with electric light; the outspill combined with pale moonshine to limn a jungle-like garden, a path leading through its profusion of plants and trees to a gazebo on the left. He had a brief glimpse of a dark shape plunging into shrubbery near the gazebo.
Quincannon scrambled up the rough boards, rolled his body over the top. And had the misfortune to land awkwardly on his sore leg, which gave way and toppled him to his knees in damp grass. He growled an oath under his breath, lumbered to his feet, and stood with ears straining to hear. Leaves rustled and branches snapped-his man was moving away from the gazebo now, toward the house.
The path was of crushed shell that gleamed with a faint, ghostly radiance; Quincannon drifted along parallel to it, keeping to the grass to cushion his footfalls. Gnarled cypress and thorny pyracantha bushes partially obscured the house, the shadows under and around them as black as India ink. He paused to listen again. There were no more sounds of movement. He resumed his forward progress, eased around one of the cypress trees.
The man who came up behind him did so with such silent stealth that he had no inkling of the other’s presence until a hard object poked into and stiffened his spine, and a forceful voice said, “Stand fast, if you value your life. There’s a good chap.”
Quincannon stood fast.
5
QUINCANNON
The man who had the drop on him was not the one he’d been chasing. The calm, cultured, British-accented voice, and the almost casual choice of words, told him that.
He said, stifling his anger and frustration, “I’m not a prowler.”
“What are you, then, pray tell?”
“A detective on the trail of a thief. I chased him into this yard.”
“Indeed?” His captor sounded interested, if not convinced. “What manner of thief?”
“A blasted burglar. He broke into the Truesdale home.”
“Did he, now? Mr. Truesdale, the banker?”
“That’s right. Your neighbor across the carriageway.”
“A mistaken assumption. This is not my home, and I have only just this evening met Mr. Truesdale.”
“Then who are you?”
“All in good time. This is hardly the proper place for introductions.”
“Introductions be damned,” Quincannon growled. “While we stand here confabbing, the thief is getting away.”
“Has already gotten away, I should think. If you’re what you say you are and not a thief yourself.” The hard object prodded his backbone. “Move along to the house and we’ll have the straight of things in no time.”
“Bah,” Quincannon said, but he moved along.
There was a flagstone terrace across the rear of the house, and when they reached it he could see people in evening clothes moving around inside a well-lighted parlor. His captor took him to a pair of French doors, ordered him to step inside. Activity in the room halted when they entered. Six pairs of eyes, three male and three female, stared at Quincannon and the man behind him. One of the couples, both plump and middle-aged, was Samuel Truesdale and his wife. The others were strangers.
The parlor was large, handsomely furnished, dominated by a massive grand piano. On the piano bench lay a well-used violin and bow-the source of the passages from Mendelssohn that had been played earlier, no doubt. A wood fire blazed on the hearth. The combination of the fire and steam heat made the room too warm, stuffy. Quincannon’s benumbed cheeks began to tingle almost immediately.
The first to break the frozen tableau was a small, round-faced gent with Lincolnesque whiskers and ears that resembled the handles on a pickle jar. He stepped forward and to one side so that he faced the Englishman. If the fellow was an Englishman. Quincannon was not at all sure the cultured accent was genuine.
“Where did this man come from?” the large-eared gent demanded. “Who is he?”
“On my stroll in the garden I spied him climbing over the fence. He claims to be a detective on the trail of a pannyman. Housebreaker, that is.”
“I don’t claim to be a detective,” Quincannon said sourly. “I
“Doctor Caleb Axminster,” the large-eared fellow said. “What’s this about a housebreaker?”
The exchange drew the others closer in a tight little group. It also brought the owner of the English voice out to where Quincannon could see him for the first time. He wasn’t such-a-much. Tall, excessively lean, with a thin, hawklike nose and a prominent chin. In one hand he carried a blackthorn walking stick, held midway along the shaft. Quincannon scowled. It must have been the stick, not a pistol, that had poked his spine and allowed the scruff to escape.
“I’ll ask you again,” Dr. Axminster said. “What’s all this about a housebreaker?”
“I chased him here from a neighbor’s property.” Quincannon shifted his gaze to the plump banker. He was not a man to mince words, even at the best of times. “Yours, Mr. Truesdale.”
Mrs. Truesdale gasped. Her husband’s face lost its healthy color. “Mine? Good Lord, man, do you mean to say we’ve been robbed?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Of what, do you know? What was stolen?”
“A question only you can answer.”
“Little enough, I pray. My wife’s jewelry and several stock certificates are kept in the safe in my office, but the thief couldn’t have gotten into it. It’s burglarproof.”
No safe, in Quincannon’s experience, was burglarproof. But he allowed the statement to pass without comment, asking instead, “Do you also keep cash on hand?”
“In my desk … a hundred dollars or so in greenbacks…” Truesdale shook his head; he seemed dazed. “You were on my property?”
“I was, with every good intention. Waiting outside.”
“Waiting? I don’t understand.”
“To catch the burglar in the act.”
“But how did you know…?”
“Detective work, sir. Detective work.”
The fifth man in the room had been silent to this point, one hand plucking at his middle as if he were suffering the effects of too much rich food. He was somewhat younger than the others, forty or so, dark-eyed, clean-shaven, with a nervous tic on one cheek; his most prominent feature was a misshapen knob of red-veined flesh, like a partially collapsed balloon, that seemed to hang unattractively between his eyes and a thin-lipped mouth. He aimed a brandy snifter at Quincannon, and said in aggrieved tones, “Thieves roaming everywhere in the city these days, like a plague, and you had the opportunity to put one out of commission and failed. If you’re such a good detective, why didn’t you catch the burglar? What happened?”
“An unforeseen occurrence over which I had no control.” Quincannon glared sideways at his gaunt captor. “I would have chased him down if this man hadn’t accosted me.”
“Accosted?” The Englishman arched an eyebrow. “Dear me, hardly that. I had no way of knowing you weren’t a prowler.”
Mrs. Truesdale was tugging at her husband’s arm. “Samuel, shouldn’t we return home and find out what was stolen?”
“Yes, yes, right away.”
“Margaret,” Axminster said to one of the other women, a slender graying brunette with patrician features, “find James and have him drive the Truesdales.”
The woman nodded and left the parlor with the banker and his wife in tow.
The doctor said then, “This is most distressing,” but he didn’t sound distressed. He sounded eager, as if he found the situation stimulating. He produced a paper sack from his pocket, popped a horehound drop into his mouth.
