The Spook Lights Affair (22 page)

“Oh, yes, I did. It was only a foretaste of what you’ll get when I deliver you to your father.”

Virginia’s lower lip began to tremble. “I hate you. I hate you!”

“I don’t like you very much, either, after what you’ve put your family and me through.”

A little silence. Then, petulantly, “How did you know?”

“That you were still alive? I’ve known that for some time. Your primary mistake was deciding to lure me out to the overlook to witness your fake suicide, instead of following the original scheme to have it be Grace DeBrett. She would have been a much more credulous witness. But I suppose in your mind fooling a professional detective made the game even more exciting.”

No response.

Sabina said, “I’ll admit it was a clever trick you and your lover concocted on the cliff, but also a foolhardy and dangerous one. You’re fortunate you
didn’t
fall off that night, traipsing around in the dark and fog on a slippery strip of ground.”

“I don’t have a lover. I … I did it all myself.”

“It’s too late to try to protect him, Virginia. It took two to make the trick and the rest of your plan work. You had to have help getting away from Sutro Heights afterward without being seen and then all the way down here. While you were at the ball, Lucas Whiffing came in a borrowed or rented buggy, didn’t he? And parked it somewhere outside before he slipped onto the property. Then while I was sounding the alarm, the two of you made your escape and he drove you straight down here. You must have paid a previous visit to reconnoiter, bring in the supplies you’d need, and arrange the servant’s room upstairs as your hideout—doubtless the day last week you didn’t return home until late.” And after Lucas had dropped her off, Sabina thought but didn’t bother adding, it had taken him most of the night to drive alone back to Carville. That was why he’d looked so haggard when she spoke to him Saturday morning.

Virginia offered no further denial. She said, “Lucas,” in a yearning whisper. “Where is he? Is he all right?”

“For the time being.”

“He was supposed to’ve come for me by now. He … oh, God.” Now she looked as if she were about to burst into tears. “How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t difficult, once I learned of your conversations with Arabella Kingston and paid a call on her. You had to be hiding someplace private that no one knew about while you waited for Lucas to get his hands on enough money to finance your travels. The money from the Wells, Fargo robbery. He’s the one who stole it in the first place, isn’t he?”

“He … he didn’t steal it. He’s not a thief.”

“A thief, yes. And worse, much worse.”

“I don’t believe you. He’s kind and gentle … he loves me and I love him.”

“But when your father forbade you to see him, he beguiled you into faking your suicide and running off with him.”

“He didn’t beguile me. It was my idea.…”

“I don’t believe you. You’re not canny enough to realize your father would hire more detectives to hunt for you unless he believed you dead. He might have done that anyway, despite the suicide note, without a body to prove you were no longer alive.”

Pouty silence.

“Where did you intend to go?” Sabina asked. “South? East?”

“I won’t tell you.”

“And what then? Live together in sin and luxury?”

“Not in sin! We were going to be married.”

“It doesn’t really matter. You’re not going anywhere now except back home where you belong. And Lucas isn’t going anywhere except to prison for his crimes.”

Now Virginia did start to cry. Tears rolled down her straw-flecked cheeks; she made no attempt to brush them away.

“We should have left right away,” she said in self-pitying tones. “That’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t care about the money, but Lucas said we needed it, that I’d never be happy living poor.…”

No, it was Lucas who would never have been happy living poor. Not that venal young man. He may have cared for Virginia, but when he knew he could never have her and access to the St. Ives family fortune by marriage, he’d wasted no time plotting his devious alternate scheme.

Sabina stepped back and picked up the lantern. “Dry your eyes,” she said then, “and come out of there. I’ve had enough of this place and I expect you have to, if you’d admit it.”

“I won’t go back with you. You can’t make me.”

“Oh, yes, I can and will. If you give me any more trouble, I’ll take you to the sheriff in Burlingame. Would you rather meet your parents quietly, like a lady, or in handcuffs like a common criminal?”

To punctuate the threat, delivered in sharp words, Sabina took the derringer from her coat pocket and pointed it in Virginia’s general direction. The girl gasped, her eyes widening.

“You … you wouldn’t dare shoot me,” she murmured.

“I might, if you provoke me enough.”

It was a white lie, of course, but Virginia believed it. After a few seconds she muttered something unintelligible, pushed upright, and came out of the stall. Sabina watched her warily, but there was no defiance left in the young ninny. She stood in a bedraggled slump, brushing straw from hair and clothing, avoiding eye contact. And she offered no resistance when Sabina took her arm and prodded her out of the barn, repocketing the derringer on the way.

An hour and a half must have passed, for the hired hansom was now parked on the driveway and the beaky-nosed driver was just coming down the front steps of the house. He saw Sabina with her charge and hailed her. She called back to him, asking him to wait a few minutes more, then steered Virginia to the outside staircase.

“There’s nothing I want from up there,” the girl said in sullen tones.

“So you say now. But we’ll pack it all up nonetheless.” Besides, Sabina’s reticule was still in the room.

The packing took no more than five minutes. Under Sabina’s watchful eye, Virginia stuffed her unpacked belongings into the two carpetbags, and the foodstuffs, eaten and uneaten, into the paper grocery sacks. The driver’s eyes widened when they appeared, Virginia carrying the bags and Sabina the sacks, and he had a close look at their disheveled appearances. But he had the good sense to keep his thoughts to himself as he helped them load everything into the cab’s luggage compartment.

The girl said nothing during the ride back into Burlingame. She sat slumped against one shaded window, her chin on her chest and her hands clasped tightly together in her lap. Sabina was grateful for the silence. She was tired, feeling peevish, and in need of a bath and fresh clothing, neither of which she would have for hours yet.

It was full dark by the time they reached the Southern Pacific depot. There was still time to make the evening train for San Francisco, and for Sabina to first send a telegram to Joseph St. Ives informing him that Virginia was alive and well and asking that he meet their train. She only hoped that he would receive it in time to honor her request. The sooner she was rid of the company of his duplicitous daughter, the happier she would be.

23

QUINCANNON

Alone in the parlor, Quincannon smoked his stubby briar and waited for the hands on his stemwinder to point to 11:30.

The Meekers had all retired to their respective bedrooms in the end cars sometime earlier, at his insistence; he preferred to maintain a solitary vigil. He also preferred silence to desultory and pointless conversation. There were ominous rumblings in his digestive tract as well, the result of the bland and watery chicken dish and boiled potatoes and carrots Mrs. Meeker had seen fit to serve for supper.

The car was no longer overheated, now that the fire in the stove had banked. Cooling, the stove metal made little pinging sounds that worked in counterpoint to the snicking of wind-flung sand against the car’s windows and sides. As the time for action approached, he checked the loads in the Navy Colt. Not to be used against the Carville ghost, if there was such a hunk of ectoplasm; no one had ever succeeded in plugging a spook, no matter what its intentions. As a precaution, rather, because he was fairly well convinced that a human agency was behind these manifestations. He even had a notion, now, as to why, though the how of it still eluded him.

Another check of his watch showed that the time was two minutes shy of 11:30. No purpose in waiting any longer. He holstered the Navy, donned his greatcoat, cap, scarf, and gloves, and slipped out into the darkness.

Icy, fog-wet wind and blowing sand buffeted him as he came down off the walkway. The night was not quite black as tar but close to it; he could barely make out the shed and corral nearby. The distant jumble of abandoned cars was invisible except for brief rents in the wall of mist, and then discernible only as faint lumpish shapes among the dunes.

Quincannon slogged into the shelter of the lean-to. His rented plug and the two horses belonging to the Meekers, all blanketed against the cold, stirred at his passage and one nickered softly. He removed his bull’s-eye lantern from beneath the seat of the buggy, lighted it, closed the shutter, then went to the side wall and probed along it until he found a gap between the boards. Another brief tear in the fog permitted him to fix the proper angle for viewing the cars. He dragged over two bales of hay, piled one atop the other, and perched on the makeshift seat. By bending forward slightly, his eyes were on a level with the gap. He settled down to wait.

He had learned patience in situations such as this by ruminating on matters of business and pleasure. Sabina occupied his mind for a time. Then he sighed and turned his thoughts to the Wells, Fargo robbery and his pursuit of the reward. The pieces of the crime and its connection to the murder of Bob Cantwell had begun to fall into place; it would not be long before he had turned up the missing ones to complete the picture. He smiled his dragon’s smile in the darkness. Yes, and at the same time he might well be able to supply an explanation for the puzzling disappearance of Virginia St. Ives from the Sutro Heights parapet. It all depended on how well his hoped-for confrontation with the Carville ghost turned out.…

Time passed slowly. In spite of his heavy clothing the cold seeped through and his body began to cramp. A constant shifting of position helped some, though after a while it seemed as if he could hear his bones creaking and cracking every time he moved.

Midnight.

Twelve-ten.

Twelve-fifteen—

And finally there was light. A faint shimmery glow from the direction of the jumbled cars.

Quincannon strained forward, squinting closer to the gap. Gray-black for a few seconds, then the fog lifted somewhat and he spied the eerie radiance again, shifting about behind the windows in one of the cars. The longer he looked, the more distinct the glow became—and he glimpsed the shape it seemed to emanate from, the outlines of an unearthly face.

He snatched up the bull’s-eye lantern, hopped off the hay bales, and went out around the corner of the lean-to. The glowing thing continued to drift around inside the car, held stationary for a few seconds, then moved again. Quincannon was still moving himself, over into the shadow of the cistern. Beyond there, flattish sand fields stretched out for thirty or forty rods on three sides; there was no cover anywhere on its expanse, no quick way to get to the cars, even by circling around, without crossing open space.

He waited for another thickening of the restive fog. When it came, he left the cistern’s shadow and ran in a low crouch toward the car. He was halfway there when the radiance vanished.

Immediately he veered to his right, toward the line of dunes behind the cars. But he could not generate any speed; in the wet darkness and loose sand he felt as if he were churning heavy-legged through a dream. There were no sounds except for the wind, the distant pound of surf, the rasp of his breathing. Not until he reached the foot of the nearest dune and began to plow upward along its steep side, at which point the night erupted in a series of weird tortured moans and banshee shrieks.

A few seconds later, the wraithlike figure appeared suddenly at the crest and then bounded away in a rush of shimmery phosphorescence.

Quincannon shined the lantern in that direction, but the beam wasn’t powerful enough to cut through the streaming fog. He leaned forward and with his free hand punched holes into the sand to help propel his body upward. Behind and below him, he heard a shout. A quick glance over his shoulder told him it had come from a man stumbling awkwardly across the sand field—Barnaby Meeker, alerted too late to be of any assistance.

When he’d reached a point a few feet below the crest, a wind-muffled report reached Quincannon’s ears. The ghost shape twitched above, seemed to bound forward another step or two, then abruptly vanished. Two or three heartbeats later, it reappeared farther along, twisted, and was gone again.

Quincannon filled his right hand with the Navy as soon as he struggled, panting, to the dune top. When he straightened, he thought he saw another phosphorescent flash in the far distance. After that, there was nothing to see but fog and darkness.

He made his way forward, playing the lantern beam ahead of him. The grassy surface of this dune and the next in line showed no marks of passage. But down near the bottom on the opposite side, the light illuminated a faint, irregular line of tracks that the wind was already beginning to erase.

The light picked out something else below as he climbed atop the third dune—the dark figure of a man sprawled facedown in the sand.

Gasping sounds came from behind him; a few moments later, Barnaby Meeker hove into view and staggered up alongside. Quincannon didn’t wait. He half-slid down the sand hill to the motionless figure at the bottom, anchored the lantern so that the beam shone full on the dark-clothed man, and turned him over. The staring eyes conveyed that he was beyond help. The gaping wound in his chest told that he had been shot.

Meeker came sliding down the hill, pulled up, and emitted an astonished cry when he recognized the dead man. “Young Whiffing!”

Lucas Whiffing, alias the Kid.

“What happened here, Quincannon?”

Quincannon gave no response. The victim’s identity was of no surprise to him; it was only the suddenness of young Whiffing’s demise that had caught him unawares, and the circumstances in which it had happened that bothered him now. Still, he might have foreseen that the situation here was volatile enough for violence to have erupted as swiftly as it had, particularly after the way he had goaded Whiffing earlier.