The Bughouse Affair

on the tips of pool cues, and while billiards is often played in America, straight pool has a larger following and strikes me as more to your taste. On the handkerchief you used a moment ago to mop your forehead is a small, fresh stain the color and texture of which identifies it to the trained eye as having come from a dish of chicken croquettes. Another scent which clings faintly to your coat is that of Syringa persica, or Persian lilac, indicating that you have recently been in close proximity to such a flowering shrub; and inasmuch as there are no lilac bushes in Dr. Axminster’s garden, Mr. Truesdale’s property is the obvious deduction.

“And, finally, I perceive that you are well read from the slim volume entitled Poems tucked into the pocket of your coat, and that you have a sensitive and sentimental nature from the identity of the volume’s author. Emily Dickinson’s poems, I am given to understand, are famous for those qualities.”

There was a moment of silence. Quincannon, for once in his life, was at a loss for words.

Axminster clapped his hands, and exclaimed, “Amazing!”

“Elementary,” Holmes said.

Horse apples, Quincannon thought.

Penelope Costain yawned. “Mr. Holmes has been regaling us with his powers of observation and ratiocination all evening. Frankly I found his prowess with the violin of greater amusement.”

Her husband was likewise unimpressed. He had refilled his glass from a sideboard nearby and now emptied it again in a swallow; his face was flushed, his eyes slightly glazed. “Mental gymnastics are all well and good,” he said with some asperity, “but we’ve stayed well away from the issue here. Which is that my name is on that list of potential burglary victims.”

“I wouldn’t be concerned, Andrew,” Axminster said. “After tonight’s escapade, that fellow wouldn’t dare attempt another burglary.”

Quincannon said, “Not immediately, perhaps. He may well suspect that I know his identity.”

“You recognized him?”

“After a fashion.”

“Then why don’t you go find him and have him arrested?” Costain demanded.

“All in good time. He won’t do any more breaking and entering tonight, that I can guarantee.”

Mrs. Costain asked, “Did you also guarantee catching him red-handed at the Truesdales’ home?”

Quincannon had had enough of this company; much more of it and he might well say something he would regret. He made a small show of consulting his stem-winder. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said then, “I’ll be on my way.”

“To request police assistance?”

“To determine the extent of the Truesdales’ loss.”

Dr. Axminster showed him to the front door. The Costains remained in the parlor, and the counterfeit Sherlock Holmes tagged along. At the front door the fellow said, “I regret my intervention in the garden, Mr. Quincannon, well-intentioned though it was, but I must say I found the interlude stimulating. It isn’t often I have the pleasure of meeting a distinguished colleague while a game’s afoot.”

Quincannon reluctantly accepted a proffered hand, clasped the doctor’s just as briefly, and took his leave. Nurturing as he went the dark thought of a different game, one involving his foot, that he would have admired to play with the Axminsters’ addled guest.

6

SABINA

Before leaving her Russian Hill flat on Wednesday morning, Sabina set out a bowl of milk for the young cat she’d recently adopted, Adam-so named because he was the first in what she hoped would be a long succession of pets-and opened the bedroom window a few inches so he could come and go as he pleased. She had never sheltered an animal before, but Adam provided companionship and comfort against the cold of the night.

“Don’t stray too far,” she told him as he brushed against her ankles. “You’re much safer here, with a nice soft featherbed to sleep on.”

I must be daft, she thought, speaking this way to a creature that can’t possibly understand me. Yet she felt that the cat, in its own way, seemed to understand her moods, especially that of loneliness. And she was lonely often of late, even more so than usual since Stephen’s death, for reasons that were not quite clear to her. Perhaps she ought to accept one of John’s frequent invitations to dinner and a performance at the opera house.…

She’d contemplate the notion later. At the moment there was business to attend to.

As usual she was the first to arrive at the agency office. John came in a short while later. Sabina had a sharp eye for his moods; one long look at his gloomy visage prompted her to say, “I take it your surveillance at the Truesdale home last night was unproductive.”

“Oh, the yegg came skulking, right enough.”

“But you weren’t able to nab him?”

“It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t.” Her partner shed his Chesterfield and derby, hung them on the clothes tree, and retreated behind his desk where he tamped his pipe full of tobacco and set fire to it with a lucifer. “Unique scent,” he muttered. “Monograph on a hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash. Faugh!”

“What’s that you’re grumbling about?”

“Confounded lunatic. Not only did he cost me the housebreaker’s capture, he did his level best to make a fool of me with a bagful of parlor tricks.”

“Lunatic?”

“That blasted Englishman pretending to be Sherlock Holmes.”

Sabina raised an eyebrow. “You mean the fellow Mr. Bierce wrote about yesterday?”

“None other.” He puffed furiously on his pipe. “Sherlock! What kind of name is that?”

“John. Exactly what happened last night?”

She listened gravely while he explained in detail accurate to a fault. When he was done, she said, “Well, the Englishman may be an impostor-”

“May be!”

“-but it sounds as though he’s well versed in the methods employed by the genuine Sherlock Holmes.”

“Bah. A mentalist in a collar-and-elbow variety show at the Comique could perform the same tricks.”

“Nevertheless,” Sabina said, “he must be adept at his role to have fooled Dr. Axminster and his guests into believing him.”

“Crackbrains can be sly as the devil. This one also happens to be a pompous, arrogant show-off.”

She suppressed a smile, thinking of John’s lofty opinion of his own detective skills. “Arrogance was one of Mr. Holmes’s traits, judging from Dr. Watson’s memoirs.”

“Yes? Well, it’s hardly the mark of a successful detective. I am every bit as skilled as he was reputed to be and I’ve blessed little arrogance in my makeup.”

Sabina again managed not to smile. “Poor John. You did have rather a difficult evening, didn’t you?”

“Difficult, aye, but not wasted. Dodger Brown’s the man I’m after, sure enough. When he slipped my clutches on the Truesdale property and swung around to kick me-”

“Kick you? I thought you said you slipped on the wet grass.”

“Yes, yes. But how he got away is of no consequence. The important fact is that he was of the right size and reeked of cheap wine. Dodger Brown’s weakness is foot juice.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Where’s the dossier on him?”

“Your left hand is resting on it.”

“So it is.” He caught up the paper, read aloud from it as he sometimes did with such documents-more to himself than to her. “Dodger Brown, christened Hezekiah Gabriel Brown, born in Stockton twenty-nine years ago. Orphaned at an early age, ran off at thirteen, fell in with a bunch of rail-riding yeggs, and immersed in criminal activity ever since, exclusively home burglary in recent years. Arrested numerous times and put on the small book by the coppers in San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities. Served two prison terms, the last at Folsom for stealing a pile of green-and-greasy from an East Bay politician. Description: slight of build, thinning brown hair, vulpine