Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005
- Автор: Dean David, Dempsey Timothy F.
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN 1054-8122
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
“Sure, probably. Then I’ll be back working at the fish market in San Francisco. Someone like Killcanon gets killed and they have to place the blame, even if they caught that Chinaman with a bloody knife in his hand.”
“I don’t think there was blood on the knife they found.” Ben’s attention was diverted by the sight of the man with the large moustache returning to the train with a bag of food. He dropped his voice and asked the conductor, “Who is that man?”
“I have no idea. He’s booked through to Ogden.”
Ben was remembering the man leaving the telegraph office in Carson City. Had he sent a message saying his mission was accomplished, that Senator Killcanon was dead? Or merely that the train had been delayed?
When they were under way again and the hour was late, Ben helped Samantha get the beds into position. Though he readily offered to sleep in the upper bunk, she seemed to feel safer up above. Jimmy came by with a stool to help her up. Sleeping on a train, with the clatter of wheels on track, didn’t come easy to Ben, and he was surprised he drifted off as quickly as he did.
Bill Wallman’s husky voice awakened him, shortly after daybreak, with the announcement to all passengers that the breakfast stop would be made in thirty minutes at Alta, another of the tiny mining towns that dotted northern Nevada. Samantha poked her head out of the upper berth to say good morning and Ben offered to bring her breakfast if she didn’t want to go out for it. She readily agreed and he soon returned with milk and coffee cakes. At the other end of the car he could see Munsey bringing food for Maude Gregory’s breakfast.
“What do you think?” Samantha asked as they ate. “Maybe it was a love triangle. Maybe Munsey stabbed his employer so he could have that woman.”
“She’s a good ten years older than him,” Ben observed, “though that doesn’t rule out the possibility.”
They’d been awakened so early that the rest of the day passed by endlessly as the Eagle traveled through deserts of alkali and sand that made even the occasional stretches of sagebrush seem somehow scenic. They lunched early at Elko and the conductor announced they’d be in Toano that evening, then across the state border to Ogden by morning.
The evening stop took longer than expected, because the engine had overheated, delaying them for more than an hour. Most of the passengers left the train for a stroll, and some young men from the family car gathered at the rear caboose for an impromptu round of songs. “That’s nice,” Samantha told Ben as they strolled, listening to “The Sweet By and By.” “Almost makes you want to settle down here.”
“Not me,” he told her. “I need the sight of cattle and grazing land, not alkali plains.”
“Do you ever think about moving to the coast?”
“Not really. When I’m too old to herd cattle I’ll probably head east.”
“That’s a long time away.”
There was someone up ahead, silhouetted against the lantern light from the train. It took Ben a moment to recognize his mystery man with the moustache. “Could I speak to you in private?” the man asked.
Ben drew a breath and told Samantha, “Go back to the train. I’ll be right along.”
She agreed with some reluctance, and when Ben was alone with the man he said, “You’re Ben Snow, the man some say is Billy the Kid.”
“Billy’s dead.” Ben replied. “I’m just Ben.”
“But you’re fast with a gun, like Billy. Want to draw on me?”
“I’m unarmed. You can see that.”
The man grinned, and for an instant his teeth reflected the lantern light. Ben sprang forward as the man’s hand dipped inside his coat. It came out holding a tiny short-barreled derringer, but by that time Ben had a firm left-handed grip on his wrist. With his right fist he launched a short, sharp jab to the man’s jaw that sent him backwards in a dazed heap. Ben found his wallet and flipped it open to an identification card that read: Philip Atlas, Investigator, Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency.
“You’re a detective?” he asked the stunned man.
Atlas struggled to his feet, holding his jaw. “I’ve killed men for less than that.”
“Not when they’re holding your gun. What are you doing on the Eagle?”
“Working.”
“For whom?”
“That’s confidential. Pinkerton’s employs me. That’s all you need to know.”
“You telegraphed someone from Carson City, after Killcanon’s murder.”
“I may have.”
Suddenly it clicked in Ben’s brain. “Mrs. Killcanon! She hired a Pinkerton man to follow her husband on this buffalo-hunting expedition. You reported to her that he was with Maude Gregory.”
He wouldn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. Instead, he offered a challenge. “If you’re Billy, give me back my gun and we’ll draw against each other.”
“The gun stays in my pocket until Ogden. I’ll unload it and return it to you then. Stop imagining I’m Billy the Kid if you want to stay alive. A six-gun could beat a derringer any day of the week.”
He turned and walked back to where Samantha was waiting.
Finally the train rolled out of Toano, bound for Ogden. Wallman explained that anyone continuing east would transfer there to the smaller, less comfortable cars of the Union Pacific, while his train and crew turned back toward San Francisco. Ben overheard Atlas, the Pinkerton man, ask if there was any further news from Carson City about the murder, but the conductor professed to know nothing.
Ben had told Samantha of Atlas’s identity, and now she wondered if Maude Gregory knew it, too. “Maybe you should tell her, Ben, let her know she’s being spied upon.”
“I suppose I might mention it.” He went up front to where Munsey was helping the woman arrange the seats and upper berth for the night.
“One more night of this,” Maude sighed. “Of course it’s not very comfortable on the buffalo train, either, but at least you’re among friends.”
Ben waited until Munsey had moved away and then told her, “I believe you’re being watched. The man at the back of the car with the black suit and large moustache is a Pinkerton detective.”
She spun her head around and quickly spotted him. Ben wished she’d been a bit subtler about it. “I’ve seen that man before, back in Sacramento. I didn’t realize it until this very instant.”
Ben nodded. “He may have been following you for some time, if Killcanon’s wife was suspicious.”
She was not in the mood for denial. “I did nothing more than love a man. Is that so wrong?”
“He was married at the time,” Ben reminded her gently.
“She never gave him the love I did. If that Chinaman stabbed him I would gladly put the rope around his neck myself.”
“I find it hard to believe that Killcanon was the victim of a motiveless killing. Perhaps someone desired you as much as you desired him.”
“If you’re thinking of Ralph Munsey, there’s nothing between us. I’d as soon believe your Pinkerton man killed him, on orders from Hiram’s wife.”
“If she hired a murder done, I think you would have been the more likely target.”
He left her and went back to find Samantha already in the upper berth. “Our final night,” she said with something like relief.
“That’s about how Maude Gregory feels, too. But you’ll be demonstrating, won’t you?”
“Right in Ogden. From there the private buffalo train travels east into southern Wyoming, where most of the large herds still roam close to the tracks.”
Ben smiled. “Try to get a good night’s sleep. If they arrest you, tomorrow night might be spent in a jail cell.”
“Thanks for that information!”
He slept well through the early part of the night, but was aware toward morning that the train had stopped. He raised the window shade to see if they’d arrived in Ogden, but saw only other tracks and a few small buildings. He got up and went to the toilet. On the way back, he found Jimmy preparing his tray for the morning trip through the train. “Are we there yet?” he asked the youth.