see it, but it sounded like a switch engine. He muttered, “All right, if we didn’t hop a handy freight we’re still somewhere in Denver, in shirt sleeves, with a clubfoot and a face that’s easy to remember. Said face might appear on some old vaudeville posters, making an all-points even easier.”
He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see the senior guard he knew from the night before approaching with his own gun drawn. Longarm put his .44 away with a smile and said, “We get to look for him the less amusing way, knocking on doors. He got a good quarter mile lead on me because I just didn’t think this was a good day to die. Where he got that .45 is no doubt another trade secret of his occult craft.”
The guard said, “The folk back yonder are clamoring to bust loose. Most of ‘em seem to be reporters who insist they’ll lose their jobs if we don’t let ‘em print how dumb we just were, in this afternoon’s editions, coast to coast.”
“That’s the trouble with the damned old Constitution. It don’t let us hold anyone without due process, and we’d play hell convincing any honest judge someone in that crowd slipped the little bastard a .45 as he was-Hold it. How could he have made it through that crowd and out the gate ahead of me?”
The senior guard put his own gun away as he replied, “Don’t ask me. The boys at the gate say you was the only one as left the grounds by that exit.”
As they headed back together, Longarm said, “Yeah, the Great Costello is the escape artist he boasted of being. I’m missing something—stage magicians call it misdirection. I know because I’ve gotten to know more than one magician-gal in the biblical sense. They get you to look one way whilst they’re doing something else.”
“Well, he surely pulled the hood as well as considerable wool over Topkick Thompson’s eyes. How the hell do you reckon he got them cuffs and that hood on his hangman in front of God and everyone else?”
Longarm growled, “I don’t know. I never said I was a magician myself, damn it. I can’t say what God might have seen, but from where I was standing it was confusing as hell. I can see where old Topkick wound up, some damned way. What’s even more confusing is where in thunder the Great Costello went after trading places with him.”
They came to where Longarm’s hat lay upside down on the cinder paving. He picked it up, dusted it off on his pants, and put it back on as he added thoughtfully, “I can see how the guards could mistake one gent with a hood over his head for another. But that leaves the Great Costello bare-faced in broad-ass daylight for at least a few seconds as they all untangled from one another high above the ground with a whole crowd watching. Then he had to make it out of the prison yard in the same broad-ass daylight, beat me to that fence by a city-block lead with one bum foot and … yeah, he’s really one mysterious little gent.”
They moved back through the parked carriages and tethered horses to the noisy gate. It was noisy because everyone inside wanted to get out and the guards wouldn’t let them out.
The senior guard asked Longarm’s views on the matter. Longarm shrugged and said, “I reckon we have to.” Then he added, “Wait, tell your boys to let ‘em out Indian file and grab anyone with a clubfoot no matter what they look like or who they say they might be.”
The guard nodded but asked, “How could he still be inside if you was just swapping shots with him so far off?”
“It works as well another way,” Longarm explained. “Costello refused to name the gents who were in on that robbery with him. They just might feel the same loyalty to him, see?”
“Not hardly. Why would a gang member you didn’t know want to shoot at you, Longarm? What call would a total stranger have to suspicion you was chasing him?”
“Like I said, they call it misdirection. Stay here and check the boots of everyone on their way out. I have to go in and ask all sorts of dumb questions now.”
He did. But the only thing Guilfoyle and the others had down as certainty, even this late, was that Topkick Thompson was dead. None of the late hangman’s crew could say whose notion it had been to trip the trap under him. One said, “Topkick liked to do that his ownself. None of us was allowed to even touch the handle. Our job was just to hold the cuss steady as Topkick noosed and positioned him right, see?” he said.
“I recall two of your men hoisting the gent we all mistook for the prisoner to his feet. If it wasn’t one of the hanging crew who tripped the trap, that leaves Father Packer and your guards. Since we have good reason to doubt it could have been Father Packer, we’d best have a word with all your boys, Warden.”
The warden turned to the nearest uniformed guard in sight and said, “You heard the man, Hansen. Gather all the guards who were even out here in the yard just now. On the double.”
As young Hansen lit out to do so, it gave Longarm time for a word with the army surgeon. “I can see why you let ‘em carry the dead man inside, Doc. Is it safe for me to assume you can say for certain he died by hanging and hanging alone?”
The army surgeon frowned and asked, “What do you mean? I saw him fall a good nine feet with a rope around his neck and then I saw him stop, with a sickening snap, well clear of the ground. What else do you have in mind as the cause of death, a bad cold?”
Longarm explained, “It would be a lot easier to put handcuffs and a hood on a man who wasn’t really struggling. Costello somehow slipped Thompson’s frock coat off, as well. Could you say for sure that the old gent was alive and well when he hit the end of that rope?”
The surgeon blinked, nodded soberly, and said, “I meant to do an autopsy in any case. Get in touch with me, say, just before lunch. Now that you mention it, his bladder control could have let go any time between them all going down together and his neck snapping, a few short moments later.”
The guard sent to herd all the others together had made it back by now, with only two comrades. He told the warden, “Duffy and Wessel are helping Sergeant Greenwood at the gate, sir. So we’re what’s left.”
The warden frowned and replied, “Where are the others? I detailed an eight-man squad, damn it.”
Longarm didn’t wait to hear Hansen’s answer. He was already elbowing his way through the last of the crowd. Guilfoyle caught up with him near the gate to ask, “Would you let me in on what we’re doing now, pard?”
“They slickered us with ringers. Do you know why you and Crawford got sick last night? Someone at the hotel spiked your drinks. Did that gal you spent the night with wake up with the trots this morning?”
“Hard to say. She was snoring when you banged on the door. Why?”
