The Doctor's Newfound Family Read Online Free PDF Page B

offered. “It’s been along night for all of us. Will you be all right if I take my leave?”
    Whirling, she acted surprised that he was still there. “Of course. And thank you for looking after us.”
    “My pleasure,” he said with a slight bow. He touched the brim of his bowler and smiled at the matron, too. “Ladies. If you’ll excuse me?”
    He managed to retain the smile until he had turned away and walked back outside. There was a deeply troubling wrong to right and no time to waste. If Abe Warner had been correct in his assumption about the gold samples kept in Reese’s private assay office, it might already be too late to preserve their integrity.
    Nevertheless, he had to try. And his first stop was going to be the Coleman house. William T. Coleman was the president of the Vigilance Committee, and although their roster was kept by number rather than by name, most of the members knew whose loyalty could be counted on in an emergency.
    Taylor mounted his buggy and shouted to the horse as he snapped the reins. There was no time to waste. A helpless family was being mistreated and he was not going to stand idly by and watch it happen.
     
    The middle-aged gentleman arrived on Pike Street in a cabriolet pulled by a matched pair of sorrel geldings and driven by a hireling in a frock coat and top hat.
    As he disembarked in front of the two-story frame house, he grinned. This plan had come together even better than he’d anticipated. With Isabelle dead, too, there was no one left to stand in his way, no one who might know what Robert had discovered and thereby ruin his reputation. Or worse.
    He strode up the front walk and onto the porch where he was met by the sheriff and two other rough-looking men.
    “Sheriff Scannell,” the gentleman said with a slight nod. He eyed the others with undisguised loathing and didn’t offer to shake anyone’s hand, though his own hands were gloved in pearl kidskin to match his cravat. “I see you’re keeping company with the usual riffraff.”
    The sheriff laughed raucously and spit over the porch railing. “Meaning yourself, I suppose, Mr. Bein? You decide yet how you’re goin’ to explain all this?”
    Bein grinned. “As long as the losses are credited to Reese instead of to me, I won’t have anything toexplain. Harazthy is so engrossed in that new vineyard of his, he barely notices what goes on around the mint.”
    “What about the Vigilance Committee? Ain’t you worried about them?”
    “Not in the least. I have it on the personal authority of Governor Johnson that Sherman is about to be made Major General of the second division of militia for San Francisco. He’ll soon take care of the vigilantes.”
    Scannell shrugged and spat again before wiping his mustache with the back of his hand. “All right. If you say so. It’s your funeral.”
    Leering cynically, William Bein snorted approval. “Not my funeral, gentlemen, my partner’s, may he rest in peace.”
    He reached into his pocket and withdrew a handkerchief folded into the shape of a packet and monogrammed with the initials R.R. “Take this and see that it’s placed in Reese’s workshop, Sheriff. Don’t make it too obvious, but be sure the gold shavings and dust are still in it when it’s found. Do I make myself clear?”
    “You think we’d steal from you?”
    “In a heartbeat, if you thought you could get away with it,” Bein answered. “Only this time you can’t. We all need that gold to be discovered in Reese’s possession. And since he and Isabelle areboth dead, no one will be able to refute the charges against him.”
    “What about the girl? She came back here.”
    “What? You didn’t let her in, did you?”
    “No, sir. We sent her away. She never got out of the buggy.”
    His eyes narrowed below bushy, graying brows. “What buggy? Reese didn’t even own a horse, let alone a rig.”
    “I think it was that doctor what brought her,” Scannell said. “You know. The young one with the