Mercury's Rise (Silver Rush 04) (45 page)
As to a possible spouse for Mrs. Crowson? “Haven’t heard a peep,” Epperley said shortly. “If there was a marriage, it must have been long ago. I say, she doesn’t strike me as the type, though. She’s devoted to Lewis now and to Dr. P, of course. She’s his right-hand woman, I suppose you’d say.”
What about a second brother?
Epperley screwed up his face, setting his mustache even more askew. “Never heard of one. I’d say it’s just the two of them. Who knows about the past, though. They never talk about where they were or what they did before they came to Manitou.” He slanted a suspicious look at her. “Why?”
She hastily changed the subject. After some time passed in desultory small talk, she dared to bring up the incident with the Herb Paris.
“Oh yes. Heard that claptrap about the horse. Must have been a mistake. Did you see this berry Calder was prattling on about? No evidence of it now, so who’s to say what it was. Probably from one of the local plants. Locoweed, maybe. Calder always thought he knew everything about everything. Not to speak ill of the dead. Why do you ask?” His eyes narrowed dangerously, and for a moment, he looked almost sober. Inez veered away from the topic, and inquired instead about Mr. Travers.
“Right, right. He’s taken up residence in this hotel,” said Epperley. “Never a good sign, when they leave Dr. P’s care in that sort of state. Poor chap. Last gasp, is my take on it. I’ve seen enough lungers to know when their number’s up.”
Had he ever heard of a Dr. Galloway?
“Can’t say that I have. But, the Springs area draws doctors the way your city in the clouds draws lawyers. I understand you can’t throw a stone across Leadville’s main avenue without hitting half a dozen solicitors.”
Even as they added more dollars to their winnings, Inez added more pieces to the puzzle. Only a few pieces were still missing, she mused. Unfortunately, they were the most important ones.
“Shall we pay a visit to Mr. Travers?” Mark asked as they started down the stairs.
“I suppose so.” She stifled a yawn. “It may be our only opportunity to find out about Dr. Galloway.”
Travers was not hard to spot. The lobby was empty, the night clerk dozing behind the desk, settled in one chair with his feet up on another. Off to one side, a hunched figure sat in an invalid chair. A single oil lamp, turned low, shed a weak light. A Negro boy, of about fourteen years and all long legs and arms, was curled up on a nearby sofa, asleep. As Inez and Mark approached, Inez wondered if perhaps they weren’t too late, and Mr. Travers had already passed from this life to the next.
As they drew near, however, Mr. Travers’ chest visibly heaved, and he began a tortured cough. The boy stirred and sprang up, pulling a cloth from his pocket. He hurried to hold it up to Mr. Travers’ mouth. Once Travers stopped coughing, the boy carefully wiped the man’s face. “Is it time, Mr. Travers?” he asked in a timid voice.
Travers nodded and motioned with one skeletal hand.
The attendant fished around in his pocket again, pulled out a bottle, and shook a pill into the outstretched claw.
“Mr. Travers?” Inez inquired.
He looked up with sunken rheumy eyes. Sparse hair lay slicked across his sweating skull. He was so emaciated that Inez thought that, when Charon did invite him into his boat to cross the river Styx, the boatman could take Travers’ body as well as his soul, for they would be equally insubstantial.
Travers’ gaze swept past Inez to Mark. Mark stepped forward. “Mr. Travers, I’m Mr. Stannert. I left a card for you with the clerk today. About Dr. Galloway?”
“You don’t look like you suffer from the white plague.” His voice was the merest of whispers, a breeze intimating death in the wings.
Mark spoke. “I was inquiring for my wife’s uncle.” He put a hand on Inez’s arm, a signal that he would steer the conversation. “He is doing very poorly from the wasting disease. We came to the Mountain Springs House to see if the physician there might cure him. He says not. But then, we heard that Galloway might be the one who can help.”
“A cure. A cure,” Travers wheezed, triumphant. “Yes! Galloway is a genius. All the rest—charlatans. He has eased my breathing, brought me back from the brink. Hemlock extract for inhalation. Injections of mercury salts. And calomel,” he held out a shaky hand, disclosing the chalk white pill, “chloride of mercury, just as in the War. It worked then, and it will now. Mercury! Ah now, that’s the ticket. Galloway understands.”
Inez scrutinized Travers, who beamed up at them with fevered, shiny eyes. The dried blood at the corners of his mouth. The emaciation, flushed skin stretched over cheekbones. The laboring chest, rising, falling, with each hard-won breath.
Anger coiled within her.
Wasting away from the wasting disease. Consumed by consumption. Who is this Galloway, who is so cold-hearted as to raise false hopes in a dying man
?
Travers grasped Mark’s wrist. Thin fingers with swollen joints tightened. Fingernails thickened and curved dug into Mark’s snow-white cuff. “You talked to Mrs. Crowson? She gave you the card?”
Mark nodded.
“Then, you know what I know, for I’m certain she told you. The doctor comes twice a week to start with. More often, if you send word to the nurse. He comes at night. She assists in his stead, brings the medications, performs the injections, when he is busy. The man with a cure is a busy man. A very busy man.”
“What does he look like?” Inez asked.
Mark shot her a warning glance, but Travers answered readily.
“Wears his jacket from the army. Showed me his green sash, his surgical bag, with eagle on the lock. Yes, from the War.”
“But his appearance,” she persisted. “Tall? Short? Gray hair? Mustache?”
He frowned, perplexed.
“So we may recognize him,” she added hastily.
He nodded, closed his eyes. Inez wasn’t certain if he was exhausted and trying to recapture lost energy, or calling up an image behind his fluttering paper-thin lids. He finally responded, “Much like the nurse. Same eyes. Same broad forehead. A relative? I do not inquire. That he provides the cure is enough. Beard.” He drew a vague arc at his throat. “Chin beard.”
His eyes opened and refocused on Mark. “You could have seen for yourself, if you’d been here an hour earlier. Dr. Galloway came, gave me an injection. I told him of your interest. I gave him your card. He thanked me. Said he would find you.”
A cold breath of fear, like a winter wind, sighed up Inez’s spine. “Do you ever see them, together? The nurse and the physician?”
He shook his head. “No. Different nights.” He smiled, lost in vague memory. “Another thing. Like the nurse, this Dr. Galloway, he smells of…mint.”
“I guess I was wrong and you were right about women in trousers,” Mark said, as he urged the horse the last mile to Manitou.
Inez clutched his arm, leaning forward as if leaning would encourage the horse to pick up the pace. “Can’t you make him go a little faster?”
“Darlin’, fast horses on a road we don’t know, that’s how horses break legs and riders break necks. I’m going as fast as is safe.”
“The road is straight here,” Inez said.
Mark sighed, and urged the horse into a slow and cautious trot. “What’s got you so wound up, Inez? Mrs. Crowson and Lewis aren’t likely to do anything tonight. They may know we’re on to something—I guess leavin’ my card for Travers wasn’t the best move I’ve ever made—but how much we know, that’s got to be a mystery to them.”
“Don’t bet on it. Mrs. Crowson may have overheard me ask Dr. Prochazka about herb Paris tonight. She knows that Calder spoke to me before he died. She was there when we were walking in the garden. She knew I was up to something when she cornered me in the hallway after I’d been downstairs looking around. At least, thank goodness, she didn’t catch me in Lewis’ rooms—or hers, for that matter.”
“Remember, darlin’, they see me as a likely investor. It’s not reasonable that they’d turn around and bite my hand at this point.”
“I don’t know, Mark. I just don’t know. As you said, she’s not likely to run. Everything she values is here, as far as I can see. Her garden, her brother, her herbs, teas, and potions. The invalids need her and count on her. If she is, indeed, living a double life as a male physician, she must be doing it for a reason. Why not just hire herself out as a nurse and tend to others in that way? Why don trousers and a fake beard,” the carefully boxed coil of gray hair in the nurse’s rooms now made sense, “unless she’s doing something she wants to be kept secret?”
“Don’t forget she probably gave you that not-so-gentle shove down the stairs.”
She frowned. “Could be. But, it doesn’t fit. As you said, you and Jonathan DuChamps are their most promising prospects to pull them out of this financial disaster they’re in. Just look at their situation: up to their necks in debt, yet still building, planning on a bowling alley, billiard room, adding cottages and another floor, hiring a telegraphist so they can have their own telegraph station here. How do they expect to pay? Who will take them on credit, if they don’t pay up on what they owe now? They must desperately want your money, and of course, Jonathan DuChamps’. So the question is, what will she or they do next? Who is the next likely target? The person who knows too much and is expendable, if it isn’t you, me, or Jonathan and his family?”
In an agony of impatience and worry, Inez twisted her hands into the fabric of her cloak, gazing ahead into the waning night.
When is dawn going to come? When will the skies lighten up so we can see?
She recognized buildings that heralded the outskirts of the Manitou hamlet. “The telegraph office is on the way, at the Manitou House,” she said abruptly. “We’ll stop there, and you can send a message to Doc. Tell him it is urgent and ask him to respond quickly, that the situation is dire. Ask him if he knew any physicians with initials VLF and SCF from the days of the War. Mention the names Crowson and Galloway and as well as Victor, Lewis, and Franklin.”
“You’ll wait while I parse this out?”
“I cannot. I cannot sit and dither, not the way I feel. I’ll take the buggy back to the Mountain Springs House. I feel something is going to happen, and if so, I want to be there. It won’t take you more than a handful of minutes to walk to the hotel.”
“So, tell me what you are going to do and where you’ll be. You plan on taking the buggy to the livery and then what? You going up to our rooms, or plan on pitchin’ a tent outside your sister’s or William’s room?”
“I could actually watch them both at the same time from the hallway. No, I’ll head up to our rooms. You will find me there.”
“I surely hope so, darlin’. If you’re not there, I’m going to tear the place apart looking for you, starting with the lower floor and workin’ my way up.”
***
After dropping Mark off at the Manitou House and promising several times over that, yes, she would be waiting in their rooms, Inez returned to the Mountain Springs House. Dawn was finally approaching. Not yet arrived, but the sky was lightening from impenetrable black to a darkling gray, with the shapes of the foothills just taking on substance against the sky.
She drove the buggy to the livery and delivered care of the horse up to a very sleepy Billy. She was disappointed that Morrow wasn’t on duty that night. Somehow, she would have felt better, knowing that he was there with his keen eye and calm ways.
She walked out of the livery, to the edge of the garden, and paused. Ahead of her, the hotel kept its silence, its occupants still deep in sleep. At least, that’s what she assumed. But behind some of the plants screening the lower story from idle eyes, she thought she detected a glimmer of light corresponding to the location of Lewis’ study.
So, he is still awake. Probably still trying to ‘fix’ the numbers for this morning’s meeting with Mark and Jonathan.
One foot on the path to the hotel, she hesitated, and glanced toward the clinic. Lights still burned through drawn window blinds.
Dr. Prochazka should be told. The sooner the better. Who knows what the nurse might do, if she thinks he’s worked out her part in all this? He seems almost oblivious to her. An invisible person can be more dangerous than someone who is an outright enemy.
Decision made, she hurried to the clinic. She pushed on the door, which swung open. Moving silently inside, she entered the dark waiting room and moved into the office. The door to the backroom was partially ajar, with lamplight blazing. She saw a shadow moving within. Heartened, she walked forward as quickly as she could in her slim evening skirts.
“Dr. Prochazka?” she called, setting one hand on the door and pushing. “I must speak with you.”
She stopped. The room revealed a long, lank figure on the floor, pool of red spreading around his head. Nurse Crowson, enveloped in a long cloak, crouched by him, hand on wrist as if searching a pulse, but eyes lifted, gazing straight at Inez.
Inez took a quick step back. “What happened?” was all she could think of saying.
Nurse Crowson rose. The long cloak fell back to reveal the nurse was dressed in men’s jacket and trousers. The heavy statuette of Asclepius was clutched in one hand.