“Not to my knowledge. I’ll look into it.”
Quincannon nodded, thinking: Not before I do, I’ll wager. He got to his feet. “I’ll be going now, if you’ve no objection.”
Chief Crowley waved a hand. “We’ll notify you if you’re needed again.”
“Will you bring Mrs. Scarlett word of her husband’s death?”
“I’ll dispatch a man.” The Chief added wryly, “I imagine she’d rather not hear it from you, under the circumstances.”
Quincannon said, “I expect not,” between his teeth and took his leave.
The law offices of James Scarlett were on the southern fringe of Chinatown, less than half a mile from the Hall of Justice. Quincannon had visited the dingy, two-story building earlier in the day, after leaving Andrea Scarlett with Sabina. The place had been dark and locked up tight then; the same was true when he arrived there a few minutes past midnight.
He paid the hansom driver at the corner, walked back through heavy shadows to the entranceway. Brooding the while, as he had in the cab, about the incident in Ross Alley. How had the gunman known enough to lie in ambush as he had? If he’d been following Scarlett, why not simply enter the opium resort and shoot him there? Witnesses were never a worry to highbinders. The other explanation was that it was Quincannon who had been followed, though it seemed impossible that anyone in Chinatown could know that Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, had been hired by Mrs. Scarlett to find and protect her husband.
Then there was the fact that the assassin had fired three shots, the last two of which had come perilously close to sending Quincannon to join his ancestors. Poor and hurried shooting caused by darkness? Or had he also been a target? Something about the gunman fretted him, too, something he could not quite put his finger on.
The whole business smacked of hidden motives, for a fact. And hidden dangers. He did not like to be made a pawn in any piece of intrigue. He liked it almost as little as being shot at, intentionally or otherwise, and failing at a job he had been retained to do. He meant to get to the bottom of it, with or without official sanction.
Few door latches had ever withstood his ministrations, and the one on James Scarlett’s building was no exception. Another attorney occupied the downstairs rooms; Quincannon climbed a creaky staircase to the second floor. The pebbled-glass door imprinted with the words J. H. Scarlett, Attorney-at-Law was not locked. This puzzled him slightly, though not for long.
Inside, he struck a sulphur match, found the gas outlet — the building was too old and shabby to have been wired for electricity — and lit the flame. Its pale glow showed him a dusty anteroom containing two desks whose bare surfaces indicated that it had been some while since they had been occupied by either law clerk or secretary. He proceeded through a doorway into Scarlett’s private sanctum.
His first impression was that the lawyer had been a remarkably untidy individual. A few seconds later he revised this opinion; the office had been searched in a hurried but rather thorough fashion. Papers littered the top of a large oak desk, the floor around it, and the floor under a bank of wooden file cases. Two of the file drawers were partly open. A wastebasket behind the desk had been overturned and its contents gone through. A shelf of law books showed signs of having been examined as well.
The fine hand of a highbinder? Possibly, though the methods used here were a good deal less destructive than those usually employed by the boo how doy.
The smell of must and mildew wrinkled his nostrils as he crossed to the desk, giving him to wonder just how much time Scarlett had spent in these premises. The office wanted a good airing, if not a match to purge it completely. Scowling, he sifted through the papers on and below the desk. They told him nothing except that almost all of Scarlett’s recent clients had been Chinese; none of the names was familiar and none of the addresses was on Fowler Alley. The desk drawers yielded even less of interest, and the slim accumulation of briefs, letters, and invoices in the file drawers was likewise unproductive. None bore any direct reference to either the Hip Sing or Kwong Dock tongs, or to Fong Ching under his own name or any of his known aliases.
The only interesting thing about the late Mr. Scarlett’s office, in fact, was the state in which Quincannon had found it. What had the previous intruder been searching for? And whatever it was, had he found it?
Sabina was already at her desk when he arrived at the Market Street offices of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, at nine A.M. She looked bright and well-scrubbed, her glossy black hair piled high on her head and fastened with a jade barrette. As always, Quincannon’s hard heart softened and his pulses quickened at sight of her. A fine figure of a woman, Mrs. Sabina Carpenter. For a few seconds, as he shed his derby but not his Chesterfield, the wicked side of his imagination speculated once again on what that fine figure would look like divested of its skirt and jacket, shirtwaist and lacy undergarments...
She narrowed her eyes at him as he crossed the room. “Before we get down to business,” she said, “I’ll thank you to put my clothes back on.”
“Eh?” Sudden warmth crept out of Quincannon’s collar. “My dear Sabina! You can’t think that I—”
“I don’t think it, I know it. I know you, John Quincannon, far better than you think I do.”
He sighed. “Perhaps, though you often mistake my motives.”
“I doubt that. Was your sleepless night a reward of that lascivious mind of yours?”
“How did you know—”
“Bloodshot eyes in saggy pouches. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had forsaken your temperance pledge.”
“Observant wench. No, it was neither Demon Rum nor impure thoughts nor my misunderstood affections for you that kept me awake most of the blasted night.”
“What, then?”
“The death of James Scarlett and the near death of your most obedient servant.”
The words startled her, though only someone who knew Sabina as he did would have been aware of it; her round face betrayed only the barest shadow of her surprise. “What happened, John?”
He told her in detail, including the things that bothered him about the incident and the speculations shared with the three police officers. The smooth skin of her forehead and around her generous mouth bore lines of concern when he finished.
“Bad business,” she said. “And bad for business, losing a man we were hired to protect to an assassin’s bullet. Not that you’re to be blamed, of course.”
“Of course,” Quincannon said sardonically. “But others will blame me. The only way to undo the damage is for me to find the scoundrel responsible before the police do.”
“Us to find him, you mean.”
“Us,” he agreed.
“I suppose it’s back to Chinatown for you.”
“It’s where the whole of the answer lies.”
“Fowler Alley?”
“If Scarlett’s mutterings were significant and not part of a hop dream.”
“You said he sounded frightened when he spoke the name. Opium dreams are seldom nightmares, John. Men and women use the stuff to escape from nightmares, real or imaginary.”
“True.”
“Scarlett’s other words — ‘blue shadow.’ A connection of some sort to Fowler Alley?”
“Possibly. I’m not sure but what I misheard him and the phrase only sounded like ‘blue shadow.’”
“Spoken in the same frightened tone?”
Quincannon cudgeled his memory. “I can’t be certain.”
“Well, our client may have some idea. While you’re in Chinatown, I’ll pay a call on her.”
“I was about to suggest that.” He didn’t add that this was a task he himself wished to avoid at all costs. Facing a female client whom he had failed would have embarrassed him mightily. The job required Sabina’s fine, tactful hand. “Ask her if she knows of any incriminating documents her husband might have had in his possession. And where he kept his private papers. If it wasn’t at his office, the mug who searched it before me may not have found what he was after.”