CHAPTER 10

DENVER, COLORADO

AFTER the train came to a halt with a screech of brakes and bursts of steam, Gunnison stood, picking up his bag from the other seat. He realized he’d risen too quickly when a wave of instability made him almost stagger to the side, out into the aisle.

He steadied himself and took a deep breath. He had to remember that it was going to take a while to get over the head blow he’d received. The doctor had warned him that he’d go through a lot of dizziness and even some disorientation for a few days. The doctor, in fact, had been strongly against him leaving Leadville so quickly.

And Gunnison wouldn’t have done so if not for the arrival of a very unexpected telegram. It had come from William Darian of the American Popular Library, sent in care of the Tabor Grand Hotel. What it said had been short, direct, and enough to make Gunnison get back on his feet right away, no matter what the doctor advised, and catch the first train toward Denver.

COME AT ONCE WORRIED ABOUT KENTON YOUR HELP NEEDED.

What could be so wrong with Kenton that Darian, who didn’t know Gunnison all that well, would wire Gunnison? Was Kenton sick? Injured?

The train journey had seemed to last forever, increasing Gunnison’s restless feeling and giving him lots of time to weave terrible scenarios about what might have happened to Kenton. He hardly noticed that now that Kenton was in trouble of some sort, he’d lost all desire to separate himself from him. All that mattered now was to find him and provide whatever help he needed. Now, with his bag swinging at his side, Gunnison was walking through Union Depot, dodging side to side in the crowd. Outside, he hailed a cab.

“The offices of the American Popular Library, on Broadway,” Gunnison said to the cabby as he settled into the comfortable seat.

“I know the place,” the cabby replied, clicking his tongue and snapping the leads. The horse trotted off, horseshoes clattering on the pavement.

Gunnison tried to forget his worries for the duration of the ride. He’d always loved Denver, considering it one of the most beautiful, healthful, and generally pleasant cities he’d ever visited.

He’d first visited Denver back in the seventies. At the time, it was a city trying hard to rebound from the difficult year of ’73, and soon to face the “grasshopper years” of ’75 and ’76, when crops would be wiped out throughout Colorado and the economy would suffer greatly.

Those hard days were long past now. The city, populated by about 75,000 people, was a metropolis of the West, full of fine houses and thriving businesses, and watered by a series of irrigation channels that ran water pumped from the Platte all through the city. Cottonwoods and maples shaded lush yards; large gardens planted in sunny lots provided vegetables in abundance for the city’s families, and every corner and porchside flower bed was abloom with color. Gunnison found himself fantasizing about someday bringing his wife, and the horde of children they still hoped to have, here to live in this city a mile above the level of the distant ocean.

The cab pulled to the curb directly outside the building whose lower and second levels housed the offices of the American Popular Library. Gunnison hopped out of the cab, paid the driver, and with bag in hand headed for the door.

It opened before he reached it, and William Darian, a somewhat plump and bookish-looking man with that distinctive slight bloat that comes of too much liquor, came out with hand extended and reading spectacles propped up on his high forehead. Darian’s receding hairline provided him with increasing expanses of brow every time Gunnison saw him.

“Alex, thank you so much for coming,” Darian said, talking fast and seeming nervous. “I’ve felt just terribly about the turn Kenton has taken … I’m afraid it’s my fault. I suppose the things I showed him must have pushed him over the edge.”

“What’s happened, William?”

“Come up to my office and I’ll tell you.”

“Is Kenton hurt?”

“No … hurting himself, though. Hurting himself. And it’s surely my fault. But what else could I have done?”

Gunnison knew then what it was. Intuition and a thorough knowledge of Kenton’s ways spoke to him in a single voice.

Kenton was drinking hard again. That was what Darian would tell him. Ironic that the news would come from a man whose own drinking Kenton himself had commented upon. Kenton had had drinking problems from time to time through the years, usually during times when he was brooding about his lost Victoria.

Gunnison followed Darian through a maze of halls, into a large room filled with rows of desks, then up two staircases into a new hallway, off which opened a short passage that led to a suite of three offices, the central one being Darian’s.

A large three-sectioned window with an arched top afforded an excellent view of the busy street below, and far beyond, snow-capped mountains. Darian, accustomed to the scene and distracted by his worries, paid it no attention, but Gunnison was for a few moments fully captivated.

Denver for him and his family, one day. He vowed it to himself on the spot.

“Alex, I didn’t know I would cause a problem. I only wanted to tell Kenton about what might be a clue to the mystery regarding his wife.”

“This serial novel, you mean.”

Darian was fumbling with a cigar he’d taken from his desk. “Yes. The Grand Deception, written by someone under the name of Horatio Brady. As soon as I read the opening chapters, I knew there was something very unusual here. Very unusual, indeed.”

“An apparent connection to the disappearance of Victoria.”

“Yes. Virtually an identical description of the incident, including the central female character vanishing from the scene, and a description of how it came about.” Darian lit the cigar, a cheap one with a strong smell. He tossed the match aside; it landed, still flaming, on a piece of paper, which caught fire. Darian noticed it a moment later, slapped the fire out and brushed the paper onto the floor.

“What scenario does the novel present?”

“If you haven’t read it for yourself, you should. The impact of the similarities will strike harder that way. To sum it up, though, in the novel, the character named Candice—Victoria’s seeming counterpart—is injured in the train crash and carried away from the scene by a doctor who was on the same train—on the train because of her.”

“In love with her, you see. Obsessed with her even though she is married to another man … who happens to be a writer, I should note.” Darian flipped ashes at the laden ashtray. They all missed, but several sparks landed on scrap paper and burned holes in the papers before flashing out cold. Gunnison was a little taken aback. Darian with a lighted cigar, in a roomful of papers, was a dangerous fellow.

“It could be coincidental … or it could be that the story was inspired by Victoria’s disappearance, but with the details supplied by the writer’s imagination.”

“That’s very true, and something I’ve thought of from the outset. But there are times a man must listen to his instincts, Alex. And mine told me that there was something in that novel, something below the surface. So I contacted Kenton…”

“Just in time to cause Kenton to abandon his obligation to speak in Leadville, and leave me to fill in. It was a most unpopular choice among most of my listeners, I should note.”

“I’m sorry. Also sorry that it cost Kenton as much as it has.”

“What do you mean?”

“Alex, Kenton has been suspended by the Illustrated American.”