Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) (25 page)

All the while she was preparing for bed she thought of it, but it made no sense, unless that old stock had suddenly become valuable, and that was unlikely.

Yet Al Hesketh had mentioned stock several times, suggesting she invest, and asking if she had ever invested…but that was just talk. Albert Hesketh was a mining man, a businessman, and not a thief. Besides, he had been with her.

Turning out the lights she went to the beam, slid back the panels and felt for the stocks. They were still there. Tomorrow, in the daylight, she would examine them, then she would at least know what she had. She had kept them for sentiment’s sake. Some had belonged to her father, some to her aunt. To be honest, she had always hoped they might be worth something, despite repeated assurances they were not.

There was that long ago letter from Val, when he told her of the money he had invested for her from that old debt owed to her father, or something of the kind.

She started to get into bed, then crossed the room and looked down into the street. All was dark and still. The street was ghostly at this hour. She started to turn away; did something move in the shadows over there?

She looked for a moment longer, saw nothing, and decided it was her imagination. She got into bed, keeping the derringer at hand.

When growing up in Paris, she had read the stories, basically true but highly colored, of the master detective and former criminal, Vidocq. Later, when active in the theater, she had often talked of him with d’Arlange, a French actor who had become her friend through her Uncle André.

“Look about you,” d’Arlange suggested, “it is not necessary to have a gun or a knife to kill. Everywhere are weapons! Clubs with which to strike, cords with which to strangle! Any object that can be picked up can be a weapon!

“And for defense as well. Look about your room! Here there is a chair, there is a table, a lamp! Study your room and the house where you live! Learn to know every room. Tip a chair in front of your pursuer, then hit him with anything when he falls! You can throw wine into the eyes! Or hot tea!

“Study your own room, your own house, your own neighborhood as if it were a battleground. Learn how to use it for defense, for escape, for counterattack!

“Have a plan! Know what you will do if your attacker comes through a door. Know what to do if he comes in through a window. Nobody need be helpless.

“I once knew a sea captain’s wife who was much alone, and she was about to open a shop and had carpenters and painters in. She lived in a room above the shop, and one night she heard someone down below. She went down the steps and was just in time to see a man climbing through the window.

“She had no weapon, so she took the brush from the the red paint pot and as he reached for her she slashed him across the eyes with her red paint brush! He opened his mouth to howl, and she thrust the brush down his throat, then she dumped the paint over his head and began flailing him with the empty bucket.

“He fled, and the police caught him only down the block, and he was in a sorry state, paint all over and cuts on his scalp, half blind and choking as well. And she? A few flecks of red paint on her flannel nightgown!”

She dropped off to sleep at last, and awakened with the sunlight streaming through the window.

After a while she sat up, propped pillows behind her, and returned to the examination of the script. It was a play she had not seen before, and interesting. In San Francisco there were a number of playwrights, far from professional, in most cases, yet quite capable. This play was by one of those, and there was talk of producing it.

Yet she could not concentrate. After a few minutes she put the play down and sat thinking. Suppose Albert Hesketh did believe she had some valuable stock? Suppose he had deliberately taken her to the theater to get her out of the flat so the thief could work? Nothing in life had impressed her with the idea that all motives were pure. It was distinctly unflattering for a successful actress, said to be beautiful, to be courted simply because she might have valuable stock, yet she would not be the first to be sought after for profit.

Suppose she led him to believe she did have stock, she could be vague about what and where, as she indeed was. Suppose she dangled the bait?

She got up, bathed and dressed, thinking about Albert Hesketh. What was it about him that made her uneasy? Was it his eyes, which were cold as steel marbles? Was it his features, that had too little mobility? Or that he so rarely smiled, and when he did it was stiff and artificial? She admitted, at last, that she had never felt comfortable in his presence.

Yet he was always the gentleman, if a little too precise, a little too perfect. He did and said all the right things, but somehow she doubted if he felt any of them. He puzzled her, but now she was angry, too. If he had, indeed, been responsible for the forced entry into her flat, she would be furious.

It was not that far, she decided. Today she would walk to the theater. She put the .44 in her handbag, closed and locked the door behind her.

She smiled ruefully as she turned the key in the door. A lot of good that would do!

It was cool and dark in the theater. The stagedoor entrance was unlocked and she went in, pausing for a moment, listening for sound. There was none.

She was early, but not much. They should be here by now. It was unreasonable that not even one was here. She crossed the stage in the dim light, glancing out over the rows of empty seats. Thank God she’d never had them empty like that for a performance!

Backstage she hesitated and looked around. It was eerie. For the first time she realized that never before had she been in a theater alone.

From behind her she heard a faint creak, as of a footstep. She turned sharply.

Nothing, only the vague half-light that filtered in from far-off windows, somewhere on the second story behind the balcony.

Opening her purse, she took the derringer into her hand. Its weight was reassuring, yet the silence was there.

Something stirred.

She looked back. Her dressing room door was behind her. If she got in there, closed the door, but what if the
something
was there? Waiting for her?

She was being a fool. There were always sounds in an empty building. Changing temperatures could make boards creak and groan, even pop.

She took a step back, reaching for the doorknob, her purse hanging over her wrist. Her hand felt for the knob and there was a sudden movement from behind. Her wrist was grasped by a strong, bony-fingered hand and jerked sharply, the handbag was jerked from her arm and she was shoved violently. She staggered forward, heard running steps, and she toppled and fell to her knees.

She looked up. For one instant she saw the running man on the stage, almost at the other end.

She fired.

He staggered, cried out, and dropped her purse, clutching his hand. She lifted the derringer for another shot, but he was gone.

She got up, staggered, and stood erect. Her purse lay on the stage and she walked to it, holding the gun in her hand.

From outside she heard running feet and then they were crowding in, her friends, the cast—even Dane Clyde. How long since she had seen him?

“Grita!” Rosie shrilled. “What
happened?
”

“A man tried to snatch my purse. I shot at him.”

“You hit him, too.” Clyde pointed at a drop of blood on the stage. Then he saw the derringer. “You mean you hit him with
that?
At that distance?”

Stunned, she put the gun into her purse. She must remember to reload it. That was her only thought. The gun, her only protection, was half-empty.

They were all around her, chattering, asking questions, saying how awful it must have been.

“He was waiting in my dressing room,” she said. “He was waiting there, and there was no one around.”

“We stopped to have a drink,” Sophie said. “I’m sorry, but when someone is buying—”

“It’s all right. I wasn’t hurt. Just frightened, that’s all.”

“If you can shoot like that when you’re frightened,” Dane Clyde commented, “I’d not like you to shoot at me when you’re calm!”

“It was luck, an accident. Just an accident.”

The stage manager, Richard Manfred, crossed over to them. “All right, it’s all over. Let’s get down to business.”

Later, when they stopped for tea, Dane Clyde walked over to her. “If you’d like, I’ll reload your derringer. I’ve just come over from Virginia City and have my own gun in my carpetbag with some extra powder and shot.”

“Oh, would you?”

He went for his bag, returned, and she watched him load the gun. “You’re very good,” she said.

“When you travel that road, you’d better know what you’re doing. Besides, there’s been some trouble over there. It hasn’t actually come to shooting yet, but—”

“Shooting? In the theater?”

He chuckled. “No, it hasn’t gotten that bad, but I’ve some friends in the mining business, and sometimes things get a bit sticky.”

Sophie and Rosie came over. “Are you all right, Grita?” Sophie asked. “You must have had a scare.”

“If we just hadn’t stopped!” Rosie complained. “But that nice Mr. Hesketh—”

“Who?” Dane turned sharply around. “Did you say ‘Hesketh’?”

“Of course. He’s a friend of Grita’s and when he offered to buy—”

Hesketh, Grita thought.…last night and now.

Chapter 28

G
RITA TURNED TO Dane. “Do you know him?”

“I know who he is. Albert Hesketh is a mining man from Virginia City, and he recently got control of the Solomon, one of the best of the mines. Be careful of him.”

“What do you know about him?”

“When it comes to that, I know next to nothing. He has been in Virginia City for some time, and they say he came there from California. He was keeping books at the Solomon, and then all of a sudden he simply took over.

“Will Crockett trusted him and all the while Hesketh had been plotting to take the mine away from him. He did just that, and Will Crockett disappeared.”

“Murdered?”

“I doubt it. We think he’s looking for some missing shares of Solomon stock which, if he could get them, would return control to him.”

“Unless Hesketh got them first?”

“Exactly.”

After rehearsal Manfred joined her at the door. “Wait, and we’ll walk home with you. You seem to be a target for this sort of thing.” He gave her a searching glance. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

“I don’t know how to shoot. I just fired.”

“Sometimes instinctive shots are the most accurate. After all, it’s just like pointing your finger and you have been doing that all your life.

“You hit him in the hand or arm, I think. That’s just a guess, but he dropped your purse, which I am sure was not his intention.

“Back in East Texas, where I come from, we have a man named Cullen Baker who always shoots like that. He’s very good.”

Dane Clyde joined them and they started up the street. “Are you still planning to come to Virginia City?”

“Oh, yes! Mr. Maguire has scheduled us to play there for at least two weeks. We will do four different plays, two the first week and two the second, and then probably a repeat, depending on how they do.”

“The War doesn’t seem to have affected business.”

“Are many leaving from Virginia City? I mean, to go into the Army?”

“Quite a few, although President Lincoln is not pushing it. After all, the government needs the silver we produce. There’s a lot of hard feeling, though, on both sides.”

“We hear a lot of talk about it in Paris, but nobody I know really knows anything about it.”

“There’s too much loose talk over here, too. Actually, it is more a matter of States’ rights than slavery. The importation of slaves has been against the law since 1820. Of course, there’s some smuggling going on, principally through the bayous near New Orleans.”

Clyde turned to Grita. “Sophie told me somebody tried to break into your flat?”

“He did not try. He did break in. He sprung the lock somehow and went through everything.”

“‘Went through’? You mean he searched everything? What was he looking for?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea. He may have thought I have a lot of jewelry. From the audience some of the junk I wear looks very real.”

“Last night and again today?” Manfred was skeptical. “That can’t be coincidence. Somebody thinks you have something.”

At the door, they paused. “Maybe,” Manfred suggested, “we should come in with you.”

“Please, would you?”

The lock on the door had been simply sprung by using a lever of some kind, a jimmy or a screwdriver or a pinchbar. The flat was one of many, hastily built to handle the rush of people in the 1850s.

They made a quick search of the flat. It was empty.

Manfred paused at the door. “You’re not afraid? I know Sophie would come to stay if you wished, and she’s not afraid of anything. I saw her throw a drunk out of a theater once—bodily. I mean she just threw him into the street.”

“I’ll be all right.”

Clyde did not wish to leave. He lingered. “Grita?” he spoke softly so that none but Manfred could hear. “Do you own any mining stock? In the Solomon, for instance?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Look at it. Hesketh has control, but Crockett has a lot of stock, too. If Hesketh can pick up those missing shares he will have control, he will keep control. If Crockett should buy them first, then Crockett could oust Hesketh and take over again. It’s no small thing, Grita. There’s millions involved.”

“If anyone believes I have stock in the Solomon,” she said flatly, “they are mistaken. I
know
I have no such stock, and let’s face it. I have never been out here before nor have any of my family.”

She closed the door and locked it, then checked the windows, one by one. The one window which was impossible to reach, she left open slightly. The others she left locked. She went from room to room, carefully looking at everything. There was no evidence that anyone had been in the flat since she left.

Suddenly, she was angry. Someone had actually invaded and searched her flat, someone then had awaited her in the theater, had shoved her down and tried to get away with her purse.