door, not first- or second-story windows; this meant he would have to come around to the side door or the front door, both of which were within clear sight.
No light showed anywhere on the grounds. Banker Truesdale and his wife, dressed to the nines, had left two hours earlier in a private carriage, and they had no live-in servants. The only light anywhere in the immediate vicinity came from a streetlamp some fifty yards distant, a flickery glow that did not reach into the Truesdale yard. High cirrostratus clouds made thin streaks across the sky, touching but not obscuring an early moon. The heavenly body was neither a sickle nor what the scruffs called a stool-pigeon moon, but a near half that dusted the darkness with enough pale shine to see by.
A night made for burglars and footpads. And detectives on the scent.
A raw wind had sprung up, thick with the salt smell of the bay, and its chill penetrated the greatcoat, cheviot, gloves, neck scarf, and cap Quincannon wore. Noiselessly he stomped his feet and flexed his fingers to maintain circulation. His mind conjured up the image of steaming mugs of coffee and soup. Of a fire hot and crackling in his rooms on Leavenworth Street. Of the warmth of Sabina’s flesh on the scant few occasions he had touched her, and the heat of his passion for her …
Ah, no. None of that now. Attention to the matter at hand, detective business first and foremost. Why dwell on his one frustrating failure instead of contemplating another professional triumph? Easier to catch a crook than to melt a stubborn woman’s resistance.
A rattling and clopping on the cobbled street drew his attention. Moments later a hack, its side lamps casting narrow funnels of light, passed without slowing. When the sound of it faded, Quincannon grew aware of another sound-music, faint and melodic. Someone playing the violin, and reasonably well, too.
He listened for a time, decided what was being played were passages from Mendelssohn’s
More time passed at a creep and crawl. The wind had died down some, but he was so thoroughly chilled by then he scarcely noticed. Despite the heavy gloves and the constant flexing, his fingers felt stiff; much more time out here in the night’s cold, and he might have difficulty drawing his Navy Colt if such became necessary.
Blast this blasted burglar, whoever he was! He was bound to come after more spoils tonight; Quincannon was sure of it, and his instincts seldom led him astray. So what was the yegg waiting for? It must be after nine by now. Wherever banker Truesdale and his missus had gone for the evening, chances were they would return by eleven. This being Thursday, Truesdale’s presence would surely be required tomorrow morning at his bank.
Quincannon speculated once more on the identity of his quarry. There were scores of house burglars in San Francisco and environs, but the cleverness of method and skill of entry in this case narrowed the field to but a few professionals. Of those known to him, the likeliest candidates were the Sanctimonious Kid and Dodger Brown. Both were suspected to be in the Bay Area at present, but neither had done anything to attract attention to themselves. In any case, the swag seemed to have been planted for the nonce, since none of the stolen items had surfaced. Likely the thief’s plan was to dispose of it all at once, in a bundle, after he had gone through most if not all of the six names on the target list.
Quincannon relished the prospect of convincing him otherwise, almost as much as he relished the thought of collecting the fat fee and bonus from Great Western Insurance.
The violin music had ceased; the night was hushed again. He flexed and stomped and shifted and shivered, his mood growing darker by the minute. If the burglar gave any trouble, he would rue his foolishness. Quincannon prided himself as possessing guile and razor-sharp wits, but he was also a brawny man of Pennsylvania Scots stock and not averse to a bit of thumping and skull dragging if the situation warranted.
Another vehicle, a small carriage this time, clattered past the property. Shortly a figure appeared on the sidewalk, and Quincannon tensed expectantly-but it was only a citizen walking his dog, and soon gone.
Hell and damn. Had he been wrong that the burglar would strike again so soon? Or been wrong in his choice of the Truesdale home as the next probable target? Both were possible, though it was already a surprise to him that the yegg hadn’t chosen the banker’s vulnerable home as one of his first three objectives.
Ah, but he
Someone was moving over there, not fifty yards from Quincannon’s hiding place.
His senses all sharpened at once; he stood immobile, peering through the lilac’s branches. The movement came again, a shadow drifting among stationary shadows, at an angle from the rear of the property toward the side porch. Once the figure reached the steps and started up, it was briefly silhouetted-a man in dark clothing and a low-pulled cap. Then the shape merged with the deeper black on the porch.
Several seconds passed. Then there was a brief flicker of light-the beam from a dark lantern such as the one in Quincannon’s pocket. This was followed by the faintest of scraping sounds as the intruder worked with his tools.
Once again stillness closed down. The scruff was inside the house now. Quincannon stayed where he was, marking time. No light showed behind the dark windows. The professional burglar worked mainly by feel and instinct, using his lantern sparingly and shielding the beam when he did.
When Quincannon judged ten minutes had passed, he left his hiding place and cat-footed through shadows until he was parallel with the side porch stairs. He paused to listen, heard nothing from the house, and crossed quickly, bent low, to a tall rhododendron planted alongside the steps. Here he hunkered down on one knee to wait.
The wait might be another ten minutes; it might be a half hour or more. No matter. Now that the crime was in progress, he no longer minded the cold night, the dampness of the earth where he knelt. Even if Truesdale owned a safe not easily cracked, no burglar would leave premises such as these without spoils of some sort. Art objects, silverware, anything of value that could be carried off and eventually sold to one of the many fences operating in the city. Whatever this lad emerged with, it would be enough to justify a pinch.
Whether Quincannon turned him over to the city police immediately or not depended on the scruff’s willingness to reveal the whereabouts of the swag from his previous jobs. Stashing and roughhousing a prisoner for information was unethical, if not illegal, but Quincannon felt righteously that in the pursuit of justice, not to mention a substantial fee and bonus, the end justified the means.
His wait lasted less than thirty minutes. The creaking of a floorboard pricked up his ears, creased his freebooter’s beard with a smile of anticipation. Another creak, the faintest squeak of a door hinge, a footfall on the porch. Now the burglar descended the steps into view-short, slender, but turned out of profile so that his face was obscured. He paused on the bottom step, and that was when Quincannon levered up and put the grab on him.
He was much the larger man, and there should have been no trouble in the catch. But just before his arms closed around the wiry body, the yegg heard or sensed danger and reacted-not by trying to run or turning to fight, but by dropping suddenly into a crouch. Quincannon’s arms slid up and off as if the man were greased, pitching him off balance. The housebreaker bounced upright, swung around, blew the stench of sour wine into Quincannon’s face while at the same time fetching him a sharp kick on the shinbone. Quincannon let out a howl, staggered, nearly fell. By the time he caught himself, his quarry was on the run.
He gave chase on the blind, cursing sulphurously, hobbling for the first several steps until the pain from the kick ebbed. The burglar had twenty yards on him by then, zigzagging toward the bordering yew trees, then back away from them in the direction of the carriage barn.
In the moonlight he made a fine, clear target, but Quincannon did not draw his Navy Colt. Since the long-ago episode in Virginia City, when he had accidently caused the death of a woman and her unborn child, and suffered mightily as a result, he’d vowed to use his weapon only in the most dire of circumstances-a vow he had never broken.
Before reaching the barn, his man cut away at another angle and plowed through a gate into the carriageway beyond. Quincannon lost sight of him for a few seconds, then spied him again as he reached the gate and barreled through it. A race down the alley? No. The scruff was nimble as well as slippery; he threw a look over his shoulder, saw Quincannon in close pursuit, suddenly veered sideways, and flung himself up and over a six-foot board fence into one of the neighboring yards.
In a few long strides Quincannon was at the fence. He caught the top boards, hoisted himself up to chin level. Some fifty yards distant was the backside of a stately home, two windows and a pair of French doors ablaze
