CHAPTER 12

As soon as the door to the room above the hardware store opened, Billy Connery lost any possible doubt that the artist who had done the sketch on the envelope was Brady Kenton. The sketch had perfectly captured not only the image but also the very stance and impression of the man who stood before Connery in the open doorway.

“What can I do for you?” Walter Wheelan asked. He was a little rumpled and weary-looking and surrounded by packed crates and boxes. The arm garters he’d worn in the sketch Kenton had done were not present now. The man had been packing up to move.

“My name’s Billy Connery,” Connery replied, still suppressing his Irish accent, just in case Wheelan was another one of those who found Irishmen intolerable. “I wanted to meet you, just for a few moments, and ask you some questions about something.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Nothing to worry about. Just some personal business I’m conducting. Congratulations on your marriage, by the way.”

“Who told you about that?”

“A waiter at the Buckeye. One of your former coworkers.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Just this.” Connery produced the envelope and showed it to Wheelan.

“I’ll be!” Wheelan said, looking at the image of himself. “Where’d you get that? Did you draw that?”

“No. It was found in the Buckeye. Not by me, but someone who was there a while back, and who lent it to me. You haven’t seen it before?”

“No. Who drew it?”

“That’s the question I’m trying to answer. I’m a professional illustrator, and I’d like to find the one who did this. He’s quite good, as you can see. Excellent.”

“I’d say so. Looks just like me.”

“You never noticed a customer sketching you at one time or another in the last few weeks?”

Wheelan thought a few moments. “Well, maybe I did, though I didn’t know he was drawing. There was a man with a pencil … I thought he was writing.”

This didn’t necessarily mean anything. Any number of people probably jotted down notes or wrote letters in cafes. But just in case, Connery pressed on. “Do you recall what he looked like?”

“Not really. I think he was a fairly tall fellow. Beard. That’s about all.”

Maybe they were getting somewhere after all. “How old?”

“Lord, I don’t remember. Not young, not old. Just a man.”

“Tell me: have you ever seen this man before?” Connery pulled from under his vest a page torn from a magazine. He unfolded it and handed it to Wheelan.

“I’ve seen this picture,” Wheelan said. “This is the picture of Brady Kenton that always ran in the Illustrated American, before he died.”

“I need to ask you a question that may seem odd. Did the man you saw with the pencil in the café look like Brady Kenton?”

Wheelan laughed. “What kind of joke is this? Brady Kenton’s dead!”

“I know. But the man you saw … did he look like Kenton?”

“I guess he could have looked like him. But a lot of people could. Kenton is dead. You’re not trying to say he isn’t, are you? Because … hey! Hey, you there! Get out of there!”

Wheelan’s attention had suddenly been diverted by someone behind Connery. Connery turned and saw a boy of about ten come running out of a half-opened door of an apartment across from Wheelan’s room. The boy darted within a yard of Connery and down the stairs. He had something in his hands—a loaf of bread, Connery thought it was.

“Damned little scoundrel!” Wheelan said. “Sorry thief! You leave a door unlocked around here and that little devil will be through it, taking whatever he can. I’ve caught him in here before! It taught me to keep my door locked, I’ll tell you.”

“So he doesn’t live in those rooms?”

“Hell, no!”

“It looked like he’d taken bread.”

“He lives on what he can steal half the time. I suppose I should feel sorry for him.”

“If he’s hungry enough to steal bread, I think there’s no choice but to feel sorry for him. Is he an orphan?”

“He’d be better off if he was. He’s got no mother, but his father’s still alive. But the sorry old devil drinks bad, and beats the boy so bad he has to spend a lot of his time in hiding. I really do suppose I should feel more sorry for him than I do. I just can’t abide a thief under any circumstance, that’s all. The people who live across the hall there have given that boy food, money, clothes, time and time again. And here he goes stealing from them!”

Connery found this all dismaying and depressing. He’d spent enough time here. Taking back the picture of Kenton, he thanked Wheelan again and turned away.

“Hey, you really weren’t trying to say that Kenton is still alive, were you?”

Connery turned and looked at Wheelan a last time. “Why? Do you think he could be?”

“Not if what I read in your magazine is true. He was killed along the railroad near Denver.”

“Then I guess you answered your own question. Good day to you, Mr. Wheelan.”

“Good day to you, sir. I hope you find your mysterious sketch artist.”

“I intend to, sir.”

Connery moved on, but Wheelan called to him one more time. “Hey, I think I just remembered something. That man writing with the pencil came back in later on. He looked around the table he’d been at, but wouldn’t stay to eat. I remember because I tried to seat him and he wouldn’t sit down.”

“He was looking for this sketch, then.”

“Assuming that man was the one who did it. It could have been somebody else. Like I said, I just figured the man was writing down notes or something. I didn’t really specifically notice him drawing.”

Connery thought it all over as he walked slowly through town, looking for the telegraph office. If it had been Kenton that Wheelan saw laboring with a pencil and paper and if Kenton had returned to seek the envelope he’d left, then he must have been concerned that the envelope drawing would be found and serve to identify him.

As fate would have it, that very thing had occurred.

Connery found the telegraph office and sent a wire to the Illustrated American. After an hour of waiting the reply came back. Kenton had indeed done a story and series of sketches about Jack Livingston.

Connery tucked the telegram into his pocket, beside the envelope bearing the sketch. He was now almost sure why Kenton had come to this unlikely town. He needed a remote, secure place to hide. And what more remote and secure place could there be than the mountainside mansion of Jack Livingston?

*   *   *

Connery walked out of the telegraph office into the midst of excitement in Culvertown: a crowd was gathering around a town marshal who was bringing in two dead bodies draped without dignity across the back of a mule, their arms dangling.

“What happened, Marshal?” someone asked.

“Shot dead,” he replied. “Both of them. A traveler coming in early this morning found them on the road, both shot square between the eyes.”

“Between the eyes?” someone replied. “Executed?”

“No powder burns on the face,” the marshal replied. “Whoever shot them plugged them from some distance away … some really accurate shooting, to hit them both like he did.” He touched his face directly between the eyebrows. “Hell of a time for it to happen, though. I’ve got a train to catch to Scallonville this afternoon, and now I’ve got to deal with this. I’ll be lucky to make it on time.”

Connery was feeling a little queasy. The men on the back of the mule were the same ones who had followed him and camped on the road the night before.

He remembered the popping sounds that had awakened him. Now he knew what those sounds had been.

He listened to the general conversation around him. Someone noted that the two were a pair of common thieves who had plagued people in those parts for at least a year. Whoever had killed them had done the citizenry a favor, another person noted.

Connery stared for a few moments at the blood dripping from the downturned heads of the dead men and listened to the talk around him. He was a little shaky. Though these men had been a threat to him and he certainly had no trace of affection for them, it was unnerving to see them dead when only last night he’d been hiding from them along the roadside.

He turned away from the crowd and walked off, feeling the need for a change of scenery and a turn around town for some fresh air.

Connery walked briskly, not noticing that another man had also stepped away from the crowd and was following him some distance behind.