“I’m so sorry.”
A furtive look flitted across his face. “It was a long time ago.”
Inez injected a brighter note into her voice. “Well, in any case, Mr. Farnesworth, it’s good to see you again. Last I saw you, you were—” She stopped, realizing that in her desire to take the conversation in another direction she may have inadvertently strayed into another mine field.
“—having my face ground into the mud,” he finished bitterly. “I had nothing to do with that woman’s demise. In fact, the local police told me this morning that I am exonerated of her death. She apparently was still alive yesterday.”
He gathered his papers and his tapeline. “I’ve got to finish the job I was sent to do. Mrs. Stannert, may I see the upstairs?”
***
After tapping walls, measuring windows, asking about the construction of the building, and examining the ceilings, Cecil seemed satisfied. “Thank you.”
“And have you finished all of State Street now?”
He shook his head, somewhat despairingly. “This block is a warren of shanties back by the alley. Getting access to them, and even to some of the larger buildings, is proving difficult. I still haven’t completed my examination of that brick structure, the boarding house at the corner of Pine and State.” A grim expression crossed his countenance briefly, like the shadow of a passing cloud. “I’ve no choice but to complete the job. That’s what the Johnson Fire Insurance Company has hired me to do.”
He was following Inez down the stairs when Bridgette came in. She looked up at Inez with a broad smile that faded as her eyes widened. Cecil Farnesworth, focused on his notes, glanced at Bridgette, then back down. Inez paused at the bottom of the stairs, watching as Cecil made his way through the saloon to the State Street door, shoulders squared, board clenched to his chest. A strange sputtering sound caused her to turn to Bridgette, who had her gaze glued to the mapmaker’s departing back. “Do you know him, Bridgette?”
“Well, not exactly, ma’am. He’s a stranger to me. Not someone of the parish.” She played with the fringe on her shawl, staring distractedly at the now swinging door. “But, he’s of the faith. You see, I saw him. That man. At confession. I recognize the nose, poor fellow. He was before me. And, I don’t listen, ma’am, that isn’t seemly to listen to another’s confession, but he was loud and…he was crying, ma’am. Crying in the confessional. It was the nature of the sound that caught my attention. I don’t know what demons haunt his soul, but from the sound of it, I’d say it will take more than a stray confession in a passing town to bring him any lasting peace.”
After the dinner rush, Jed showed up, enormous circles under his eyes. He was immediately besieged as he walked in the door.
“Hey! Elliston! Good issue!”
“That bit about that upstart Wesley. How’d you come by that?”
“Sources that wish to remain anonymous,” he said mechanically.
“Ya sure scooped the competition. Not a word of this anywhere else.”
“Say, what’s this about a lewd photograph? You gonna share the details if I buy you a drink?”
Elliston didn’t answer. He simply removed his hat and set it with precision on the bar.
Inez noticed that his usually carefully groomed hair was in disarray, as if he’d rushed out of his rooms without more than a desultory combing that morning. An uncharacteristic faint stubble shadowed his usually clean-shaven face. He was but a rumpled shadow of his self on the previous evening at the reception.
“Whiskey, please, Mrs. Stannert.”
“What? You’re not going to celebrate your good fortune with something a little more substantial?” Inez turned to scan the bottles on the backbar for something better than the usual firewater.
“I’ll celebrate later.” He scratched his chin, as if suddenly aware of its sandpapery condition. “Say, can I get whatever the daily special is? I’ve not eaten yet today.”
Inez tipped some Old Forester into a glass and looked at Jed with concern. He was the kind of fellow who preferred to take his meals at the finer venues around town—the Saddleback, the Clarendon, or the Clairmont—the better to see and be seen and to pick up high-grade gossip and the latest news.
“Well, Bridgette has a quantity of excellent stew and fresh biscuits. There might be sausages from this morning.”
“Sausages sound good.” He took the liquor in a gulp and didn’t even shudder. Inez waved down Sol, who was doing double-duty as waiter that day, taking orders for comestibles. He scribbled down Jed’s order and disappeared into the back with a handful of slips.
Inez leaned on the counter. “Jed. What’s wrong?”
At that moment, the door blew open. John Quincy Adams Wesley stormed in, trailed by an avid pack and the unflappable Kavanagh. Wesley stopped, blocking the entrance yet again, looked around, and—
“Coward!” He stalked toward Jed.
His followers fanned out around him, an assemblage that included his usual coterie and a congregation of newspapermen, including, Inez noted, several of Jed’s competitors. The pencil-pushers hung back, eyes bright with the eagerness of newshounds scenting a story in the making.
“Here you are. Hiding. I tracked you here after inquiring at your usual haunts. Flushed you from your liar’s lair. How dare you, you damned deceiver, teller of false tales, prevaricator, fraudster. My mother is prostrate. Distraught. Due to you and your lies.”
Jed visibly pulled himself together, squared his shoulders, and turned. “Mr. Wesley. Good afternoon to you as well. Your complaint being?”
“These, these, damnable lies! Fantasies fabricated from your febrile imagination!” Wesley thrust a crumpled copy of
The Independent
under Jed’s nose. The two men were of a size, but Wesley’s commanding presence and palpable anger set him degrees above the newspaperman.
Inez glanced over at Abe, who had taken a station by the shotgun hidden under the bar. He nodded fractionally to her.
Inez turned back. A heated political argument and shouting match was one thing. Should things turn physical, however, that was something else.
Jed was talking, his stubborn won’t-give-an-inch streak reasserting itself. “I have my sources. My proof. I stand by my words.”
“Proof!” Wesley spat. “What proof? Show it to me!”
“Letters from your own hand,” said Jed staunchly. “On your letterhead. The first is addressed to none other than the owner of Silver Mountain Mining, Incorporated, Harry Gallagher. All here know that Harry would jump at the chance to fill his mines with cheap labor, from the Orient or otherwise, and throw honest men trying to support their families out of work. The other letter, again on
your
letterhead, is addressed to Mrs. Clatchworthy, who is the most ardent supporter of this ridiculous movement to gain women’s suffrage. A movement nipped in the bud, and rightfully so, by the faithful voters of Colorado a mere three years ago. Granted, women gained school suffrage, but that’s hardly the same as—”
“Do. Not. Lecture. Me. About. Politics.” Wesley ground out. “You obviously know nothing, nothing, about my beliefs or my political stance. I don’t recall you interviewing me or approaching me in any way about my stands on various issues.”
“I tried, but your
bodyguard
,” Jed threw a meaningful look at the lurking Kavanagh, “has seen fit to check me at every opportunity. Since you refuse to talk to the free press, we must get our facts in other ways. For instance, it’s well known that Lucretia Wesley—”
“Keep my mother out of this!” Wesley shouted the words, drowning him out. “Her views are her own and do not necessarily represent mine. She has naught to do with this.”
“And naught to do with your unnatural proclivities?” sneered Jed.
Wesley’s face paled.
The mob closed in.
Abe brought out the shotgun and set it on the bar with an audible
clunk
that sounded loud in the sudden silence of the saloon.
The passdoor to the kitchen swung open with a loud scrape and squeak. Sol emerged, balancing a tray holding bowls of stew, cups of coffee, and precariously perched plates of sausages and biscuits. He stopped, mid-stride, tray before him like an offering.
Inez interrupted the tense silence, using a tone of almost motherly severity designed to defuse the situation. “Gentlemen. Civilized arguments on politics and differences of journalistic opinion are well and good and welcomed here at the Silver Queen. But I warn you, should this war of words escalate into violence or if we even sense a hint of impending fisticuffs—”
Far from pouring oil onto troubled waters, Inez’s words had the verbal effect of tossing a match to a container of kerosene.
“A black eye or broken jaw wouldn’t even begin to compensate the injury you’ve done to my mother’s and my honor by printing those lies and blasphemies, you bastard,” hissed Wesley. His large dark eyes had a nasty gleam to them now.
Inez noticed the fourth estate scribbling in their notebooks, pencils on paper sounding like the scrabbling claws of rats.
Perhaps Jed heard the noise as well. He took a step forward and said in a steel voice that Inez barely recognized, “Call me a bastard. Call me a son of a bitch, if you wish. But do
not
call me a liar. I have proof. Proof for everything that appears on the front page of today’s
Independent
newspaper.”
His voice carried to all corners of the room.
Inez winced.
Now’s not the time to try to increase your circulation, Jed.
“Liar!” Wesley shouted. “If you have proof, show me. You have until tomorrow night to produce your ‘proof.’ I challenge you to meet me at the portion of track where General Grant disembarked. Sunday evening. Six o’clock. Bring your pistol if you wish to defend your nonexistent honor. If you are not there, with your gun or your proof, I will hunt you down and kill you like the dog you are!”
Jed locked eyes with the newsmen in the audience. “Gentlemen. I invite all of you to be present at that time. Where Third Street crosses the Denver and Rio Grande track and becomes the Boulevard. You can examine the letters and the inscribed photograph for yourself, and cast your own votes.”
Wesley glared around at the room, gaze murderous. “You should
all
be there to see this sorry specimen of the so-called free press receive his comeuppance or die. He’ll be coming with his tail tucked between his legs. He will bring no proof, because there is none.” He swung back to Jed. “Who paid you? Which of my enemies paid you to tar me with such blatant corrupt deceits? Whoever they are, they are on the side of those who are working against my goals of bringing political parity to the common man. I shall drag the names of those responsible from you if I must disembowel you in the process.”
With that, Wesley cast the crumpled newspaper into a nearby cuspidor, where it floated soaking up the brown oily liquid. He stormed out of the saloon, his entourage following like a shadow at his heels. Kavanagh brought up the rear. Inez saw him unobtrusively reholster his long-barreled revolver under his coat.
A chill prickled her neck.
Kavanagh caught her gaze and lifted his eyebrows as if to say, “Now
that
was a close one.”
The door closed with finality on his heels.
Inez released her held breath. Beside her, Abe did the same. A moment later, everyone else stirred. Glasses held at half-mast clinked down on tables. Others were lifted and contents emptied. Chairs shifted back, voices rose in a speculative murmur.
“So how’s your aim, Elliston?” called out one wag.
“Good enough.”
Inez, standing close by, caught the faintest quiver of fear underlying Jed’s enforced bravado.
“I’ll give two-to-one odds on our local scribbler here besting that Denver whelp tomorry night!” shouted one of the card players at a back table.
Cries of “Done!” and “I’ll take those odds!” were interrupted by proposals offering alternative odds on one side or the other, including: “ten-to-one on young Wesley. I’ve seen Jed try to shoot!”
Laughter and protests as to supporting one of their own versus the “outsider” erupted.
Inez reached over and tapped Jed’s arm. He whirled around. His eyes were as wide as a deer’s facing a forest fire bearing down at full speed.
“Mr. Elliston, allow me to offer a round for the house, and to place a private bet on your behalf,” she said loud and clear for all to hear.
A general hurrah arose, and patrons raised glasses empty or near so. Abe looked disgruntled.
“Too many free drinks these days,” he grumbled.
She leaned over and murmured, “The rotgut is fine. If it’s free, they don’t care what kind it is.”
“Your call, Mrs. Stannert,” was his reply. He began pulling bottles of their cheapest out from beneath the backbar. Sol brought a plate of sausages to Jed before grabbing several bottles to fill glasses waving from various tables about the room.
“Mr. Elliston.” Inez released his arm and took the sausages hostage. “Please, come up to the office. Let’s discuss what odds you think I should favor for this contest between freedom of the press and the overweening ambitions of politicians still wet behind the ears.”
She came around the bar, took his arm, and, holding out the sausages as an inducement, dragged him upstairs.
Once in the office, she closed the door for privacy, guided him to the worn velvet loveseat, and pulled out a bottle of her private stash of brandy from its place of honor on her roll-top desk. She poured two glasses and handed one to Jed, who sat staring at the untouched sausages on the plate.
Inez lowered herself into her rolling desk chair, then pulled it forward with a squeak of wheels so she could better gauge his expressions and ascertain when he was telling her the truth and when he was lying.
“Jed. Look at me.”
He looked at her. Dejection and panic clear on his face.
“You have the letters and the photograph?”
“As I told you at the reception, they were delivered last night in a single envelope—”
“Do. You. Have. The. Letters?” she emphasized.
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t have to.
“And this purported image, this lewd carte de visite?”
His shoulders slumped further.
“Jed.” She injected a note of urgency into her tone. “What possessed you? It’s one thing to make up stories of swells picking silver up off the ground on Capitol Hill on their way to the opera. It’s quite another—”
“I had them. Had them all,” he said. “I gave them to my typesetter to put in the desk. I had to get to Grant’s reception. When I went to the office this morning, they weren’t there.”
“Well, where is this typesetter of yours? Perhaps he inadvertently took them home. Given the nature of the photograph, I suppose I could understand if he—”
“She! She was a woman.”
Inez blinked. “What? Who was a woman?”
“The typesetter.” He shoved the plate of sausages off his lap and onto the nearby table, and clasped his hands between his knees. “I’d just hired her. She and I worked together all day yesterday. She was quick to learn, I was patting myself on the back for having found a typesetter I could count on. I even paid her a full day’s wages! But then, when the letters and photograph weren’t in my desk, and when she didn’t show up this morning…Oh hell. Could she have been in on this? Have I been played for a dupe?”
He looked at Inez, agony on his face.
Inez tried to think. “What do you know about her? What’s her name? Do you know where she lives? Anything?”
He sighed heavily. “Her last name’s Thomas, first name Zel, or some variation of that. She lives with a blind father and a couple of young twin brothers on Chicken Hill. I looked through the city directory. I even went up to Chicken Hill this morning and asked around. There are a fair number of Thomases up there. No luck.”
Inez sat back, thinking. “Thomas might not be her real name. Who knows if anything she said is true? It could be, Jed. It could be that you were taken. What kind of a shot are you?”
He closed his eyes. For a moment, with his hands clenched, he looked to be in prayer. He opened his eyes. “Not all that great. A duel? Jesus, he’ll kill me. If he doesn’t, the publishing fraternity will stick their quills in my heart and finish me off.”
He loosened his hands, picked up the brandy snifter, and drained it.
Inez couldn’t help but calculate the worth of the brandy he inhaled at such a rapid rate.
He looked at her, desperate. “Mrs. Stannert. Can you help me?”
“Help you? If I can. I’ve no love for that Wesley. From what his mother said last night, I suspect that at least the letter to Mrs. Clatchworthy you described might express his true stand. Although, who’s to say? But he is such a cock-arrogant young whelp.”