He had learned patience in situations such as this by ruminating on matters of business and pleasure. Sabina occupied his mind for a considerable time. Then he sighed and shifted his thoughts to the other cases currently under investigation. The missing Devereaux heiress should be easy enough to locate; like as not she had gone off for an extended dalliance with one of her swains, since no ransom demand had been received by the family. Sabina needed no help from him in yaffling the pickpocket at the Chutes amusement park. The Wells Fargo robbery was more his type of case, and a challenging one since city bluecoats and rival detective agencies were also on the hunt for the two masked bandits who had escaped with twenty-five thousand in cash. He had to admit that he’d made little enough headway over the past two weeks, but the same was true of his competitors for the reward Wells Fargo was offering—
Light. A faint shimmery glow through the mist.
He strained forward, squinting closer to the gap. Gray-black for a few seconds, then the fog lifted somewhat and he spied the eerie radiance again, shifting about behind the windows in one of the cars. More than just a glow — an ectoplasmic shape, an unearthly face.
He snatched up the dark lantern, hopped off the hay bales, and stepped out around the corner of the lean-to. The thing continued to drift around inside the car, held stationary for a few seconds, moved again. Quincannon was moving himself by then, over into the shadow of the cistern. Beyond there, flattish sand fields stretched for thirty or forty rods on three sides; there was no cover anywhere on its expanse, no quick way to get to the cars, even by circling around, without crossing open space.
He waited for a thickening of the fog, then stepped out in a low crouch and ran toward the car. He was halfway there when the radiance vanished.
Immediately he veered to his right, toward the line of dunes behind the cars. But he couldn’t generate any speed; in the wet darkness and loose sand he felt as if he were churning heavy-legged through a dream. There were no sounds except for the wind, the distant pound of surf, the rasp of his breathing.
It was two or three minutes before he reached the foot of the nearest dune. No sooner had he begun to plow upward along its steep side than the wraithlike human shape appeared suddenly at the crest and then bounded away in a rush of shimmery phosphorescence.
Quincannon shined the lantern in that direction, but the beam wasn’t powerful enough to cut through the wall of fog. Cursing, he leaned forward and dug his free hand into the sand to help propel himself upward. Behind and below him, he heard a shout. A quick glance over his shoulder told him it had come from a man running across the sand field — Barnaby or Jared Meeker, alerted too late to be of any assistance.
He was a few feet from the crest when a wind-muffled report reached his ears. The ghost-shape twitched, seemed to bound forward another step or two, and then suddenly vanished. Two or three heartbeats later, it reappeared higher up, twisted, and was gone again.
Quincannon filled his right hand with his Navy Colt as he struggled, panting, to the dune top. When he straightened, he thought he saw another flash of radiance in the far distance. After that, there was nothing to see but fog and darkness.
He made his way forward, playing the lantern beam ahead of him. The grassy surface of this dune and the next in line showed no marks of passage. But down near the bottom on the opposite side, the light illuminated a faint, irregular line of tracks that the wind was already beginning to erase.
It illuminated something else below as he climbed atop the third dune — the dark figure of a man sprawled facedown in the sand.
Panting sounds reached his ears; a few moments later, Barnaby Meeker hove into view and staggered toward him. Quincannon didn’t wait. He half-slid down the sand hill to the motionless figure at the bottom, anchored the lantern so that the beam shone full on the dark-clothed man, and turned him over. The staring eyes conveyed that he was beyond help. The gaping wound on his chest stated that he’d been shot.
Meeker came sliding down the hill, pulled up, and emitted a cry of anguish. “Jared! Oh my God, it’s Jared!”
Quincannon cast his gaze back along the dunes. The line of irregular footprints led straight to where Jared Meeker lay. There were no others in the vicinity except for those made by Quincannon and Barnaby Meeker.
At dawn Quincannon helped his distraught employer hitch up his wagon. There were no telephones in Carville; Meeker would have to drive to the nearest one to summon the city police and coroner. Young Jared’s body had been carried to his bedroom car, and Mrs. Meeker had held a vigil there most of the night. Despite her disparaging comments about her son, she had been inconsolable when she learned of his death. And she’d made no bones about blaming Quincannon for what had happened, screaming at him, “What kind of detective are you, allowing my poor boy to be murdered right before your eyes?”
For his part, Quincannon was in a dark humor. As unjust as Mrs. Meeker’s tirade had been, Jared Meeker had been murdered more or less before his eyes. He couldn’t have foreseen what would happen, of course, but the shooting was a potential blow to his reputation. If he failed to find out who was responsible, and why, the confounded newspapers would have a field day at his expense.
One thing was certain, and the apparent evidence to the contrary be damned: Jared Meeker had not been mortally wounded by a malevolent spirit from the Other Side. Spooks do not carry guns, nor can ectoplasm aim and fire one with deadly accuracy in foggy darkness.
When Meeker had gone on his way, Quincannon embarked on his first order of business — a talk with Artemus Crabb. Crabb had failed to put in an appearance at any time during last night’s bizarre happenings, which might or might not have an innocent explanation. The fog was still present this morning, but the wind had died down and visibility was good. The dunes lay like a desert wasteland all around him as he trudged down the left fork to Crabb’s car.
Knuckles on the rough-hewn door produced no response; neither did a brace of shouts. Not home at this hour? Quincannon used his fist on the door, and raised his call of Crabb’s name to a tolerable bellow. This produced results. Crabb was home, and had apparently been asleep. He jerked the door open, wearing a pair of loose-fitting long johns, and glared at Quincannon out of sleep-puffed eyes.
“You,” he said. “What the devil’s the idea, waking me up this early?”
Quincannon said bluntly, “One of your neighbors was murdered last night.”
“What? What’s that? Who was murdered?”
“Jared Meeker. From all appearances, he was done in by the Carville ghost.”
Crabb recoiled a step, his eyes popping wide. “The hell you say. The... ghost? Last night?”
“On the prowl again, the same as before. You didn’t see it?”
“Not me. Once was enough. I don’t want nothing to do with spooks. I bolted my door, shuttered all the windows, and went to bed with a weapon close to hand.”
“Heard nothing, either, I take it?”
“Just the wind. Where’d it happen?”
“On the dunes beyond the abandoned cars.”
“I don’t get it,” Crabb said. “How can a damned ghost shoot a man?”