The Wicked Affair of the Golden Emperor

A Charles Goodfoote Mystery in Old San Francisco

Chapter 34

A dastardly plot against the Catholic Mission House

It was nearly noon the next day when I called at the Mission House to invite Emily O’Rourke to Walker’s Party. But I caught her coming out the front door so offered her my coach. She insisted I accompany her.

“City Hall, please,” Miss O’Rourke told the driver. “I have an appointment with Mayor Haversack, Mr. Goodfoote,” she continued as she took my hand and stepped up into the coach.

“Is he soliciting the Mission House vote?” I asked as I took my seat opposite her.

Emily frowned. “No. It’s perplexing. He asked me to bring our records of the girls we’ve rescued for the past six months.”

“Did he explain why he wants them?”

“No, he did not. But he’s been speaking against us to the newspapers. He says we’re interfering with the administration of proper justice.”

“Proper justice! A politician’s term for looking the other way.”

Miss O’Rourke simply smiled.

“Speaking of proper justice, has Miss O’Shannahan recovered from her adventure of last night?”

“Yes. She’s quite resilient. And you and your colleague are certainly earning your pay from the Six Companies and Mr. Fong.”

“Your safety, and that of your sisters, is now our highest calling.”

“And we are most grateful. But you must understand, Mr. Goodfoote, we at the Catholic Mission House are accustomed to threats from all sorts of criminals. Because of the work we do, danger has become commonplace to us. We place our lives completely in God’s hands, so please know we are truly thankful for you coming to us as an agent of Our Lord.”

Agent of the Lord is lofty employment, I mused. Maybe Pinkerton’s would increase my pay if I phrased my future salary requests along those lines.

For several minutes, Miss O’Rourke seemed lost in thought, then turned to me with eyebrows drawn together. “One of our girls has disappeared, Mr. Goodfoote, and I’m quite worried.”

“Hing Fa?” She cocked her head to one side and widened her eyes. “Miss O’Shannahan mentioned her last night.”

“Yes. Of course. Over a month ago, Hing Fa told me a disturbing story that increases my concern for her well-being.”

“Oh? What did she say?”

Miss O’Rourke gazed silently out the window for several moments, then began. “Several weeks ago, I saw a young Chinese girl begging on Kearny Street. I recognized her as Hing Fa, a girl we had rescued and returned to China just a year ago. And here she was, back in this country, on the street, begging.”

Turning to me, she continued. “I of course took her back to the Mission House, gave her some food, a bath, and fresh clothing. The next morning, after she had breakfast, she came into my office and sat with her head down. As I could see she was disturbed, I made tea and encouraged her to speak. Slowly, little by little, she told me a strange story.

“You must know that Hing Fa is a nervous girl and, while lying aboard the ship returning her to China, she began picking at the bamboo frame of her bed. To her surprise, she found pure gold inside the center of the bamboo. She covered it up as best she could and told no one about it.”

Gold smuggling, I thought. Another track on a trail linking Dillman to Chinatown. “Was this one of Lo Ping’s ships?”

She was quiet for a moment. “I really couldn’t say. I simply don’t know. He’s one of many who help take our girls back home.”

“Did you mention this to anyone?” I asked.

“Well, yes. To Administrator Dillman. He advised me not to go to the police, since at that time, he said he had a plan in motion with which the police would simply interfere.”

“Did the child say why she hadn’t stayed in China?”

“Yes, she did. Her sister had been kidnapped and brought to America. Hing Fa came to find her. She hid within a group of women who were being transported to San Francisco for base purposes, and slipped away when they arrived.”

Our conversation came to a close as we pulled up at City Hall. I exited the coach, flipped down the step for Emily, and took her hand to help her disembark. I must admit, I held her hand a moment longer than necessary. She rewarded me with a quick glance with her large dark eyes.

Dealing with politicians is not high on my list for entertainment, so I agreed with Emily to let her enter the massive stone building alone. I smoked my pipe while the driver and I exchanged views on the changing panorama of San Francisco. In about a half hour Emily emerged, her face flushed and her lips in a thin line.

“Your meeting apparently didn’t go well,” I said, after we settled ourselves into our carriage.

She simply glared at me before speaking in clipped tones. “He wants us to end our program. We, who have rescued hundreds of children who would have been put out for prostitution when they reached thirteen, must now stop. The fool says we’re giving San Francisco a bad name among other cities because our numbers are too high!”

“Did he threaten to close you down?”

“No, he wasn’t that direct. He implied we would be getting no further support from him or the police.” She looked out the window. “I must speak to Mr. Walker about this.”

“Walker?” I said.

“Why, yes. He’s very supportive of our Mission, and I’m sure he will have some influence with the mayor.”

I sat quietly as the city slipped past. “Speaking of the former Governor,” I finally said, “I have an invitation to a party he’s throwing in two days.”

“As do I, Mr. Goodfoote. Governor Walker has invited both myself and my Mission House sisters. I hesitated to accept after the attack on sister Meghan, but now, with Hing Fa still missing, I’m afraid I must. The Mission House survives on the largess of the Governor and The Collective, and I’ll need their help, both with her disappearance and this latest obstruction from the Mayor.”

“I’m sure we’ll be speaking with both the Mayor and the former Governor at the party. Perhaps I could escort you ladies and save you the coach fare?”

Emily O’Rourke laughed. “It would indeed be most efficient. And shall we consider this part of your assignment from Mr. Fong?”

“Think of it only as my opportunity to enjoy you, and your friends’ elegant company.”

“Well, Meghan has already said she will be attending in the company of a friend. And Miss McMasters told us she is otherwise engaged.”

“So, it will be just you and me sharing a coach?”

“Yes,” Miss O’Rourke replied quietly. “You can call for me at eight. But now, I must deal with the Mayor’s threat.”

“Is there some way I can be of service ?”

“No, not at this time, but thank you. My staff is meeting this morning and we’ll decide on a plan of action.”

Our coach swung onto Sacramento Street, the boulevard bustling with walkers and carts. We were pulling up at the Mission House when our team reared in a panic, twisting in their traces. A white delivery van, its teamster lashing his horses, narrowly missed us as it roared past. The glimpse I had of the driver showed a man dressed in a black smock, a red scarf wrapped across the lower part of his face. Our hack bellowed his salutations, adding to the general din, as our iron-rimmed wheels screeched across the cobblestones.

Before our cabbie could straighten out his team, a deafening, violent blast rocked our vehicle. Emily was thrown to the floor as our coach was blown sideways. A chunk of debris flew through the open window, whacking me in the head. The horses reared and stumbled, and the driver nearly got knocked from his box as he strained to steady his team. Emily, her soot covered bonnet knocked akimbo, struggled to regain her seat as gray smoke poured into our rig. As quickly as I could, I helped her to an upright position, and we both exited the coach after our driver had regained control of his mares.

A scene of panic greeted us. Horses, wall-eyed, flew down the boulevard, their carts and carriages careening from side to side. Screams from women and curses from men filled the soot-laden air. Men and women, as wall-eyed as the horses, slammed into each other, and were sent sprawling.

I took Miss O’Rourke’s arm. Both of us were blackened by smoke, and I felt a trickle of blood run down my face. Emily and I helped a man to his feet, his clothes torn and his face bloody. We walked slowly to the Mission House and found its heavy door shattered. The bricks around the doorframe were blackened, and most of the door was scattered inside the foyer.

Someone had bombed the Catholic Mission House.

The Wicked Affair of the Golden Emperor

A Charles Goodfoote Mystery in Old San Francisco

Chapter 35

Mysterious clues from a dead agent

“It was an infernal device put against the outer door of the Mission House,” Sergeant Monahan said. “Wrapped in a package. Whoever placed it had only seconds to get clear before the thing went off.”

After having accompanied Miss O’Rourke and an injured housemaid, with Doc Thorp leading the way on his charger, to Saint Bart’s Hospital, I returned to the office just as the police officer paid us a visit. He was now enjoying some of Henry’s plum cake accompanied by a glass of plum wine.

“We can be grateful none of the other Mission House ladies were hurt,” I said. “They were all in the meeting room at the back of the building away from the main hall, waiting for Miss O’Rourke. Emily’s a strong woman and, under the watchful eye of Doc Thorp, has already recovered from her shock. The housemaid, Mrs. Banfrey, had only a few small cuts.”

“Anyone in the street see who made the delivery?” Jubal T. asked.

“Several witnesses, Mr. Bedford,” Monahan read from his notebook. “The man was tall, short, average. He was white, Chinese, Italian, Irish. One woman swears he was a dwarf with a red scarf around his face. And the package was wrapped in brown paper. That much, at least, most folks agree on.” He looked up. “And it wasn’t a big bundle. Maybe two sticks of dynamite.”

“So we’re certain it was only one man and a driver?” I questioned.

“It looks that way, Sir. Two gentlemen who were across the street agree the van raised a ruckus when it came off Beecher Street, near-tipping as it careened around the corner. After it pulled up, a man ran from the back of the cart, up the steps, dropped the package, and was barely aboard before the wagon drove off, the driver whipping his horse.

“These gentlemen are our best witnesses. They weren’t hurt by the blast. And their description is the most detailed.” Monahan returned to his notebook. “A closed delivery cart with writing on the side, one horse, driven by a Chinese man. The man with the package was also Chinese.”

I moved to the window and looked down. “Were they Chinese, or were they dressed as Chinese?” I looked at Monahan. “If you’re wearing a black smock and a black cap, in this city, you’re Chinese.”

“Well,” Monahan said. “The gentlemen admit they didn’t notice the men’s faces. They were stunned by the way the horse was being treated.”

“The writing on the cart. Was it Chinese or American?” My brief glimpse as the cart flew past was of Chinese characters.

“They’re not sure, but they think it was Chinese.” Monahan closed his notebook.

“So,” Jubal T. said. “We have a Chinese bomber who targeted the Catholic Mission House. You better not let this get out, Monahan, or you’ll have an Irish mob tearing up Chinatown.”

Monahan sighed as he rose to go. “It’s out of my hands, Gentlemen. The Mayor is giving a speech in Portsmouth Square tomorrow morning, and I’ve heard he’ll be going after the Chinese.”

After Monahan left, I sat with JT. The attack on the Mission House, like so many pieces of this puzzle, just didn’t make sense. “Everything we see and hear points directly to the Chinese,” I said. “Yet, all my innards are against it. Mark my words. The murder of Agent Hoople is one end of a bloody string that ties all these cases together. If we can get a handle on why he was killed, that’ll go a long way in reading the rest of this confusing pattern.”

Jubal shook his head. “I don’t know about your innards, Boss man. But Hoople’s murder could have been a random event. He may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. His killing may have nothing to do with the rest of this. I think we should start with Skaggs.”

“No, JT. We have a Pinkerton Agent dead two years past. A random event is a dead end, and gets us nowhere. There was a reason he was on the docks that night, and a reason he was murdered. We’re going to dig around that case until it bleeds. We’ll start by looking for any link, no matter how small, between Hoople, Skaggs, and Dillman. Files may be missing, but I’ve found tracks on bare rock before. ”

Through Hoople’s office had been cleaned and his apartment now occupied by others, we still had his personal effects in a trunk in the office storeroom. Hobbs had recently complained about it being in his way.

Henry and Jubal hauled out the trunk of the late Agent and we sat down to paw through it. As we unpacked a few items of clothing, a book on trigonometry, and a drafting set, I thought of this man of varied interests and humble wardrobe. From his reports, I knew him as a skilled and crafty investigator, and somewhere, he must have left a clue to his murder.

“I guess the family had no interest in any of this,” Jubal said. “I hear they’re from someplace back East. Connecticut, I think.”

At the bottom of the trunk, Henry found a heavy wooden case. When opened , we found what looked like a brass sextant.

“Was James a seafaring man?” Jubal asked.

“From New London, he were,” Henry responded. “Plenty o’ windjammers there, sure ‘nuff. An’ we got a whole slew comin’ into port right here, from all the seas of the world. He’d head down to the bay, like he were a proper bo’s’n chief, figurin’ out somethin’. He said this thing here were a sextant, but I never seed one looked like this. I seed him down there some nights and as many days. Then he’d run back here and do his figurin’. Didn’t tell me what all them numbers meant. T’wan’t positionin.’ That don’t change.” Henry seemed to drift away for a few seconds. “He did like his figurin’, lookin’ at manifests from all them ships, jottin’ down numbers.”

“I don’t see any manifests here. What happened to them?” I asked.

“Wal, we pitched ’em right out when we cleaned up. Didn’t see no point in keepin’ ’em layin’ ‘round. Mr. Hobbs likes a clean deck, ya know. He heaved ’em out hisself.”

“Did Hoople tell you what he was working on, Henry?” I asked.

“No,” Henry said with a slow shake of his head. “No. Jest liked numbers, I guess. I run into him down the docks, him and his spyglass there, lookin’ out over the bay, said he was jest practicin’ with his sextant.”

“Henry, the numbers you copied weren’t longitude or latitude, and I didn’t find anything like that in his notebook or papers.”

“Maybe he threw them away when he was done with them,” Jubal said.

I walked to the window to sight up the instrument on a flagpole a block away. “Huh,” I muttered. “This is good for things a few yards away, but it wouldn’t be any good for the stars or moon.”

I picked up the trigonometry book and it fell open to a page with exercises for determining the height of trees. “Huh,” I said again.

“Them ‘Huhs’ of yours mean something, old Hoss?” Jubal asked.

“This instrument Hoople was using is like a sextant, but not quite. I’m no Navy man, but one of the requirements at Harvard was a semester of sailing classes. An old seadog by the name of Commander Cooper had us spend weeks using a sextant to map our positions from the Charles River out onto the ocean. And this clever instrument, trust me, is not a normal sextant. I believe it’s some new form of ‘inclinometer’.

“What’s that in plain American, Capt’n?” Henry asked.

“An inclinometer is an instrument for measuring the height of something, like a tree. Or a building. If Hoople was at the Bay using this instrument, he was looking at something a lot closer than the stars. The only things he could have been studying are ships and boats. Let me see that notebook, Henry.”

As I looked at the abbreviations of ships and the numbers scrawled by Hoople, I had a flash of insight.

“And now, by Godfrey’s Ghost, as we used to say at Harvard, I think I know what those numbers in his notebook mean. Hoople was measuring the ‘freeboard’ of these ships.”

“”Freeboard’?” Jubal said.

“Sure nuff, Capt’n. I think you hit on it,” Henry said. “Them numbers could be the freeboard of all them freighters.”

“Freeboard?” Jubal repeated.

“The distance from the surface of the water to the deck of the ship,” I explained. “That instrument is the key, gentlemen.”

“Why in thunder would he be ameasurin’ the freeboard, yer worship? The tonnage is right on the manifests he was a-pourin’ over. And how could he measure the freeboard with that contraption?”

“I’ll explain the mathematics, if you’ve a mind to hear them.”

Jubal spoke up. “Please keep the mathematics to yourself, Boss. Just give us the whys and wherefores.”

“Fair enough. Let’s take the Glenda Stein as an example. When the ship comes into port loaded with, say, ten tons of cargo, it would be riding low in the water. After the cargo is unloaded, the ship rises.”

“Of course,” said Jubal. “The distance between the deck and the surface of the water would be much greater, because the ship is lighter.”

“Right. But Hoople was measuring the ship as it came into port loaded, then after it was empty of cargo, and finally, what depth she was riding at when she sailed off. He had a copy of each ship’s manifest telling how much cargo she was carrying outbound, and he checked to see how the freeboard of the ship corresponded to the listed weight of its cargo as she sailed away.”

Jubal looked confused. “Say again?”

“Look at it this way. The Glenda Stein comes into port with ten tons of lumber. The distance from her deck to the surface of the bay might be eight feet. Then she unloads and, because she’s now lighter, she floats at maybe twelve feet out of the water. Now, let’s say she takes on two tons of passengers. That’s eight tons lighter than the lumber, so she still should be riding pretty high, maybe ten feet, Suppose he sees that she now measures, not ten feet, but closer to six feet.”

Jubal nodded and Henry started to hop from one foot to the other, a sure sign he was about to burst with elation. “I’m seein’ whar we’re a’headin’, Capt’n. She’s carryin’ a lot mor’n two tons of passengers. Like a couple tons of gold, maybe?”

“You got it, Henry. She picked up a few extra tons of something right here in the San Francisco harbor.”

“And Hoople figured it out,” Jubal said, “and got killed for his trouble.”

The Wicked Affair of the Golden Emperor

A Charles Goodfoote Mystery in Old San Francisco

Chapter 36

The Mayor gives a speech, and the Detectives visit a dangerous saloon

The weather turned warm the next day and a heavy mist blanketed the city. By the time I reached the office, I had sweated through my shirt. Henry was clattering in his cubby, but neither Hobbs nor JT were on the premises.

No breeze was stirring, but I threw open the window in case one sprang up unannounced. The sun was just a pale orb, and the traffic on Montgomery Street moved in a cloud of muffled haze. I had tried checking out Hoople’s inclinometer on the ships on the Bay, but the visibility was too poor.

Resigned, I turned to the pile of paperwork awaiting my attention. Even the paper was limp. After a couple of hours of this dreary chore, I told Henry I was going out, and would return after attending the mayor’s speech.

The mayor, a barrel of port and piss named Marcus A. Haversack, was due to give his talk at ten o’clock, and a crowd had gathered in Portsmouth Square by the time I got there. A rumor among the rabble was that his speech was to be a call to arms against Chinese immigrants, and a group of young toughs had come with bats and metal bars.

The mayor arrived flanked by Chief of Police Ambrose Wayne and Captain Bullump, who, as usual, looked like an angry toad. Some cheers and a few boos greeted the mayor’s opening remarks about the weather and San Francisco in general. The mayor was a skilled politician, if nothing else, and it seemed to me he was trying to read the crowd, measuring how much he wanted to show his outrage at the Mission House bombing, but not being so bombastic as to start a riot. In the past few years, Chinatown had become of financial benefit to the city and wrecking it would be an economic, as well as political, disaster. The chief of police must have had much the same thoughts for there was a sizable police presence. A cadre of uniformed officers carrying heavy truncheons surrounded the speaker’s dais, as well as volunteers from the vigilante groups.

So I was pleasantly surprised when the mayor didn’t throw the Chinese to the mob, and the hotheads, who were throwbacks to the old “Know-Nothing” party, were either shouted down or arrested for trying to storm the dais. The Hounds, that old reactionary gang of thugs, was not to be resurrected on this day.

The Mayor had given the whole city a reprieve, I felt. He had kept Chinatown from being ripped apart, so the rest of the city was free to go about its usual business. For my part, rather than return directly to my office, I spent the better part of the day running down men who might have had information about yesterday’s bombing, Of course, everyone was either blind or deaf, and had been home in bed when the bomb went off.

Jubal and I met at the office at dusk. He had talked to some of his snitches, but, like me, had nothing new. There were speculations aplenty, but, as of yet, no one knew, or was telling, who had planted the bomb at the Mission House. Or why.

“I’ve been thinking, Bossman,” Jubal said, taking his feet off his desk. “Hoople was putting in a lot of time down at the docks watching those ships. He wouldn’t have been investigating unless someone had hired Pinkerton’s. And I’ll bet it was Dillman who hired this agency.”

I nodded. “I’ve been thinking along those same lines, Jubal. What I don’t understand is the lack of official report from Hoople to the Chicago Headquarters. So far, we’ve found no paper trail between them. From reading his other reports, it’s pretty clear he wouldn’t have gone off on his own without filing something through Henry.”

We sat in silence for awhile lost in our own thoughts. Finally, Jubal spoke the dark idea that had gone unsaid. “You thinking maybe Henry mislaid that report on purpose?”

“I’m thinking we need to talk to Henry about it.” I stood up. “Time to go, JT. We’ll grab a bite at Annie’s and then hit Big Willy’s before the crowd gets too unruly.”

I saw Jubal open his desk drawer and slip an extra firearm into his coat pocket. Hobbs was still in his office when we left.

Frequented by pimps, receivers of stolen goods, thieves, road agents, smugglers, gun hands and murderers, Big Willie’s Bull Run was the social center for every sort of hardcase West of Hades. It was a damned dangerous place for a man on Easter Sunday morning, and likely to get downright calamitous any day after the sun went down.

The odor of sweat, tobacco, and spilled beer that greeted us as we pushed open the Run’s wooden doors hadn’t diminished any in the week since I had last seen Willy and his three gunnies. A tinny piano was being assaulted by a skinny man in a blue derby who resembled a spider on a hot griddle, his thin arms and legs pumping in all directions. Lamps had been lit, but they did little to pierce the smoky gloom. A couple of foot-lamps on a small stage illuminated the night’s merriment. I won’t sully these pages with a close description of the entertainment, but it had to do with an underdressed corpulent woman with curly red hair toying with a variety of non-human species. A line of early drinkers, slumped along the bar, swilled watery brew by the gallon.

In the center of the room, the dance floor was occupied by saloon girls dragging drunken miners and sailors in slow circles. While Jubal T. and I stood near the door surveying the premises, one of the girls led her beau to the stairs leading to a balcony that ran around three sides of the saloon. I saw a man armed with a rifle standing in the shadows on its gallery. Jubal was paying close attention to a man behind the bar, who, sitting on a six foot high chair overlooking the barroom, was armed with a shotgun. If shooting started, we had our first targets picked out.

“Why Mr. Goodfoote, back again so soon. And Mr. Bedford,” boomed Big Willy. “Welcome to my little slice of heaven.” Out from behind the bar came the man himself, his nose sporting a fresh layer of flour. Dressed in a white shirt, crimson vest, and gray trousers with thin white stripes, he was the very picture of a prosperous innkeeper.

“We’ve come for the pastoral scenery,” I began, as Big Willy clasped my hand in his massive paw. “And to enjoy a few minutes of your sparkling conversation. Any place we can speak in private, Willy?”

“I’m always ready to jaw with you Pinks,” Willy said with a wide grin. “We can use my office near the stairs.” He glanced up at the shotgun man in the raised chair, and flicked his right hand. I took this as his signal that Jubal and I posed no danger.

Big Willy’s office was a table with three chairs in the far corner of the dance floor. Three shot glasses and a bottle of rye whiskey sat on the table. Almost as if the villain had been expecting us. Willy took the chair against the wall where he could look over the barroom. Jubal didn’t sit, but stood, arms folded, leaning against the wall. My back was open to the dance floor, and it was a damned uncomfortable position. I was relying on Jubal T. to keep his eye peeled for any backshooter, not an unheard of incident on the Barbary Coast.

“Have a snort, Goodfoote,” Willy roared as he filled my glass. Last time I was in, he wasn’t so friendly, and I was trying to figure out why, this time, he was treating us like such great comrades. Willie looked at Jubal who shook his head “no”, his eyes continued to scan the barroom. “Bedford here has a suspicious nature. What, you ain’t drinking neither? I may become insulted if this behavior continues.”

“No offence intended, Willy. We just need to palaver.”

“Well, fire away, but be quick. I got real business to attend to.” Willy emptied his glass in one go, grabbed the bottle, and poured another shot.

“Four men took it upon themselves to attack a lady in Chinatown yesterday,” I began. “One was that horse thief Dietrich. One was the Swede who hangs out here and beat up that sailor last week.” I noted Willy turning redder as I went on. “The third, Turkey, has a bullet in his right arm. The fourth will be sporting an eyepatch.”

Willy threw back his second whiskey and slammed the empty glass on the tabletop. Sweating, he ran his sleeve over his face. “My memory ain’t what it used to be, Goodfoote. And, Breed, would ya do me a favor and take off yer boots? I got a hankering to see if yer feet are still black. Ya are a Blackfoot, ain’t ya?” He leaned back and roared at his own joke.

I leaned forward and fixed him with my crocodile smile. “Now, Willy, me lad, you and I have always gotten along and I know assaulting young Christian women isn’t your style. But I also know you can tell me something about those four, If you’ve a mind to.”

A series of gunshots sounded from the street outside the bar, a common enough occurrence in the Barbary Coast. None of the patrons took notice, but I saw a smile grow on Willy’s face, and it wasn’t pretty. “Wal, I don’t have a mind to, yah half-breed son-of-a-bitch. So you can take your questions and go straight to hell.” Willy’s face was red and moist and his eyes bulged, like he was being slowly strangled. He splashed liquor on the table as he poured himself another shot.

“Ooooh, Willy. You cut me to the bone with that kind of talk. We come in here for a friendly chat, and there you go getting all riled up. Why is that Willy? Who put the jelly in your backbone?”

Willy jumped to his feet, his hand gripping the neck of the whiskey bottle. “Get outta’ my place while ya still got legs to walk with, Breed. And take Johnny Reb here with ya.”

I looked at Jubal who just smiled. The man loved calamity. When Willy looked at JT, he knew if he swung his bottle he’d get his eyes shot out. The big man sat down.

I rose slowly. “I’ll be back, Willy. And you know what that means.”

“I got nothin’ to fear from ya, Goodfoote,” he nearly shouted. “I’ll be pissing on yer grave before dawn. That gimp-eyed Skaggs was jest the first.”

I stopped and fixed him with a look that would have given Old Scratch himself the cobbly-wobblys. “What do you know about that, Willy?”

“Just this, Breed,” he said through clenched teeth. “You’re a piss-ant in a buffalo stampede. This ain’t no rag-tag bunch of cow punchers yer up agin. You and this Greyback here are already dead men, and there ain’t nothing this side of hell can save ya.”

The Wicked Affair of the Golden Emperor

A Charles Goodfoote Mystery in Old San Francisco

Chapter 37

An ambush is thwarted and the office is set ablaze

“Keep an eye out, JT. These lamps were lit when we went into Willy’s, and this fog isn’t helping any.”

“I don’t think I ever saw Willy sweat before,” Jubal said as we walked up a darkened Broadway. We hadn’t been attacked inside the Bull Run as I had feared. And since someone had shot out the street lamps, Willy probably felt we would be better targets outside .

“I’ve never met the man or demon who could scare Big Willy,” I replied. “But he was shaking like an aspen in a windstorm when we started asking about those hardcases. Someone or something has put the wind up Willy’s backside, and he was damned quick to get us out of there.”

“He wasn’t telling who was going to come a- shootin’, but he made it plain someone will,” Jubal said.

I nodded. “It’s as dark as the devil’s fundament out here.”

Jubal chuckled. “Not as dark as that. A little fog, maybe, but there’s a fair number of people around.”

He stopped and faced me. “Someone has it in for that Mission, too,” he continued. “And they aren’t playing nice. Maybe we better keep a lookout again tonight.”

“I have Miss O’Rourke’s assurance they won’t be running out again after dark. She’s become a little more cautious. And their front door has been repaired, but…”

I was rudely interrupted by chunks of brick exploding near our heads. Bullets buzzed past, one sent my hat flying. The window of the cigar store we had just passed shattered and people scattered like sparrows. Jubal T. and I drew our weapons and I dropped into a squat while searching the darkness for the source of the gunfire. Three men directly in front of us, still somewhat enshrouded by the fog, blazed away, their revolvers spitting a swarm of lead. A bullet tore through my open suit coat and grazed my vest as I fired my Remington at the man in the middle, my round slamming into his chest. I heard Jubal’s Colt bark three times, the shots so close to sound almost as one discharge. I’m a fair hand with a pistol myself, but no one I know can beat Jubal T. Bedford in quickness and accuracy. I knew I hit one man, but I suspected we’d find Jubal’s lead in all three.

“Darkness works both ways,” Jubal mused. “They put out the streetlamps, but couldn’t see well enough to hit us.”

It was apparent the shooters had been waiting for us, and probably figured we were easy targets. They hadn’t bothered to hide or seek cover, relying instead on the darkness and the rain of lead they were spewing. We checked the bodies and found two of them seriously wounded with holes in their chests, a third dead from a head wound.

“This dead one with the sling is Turkey,” Jubal said. “And Dietrich here won’t be stealing any horses for a long time, if ever. Don’t know this one’s name, but I’ve seen him in Willy’s.”

“They were all jawing with Willy when I was in the Run last week,” I said. “The only one not here is the man Meghan O’Shannahan blinded.

“We better skedaddle,” I continued, as people started to fill the street. “Or it will be a long night of explaining to the police.” Bullump would have liked nothing better than to hold us for an indefinite time, and I had reason to doubt our continuing good health if we were put in such an unfriendly position.

As we moved quickly toward a side passage called “Pissers’ Alley,” Jubal stopped to pick up something setting against a wall. Neither of us had a moment’s regret leaving the two wounded gunmen lying in the gutter next to their dead companion. ‘You reap what you sow’ takes on a more immediate meaning when gunplay is involved.

“Here’s your hat, Charles,” Jubal T. said handing me my derby. I glanced at it as we scooted out the back of the alley onto Vallejo Street. It had a neat bullet hole through its crown. One of the killers’ shots had missed me by about half an inch. “You better start charging Pinkertons heavier wages, the way you’re going through headgear,” he said.

No one even glanced at us as we strode along Vallejo.

“I’ve a notion to go back to the Run and let Willy know we don’t cotton to being ambushed,” Jubal said. “Maybe we should show him what a piss-ant can do.”

“We’d be playing his game, JT. Willy will keep. He’s not going anywhere.”

“I’d pay a month’s wages to see his face when we walked in, though,” said JT, smiling.

“That may come later. Our own cave needs cleaning before we tackle Willy or anyone else. I’m betting Willy had his shooters set up before we finished our supper. Willy expecting us, and his setting up this ambush, smells like a coyote’s lunch. But now, we need to be seen elsewhere.”

Jubal and I spent the rest of the night in and out of some of the lowest dives on Kearny and Broadway, making sure we would be remembered. At the Broken Crutch Watering Hole, we started a brawl with a group of sailors just off a sailing vessel, and I shot out the wall decorations in the Dirty Dog Saloon. I picked up an unventilated chapeau from a drunken gambler at the Embargo Tavern after he dropped it while dancing with a trollop on the crowded dance floor.

We kept a keen eye out for any more of Willy’s gang, all the while laying a trail a blind man could follow. By the time dawn spread its colors over the city, anyone tracing our movements would be hard pressed to prove we were anywhere near the scene of the earlier shooting.

“Time to rein in our mounts,” Jubal T. said, squinting at the pale sun over the bay. “I’m heading for the stable to see to Triumph, but I’ll be in the office by noon.”

“I’ll grab a nap at the office,” I replied. “I have a clean collar there, and a hat with less sweat than this gambler’s skimmer.”

“Keep an eye on your back-trail, Charles,” Jubal cautioned as we parted company. “You might be safer in the street.”

“I agree, JT. It’s a melancholy thought the office might have a skunk under its porch.”

There was no point in trying to hire a cab at this time in this part of town, and I felt a walk might help clear my head. My mood was somber, for I had to consider who in the office was the snitch. Someone had tipped Willie we were on our way and he had his gunmen ready to ambush us. I knew it wasn’t Jubal. That left Henry and Hobbs, both men I trusted. I racked my brain for another possibility. Could we have been followed from the office by one of the Ducks? Unlikely since I prided myself on my skill in spotting a stalker, and it was an art I practiced with some dedication. But I hadn’t tripped to the men following Miss O’Shannahan to Chinatown when she was attacked. They came behind Jubal and me, far enough back to remain invisible.

At this hour, the streets were clear of revelers and mostly honest workmen were about, trudging their way to labor in the hotels, stores, and warehouses of the City. A Chinaman went past with a wash-basket on his head, and an elderly Chinese doctor, carrying his case of herbs and needles disappeared into a narrow passageway.

My mind kept rearranging the moving pieces of this life-and-death puzzle. I decided the best thing to do was to make a list of what I knew for sure, and what was just speculation on my part. In the back of my brain, Henry’s warning about the right hand puppet entertaining, while the left hand did its mischief, had a whole new meaning for me. Whitemen can be puppeteers too.

As I thought about Henry, I realized at this hour he would be in his office kitchen baking his morning bread and brewing up his coffee. My task would be to act normal, but all the while remembering someone had told Willy we were on our way to brace him. That information had damn near got us killed.

I was almost at Montgomery Street when I realized something was wrong in the color of the early morning sky. At first, the flames behind the window with the Never Sleeping Eye logo, and the grey smoke seeping around the window casing didn’t register with me. As soon as they did, I ran to the office building, and bounded up the stairs into the heavy smoke. Hobbs’s desk was ablaze, but the fire hadn’t had time to jump from the piles of paper on his desk to the walls. I grabbed the office sand bucket and threw its contents on the flames. The coals still smoldered so I ran to Henry’s kitchen and grabbed a bucket of water.

Just as I emptied it, Henry came pounding up the stairs.

“What in…” Henry started.

“Open the windows, Henry. Get this smoke out of here.”

Henry threw open the windows as I began to examine the ashes on Hobbs’ desk. “There goes Hobbs’ budget,” I said. “And these other files are a total loss, too.”

Henry sniffed. “Kerosene, Capt’n’. Dumped out the lamp and set ‘er ablaze. The scabby son of a Bombay slag grabbed whatever papers wuz layin’ round to stoke it.”

“I’ll check the other offices,” I said. “You see if the file room is still locked.” Henry stomped out, muttering. I found Jubal’s office was untouched, and mine was shipboard neat.

“The file room is standin’ wide open,” Henry said when he returned. He was bouncing from foot to foot. “They wuz fixin’ to burn us out, Capt’n, that’s fer certin.” Henry then finished characterizing the arsonists in language common only to sailors and muleskinners.

“This whole building would have been ablaze if I hadn’t come to work early,” I said, putting a cork in Henry’s verbal outpouring.

“Waal,” he said as he dropped his eyes. “ I’m usually here bakin’, but this mornin’…”

“No need to explain, Henry. If you had been here, they would’ve put a bullet in you and then gone about their dirty business.”

He looked at me sideways. “I ain’t that easy to corpse, Mr. Goodfoote, yer honor. Many have tried, but I’m still here trodden’ this here deck.”

I smiled and patted his shoulder. “I know, Henry. You and that blunderbuss of yours would have pointed out their mistake, I’ve no doubt.”

I looked at the floor in Hobbs’ office. “This ash and soot has covered any footprints, Henry, but I’d like to take a look at the back stairs. You swabbed the back hallway and stairs before you left last night? I know you usually do.”

“You could’ve shaved lookin’ at ’em, iffen you had a mind to. And ’em stairs were fresh varnished jest last week.”

“I’ll get my lamp and take a looksee. If your kitchen’s not ruined, Henry, I could use a cup of your Sumatra coffee, as strong as you can make it.”

For the next twenty minutes I studied the tracks in the entire office, including the file room and the stairs leading down to the back door. Then I followed the prints into the yard and found more revealing details of the arsonists.

I came upstairs and brushed the yard-dirt off the knees of my trousers. Some can track standing up, but I’ve found getting my knees dirty is a small price to pay for a close up look at the prints. I took the cup of coffee Henry handed me to my office so I could consider this latest outrage in full.

The fire seemed over the top. Why not just steal the files? Was there something in them we had missed? Was the fire planned before last night’s ambush and meant to destroy evidence if Jubal and I had been murdered? Or was it a backup plan after the gunmen had failed to kill us?

Unknown to them, the arsonists had left more clues than they had destroyed. Their footprints on the newly varnished shiny floor in the hallway and rear staircase, and the dirt outside the back door told me volumes about them. Their tracks gave me hard evidence. Not more rumors and gossip that had been plaguing this case. Good hard evidence. And I knew how to make the most of it.

But for now, I was keeping what I knew, and what I suspected, to myself.

Henry collected the remains of files that were only partly burned, and carried them in a box to my office. “It wasn’t much of a fire,” I reflected.

“If ya hadn’t come aboard a’ foretimes, we’d be slurpin’ our brew over a pile of ashes, Capt’n. Some crawly maggot wants yer tripes for garters, that’s fer certain. I telled ya not to piss in the same pot as them coppers in this town.”

“Just doing my job, Henry. When someone objects this strongly, it means I’m reading the sign they’re leaving more clearly than they find comfortable. For now, order Hobbs a new desk, if you will. We can’t have prospective clients thinking we can’t afford proper office furniture for our employees.”

I grabbed my coat and hat from the rack. “I’m going to find Jubal. He needs to know about this fire.”

The livery service where Bedford stabled Triumph was just a few blocks from the office. I hurried over on foot and found him asleep on a rough cot in a stall next to his horse. I nudged him awake with the toe of my boot.

“Time to talk, JT.”

He sat up, stretched, and gave a loud yawn. The morning light poured through spaces between the rough boards of the stable wall.

“I know who’s the traitor in our office.”

Bedford, pulling on his boot, looked at me.

“It’s Hobbs,” I said, “there was a fire in his office this morning. I got there in time to put it out, and when I read the prints, they pointed to Hobbs.”

“Hobbs?”

“Two men came up the front stairs. After the fire started, three men went down the backstairs and into that horse lot behind our building. Henry keeps the back staircase polished, so reading their footprints was child’s play. And the dirt in the horse lot is what the Blackfoot call a track-trap. Prints aplenty.”

“You sure the third person was Hobbs? He could have gone out the back anytime,” Jubal said reasonably.

“Nope. He always goes down the front stairs and locks the front door behind him. I’ve never seen him go out the back. And the tracks I found were left last night, after Henry had swabbed the back area.”

“Still, Charles. He’s been an operative in that office longer than you or me.”

“Hobbs has a square-toed boot with a raised stitch. Some of his tracks on the backstairs had ash crushed in them which means he was in the room after the fire started.

“A lot of men in this city wear square-toes, Charles.”

“Yes, but Hobbs has a cut on the sole of his left boot. I’ve been seeing that cut in his print for weeks now.”

“You been tracking Hobbs for weeks?” Jubal looked at me with wide eyes.

“It’s a habit, Jubal. I read your tracks, Henry’s, and mine like I read Sam Clemens’ column. Looking at people’s prints was an important part of my early life and it’s never left me. It’s what I do.

“There’s more. Another man in the office had flat soles, and was just short of six feet tall. The length of his shoeprint told me that. The third man wore a set of wide, soft-soled shoes, more a moccasin than a boot. He wasn’t as tall as Mr. Flat Soles. So we have those three in Hobbs’ room as the ash was falling to the floor. They probably stayed around piling on more files, making sure the fire caught. I’m thinking they saw me coming and ran out the back, because if they had come out the front, I would have slammed right into them.”

Jubal nodded. “Makes sense,” he said.

“I’m also thinking this fire was a last minute idea,” I went on. “The two men were probably from Willy’s gang who had came to tell Hobbs we were still among the living. The three panicked, then tried to burn anything they thought we’d find useful.”

“So you’re saying Hobbs tipped off Big Willy we were coming.”

I kept my voice low, although no one else was around the stable. “That’s how the sign reads. And here’s something else to think about. Hobbs must have read Hoople’s report on the gold smuggling. He told someone who maybe told the Chinese. Hoople gets murdered, and most of his files disappear. Whoever is behind all this, is now after us, and they have Big Willy by his topknot. With Hobbs spilling the beans about everything we talk about in the office, we’re hunted by both Lo Ping’s hatchetmen and Willy’s hired guns.”

Jubal took a deep breath. “I’ve got to ask you straight out, Charles. Do you suspect Henry may be part of this, too?”

I shook my head. “No. Henry is loyal to the marrow of his bones. If it wasn’t for him, we’d still be scratching our heads over those abbreviations and numbers. We’d be nowhere in this investigation without his help. I know he can be a cantankerous old sea cod, but he’d cut out his tongue rather than be disloyal.”

“Why would Hobbs turn on us?” Jubal asked.

“That I don’t know. He may have run up a gambling tab he couldn’t pay. I know he’s been winning more than usual at the roulette wheel at Woo Fat’s. That would be a simple way for Lo Ping to pay the snake.”

Jubal took another deep breath. “I won’t feel safe in my own office until we find Hobbs and put him someplace where he can’t cause further trouble. He knows our routines and how we think, and if he is sleeping with Big Willy’s mob, our healthy living could be a thing of the past.”

I shook my head. “I want Hobbs out and running free. If we use our smarts, we can feed him only what we want him, and his handlers, to know.”

“A lot can go wrong with that, Boss man. He may accidently overhear or see something. Have you talked to Henry about this?”

“No, Jubal. Hobbs is no fool. A look, a gesture, and the game is up. Henry wouldn’t be able to bring it off. I’m counting on you and me to keep Hobbs in the dark. I’m thinking we won’t have to play-act for too many more days. Hobbs will crack if pressured, and, if he feels threatened, he might just go after Walker. A couple more days at the most.”