ‘All’s well. Who’s this?’
‘The client,’ Dan McReady said. ‘He’s taking an active interest.’
‘Doesn’t trust us?’
Dan glanced at Collis and grinned. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Could be a fire bug, like you.’
Gordon Jarvis stepped into the light. He was wearing a seaman’s jacket, with his hands jammed in the pockets, and his small round head was capped with a knitted fisherman’s hat. His nose was twisted, his cheeks were folded with white scars, and his two front teeth were missing. He smelled strongly of Dutch gin. His eyes glittered in his face like chips of coal caught in a hearthside rug.
‘How do you do, mister,’ he said, in a strong Australian accent. He put out his hand, and Collis shook it. Unnervingly, Jarvis had only three fingers, no thumb, and it was all Collis could do not to tug his own hand away in repulsion.
‘Dan tells me that everything’s ready,’ said Collis.
Jarvis nodded. ‘All we need now is the match, and you can have your fire. It should be a good one, too. I’ve told the boys at Engine Company Five to give us a fair half hour before they turn out.’
‘Nobody saw you move the blankets?’
Jarvis wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘We’re not first-timers, mister. We moved all the blankets out of the old warehouse under tarpaulins, and if anybody asked, we said they were rotten hides. We had them into Parkinson’s place by seven o’clock, and all locked up. Mr Stoddard gave us all the correct receipts, and he’s more than happy to see the place burn down. It’s overinsured, and overvalued, and he should be able to put himself up a decent new brick place instead.’
‘Very nice, too,’ said Collis wanly.
‘Right then,’ said Jarvis. ‘Shall we go? The fun’s all ready to start.’
They walked along the wet planks of Davis Street as far as California. The night was almost quiet now, except for the sounds of distant piano music and an occasional shout. The fog was precipitating cold moisture over the waterfront district like misery itself. Dan McReady let out one of his abrupt coughs – ‘Ha!’ – and Collis
glanced at him and hoped he wouldn’t decide to let one out just at the moment he was going to fire at Grant Melford.
Parkinson’s warehouse was a damp, sagging building that had been put together out of old timbers from Howison’s Wharf. Its foundations had been shifting for five or six years, as the Bay infill slowly settled beneath it, and now the walls were leaning and the roof was shedding its shingles. ‘If you want to watch, wait here,’ Gordon Jarvis said, and he crossed the street with the gait of a determined gorilla.
Dan McReady’s cigarette went out again, but he didn’t try to light it. He stood there with his arms folded and his hat tilted back, sniffing with contented regularity and waiting for the first signs of Gordon Jarvis’s success. Collis found himself whistling between his teeth. The buildings all around them were clotted with shadows.
At last, they heard a crackling sound. Collis looked across the street, straining his eyes in the darkness, and he saw skeins of grey woolly smoke pouring out the clapboarded sides of Parkinson’s warehouse. Then he saw the first licks of flame, and in a few minutes the whole building was issuing smoke like the big black carcass of a dragon. There were pops and groans and creaks, and some of the joists fell inside the building, so that it staggered and leaned even further to the left.
Abruptly, there was a soft funnelling sound, and through the cracks in the timbers Collis could see that the inside of the warehouse had burst into dazzling, lascivious flame. Dan McReady sniffed and said, ‘That’s the whale oil. Gordon always likes to leave a barrel of whale oil around to hike up the heat. You watch her burn up now.’
The fire became ferocious, like a flaring disease from which no timber or rafter could escape. Thick, choking smoke was blown by the mild easterly wind across the city, and whatever Engine Company Number Five had promised Gordon Jarvis about holding off, it wasn’t long before Collis could hear fire bells ringing, and the rattling of horses and wagons.
It was too late now for the hook-and-ladder boys to do anything but keep the fire contained, but their steam pumpers arrived in a hissing, glittering, clattering cavalcade, and in a few minutes the intersection between Davis and California was crowded with tossing fire horses, volunteer firemen in shiny brass helmets and brass-buttoned tunics, hoses, pumpers, wagons, and all the inquisitive riffraff of the docks and market districts. The sound of bells and screaming steam valves was deafening, but it couldn’t drown out the most terrible sound of all, which was the low breathy rumble of a building ablaze. Every now and then, as a main beam collapsed in a hail of sparks, the crowd would let out a curious moan of fright and pleasure, and the fire horses would stir restlessly in the harnesses. A fire in San Francisco appeared to Collis to be almost a ritual event, at which not only the engine companies and the spectators played out their parts according to what was expected of them, but the arsonists, too. Without fire-raisers, after all, there would be far fewer fires, and what would the splendid engine companies do then?
There were more crashes and creaks from the warehouse. Through the skeletal sides, Collis could see bundles of blankets burning, stack upon stack of finest English wool bedding. He looked up at the sky. The sparks were rushing up into the foggy night air and whirling around in a triumphant celebration of success. He just hoped he was going to stay around long enough to enjoy it.
‘Pretty good, huh?’ Dan McReady said.
‘I guess so. I never saw a fire like this before. It’s kind of depressing.’
‘What’s depressing about it? Nobody loses, and the firemen have a good time.’
‘Arthur Teach loses.’ Collis felt his face flush with heat, a consequence not only of the blazing fire nearby but of a sudden sharp remorse for what he was doing.
‘Sure,’ Dan McReady said, tugging at the brim of his hat. ‘But Teach should have been more cautious. Revenge may be sweet, but it generally comes expensive.’
‘Have you paid off Gordon Jarvis yet?’ Collis asked.
‘Not yet. He’s supposed to be meeting us here.’
The steam pumpers were spraying the warehouse with veil after veil of water, and in ten minutes the fire had been reduced to a few sulky flickers. A party of volunteers had chopped their way in through the side gate, and were now happily tearing down a low shed which connected the warehouse to the shipping office next door. Collis asked Dan McReady, ‘I suppose he’s all right?’
Dan McReady gave a quick shake of his head. ‘He’s the best in the business. That’s why I used him. He was transported to New South Wales in the first place for arson. He burned down a music hall in East London with seventy people in it, and they were goddam lucky they weren’t all toasted in their seats.’
‘That doesn’t mean he hasn’t made a mistake this time.’
‘Listen,’ said Dan McReady, sounding testy. ‘You got what you wanted, didn’t you? Twenty thousand dollars and your blankets burned for good?’
‘Sure, but –’
‘Gordon’s all right,’ Dan McReady put in. ‘He probably had to get out the back way, and skirt around. He’ll be here.’
They waited on the corner for nearly twenty minutes. Three o’clock struck. The engine company had doused the flames, and now the streets were thick with billowing, acrid smoke. There wasn’t much left of Parkinson’s warehouse but charred uprights and blackened ash. The firemen trod through the wreckage with their brass helmets dulled by heat and water, swinging their axes at anything that still smoked, and coughing. One of them was whistling Stephen Massett’s railroad song, ‘Clear the Way’.
‘Men of thought be up and stirring, night and day!’
Dan McReady bit his lip. The warehouse was intermittently blotted out by smoke, and it came and went as if it were a magic lantern picture. The stench of wet burned wool was almost unbearable. One of the firemen was winding in the hoses across the muddy, ash-littered street.
‘I can’t understand it,’ said McReady. ‘He told me to wait right here. “Wait right here,” he told me. He said he wouldn’t be more than five minutes.’
Collis was too tired to wait any longer. ‘If he’s the best, as you said, then he’ll come around for his money, even if he was to look you up at your office. He wouldn’t give you a fire like that for free. Not and keep his mouth shut about it, too. Now, let’s go get a drink, for God’s sake. My throat feels like a charcoal burner’s chimney.’
‘Maybe we ought to give him five minutes more.’ McReady frowned.
‘Dan,’ said Collis, wearily, ‘he’s not coming. He’ll be around tomorrow maybe, but it’s pretty damned plain that he’s not coming tonight.’
‘Okay,’ said McReady reluctantly. ‘I guess you’re right.’
They left the corner and crossed the street. A fireman called, ‘Watch that hose, will ya?’ and they had to sidestep as a wet canvas hose slithered past them like a glistening anaconda. The night disappeared in a rolling cloud of smoke, and then appeared again. Everybody’s face was pale with tiredness and smudged with soot. They looked like clowns at a funeral.
As they passed the burned wall of the warehouse that fronted on California Street, they heard one of the firemen call, ‘Captain! Come take a look at this!’
Collis walked on, but Dan McReady caught his arm. ‘Wait. Just for a minute.’ Collis sighed and paused. The fire captain was crossing the wreckage in his peaked cap and his shiny boots, his tunic strained in front by a mighty well-fed paunch, and his britches strained behind by an equally well-fed rump. Three or four more firemen joined him, and soon half the company were standing around in a circle, shaking their heads and talking. Collis couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the constant hiss of steam from the pumpers.
‘My God,’ Dan McReady said suddenly and climbed over the charred boards which were all that remained of the building’s south wall. He began to stumble across the black ruins, slipping twice and tearing the cuff of his pants. ‘Dan – what the hell’s the matter?’ Collis asked. But then he glimpsed between the boots of the gathered firemen to wh
at Dan McReady had already seen, and he hesitated for only a moment before he cautiously climbed over the boards after him, and walked towards the firemen with a feeling of unreality and fright. The firemen didn’t even glance at him as he joined their circle and looked down at what they had found.
It was Gordon Jarvis. Collis knew it was Jarvis because of his three-fingered hand, and because it couldn’t really have been anyone else. But there weren’t any other ways of telling.
Maybe the cask of whale oil had flared up before he meant it to. Maybe he’d stumbled, or suffered a heart seizure, or twisted his ankle. Nobody would ever know what physical hell he had suffered, and Gordon Jarvis himself would never say.
Collis was almost back to the sidewalk before he realized he had turned away. The smell of burned wool now seemed like the ghastly fragrance of flesh. He stood there for two or three minutes, looking up California Street towards the Chinese quarter, where distant lanterns swung red and green in the early wind. He didn’t know what to do or say. In less than four hours, the same ambition which had brought Gordon Jarvis to these ashes on Davis Street was going to take Collis to the north shore of Lake Merced. Collis couldn’t deny that he was scared. Maybe Laurence Melford and John Frémont were right about the Pacific railroad, and he was all wrong. Maybe the dream of spanning America by rail was too grand, too arrogant, like building a tower of Babel on its side. Hadn’t John Frémont lost ten men, frozen in the mountains that were named for the blood of Christ?
Dan McReady came up at last and touched him on the arm. He was very white, and he had taken his hat off.
‘I knew that fellow for years,’ he said, in a whisper. ‘A strange man, you know, and very violent. But he would have helped anyone who needed help, and set fire to anything at all if you’d asked him to.’
Collis didn’t answer, but rubbed his smutty cheek with his fingertips.
Dan McReady said, ‘It’s not making you scared, is it? What happened to Jarvis?’
Collis gave him a long, serious look. ‘In Panama,’ he said huskily, ‘I prayed in a cathedral for somebody’s life, and that life was saved. But I’ve had a hand in two deaths now, a girl in New York, and now Gordon Jarvis, and I’m just wondering if God hasn’t decided it’s time I was judged.’
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