“Invaded?”
“By the police and certainly not by a female private detective. I place a high value on my privacy.”
“Indeed you must.”
“Then you will honor your refusal to Miss Kantor and not meddle in my affairs?”
“I have already said so, Mr. Purifoy. Would you like me to put it in writing?”
The sarcasm was lost on him. He said, “That won’t be necessary. I shall take you at your word.” He tapped the ferrule of his stick on the floor as if for emphasis, turned on his heel, and removed himself from her sight.
Sabina sat simmering. Everything about Vernon Purifoy rankled, not the least of which was his cheeky, hidebound reference to her being a female private detective. A martinet, a prig, a denigrator of women... and perhaps something even more unpleasant, too? His sudden arrival in person and his insistence that no investigation be undertaken seemed out of proportion to what he himself had termed “a minor misunderstanding.” In her experience that sort of heavy-handed protest meant the individual had something to hide.
Sabina seldom acted on a whim. Almost never, in fact. She was much too practical a businesswoman to allow personal feelings to overrule her judgment. But she surprised herself by giving in to impulse not once but several times over the next few days.
The first time was not long after Vernon Purifoy’s visit. The day being warm, she walked up Market to Geary during the noon hour and ate her lunch at a bakery shop that served the best muffins in the city. The choice was not quite random, for the bakery was near Maiden Lane, and when she emerged she found herself detouring in that direction. She had no good reason to stop in at the Clark Dressmaking Shop, other than the fact that she felt sorry for Gretchen Kantor. There was nothing she could say to the young woman of her dislike of Vernon Purifoy, and it would be cruel to reveal the man’s coldly insulting remarks about her, but there was no harm in reassuring her that she had done nothing wrong in attempting to act as his benefactor.
A whim, pure and simple.
But it became more than that when she entered the shop. It was small and somewhat cramped with display racks of inexpensive women’s apparel and accessories of the sort that clerks, secretaries, and sales girls such as Miss Kantor herself could afford. There were no customers at present, and it took a few moments before a curtain parted at the rear and Miss Kantor emerged wearing a tentative smile.
That was not all she exhibited, however. A bandage three inches long stretched across her left cheekbone. The skin along its edges was discolored beneath an application of powder, the rest of her face pale.
She came to an abrupt standstill when she recognized Sabina. Something like fright showed in the hazel eyes. “Oh,” she said, “Mrs. Carpenter. I... I didn’t expect to see you again...”
“What happened to your face, Miss Kantor?”
One hand lifted to the bandage, lowered again without touching it. “It... it’s nothing, really, just a small cut. I tripped and fell in my room last night, struck the edge of a table.”
She was lying, covering up. It was in her voice, the quick side-shift of her gaze, the slight tremor of her hand.
Sabina kept silent. If she gave voice to what she was thinking, it would accomplish nothing. The girl would only deny that it had been the signet ring Vernon Purifoy wore, not a table edge, that had opened the wound in her cheek.
Miss Kantor said, “You haven’t changed your mind, have you? That’s not why you’re here?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Then...? I mean, this isn’t your sort of dress shop, surely...”
“I just wanted to reassure you that you did nothing wrong in confiding in me yesterday.”
“Oh, but I did. It was foolish of me to go against Vernon’s wishes. I had no right to do that.”
Virtually the same words Purifoy had spoken to Sabina, which she had no intention of mentioning. “I take it you told him of our conversation,” she said, “and he has no desire for an investigation.”
“None whatsoever. No.”
“Why is he so adamant against it?”
“He... he doesn’t want anyone meddling in his affairs. He values his privacy.”
More parroting, Sabina guessed. Part of an angry lecture delivered by Purifoy and punctuated and bolstered by violence.
“Please honor his wishes, Mrs. Carpenter. And please don’t come to see me anymore. I... we just want to be left alone.”
Sabina took her leave, and anger rode with her on her return to Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. She despised men who mistreated women; verbal abuse was bad enough, physical abuse intolerable. And poor Gretchen Kantor was a prime example of a bully’s victim. Her infatuation with Vernon Purifoy was so great that she forgave being struck in a fit of rage, her fear not of more abuse but of being cast out of his life.
Sabina understood both types all too well, but what she didn’t understand was Purifoy’s motives in this particular instance. He was a martinet and a bully, yes, but she was even more convinced now that there had to be more to his intensely negative reaction to the thought of an investigation than a desire for privacy. The apparent breaching of his home by a stranger was one part of it — or was Oscar Follensbee, if that was his real name, not a stranger at all? Another might be fear that something he kept in his desk had been stolen. Money? More than one man who lived frugally and mistrusted banks had been known to hoard greenbacks or specie.
She might not have dwelt on the conundrum if there had been agency business to attend to. But there was still none — no calls, no visitors, no mail — and the combination of boredom and curiosity was proving compelling. Of course there was nothing she could do about it legally. And yet, if one wanted to stretch a point, there was a certain moral responsibility involved. Did she want to stretch the point? Perhaps, if there was a way to do it that did not openly violate professional ethics.
Well, there was nothing wrong with conducting a private investigation, was there? Just for her own satisfaction, if nothing else?
She talked herself into it. Her second whim, this one not so pure and not so simple.
6
Sabina
On Thursday morning, shortly after she arrived at the agency, a Western Union messenger brought her a belated reply from the Far West Mine Workers Union office in Sacramento. The wire stated that the FWMWU had no record of an employee by the name of Jedediah Yost, past or present. Nor had the organization sanctioned visits to Patch Creek by any of their representatives.
Just who was Jedediah Yost, then? It might be possible to find out from the description of the man James O’Hearn had given to John, though there was little enough to distinguish him. Yost was in his late forties, of average height, slender and wiry; other than a small triangular birthmark on his left cheek and a bootlace mustache, he evidently possessed the sort of bland countenance that would render him unnoticed in a crowd of more noteworthy men. His only known habits were the smoking of short-six cigars in an amber holder and a fondness for and skill in stud poker. Sabina sifted through the agency’s file of dossiers on known criminals. None matched the description or had a record of involvement in any kind of gold theft or swindle.
She hurried out to the telegraph office, where she intended to send a coded wire to J. F. Quinn, John’s alias in Patch Creek, informing him that Yost was posing as a union man. The intention was thwarted, however, when she was told that Patch Creek did not have a Western Union office; the nearest was in Marysville. Telegrams could be delivered from there to the gold camp, but not without the recipient’s address or a prior arrangement as to where it could be picked up. If John had known beforehand where he would be quartered, he hadn’t confided the fact to her.