Besides, as long as du Mond's own clothing remained here, Cameron would probably assume he was with the clothing, if not in it.
'It'll be waiting,' Diego replied, without interest. He and his employer had no curiosity about why Paul used their establishment as a way-station. That greatly endeared them to him. Add in the fact that this place was within walking distance of the Nob Hill apartment, and it was altogether an arrangement to du Mond's liking.
But for the moment, with all of his needs satisfied, it was time to get back to his gilded cage. He bade the Mexican goodnight, turned up his collar against the damp and chilly night air, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets to foil petty thieves.Although it was near midnight, the establishments of Pacific street, from the meanest tavern to the Hippodrome, were barely getting warmed up. Some of them were even decked out in electrical rather than gas lights. He wondered what the Coast would look like when electrical lights became cheap enough to use for signage and shook his head.
It was a lengthy walk, but not bad for a man in the physical condition of Paul du Mond. He strode east, watching the traffic around him with a wary eye and wondering what secrets some of those faces held.
One day, soon, he would have the power to find out. And San Francisco herself, the biggest whore of them all, would have a new master.
When he had a number of errands, Paul always solved the difficulty of finding a cab by hiring one for the entire day. They were Cameron's errands, so Cameron's money might as well pay for them. He ran the more mundane chores first, and they took him all over town before it was finished. Among those was the list the Hawkins girl had supplied, and he took some savage amusement in wondering what her reaction would be if she ever learned it had been him who had purchased her requested supplies-
She'd probably faint from embarrassment alone. He'd like to see her embarrassed, or better still, humiliated. He'd imagined her prim little face superimposed on Lupe's last night. He'd like to have a chance to break her. Damned women, thinking they had a right to careers, taking money out of a man's pocket to do so, getting ideas about equality ...
Perhaps he'd have the opportunity, if things worked out properly. She was an orphan; there'd be no one to miss her or inquire after her if she vanished.
Among his errands, he contrived to drop a message in a certain tobacconist's when he bought his own Cuban cigars. Tonight, after Lupe, he would find out if there was an answer to that message.
Meanwhile, the day plodded along like the weary cab-horse, straining its way up the hill of time towards noon, then straining to keep from tumbling headlong down the other side. Why anyone had ever chosen to build a city here, in this maze of hills and valleys, was beyond him. The inhabitants suffered from enough back and foot ailments to keep every purveyor of quack medicine in the country happy. There were no real places to leave a carriage, and even if you found one, it wasn't one where he'd want to leave a horse standing for long. The cable car system that ran up and down the Slot on Market Street had been invented because the life of a trolley-horse in San Francisco was a fraction of one in any other city. They had dropped dead in their traces all the time before the mechanical traction device took over their chore.
Paul, of course, did not have to walk unless he chose, nor suffer the press of the Great Unwashed on the cable cars unless he wished to. He always hired cabs with strong horses with some draft-blood in them; horses that were up to a long day of traversing the streets. He had stopped by the tobacconist's early; on impulse, on the way back from the final errand of the day, he had the cabby stop there again.
Much to his pleasure there was already a reply to his message-a single slip of paper with three words, none of which would have given the game away even to Cameron. Twelve, the usual. It could have been someone's order, picked up by accident, for boxes of cigars or cigarettes, or any other product the tobacconist sold, which was precisely the point.
None of the parcels he obtained today required the special handling Jason had specified, so he simply left them piled in the hallway with orders to have them sent to the waiting carriage. The cook had prepared an excellent meal, and du Mond settled in to eat it with full enjoyment, now that his duties were over for the day and the evening lay before him.
He had a cab take him as far as the end of Pacific Street that was only risque; what harm, after all, was there in his taking in a bawdy show? He even entered the theater, although he came right back out again as soon as the cab was gone. From there, he walked to the Mexican's, where events proceeded as he had predicted they would.
He was finished by eleven, and the man who left the Mexican's in no way resembled the man who had entered. Seedy cap pulled low over his forehead, hands stuffed in the pockets of his dungarees, warding off the chill with a shapeless, baggy flannel shirt, Paul would not have been recognized by anyone who knew him as Cameron's secretary, and he knew it. All of the clothing was old, threadbare, patched. He had altered his posture, even his gait. He did not bother attempting to find a cab-no one looking the way he did would have money for such a thing, and the use of anything other than his own two feet would only reveal that he was not what he seemed.
It was a long way to the docks at the end of Pacific Street, but that was 'the usual.' So near water-both in the form of fog drifting in off the Bay and of the Pacific Ocean itself-it was the last place one would expect to see a Firemaster.
