CHAPTER 2

Gunnison stared at his plate a moment before he began to eat. What Garry had just told him had unsettled him even though he had not let it show.

Kenton seen in Denver. Garry was the third person in just under two weeks to report such a sighting to Gunnison. The first two reports Gunnison had discounted, the second less easily than the first. But now a third.… What was he to think?

Gunnison picked up his fork and knife and sliced off a bite of pork. He ate but tasted it only slightly, his mind preoccupied.

It was possible Kenton was in fact in Colorado, at least theoretically. The news of Kenton’s death, reported as fact in the Illustrated American and picked up subsequently by every major newspaper in the nation, was a fabrication, a fact known by only a handful of people, Gunnison chief among them. It was he who had written Kenton’s obituary and who had eulogized his old partner movingly, standing beside a mahogany coffin weighted with old copies of the Illustrated American.

Gunnison still wondered if that deception, once revealed to the world, would cost him his position at the Illustrated American, a position greatly advanced since Kenton’s supposed death. With Kenton thought to be gone forever, Gunnison’s father, founder and publisher of the magazine, had at last advanced his son upward in rank, aiming him ultimately for the publisher’s office. But once it was learned that Gunnison had cooperated with Kenton in foisting one of the greatest hoaxes in journalistic history upon the world—using the sacred Illustrated American to do it—Gunnison feared his own father would fire him. The senior Gunnison took his magazine and his conceptions of journalistic duty dead seriously. He would not abide deliberate deception, not from his own son, not from Brady Kenton, not from anyone.

It didn’t matter. Gunnison would have carried out the hoax at almost any price, because Brady Kenton had asked him to. By becoming “dead” in the eyes of the world, Kenton had gained the opportunity to travel to England to seek his lost wife, Victoria, who for many years had been in the hands of the obsessed Dr. David Kevington. Kenton had taken with him his daughter, Rachel Frye.

But that had been nearly a year ago. Gunnison had received a single item of news from Kenton at the beginning, a letter sent to him at the Illustrated American office under a preagreed code name. The letter informed him that Kenton and Rachel had safely made their voyage and were preparing to begin the journey to the Kevington estate. Kenton promised another letter would soon follow … but none had ever come.

Gunnison had waited, waited, and waited more … but nothing.

He was worried. What if Kenton and Rachel had been captured by Kevington, or worse? The man had demonstrated his willingness to do extreme actions long ago when he’d taken the badly injured Victoria Kenton away from a train accident and spirited her off to his English estate. There he had slowly led her back to health again, though not before she had given birth to the daughter of Brady Kenton, conceived shortly before her accident. Victoria had never known of the birth; she was in a coma when Rachel Kenton was born and still in a coma when Rachel was given away to a servant family named Frye, to raise as their own.

Rachel had learned the secret of her true heritage many years later and had come to the United States and found Brady Kenton, her real father.

Now Kenton and Rachel were gone off to England … or perhaps off the face of the earth, for all Gunnison knew.

He worried almost constantly about the lack of news from Kenton and already was secretly planning a voyage of his own to England to find out what had happened to his friend.

But what if Kenton wasn’t in England at all? Could he really be in Colorado?

If so, why hadn’t he contacted Gunnison? And where were Rachel and Victoria?

Gunnison stared at his plate, lost in thought.

“Is something unsatisfactory, Mr. Gunnison?” a waiter asked.

“Hmm? Oh … no. Everything is fine. I’ve just been thinking about something.”

“Can I bring you anything?”

“No. Not at the moment.”

“Very good, sir.”

Gunnison ate the rest of his meal without interruption, paid his bill, and walked back to his lonely house with his collar turned up and his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

*   *   *

Kenton … in Colorado.

Gunnison rolled the possibility over in his mind again and again and found it simply didn’t fit. Kenton would not return without contacting him.

Not unless he was in trouble, major trouble, and didn’t want to embroil his old friend and partner in it. Kenton was like that.

Nearly to his house, Gunnison stopped, sighed, and turned on his heel. His mind was churning; no point in going home just yet, because he couldn’t relax if he did.

It was several blocks to the building full of renovated offices into which the Illustrated American had moved its operation only eight months before, but Gunnison walked them speedily despite his heavy supper. By the time he got to the office he’d worked off most of his tension.

He turned the key and entered the empty building. Not even a janitor around just now; Tuesday evenings the offices were empty except for the occasional late worker. The absence of lights in any windows indicated no one had stayed late tonight.

Gunnison didn’t bother to light the hallway, walking it blindly by familiarity. He passed the little office that had been Kenton’s. The door was slightly ajar, the room vaguely illuminated by the relatively brighter light outside. The desk was empty, the shelves still untouched and all Kenton’s books in place despite the fact everyone believed him dead and the stuff should have been gone through long ago. Funny how nobody wanted to do it. Everybody liked having Kenton’s office like it was.… It made it seem possible that he could reappear and come boisterously striding in like he always had. People around the office still talked in sentimental tones about this, like mourners at a funeral discussing how good the corpse looks.

Gunnison went to his office, lit and cranked up the light, and took a second look through the stack of mail he had received in the morning. He knew there was no letter from Charles Matthias, the pseudonym Kenton had chosen for his letters to Gunnison, but he looked anyway, just to be sure. Then he went to his father’s office, the door of which always stood open, and examined his father’s mail on the chance that a letter might have been delivered to the wrong Gunnison. Again, nothing.

Gunnison returned to his office and flopped down in his chair. He was tired, missed his wife, and was worried about Kenton. It had just been too long. He should have heard something by now.

The prospect of a journey to England seemed realer by the moment. But also daunting, especially as tired as he felt right now.

Gunnison leaned across his desk, resting his chin on the back of his crossed hands, then turned his head and rested his cheek instead. He closed his eyes.