Chapter Twenty Two

 

Although another downpour was bouncing raindrops across the cobbles, Sage walked with a spring in his step to where Fong waited in the entryway just inside the New Elijah’s kitchen door.

“Any problems?” Sage asked, his voice low. Beyond the little entryway, kitchen workers were cheerfully bantering as they washed up. The supper hour was over.

“No problem. Orpin down there. Nobody saw,” Fong assured him in a whisper.

Sage understood Fong to mean Orpin was imprisoned below them and that no one had seen them taking him down.

Fong opened the cellar door, lit a lantern and headed down the stairs. Following, Sage felt a familiar twinge of unreasoning fear but firmly suppressed it. During the prior shanghaiing escapade, the one involving Matthew, Sage had learned how to conquer his fear of the musty dark—a fear born in the coal mine.

Like most businesses situated above Portland’s underground, the New Elijah’s storage room was walled off. A locked door opened into the bigger basement which, in turn, connected with all basements beneath the block. Brick tunnels ran under the streets, connecting these block-sized basements. It was this arrangement that created an underground stretching west from the river to Eighteenth Street and north and south even farther.

Originally, the underground provided dry transport for goods to and from the riverfront. Once the streets were paved the goods were transported by wagon and the underground was put to less desirable uses. This was where kidnapped men were imprisoned before being sold to ship captains. Opium and gambling dens occupied its remotest corners.

Fong’s cousins were master navigators of its dark expanse. Restricted housing forced some Chinese to live in walled-off basement rooms. And, it was also where they nursed some of their sick and dying out of fear that whites would use the illness as an excuse to drive them all out of the city.

Sage had mixed feelings about the cell where Orpin waited. A building owner had constructed it to aid the shanghaiers. Portland’s merchants encouraged shanghaiing—even blocked legislation to curtail it. For economic reasons, they wanted men to be kidnapped and sold to ship captains because sailors tended to jump ship on America’s west coast and sailing ships required a minimum number of crewmen. Without that minimum, the ship got stranded in port. A port with a high incidence of stranded ships drove up shipping rates. Shanghaiing was how the monied men kept those rates low. Their greed kept the deadly practice alive.

At first, Sage planned to destroy the cell but Fong resisted. Subsequent events proved Fong right. So far, it had persuaded more than one criminal to speak the truth. Hopefully, tonight, it would do so again.

Fong’s raised lantern lit their way. Rodent squeals and Sage shuffling through the bone dry dust were near sounds heard against a backdrop of the distant human sounds filtering down through the floorboards overhead.

Reaching the cell, Fong lifted the lantern so that its light hit Orpin’s fish-belly white face, causing him to squint.

Sage stepped forward. “Okay, Orpin. You are now going to tell us exactly what you’ve been doing,” he said menacingly.

“I ain’t been doing nothing,” came the surly reply.

“You tell us what we want to know or one of two things will happen. We’ll treat you just like you treated Andy Hosier and leave you here to die of hunger and thirst. Or, maybe we’ll just sell you to the captain of a whaling hell ship. How’d you like to swim in the Bering Sea? I hear tell that’s a right quick death.

Orpin swallowed hard. “I set the fires,” he mumbled.

“How did you pick which fires to set?”

“He told me.”

“Who told you?”

“Don’t know his name.”

“Oh, come on. You risked going to prison for someone you didn’t even know?” Sage didn’t rein in his sarcasm.

Orpin just shrugged.

“How’d you meet this man who told you where to set the fires?”

Orpin stared into the dark before taking a deep breath and saying, “I tried to rob him with a knife. He pulled a gun and made me tell him my name and address. We worked out a deal.”

“What deal was that?”

“He sends a note to my house with the address of the place I’m supposed to torch. Afterwards, he sends me money.”

“You never saw him again?”

Orpin’s headshake was adamant. “Nope, never. Truth be told, it was kinda dark that night. I don’t know if I would recognize him if I saw him again. But, his voice was gnarly. I’d recognize that.”

“You ever set fires before you met this gnarly-voiced man?”

This time, Orpin’s voice dropped as he said, “Just small ones, here and there. Sheds and stuff like that. Never big buildings. Like lately.”

Sage exchanged a steady look with Fong before saying to Orpin, “How’d you end up shooting at me?”

Orpin shuffled his feet. “Same thing. I got a note saying that a fellow was snooping. Said you’d taken over Hosier’s job on the fire engine at Station 1. So, I stuck around at the one of the fires and saw you. Plus, my neighbor said some man had been watching my house. So, I hid out and watched. Sure enough, there you were. Soon as you left, I followed.” There was a pause before he added with heat, “Too bad I didn’t aim better.”

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“Messenger brought it at the same time as the note saying you were snooping.”

“Where’s the note?”

“I burnt it in the cookstove. I always burn the notes. That’s what he said to do.”

Sage watched Orpin closely as he asked his next question. “Why’d you hit Wally Roberts on the head?”

Puzzlement appeared to wrinkle Orpin’s brow. “Who is Wally Roberts? Why would I hit him on the head?”

“You didn’t go to the umbrella warehouse after you burned it, find a man, hit him on the head and then hide his body under rubble?”

Orpin’s watery blue eyes widened. “No, I didn’t! I don’t know nothin’ about it. Anyone says I do, is a damned liar!”

The firebug’s outrage felt genuine. Deciding Orpin was probably innocent of Robert’s murder, Sage moved on to the next issue. “About Andy Hosier. How’d he end up in your cellar?”

Orpin turned evasive, his eyes flicking to one side.

Sage’s tone sharpened, “Don’t think of lying, Orpin. You’re already in swamp water up to your ears. Don’t step out any deeper.”

Orpin sighed. “Got another note. This one said they’d be bringing him and I should find some place to keep him quiet. Luckily, we had the root cellar.”

“Not so lucky for him,” Sage snapped and got a shrug from Orpin in return. “Who brought him to your house?”

“Couple of rough looking fellows came after dark. He was out cold. They just carried him in, dropped him down the hole and went away. They never said nothing. Didn’t leave me no money for his food or his keep. Never seen ‘em since.”

“You the one who told the police Andy was the arsonist?”

“Yah, the fellow sent a note saying to do it but to give the cops a phony name. That’s what I done.”

“What about the Cooper boy. You write that note?”

For the first time Orpin scowled and he said, “He ain’t got no business making eyes at a white girl.”

“You set him up to go to prison for years because he talked to a white girl?” Sage didn’t bother to suppress his disgust.

“They hang ‘em for less than that down South. Why, one of them got lynched not that long ago right here in Marshfield, Oregon.”

Sage stared at Orpin, shook his head and moved out of the light in an effort to bring a spurt of sudden anger under control. He wanted to smack the idiot.

When he returned he spoke to Fong, not Orpin. “You ready to go?” he asked.

At Fong’s nod, Sage stepped away into the dark, followed by Fong and his lantern.

Orpin shouted after them. “What about me?”

“You’re going to get to experience what you put Andy Hosier through,” Sage called back.

“But there ain’t no water or a pee bucket or anything in this cell.”

“Exactly,” Sage said and kept walking.

Only after they’d passed under a street and were beneath the neighboring block did Sage speak, saying with disgust, “I didn’t want to give that cretin even one more minute of light.”

“How long you plan he have no water?”

“I hope he thinks it’s forever. But we’ll be back early in the morning with Sergeant Hanke. He needs to hear the whole story.”

“Hanke will fuss you get him in new mess.”

Sage chuckled. “Yah, he’ll fuss but he’ll go along. He always does.”

As they headed toward the New Elijah, Sage said, “So, we have the Coopers cleared and Andy rescued but the men behind the arson scheme are still running free. They’re also responsible for Wally Roberts death—I’m sure of it.”

“Maybe we find messenger who bring notes to Orpin. See if he knows who sent them.”

“Good idea. Matthew will help with that, since he’s friends with most of them,” Sage said. “But, I bet you all we’ll hear is that a stranger just stopped them in the street and paid them in advance to deliver the notes.”

“Best we think how to catch whole gang,” Fong said.

Sage had to agree. The most important task was catching those behind the fires. He smiled to himself and said, “Since Orpin’s locked up, there might not be any more arson fires. It’ll give us time to think.” He was also anticipating an uninterrupted night’s sleep at the firehouse. But first, he had to stop at Mozart’s.

 

* * *

“Do you think Matthew’s still up?” Sage asked Mae when he found her in her room. She was sitting in her rocking chair, feet on a small stool, mending in her lap.

“I just heard him clomp up the stairs. You might be able to rouse him without waking Ida and Knute.” She voiced an important consideration. Ida rose at four a.m. and so did Knute—she to make pies, Knute to head off to the shingle factory. Sage could never think of Knute without seeing those whirling saw blades, mere inches from his hands. The Swede definitely needed to be well-rested.

Matthew immediately snatched the door open at Sage’s light tap. The auburn-haired young man held a book with his finger marking his place. Seeing Sage, he stepped out in the hallway, softly closing the door behind him.

As expected, the boy jumped at the chance to help out. He’d done so reliably in the past, once he’d learned to follow directions. His initial failure to do so is what had gotten him shanghaied. It had been a hard but, effective, lesson.

“I don’t want you missing any school,” Sage told him.

Matthew nodded eagerly. “Don’t worry, I only meet the other messengers at the public market after school. There’s an overhang out of the rain where we get together.

Sage handed him a slip of paper. “See if you can find anyone who took messages to this address. It’s on the eastern edge of Nob Hill. I’m hoping someone will remember who paid them to carry it.”

Matthew took the piece of paper, asking, “Is there money in it for the messenger, if I find him?” he asked.

“For him and for you,” Sage answered.

That response triggered an adamant headshake from Matthew. “For him yes, but not for me. You already do enough for me, Mr. Adair,” he said.

“Now Matthew,” Sage began.

Matthew’s chin rose, “My books, my tuition, even my bicycle, Blue Beauty. You’ve done enough.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Sage said. “Just do your best to find someone who’s carried notes to that address.”

Matthew straightened like a soldier at attention. “Yes, Sir,” he said.

As he turned away, Sage said, “And, be careful. Don’t get yourself into trouble.”

Matthew didn’t turn around. He merely nodded and slipped soundlessly back inside his aunt and uncle’s apartment.

Sage stood on the stair landing, thinking that Matthew’s lessons with Fong were making him less the clumsy colt. Next he thought of his comfortable bed on the floor above. Sighing, he slapped on his floppy John Miner hat and headed downstairs. It was the lumpy iron cot for him.