The Spook Lights Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

specifically the Wells, Fargo job, eh?”
    “No. But it couldn’t be anything else. Jack was too excited, and there has been no other large robbery recently. Besides … he’s been in trouble with the law before. He spent a few years in prison for armed robbery.”
    “When did he do his bragging? Before or after the deed?”
    “Before,” Cantwell said. “A week before. He came to my lodgings one night. I hadn’t seen him in years, since I moved to San Francisco, but he knew that I work for a real estate firm. He demanded I fix him up with a place where he could … hole up for a while.”
    “And you did his bidding for a price.”
    “No, sir. He threatened me into it.” Cantwell’s mouth quirked bitterly. “Jack’s half again my size and a damned bully. He … well, he used to beat on me when we were kids.”
    That explained why Cantwell was willing to sell out his cousin. Money the primary reason, revenge the secondary. The little poltroon was too cowardly and too afraid of Jack Travers to try cutting himself in for a percentage of the stolen loot, yet too hungry for cash to feed his gambling habit to have turned Travers in to the coppers. A contemptible Judas whose price had been halved to one hundred pieces of silver.
    “Where’s the hideout, Bob?”
    “Why do you want to know? If you’re not a policeman, what are you? A Wells, Fargo detective?”
    “My business is none of yours.”
    “But you are planning to arrest him?”
    “Likewise none of your concern. Answer the question.”
    Cantwell gave his lips a nervous licking. “You won’t tell him I told you? You won’t say anything about talking to me?”
    “Nary a word. Now where can I find him?”
    “A cottage on Telegraph Hill. Drifter’s Alley, off Filbert below Pioneer Park. The alley’s a cul-de-sac, with just two cottages and a vacant lot between. He’s in the second.”
    Quincannon knew the approximate location. He nodded, and then asked, “Have you been to see your cousin since the robbery?”
    “Why would I? I want nothing more to do with him. He can rot in jail or in hell for all I care.”
    “Then how do you know he’s still in the cottage?”
    “He must be. Jack said he’d need the place for some time, to let things cool down, as he put it. And he hasn’t returned the key.”
    Quincannon considered. Hearsay and speculation—a thin brew for one hundred dollars. On the other hand, he had no better lead and there was enough tantalizing circumstantial evidence in Bob Cantwell’s story to make it worth following up.
    He took his hand off the twenty-dollar greenback. Cantwell snatched it up instantly and made it disappear. The dice in his other hand rattled greedily as Quincannon removed four more twenties from his billfold, folded the notes, passed them over. How long Cantwell remained in possession of his newfound wealth depended on the whims of Lady Luck: he would be in a dice game within minutes of their parting. Which was immediate, Quincannon having nothing more to say to the little weasel. For the nonce, anyway.
    He was now out a considerable amount of cash—one hundred and two dollars, to be exact—and his night’s work had only just begun. If it developed that Jack Travers was not the Wells, Fargo Express bandit, the money he had just handed over would eventually be recovered even if he had to take it out of Bob Cantwell’s hide a dollar at a time.

 
    4
    QUINCANNON
     
    Only the western slopes of Telegraph Hill were habitable; the hill fell away so steeply to the east that there were no streets leading up, just foot trails and a scattered few wooden stairways. Although it was much the more difficult route, Quincannon chose the eastern ascent because it was not far from the Bucket of Beer and because a cab ride around to and up Dupont Street, the hill’s main thoroughfare, would have taken twice as long as an uphill climb on foot.
    The fog had thinned somewhat along the Embarcadero and on the lower section of