“No. It’s Quincannon. John Quincannon.”
“Quincannon,” she repeated, as if tasting the word. “Very well, Mr. Quincannon., what is it you want from me?”
“Cooperation.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We are more or less in the same profession, you and I,” he said. “I am an operative of the United States Secret Service, attached to the field office in San Francisco.”
Her eyes widened. Incredulously she said, “The Secret Service? Really, Mr. Quincannon…”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Why should I? After all, you’re a — ” She broke off.
“A drunkard? Yes, Miss Carpenter, I am. And the fact will no doubt cost me my job one day.” He took out his Service badge and Boggs’ latest telegram, moved over to set both items on the table, and then stepped back. “Perhaps those will convince you.” He waited until she had examined them, then said, “The telegram is from the agent in charge of the San Francisco office. He signs himself Arthur Caldwell, but his real name is Boggs. You can verify that by wire, if you like, through the Pinkerton office in Denver. I’m sure Mr. Boggs has been in touch with your superior there.”
She seemed confused and nonplussed now, as if all of this was too much for her to grasp at once. She moved away from the table again, this time to sit down on a stool used for customer fittings. After a moment she said, “You’ve shaken me, Mr. Quincannon. More than I’d care to admit.”
“It was as much of a shock for me to learn that you’re a Pinkerton.”
“I suppose so. But what is a Secret Serviceman doing here? Not also investigating Oliver Truax and the Paymaster Mining Company, surely…”
“No. A gang of counterfeiters is what I’m after.”
“Coneymen? In Silver City?”
“Yes. One of the largest and most organized boodle games ever to operate west of the Rocky Mountains.”
“Do you know who is running it?”
“I have strong suspicions, yes.”
“It’s not Oliver Truax?”
“No. I don’t believe he’s involved. But I do think his wife might be.”
That surprised the Pink Rose, but not as much as it might have. She said, “How would Helen Truax be mixed up with counterfeiters?”
“Jack Bogardus,” he said.
“You mean you suspect Bogardus is the ringleader?”
“I do. And that the Rattling Jack mine is the manufacturing and shipping point for the queer.”
She nodded slowly and thoughtfully. “Yes, I can see how that might be possible. Do you have proof?”
“Not quite enough to act on as yet. I take it you had no suspicions anything of the sort might be going on?”
“No, none. It’s common knowledge that Mrs. Truax and Bogardus are engaged in a clandestine relationship; I have even seen the two of them together. But I believed, as everyone else does, that Bogardus’ newfound wealth was the result of a rich new silver vein.”
“Whistling Dixon was involved, too,” Quincannon said. “I believe that’s why he was killed. And the same is true of Jason Elder.”
“Elder is dead?”
“Yes. His body was found yesterday, in a canyon back in the hills. He had been tortured before he was killed.”
“My God. Why?”
“He had something Bogardus and his gang badly wanted; I’m not sure what. But he wouldn’t tell them what he’d done with it even under the torture. They thought he might have hidden it at the newspaper office or given it to Will Coffin; that is why the office and Coffin’s house were broken into, not because of any Chinese retaliation against his stand on opium. They also searched Elder’s shack, of course. It was ransacked before you searched it yourself?”
“Yes. I thought it strange when I found it that way.”
“Why were you at Elder’s shack?”
“Last week I followed Mrs. Truax there — a curious rendezvous for a woman of her station. I intended to investigate her relationship with Elder, but then I learned Oliver Truax was going to Boise to sell a block of Paymaster stock and I followed him there instead. Tuesday morning was the first opportunity I had to check up on Elder. And it seemed safe enough to search his shack then; I ran into Will Coffin before I went there and he told me Elder had disappeared.”
“Where did you find the stock certificate?”
“In a fireproof box inside the stove.”
“Was there anything else in the box?”
She shook her head. “Is it possible the certificate is what Bogardus was after?”
“I don’t see how. Do you?”
“No,” she said. “There is nothing important or incriminating about it that I can see. Still… she was eager enough to have it back when she confronted me.”
“ She confronted you? Didn’t you tell her on Tuesday night that you had found the certificate?”
“I did not. I had struck up an acquaintance with the woman and invited her to visit the shop.” There was reproof in Sabina Carpenter’s tone as she said, “You were the one who told her I had the stock.”
“A foolish mistake,” Quincannon admitted, “and I apologize for it. What was her mood when she came to you about it?”
“Angry, of course. She demanded that I let her have the certificate.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“I had no choice. She threatened to go to the marshal if I didn’t.”
“Do you know why she signed her stock over to Elder?”
“No. She wouldn’t say, and I had no luck finding out on my own. I couldn’t imagine a personal relationship between her and Elder. You never saw him, did you? He was an ugly little man with yellow skin from his addiction. But now I wonder if it was something to do with the boodle game that caused her to give him the stock.”
“It must have been.”
“You suspect Elder of being the engraver of the counterfeit plates?”
“Yes,” Quincannon said, and something stirred in his memory — something he had overheard Bogardus say to Helen Truax. Now that we’re operating again, another couple of weeks is all we’ll Meed — at least two more big shipments.
Now that we’re operating again…
“The plates,” he said.
Sabina Carpenter looked at him questioningly.
“The plates,” he repeated. “God, yes, that must be what Elder hid from Bogardus. There was a falling out of some sort, Elder took the plates, Bogardus tried to buy them back with Mrs. Truax’s Paymaster stock and when that didn’t work, he resorted to torture that went too far.”
“That does sound reasonable,” she said. There was animation in her voice now that her initial shock and confusion had gone. An excitement, too — the kind that had once been in him when a difficult and intriguing case was about to break wide open. “But where could Elder have hidden the plates?”
“He didn’t hide them; he gave them to his opium supplier, Yum Wing, for safekeeping.”
“Of course! And Yum Wing’s death last night — Bogardus was responsible for that?”
Quincannon dipped his chin affirmatively. “I was almost able to prevent it,” he said, “but I realized the truth too late. Yum Wing was already dead when I arrived. His killers jumped me from hiding; they mistook me for another Chinese in the dark or they would probably have murdered me too.”
“That explains the cut on your head — I’ve been wondering about that.” She paused. “Do you think they got the plates?”
“I’m certain they did,” Quincannon said. He explained what he had overheard at the Truax house.
“What will you do now?” she asked. “It seems to me you have sufficient proof against Bogardus to take direct action.”
“To me as well. But Mr. Boggs and the gentlemen in Washington are much more cautious in these matters than either of us.”
“I know what you mean. The man I work for in Denver, James Lumley, is the same sort. Which is why I’m still operating this shop and Oliver Truax is still a free man.”
“You have evidence of Truax’s guilt, then?”
“Considerable evidence.”
“A pyramid swindle?”
“Exactly. The man is riddled with greed, and reckless because of it. He will sell any amount of Paymaster stock to any interested party for immediate payment in cash. He told me there were no shares available for sale when I first approached him, but when I showed him the Agency’s five thousand dollars, I owned a hundred shares less than twenty-four hours later.”