Dame Edith would just have to wait.
Chapter 2
Longarm paused on the landing before going the rest of the way down into the hotel lobby. He adjusted the string tie at his throat and tugged at the bottom of his vest. At this time of year he preferred a fairly heavy calfskin vest for its extra warmth and laid his usual tweed coat aside in favor of a heavy sheepskin-lined ranch coat. As always, though, the familiar gold watch chain dangled loose across his belly. That chain and its attachments had been of great service on more than one occasion, for at one end of it there was the expected railroad-quality Ingersoll key-wind pocket watch, but at the other, instead of a decorative fob, there was a far more utilitarian item, a small brass-framed .44caliber derringer.
Satisfied that his appearance was as good as he was going to get after such a hasty departure—made all the more swift by Edith’s fury when he told her he had to leave—Longarm clamped his cheroot between his teeth at a jaunty angle and made his way on down into the lobby.
He needn’t have been concerned about his appearance, it turned out. Apart from the hotel staff there were only two guests in the place, and they were engrossed in reading their newspapers. Longarm nodded a pleasant good day to the clerk behind the counter and strode toward the wide entryway where a doorman in a gold-trimmed red coat was waiting. Before Longarm came near, the doorman snapped to attention as crisply as a West Pointer could have managed, and a whole lot more smartly than any private soldier Longarm had ever seen. The fellow fairly jumped at his chance to open the door. Not for Longarm, as it happened, but for a young, handsome, and quite obviously wealthy swell who was heading in from outdoors.
The newcomer came breezing in amid a flurry of swirling snowflakes. It hadn’t looked like snow the last time Longarm poked his head outside, but then February weather is never predictable in the High Plains country. And Denver is situated to catch the worst of the plains storms and the tail end of the bitter mountain storms as well.
The swell was greeted with so much enthusiasm that Longarm would have found it damned well embarrassing, but this young gent took it all in stride as if it were his due.
He was, Longarm noted in passing, tall and built with all the tough resilience of a sword blade. His hair was blond and curly, giving him a soft and almost feminine look. Until one noticed his eyes. The fellow, for all his wealth and pampering, had the cool and confident look of a gambler. And a damned successful one at that. Longarm suspected this was not a man he would want to face across a gaming table. Nor a dueling ground either, unless it was Longarm who was given the choice of weapons. This looked like a very competent gent indeed.
Longarm gave the fellow a polite nod and went by him.
“Welcome back, Lord Matthew,” the desk clerk enthused loudly.
Lord Matthew indeed! The elderly impotent of the walrus breath and the cuckold’s horns?
Longarm slowed and paused by the door to take another look at the man in whose bed he would surely have been caught if not for Henry’s recent intrusion.
“I thought the gent was off shooting buffalo Or something,” he muttered to the doorman.
“Lord Matthew? Oh, no, sir. Lord Matthew don’t do much shooting. Though I hear he has his hired hunters to collect trophies for him to take back to his estates. Kind of an odd sort, he is. Or so they say. Me, all I know is that he spends free and easy. Catch his eye and there’s sure to be one of them English sovereigns, gold ones they are, to put in your pocket right soon. Oh, he’s a spender, that one is. But … different from the way an American would be. Thinks his shit don’t stink just because he’s a lord.” The doorman shrugged. “What the hell, is what I say.” The shrug gave way to a grin. “Just so long as he keeps on handing out them gold coins, right?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Longarm said. But as he looked back at Lord Matthew, who now was heading up the stairs toward his gorgeous wife, Longarm couldn’t help wondering if Dame Edith had been playing a deliberate and malicious game today.
Was that why the lady was so pissed off when Longarm told her he was leaving? Had she been expecting her husband’s return today? If so, Billy Vail had gone and ruined it all by taking Longarm away before all the players were assembled.
Too bad.
Longarm nodded a cheery good-bye to the doorman—no point in insulting the fellow with a dime tip when it was gold sovereigns he had in mind—and went outside.
Once the hotel doors were securely closed behind him he began laughing out loud. The silly bitch and her walrusbreath lord of a husband indeed.
Longarm was going to have to do something nice for Henry, he decided. Something by way of a thank-you.
Then, turning his coat collar up against the bitter wind and the snow the wind carried with it, he hunched his shoulders and made his way in the direction of Colfax Avenue and the chill mausoleum that he knew the empty Federal Building would be on a dreary Sunday afternoon in February.
“I’m sorry to drag you down here like this,” Billy Vail said.
“Don’t be. I didn’t mind in the least,” Longarm told him cheerfully. And, as it turned out, honestly.”
Billy gave him a frankly skeptical look, then decided to accept the statement at face value. “The reason I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow, Longarm, is that we have a tip that Cy Berman has been spotted in a town called Talking Water up in Wyoming Territory.”
“Never heard of it,” Longarm said.
“That’s understandable. The people who live there hadn’t heard of it until last year or so.”
“Gold camp?”
“Uh-huh. Shirttail sort of place, I suspect. If things hold true to form it should last another season or two and then fade away. Not that you have to care about that, of course. What that does affect, however, is the status of law in that part of the territory. Talking Water has no town marshal, or at least not that I can ascertain. The town, not incorporated, is in Ross County. The sheriff of Ross County is a gent named Andrew Thomas Dillmore. Do you know him?”
“No, should I?”
“Not particularly, but I was hoping.”
“Go ahead an’ spit it out, Billy. Our boy Cyrus Berman has been spotted in this half-baked gold camp and there is local law available but Berman ain’t in custody. So what’s the story? Why do I have to rush up there an’ put the cuffs on him when this … what’d you say his name is?”
“Dillmore, Andrew Thomas.”
“Right. Sheriff Dillmore. Why hasn’t Dillmore put Berman in the pokey where the sonuvabitch belongs?” Cy Berman, as every deputy U.S. marshal west of St. Louis damned well knew, was high on the want list of the Attorney General and of every swinging dick beneath him. It was bad enough that Berman made a fat living by robbing mail cars. What was worse was that the bastard had shot down three postal inspectors and a U.S. deputy marshal, a man named Squires from Seattle who Longarm never met but nonetheless felt for. Berman was quick to shoot and had neither mercy nor remorse. There wasn’t a federal officer anywhere who didn’t want this one put away.
And now to have some local shit-for-brains refuse to wrap him up? Longarm was already getting pissed just thinking about it.
“I’ve sent two wires to the man since this tip came in,” Billy said. “And the tipster, by the way, said he had already tried to get Dillmore to arrest Berman but was refused. I received one reply from Dillmore. All it said was, and I quote to you the full text of the message: ‘No cause to arrest.’”
“No cause?” Longarm came halfway out of his chair in protest. “The sonuvabitch has-“
“Dammit, Long, you don’t have to convince me. Tell it to this Dillmore person.”