Tale From a Trunk, pt. 6

“First,” I said, we must examine the scene where the ghastly crime unfolded.”

“Easy,” he replied. “It’s right out back, in the alley.” I stood aside and let him open the door for me, then I strolled past him into the narrow, dank pathway that separated his establishment from the whorehouse next door. It smelled foetid and foul, and I would have thought that it had been the place where the butchering of chickens or other beasts for dinner had taken place, except that I knew slaughter of another kind had occurred there.

I looked around, seeming to take in clues in order to satisfy my bilious friend. The ground was covered with litter, though the light was too dim to make out its character. The damp seemed to rise of its own accord and to clutch me about the throat. Feigning nonchalance, I took a cigar from my breast pocket and made a show of lighting it, holding the lit match aloft and looking about the alley. I could easily see the slash of dried blood on the wall of his saloon, then looked down to see that dried gore was sticking to my shoes.

Resisting a strong urge to vomit, I puffed furiously and said firmly, “Yes, yes, just as I thought!” In response to my friend Julius’ questions I merely stated that the scene was as I suspected and saw no need to delay there. I hurried out into the street, taking in great lungs full of air. Seeing through my distress he laughed.

“It’s just what’s left of Slade,” he informed me. “That, and what Moses has shat out.”

I scolded him. Had I not determined that Moses Phoenix was innocent?

“Not so’s I can tell,” he answered mildly. “How exactly are you certain?”

I made a show of immense patience. It was simply beyond the ken of the uneducated, I explained. The superior mind can detect hidden meanings in the mundane. What he failed to see in the alley was as clear as day to me. I needed only to peruse additional locations and it would even be clear to him. With a detailed explanation from me, of course.

“We’ve little time to waste,” I urged as I walked swiftly down the muddy thoroughfare. “A guiltless man is likely to fall victim to the mob, unless I can present the evidence to prove his innocence!” I strode purposefully, trailing the lumbering Spander in my wake.

It was only a diagonal journey to the offices of The Daily Times, and the daytime abode of my newly identified rival, Billy Stewart. Without introduction I burst into the room in which he sat, and came to an abrupt halt, hands on hips and a tower of cigar smoke issuing from the corner of my mouth. Julius struggled to keep from knocking me to the floor, so sudden was my stoppage and so close to my heels had he kept.

“Why Sam,” said Billy slowly, and looking over my shoulder to take in my companion, “are you carrying the bar with you today?”

“Not today,” I said sternly, waving my hand. “Today, I have deputized Mr. Spander, in order for him to be my witness as I reveal the results of your journalistic assassination against my client.” A fine turn of phrase I thought, as I listened to myself.

“Whatever are you on about, Sam?”

I explained rapidly that I had undertaken the rehabilitation of Moses Phoenix’s reputation, and let Billy know that he had gotten it all wrong. He sat up straighter and eyed me with greater interest.

“Do you say that you know the whereabouts of Mr. Phoenix? Why, all of Virginia City is looking for him, Sam, and you say you have him? That’s first rate work! Where is he, exactly?” I frowned at that. It wouldn’t do for a mob to take apart the offices of the Enterprise. Bill Wright might get it into his head that I was somehow responsible, and suggest that I pay for the damages.

“That’s not important, just yet. I can’t have a drunken throng stretching his neck, just because you’ve got them all stirred up. He’s in a safe place, until I can sort this all out and prove his innocence.”

“Well then,” he said, taking his hat from the rack by his chair and placing it on his head, “that’s something I have to see. Mind if I trail along?”

I did indeed. This had taken a course I had not foreseen, nor wished. Still, when a pilot comes upon an unfamiliar bend in the river, because some storm has changed its course, he finds his way. “It will be my pleasure,” I replied amiably. This way, I thought, I will have the enjoyment of seeing his chagrin, when I showed him how wrong he had been. As he stood to leave with us, he called out to one Rafe Still, an artist who worked with the paper, to join us. He wanted him to make sketches, if justified by our investigation. Magnanimity flowing within me now, I happily agreed. What was one more witness? Another member of the audience.

As we walked down the puddled thoroughfare, Still whispered mischievously in my ear: Did I know how badly cut up the remains had been? He had made sketches, but the editor refused to allow them to be printed, so hideous were they. Slade had been butchered with some skill, and the lesser cuts had been left behind in the alley. If the people of the city had seen Still’s (and the murderer’s) work, there would be no keeping them away from the killer. It would make no difference to Phoenix, I assured him, once I had proven him guiltless.

“How do you propose to do that?” Billy Stewart interrupted, concerned now, I could see, that I was on to something. His hasty reporting was about to be his comeuppance, I was certain.

“We’re going to Captain Burnside’s office,” I said happily. “I need only to determine the effects of his investigation, then I shall reveal all I know.”

Burnside was some specimen of law in Virginia City, having been appointed years previously by a long-forgotten eminence in the East. Now, his sole function seemed to be to drink from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, to eat from four to eight in the evening, and to sleep the rest of the time. Still, he was inoffensive. He let people kill themselves regularly without meddling, and kept his lone cell free from the detritus of prisoners. It left him with a good place to nap, once he was through with his daily repose.

Before we arrived at the jail however, we happened upon Denis McCarthy and Stevie Gillis, who were standing at a bar, taking in the morning along with a few bracing glasses. Stevie was a printer at the Enterprise, a diminutive bantam. Though scarcely rising to my shoulder, his fists were deadly. I always treated him cautiously and courteously. Denis was co-owner of the same paper, so I obligingly lifted my hat to them both.

“Join us, Sam?” Denis inquired. “Steve won me a hundred in a bout not more than half an hour ago, and we were just starting to celebrate.

I explained my business as quickly as possible, but there was no use to it. They no sooner heard my tale than they determined that they must accompany me, to serve as both bodyguard and reportorial back up. So we continued until we reached the jail.